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S3 Ep275: Gaming in September 2023
76 Plays2 years ago
Join Dave and Jake as they briefly chat about Castlevania, minimum wage, food prices, the work-from-home meta, and even October games in this week's episode!
Intro:
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Intro:
- Wargames: Defcon 1 - Track 8
- Payday 2 OST - Clean Getaway
SoapstonePodcast@gmail.com
Like our podcast? Like our podcast! We'll post when new episodes are uploaded!
https://www.facebook.com/SoapstonePodcast/
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Transcript
Introduction: Meet Jake and Dave
00:00:57
Speaker
How's it going everyone? Welcome to another episode of Soapstone. My name is Jake, and I'm joined by my co-host, as always, Dave. How's it going tonight, Dave? It's good. It's net good. Net good? That's good.
00:01:09
Speaker
on the alignment chart between evil, neutral, good. My day was going to be evil, but then I did a good deed. Oh, that's good. Yeah. I was about to commit evil against a work who was keeping me late for a thing that is stupid and should not be my responsibility and should have been thought about ahead of time.
Castlevania Nocturne: From Game to Screen
00:01:27
Speaker
Um, but Castlevania Nocturne dropped today and I've been just feeding myself those episodes throughout the day. So right.
00:01:37
Speaker
and this is the uh it's on netflix right the continuation of the netflix series yeah i think netflix is going to have ownership or rights of that for a while nice that counts for this episode you know month in gaming but some people don't realize this castlevania was actually a game i found this out because psycho mantis
00:02:00
Speaker
will call you out for it if it's on your memory card in Metal Gear Solid. So that's how you know it's a game.
The Influence of Castlevania Music
00:02:10
Speaker
Which is based off the manga. Yeah, probably.
00:02:16
Speaker
Yeah, it is crazy how prolific Castlevania has become. It's just so many people know so many, I mean, so many, it's probably like three songs, everybody knows, one of which is obviously Bloody Tears. But it slaps. And I've heard so many good covers of it from bands over the years, and other artists and people making electronic stuff.
Evolution of Video Game Adaptations
00:02:41
Speaker
It doesn't hurt that like the quality of content for for video games specifically something like Castlevania is far higher than it was in the past right you like you go back a decade or two and it's very much like we're kind of just doing a cash-in sort of thing and a similar way people would make like
00:03:02
Speaker
like action figures and toys like that for popular media. They're like, how do we get money out of this thing ASAP? Like, no, we don't want to spend a ton of time in development. Just get it out the door. We're just taking people's money. It doesn't matter how much they like it. Right. And then then Castlevania was like a really good show. Yeah, it's super entertaining.
00:03:26
Speaker
I'd say it's been kind of on par, like at least thematically. Like I still have good interesting characters, dialogue,
Dave's Subscription Strategy
00:03:34
Speaker
animation. There's vampires. There's vampires. It doesn't seem as deep overall, but I mean, I think they have eight episodes out, which I assume is the season. So maybe they will do more with those characters in the future and kind of go deeper into it. But the setting aesthetic has been very cool and fun.
00:03:56
Speaker
Yeah, it has a lot to live up to because that show has been kind of all over the place and very adventurous everywhere it goes. So.
00:04:09
Speaker
I'll have to give it a look. See, I'll have to, I'll have to do the, uh, the re-up thing. Cause that's pretty much the way I think I'm going to handle subscriptions for the most part going forward. We talked about it, I think in a previous episode, but I don't want to keep like 10 subscriptions going forever. It's going to be like this month, we're going to watch the whole thing. Cause we're going to be here for this month. Right. Yeah. Like I want to go into the model of like, when I go to a grocery store, they're like,
The State of Minimum Wage in the U.S.
00:04:37
Speaker
Oh, do you have like our discount card? And I'm like, not yet. And then I turn around in place three times and I'm like, all right, I've been a member all along. I'll take that discount. And then I tear up the card in front of their face after the transaction. I'm like, never again. Never again. They're like a minimum wage employee. Somebody who's 16 named Tyler who's just kind of like looking around like, what do I do with this customer?
00:05:05
Speaker
I'll see myself. Oh, yeah All the minimum wage would actually be really bad right now. I realized as I said it minimal minimal wage would be Nothing in our home state of PA. I think because we have federal so it's like 725. I Thought it got moved up. Do they get moved up?
00:05:25
Speaker
I don't think to push it for $15 and I followed it for a little bit. But again, it's $7.25. Oh, it's still $7.25. Okay. I know certain places do offer a closer to $15. Yeah. There's Google saying that there's legislation to increase it and some of it passed like the house, but none of it looks like it's taken actual effect. So.
00:05:55
Speaker
Okay. There was the two weeks where we cared about it and then something else happened and then. Yeah. Someone influential disagreed and yeah. There's some good points. We shouldn't pay them more. No one makes $7.25. If you make $7.25, you're actually being robbed, especially to deal with Dave's supermarket shenanigans.
00:06:18
Speaker
Where I constantly rob people. Leaving a trench coat. I've always been this size, no further questions.
00:06:25
Speaker
I've been playing Payday recently and I think to actually rob a supermarket, like the cashiers at a supermarket, would be like a net loss in gas cost. At this point it's absolutely not worth it. Could not recommend. But I mean, food prices have definitely gone up. True. Yes, everything has.
00:06:49
Speaker
but food prices very chiefly. This is not about video games, really. Sorry, sorry, sorry. No,
Work-from-Home: Competitive Landscape
00:06:59
Speaker
no, no. I was thinking about it because I was like, I talked to Dave on the side behind, and we're talking about work from home because we're both in work from home situations. I was like, I'll keep you apprised of news updates or anything else I get around this because it used to be during the pandemic, work from home was massive and expanding, and it's been contracting by comparison.
00:07:15
Speaker
And it was something like some crazy, almost half of LinkedIn applications were for like the 9% of positions on the site that were posted for work from home positions. Like it's crazy the amount of contention.
00:07:34
Speaker
So much so that people that are posting jobs, in some cases, we're closing them within three days. They're just like gone. And so the natural follow up is...
00:07:46
Speaker
those positions may pay less, not the shoe store. And yeah, so that's the update just for Dave. For everyone who tuned out, you can tune back. Again, I think it's, I mean, I've discussed this point and argued it so many times, but it's so fucking stupid to do something just for the sake of doing something and not because it actually makes pragmatic and practical sense.
00:08:12
Speaker
Like, if you ask me to do X amount of work, and I do X amount of work, the other factor should not matter. Right? As long as it's done within the time frame or whatever the fuck it is.
Dave's Work Reputation & Remote Challenges
00:08:25
Speaker
Like, if you're like, well, but it's a blah blah blah blah, you're stupid.
