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S6 E19: Jiggle Physics
81 Plays1 year ago
After covering the news, we dive into in-depth reviews of Return to Moria and The Creator before launching into our main topic - completely unique gaming experiences.
Beers Reviewed This Episode:
- Sobremesa Fermentary & Blendary - Al Dente - Sour - 5.8%
- Molly Rose - Raspberry Lamington - Sour - 4.0%
- Molly Rose - Lime & Jalapeno Lounge - Radler - 2.9%
- Dangerous Ales - Phantasm Boi - Thiolized Lager - 5.0%
- New England Brewing - Dapper - ESB - 5.5%
- Archer Brewing - Crystal Lager - Vienna Lager - 4.8%
- Bracket Brewing - This is the Way - WCIPA - 6.2%
- Chur Brewing - Tangerine Dream - Brut IPA - 5.8%
- Aether Brewing - WCIPIA - 6.0%
- Temple Brewing - Grizzly Tales - American Brown Ale - 5.4%
- Sailors Grave - God Save The Sponge - Smoothie Sour - 7.0%
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Pixels and Pints
00:00:29
Speaker
Welcome back to Pixels and Pints, where we're going to talk some video games, TV shows, movies in a little bit more depth this week and drink some tasty Australian beers. I've got all Australian. I think I shouldn't say that before I read them properly. You almost always do. Yeah, almost always. Drink some tasty Australian craft beers. And that guy that Ed just sent a picture through about his newspaper article can go get fucked because we're going to use all those descriptions and he can go fuck himself.
00:00:56
Speaker
Uh, if I could care to remember his name that Ed sent through that, uh, we'd, we'd call him out and shame him, but, uh, yeah. I'm Dan. I'm joined tonight by our audio curator, Pete. Howdy. The one who spends so much time dealing with all of our bullshit and editing and Tom who creates most of those problems in the bullshit and editing.
00:01:26
Speaker
Oh fuck. And poor innocent Dan in the corner. Yes. Oh yes. Poor innocent Dan. Yes. Dan's never one at fault. You told me it was my intro so I get to give myself whatever intro I like.
00:01:40
Speaker
Just because you were in there first today and we didn't have to wait 40 minutes to figure out your microphone, your fucking camera. Yeah. Yeah. That's it. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's Sunday afternoon here. It's, it's pretty, pretty warmish where I am. I don't know about you guys, but sweaty in my studio. I am sweating like a priest in a playground. It's a nice, nice, nice Sunday afternoon to have a couple of tasty beers and talk some shit, which we sound like we're right on point already. So.
00:02:09
Speaker
It's on the space just turned into a cat's asshole, so I think we could go first.
Beer Reviews: Al Dente and Others
00:02:15
Speaker
Yeah, this is fantastic. I am drinking al dente from Sombressa Fermentary and Blenderie, who I'm sure we've never had on a podcast before. They are from Kensington in Victoria.
00:02:32
Speaker
And this is it is obviously third of december so i'm three days into my my canvint calendar. I'm doing my first two years of from both my little advent calendars as this was made in collaboration with carland sellers in in melbourne and they have a it's a blend of barrels aged on red cards and cranberries.
00:02:55
Speaker
And this is a blend of five barrel fermented Saisons, aging from seven months to three years old. It's conditioned on a blend of local red currents and cranberries at a rate of 250 grams per liter for seven weeks.
00:03:08
Speaker
And it says it's fruit driven, bright and tart with integrated funk. And it is tart. Whoa. Like. We could read that from your face. That was warhead level. Like every, salivating. It is, it is like the currents are coming straight through the cranberries really like bright and tart and dry as well as with drying. Oh, and just the color on it. Like I have a bang on that.
00:03:33
Speaker
Yeah, this is fantastic. If they don't re-release this as like a limited run, I would hope they'd have extras left over. Oh, this is fantastic.
00:03:44
Speaker
I got to be in the mood for a Saison, I have to say. Just because of that, that farmhouse farm too. I normally don't like the farm. This is definitely more, more, more puckeringly sour. Like, not getting heaps of that, that Frenchy, you know, not going to get into it. Yeah, this is definitely coming through. Sorry, go ahead. No, this is just, this is more like,
00:04:06
Speaker
Yeah, I'm sure they probably use the Saison yeast and stuff, but it's not carrying that particular flavor through. I'm not getting all that funkiness. I'm getting, yeah, just really like bright, fresh fruit and like heaps of really puckering sour. That is fantastic.
00:04:23
Speaker
That's exactly what I wanted on the day like today. Yeah, that is cracking. That is five fucking stars. Five? What a start. Yeah. What a start. Saison's traditionally a ale style, isn't it? With Saison yeast? Is that what makes a Saison a Saison, essentially?
00:04:42
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. It's a particular use train. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So, so I guess you'd probably be getting less of that farmhouse fun, cause you kind of change it from an ale into a sour ale. Yeah, but it's definitely sour as fuck. It's great. Yeah. Like I said, I got to be in the mood for a straight up saison. But that could be soured from the being in the barrel, not from an actual souring.
00:05:07
Speaker
like a kettle souring process or a mash. They may have, yeah, it may have fermented with the black carrots. Yeah. Might've picked up some fruit or some wild, wild yeast from the fruit skins and if there's no description. It's literally just this fruit driven bright and tart with integrated funk. Yeah. You get a bit of that funk on the nose, but
00:05:28
Speaker
wrap your lips around it and it's, yep, it's coming back again. It's right up in the gums. I've actually never done an Advent calendar. I really should. Anywho, Dan? I've had this one. I actually have had all these beers sitting in my fridge for weeks and been staring at me in the face. I've got Molly Rose Raspberry Lamington.
00:05:52
Speaker
So Raspberry and Coconut, Raspberry and Coconut. So Molly Rose are from Victoria and they're quickly becoming one of my favorite up and coming, or I probably shouldn't call them up and coming. They've been around for a little while now, but all their releases that I've tried have been great.
00:06:08
Speaker
This is really tasty. It's a really nice, light raspberry sour. It's got a reasonable sort of mid-level tartness to it. Really good fruit character, super clean too. Not getting too much coconut, which I would have really liked to sort of come through on the back palate. So I think it could use a real boost there, but it's nice and fresh and lightly tart and exactly what I needed for the warmer weather just to get started on. So I think that's a good ball.
00:06:39
Speaker
Yeah. Okay. I'm not going to go quarter points here because I don't think it deserves a three seven five, but I don't think it deserves a four two five either. So I'm going to, I'm going to go on a four. Nice. Yep. Finally broken him. I'm also drinking a Molly Rose. This is one of the rattlers. I had that the other day. It's, I mean this, it killed Tom, but it's fucking not bad. So as soon as you pulled up the label, I was like, nah, it's poison. It's poison.
00:07:09
Speaker
Yeah, I had a day when I was looking for something white as well, just because only like two points. 2.9%. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's, um, I've had, I've had the Heapsmender in Rattler before, which is another low arc. Um,
00:07:25
Speaker
I think there's a third one I just saw when I was looking it up on untapped. There was a pink label, so obviously they've done something with raspberry or strawberry or something. This is really fucking good actually. You can get just a touch of the jalapeno spice and then lime juice, lots of lime juice. Yeah, super refreshing. I mean, it's inoffensive. It's surprisingly flavorful given how, like the low ABV on it.
00:07:52
Speaker
It's not thin as you get with a lot of low alcobias now i think rattle rattle is is rattle and not the style is it a style that is naturally low alc or is this a particular is this specifically to be low alcoholic.
00:08:06
Speaker
They're traditionally lower alcohol. They're like, I think they refer to them as like bicycle beers. So they can go take them out. Well, I'm on my penny farthing. Yeah. I had some and not be too in talks to drive. And it's meant to be hotter weather, hotter weather, spring, summer.
00:08:31
Speaker
That's really fucking solid actually for a starting beer. I'm going to give that four as well. I'm impressed given what it is. It's not the best beer I've tried, but at 2.9% to get that much flavor out of it. It's kind of making me want a margarita though with all that lime juice.
00:08:47
Speaker
Just, you know, drop a shot in himself. I've got some contrast somewhere. And is it contrary? It's the, uh, orange liqueur. Yeah, contrary. Yeah. You don't want that. You want a Tommy's, you want Tommy's margarita. Just double shot of tequila, agave juice, lime, fuck around with control. Those aren't just a piss off. Anyway, that's all right. Where am I?
00:09:11
Speaker
Don't use Margarita Mix as my advice
Tech and Gaming News
00:09:13
Speaker
in life. Every single time I've tried Margarita Mix to shortcut, it's feral as fuck. Anyway, let's kick off with some news. Let's do it. We interrupt this broadcast with some breaking news from the front. That's a solid round of beeries. I'm happy with that. Well done, everyone. We've been talking about this for a while. We're going to continue talking about it because, fuck you, there's nothing you can do. It's going to continue happening too.
00:09:39
Speaker
Well there's nothing you can do if you're going to continue listening to us but there's also nothing you can do if you're a consumer of media so playstation are about to delete a bunch of shit from your your playstation library even if you paid for it. So discovery has been purchased by warner brothers.
00:09:57
Speaker
which is just a fucking stupid acquisition anyway. But due to licensing, PlayStation is now removing all Discovery Channel shows, including Myth Busters and a fuck ton of others. Now.
00:10:11
Speaker
Discovery pump out a bunch of low-cost, low-value TV series, I would argue. I think there was one called Pregnant Behind Bars, where's a TV series that came up in the list? So you can kind of get the idea for some of the stuff. But then Mythbusters was like a generationally defining fucking TV series, right?
00:10:34
Speaker
But this is just this, this is just the continuation and it's as early days for you realizing that you don't own your fucking content and that these studios will just delete shit whenever the fuck they want. There's nothing you can do. And in the old days, you used to be able to say, I'll just buy it on disk. But now we're not even getting disks. So, you know, fuck you, consumers. How are the seven C's I believe is the way to go. And that's, you know, and that's where they're pushing us.
00:11:05
Speaker
There's a YouTube clip that keeps popping up in my list of watch and it's titled, Why Piracy Will Always Win. I haven't watched it yet, but I'm starting to get interested in it. For a while streaming really killed piracy, right? In a big way. And then they've just, all they've done is taken us off the teat of buying discs and then now they're back to fucking us in the ass. So we're back to, yeah, unfurling the Jolly Roger that's been in the back cupboard for a couple of years.
00:11:34
Speaker
Tom, next one's yours, mate. That was a description and a half that I'm going to just leave alone, especially after we're talking about pregnant behind bars. And we're getting into dick and ball jiggling physics later on, too. Hot diggity damn. Good old Elon Musk. He's just continually fucked over X and Twitter. Fuck that guy, honestly. Oh, God, he's funny to watch, though. It's kind of funny to watch him implode. It's like watching a civilization die in slow motion.
00:12:04
Speaker
But you can no longer share your stuff from your PlayStation directly to Twitter. Doesn't really matter because the PS app is actually really good now getting your captions. Yeah, it is. Even I can use it. I know. That's the real miracle. If it's easy enough for me to install an app and it doesn't have me jump through a thousand fucking hoops before I get there and I can actually get clips in that off there. It's got to be saying something.
00:12:30
Speaker
But that happened November 13th, so it probably only affected some streamers. It's, you know, that's the only people that really would affect. I used to steal my like platinum clips from that, but I can get them straight from the PS app now. So, um, Oh, well, thanks Twitter. I'll still occasionally look at you for boobs. Cause that's all you're good for. I like to see what the latest craziness is from, from certain political persuasions.
00:12:56
Speaker
Oh, yeah, that's Twitter rabbit holes there. Yeah, that's like, yeah. Anyway, in some good news, though, and I think this is excellent. So, playstations were part of the playing for the Planet Alliance, which is a commitment they made to the UN. So they've created the alloys forest project.
00:13:14
Speaker
Which I've got to say after my very, very off-the-cuff comment around Aloy in VR in the Call of the Mountain or whatever it's called. Call of the Mountain, yeah. Yeah, Aloy's Forest Project is not what I thought you were talking about when I first read that. Ah, copyrights, yes, chef. Say no more. Anyway, Aloy's Forest Project. I'm definitely missing something here, so we might continue this conversation later.
00:13:40
Speaker
Oh dear. So what this basically is. Next generation of PlayStation VR video games. Stop it. Stop it. We're talking about a good thing. Sorry. Basically what they've done is if you earned certain trophies, specifically the Reach the Daunt trophy in Horizon Forbidden West, they would then go and plant a certain amount of trees. So it's helping with reforestation. They have since Winded Horizon, that was February, wasn't it?
00:14:08
Speaker
That came out for the second one. Yeah, everyone feels like longer. Maybe last year. I clunk it than that. Somebody looked that up. But since that game has come out, if you got up to that reach the Daunt Trophy, depending where you are in the world, there were certain initiatives that would then go and plant trees. They plant over 600,000 new trees and they have
00:14:31
Speaker
1,800 acres of indigenous lands and wildlife habitats have been restored as a result of this. Fuck yeah. That's every last year. There you go. But still, that's a lot of fucking trees to plant. And it's coming out of a video game. I mean, that's excellent. Yeah. I remember seeing this as part of the promotional thing when it came out and I kind of glanced at it, but I'm definitely going to keep an eye on the playing for the Planet Alliance. I think that's a great idea.
00:15:01
Speaker
Especially someone who goes and hunts trophies now, if there's more games I can go play and someone's going to go plant some trees as a result. Did they take it one step further and every time somebody plays God of War, PS4 that when Kratos cuts one down, they cut one down? Hopefully not.
00:15:21
Speaker
Atreus kills the deer. Kind of we were headed in the right place just as we got to the targets. Atreus kills the deer and some poor intern goes.
00:15:37
Speaker
Hey, we got the good news and I agree it's excellent news and well done. I just needed to add a bit of something in the end. Continuing in the kind of the good news stories, Electronic Arts has made a bunch of their tool sets open source to help with accessibility issues.
00:15:55
Speaker
So they've got a bunch of patents for video game systems that help with accessibility for people that are handy abled in various different ways. And they've basically made them open source. So other video game studios can now use EA's toolset. So the latest one is a system called Iris, which is a machine learning system that basically analyzes video game footage looking for photo sensitivity triggers for people with epilepsy.
00:16:23
Speaker
Oh, wow, that's cool. Yeah, so it's it's it's using artificial AI or ML is machine learning is kind of an extension of artificial intelligence, but it uses it to kind of look at it frame by frame. And it's looking for specific patterns of lights flashing our two body flashings, that sort of stuff.
00:16:40
Speaker
Um, it's also, uh, they've got a bunch of other stuff out there. So, and it's usually based on, on machine learning again. So, um, there's systems that will suggest, uh, controller configurations based on usage patterns and, and, and common, um, handy caps or, you know, you know, people missing fingers or people missing hands, those sorts of things. Um,
00:17:03
Speaker
certainly around color blindness or color desensitivity and it's not truly blindness for the most part, those sorts of things. So there's a bunch of different systems that they've now released as open source, which I think is cool.
00:17:14
Speaker
Yeah, the, um, the PlayStation access controller releases on the sixth. It's the third today. So next week. Hmm. And yeah, what's the number of unboxing video that it's just like, wow, it's super easy to like, to set up for whatever you need to set it up for. It's just. Clip off magnets. It's all clip off magnets. It's great. Yeah. I mean, to see some reviews of that, like people actually using it and how actually.
00:17:38
Speaker
how accessible it is. Obviously some smart industrial designers out there, because it would have been super ironic to have a controller specifically to help people with disabilities and then make it fucking impossible to adjust it, right? Yeah. I'm glad that they found ways around the obvious of not needing a fucking screwdriver and an Allen key.
00:17:55
Speaker
Or even just like clipping things in to keep the buttons on or stuff like that.
Game Updates and Releases
00:17:59
Speaker
So Ubisoft hasn't read the story of Pandora and is trying to unlink the remaster of Beyond Good and Evil. They haven't played God of War 3.
00:18:11
Speaker
So they fucked up themselves. Apparently, anyone who was an Ubisoft- I don't even know what this is, it must be an American thing, but an Ubisoft monthly subscription service obviously must give you access to all the Ubisoft back catalogue games, maybe? Which you get as part of the PS Deluxe, you've got the Ubisoft catalogue.
00:18:32
Speaker
But like, I guess in Australia, for example, we've got a bunch of streaming services like On4TV, like Binge, that includes most of the content that you would get from like a Paramount Plus subscription and a AMC Plus subscription. So I suspect in America, it's a lot more granular than it is over here. Well, mind you, they pay 18 US dollars a month for the Ubisoft subs, so it might be more granular, but it's certainly not fucking cheaper.
00:18:55
Speaker
Anyway, if you're a subscriber, they gave you access to their brand new 4K full remaster of the original Beyond Good and Evil and then realized they'd unfucked up and didn't mean to release it until next year. But it was a little too late because a bunch of people had already played the fuck out of it and have uploaded a shit ton of it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So there's a bunch of clips up on YouTube already for the game that hasn't officially been released.
00:19:22
Speaker
Meanwhile, Larian dropped a huge Baldur's Gate 3 patch, patch 5, which I've just installed. Did you have to uninstall your game to reinstall it?
00:19:34
Speaker
Cause that was the official advice from Larian. Cause they said it's so big that you might have to actually, yeah, but on top of the actual like original game file, they, they suggested their official suggestion was it's probably easier for you to delete the game off your console and just redownload the whole thing. Wow. Yeah. No, I laughed long and hard at, I was like, that's great. That's why I've got a 25 gigabyte, uh, download sitting in my steam.
00:19:59
Speaker
Download library. Yeah. Yeah. No, for me it was fine. I did notice they released a second, like an unnoted patch today. So version 5.2. So I suspect they've probably fixed some sort of issue that was caused by patch 5.
00:20:18
Speaker
Yeah, but like the the patch notes and I'm not going to read them, but the patch notes are pages, pages and pages long. Some of the some of the high level like highlights, they've added an entirely new section at the end of the game called the epilogue. I and I'll talk more about at the end of the episode, but I've just finished the game for the first time. And I do have to agree that once the story ends, it kind of just kind of halting.
00:20:42
Speaker
It's just kind of roll credits and it's like, but hang on, there's a whole bunch of conversations with all my characters that I really wanted to have that I never got to kind of close the loop on things. So they've added an epilogue that is directly addresses that specific issue to give you a sense of closure with your allies. They've added a new difficulty mode called honor mode, which if it's anything like Larian's previous games will be ridiculously difficult and will automatically delete the save game if you have a party wipe. Yeah.
00:21:10
Speaker
lots of performance improvements, dynamic resolution for PlayStation 5, new language, Korean, and then just a shitload of little tweaks to rules.
00:21:24
Speaker
The way that things work. And yeah. And the dick jiggle physics, which I think is fucking hilarious. Somebody, how did somebody notice that? So, apparently now they've added jiggle physics. It's the first thing I'd notice. If my character was running along, I'd be like, his balls aren't jiggling after. Thank you very much. Fix those physics.
00:21:42
Speaker
But the only way you would have noticed is if you went back to the character select screen, which I guess you can do mid game because you have a magic mirror in your camp. And if you approach the magic mirror, you can change your facial features and hair and colors and lipsticks and eyeliner and all that sort of shit tattoos. And you can strip your character naked at any point in the game if you really want to.
00:22:03
Speaker
Um, but in order to see the jiggle physics of your penis and testicles, you would have to strip your character naked in the magic mirror and then flick the mouse around or the controller around so that he twists on the spot enough. That's very specific for somebody to be sitting there checking it after every patch. Like I didn't feel like the game was perfect. The guitar in the shower, like, you know, having a little strum.
00:22:32
Speaker
Anyway, so yes, they've added JigglePhysics. Thank God for modern software development. People are still worried that AI is going to take over when this is what the focus on is dig JigglePhysics. Fantastic. Back to you, Tom.
00:22:51
Speaker
This is my one. Talking about dick and ball jingle physics, Cyberpunk had it from the very beginning in the character creation screen and I guarantee I know that through personal experience. Are there genitals in Cyberpunk? Yeah, I remember that. It was the same kind of outcry when it came out. It was just like, why? Do we need it? Who cares?
00:23:17
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, whatever. But Cyberpunk is getting another going on the first big base game patch update it got when Phantom Liberty came out three weeks ago. That started November.
00:23:32
Speaker
The base game got a huge patch update there with the, even if you bought the Ben and Liberty expansion or not. And this Tuesday, 5th of December, it gets another massive update that adds content to the base game, as well as changing some stuff around in
00:23:51
Speaker
in Phantom Liberty and the base game. So they're still cranking that massive workout. It's some bug fixes, but it's actually additional content. I don't think it's additional missions or anything like that, but it's definitely additional things, social content with other characters within the world. So I think that's huge for them to do that. And it is bundled with the Ultimate Edition that somebody's added there as well.
00:24:19
Speaker
which is also getting its physical release.
00:24:22
Speaker
I was getting the physical release too. So with that last big patch update and the ultimate edition coming out, CDPR have said they've moved more than 50% or just under 50%, sorry, of their staff over to concentrate on the Witcher 4. So Witcher Paul Arras is its codename at the moment. What are the other half doing? Making sandwiches for the first half?
00:24:49
Speaker
Still still working on the support for cyberpunk for the moment and they had a a investor review last week i think it was and there's there's actually a big new attempt to do in your den. Definitely there's. Flute a poll.
00:25:07
Speaker
a 20 or 30 minute behind the scenes documentary that came out on the things that they learned through their fuck ups on releasing Cyberpunk. And it's all come out with this investor review and where they're going forward. So we should have just stuck with Witcher. I'll report back on that. But no, they're opening CDPR in Boston and the lead from Cyberpunk is moving to Boston and they're concentrating on Cyberpunk 2.
00:25:37
Speaker
So we don't have any... This is going to be another Ubisoft Montreal versus Ubisoft wherever. Potentially. Keep the Polish history of which you're in Poland and move the cyberpunk stuff to the Boston office. So there's a lot going on there and can't wait to hear more about what you're for. Even if we just get a little tidbit of information about what's going on there, that would be fantastic. But the fact that they've moved
00:26:07
Speaker
Just under 50% and moving more in the, in the coming months, but over to which a fall is a very, very good thing. Oh, for sure. Absolutely. Oh, I remember actually you went on which you remember how I sent you that thing. I was like, this is weird that destiny, the game destiny was adding in Geralt content, the bathtub. Yeah. I realized why it's cause it's the new season they're doing is called the season of the wish. And so it's all around the last, it's like a connection with the last week. Yeah. Yeah.
00:26:35
Speaker
There's that time, so shut up. Just a crossover that we didn't need. Yeah. The Destiny suits, the Witcher suits in the Destiny look fucking great. They do. Yeah. But that's just, I mean, it's an Unreal 5 engine. That's what you're going to, like, you're going to expect that kind of quality out of the next Witcher game, too. It's just because it's changed. Yeah. So we're not going back.
00:26:56
Speaker
So we're not going to do trailer trash this episode. We'll talk about what we'll do with that segment, some other episode, but just, we are going to mention a couple of back of the trailer and the gold yellow out.
00:27:12
Speaker
Uh, so grand theft auto six trailer dropping, uh, 1 AM, December 6th, Sydney time. Thank you for the very specific update. You are welcome, sir. Um, but wasn't GTA six like kind of leaked, uh, like a six months ago. Some of it was. Yeah. So over the course of this weekend, uh, uh, son of one of the developers went in and recorded on his phone and uploaded to tick tock and Instagram, uh, some footage of his dad, like.
00:27:41
Speaker
watching the trailer and how to get your father fired. Yeah. Fucking hell. Oh boy. There's some true, true fucking idiots in this world, isn't there? Yep. Yep. Yeah. So yes. 1 AM, December 6th, Sydney time. If you bothered to be up for it, otherwise just wait until the morning. You can probably watch it in bed still. It's not like the tennis. Yeah. Anyway.
00:28:05
Speaker
There was also a couple of other little trailers I think we're just going to dump. You can go look at them if you feel rather than us putting them up. So Mass Effect 5 got an in-game engine teaser as part of their N7 day, which is November 7th. It's their little Mass Effect day. It showed a potential new main character build. Very popped collar.
00:28:24
Speaker
I'm didn't look like shepherd so yeah looks more like what you'd expect like an N7 spy to be like that kind of vibes yeah yeah that a trench coat and trench coat massive pop collar but still had like the sleek helmet look very sleek very sleek.
00:28:41
Speaker
But yeah, we'll be sure we'll see more of that in coming months, probably maybe even after this week. Also, yeah, for the news, it's the next South Park game, the Snow Day, which is going off the last stick of truth. It's the same kind of vibe. They released a new gameplay trailer for that. I thought it was the... What type of game? Like, this is fucking show on my age. What type of game is Fortnite?
00:29:10
Speaker
Battle Royale. Battle Royale. I thought this No Day One was a Battle Royale game. Ah, from the trailer it looked more like the story-based Stick of Truth. I haven't played it, I don't know. Pete's frantically googling, so we've got to fill some airspace and I've lost the rung. I am frantically googling, you are correct, but instead of getting my answers, I'm getting all this stupid shit I don't care about, like cookies.
00:29:37
Speaker
When am I going to get a disable all button, you bastards? I can't tell. All new 3D co-op game, blizzard of epic proportions. I don't want to read this shit. I have no idea. We'll let you know next episode for the one person who gives a flying fuck. It says on Steam, action, action adventure, action RPG. Okay, but what does it say if you look up fucking Fortnite?
00:30:00
Speaker
I don't know. I don't look up for play with up to three, three friends, use matchmaking or solo the game with ally bots and battle through snow. Pilot town of South Park. Um, yeah, actually starting to sound a bit battle Royal as opposed to I'm sure if you look up Fortnite on, on steam, it's going to describe it as just a bunch of peds fucking grooming children. It's a pretty short bet.
00:30:24
Speaker
Yeah. Fallout 4 got a trailer. I like how you updated the fucking notes there, Tom. Oh, Fallout 4? Oh, Fallout 4. No, Fallout TV show. Fallout TV show. We are on the same page, though, Tom. You were talking about the TV show as well? Yep. OK, cool. So Fallout TV show. Oh, I didn't write that. That's not me. I do. We need to color code our notes. I'm green. I'm sure we do. So yes, the Fallout TV series got a trailer.
00:30:53
Speaker
I thought it looks great. What did you have? Okay. So, I mean, the first thing I noticed wasn't really a complaint, but the clean blue jumpsuits just don't translate that well in real life. They were crisp and perfectly royal blue inside. We'll see what happens outside the vault. But then you get the cardboard vault door opening.
00:31:18
Speaker
And it was like, I'm sure that they probably did a full blown CGI model and that thing has lots of intricate gears and shit. And then it was just a lens flare from that particular shot, but it looks so cardboard. It could have been fucking cardboard.
00:31:34
Speaker
And then I just really took issue with the CGI. I think the Brotherhood of Steel's chopper things, ornithopters. They're not ornithopters, but the chopper things look too clean dirty, if that makes sense. So they're perfect objects in 3D space with a dirty mask texture wrapped around them. And then the Brotherhood themselves look like bad video game CG. That was some really sketchy TV fucking 3D.
00:32:03
Speaker
But the desert scenes of mutants, all that sort of shit look great. But they- Dug mate's back? They very clearly hit every iconic fallout thing they could fucking think of in a big montage. The ghoul looked fantastic. Ghoul makeup was great. Yeah, with the missing nose, it looked like an amped up, better version of Red Skull. But the mutant bears,
00:32:27
Speaker
the nuking of Washington, D.C., Rad Roaches, the German chef. Well, what's his name, Dead Mate? Dog Mate. I'm holding a severed fucking hand. Every every iconic scene. And then the music obviously in the background. Love that music. Yeah. When it switched from the thematic music to the like the fifties old, I was like, yeah, well done. Very good.
00:32:47
Speaker
But you just know that that was a
Film and TV Critiques
00:32:50
Speaker
teaser trailer. You know that the full trailer is going to start with war. War never changes. It has to. It has to. Or at least the TV show needs to start with that. You might not need that in the trailer. I would probably save that for the first episode. Yeah. Yeah. I thought the same kind of thing that with the armour in Rings of Power with the hood of steel, it just looked a bit
00:33:14
Speaker
When he was sitting there in the chopper, it was okay. But when there were, when there was three of them walking towards you, it just looks really bad. Because I think it was because it was in slow-mo as well. It reminded me of a Warhammer Space Marine fucking video game trailer, to be honest. Yeah, right. Just anyway. Yeah, it didn't, it didn't carry the weight. One of the first comments I saw though was, please don't halo this. And I was like, oh, oh no.
00:33:44
Speaker
One thing that I took away from it was it wasn't as I went into it very skeptical. Yeah. I like Fallout, but I've never finished a Fallout game. And I was expecting it to be really dumb, quippy. I mean, it still could be, but really dumb, quippy dialogue. And I didn't get that from the trailer. The ghoul says a couple of lines, but it all felt very
00:34:11
Speaker
situationally aware. It didn't feel like dumb. And I know this has become a bit of a thing, bit dumb Marvel quippy. It felt like its own thing and it felt separate. I mean, they could still go down that path when we see more. There wasn't that much dialogue. No, no. If they can just stick to some of the Spaghetti Western vibes I got out of parts of that trailer,
00:34:34
Speaker
I like I would happily watch the shit out of it because it is very much set in sand and you know the the wasteland of America. So yeah. Vault 33, which was in San Diego, where it's, yeah. Okay. Set over there. Compared to like Fallout 4, which was in Boston. Fallout 3, which was Vegas.
00:34:53
Speaker
Uh, known that was new Vegas in between three and four. Three was in Washington DC because you were in the Washington monument for a lot of it. Um, so they mustn't have nuked Washington. You see how much I know of the American landscape in the trailer. They nuke some other city. I thought that was, yeah, that was, uh, it looked like LA cause of the Hills. I imagine it was, it was riding that horse up near the Hollywood sign or whatever. I don't know.
00:35:20
Speaker
It's all dust now in that TV series, so who cares?
00:35:26
Speaker
Who else wrote the rest of this one then? I did. It's all me. It's all me. We also got a new trailer for the next Witcher animated film or through Netflix, which has brought back Doug Cockle, who was the voice of Geralt in the games. And so that looks, you know, it's the same Netflix animation style. There's a bunch actually of new Netflix animated trailers, which there was Blood is Loose season two's coming.
00:35:49
Speaker
I can't remember if you guys watched that one. There's the Lara Croft, there's a Tomb Raider one that's coming. So their Netflix are doubling down on their animated stuff, which I think is probably a smart move for them. And definitely in that kind of
00:36:06
Speaker
Western anime style of animation as well. So it's, you know, it looks like it's, it's rushing, but it's not as say, like some of the more, uh, like traditional Japanese animes when they, when they get into some certain movements, it's like really over the top. It hasn't got that far yet, but it's getting there.
00:36:25
Speaker
And they also have been a bit of a complaint in some of the translations that I've seen recently of traditional manga into. I think it was real life. There was a manga.
00:36:38
Speaker
One piece? Yes, it was one piece. And the complaint was it's not over the top enough. And the dynamic dynamism of the of the action just doesn't translate well. Yeah, yeah. Well, yeah, that's that's why I've definitely got to sit down and watch that. That's something on my list to watch. We also got in the last 12 hours, we got a season four trailer for the boys.
00:37:00
Speaker
which looks as over the top as ever. Gen-V's reinvigorated my love for that series. Gen-V's was spectacular. Jeffrey Dean Morgan's in it. We're good. Him and Butcher having a sit down. I was like, oh, I hope those two get some fight scenes together. That'd be fucking sick. And I didn't watch it because I haven't seen season one, but House of Dragons also dropped it season two. I'm going to watch that during the break. Thank you. You're welcome.
00:37:25
Speaker
Game Awards are coming up this week, December 8th for those playing at home. It'll air at 11.30am Sydney time, which is quite a nice time for a game show to be honest. Usually it's 3 or 4 in the morning and can't be fucked getting up for that.
00:37:41
Speaker
They said it's gonna be a three-hour show they said expect some new trailers, but it's not going to be as trailer-heavy as previous years You'll of course have Jeff Keeley's very punchable face Man look at him look up Google a picture of him. He don't very punch. Thank you. I win. I'm gonna punchable personality. He's gonna punchable face
00:38:04
Speaker
And then, yeah, we'll see who takes home game of the year. I distinctly hope it is. It is Larian. Larian's up for a few. I do too. Yeah. I wouldn't be surprised if they don't, but I'd be really pleasantly surprised. They're up for most of the awards as well.
00:38:20
Speaker
I can hope they take on some silverware. It's good for a small studio to take on the silverware. Fuck yeah. Yeah. Um, uh, speaking of small studios, Bethesda and the tiny Howard, tiny studio, Todd Howard and his band of, of, of people that suck their own cocks continue with their bullshit.
00:38:39
Speaker
Ah, was it Prince? Was the other room in Michael Jackson? Anyway, um, so their steam review score averages have plummeted. Oh, Dan's folded inside out. You're right there, Dan. Dan's done himself a calamity. Yeah.
00:39:08
Speaker
Okay buddy, you want to talk about it? We'll get through the rest of this news and I'll attack this beer like I did the last one.
00:39:14
Speaker
Okay. We don't have much to go. So Bethesda's, sorry, Steam score for Starfield has plummeted from a most amazing game ever made to mixed reviews. And Steam's customer service, sorry, Bethesda's customer service have now been replying with multi-paragraph responses to some of the more negative reviewers. Which is the worst way to do it. Just, yeah.
00:39:39
Speaker
And a lot of them are just scripted like I'm sorry you didn't enjoy our game, here's all the amazing stuff that you can do and it reads like a really bad awkward fucking customer service copy paste script. But some of them are a lot more targeted. So here's a shorter example because there's some really solid fucking R6 samples where you just want to punch these people.