00:08:29
Speaker
Whatever reason you have, you're stupid because I can easily point out things. You're like, hey, this is a bad business practice that you do. You don't have certain things in place here. Here's where you're burning money. But no, you want to have people in the office. Shut the fuck up. If you want to see my face, I'll turn my camera for five seconds. I'll give you the I'll give you a little wave so you feel good about yourself. But like, that's all you don't need it.
00:08:54
Speaker
The other thing that was not stated in the article is people's revulsion to work from home or the withdrawal from it is mostly fueled by Dave's aggression towards employers. They're just like, I don't know, Dave's work from home. He seems pretty dangerous and angry. Dude, I low key think I have a mild reputation where I don't think certain people enjoy working with me or they're worried that like,
00:09:23
Speaker
I'm going to pop off. And sometimes I do, but I think it's like with good reason. Right. And it's not like, fuck you, you fucking idiot. I'm just like, why are we doing this thing when we could be doing this? Right. Not aggression, but irritability, perhaps. Oh, yeah, I'm very irritable. But you would think that in a work from home situation, they would be more happy to have you as a work
Recent Video Game News
00:09:48
Speaker
from home employee.
00:09:48
Speaker
because you're less likely to show up to work with a trench coat and like an assault rifle right like you'll be fine they'll be fine everyone will be fine yeah i'll be honest my recent threats of don't go into the office today have not landed the same since the pandemic so uh-huh yeah yeah but on the video game front uh threats of domestic terrorism aside um
00:10:14
Speaker
There was a fair number of things that landed this month as far as news was concerned. We're also, I was going to say, hot off the presses. That's not correct, but we're on the chasing the coattails. We're on the heels of the release of Armored Core 6, and it feels like at least in the news cycle, Baldur's Gate is still a thing, as well as everything that actually came out this month.
00:10:41
Speaker
Plenty of things to talk about. Was there anything that happened in this month that you want the prestigious position of starting us off? I think I made a joke at some point that I was going to beat Armored Core 6 before we ever got to Chapter 2 or Act 2 of Baldur's Gate 3. It turned out to not quite be true, but it was fucking close. It was very close. Just because I struggled with one of the bosses for several days.
00:11:10
Speaker
But armor core six thoroughly enjoyed Baldur's Gate three still going on so I refused to watch any videos or Anytime somebody mentions that I'm like I closed my ears and I scream shut up I don't want to get spoiled until I've actually a chance to complete it and then I'll be very late to the hey guys Did you like this one part like yes, we talked about it a month ago? Okay, cool
00:11:34
Speaker
But that's still going on. Lies of Pete came out this month. That's
Payday 3 Launch Issues
00:11:39
Speaker
true. Yeah. I've been checking that out a little bit. It is probably the, of all the spin-off soul's legs that kind of get media attention. I think this one has been the closest to hitting the mark. That's pretty good. Um, the other things like Steel Rising just didn't seem to land as much. Um, so there's another one I'm not recalling at the moment.
00:12:02
Speaker
What else came out? Payday 3. Payday 3 did. I feel like we should spend some more time talking about that launched, question mark. Technically. It is available to play. I don't know if it's in popular media or not, but there's this association of a ship launching and then being unmoored and immediately just descending into the sea.
00:12:31
Speaker
And that's what the launch of Payday 3 is kind of like. Right. It just rides the bottom of the coast right down off the abyssal plain and that's Payday. There's so many times where people get excited about games and the more people get excited the more concerned I get.
00:12:50
Speaker
If I get excited for it, obviously I am very vested in it, like Armor Corps 6 and Baldur's Gate 3. And Payday 3 was very much a, we'll see how it goes. And people were like, yo, Payday 3. I'm like, I have a bad feeling. And then it has not been up to expectations, I would say.
00:13:12
Speaker
Yeah, I think it would be a little bit revisionist history if you said everyone was full hype ahead. A lot of people were very hype. At least when I was talking about it, I like to mention that some of their previous games are just outright bombed. So there's no real reason to expect that it would be a soft landing. But even with that caveat,
00:13:34
Speaker
It's been a really rough landing to invert the the analogy It it's like a parachuter with no parachute Pretty much like straight into the ground like a shooter if you will. Yes. Yes It was a shooter but to quantify that it's mostly because it's always online and for a Significant chunk of the time in the first four or five days that the game was out. It was unplayable
00:14:05
Speaker
because the people they went with for server hosting just literally could not host everyone playing the game and it all just crashed under its own weight and it was completely unavailable. Do you know my favorite recurring story is in games media?
00:14:23
Speaker
We weren't expecting to have so many players at launch. Oh my god, you fucking idiot. This happens every time. There's always going to be a rush of players at the start of a game launch, but similar to having like a first bad date or like first bad interaction, meeting somebody, that's what you're going to remember. You can remember the launch was bad. You couldn't really get into games or you had to wait a very long time to
00:14:50
Speaker
Try something single player because you had to wait for online server space to try out a mission. And then you get distracted by something else. And then you're like, do you want to go back and play that? I remember having a bad taste in my mouth with that experience.
00:15:06
Speaker
Yeah, there are plenty of examples about that. And like we were mentioning, it's still a pretty hot season for games right now. So like if you were thinking about another Baldur's Gate playthrough, if you were getting into like Cyberpunk or something else we'll talk about or play a more armored core, like these are all very tangible, great options and like Starfield, whatever.
00:15:26
Speaker
and this game is kind of unavailable yeah a lot of people refunded it um i think i can't remember if it was the ceo or someone else came out on twitter and was like um it's better to you know play on game pass than to refund or whatever and i'm like what does that mean like that is not a great line to drop um but yeah it was it was just
00:15:52
Speaker
It was really bad and really bad when people have this perception of No Man's Sky's launch and Fallout 76's launch and freaking Red Cyberpunk 2077's launch, like these are, yeah, and Redfall, yeah. And yeah, most of it was around availability, but people also have other concerns with the game such as
00:16:16
Speaker
the challenge system where you only get like certain types of progression, namely infamy, which is what unlocks your ability to buy certain weapons and gear and stuff. Um, that only progresses when you complete challenges, um, as opposed to just doing heists, right? Where you're rewarded more for pulling more money out of the mission. Um, but.
00:16:38
Speaker
I don't want to go into a crazy amount of depth about comparing this game to Payday 2 because I've suggested, I've subjected rather other people to it. There are definitely pros and cons. And the game seems pretty good when I can play it, is my opinion. I enjoy playing it. But maybe I've just been off the train too long, but like,
00:17:03
Speaker
I don't really think for any of the times I've hopped on to play payday three with people, have I been like, wow, we zowie. I'm having a good time. I'm just kind of like, I'm along for the ride. Oh, the ride's done. Okay. And that's okay. I'm also like a very muted part of my life. Um, but yeah, like certain things feel to what's the word flat or.
00:17:30
Speaker
Like the edges are rounded off for payday round Whether it's like character design how the guns feel feel like I can't really unlock a lot or do a whole lot at the moment Maybe that's part of it I think I think that's valid too. There's there's a lot that payday 2 has that payday 3 like does not have content wise and It's a slower game
00:17:54
Speaker
And it takes like two shots with any sort of starter weapon for like head shots to kill an enemy and that alone actually Of all the things you can do to judge how your game feels like that feels bad a normal difficulty to shoot somebody twice in the head is necessary like they're not zombies right like there's supposed to be people and
00:18:17
Speaker
That just impacts the pacing a lot but part of it is because they are trying to slow the game down from this 200 miles an hour Payday 2 experience where you're just like going through droves of people. But I thought that was more fun from a combat perspective. Okay. By that I mean Payday 2 was more fun. Okay, I agree with that. It's more so. It's more arcadey.
00:18:47
Speaker
Yeah. It just feels like there's stuff going on. Okay. Although granted, like last time we played payday two, it felt like pure, unfettered chaos. Whereas like, I don't know what's happening. I need an adult to kind of drag me by the hand and be like, come over here and shoot these police. I'm like, okay. So I was shooting people as they, as they came up to me instead of like moving the objectives. Um,
00:19:13
Speaker
But like, yeah, it can, it can get really crazy, but it feels good when you actually have a coordinated team and certain people are on. Oh, there's a sniper. We have a specific person with a ranged weapon or a sniper with decent sites to be able to deal with that. Oh, we have somebody with like a street sweeper shotgun. Who's going to deal with a lot of the. Jobber cops, et cetera.
00:19:38
Speaker
It really feels like that game, and we talked about this a little bit, but I've had more time to think about it. That game excels in a multiplayer setting when everybody has something to do, and the thing that they have to do matters.
00:19:53
Speaker
And because of that, stealth is very difficult. And combat already has all of those issues. It kind of feels sort of one note. It's a little bit bland. The music is excellent, but you are playing a game also. As great as it would be to just close your eyes, lean back and be like, I'm enjoying this track, this music appreciation course.
00:20:15
Speaker
Um, and yeah, it's just, it's not the experience I really want in combat and the stealth is awesome for like two
Challenges of Playing Payday 3
00:20:25
Speaker
people. But if you're in a four person group, it's too much. You can't explain, you can't really coordinate that many people to do things. No heist has four simultaneous, uh, objective requirements. So like.
00:20:43
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know. It's, it's, it's kind of difficult to get into. I think as, as a new player, pubs would be terrible, but even if you're in a full group of people that you know, I don't know how you ever really explained stealth unless everyone's done the mission already. They all already understand it. Oh, I'll just queued up single player and figured out on my own.
00:21:05
Speaker
I honestly, this harkens back to where you can't play single player without being online. This is true. Yes. Um, you have to wait for them to allocate you space as of recording. It's a little bit better on the servers. It does seem like you can get a match. Um,
00:21:21
Speaker
And I actually kind of recommend that if you're interested in the game, but there's, these are two Venn diagrams, people who want to play the game with their friends because you know, co-op game, heisting, all of that stuff. And then people who want are willing to run through the missions on their own to understand them. I don't think there's a crazy amount of overlap for every person. So it makes it kind of a harder recommend that I'd like to say, but
00:21:51
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know. It's kind of tough to get into if you don't already know some of what's going on in each mission. You know what's crazy? This is making Back for Blood look better. Yeah. And I never had major issues with Back for Blood. Like for me, it was close enough to what I expected for a Left 4 Dead 3 type. And I understand it wasn't for everybody.
00:22:15
Speaker
But again, everybody had the same job of like shoot shit. Occasionally you'd have to do like a minor objective, but as long as you were shooting stuff, you, you would get by fine. Um, everyone lived as a unit generally type of game. And like you had some perks, but they were typically minor and that kind of helped the team more. So like, Oh, you picked, I forget the name of the guy. We called him Lucio. Um, but you could, you could move faster as a group. Cool.
00:22:44
Speaker
But again, it was a minor thing. And if you didn't have that person, it didn't kneecap you. It's just kind of how you want to specialize a little bit. Right. Yeah. I think in order to get a, everyone doing something at the same time in stealth and payday, you both need every, you need everyone at the table to understand exactly what needs to happen in the mission and then determine the roles of each person and like.
00:23:09
Speaker
That would be really cool to pull off, but no one is capable of that when they come in like to the game for the first time. And so, yeah, I think I think a coordinated cooperative game is just a lot easier to get into. Deep Rock Galactic, Back 4 Blood, anything where it's like people are basically in the same footing or they know exactly what their role is and it doesn't need to be defined at the start of the map.
00:23:36
Speaker
Everybody can kind of lightly hit stuff, but there's somebody who specializes in drilling or digging. Yeah. Everybody can jump around, but like the Scout has a lot more mobility and get to higher places easier. Right.
00:23:50
Speaker
Everybody is kind of on the same level to a degree with basic functionality, but certain people excelled at specific roles and you're like, okay, I'm primarily going to do that because I'm good at that. Hi, I'm the explosive guy. I'm going to blow shit up and set fire to my team. Okay. You go do that.
00:24:10
Speaker
Yeah. And there were synergies between them that were well established, right? Like if you're talking about the scout, like maybe there's a patch of ore really high up on the wall. You can have the engineer shoot a platform up there and then the scout will repel up and mine from the top of the platform. Something that neither person is capable of doing on their own, but they have that cool synergy and.
00:24:32
Speaker
Payday 3 hasn't reached anything like that yet. There are some synergistic perks, but there aren't like, I don't, again, I don't wanna get too crazy into details for the perk tree and stuff like that. I like it overall, but there are very few things that are like, this is gonna benefit everyone around you. And the one that I saw was like, ammo pickups are shared whenever you grab it. So you get full ammo and then everybody nearby also gets full ammo from the pickup, which is cool.
00:25:00
Speaker
but nothing like mechanically enforcing this sort of play.
00:25:09
Speaker
But I don't wanna, I don't wanna end on like digging into the game. Cause I will say my last experience with it was two other people, two other friends were in a heist and I jumped in and was like, I'm just going to hack into the cameras. And literally all that I'm gonna do here, because I'm sitting here eating food in real life, right? I've got a bowl of food in front of me. Everything that I do is just going to be looking through the cameras and looping video feeds.
00:25:37
Speaker
as they move through the mission. So they're like, oh, crap, here's this camera or whatever. And I'm tapping through until I find it. I was like, okay, that one's looped, you guys can go. And it was very funny. It's something that is not possible at all in Payday 2, this entirely passive sort of play, because I didn't even have my mask on. So I was in no danger unless they mucked it up, right? Which they did in the end. But we did all escape, it was kind of close.