00:39:59
Speaker
But a shorter example with someone complain that stuff fields one thousand planet galaxy was boring to explore and the rebuttal was we are sorry that you do not like landing on different planets and the finding many of them empty some of star fields planets are meant to be empty by design but that's not boring.
00:40:18
Speaker
The rep then quoted an interview with director Todd Howard, where he said that the moon is completely empty, but the astronauts weren't bored when they landed on it. Oh, for fuck sake. Unless you have the most immersive gaming system, nothing is going to compare to landing on the moon, to then guiding your little pixelated fucking hot bodge of a spaceship there.
00:40:47
Speaker
Like it's just so tone fucking deaf and it just- He doesn't care, he's Scrooge McDuckin into his pile of millions. It's just idiotic like to even to even say those sort of things is.
00:41:01
Speaker
Fuckin' idiotic. What's the whole note song? Oh, I'm out of touch. Great, great tune. But don't you think it's like representative of the current generation of game and movie studios and how disconnected they are from their audience and how many fucks they don't give any more about the consumer.
00:41:26
Speaker
Cause rewind 20 years, you would never, I mean, it's not that you would never, but from a huge studio like Bethesda, you would never have seen it. Cause it would have been fucking suicide for the studio these days. I haven't saved Bethesda at the launch of Skyrim. If it's going to have this kind of launch, they would have been on hands and knees begging people to come back. If Marvel kept pumping out.
00:41:45
Speaker
turd fucking movies the way, like 20 years ago, that the way they do now, we wouldn't have an MCU. It's just, there's a complete disconnection between consumers and the, and content producers these days. Anyway, moving on before you, it's super political. Sorry. That's just like going back to Tom's comment.
00:42:03
Speaker
Comment on, yeah, I'm pulling it back here for a sec. Tom's comment there on Skyrim. If it had been that, and people were saying, oh, the place is dotted with caves and everything like that, but you go in, it's a single room, there's nothing there but a fucking a wheel of cheese.
00:42:19
Speaker
If you haven't seen Skyrim Wheel of Cheese, look it up on YouTube. They would have been jumping in and putting in patches to put in content and expand this content instead of going, oh, yeah, well, you know what? Caves are really just one room and they're empty. There's nothing really ever lives in there. Have you never explored a fucking cave in real life, you dicks?
00:42:39
Speaker
Exactly. If they wouldn't have said that back then, they would have been like, like you said, they would have been on their hands and knees. They would have been going, okay, right. We're sorry. Like we just, so he's a good contrast. Sorry, more drug and to the pop out of the walls when you least really annoy you when you're just trying to get through a cave to the wheel of cheese.
00:42:57
Speaker
Sorry to cut you off, Dan, but just to contrast, so Larian, I found this really interesting, Larian was saying, so there's a particular monster that you fight in Act 1 that is extremely dangerous, and it was already dangerous in the original D&D ruleset, but they tweaked the rules slightly for the video game and it ambushes you.
00:43:17
Speaker
And a lot of people were online during early access complaining they were getting absolutely party wiped instantly by this creature. And Larian Studios basically said, all right, because of your complaints, we've set up real time analysis and we're building a heat map of how many party wipes there are on this encounter. And if there are too many, it's designed to be a difficult encounter. But if we determine through this heat map that too many people are dying, we'll tweak the encounter. We'll change the rules.
00:43:47
Speaker
Complete contrast. Fuck you. You're a dipshit. You don't know what a good game looks like. Our game looks great. Starfield wins. It's just complete opposites. Anyway. Also, that's good stats by the way. Great stats. We love some good stats. I actually wouldn't be really curious to see what that heat map came up with. Obviously, because I'm guessing they did change it.
00:44:09
Speaker
I don't know. I didn't play during Early Access. I just know the the Burette or the Burielle is still a just fucking potently dangerous monster to fight. Sounds like a drop there. Just as you hit the Underdark. It's one of the first things you encounter in the Underdark. And we will. Oh, yes, that thing's fucked.
00:44:28
Speaker
Yeah. And speaking of speaking of heat maps and stats, I've actually added a spotlight topic for the future around AI and machine learning being backed into video games these days, because there's a lot more of that going on in the background than you realize. Stats. Load up the stat rifle. Let's go. Back to you, Tom. Back to me. The last two points and then we'll get into some beers. So Nintendo have officially announced they're making a live action Zelda film after years of
00:44:55
Speaker
of rumors and what's going to happen. It'll be my first experience with Zelda. Oh, Matt, you're missing out. I've recently recently downloaded Breath of the Wild because it was Black Friday sale. Got it cheap. Oh, yeah. It is being directed by the director attached at the moment is Wes Ball, who is behind the Maze Runner series. And he has directed Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, which is coming out next year. Whoever wrote that red note. Yeah, me. Very angry.
00:45:23
Speaker
It will be fifty percent finance by nintendo and the production and then it be distributed through sony. There you go we'll see who they have announced anyone who's behind a bunch of fan casting and i fucking hate most of it.
00:45:39
Speaker
Like there's just, you know, you need someone I, you want someone to play a link? He needs to be some unknown, just needs to be an unknown and he shouldn't fucking talk. Let's go pure Ocarina of time. Just as he falls. That's the only thing you need. Like you'd need an in series law reason for him not to talk though. What?
00:46:04
Speaker
Because the whole point of these crossovers is to grab more fans. But for anyone who hasn't played the games and doesn't understand why there's a mute main character, if you don't explain it, it's not going to capture that audience. I'm pretty sure they haven't given him like a direct voice in the games. I'm pretty sure. But they've given him like a text.
00:46:27
Speaker
like voice. So yeah, I mean, they would need to talk. You're right. It wouldn't wouldn't make much sense. It'd be very bold move of Nintendo to do it. I'd applaud it. I'd absolutely applaud it. But I don't know if they will. Hey, this comes back to my my Sisu and Doom Slayer conversation. I think they can very much do a non a nonverbal main character. Yep. Just take someone a little bit creative and some visual storytelling. Yeah.
00:46:54
Speaker
Um, and this, um, West Ball, like, uh, I, I haven't seen the Maze Runner series, but from what I gather the reviews I've read of him quickly today, they were like, that he's really good at, um, adapting. Like previous run content, obviously. I've got to be honest, I enjoyed it. Ton of ton of, ton of law around Zelda as well. Um, Maze Runner, I was a kid's, I mean, like a kind of young teen, young adult. Yeah. Young adult book or book series turned into a TV, a movie series. The main character dude, like have a hectic car accident, had a hectic accident on set, I think.
00:47:24
Speaker
Oh, yeah. They had to stop production for so long because he had this like super serious, like, I think it was a stunt gone wrong. And like, like neck break or something. Like, it was in, yeah, it was a big, it was a few years ago. But yeah, I remember. I mean, I enjoyed the film, but not enough to read the behind the scenes book. So yeah, the films were pretty good. They were a little bit kind of wiggly waggly in terms of plot. They lost their way and found it again a few times, but it was pretty good.
00:47:51
Speaker
I mean, it's a popcorn series, right? I was about to say, it's young adult fiction, so yeah, that's most of those points in there. And lastly, some new free games for your PlayStation. You got LEGO 2K drive, so I'm pretty sure that's building cars in LEGO and driving around. How good? The weird phenomenon that is power wash simulator.
00:48:11
Speaker
That's coming. I'm downloading it. Apparently it's hilariously really like relaxing. It's just like the amount of people who play it after like a really shitty day and just go, this is nice. Just cleaning. Just making order out of chaos. There's so many channels dedicated to that. And yeah, you know, those perfect brick layers that tap it at the end and then all the way down the aisle. That's this whole.
00:48:34
Speaker
That's a thing. Something with ASMR. Buff cleaning, everything. And then Sable. Sable actually, I think looks really cool. I suggest you guys watch the trail for that. It's the art style is like hand drawn, but cell shaded at the same time. And it looks kind of like if you guys ever played Journey or like a game like that. So it's, you know, you're kind of sailing something like a sand, sand glider through, through a desert and there's a story behind it. So that's definitely one I'm going to get behind. It looks really cool.
00:49:01
Speaker
It's supposed to be this generation's journey. Yeah, cool. Journey was great. I really enjoyed Journey when I played it. Never played it. It's super short. It was just relaxing. It was very nice. The music behind it was very, very soothing. It was a nice end of day, come home, just kind of glide through the sand. Yeah. That's it. That's the news. Shuffle my papers.
00:49:26
Speaker
Cool. All right. So we're talking about our second beers. Yeah. Sorry. I'm just watching a truck. That's way too wide for my street, trying it through the street without banging into anything. I might go first if that's okay. Just, just cause. Yeah. Just cause. So this is Dangerous Ale's Phantasm born. Hey, I've got that too.
00:49:49
Speaker
Yeah. Uh, I think this came in, in a Tom care package, to be honest, um, from Milton, New South Wales, which is we, cause I'm used to saying Milton Victoria from a past job. But anyway, um, it's a 5% dialyzed Lager and it's okay. It's not, I mean, it's not, it's not, it's not okay. It's not in the slightest. Is that the one you're drinking now?
00:50:20
Speaker
It's like you can certainly get pith and I get more grapefruit juice and grapefruit pith out of it than anything else. But it's got this twang to it that's very specific. It's like... I'd save this one for this just because I've had now
00:50:45
Speaker
three thylized ones, three or four. And the garage project ones, great. The last one I hated that was the one of the dangerous ones was the Gabs beer one. Yeah, I remember that. You ripped that to shreds. This to me is exactly the same. I can't stand it. I think it's terrible. I think it's the worst. And I wonder whether this is one of the reasons why it hasn't been
00:51:13
Speaker
more wider spread in usage in the industry. Excuse me, sir. Yes. Question. Is it the thioli referring to the yeast or hops because my Google search is leading me astray? No, we were talking about thiols before. We had a whole discussion about it. The Phantasm edition that comes from the
00:51:34
Speaker
Green, green grape. After a wine making, it's a green grape extract of some sort that's meant to enhance hot character.
00:51:44
Speaker
And thiols were the organosulfate compounds that make garlic smell garlicky, for example. I'm trying to jog your memory because we did have a whole conversation about it. Many thiols have strong odours resembling that of garlic. And I guess there you go. That's probably what I'm getting from it. It's that really pungent
00:52:11
Speaker
It's a, it's a really over the top vegetal character. Now that you say garlic, that's exactly what it is. It's pulling, it's drawing something out of that hot character that I, I think is awful. Your, your palates obviously, I mean, we've talked about this before too, your palates a lot more developed than I am. I find the beer.
00:52:29
Speaker
on the verge of being, like it's not offensive. It's not an offensive beer to me the way that it is to you. Yeah, no, but I'm not, I'm not, I'm not arguing the difference. I'm just, yeah, it's just your, your palette, you pick it up as offensive. Whereas to me, it's just a,
00:52:44
Speaker
Over the top grapefruit juice and pith with a twang to it that I'm not enjoying it's not quite metallic one of the things I'm just talking about files one of one of the things it does talk about is not all files have unpleasant odors for example fear into methane file contributes to your own refresh the coffee where is grapefruit macap captain.
00:53:07
Speaker
Is a file responsible for the carrier characteristic sense of grapefruit so it's probably what we're getting but it's a it's a synthetic in a synthetically derived natural compound. If that makes sense so we're manufacturing it it does but it does exist in. In the free world in nature anyway i'm i'm gonna give it a two point five and dance gonna give it his score and i guess will average it.
00:53:36
Speaker
Which you can now give a zero because of my little speech, because then you can average it. You can't give a zero in untapped. You can, you just leave it unrated. Yeah, I think that's where I need to go. I think I need to not write it. I...
00:53:57
Speaker
Put him down as a DNF. Didn't finish. Yeah. A hundred. There you go. There you go. It's a, it's definitely because I put it as a DNR cause did not rate and you know, do not resuscitate. Works out well either way. All right. Over to you, Tom.
00:54:12
Speaker
Well, I'm going to go and find myself another beer. I'm going to pull out of the, uh, thylized, I was just reading about thylized yeast before Dan runs away, but, uh, yeah, we'll talk about it later. We'll talk it off. Um, yeah, I'm drinking deliciousness. Um, I obviously make good choices. Uh, no, I had no idea this beer was coming. So this is great. This is the, my second, uh, Advent calendar of the day. This is from the beer cartel Advent calendar. Uh, it's called, uh, Dapper.
00:54:37
Speaker
Um, yes, that is tweed, not actual tweet on the can. Um, it's new England brewing. It's a, an extra, extra special bidder. Um, it comes in at 5.5%. I apologize, Peter. I realized I probably didn't say the ABV on my first beer, but I know that you wrote it in the show notes. Um, it is a, just a hands down ASB. It's delicious. It's multi little bit of honey in there. Um, there's like, uh, Oh.
00:55:06
Speaker
Nutty, it's nuttiness. Chewy. Yeah, chewy. I wouldn't say it's chewy. You're not in the red ale kind of territory there. No, no. Color-wise, it looks almost red ale, but no, it is definitely, I'd say it's more akin to a brown ale than red. Definitely doesn't have any of that hoppiness you only get with a red ale.
00:55:28
Speaker
Um, it is very well made. It's like, this is the kind of beer that I would expect New England to do really well. It's cold to climb it up there in your Allah. Um, uh, it is, yeah, this is definitely one I'd happily sit there. Like you want to have a Sam, like a really nice ham sandwich with this, like.
00:55:49
Speaker
like really crusty breads. Isn't it funny how life just throws random shit at you like that? So just, sorry, I'll let you keep talking about your beer. Yeah. Love a ham Sambo, don't get me wrong, but like really soft inner bread, but really like thick crust that kind of cuts the roof of your mouth a little and you really hate it, but yeah. But you want the cheese cut like a rough in the thick as fuck. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's old school kind of cheese cut, but yeah. And just that with this,
00:56:16
Speaker
It's it's or like a plowman's plowman's platter. Yeah, it's definitely yeah. One of those you just you feel like you're taken back a hundred years. It's coming up to Christmas so ham off the bones, you know. Yeah, that's Christmas for me. Whole ham in the fridge just for Tom. Good. And the bone for Jasper.
00:56:39
Speaker
Yes, yes. Passed out right next to me. Yeah. Out of five? Out of five, that's a four and a half. It's very, very good. Very, very good. I again, hope this gets re-released. This is also nice. This is the, yeah, I'm going to throw some shit at beer cartel. This is the first beer. It's been three beers, but this is the first one out of the three that hasn't come
00:57:01
Speaker
like almost syrup-like and snow globey, like with the amount of fucking proteins floating in it. That coagulated protein in that last one that you showed us was pretty bad. And I had one last night. It was a mountain culture beer and it was just like
00:57:18
Speaker
Yeah, what like I've had plenty of mountain culture beers and they really have that kind of protein like separation. I don't know if it comes down to their storage, but yeah, look, if you bounce back now be a cartel, so I won't, won't lay siege to your fortress because I know where you are. And you could get a trebuchet down their driveway.
00:57:37
Speaker
That's just on the road from my place. Um, that's who I'm going to have to go to moving forward. Um, but yes, no, so this is, this is very good. Uh, Dan, you probably missed all of it, but I'm having the ESP from New England. Oh, nice. Yeah. Okay. Very, very good. Goes with Dan's hat.
00:57:54
Speaker
You would wear that hat, as I was saying. I'm not gonna, I've got one just like it, but it's actually tartan in the other room. I just don't pull it off nearly as well as you do. That's that. Really hope to get another release of it. So keep an eye out.
00:58:10
Speaker
Let's move on to Dan's review of Return to Moria. It's not exactly a mini review, but it's a review review. That's why I didn't describe it as a mini review. I actually had to write notes.
00:58:25
Speaker
Which I've never done before so yeah, I obviously this was the big one for the Learning after seven years of doing this or something actually be semi-prepared You know obviously it came out in the last the last episode or last main episode that I was very much excited for return to Moria because I like building games and I like report of the rings and I like dwarves even more so it was one of those big things I
00:58:51
Speaker
I want to come up straight and say, yes, I'm going to talk about a lot of things that I think were bad about this, but I did actually enjoy my time with it and I'm glad I played through and finished it. It was very enjoyable and I am looking forward to going back in maybe a year or two if they do some pretty strong patches and updates and playing through again. I think it's something that they can take on board and actually make it
00:59:18
Speaker
a really standout, solid addition to that genre of games, but also Lord of the Rings games. I think it's one of those big things. The story, the story is pretty basic. It's in there in the title, return to Moria. The dwarves are heading back to Moria under, under Gimli's direction. Why? Why? Why it makes no sense.
00:59:39
Speaker
Well, apparently it is taken from some of the law that that they did return to the morrow sources in the fall of age. I was relying on you for those sources, but apparently it is part of law that they did. They did go back at some stage. Uh, I'm not sure if it was led by the companion out. Yeah.
01:00:00
Speaker
They they get so in the intro cutscene, they get to Moria and the doors are magically sealed through some some dark nefarious magic. And so they try and blast their way in and you end up caught in a blast. Wait, which stores do they go through? Sorry, I've got a lot of questions.