00:26:04
Speaker
i love that that's a really good feel and if the game could get more things like that where you go into a map and you're like i know what my role is i know what i'm contributing it'll it'll succeed i think but it has a long way to go there's only eight heists by the way too and that kind of
00:26:21
Speaker
Bro, that feels shit. That feels really bad, actually. They're better, I will, to give them a little bit of credit, they're better than the payday two heists that launched because the payday two heists are things like Go Bank, which I subjected Dave and Lando to watching me try to go through, and the basic cash, gold, and deposit box heists, and some other things, nightclub, mall crasher, really basic things.
00:26:45
Speaker
they're better all of them are pretty much better than those but it's still only eight so i very much foresee this game is going to fall off the radar and be something people revisit later when it's more stabilized and has a lot more content
00:26:58
Speaker
I still think they would have benefited from finding some way. Maybe they do have it planned. They'll be kind of weird to do later versus at launch. But to migrate some of the existing content from Payday 2 of, hey, we really like these levels doing these things. Maybe we could bring them back over. Hey, I know you guys spent a whole bunch of money on DLC for a game that nobody plays anymore. Oh, we kind of brought over your masks.
00:27:26
Speaker
Yeah, it feels very barren in comparison in Payday 3. Maybe that's because of how much of a legacy Payday 2 had built up over time, but yeah, we expected more. Sorry.
00:27:41
Speaker
A lot of it they can't move over because they did the same thing similar to a game like Fall Guys where so much of their content is licensed. So they couldn't meet, they couldn't launch with Jacket from Hotline Miami. They don't have Ethan and Hila for Payday 3. They don't have Ron Perlman as a playable character anymore. There's a lot of stuff.
00:28:10
Speaker
characters I would think that some of the levels and missions oh yeah mm-hmm I do think there is a pretty big difference it's a completely different engine and I will say the engine is a lot better although there are performance issues and they really should work on that too the engine is better than payday too but that's not a hard bar to clear
00:28:31
Speaker
And, uh, so anything that they pour over is basically going to just be recreated, right? Like they're going to have to have new assets, new layout, all of that. Um, but I suspect that's probably what will happen. Like they probably will take that approach. It's kind of like, Hey, do you like this destiny one content fans go crazy. Oh my God.
00:28:54
Speaker
Oh my gosh, anything. We're just starved. That's actually one of the issues I kind of have with fancier games with better graphics and stuff like that, is I don't care that much. And it's harder for them, it takes more time for them to make maps like that.
00:29:17
Speaker
And I would rather just have more maps with cool mechanics and things like that than really nice looking maps like the Nike, the what is it Club Neon or whatever and Payday 3. It looks awesome. There's music. There's all these lights and stuff. It's freaking great. Would I have taken like three maps instead of that one? Yeah. Yeah, I would. Yeah, I.
00:29:41
Speaker
I can also get a little bit lost in the sauce. Like, when I've been playing Lies of P, graphically, it's been good. I definitely know I'm not running at its crispest settings, but there are times when I can just be in like the environment or like a boss fight and I would just kind of zone out, be like,
00:29:59
Speaker
There's a lot of pretty detail in here. Oh shit, I gotta pay attention to other things happening. So like it does make it feel more immersive and more like, that's right, I'm a gamer. But at the same time, yeah, I don't need it to be perfect because my eyes are going. I can barely see Jake at the moment. I don't know if that's how computer screens work.
00:30:25
Speaker
Like there's very few games I'd be like, Oh my God, you have to check it out. It's the most pretty thing in the world versus Hey, you should check this out. I really enjoyed the gameplay stories. Good character. Good music slaps. Yeah.
00:30:38
Speaker
I mean, we don't take comparisons from this series this much, but Dark Souls has never been a high fidelity game. Dark Souls 1 actually looks really bad. Graphically, there's almost nothing there that really looks good. But art style wise, you might come across to Vista, not the operating system, but the point of view where it's like,
00:31:06
Speaker
Oh my gosh, there's this massive area before me. I see it. And because this is Dark Souls, I can go there if I see it. Right. And that's really cool. Or the Raya Lucaria is what it's called in Elden Ring. But there's the Boreal Valley in Dark Souls 3. That's burned into my that's that is a formative memory.
00:31:30
Speaker
That I can like never forget like the first time you just see this awesome looking city in the moon behind it That city is full of bland textures. Let me tell you like when you're going through it. Nothing there stands out is awesome looking But that seeing it the first time is freaking awesome It didn't take the craziest amount of development time, but it leaves an impression And I think that's what you should do. That's what you should aim for
00:31:58
Speaker
Yeah. I'd also throw in an Orlando as an example. Yeah. It just, uh, what do you want to do? Uh, sunset, everyone's like, holy shit, the most pretty area in the game. And to be fair, like compared to a lot of other areas, it's really nice. Um, but yeah, like it sets a tone and that carries way further than. Did you see the specific, uh, pixels here? Did you see that the assets they had for like the fruit? Oh my God. The fruit assets are crazy. Eh, eh, okay.
00:32:28
Speaker
Yeah, I don't need the next crisis. And they let you under, they let you undermine that in Dark Souls 1. If, uh, you kill Dark Sun Gwyndolin. You're just like, oh, well, sunset's gone. It's nighttime now, fool. Like, why would you do this? Your mistake. Dude, his boobs were for everybody.
00:32:49
Speaker
Oh my gosh, is it Gwynevere? If you killed Gwynevere, it is the illusion of Gwynevere that causes the darkness. What happens for Gwendolyn, if anything? He dies. He dies? Oh, he's also maintaining the illusion, though. That was it. They both would vanish if he killed Gwynevere. I guess either, yeah. Okay. I'm still technically kind of correct, but not from the way I was originally expecting. 90% of people are more likely to shoot Gwynevere's illusion in the boobs than
00:33:19
Speaker
It's fair. Yeah, it's also like a hidden boss. Watch Zooli's video on how that boss mechanic actually works for that infinite hallway. Very cool. Recommend it. Anyways, that's payday three. I might talk about it more a little bit in the future if we want to do like a more
00:33:39
Speaker
I would like to do a little bit of a comparison to Payday 2 when we've had more time to sink our teeth into it and really evaluate where the game's at because Payday 2 was an episode so far back in our founding. But I also acknowledge that
00:33:58
Speaker
I'll probably get technical in ways that no one will listen to the entire podcast. So I'm not gonna subject people to that here. And I'd like to also give it a little bit more of a fair shake. So, later.
00:34:15
Speaker
That was one of the games that came out like it recovered to write anything else you wanted to say for lies of pee you said that it's it's been a standout so far and Do you think it's on the do you think it is a contender to have its own episode?
00:34:30
Speaker
I mean, it depends if you check it out and play it.
Exploring Lies of P Gameplay
00:34:34
Speaker
I will say the reason I'm checking out currently is one, had some big interest and then two game pass, which I'm using for that and payday three. So get my money's worth. Um, I will say, let me, let me throw some high level mechanic stuff at you. Um,
00:34:54
Speaker
So far, I have not been overly impressed by the level design. Though, the more I play, the more intricate things seem to get. But as far as how it's themed and all laid out, I'm actually really enjoying it. The whole aesthetic is very cool.
00:35:13
Speaker
I'm liking the hub area and the characters you get to meet. I'm liking the different progression systems so basically you have a weapon your weapon has sharpness or durability and Like let's say you're blocking a lot of hits or doing a lot of damage your weapons gonna wear down over time eventually it can theoretically break and
00:35:36
Speaker
But the way you sharpen it is you just kind of like take your other mechanical arm and just kind of grind on it and it looks so badass Was it sort of like a monster hunter like mechanic where? Like you're taking time in a fight or while going yeah, perhaps toggle it on or off
00:35:56
Speaker
So I have started to sharpen something where I did a major part of critical damage. I have a brief window to do something, whether it's pop a potion or sharpen my weapon. So I'll sharpen the weapon while walking back. I'll be like, do I got to switch yet? And then I'll see them get up. I'm like, oh, fuck. And I'll switch what my belt's pointed to so I can have heals up again.
00:36:19
Speaker
But there's that. There's also a little bit into it. You can get a grindstone. So in that same sharpening thing, I can basically have a specific one where it's always set to electric fire poison. Right. The imbuement sort of. Yes. So I get one free per touching a bonfire, essentially.
00:36:42
Speaker
So I can just imbue going to a boss fight like, let's fucking go. So that's a cool thing that they added.
00:36:51
Speaker
Also, it has the bloodborne mechanic of if you're taking hits while blocking, you kind of get like that little window of damage that you can heal back by hitting people. The rally system. I think rally system is called. Yeah. There's also perfect parries, which that's how you break an enemy stance or have them break their weapon. And you can also open up for like critical attacks, which is cool.
00:37:17
Speaker
Also, the weapons are kind of broke up into two things. There's the blade, and then there's the handle. The blade is going to determine your attack speed and attack damage. And it might scale off some stat type. And then the handle is entirely for, hey, here's the move set you have access to. Gotcha. So you can kind of mix and match and play around with stuff.
00:37:43
Speaker
Which has been fun to experiment with I'm very much going a heavy boy where I'm like, let me slap him once big and we'll see what happens Pinocchio made out of mahogany. Yeah But what's cool about the weapon I currently have is it actually has a mode using fable charges fable charges is kind of like Stuff you build up and then you can use weapon arts with the fable charges So the more you hit an enemy the more that charge builds up then you can use a weapon arts
00:38:13
Speaker
I've played Charge Blade in a Monster Hunter. I'm following 100%. I know what you're talking about. So there's always going to be two options on a given handle. One will be like, in this case, I'm playing on Xbox, so I'm just hitting Y. And it's usually just a quicker attack or something else. And then your left bumper in Y will do a special weapon art. So in the case of the one I have, it makes the weapon longer.
00:38:42
Speaker
a little bit, but also when it does that change, I use less stamina when attacking for a period of time. And then if I switch it back, I get a damage buff for a time, but of course I'm now attacking a little bit slower with a little bit less range. So you're incentivized to swap more often to keep this buff up?
00:39:06
Speaker
I haven't tried swapping more than once at the start of a major fight because I just like the range in the faster attacking option a little bit more. But yeah, I'm sure there's lots of other things I have not encountered yet.
00:39:21
Speaker
It sounds like it's borrowing depth from like a lot of different souls like games and mechanics and things like that. Have you found that to be, um, overly derivative or is this more of like an homage or is it just like, I recognize that you're blatantly ripping this off, but it was good there and it's good here.
00:39:44
Speaker
I mean certain things are very much it is a souls like so it has those things like there is upgradeable weapons there are NPCs scattered throughout there's different shops you can find in secrets some of that stuff is just very much it's a souls game like I'm expecting that
00:40:01
Speaker
But it very much feels like it has its own personality, partially for aesthetic, partially. A lot more things are spelled out here versus the Dark Souls. I remember this place once and I tell you nothing else.
00:40:19
Speaker
Uh, there are still item descriptions. Like you can do side quests where maybe you'll talk to an NPC through a window. They'll be like, I need you to help me do a thing. They help them do a thing and they'll give you a reward. The bloodborne. Yeah. I feel like it's been a decent mix of things so far.
00:40:39
Speaker
I will say my biggest gripe has been for the last boss that I finally conquered, I really had to learn and be very patient to learn the fight because I was getting my ass beat. Maybe I was making it harder myself by the way my build is for this specific boss, but you're going to get so much further learning the boss and knowing when to evade perfect parry or like, oh, I can attack now.
00:41:06
Speaker
Which I think is true of a lot of Souls likes. Yeah. That's almost the essence of Souls. As it's like, you know, or you don't know. And that's the difference between success and failure. But like in Souls games, I feel like there are a lot of times you're like, I have enough damage and enough Estus. I can just trade and we'll probably be okay. And that is sometimes not the case because holy shit. Uh huh.
00:41:32
Speaker
That's fair. Yeah, what you said here. Well, first question before I segue into something else. You're playing it on Game Pass. Would this be the type of game you would consider picking up if it wasn't available on Game Pass?
00:41:47
Speaker
Or is it still in that evaluation phase where you're like, come back and listen to the dedicated episode. We're not going to give you the meat and potatoes here in this brief overview. Um, I would say that I've been liking enough enough so far. I think I've spent around 25 hours. So like, yeah, I could see picking this up full price.
00:42:05
Speaker
It also has like some albums you can get and play in the hub area and I've only found three so far But they've been good and I want to find more But yeah, I do find myself very much driven towards I want to find the next thing So I would say that I'm enjoying it and probably would pick it up full price at this point
00:42:24
Speaker
Yeah, I've got an anecdote of like, we were getting ready to play like a paid A3 and Dave was like, all right, let me just finish this thing and like lies of P or whatever, or the puppet game, we call it. So that we stopped talking about P. Um, and, uh, I was like, all right, it was probably, I probably have to play it. Cause if Dave's like not willing to just jump off to go into other multiplayer games, then it's probably got something going for it. Um, so I'll definitely have to give it a look. See as well. It's very contentious.