01:00:18
Speaker
I can't remember that. This is going to be a whole episode. No, that was weeks ago, man. In retrospect, this really should have been a whole up late. Just timely ripping. Yeah, I don't know. It could have been the episode that I was away for.
01:00:34
Speaker
Well, I'm going to get away. I'm going to get away from law in a sec and the doors are sealed. And that is the, that is the main premise of the game is to unlock the, unlock the main doors. Uh, you, so it's more like escape from Moria than it is more like, that's exactly what it is. It is escape from Moria. That's 110% because once you're in, there's no fucking way out until you finish it. So
01:00:59
Speaker
That's actually a much better move. Did you design a dwarf with an eye patch then? So it could be a snake. Snake, snake, please. I didn't think of that. I wish I did because I would have done black head and stubble with an eye patch because I think you can put an eye patch on them. Yeah, right. I have to look at that. I have to go back into the dwarf creator and see what happens. Enjoyment, yes, I thought it was fun. The last area of the game was
01:01:27
Speaker
incredibly frustrating. The whole overall premise of it is set as a building game, but you don't actually have to do that much building or anything because it's not a voxel game like Minecraft. It's not everything is diggable and everything is destroyable. Only certain patches are diggable and that's all around the oars and moving to the next room because there's collapsed dirt.
01:01:53
Speaker
So you've got to dig through. And they use it as a roadblock for story elements that you have to have. A bit of pickaxe to get through compact dirt and stone and things like that. So they use it as a push to create better equipment as you go along.
01:02:10
Speaker
And there's a wall to not let you move into an area you're not prepared for yet. Yeah, definitely. So it's a gate. Yeah, it's definitely a design gameplay element. I would have much preferred to have a certain amount of influence on the environment where you are.
01:02:29
Speaker
Uh, which is, which is a bit disappointing. Uh, so my Friday night crew, Kel, Sui and Steve, when we all play, we've been playing some building games, uh, recently and we got into Valheim first and we call it the Valheim defense, whichever building game we get into. We call it the Valheim defense where we dig a trench.
01:02:45
Speaker
around our base and that trench as our base expands, that trench expands with our base as well and that in most building games is enough for you to be able to defend with a lower number of people a base attack. You can't do that in this because you can't influence the terrain so you have to find somewhere
01:03:08
Speaker
I don't know how procedurally generated the world is. I know it is to a certain extent, but I don't know if that that's rooms or the way the world looks or if it's a bigger influence there.
01:03:23
Speaker
But I found this this this point in the second area, which I made my camp and it had a natural defense. It had about a six foot natural brick wall with only two points of entry. And I was able to barricade those two points of entry that the the orcs and the goblins can't jump.
01:03:40
Speaker
so you can literally have a waste high wall that they can't get over so i did that ends my two points of entry and i was able to take on sieges on my own so that i never become a there so that was that was my warrior defense finding that natural natural outcropping to build to build on it's full of.
01:04:01
Speaker
bugs and glitches at the moment. They've only released one patch so far and that was to deal with some gameplay element glitches around load times and fast travel where it got stuck in load screens. They actually addressed a few more things that they didn't even put in the patch notes. The exhaustion system was
01:04:24
Speaker
incredibly frustrating, uh, when we first started playing, uh, which leads me to believe, and I think I've put this in my notes. I don't know where I've put it back. Yeah. In this one is they've released this as an early access game. This is, they were using day one purchasing people as play testers because there is no way this game was at it's more.
01:04:49
Speaker
Yeah, it's much smaller as well. So, yeah. Less excuse. Yeah. We just, we were used as guinea pigs. We were used as gameplay testers, which is incredibly frustrating because I won't touch the game now for another year or two. Until they fix things. Because, I mean, it would be, as a solo player, some of them were a little frustrating and could have been
01:05:17
Speaker
game inhibiting, like where I would log out of the game, I wouldn't necessarily load straight back into. I could be literally on the other side of that biome. Luckily, I'd cleared out that biome, so it was a clean run straight back to my base where I logged out of.
01:05:36
Speaker
without trouble but if i had logs back in and was on the literally the opposite side of one of the danish plans. It would have been completely frustrating or in a harder game something damn near impossible to get back to. My base area to pick up extra supplies to survive that time. Luckily i did it in the small one of the small bombs the open quarter and it was pretty easy just to run across and i'd clear the area by the end of it.
01:06:04
Speaker
by the time i reach this glitch anyway but it would also drop some items out of your inventory so you pick up notes from a ranger that had gone through the mines of moria and you find their camp and you can add the pages of their journal
01:06:20
Speaker
back in and that gives you certain crafting recipes and things like that as well. It would just drop them out of your inventory and you would go back to where you logged out and there's an urn that appears when you die where you can pick up all your stuff and the pages were just sitting in that urn. So there's glitches like that. But the two biggest glitches I met, the two boss fights, the two big main boss fights, one's about halfway through the game and one's at the end of the game.
01:06:47
Speaker
completely bogged out. Like as a solo player, the first one I went into, um, I'm not going to spoil what it's up against, but the first one I went into, I like a Balrog. Cause then I'm going to, I'm going to go punch someone in the fucking front. Yeah, it is. It's a troll troll. It's the troll king. It's the troll king. Um, and
01:07:11
Speaker
I prepared for it. I created a teleport point back to my camp right outside the boss fight. I went and dropped everything that I didn't need. I loaded up on like shields and arrows and everything to go into this boss fight. You took all the right potions.
01:07:26
Speaker
I took all, yeah, their potions are done through Ales in this. So I did all that. I loaded up. It was a Witcher 3 reference. Yeah. I loaded up on all my, my buffs when I went in and it was a difficult fight for about 30 seconds. And then he did one of his powers and got stuck in a corner. And you know what? I could reload and do all of this again, or I can just kill him and move on.
01:07:55
Speaker
And I just walked up behind him and just fucking just wailed on him until he fell over. And that was it. And that was the big boss. Surely if you play testing a game, if you're paying people to test your game, that would be a focal area is, okay, we've only got six bosses in our entire game. Can you just go kill them like all six in a row over and over and over again, please? Just tell us what happens. Like, seriously. Completely agree. Completely agree.
01:08:23
Speaker
And then the entire, the whole big bad of the, the entire game, I got to it and glitched out as well. And it was, it was firing off all of its attacks just into a solid stonewall. So it's a tantric video game. It takes hours and hours and there's no payoff at the end. That's a hundred percent. Yeah, it was, it was that, that fight was so disappointing and it was also, man, I could reload, but this could just glitch again.
01:08:49
Speaker
Or worse. Or worse. It could completely kick my ass because if it's that glitchy and that unbalanced, I might not be able to finish it on my own. So I'm like, you know what? Fuck it. I'm this close to the end. I'm over it because the final biome area was so fucking frustrating that I'm just like, just finish it. Just do it. Be done with it. Walk away for a couple of years and come back to it when they've fixed all these things.
01:09:14
Speaker
Huge, huge glitches. Yeah. The one of the main things, the kazot stone, which is kind of like the arkenstone from
01:09:26
Speaker
The Hobbit guys, the Hobbit dwarves are going to get in the Misty Mountain. The Khazad Stone's the one for Moria in this game. I'm hoping it's lore and canon. I had to Google where it was in the game after I'd beaten the final boss because I couldn't find it.
01:09:47
Speaker
Yeah, I saw your notes on that actually. When it told me where it was, I'm like, you fucking serious? I passed that point in the game dozens of times and I went back to it and yeah, I looked down and there's this one little red colored or I think I'm pretty sure it was red colored pixel in a pile of fucking dirt.
01:10:06
Speaker
that I aimed down and said, pick up. And I picked it up and they're like, that's how I finished the game. Because I got to the exit door for Moria and it goes, oh, no, you haven't got this stone to give to foreign. So I need to go back in and find it. And I'm like, you fucking serious? Like it's in that last section that was the shittest area in a video game that I've played.
01:10:26
Speaker
And it wanted me to go back in there. So I'm like, I'm Googling where this is because there's no fucking way that and because the map slightly different for everybody, I was a bit worried that it was going to say, Oh, well, no, you just got to walk around to find it. But it was in a specific it was in a specific point that is the same for everybody.
01:10:44
Speaker
And so I picked it up and that was it. There was no way. I walked past this point several times and missed it every time. And that was a terrible glitch. That should have been something that was much more clear.
01:11:00
Speaker
I'll blast through the rest of this. The art style is much more cartoony than say the Shadow of War games or the Peter Jackson movies. So was it kind of World of Warcraft cartoony? Yeah, kind of along that way. Not quite to that level, but it is much different. It is more the cartoon style of things. The trolls look like the rock eaters from Never End a Story. I couldn't work out where they were.
01:11:23
Speaker
And I had to Google trolls in movies and go through the images until I found the one that wasn't. I'm like, that's exactly what they are. Fucking. Another Jim Henson masterpiece. Yes. So the art style is nice. It's good. All the dwarvish armor and the buildings and that look excellent.
01:11:41
Speaker
It is really good on that side of it. The animations of the dwarf moving are really good. You can do a combat roll which is actually really fluid and if you pull it off at the right time is quite satisfying. The gameplay loop itself is
01:11:58
Speaker
Okay, you don't you kind of move along through the areas and you can see where they want you to set up settlements because there's a there's a there's a broken down forge and a broken down half or there's an area that is
01:12:14
Speaker
clearly you can see it's defensible, where they want you to set up a camp. I didn't get past the second zone. I just, I'd made my camp there and just took enough, enough ingredients with me to make warp waypoints, map points, wherever I found something, I would, I would drop a waypoint and then I would just pull back to, pull back to my main base to, to do that, to do that. So it's, it's fun to start with. We don't have much ingredients or anything. And you're,
01:12:43
Speaker
And you kind of need to move to the next area. You need to make a little camp just to survive because you can't get back to your next one. And then you just find more ingredients and then you just give up on it and you just keep your main base. Your upgrades are good. The satisfaction of getting more minerals to move forward is good. That last biome that I was talking about, which is the it's just a
01:13:09
Speaker
It's just a rehash of bits and pieces from the first ones. And it's so frustrating. Some of the rooms are just, I think I went through about four or five rooms in almost a loop that were mirror image of each other. They were absolutely identical down to the oars that were on the walls.
01:13:29
Speaker
And you would just do this. You would go and find goblins, go to the next room. And then you just would make a loop back. And it was just it was fucking frustrating. Rocks would be constantly falling from the ceiling, knocking you off things. It was vertical when the vertical gameplay isn't very good. The ladders, the ladders and the platform placing is a bit dodgy. It's a much better game on a level platform. So that last biome was fucking horrible and needs a serious, serious overhaul.
01:13:59
Speaker
All the AWP camps, there's one major AWP camp in each area, which is just a mirror image of each other. So once you know the layout of the first one, super boring, roll through the bosses in the same arena, the arena looks exactly the same all the way through. So end the actual player map.
01:14:18
Speaker
especially in that last area where there's a lot of verticality. It only shows you the level you're on. It doesn't show you the levels you've been to, and you can't flick through your map levels. It doesn't mark where the next rooms are on your map. You're flailing in the dark to going up and down this bad verticality
01:14:40
Speaker
traversal system to try and find runes that you haven't been into to at least try and find the next objective. I feel like the Lord of the Rings maps are absolutely beautiful in the other media. So it could have been something that could have been one of the most gorgeous points of the game with like dwarven written rune notes all over it and everything like that. But it just here be dragons.
01:15:04
Speaker
And the things like that, I mean, it should mark those things automatically for you and mark where all's are and things like that, especially if you tag them. It could have been a really beautiful player map. So I think that's a really, um, a really big miss bland, boring and broken is how I named them. Um, yeah, overall, I once again, seems like it's a description for the whole game, Dan, bland, boring and broken. Yeah.
01:15:28
Speaker
Yeah, the the biggest thing I spoke to you guys about it, the most beautiful part about it is the songs. It was it was really great to get back to the camp when I needed to rest. And I brewed a brew called evening ale and you would drink the evening ale and it would give you a buff when you woke up.
01:15:48
Speaker
But to get that buff, you need to hold E to drink the beer, but he will then sing a verse of a song as it goes through. And I think they probably were all original songs and they were My Girl's Beards as Bright as Brass, the story of the Hobbit naming all the dwarves and when they get to Bilbo's place and
01:16:11
Speaker
the running amok there and a few other bits and pieces. The singing then continued into mining. You would start singing when you were mining ore and you would then gain inspiration that didn't use stamina when you were mining ore. You would then sing songs at the statues of Durin, at the one of the library pillars.
01:16:34
Speaker
Every main point you would sing a song to open a door, and they were extremely well done. It would start off just with the dwarf singing, and then the big background chorus and orchestra would come in and continue off the last little bit of the song. Some of it was sung in English, some of it was sung in dwarfish. That, to me, was the jewel in this game, and it was one of the big things that kept me going through and pushing through.
01:17:03
Speaker
That's it. I probably got more to say, but I've talked long enough myself. That's a 20 minute review. So that's a solid. That's definitely not a mini review. I've got some stuff to say because I did some research in the background. Yes. So you said they entered through the doors of Duran. These were the doors that the watcher in the water destroyed when the fellowship entered. They were not rebuilt.
01:17:25
Speaker
According to token letters until cousin to a memorial was resettled by the dwarves which didn't happen until sometime after the fourth age year one seventy one and gimli. Left. Company legless the undying lands in fourth age one twenty.
01:17:45
Speaker
So you can't have entered by the doors of Durin, not that your dogs. Um, but they do say that Thorin Stone held the third, who was at the council of Elrond. Uh, he did send, um, with, so Gimli was at this point was in the glittering caves at Helms deep. That's where he'd established his, do they talk about that at least? No, no, not at all. Fucking dogs. That's the best part.
01:18:10
Speaker
Gimli goes after, because in the books he's so obsessed with the glittering caves that then he decides to settle there and mine them. So yes, Thorin Stonehelm, who was Dane Ironfoot's son. Dane Ironfoot was played by Billy Connolly in the Hobbit films. He rode the big goat.
01:18:25
Speaker
So his son was the King of Erebor, the Lonely Mountain. He did send dwarves to mine Mithril from Moria, but it wasn't resettled. It wasn't resettled until well after the year 171 in the Fourth Age, where Thorin's son Durin VII, or Durin the Last, who was the last reincarnation of Durin the Deathless, eventually
01:18:51
Speaker
did resettle Moria and they stayed there until the dwarves faded out of existence. But it doesn't sound like this game you have settling Moria or it's more like you've entered and then got trapped. Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, the idea is too settled. Yes. And that's at the end of the game, you do get, I'm just going to spoil this. You do get made Lord of Moria because you opened the door for them to get in. I don't know where you get Lordship out of that, but anyway.
01:19:16
Speaker
You mentioned I broke into someone's house and opened the front door. I owe the house. Squatter's right, baby. Squatter's right. Yeah, you are there under the orders of the King. So I guess it kind of makes sense. But you mentioned Mithril. So Mithril is the last all that you get.
01:19:32
Speaker
in the game. And the only way is when you get to the deep dark, because the paths through the mine are all locked. So you've got to find alternate routes. So you go into this, it's called the crystal descent. And you end up in the deep dark, which has got really cool sort of mushrooms and like glowing crystals and things like that. It's a pretty nice area to get into. But then within the deep dark, there's
01:19:57
Speaker
cracks in the terrain, which lead into the deepest dark. And so you make platforms and ladders and get down into the deepest dark, which you can only spend a certain time in there because you end up with despair, which takes health off you.
01:20:13
Speaker
And this is where you can get the rare gems. And you need rubies in that to make some of the better weapons in the early areas. But then in the last section, this is where you mine Mithril from. So I started to mine, get down into these deepest dark
01:20:31
Speaker
they're fine because it's a bit of a time limit on there. You can only stay down for a certain time and this and that. It's like in God of War when you go to the the misty, the poison mist, right? Yes, that's exactly what it's like. Yeah, you can only spend a certain time in there. Yeah. And so I found those breaks in that monotonous gameplay very interesting and quite fun. Yeah.
01:20:53
Speaker
So I mined a bunch of Mithril because I found one that was really great. I set up a waypoint stone in there so I was able to teleport out before I was sort of too damaged. Got all this Mithril and you can only make one thing out of Mithril.
01:21:09
Speaker
You can only make one weapon, a spear to kill the big bad of the game. And that's, that's it. You can't make anything more. So you, and there's, there's so much, so much out of Mithril, but there's so much abundance of this ore that in all of the ores, there's an absolute abundance of it, but you don't actually make that much out of any of it. Like there's not, there's not options for like different types of armor or anything to make out of each of the ores that you find.
01:21:37
Speaker
Would be fine and then make armor stands and put them up and it would be an expense on the gameplay. There's only one set of armor you can make out of each.
01:21:45
Speaker
out of each ore. So you get enough of that ore to make your weapons and your armor and then you just don't get any more because you don't need it. So the Mithril, all that extra Mithril that I've mined, you don't need it. Like I got enough to make this one weapon and then I thought, oh, surely as I get along, there's going to be an armor set and some bits and pieces to go with it, but there's not.
01:22:07
Speaker
There's just that one weapon. And that was really disappointing, especially for how abundant it is once you get into the deepest dark in that area. Yeah. It was really disappointing. Yeah.