00:42:54
Speaker
in game time I understand right now I'm putting a lot of time into payday too but what I like is we can give Jake a backlog of games and he's like yeah yeah yeah I'll definitely play armor core six or Paper Mario or Yakuza he's like
00:43:17
Speaker
I'm actually the worst. I am the worst for it. I think part of it is the psychological like procrastination concept where like if there's something that you know you should be doing, you're more likely to do something else, which is how people do. Especially if there's a hurdle too.
00:43:34
Speaker
Yes, which is why people who like exercise productive procrastination put like an arbitrary thing at the top of their list and then just try to convince themselves like oh man I really need to plant pagoneas or something like that. I've been trying to do that for years and then like whatever they actually need to get done they just put underneath that so they procrastinate on planting pagoneas by doing the things they actually need to do that day.
00:44:01
Speaker
It's a psychological thing. Apparently it works According to some people I don't know but I don't implement it so Or maybe I do but it doesn't help me because my lower priority things are playing payday, too. I Will say the brain is actually very stupid I
00:44:19
Speaker
You can actually trick your brain to do certain things. I've not tried it too much yet. But in the same way that your brain will be stupid and it will lie to you and be like, you're useless. You're a piece of shit. I'll be like, I know. But you can actually just even fully well knowing that you're lying, say like, I'm feeling good today and I'm going to have a good day. Right. Right. And you just keep repeating that mantra, say like three times a day.
00:44:43
Speaker
Because your brain is so stupid, even though your logical brain is saying, I know that I'm just manufacturing this just for the sake of it. There's some other part of your emotional brain in the background. It's like, yeah. And that's fucking crazy. And I need to start doing that because.
00:45:02
Speaker
I would lie to myself for my own benefit. That would be great. You kidding me? It's definitely I don't believe there's anything like a secret or something like the secret or something like that. But you're 100 percent correct. Like the difference between faking it and making it is actually very, very close. The thing I go back to is like this one actually was proven.
00:45:24
Speaker
I think, but if you smile, you're more likely to be happy. Not like people smile when they're happy, that's obvious, but like people are happier when they smile, which is like, what does that do? But it's literally your brain is like, oh, we're exercising the muscles that we exercise when we're happy. So we must be happy or something. And then like it starts that loop and it's just like absurd.
00:45:50
Speaker
it's it's kind of like if someone's being obnoxious to you or if they're bothering you or something if You thank them or you'd be polite to them or something like that. It can actually make the situation more tolerable because your brain starts to like You're lying to it. You're saying this is the person I don't mind being around or something like that. It's it's it's crazy, but that's psychology for you
00:46:17
Speaker
But I was going to mention, you're talking about the difficulty of some of these boss fights. This is the segue I was talking about. And I wasn't going to really talk about it, but it hearkens back to something I read about recently, Remnant 2, which we had an episode on earlier this year. Apparently, the developers for that game, they fine-tuned the boss difficulty by being like, OK, can we beat the boss on a first run through with this?
00:46:45
Speaker
um can we do a no hit run of this boss um and they basically just tried to play that knife's edge of like the boss is just hard enough that we can barely do a no hit run or something like that but like kind of presuming that they are the best people that would be playing the game um and i'm like yeah i can feel it i can feel it in the difficulty especially some of the later boss fights they were absolutely getting crushed in
00:47:10
Speaker
But it's all pattern based and no hit runs would be a bigger thing. I kind of like that. It's a cool background story for the development process.
00:47:24
Speaker
There was actually This is one other anecdote off of that and we go back to topics you can own the next one because I'm just chatting a lot now But for Final Fantasy 14, they had an apology Yoshi P put out an apology the producer
00:47:40
Speaker
Because for one of their really hard raid fights savage tier is what it's called They had their play test team try to beat it and they're like we really want this one to be tough We got to make sure that like it's it's fine-tuned. So we're gonna put a lot of effort into it and Their team would use buffs all the stuff available in the like for the players They would coordinate they would have strategies. They would beat the boss
00:48:06
Speaker
And then their standard approach was to increase the boss's health by like one to 2% after they got the boss to where their team could just beat it. Because they're like, well, the top players are just so much better than us, right? Like we're going to need to buff the boss a little bit better than what we could do. We'll get to our knife's edge, but then other people will be way better than us.
00:48:28
Speaker
And then legitimately, it was so hard that one of the classes, one of the jobs you could call them in Final Fantasy was completely pushed out of recruitment. It was like Bard or something, I don't know. But they're like, this person cannot be even in our rotation. You cannot fight this boss with us. And so they came out and apologized because they're like, we made it so tough that an entire group of players could not participate.
00:48:55
Speaker
And they didn't address it because because of like this kind of Japanese humility. But if you connect the dots implicitly, they're like, oh, we are not actually so much worse than our player base anymore. Our player testers did push it to the edge. And when we gave it this little bit of a buff, it was too much. So I just love that. I love video game tuning.
00:49:19
Speaker
Very interesting. I think it needs to be done more because when there are titles like anything under Neo, I understand that it's possible. But like it looks so balls hard to like where you really have to hate yourself to want to go into it. And I feel like it actually does have a lot of cool things, but it's just it's so much mechanically where you have to play kind of perfectly versus. I don't know. I feel like.
00:49:49
Speaker
For a lot of these games, like Liza P, you could have somebody who's not as familiar or not like a master of these types of games come in and be like, yeah, I played the tutorial, uh, beat the first boss. It makes sense. Like that is fun. Versus like, Oh, you can't even beat the tutorial boss type thing. Right. The game's journalist difficulty. Yes. Yeah. Cause again, if you want to have like a decent player base, make it approachable to a degree. It doesn't have to be easy, just approachable.
00:50:20
Speaker
Yeah. And if you, if you want, I mean, not every game needs a difficulty slider, but I don't hate, I wouldn't hate if a game was like the difficulty as we intended and then easy mode, right? Like, um, Liza P, if you would specifically say like, Oh, this is easy mode. Some of your fan base would probably decry you for in seclusion at all. And that's been the news article forever, right? Does Dark Souls need an easy mode? It wouldn't make the game worse if it had it. Um,
00:50:50
Speaker
It would just be the people who are already very invested in the series and really wanted to challenge themselves would not use it. Right. I would only push against it if it meant like you're changing other things about the game. So if you scale down like health and damage for something like easy mode, everything's 50 percent easier to kill. That's 15 percent less damage to you. OK.
00:51:13
Speaker
But if you have to mechanically rework enemies and bosses for either end of the spectrum, whether you're making it easier or more difficult, I feel like it depends on how much time they have to allocate for that.
00:51:28
Speaker
I mean, I think this is very much in the specifics of game design, but the naive approach would just be like reduce incoming damage. Yes. There you go. You don't have to change anything else. You just take more hits before you die. And that way it wouldn't really add to game development time. You're adjusting one value.