01:22:20
Speaker
Well, there was more in there that I didn't mention, but I'm not going to go back. Doesn't matter. I feel vindicated. I win. Thank you very much. I mean, it was a turd. They just throw, they just threw Gimli in there because it was a name that everybody did. They would have thrown a bunch. I get why they did it, but they're wrong. They shouldn't have. Yeah. Yeah. I agree. I think it would have been better if they'd stuck to the, like the proper law to the, to the dwarves of variable. Yeah.
01:22:45
Speaker
Yeah, but I mean, I also am going to talk about Shadow of War later, so. Oh, well, there's a departure. I think on that note, we should probably take a break. Probably a good idea. We'll come back for our next review. Stay tuned, avid listeners.
01:23:14
Speaker
Hey, we have returned. And apparently we're ready for our third beer review. Oh, hello.
01:23:25
Speaker
Looks chewy. No, it's not. I guess it is a little bit. I'm going first now. So there's a new Australian malt supplier called AMSAT out of South Australia. Let me look up. I did have it here open. Australian malt is serving services and technology out of South Australia, which are distributed by Ellersley hops.
01:23:50
Speaker
We're customers of Elleslie Hopps. So got invited to the AMSAC sort of announcement thing over at Dad and Dave's in Brookvale last week, where I got to taste the malts, talk to the maltster about what they're doing. And they'd actually brewed two beers with these new malts. So we got some of these beers to take home with us. I tried each one of them and then I'm like,
01:24:16
Speaker
got to talk about these on the podcast. Because this one's made by Archer Brewing in Brisbane. It's a crystal lager. So it's a crystal malt lager, but also the, I would call that also crystal clear as well. It's a beautiful, beautiful, clear, deep amber crystal malt lager. It's got
01:24:40
Speaker
that really nice light caramel with some a touch of sort of biscuity malt character coming through there as well it's it's
01:24:51
Speaker
It does have Pete's favorite word, a little bit of residual sugar there for a lager, but it's not super chewy, but there is definitely a larger body to it. But the freshness of this fucking specialty Australian malt coming out of South Australia just gives this brightness in flavor to these products.
01:25:17
Speaker
People not on the production side of it, most of our specialty malts come from UK or Germany. There is Gladfield Malt over in New Zealand, but only a select amount of people use them because they have
01:25:32
Speaker
big distribution, but you can't always get what you want because they do smaller batches and they're pretty highly sought after. Then you've got Voyager Malt, which is a New South Wales one, and now we've got these guys. Malt is a food product, so the fresher we can get it, the better the flavor expression it's going to be. And these beers, the malt expression on these two beers is unlike any beers I've ever had.
01:26:01
Speaker
even ones I've made and tasted fresh out of tank have never had the clarity of malt expression like these beers have. So wow. I'm really excited to try these, these, these malts out in some of our brews, because if, if we can do three quarters, half to three quarters of what they've done with these two beers, then I'll be, I'll be a very happy camper.
01:26:24
Speaker
Um, so these, these two, the next one is a, an American brown ale made with their chocolate malt and their dark crystal. Uh, and it's phenomenal. You're selling it. Yeah. Um, I'm not even sure if these beers are available on market. Yeah. Uh, there's only four chickens on untapped. So probably not. They're probably, well, they, they did the, uh, Ellerslie's been doing state by state, um,
01:26:49
Speaker
the malt tastings with these beers, so they're probably all people, industry people, I'd say, that have been to these things.
01:26:57
Speaker
Archer, Gareth, who I went to uni with, started Archer with, I think with his brother-in-law out of Brisbane. So got a bit of a connection there, but fucking phenomenal. Absolutely phenomenal. I love these. And they're such easy drinkers because the flavor expression is just wonderful. And they're not palate killers either because they meant they're designed to give that malt.
01:27:23
Speaker
the heroes of the malt rather than being sort of super hoppin' and I think forwards are beautiful. Well there you go. Out of five? You know what? Unquestionably, this is a five. I think just the freshness and the flavour expression on it are just absolutely so outstanding that
01:27:50
Speaker
It needs to be, it needs to be marked to five. And the simplicity of it too. Like there's, there's so little complicated. Yeah, that's exactly it. There's so little going on there that coming off that file product, that this is, this is just a back to basic simplicity, well-made with wonderful ingredients. It's just, it's next level. Nice. Here you go, Peter. Okay.
01:28:18
Speaker
Um, I am drinking bracket brewing. This is the way Which has all the hops that we've talked about a bazillion times idaho seven citra and chinock Uh, it's a west coast ipa at 6.2. Um, and it is exactly what You would expect it's a nice bright
01:28:45
Speaker
Better IPA. It's holding up quite well, I must say, because I had one the other day as well and this was brewed for May 4th and it's still holding up. I had one. I thought it was pretty good too. A bit of hazed protein through it now. It's funny because I got
01:29:03
Speaker
I fucked up my pour, so I had quite a big head on it, let it settle, and then poured out the last, I don't know, half an inch from the bottom of the can, and it went from perfectly clear to just hazy as fuck. Some floaties in there. Yeah, it's very bitter. Exactly. It's right up Dan's alley, actually, and it's got lots of, I don't want to say tropical juice because that's not what it is. It's more
01:29:29
Speaker
Again, it's pith. It's on the bitter side of a citrus fruit, if that makes sense. But it is quite bright as well. So yeah, I'm going to give it a 4.25 because there's not much more you can ask for out of a beer like that. It's expressing exactly what you'd expect from like Chinook, especially, and Citro. They're very bold hops that you know the flavors of. And that's what I'm getting. Excellent.
01:30:01
Speaker
I didn't want anything down, so now I've got to remember my own score. Thomas seems perplexed. It's growing on me. It's growing on me. I am drinking the tangerine dream from Cher, a brewing company. So this is one of their brews from Cher Behemoth. So this is from
01:30:24
Speaker
New Zealand from Auckland. It is a Tangerine Brute IPA. Remember Brute IPAs? They're back. They're coming back for the ventures. No, they're not. No, I don't know. I couldn't even finish that sentence without calling out my own lie. Yeah, so it's Simcoe and Mosaic. And it's just, I don't know, the more I've gotten into it, I've started to get some of the Tangerine-y, the Melanie flavors, but it's been
01:30:54
Speaker
been slow to get there. It's not as dry as I remember a Brut IPA being. I remember they were like bone dry. They were going for that like whole champagne-y feel. This is quite dry, but not like that bone bone dry. And yeah, there's just, I don't know if it's like, it's almost like overly pithy and it doesn't meld well with the flavors I would expect to get out of it. I just, I don't know. It's like,
01:31:20
Speaker
It's just not quite working for me the way I thought it would. I thought it would be a bit more refreshing with, but like with that dryness, I don't know, it's kind of, no, no, no, not really like polarizing flavors. I guess it's just, you know, it's dry, but it is like a refreshing upfront. It's dry on the back. Um,
01:31:40
Speaker
And yeah, the like tangerine, they say mango and pineapple. I'm getting like zero pineapple, little bit of mango, but it's like when the mango has kind of been in the fridge for a day too long and it's not quite nice mango. Yeah. I don't know. It pours like it was, it's like poured quite well. Like there was nothing else in it. There was no like floats in it to give like heaps that extra bitterness sometimes you get with those when like.
01:32:05
Speaker
just a chunk of Trub drops in there and you go, ah, well, fuck doubles. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, I don't know. I'm a bit, I expected more. I think is, is where I'm at. I expected better. That's always been my opinion of any brute IPA I've ever had.
01:32:23
Speaker
And I've always gone into it with every expectation that you just said there as well. Really dry, nice and refreshing. Because there's no residual sugar in there. They basically go down to balancing with water on a gravity scale. And just you expect all that extra flavor and that to pop there. But I've always been disappointed in every single one I've ever had.
01:32:47
Speaker
Yeah. And so this is like, I pulled out the end of the can now and I'm, I am definitely getting more of those, like, those, those, those like tangerine citrusy flavours and like a little bit of the mango, but yeah, I don't know. It's, it's. Yeah, exactly. It's just not what I expected. The can art though is fantastic. Yeah, that is beautiful. Like, but it's not making me do that. So the can has lied to me. You're a liar. I hate you. I hate you little churn. There's only been one check-in on untapped for this beer.
01:33:17
Speaker
There you go. From, ironically, from Tom Sellers in North Taramara. There you go, Tom. I don't know. Tom Sellers? Yeah, that's a good little bottle shop. It's clearly the same beer, same artwork, same description, same everything. So I don't understand how it's only got one check-in. Can't beat that. Yeah. Well, unless that's done under chair and then you've got a whole bunch of people in your zone checking it in under behemoth. Yeah. That's a good possibility. Yep. Out of five.
01:33:47
Speaker
Three and a half. Three point five. You're allowed to have an opinion, you know. No, I know I'm allowed to have an opinion. It's just I think I wanted to enjoy this one more. And yeah. Anyway, that's life, I guess. All right. We're going to we're going to we're actually we're not going to race through, but we are going to get through another review.
01:34:11
Speaker
Because we've all watched something for once. It's pretty rare these days. The Creator. I actually don't know who directed it. I watched the- Gareth Edwards. Thank you. Hence my little joke, Rogue Two. So Gareth Edwards directed this one. He also filmed most of it. If you watch the behind the scenes, I found it's like a one hour long behind the scenes movie about the movie. And it was fascinating from start to finish.
01:34:39
Speaker
Yeah. He's a fascinating dude. He loves film like, and it's just like, and he's got, I think he's got, because he's roughly our age, I think might be a bit younger, but I think he's, he's, he's very much on that, that spectrum of where.
01:34:56
Speaker
I feel like we are now in cinema as well, that these one-shot, wonderfully told, beautifully filmed stories is what we need as a pallet cleanser to go for a callback. Well, not as a pallet cleanser. I actually think
01:35:14
Speaker
We need to restore the storytelling in cinema and that and that and he's not he's not unique, but he's one of the few directors who are very clearly passionate about storytelling above everything else.
01:35:30
Speaker
So the idea of we're going to spend 95% of our budget on and of which there was scarce little budget. 80 million. Yeah, which is fuck all considering most of these monsters are 500 million to a billion in production costs these days by the time you add advertising. So 80 million is a is a pittance.
01:35:52
Speaker
But he declared right up front, he's going to spend 90% of it in post, in adding CGI and forcing him to essentially become a run and gun guerilla cinematographer that he likened to a war cinematographer. And it's shaky cam, like without the ugliness that is Blair Witch Project shaky cam, like it's
01:36:21
Speaker
You can tell it's not on a dolly, they're not perfect smooth motion. It was shot Pete on a Sony FX3, which is an entry-level full-frame cinematic camera. It's the Sony equivalent of the camera that I'm shooting this on right now.
01:36:40
Speaker
Because as soon as he mentioned it, of course, I fucking googled the FX3. But yeah, I mean, and he had an anamorphic lens, which he then de-squeezed, which is a whole cinema style choice around the way that images are captured on those anamorphic lenses. It's got a very specific style to them. But just the way that he described about how he just moves around the actors and just make them do a thousand takes until he nails what he was going for.
01:37:09
Speaker
Yeah, anyway, I'm a massive fan after watching that. I'm a fanboy after watching the behind the scenes film.
01:37:16
Speaker
Okay. Well, I mean, if you get, if you just go on something, like you said there, I mean, the most of the actors there are relatively unknowns as well. Obviously the core main cast, the, um, God, I've got them here because I couldn't remember the names. Um, John, uh, Don David Washington, obviously a big one, Gemma Chan's been in a lot. Uh, Ken, Ken Watanabe always pops up always fucking amazing. Um, and Alison, Jenny and Jane Janie.
01:37:43
Speaker
Yeah, I was going to say, Janie, in a role that is not what she is typically in and fucking nails it. Like, you can just see that he has gone, you are the right person for this role. Like, and then the rest of the cast, basically unknown. Like, I greatly apologize to anybody else. Like, Benedict Wong's in the, in the casting as well. I don't remember seeing Benedict Wong in there anyway.
01:38:10
Speaker
And I don't remember seeing Danny McBride in there anywhere either. No, so that's that's Benedict Wong was originally meant to be Ken Watanabe's character, but he. Oh, okay. Right. I mean, Ken Watanabe is just phenomenal. He's fucking like boss me. Yeah. He's always amazing. Everything he does and always has this stoic.
01:38:30
Speaker
It's samurai energy. It's just what he does. He just fucking owns it when he doesn't even say anything. It's just one of those. It's the look. And then the young sin, the Madeline Una boils.
01:38:51
Speaker
Yep. Did I pronounce that correctly? I would have gone with... God damn authorities. That kid can fucking act like that. Yeah, she gets a lot out of very few lines. Oh boy. And with only half a head.
01:39:09
Speaker
It's like, good God. I hate to bring it to you, but that was animation. But the supporting cast as well. So where I was at is like, he's got this four or five core great actors that he is obviously handpicked that were specific for the roles and they all nail it. And however many takes he took for the shots and the dialogue. I actually think he did that on purpose.
01:39:36
Speaker
Gotta be honest, I think that whole concept of, I'm going to make you do it so often that you're exhausted and you stop acting because you forgot to act. And a lot of it, and you know, that only works for certain dialogue and certain specific plot points, but it shows in the movie.
01:39:58
Speaker
they're in a continuous run from the authorities. And so you would expect them to be exhausted and at wit's end and on that point of frustration and on the point of giving up. And I think the immediacy of exhausted actors translates really well into the story. Should we get ahead of ourselves? Should we give a quick 30 second breakdown of what this is about?
01:40:24
Speaker
No, but I'm sure I could wrap one. I mean, it's said in the near future, artificial intelligence was accepted by the world in robots, in independent robot units, because, you know, we talk about... You can't even say that anymore, right? It's 2023 and AI is already everywhere in real life. So, yeah, in independent robots, it's very chappy-esque in their
01:40:47
Speaker
You know, the robot units. And then, then the AI is accused of nuking. I think it was New York. Los Angeles. LA.
01:40:57
Speaker
Nuked LA and we're essentially outlawed by America and a group of countries wrapped around America, so probably like the G8. Artificial intelligence has essentially withdrawn to Southeast Asia to hide from the big geopolitical countries and are essentially being hunted down by America.
01:41:19
Speaker
And it's very, I mean, it's in the East and banned in the West. Yeah. Yeah. But it's very much Southeast Asia. It's not even the East because it's kind of Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand, Thailand. Yeah.
01:41:34
Speaker
Yeah, true. So that's kind of the basic premise. And then against that backdrop, an agent working for the US government has been seated as an undercover operative to try and find the creator of modern AI. And then some bad stuff happens to him. And that's kind of the starting point for the movie, really, I think.
01:41:58
Speaker
I think it's really important to I think it's really important to add to that that they do have a shadow this because it was overshadowed in the trailers but then. The the whole thing that is overshadowed constantly is the nomad the nomad is ever present and I that's established pretty early on that there is no matter if it's big giants it's yeah big brother space station military like.
01:42:17
Speaker
But it's a representation of, and you can't not look at this politically, in my opinion. Nomad is a representation of what's going on in America at the moment in terms of US governmental overreach, over surveillance, and over control of its population. And that's literally called the North American defense, something, something. That's what Nomad stands for.
01:42:39
Speaker
Yeah, and they made no, they made no secret that it was a US satellite missile defense platform like bombing Southeast Asia with zero repercussion. Yeah. So it literally just gets called in, you see the big blue light and you go, well, we're fucked.
01:42:58
Speaker
Fucking scary ass, like he did a really great job of that. And but the cinematography was a really great balance between absolute beauty or like natural beauty and like learning storms in the distance and these massive establishing shots and scenic shots and messes and all the rest of it. Like the beauty of Southeast Asia set against the backdrop of like, like futuristic tech and, you know, this Nomad platform wandering around bomb and shit.
01:43:25
Speaker
To me, it was very District 9. It's a love letter. What I can see in there is, I can definitely see Neil Blomkamp, which is District 9 Chappie Elysium. It was very Elysium. But Elysium was derivative of District 9 and Chappie as well. Yeah. Well, it came in between the two. I was way back. I was just nam. It was Vietnam stories. But that goes back to the Blade Runner with some Star Wars elements thrown in there.
01:43:55
Speaker
Yeah, particularly when they're in, I think they ended up in, did they end up in China or Japan at one stage? It was Japan, I'm sure. There was one stage in the middle of the movie where he was in a major, major Asian city, I thought was Japan.
01:44:10
Speaker
Might not have been. It's called something else, but, yeah, they don't name it as a city that I reckon. But it has like a has like a checkpoint. Are you talking about the checkpoint? Yes, I am. Yeah. Yeah. It had like a Times Square style. You know, you often often see that shot from, I think, Tokyo in the middle of Tokyo. That's yeah. With all the massive screens. Yeah. Anyway, I don't know. I just it's one of the best movies I've seen this year.