00:51:46
Speaker
Then the only question is, are we fragmenting our player base? Because, you know, you can't have people that are farming on easy mode competing against people who are like PvPing until like after a week. And then it doesn't matter because the power differential is so crazy anyways. But like, I don't know, it's interesting. But as I get older, I kind of like.
00:52:08
Speaker
I don't know, sometimes I would appreciate an easy mode. I'm the type of person that usually launches a game on like, hard. Because I'm like, I'm kind of used to western difficulty, where hard is like, challenging. And then occasionally I get like, slapped in the face by a Japanese game, that it was like, oh hard, you mean, masochism mode, really?
00:52:29
Speaker
It's like a very hard icy American spicy American spicy. I'm so sorry It's like and they're very hard setting is something like no one has ever completed this actually We didn't even play test it. We just crank the numbers up really high and left But yeah That's a fun topic it is No, what else is fun? Huh? I think we already talked about the unity thing
00:52:56
Speaker
Well, they, they, they rolled back, didn't they? I think they partially rolled back. I don't think they fully rolled back. Yeah. But I think they've left enough of a, to again, use the phrase a bad taste and everyone's mouths were like, people do not trust them. Um, so I think they're going to like wrap out if they have like an active project in unity, but then going forward, people aren't going to use unity for fucking anything or a very small base wheel in comparison to what it used to be.
00:53:26
Speaker
Yeah, it's, I don't know, from like a certain perspective, I get that they can, I'm looking up the article now so I can kind of be correct here. Yeah, they said, after a week of developer chaos, the company will no longer charge its per installation fees on most indie games. But I mean, you can already hit trust with something like that. I don't know why you would jeopardize that.
00:53:54
Speaker
outside of just blatant capitalism. If you've got the market share, if you've got people using your engine, why would you have them look at other things? Why would you jeopardize that? I don't know. I'm not an analyst.
00:54:11
Speaker
Like if that was their plan, then again, no point of this is like, Oh, it'd be fine if they change one thing. There's lots of issues. But one thing is specifically the fact that they're planning to roll it out in what January. And like there are game developers who are working actively in unity. It's not like, Oh, that will be done by end of year.
00:54:33
Speaker
No, some of these projects are like multi-year things. And the fact you're going to like change somebody's thing entirely and how they're going to base their pricing model and all these other decisions on like a
00:54:44
Speaker
Hey, just a heads up in three months. It's like when your rent, for anybody else who rents, rent boys unite. I hate renting. But I feel like they just change that kind of on a whim. You're really just at the mercy of whoever's deciding that for you. And you're like, OK, cool. I guess that's a factor now. And then you have to kind of react and pivot on that, which sucks.
00:55:11
Speaker
Because they've never made it less money. I want to point that out. They've never decreased rent prices. Yes. To provide some specification, because I don't think we ever talked about this on the podcast, the initial change was that all games that use the Unity engine will be charged $0.20 US dollars for every game installation once it hits a threshold of $200,000 in revenue.
00:55:39
Speaker
and What they rolled back is they're like, okay. Well, we're not gonna have that one once you hit the $200,000 mark but It will kick in at a million dollars within a year And I don't know how much games make a million dollars kind of sounds like a lot for your for indies But a year is also a long time. So I'm not sure
00:56:02
Speaker
In either case, they want more of the pie of whatever people are making with their engine. And I know Unreal does a similar thing, Epic and Unreal, where they're like, hey, if you start making Serious Bank, if you're really onto something, we're getting our piece.
00:56:23
Speaker
Yeah. And that's fine to have that as an upfront thing of like, Hey, there's this flat percentage cut we get for you using our engine and propping from it, but you can't pull the rug out from people. Yeah. And then also not have a system to really enforce that. Cause they were doing it. They wanted to do it off of installs. Yes. Which is kind of weird, right? Like it's the stupidest thing because I could uninstall and reinstall. Okay. How do you know?
00:56:54
Speaker
Yeah, that's the thing. Like you might not hit $200,000 in revenue, but I could see 200,000 installs for a smaller game. That doesn't seem super crazy. I guess it's a very big game, but anyways. Yeah. It's the changing of the terms that is the real frustrating part. And the reason there was so much backlash to it is you think, you know, what guy don't trust companies flat out. Yeah.
00:57:21
Speaker
No business. No business. But, you know, a company, I'm just kidding. What were you going to say? No, mine was like way off into space. Well, um, go with what I was going to lean into as far as the Microsoft lease. Oh yeah. Which is a whole big thing. Um, yes. A bunch of upcoming things from Microsoft.
00:57:47
Speaker
One of the things that was mentioned on their couple year plan is Dishonored 3 and I know Jake is a big Dishonored simp and I have definitely come on board but not as definitely I will pale in comparison to Jake's love for that game. I don't think I can ever match it but I did enjoy Dishonored.
00:58:07
Speaker
But I didn't do all the DLC and I don't think I did Everything in one of them, but okay. He's a casual gamer take it all back One two and three Well three is there is no three but dishonor death of the outsider But for the third Game that will be upcoming at some point. Are you excited? If you're excited, what are you looking forward to? What would you like to see? I'm excited with a tinge of
00:58:37
Speaker
I really hope that Arcane is not somehow eternally hampered by their Redfall performance. I'll be honest, I know that it's two studios and I can't remember which one makes Dishonored, but if it's the same one that made Redfall, I'm a little concerned. I'm hoping that that was a fluke.
00:58:58
Speaker
But you know, don't up front trust games, wait for reviews. Don't preorder, wait for reviews. Go to a previous episode to hear our rationale and all of that. But I mean, I actually, I don't know. I'm actually kind of curious if they could massively innovate on the Dishonored franchise because when they came out with something like Deathloop,
00:59:17
Speaker
It largely was taking borrowing some of those dishonored mechanics and then putting it in a completely different setting. But it was still pretty much mechanically similar to dishonored. Right. So I don't know if they can make massive changes to the dishonored formula.
00:59:38
Speaker
in a way that doesn't, you know, kind of hamper it. But I mean, the things I'd be hoping that they keep are things like open sandbox, like multiple ways to approach situations, multiple combat scenarios, so you can have like crazy videos like the ones that are on YouTube of people shooting a bullet, stopping time, moving a person into the bullet path, like setting up ricochets with bombs, jumping up in the air, doing stabbing attacks, all this nonsense.
01:00:06
Speaker
Um, it looks really cool. Like look them up. Um, I don't want to lose that and I don't want to lose the setting because this Victoria steampunk nonsense is excellent. So the question then becomes, what do they successfully change? What do they safely change? And I'm not sure. I feel like they almost have to do a time skip be like all of this other stuff. This is established the outsider died, which is one of the big driving forces. That's not really a spoiler. It was in the game title.