01:44:40
Speaker
Without any doubt. Completely agree. I think it's one of the best sci-fi movies of the last 10, 20 years. It's well up there with the Blade Runners and that for me, it's well thought out. It's emotional. The characters are established without going overboard. Their motivations are justified. That especially comes around the John David Washington and the Alison Janie.
01:45:08
Speaker
characters, their motivations on opposing sides of this story are completely justified in very little, in very little storytelling. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I think you summed it up really well. I think you wrote somewhere in the notes that they do a shitload of showing, not telling.
01:45:29
Speaker
through the entire thing. And there is a little bit of telling as well when it comes around some stuff, but they don't treat the viewer as an idiot that hasn't been told a story or seen a movie or seen a TV show. They treat them like this is an established world. You understand the basic elements of because it's not that far from our world and you know where our world is at the moment. So I'm going to put this element here and I'm not even going to explain it to you.
01:45:56
Speaker
I'm just going to show you what happens. And this really came around the dying soldier scene where she put the extraction of the mind and put it into the sim. And then the other one was the fucking suicide bomber robots. Sorry. Spoilers here, people. Oh, I don't think they're spoilers. Yeah. Their existence isn't a spoiler.
01:46:22
Speaker
That establishment of a soldier talking to the commander about, hey, I'm setting this robot to do this. And then they show us. They show us. It's literally off and running. And you go, oh, fuck, where is this going to end? Like, what is the what is going to happen here? And it just that that scene on the bridge, spectacular. I mean, just incredible. That was it was moving on both sides.
01:46:53
Speaker
And I don't feel that the, and I'm saying this in quotation marks, the bad guys in this were unjustified bad guys. You could sympathize with both sides of the line. If you, if you, yes, yes, there weren't, but to me, I mean, and you know, cause it's such a topical discussion at the moment with, with.
01:47:17
Speaker
I mean, chat gbt is really the apple of AI in the sense that the technology has been around for a decade. It's just no one gave a shit until apple piped up and went, oh, you know, there's PDA with a fucking pesky little pen shit. We can do it better. And now suddenly everyone's got a fucking device in their pocket that, you know,
01:47:36
Speaker
Apple brought that technology to the masses chat gbt brought to the masses it's everywhere and it's permeating society at the moment and it's it's interacting in new and interesting ways and we'll see that play out over the next few years. But i actually don't think this is a i don't think this is another story about.
01:47:56
Speaker
robots taking over and how we should be cautious about artificial intelligence. To me, this was about the right to exist as independent thinkers versus the machinery of government. They'd literally say that. Ken Watanabe characters says to John Davis Washington, he goes, do you know what's going to happen if we win this war? Nothing. We're not going to come after your people. We just want to be left alone.
01:48:23
Speaker
And that is their motivation. You created this now, just let us be. Just let us be. We're not going to take over. We're not going to wipe you out. We're not going to do anything. Just let us be. But in terms of it being a comment on current society, because it struck for me that it was
01:48:41
Speaker
It was a parody of what's going on in real life at the moment. And to me, it really was about the machinery of government controlling society versus the right to exist as individualism. That was also a big kind of fuck you to the hypermilitaristic nature of the US. Yeah, totally.
01:49:03
Speaker
Um, no, I like it, you know, I, we all sound like massive fanboys, but to me that was, it was masterpiece level fucking movie. Incredible. And like, and yeah, I very much enjoyed it, but there were bits in the middle where I was just like, I found myself going, Oh, how long is this actually going to go on for? I found certain bits in the middle drag some pacing issues. Well, it wasn't perfect. It wasn't, yeah, I haven't declared it perfect. Um,
01:49:30
Speaker
I do see masterpiece perfect come on. Well yeah okay I mean I'll take that feedback but I think it was pretty fucking close. Okay I've got a caveat to Pete's masterpiece comment I think it's a cult masterpiece. Yeah okay. Great addendum.
01:49:51
Speaker
I'm trying to work in the term addendum for the last three episodes. I tell you what I thought was really interestingly explored was, and you can tell that they'd obviously hired some futurists or he is just that visionary. But the notion of, okay, predict what military technology will look like in 20 years, but no robots.
01:50:13
Speaker
And so you end up with just super massive tanks and you went up with hardcore armor suits with like, you know, computer engaged, you know, intelligence, but they're not AI engines. It did kind of feel like some of those designs. It's just like the Gareth Edwards went, well, I really liked edger tomorrow and I really liked the big, uh, the big tanks out of star wars. So I'm going to take those and then he, like he got to pick and choose, which I'm all, which I'm all for. I'm all, don't get me wrong. This is like.
01:50:41
Speaker
If I had the playground of that to create a film, I'm like, I'm going to bring in some of the best elements from like. But everyone's building on everyone else. And there's an argument. Yeah. There's also an argument to be made that they've all derivative of real life. And so they're kind of convergent at some point anyway.
01:50:57
Speaker
Yeah, but that's what I thought. It was like, it was like the, uh, the MVPs of, um, of semi-futuristic military technology. Like you said, but one of the big, but one of the big engines was basically a Warhammer 40 K tank, like a land Raider or a land Raider Crusader. And it was basically take a massive tank and an APC merge them and then scale them up five times. And that's, that's, that's what was rolling over the top of that mountain. But that's also a description for a land Raider from Warhammer 40 K. Yeah.
01:51:27
Speaker
So, yeah, it's kind of convergent. The special effects on that budget were phenomenal. ILM, I loved the way that he described that Industrial Light and Magic was shit scared of him because he was like, no, I don't need you to model this in three dimensions. I need you to just paint it into the scene because I'm not going to change my mind later, I promise. Like you don't need to. I haven't seen that part. I didn't see that comment.
01:51:53
Speaker
Yes so so he the reason he got away with it so cheaply was because he went to I am and said. I'm never gonna reshoot the sequence I'm never gonna change my camera angle you don't have to create a perfect 3D model and then texture it from every fucking angle like you do for every other movie. I'm not gonna change my mind my shot is set I just need you to need you to paint a 2D plate.
01:52:16
Speaker
And so a lot of those background sequences are traditional plate painting, like environmental design, rather than 3D models. And that's how I got away so cheaply. But all the all the robots and all the Sims and just all of the, all of the extra, there was only one shot that was, um, I think it was, uh, it was not long after the date, they find the, they find the child.
01:52:45
Speaker
where one of the guys walks out and I'm like, that's a green screenshot. That was the only time that I went, hmm, that I could have spent like five more minutes on that background and it would have blended a bit better. Everything else felt like it was there and belonged in that world.
01:53:02
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, so a lot of it was and so, like, you know, yes, there were video sequences, but someone someone hand rotoscoped most of those shots. Right. So the heads where you can see, you know, the robotics, you can see through the skull. That's all rotoscopes. So they filmed actual actors. In some cases, I love the fact that they weren't even actors. They were just people there.
01:53:23
Speaker
They were just filming people in back streets in Southeast Asia in Cambodia on a handicam, and then they just randomly selected, he's a robot, he's human, he's human, he's a robot, and they just painted them out. And so the motion and the randomness of their behavior and actions were 100% human. It's a great way of nailing AI being human-born.
01:53:49
Speaker
Because they are literally acting as humans. Anyway, I did walk out of it and I went and saw it with my, Luke. I wish I'd seen it in the cinemas. We saw it in the cinemas and then we walked out, we'd had, you know.
01:54:04
Speaker
couple of years by the time we walked in and watched it. And then we had two more in the cinema and walked out and was just like, it's really nice that Gareth Edwards used all the cutting room floor imagery from Rogue One. It was really nice. Yeah. I liked going back to Scarif. That was great. Yeah. But you can see his, like, but that's the thing. You can see his fingerprint on it. It's his signature. Yeah. Yeah. That's, yeah. It's, I liked how he called it Rogue Two earlier, but it's more, it's representative of his style as opposed to it being kind of an extension of Rogue One.
01:54:34
Speaker
Yeah no no no no it is more it's his fingerprint on it which is which is delightful to see cuz sometimes.
Unique Gaming Experiences
01:54:41
Speaker
Like i know we've had it in the past we've always had that that kind of it was always that signature style of certain directors.
01:54:48
Speaker
Not that fucking wack face. But yes, no, exactly. But it's like, it's starting to come back. I feel like it got lost a bit in the last, like, say, 15 years. And now it's starting to be like, no, no, no. As a director, I'm taking more control back. This is my style. Yeah, yeah. I would enjoy watching more.
01:55:06
Speaker
No, I don't know that you would. I wouldn't extend that movie, but that style from him, I actually think he does a great job. And just looking at his directorial list, there's no sequel. He said to the studios, this is a one-off, this is a standalone movie. And that's what he needs to do. He did Monsters and he did Godzilla.
01:55:33
Speaker
Sorry. Monsters is great. I watched Monsters when it came out and obviously he was unknown then and I love it. It's a movie that's focused on a couple that weren't a couple. It's a small story. Yeah. Going across South America and it's not even focused on the Monsters. Like it's not. Sorry, it also wasn't scripted.
01:55:57
Speaker
Okay. The whole movie. And I didn't realize it was the same guy because it's kind of reminding me now I'm looking at it on IMDB. So his behind the scenes on this one was he gave the actors rough notes and then filmed them. And again, they were in Southeast Asia exhausted with no plan, no plot, other than these dodgy notes, he would hand them and they would have to just act against it. Yeah. But heaven forbids let the, uh, let the person who knows their craft do their craft.
01:56:29
Speaker
Yeah, it's like over, over direction can kill things as much as it can, as much as it can help things at times with the right director and the right actors. Yes. It can, it can create masterpieces, but also. Which we've, we've talked about where like previews is now more, more controlling of movies than the director is.
01:56:50
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I think on the flip side of that, you've also got to be very careful about the fact you've got to remember that actors are human beings and you can't just exhaust them so that they act naturally. No, no, no. Yeah. But no, I just think that like this is kind of going, no, no, I'm not saying you are, but I'm just saying we're talking about the way that Gareth has done this and it does start going down a bit of a slippery slope where you get to like,
01:57:15
Speaker
you start getting into like actor abuse. Because if you talk to the guys. But it can lead to that. Like, you know what I'm saying? This is starting to get down to like what Tarantino started doing. Yeah, I was going to say, he's not doing Tarantino yet. But also Tarantino is Tarantino and he can do whatever the fuck he wants. But monsters was quite different. Legally, he cannot.
01:57:36
Speaker
So the two main actors in Monsters are Scoot McNary and Whitney Abel. I basically described it as it was an unplanned backpackers holiday through Southeast Asia. Yeah. And occasionally they're on camera. Because I didn't know where they were.
01:57:53
Speaker
I mean, that's the thing. As long as, as long as an actor knows that they're going in for that kind of like thing, they need to know for like upfront. That's kind of what I'm getting to. Yeah, I think you're right. Actually, it was South America because it was supposed to be based in Mexico, but a lot of it was, a lot of it was, so he, he, well, they stated it, a lot of it's unscripted and he didn't really have permits. And he made a point of mentioning that in the behind the scenes that it wasn't a, I'm going to rent out this street and all the extras. It was,
01:58:23
Speaker
I got a handy cam and no one will even notice me filming my movie. Nah. Anyway. Yeah. My one last little point to put in there is I thought the comedy was perfectly timed and didn't stand out to be silly. It wasn't a gimmick.
01:58:40
Speaker
No, so it was a counterpoint in certain. You got the dog that picks up the hand grenade and runs it back out and drops it at the robot soldiers and then the car flip and turn back the other direction. Not going to say what they are because they were good points and anybody who's not watched it. And the standby not shut down. There was a couple of moments there that I thought were quite comedic, but they were
01:59:05
Speaker
Organically comedy rather than a comedy writer sat down and wrote a joke for the movie. We should move on because we're buried in this. Okay, and also Dan goes to pee. I did come home and the first thing I asked me off the credit, she was like, how was it? And I was like, it's great. And she's like, well, can you give me one word, one sentence review? And I said, the dog doesn't die.
01:59:28
Speaker
And that is now how I have to phrase most films. That's a whole, that's a whole website. I'm sure. Yeah. Yeah. The dog, the dog, the dog doesn't die.com. Like, and I often look it up because there was a certain scene with a dog and a gun and you're just like, well, that, um, sorry, sorry, sorry, but it's fair. Like, come on. Um, yeah. Don't hold guns at animals. True. Children's fine animals. No.
01:59:54
Speaker
fueled a whole series of movies that should have stopped at the first one. So we're going to move into our spotlight. John Wick. Oh, yeah, fine. We're going to move into our spotlight. I think we'll probably do this one pretty quickly. Yeah. Because we're 40 minutes in and haven't hit the spotlight yet.
02:00:14
Speaker
Um, this is why we're not doing trailer trash anymore. I, so this is Dan's idea and I don't have enough filler to stall until he gets back. So we're just going to, this came from a discussion Dan and I were having when, um, I was talking more about the new traversal in Spider-Man two of, um, you've got the web wings. So you gained a pretty significant gliding ability, um, compared to the first of the insomniac Spider-Man games where you purely just had your webbing around. Um, so now you can go, you know, you can.
02:00:44
Speaker
and swing up as high as you want and you launch yourself off and then you can press triangle, shoot at your little web wings. And it's just, it's a real change in the traversal, but it's not limited to that. It's, it's also in like your gameplay in like a fight scene. So like.
02:00:58
Speaker
Normally it's swing into one, but like, what if you were web zipping web gliding through and you spotted a crime and you're like, well, fuck, I might need to stop that. Cause you're going a little bit faster. So there were some videos that some people did like, which one's faster. I'm pretty sure web gliding one by like five seconds. They did like the, the end to end map race. Um, but yeah, this is, this is where it came from. And it ended up in a discussion of like unique game experiences. Like.
02:01:25
Speaker
I know there's probably some gamers out there who played spider-man 2 who unless they needed to use the web lighting wings. They wouldn't unless it was like a scripted thing when i had to use it there's no other way to do it there are certain missions that make you do that but how much does that kind of change it when you everyone has the same.
02:01:44
Speaker
ability to use whatever ability it is. So you have the standard web slinging or you have your gliding. But to create a unique user experience, how much you use them and how much does that differ your gameplay? Your experience. I mean, I kind of took this to the next level and focused on entirely and utterly unique gaming experiences because the engine
02:02:12
Speaker
I think this was the launch towards that. Yeah, okay. Because you could have the same discussion about, you know, got a war and which weapon did you favor throughout most of got a war. You have the same discussion around and we, ironically, we have had that conversation and we had the same conversation around Jedi survivor and which lightsaber style of combat we favored. And in that sense, they're all kind of unique experiences, but I kind of took it a step further to
02:02:40
Speaker
impossibly unique, as in my experience of this game is unreproducible because of the engine or because of the mechanics or because of whatever. And I took that away from Dan's discussion around the Nemesis system. Which I think is the perfect intro into it. So Dan.
02:03:01
Speaker
Well, I've already, I've already told Tom this story, Pete, cause I, uh, I didn't want to spoil shadow of war for you if you were ever going to get to it because I'm never going to get to it, but I was going to go grab another beer and now you've made me sit stay. So carry on. Sorry.
02:03:13
Speaker
So the Nemesis system for those who don't know what it is, it got implemented in Shadow of Mordor, and it's a way for randomly named orcs to be able to get thrown into this captain, the higher military system. It's almost a player RPG system, but for NPC enemies.
02:03:37
Speaker
Yeah, and they uniquely create names for them and visual appearances and their story in each game is unique as well so you can use on the actions that you the player exactly it's procedurally generated but it's it's.
02:03:55
Speaker
narrative driven. Yeah. So where this came from was I encountered an epic captain. So they come in just normal run of the mill captains, epic and legendary captains, which when you kill them, you get different. You get an epic item or a legendary item or a standard normal item. So the tag doesn't make that much difference, but the epic ones have some better, some higher rate drops.
02:04:18
Speaker
better loot drops but they also have a poison weapon or a fire weapon or some unique abilities so I encountered this one epic captain and I defeated him the first time but you don't necessarily unless you cut off their head they're dead dead in the game but you can do a whole bunch of you know
02:04:37
Speaker
No, Tom say Tom's come up with something different. So you can you can cut off limbs, you can burn them, you can do a whole, you can even cut them in half and they'll come back and they'll be stitched up or they'll have a hook as an arm or sword or definitely missing a lot of legs.
02:04:54
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. So they'll be, they'll be, they'll be stitched back together in some way from your last battle. And when you re-encounter them, they'll refer to that and saying, you thought you killed me last time, but you know what, I'm back for revenge, blah, blah, blah. Some of it gets much more into it than that. So I killed this epic captain, killed, saying quotation marks, took the loot that dropped for me, and then
02:05:18
Speaker
20 minutes later, I'm fighting someone else and he's popped up again and he's like, he encountered me in another fight. I'm like, fuck you, I'm going to get you this time. So I started to fight him and you can do things that make them scared or feared and they'll retreat as well. And it'll notify you when they'll retreat because they'll get a little line of dialogue and then they'll bolt out of the fight.