01:00:39
Speaker
and go from there, or maybe he died. It depends, but there was a resolution to the first arc. So they got to come out with something new. And that's where- Maybe it'll be in Spain.
01:00:55
Speaker
The adventures of Jose Corvo. Yeah, they just, they deal in Assassin's Creed and it's just a different descendant in the atmosphere. It's Corvo with an accent. But no, it could, I have high hopes for it, but I'm not going to pre-order it. It'll be on game pass too, so I don't need to really. Hopefully I still have game pass in five years unless I change something.
01:01:24
Speaker
I would definitely want to check it out probably on something like Game Pass because those games have been fun. It's like a nice one and done playthrough. Yeah.
01:01:36
Speaker
There's a bunch a bunch of other things that were leaked and that and I don't have the full list in front of me We talked about talking about it and then I forgot But I do know that there was another doom also coming Do you have any interest in the following doom? Are you caught up on doom DLC? I'm doing I'll see if you will. I'm not I'm definitely not Like I played doom 1 doom 2 and they're like, oh, here's more stuff about this and it's the the doom guy from Asgard and something else I'm like
01:02:06
Speaker
I don't care. But Doom 1 and Doom 2, you mean 2016 Doom Eternal, right? Yes. OK. I was just I love the impression. You're just like, I played like the original Doom. Nothing else has caught my attention since then. I didn't really like Doom 2's DLC that much, where it's just, oh, we had a couple extra sprites. Like, who cares? Yeah. But no, like I definitely enjoyed Doom Eternal.
01:02:33
Speaker
Cause like they made the gameplay fun. The music's amazing. Loved the combat, but I just didn't have more of a drive to check out the DLC in particular. I didn't either. Yeah. Like maybe it is fun. I actually don't know, but I just wasn't interested at that time. And then it kind of just time kind of passed.
01:02:51
Speaker
Yeah, that's the issue I have with DLC is it comes out after I've moved on from a game, right? If it was just there as part of it, I probably would rate it much more highly. But why would I come back for that? Certain things like Elden Ring DLC when it gets announced, I'm going to take off work. Why aren't you going into work today? They announced a game. Yeah. When is that? Years in the future, but it's happening. You're like, this is your heads up.
01:03:22
Speaker
Um, yeah, I figure I'll probably enjoy it when I get around to playing it, but like I'm, I would be an outright lie to say I plan on playing it anytime this year, maybe next year. I don't know. It's, it's tough.
01:03:37
Speaker
There's a lot of stuff that came out. I'm going to go into rapid fire mode for some of my stuff that is necessary to cover here, and I'm going to skip other things. Starfield officially came out, but they don't get that much time because they did that little pre-release thing.
01:03:54
Speaker
last month, which would mean that it's not gaming news this month. So I took time off from work for it. I think it's pretty good overall. I kind of waffle between saying it's like a seven or like a seven, five, and an eight. Really depends on what type of game you're looking forward to. But in its favor, it's a space game. There's not that many of those that are good.
01:04:20
Speaker
Um, it's Bethesda's least buggy game ever, which is, you know, good for them. It's still pretty buggy, but not, not to an extent that they are known for.
01:04:35
Speaker
And overall, I think it's good, but I would be fine waiting. And coming back to it when the modding community is like, this is Star Wars now, which they started doing. There was a mod that replaced all of the guards in the first major city with Stormtroopers. So we're well on our way.
01:04:57
Speaker
That's Starfield. What else happened? Phantom Liberty and Cyberpunk 2.0. I'll be crucified if I don't mention this one by our extensive listenership. And it's all one-to-one, everyone plays Cyberpunk. So I bought it, I bought the DLC, I installed it, and at some point I'll make a new save. Do you have any intentions on returning to Night City with the fifth protagonist?
01:05:26
Speaker
What? There's a fifth one? Well, no. They're just named V. Slow on the up-take. It's all good. We're over time. At a point, maybe. At a point. But I'm not really in the edge to go back. Again, I enjoyed what I played. It would definitely be interesting to play more at some point when it's less buggy, which it sounds like it's doing a lot better now. But I just haven't been in that specific first-person space.
01:05:56
Speaker
I will say on our Discord, which you guys don't have access to, I made a post in our games threads about Phantom Liberty and I posted a video which has nothing to do with the DLC. It's just a brief combat segment of someone doing unarmed and 2.0, which is like the current version of the game. They released this before the DLC and it made like bunches of changes. They redid all the skill trees. They added shooting from cars. They have like all of this nonsense.
Food as More Than Sustenance: Dave's Philosophy
01:06:23
Speaker
Shoot for cars. It doesn't sound that impressive because you're like, couldn't you already? No, you couldn't. You could not use a gun while on the car before. And it's a brief little combat segment and it looks awesome. It has all of like that cyberpunk style that the universe absolutely needs. And I'm pretty excited for it. It's just a very contentious time to be playing games.
01:06:50
Speaker
I'll talk about more. I'll talk about it more. I'm sure when I get some time into it, but, uh, any, any words of wisdom to end us off in or final pieces of advice news or otherwise worldly content we can impart on our listeners.
01:07:09
Speaker
So I'm somebody who will often just eat to live. But I think every once in a while you should live to eat. Find something that you've been like, oh no, I shouldn't eat that. Fuck your diet for a day. Eat something nice. Just don't go overboard with it. If you like a little tasty treat like a donut, get a fucking donut. You want a smoothie? Get a smoothie.
01:07:34
Speaker
as I get progressively more high pitched. Yeah. Yeah. Until you get incomprehensible. It sounds like one of those, uh, station warnings of like, uh, there's a hurricane in process. Clack's an alarm. Ooh, I hate those. Those are messed up. Yeah. Just find yourself a little treat. Maybe you save it for the weekend.
01:07:55
Speaker
Yeah, just have a little nice little something and maybe even better share it with somebody It's true. Don't split that donut in half get two donuts Don't deprive yourself. You say I got you a donut and then you give them half a donut people are gonna feel robbed
01:08:10
Speaker
You just squeeze out the Boston cream. You get the middle. This is yours. You get the middle of the donut. Would you rather have the Boston cream or the the outside of the donut? A deflated donut. They're both very sad. I feel like that's kind of that's an all in one deal.
01:08:30
Speaker
My advice is don't separate the Boston cream from the donut. That's my follow-up advice But if you guys have things that you're looking forward to in next month that you'd like us to cover You know feel free to send in those suggestions. We may even talk about them or at the very least review them and laugh at them in real time as we often do you can send to those suggestions to soapstone podcast at gmail.com and
01:08:56
Speaker
Or you could join the discussion on Facebook, where we all laugh at each other. It's Facebook.com slash Soap Zone Podcast. And as always, we'll see you in the next one. Good night.
01:10:04
Speaker
you