02:05:41
Speaker
So the second time I encountered him, I got him to the level where I was about to feed him again and he retreated. He got out and I couldn't chase him because there was just too many others out and I've lost him in there and they run pretty fast when they retreat. Yeah, they do run very fast. Yeah. 10 or 15 minutes later, he's fucking popped up again. He's ambushed me again. He's like, I'm going to get you this time. And so I fought him, fought him to a point where he retreated again. Like he's like, he's not like, nah, I'm getting out of here again, but you've got an ability to pin them.
02:06:10
Speaker
So I fired an arrow at his foot and pinned him. And was this the time that I pinned him? Was it the second time that I pinned him? I'm reading my notes that I... No, it's the third time I encountered him. I pinned him. Yeah. So this is this time. This is very much a nemesis system, right? Like that's the exact right word for it. It definitely is. It's also like, proprietary limited by this studio. Yeah.
02:06:34
Speaker
So I pinned him. And then what you do is you dominate them. So you threw the wraith calibrimball that's attached to you. You can dominate them and. Oh, I saw. Submit eggs and whips. But yeah. Yeah, basically. Submit their will so they become a captain for you instead of Sauron. But I couldn't because he was too high a level. So what you can do when you can't recruit them and they're too high a level is you can shame them.
02:07:03
Speaker
which drops their level. So I couldn't, I couldn't dominate him. So that shames him. And that takes him automatically out of a fight. So when you come, come out of the domination screen, he's gone. And like the character quickly disappears behind you. And even if you turn around, like the actual, yeah.
02:07:20
Speaker
But then you can mark them in the army map, so which is what I did. I went into the army map, I marked him and then I hunted him down because I knew he would be below my level now. So I then went and hunted this fucker and got him to a point where I could dominate him again. So you would dominate recruit him.
02:07:38
Speaker
Yeah, so you need to break them. So you need to wear them down in combat to the point where it says broken above their head and then you can dominate them. Then Louise is sitting next to me on the couch doing her uni work. And when one of the big things when Calibrin board dominates someone, especially in the early game, he slaps his hand on their head and goes, you're mine.
02:08:00
Speaker
Like in this big loud, uh, like, like dominating voice. And I just fucking yelled that because this had been going on for an hour at this point. And he's like, I've slapped the hand on him and I've just yelled at the screen, you're mine. And Louise is like, stopped reading and like, like, what the fuck are you doing? And watched me, uh, and I was so happy when I got that dude, like, because it was, it was an hour worth of gameplay that had no bearing on anything else I was doing in that game.
02:08:31
Speaker
And it was the thing that was completely unique to me. And that Ork probably didn't even appear for anybody else in that specific configuration. Yeah. Yeah. So there are certain Orks that appear in everyone's game, but then it is, as you said, it's procedurally generated what your Ork
02:08:50
Speaker
Captain's that you meet in the game and they just continually generate them as you go so you know if there's a gap in the army left to the enemy army left too long. A new captain will appear especially once you die if you die then the game kind of resets and goes well cool well there's.
02:09:07
Speaker
There's these three promotional spots. We're just going to put a random walk into it and push them up. The other thing you do, which I don't think Dan really touched on there, is if you shame someone too many times, you actually break their mind and then they become like ungovernable. I don't know if you experienced this. Then they go absolutely crazy. They can't be recruited for either side.
02:09:31
Speaker
Yeah. So you can actually, you can break, you can break, basically you break their will to live, but then they just become like, they don't speak anymore. They don't know. No, they don't speak anymore. It's just like, it's their eyes are just like wild. I'm crazy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You actually break their minds. So I did that to bruise. I broke. I like bruise. Bruisey.
02:09:56
Speaker
not friends. You're making me want to play the game. Oh, it's fantastic games. Yeah, it's a very, very, very clever way to generate enemies in a game where you, if you think about it, if you're one captain of Gondor in Mordor, you would be fighting endless fucking orcs. Yeah. So, so ones that come out and want to kill you and hunt you down. Yeah. And that's what the captains do.
02:10:24
Speaker
So procedurally generated games or elements of elements in games that are procedurally generated aren't new. They're like, it's a 20, 30 year old technology. It's not new at all. It's just, it's been expressed more recently around games like this and No Man's Sky. And it does lead to these kinds of encounters, but like I guess this one is, this is, this is where it learns from you as well.
02:10:47
Speaker
So it remembers the exact attacks you would use. So you can't, if you fought a guy and you managed to disarm him, you can't do that the second time. So it remembers your fighting style. It remembers your fighting style. And then there are certain certain guys like if you burn them one too many times, they'll have a fear of fire or eventually they'll get over it. And they'll be like, no, I am the fire now. Same with the poison element or anything else. They become the Batman.
02:11:14
Speaker
Basically yeah yeah yeah but my point was so no man's guys obviously procedurally generated and when you first play the game and you understand that you are landing on a planet name something no one's ever seen before and the particular blend of fauna and flora and even the style of.
02:11:33
Speaker
of flora and fauna is completely procedurally generated so it's unlikely anyone seen that species of dinosaur type bird with that particular age and you know and and that you know whether it's kind of risk. It's cool for about ten seconds and you realize that the.
02:11:51
Speaker
The procedurally generated nature of the game really doesn't have any bearing on gameplay and so it is unique, but it's not unique and interesting in the way that nemesis system is where nemesis is unique but. So specifically driven around the story and plot that it has a point it's not just doing something for the sake of doing and it's actually a core point of the game.
02:12:15
Speaker
And it becomes super important in your gameplay because you'll be trying to do something specific. You're adapting to their adaptations. Yeah. Like you're trying to get like, there's a thing where you, like one of the trophies, you have to, you have to dominate four captains of a war chief and then get them all to turn on the war chief when you appear.
02:12:34
Speaker
But the game at some point might be like, but you already, like you abused this captain too many times. So when you say everyone turn, he goes, how about fuck you? Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's one of the cleverest systems I've ever like, like played with or like, especially like that. And it's, it's so enjoyable and I really wish like, I know it'll never happen, but it'd be so nice if you got like shared to some other games, like.
02:13:03
Speaker
It could make like Far Cry games would, would benefit from this so much more than I think any other game I've played. Like, cause the Far Cry games eventually just come like, all right, here we go. Drive my thing in, but I can snipe them all. And then I'm done. But it's like, if you suddenly like it learned enough to be like, well, Tom snipes everyone from this exact deal every time. So we're going to like, climb up his ass while he's lying down with, or just like, you know,
02:13:28
Speaker
mine that part of the hill so we know when he jumps in there and gets out of his car and lies down, he just blows up. It's like, yeah. So I had another, only yesterday, I had another very unique experience. I had these two orcs that were blood brothers and every time I attacked one, the brother brother comes in to do it. So they fucking frustrated me for so long and I could not kill either of them because they were both really hard.
02:13:58
Speaker
And they just they just kept like annihilating me. And so in the end, I had to go and find other captains to dominate and then pit that captain against one of the blood brothers and lead that brother into a trap. And then I did the wrong thing. I actually dominated that blood brother. And then I went after the other one.
02:14:21
Speaker
And the one that I dominated turned up at the other fight and said, mate, what do you think you're doing? Like you tried to dominate me. I'm not working for you anymore. This is my blood brother. I'm going to fight for him again. So I ended up back at square one. So that's fantastic.
02:14:39
Speaker
Yeah. So it is an absolutely incredible system. And the fact that it's just unique. It's unique. Yeah. Yeah. And so your experience and journey through the game is going to be different to anyone else's because it's impossible for them to be the exact same. I don't know. It's improbable. I wouldn't say it's impossible. It's improbable.
02:15:02
Speaker
Sure. Okay. It could in a certain amount of games still could become monkey monkeys with typewriters. Yeah, it could happen. It could happen. Yeah. It's improbable, but it's not impossible.
02:15:14
Speaker
Yeah, OK. So when I thought about this spotlight, the only thing I mean, obviously, I'm playing Baldur's Gate 3 at the moment. And it's a big feature in my world at the moment. And I'll talk about that more in IU Winning Sun. But there was this number that's been floating around the internet for about a year now that there are 17,000 ending variations to the game.
02:15:40
Speaker
Now, you kind of look at the number and just go, that's, it's probably, even if it's true, it's only true by technicality. It's not a real thing. Yeah. It depends on who's in your party at the time.
02:15:54
Speaker
How much they like you depending on what they say. I don't know. I'm walking it back in terms of my thought process at the moment because I actually genuinely think that unless you were going out of your way to write down every decision in every quest and what order you did each step of every quest in. Yeah. There's no way that you could repeat the same journey through the game that I did.
02:16:20
Speaker
You would have to use the same characters, you would have to pass the same persuasion, deception, intimidation checks on the same quest characters at the same time. You would have to do step one of this quest after step four of this quest and then step three of this quest. There's no way that you could sit there and script the exact same journey through the game. And then you sit there and go, right, well, out of 17,000 possible endings,
02:16:46
Speaker
variations to the ending because it's not that many endings is about i think that's eight endings idle nine endings to the game. How many of the seventeen thousand material.
02:16:57
Speaker
It depends, and then it's like, well, then how do you measure materiality? Because I'm playing the game through a second time right now. I'm trying to make the same decisions. I've already played the game and I've got no intent of really deviating from my first gameplay, like playthrough. I didn't do a good playthrough and now I'm doing an evil playthrough. So I'm not, my decision making process in my mind isn't
02:17:22
Speaker
fundamentally different, and yet, I'm only halfway through Act 1 and I've got a completely different gameplay experience right now than I did through the first game. Which is really insane. I've got characters I didn't even know existed in my camp. Oh, wow. So, in terms of materiality,
02:17:39
Speaker
It might not change the ending of the game, but it sure as shit changes the experience. Yeah. Well, I'm, I'm actually on the opposite side of that because I'm, I'm back in Dragon Age Inquisition because I'm a psycho. Um, and like, I'm definitely remembering now as I go through, it's like without it, we're like, it's been 10 years since I played the game for everyone playing at home. Um, and in those 10 years, I've obviously forgotten all the exact choices I made. Yeah.
02:18:07
Speaker
But I'm definitely now going, oh, I remember this cut scene. And if it's meant to be like a pivotal choice cut scene, it's like, well, it shouldn't be that, no, no, it can't be that similar. It's like, I'm, I'm, I am making the same decisions that I made 10 years ago based on the character. But it's like, I would have to drastically change what I'm trying to do to get a different, different, different playthrough, I think. So. We're just not doing the opposite. I'm purposely trying to match the same decisions because
02:18:34
Speaker
I liked. Also, it's a fresh one for you. Like, yeah. Yeah. And the rest I might reserve for, are you winning, son? But yeah, no, certainly in terms of unique gaming experiences, somebody else has probably seen most of what I'm seeing. Yeah. But for me to play the same game twice back to back.
02:18:53
Speaker
and diverge at act one is pretty fucking impressive. That's big. Yeah. Yeah. You guys keep talking. I need to grab my fourth beer. Go grab your fourth beer. Yeah. I mean, I just don't know. Like when I think about this in terms of unique game experiences, I always go like kind of similar to the Nemesis system and think one of the big things that always changes a gameplay experience for me is traversal systems and how much you can break and bend them.
02:19:23
Speaker
And I think Emma really loves watching me just go, it won't let me get up this mountain. I'm fucking getting over it. I'll figure out a way. I know it would take me 10 minutes to walk around it, but I'm going to figure out a way to go up and over. Yeah. Kind of also why I was saying horses were useless in Assassin's Creed when he could just climb everything.
02:19:46
Speaker
Yeah, I know exactly. But I mean, Assassin's Creed is perfect for that. Like, how would you, you know, you've got a, let's say for argument's sake, a four walled building and you've got old mate you need to kill in the middle. And it's just like, well, if I come from the left, am I going to experience it differently from that way? If I come from the right, am I going to have to go up another story and then I can just like,
02:20:07
Speaker
pop over and jump straight down onto him. Uh, which one, which, which entry point gets me the best exit point. If I want to just do a quick assassination, but I think traversal is a big thing in like how you can make or break a system. And I often test a game based on how I can bend their traversal system. Um, and look, finally it was fun with that because it's definitely like the way you would approach a fight in terms of swinging versus gliding was like.
02:20:37
Speaker
But it was kind of the same with Arkham series. You could glide in that. And then it's like, well, am I going to silently glide in and then approach this kind of Predator style? Or am I going to rev up the Bat tank and just blow everyone to smithereens if I can?
02:20:55
Speaker
Yeah, definitely Arkham Knight gave you all those extra tools, including the Batmobile in there. And it's like, even in just the Predator scenes that were in high-rises where the Batmobile couldn't get there, then you had a bunch of tools at your disposal and was like, yep, you know what? Here's your playground. Fucking go nuts. Am I going loud? Am I going silent?
02:21:20
Speaker
Yeah, they're like you like kind of like said, there are a certain number of branches you can go on for that. But to get the exact branches again, like you'd have to have a pretty like, photographic memory of like, yeah, cool. So I, I batgelled that wall while I was over here, slinging that guy up from from a gargoyle. And then I like, like, flew onto that guy and kicked him out from behind and then set everything off.
02:21:47
Speaker
But so I've come in back to this conversation halfway through. I guess my question to you would be how material are those decisions? Because whilst your experience might be unique, do they have a material impact on the overall experience? I think it changes the way you experience, especially when you're playing as a character.
02:22:07
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Like, cause the way I wasn't a loaded question, it was a great question, but I think it is, it comes back to that. Like how much do you want to embody that character? So if I'm thinking about Batman, it's like, but also who were you embodying precisely is often the question. Hmm. Well, that's, that's focused on Arkham Knight then. Like we've all played the Arkham series and it's like, do you want to be like, like,
02:22:34
Speaker
Do you go, or no, actually better. Ghosts. Ghosts is a shame up because we all played that and we went so different because I fully embodied the ghost thing. Whereas Dan was like, no, I am a strict samurai. Dan and I ended up very similar, which was- You definitely lean more into the samurai side. But it was surprising for both Dan and I that- I fully expected you to go full ghost.
02:22:59
Speaker
Yeah, it's one of those things. It's just like, how do you see it? Because that did affect the story at the end of it. It affected the certain conversations you had with the NPCs. It's just like,
02:23:11
Speaker
Your experience of it is I need to play straight and fucking narrow. And I'm like, cool. I'm going to poison dudes from, from a mile away and just sit back and go job done. I mean, I, it's been probably close to two years since I played ghosts. And yet the memory of holding down the button or pressing the button, the precise moment to cut the guy's head off as he attacked me is still insanely satisfying in my memory.
02:23:39
Speaker
for literally pressing a button. It was very visceral.
02:23:44
Speaker
But it was perfectly timed and I loved that the timing got tighter, the higher the difficulty too. I thought that was a nice touch. Very nice touch. But also the cleverness of that and incorporating if you wore the full Sakai armor, you got more advantage in the samurai standoff. But if you wore the full ghost armor, you got more advantage in your ghost hastic. So they've definitely, like 100%, they've known that
02:24:10
Speaker
This is going towards this gameplay and that is going towards that game. And if they're going people want to do these certain things, then we are going to provide the tools for that player to do what they want to do.
02:24:23
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. I think a lot of the time when we have these, like when we talk about this sort of stuff and a lot of what is kind of coming out in my head in this conversation specifically is there's two or three paths and whilst your specific journey might be somewhat different, you gravitate towards these large streams. And so if you were to map it, they'd kind of all kind of gravitate around these two or three streams of gameplay style.
02:24:51
Speaker
You're either going stealth or you're going loud. That's that's true for Assassin's Creed. That's true for Ghost of Tsushima. And there might be some subtlety in between or some variations in between. You're primarily going to gravitate towards loud or sneaky.
02:25:07
Speaker
They're definitely used for, especially for me for the Arkham and Arkham Knight in particular, because you had that extra element that they threw in. I forget what they were ever called when you would pop up out of a floor or drop down and you would highlight the vent takedowns.
02:25:24
Speaker
Yeah, no, the it was it was detective mode, but no, no, no, no, no. It was something to do when you got the upgraded suit. You were able to take four or five guys out in a. Oh, yeah, the multiple takedown. Yeah, the multiple takedown. You had a name. I can't remember what it was, but.
02:25:40
Speaker
I would... Probably the bat takedown if we're going to be completely honest. If I could find a situation to use that and take four or five guys out in a predator situation, or even three guys out, just because I enjoyed the visuals of that. I enjoyed marking them and going bang, bang, bang, grapple away. Even if they saw me get to there, it was fun then to shoot the... Well, then you kind of grappled around and you lost them.
02:26:10
Speaker
Yes, you had all these extra tools. You'd use the cross line, the zip line, and then you could stop halfway and pull yourself up onto the line and you could create all these extra things that you could tackle that how you want it to tackle.
02:26:26
Speaker
One of the things I've always wanted to do is go back and play all those challenge maps and get the stars. The biggest things that stop me doing any of that is fucking load times because if I fuck it up in the first 10 seconds, I don't want to wait two minutes for it to reload. I want to be instantaneous. So hopefully in any sort of update they do for Arkham Knight, we get a SSD.
02:26:48
Speaker
Load time update. Well, you do get to do the similar style, like web lines in, in Spider-Man two, where you get to connect together. Yeah. That was very fun where you, you literally built a web. And then you just walked along it, picked guys off at random and then just tied them up. And that's fucking cool. Yeah. Um.
02:27:08
Speaker
The only other part of this conversation that came to mind when we were talking about it offline was just MMOs. Well, it doesn't even have to be massive, but any online game where you're playing with your mates or playing with people that you know, our experiences in Grand Theft Auto, Dan and Red Dead Redemption before that with Chris and Sui, completely unique to us.
02:27:33
Speaker
And that's an online game that everyone else is experiencing. It's the same mechanic, but the actual pathway through that game was unique to us. World of Warcraft, the memories I've got of that were made with the people that I was with more than the bosses. My boss fight with that boss is different to everybody else's because of the people I was with and
02:27:56
Speaker
Oh, my mates I played Titan Quest 2 with have still never forgiven me because we beat the final boss. It was 3am. We're in an internet cafe in Chatswood and I went, cool, we've finally done this after how many months of playing this game for like a six hour session, like every other week. I went, all right, well, you know, I've got to get the fucking bus home.
02:28:17
Speaker
I guess I'm going to go to the portal and I left them in Hades because their characters didn't come through with me. And they still never forgive me. It's been two decades. So our guild had a guy who famously, I mean, that was where?
02:28:36
Speaker
came from for me was he was he would famously be the guy because hunters in World of Warcraft had the longest range in the game. And so if if you were trying to clear a dungeon to get to a boss, you would want to pull trash mobs in groups, but not the whole fucking dungeon in one go. And so he would be the guy that we sent out to go on. Hey, can you go and shoot this group of four and bring them back to the raid?
02:28:59
Speaker
And he would constantly aggro the whole fucking dungeon. Just not through, not through, not through any intent, just through sheer stupidity, which is why we called him our hunter. Cause he was a fucking hunter. He would go into a cave and pull everything every fucking time. Sorry guys, I didn't mean to. He must have just seen me around the corner. Like no, dude, man. Like you just have no situational awareness.
02:29:26
Speaker
But it drove the whole guild storyline, not just our experience on any given night. Because you couldn't raid without the guy, because it wasn't the same experience. And so even though he fucked us up and he led to so much frustration, it wasn't a guild raid without him there.
02:29:45
Speaker
Oh, absolutely. Yeah. His name is Turtle. Great guy. That leads into my, are
More Beer Reviews
02:29:50
Speaker
you winning, son? So when we get to that, I'll voice my experience. Quickly have a beer and then we'll... Yeah. Let's talk about fourth beers and we'll get into it.
02:30:00
Speaker
Yes. I'm going to go first. I'm going to go first. I am having a, you're ready to be dazzled. Look at that. Whoa. This is the eighth of brewing West coast IPA. Um, this is, I'm assuming just like there.
02:30:18
Speaker
Does it have a name, or is it just the West Coast? Aether West Coast IPA. Okay. It is... What's solid? Is it a sour? It's a brute salt. It is Deez Nuts. Ligma Balls variety. Is the hops they used? Yeah, no. So I'm assuming this is just their West Coast. There's literally nothing on the can. There's none. This is useless. Once I've emptied it, it's just...
02:30:46
Speaker
garbage. But it is a very, very well made West Coast, nice solid malt based body. It is nice and bitter. Little bit. Actually, I'd say yeah, this is more what the the pineyness and like pine as in pineapple, like that sharp pineapple flavor that I was probably hoping to get through the tangerine. I'm getting that in this. It's quite, quite
02:31:15
Speaker
Like when the sweetness becomes sharp, it's that, that at the top. Um, but there's, there's a lot of citrus going through it. Um, it's, it's very good. It's, if this is a core range, this is great. Um, I, I'm guessing they have listed here that the, it is original art on the can. Uh, the artist's name is Karen Lynch. It's called beach vibes. It's their collage art. So maybe they've just taken their core range and been like, Hey, let's get an artist series going, which I think is very cool too.
02:31:42
Speaker
Um, but yeah, so yeah, either from, uh, from Northgate and Queensland and that's a, that's a solid four and a half. That's a really, really well made West coast IPA. Nice. Yeah.
02:31:55
Speaker
Cool. Going down a tree. Dan? I've got the other AMSAT malt beer that I got from Temple Brewing in Victoria, Grizzly Times. It is an American brown ale, and this is made with the AMSAT dark crystal and chocolate malts, and it's light on the chocolate malt side of things. Actually, it's light on both malt side of things, but
02:32:23
Speaker
both of those malts are beautiful and clean and fresh. Like there's that real subtle dark fruit characteristic. There's that real soft chocolate character. So when we were at the malt tasting, we tried the actual malts themselves and somebody had the dark crystal and said they were like those little
02:32:46
Speaker
brown baby lollies that used to get. They were that kind of sweet. They got renamed because they were too racist. They did. They did. I don't know what they got renamed to though. That's why.
02:32:59
Speaker
I'll look it up in incognito mode. That's why I can't name them. Yes. So there's little, there's little brown jelly babies called cheekies, which isn't far from the original. Yeah. That's that's what they.
02:33:17
Speaker
That's what they described the malt as, and it was a really good description of it because it had that slight sweetness to it, but that light chocolatey character to it as well. And that's coming through in this product as well as that dark fruit, a light dark fruit character.
02:33:33
Speaker
And it's got a fucking good level of bitterness to it for an American brown. It's like a nice strong but not overpowering bitterness. It's not overly sweet or anything like that. It's just got the right amount of residual sugar. It's just completely balanced across all the ball. There's no hop character there to overpower it. Just that bitterness works with that malt character. It's really phenomenal product as well. So yeah.
02:33:59
Speaker
I'm Pete's just looked up something inappropriate as well. Cause he just, actually it's, it's not, it was, I'm waiting for you to finish out respect. Cause I didn't want to interrupt your flow. Well, that's something new. You know what, you know, I'm giving that a five as well. Yeah. Wow. Wow. Because I think, I think both of those beers are phenomenal beers and I would be more than happy to drop a hundred bucks on the case of any one of those.
02:34:29
Speaker
and just sit there and drink that whenever I wanted a good beer. And they just, they're bold flavors, but not palate destroying.
02:34:40
Speaker
So they are good starters and in between beers and finishing beers, whichever way you want to put it. But to have something that's high hop or high bitterness or something else in or sour or whatever, this would completely reset, reset you to a happy place. And then you can move on from there. I got to say like, astounded because I, and this is going to be mean, but I'm going to say it. I can't remember the last time I had a good beer from Temple.
02:35:09
Speaker
Yeah, okay. I'm not sure if I've ever had one. I'm sure I have. But yeah, they they were. We haven't had them on the podcast often. We've had no, they used to be more prevalent in in Sydney, being Melbourne, they used to have more of a representation a few years ago, and they dropped off. But yeah,
02:35:28
Speaker
If, if temple want to come at me and we want to have a battle royale, I'll destroy you. Um, but yeah, let's fight. So, so what we've started a fight with temple and dangerous sales, this, uh, this round, this round last episode, destruction, Adobe with us in the middle, but sure. Moving on from Tom's dream. So I'm having a sailor's grave. God saved the sponge. What was that one? I didn't see that one.
02:35:58
Speaker
Yeah. Does Dan need to wee? Yeah, I do. I was going and then you intrigued me with the beer you had. So this is an Imperial strawberry cream sour and it's, yeah, but it's fucking spectacular. God damn it. I've got their apple pie one in the fridge and I didn't have it today and I might have it after this.
02:36:22
Speaker
Yeah, and I know like and because I know that one of Dan's favorite beers is the cake hole in terms of sweet beers. Yeah. Because he's not a big sweet beer drinker, but I know how much he loves cake hole. And that was the Black Forest Sour? Moondog. No, Moondog, Black Forest Stout. Stout. Yes. This is kind of right up his alley because whilst this is a sour, not a stout, it's
02:36:48
Speaker
It's decadent in the right kinds of ways. So you get a shitload of strawberry, which you would expect out of an imperial strawberry cream. But I've got to say that there's enough vanilla balancing against it that, and then you kind of combine the vanilla flavors with the creamy mouthfeel and you get sponge. Does, um, like Sailor's Grave, Kings of the Weird Beer, um, does it say where they got like,
02:37:17
Speaker
The strawberries from, is it like a local farm or anything? I have no idea. I'm looking it up, but I just thought I'd ask, see if it was on the...
02:37:28
Speaker
No, there's no blurbage on the can. No blurbage. God save the sponge. Imperial strawberry cream sour. Lie back and think of England. It's literally all it says on the back. Other than the pregnancy warning and I'm pretty certain I'm not pregnant. Thank God for that. No, so Dan, given how much I know you love cake hole, this is right up your alley. It's a different style of beer. Obviously it's not a stout, but it's a sour that's not
02:37:57
Speaker
It's acidic rather than sour. And I know they're words on the same kind of spectrum, but there is a difference to them. The vanilla, if you add the vanilla flavors against the creamy mouthfeel, you end up with sponge cake, which is exactly where it's marketed. And then strawberry prevails through the whole thing. Oh, this is their seventh birthday beer.
02:38:21
Speaker
Yes, it is. Yep. This regal desserts tower is velvet in a glass full of luscious strawberries and creamy vanilla. Roll out the red carpet, polish your finest glassware, lie back and think of England. No, it's excellent.
Game Impressions and Reviews
02:38:35
Speaker
I'm going to give that a 475. Lovely. Yes. Smashing beer.
02:38:43
Speaker
Pip-pip and all that, eh? Tom, are you winning, son? This just in. The jerrys have crossed the river in their whirlybirds. Um, yes. I am winning. I was winning, and then I... Stopped winning. ...started to punish myself.
02:38:59
Speaker
I split through Spider-Man 2 and that was the last time I spoke about what I was playing. It was Spider-Man 2. I had a great time. The story was great. It finished strong. I loved those games, so it was just nice to be back in that world. They did a really good job of cementing both playing as Peter and Miles in the same game. I think they balanced it really well and each had their benefits of playing as that.
02:39:27
Speaker
The Venom storyline was kind of a rehash of a mismatch of a bunch of Venom storylines, but it worked. It worked really well for the universe they've created there. And there were limited Mary Jane missions, which was great.
02:39:45
Speaker
That is the measurement of success in the Spider-Man game. I'm sorry while I crawl across this art gallery. There was one or two Mary Jane missions, but they've decided to give her a gun, a taser, basically a taser. Something more to do. Can she use it on herself and skip the mission? Unfortunately not, I tried. I did turn the gun on myself.
02:40:12
Speaker
Yes, no, then I jumped into Doom Eternal. Fantastic. Loved it. Breeze through it. Breeze, probably not the best term to use. I rip and tore through it. I had such a fantastic visceral, ultimate, like,
02:40:28
Speaker
hyper violent time with it. And I'm still a day to day normal human. So you know, that's as much as well. Yeah, everything's relative. I did say to I think I messaged I'm not sure if you both or just message Dan, but I am. It was just one. I had one instance where Emma came home and I've
02:40:48
Speaker
She's not good with the really visceral games that I play sometimes. And so she, she came home from the gym, sat down on the couch, and I was in the middle of like a very tense like moment. It was late in the game and didn't have my headphones on. So there's obviously like thrash metal playing. There is like techno thrash metal, whatever you want to call it. Um, I'm ripping people's heads off, chainsawing through guys.
02:41:13
Speaker
It's a sensory overload in about eight seconds. In the first room in 2016, you had so much more ammo to play with, but in this one, they really push you towards using the chainsaw to get ammo to the point where your chainsaw somehow mysteriously regenerates fuel.
02:41:30
Speaker
um, demons, whatever, don't care. So like, it's great for someone like me or Dan or yourself. It's just like, but I was doing this and literally like finish the fight and it's, it's quite tense, like music behind it. And the music does reinforce the heartbeat. And Emma just turns with this face of like, what the fuck? And I was like, yeah. And she's like, why are you so calm? And I was like, it's actually quite soothing for me. Yeah.
02:41:59
Speaker
And then she goes, that's why we've all got seats in hell. Well, I think at that point, she's like really rethinking this whole marriage thing. Pretty short. It was good. It was fun. It was really like Doom Eternal really leans more into the fantasy nature of the Doom series. Doom 2016 was
02:42:21
Speaker
Like it was, it was sci-fi ish, but it was, it was, it was grounded, like side of the fact, you know, it was grounded. It was just more about the, the, the visceral, the visceral, violent nature of the game. Whereas this is like kind of leading into this so much law. I did the anti-sui playthrough. I picked up every single piece of law and read it and read it and read it and actually really enjoyed it. I thought it was fascinating. Like I'd, I'd love to have a little, which is what got Dan through it.
02:42:47
Speaker
This is a Doom lore. Well, his was halfway through. I was straight from the start. And then I've just got the multiplayer to finish. The multiplayer is a massive disappointment compared to 2016. I said to Dan, so they changed the multiplayer from just straight deathmatch, which is what Doom and Quake are obviously built on. Mighty software. This is now it's that Hunter style of game that multiplayer gameplay where you've got two on one.
02:43:13
Speaker
So you either play as the Slayer or you play as a demon, but the demon can then summon subdemons. So you play as a high demon, you can summon subdemons. Yeah, that's right. You talked us through because of the trophy. Yeah. And it's just it's as the as the Slayer playing it, unless you're one of the most skilled people playing as the Slayer, you there's no winning. There's no it's games over in 30 seconds. It's not fun. It's it's not good. Like you need to find a group to like boost it.
02:43:40
Speaker
But the story itself was cool. I'll definitely probably download the DLCs and play through them. I think they're great. I'll play through horde mode. That sounds really cool as well. But while I was waiting, I talked to some guys online and we talked about playing multiplayer. I think it's fizzled out, so we'll pick up a time to do it. I went back to Dragon Age Inquisition, which is my
02:44:00
Speaker
It's my Ahab, it's my White Whale, it's my, yeah, it's my Moby Dick. I've never been able to finish this nightmare play through. I'm not very good at those really tactical RPG games. I always picked the wrong class. After I started my nightmare play through, I was like, why am I dying so often? And I looked up like a play through, Pete's dying over there, he's allergic to my bullshit.
02:44:27
Speaker
But i like every every single guy just read play as a mage plays a major road do not play as a warrior so naturally i play as a warrior. I'm giving myself the hardest version of the nightmare play through and then this is being like. The more i've gone back and played it and especially after years like i enjoyed when it first came out i thought it was like a really nice story was cool as well built well fleshed out.
02:44:52
Speaker
But going back now and playing it and being super frustrated by it, I'm starting to nitpick so many things that are wrong with it and it's just...
02:45:01
Speaker
you can't run and just fuck off. It's a fantasy game. Like let me, I know I'm wearing full armor, but let me run a bit faster than just a trot because when you, when you overpower me in any sort of fight and then send me back to the last like save point, I then have to physically do another five minutes running to get back to where I was to try again, to then fail, to then try again, to then fail. And then.
02:45:28
Speaker
Unfortunately, the only way I'm succeeding this game now, and I will hand on heart say it's basically cheating is because they released a DLC, which is a tieback to Dragon Age two. It's like a store, but they it's, it's got really expensive, high powered weapons in it. But as soon as you can afford one, you buy one and you blitz through it. So now I've got this super powered acts and I can suddenly kill the things that were just demolishing me before. And I'm like.
02:45:56
Speaker
You shouldn't have to rely on that kind of- No, I'd rather go back. And I said to you guys, I'd rather go back and grind through building up my level. But yeah, sure, eventually I'd fight guys that are like six levels below me, but I'd still be grinding away. I'd rather have a 300 hour gameplay where I'm just like, no, I slaved away to get to this powerful level. Now I can kill the big boss.
02:46:19
Speaker
than what I'm currently doing, which is I'm still having to do all that, but I've now got this kind of like uber weapon, which I can destroy things with. It's like, it kind of, it's just, it's so imbalanced. And then the more like, and then talking with, with Pete about like the Baldur's gate, like the multiple endings, I had to replay a certain mission the other day.
02:46:43
Speaker
It took me 10 minutes because I have this overpowered weapon now so I can just blitz through it. But I deliberately went and chose different like conversation paths at the end when you're talking with the character that you're playing through the mission with. Exactly the same outcome. Didn't matter. If I was a dick, if I was joking or if I was compassionate, didn't matter. I was like, cool. So anyway, I will finish it. I will defeat it. And then I've never done this before, but I think I will snap that disc in half.
02:47:15
Speaker
I knew you were going to say that somehow. I could feel the energy leading into that. 2014 I started that game and I have gone on and off on it over the last decade. Like I played through it originally, got the end of the story and I played it through on normal mode and like took me forever to do it, but I did it. And now I'm playing through it and I'm just like,
02:47:36
Speaker
Yeah, that, that's, uh, that's, that's getting the hammer taken to it or snap or yeah, or melted down, whatever. I'll find maybe multiple ways to slag it. Yeah. Anyway, definitely. Danny, are you winning son? Not for me.
02:47:52
Speaker
Yeah. Convincing. Convincing. Very convincing. Yeah. Yeah. I'm winning. So if everybody likes and subscribes, I'm winning. Who wrote that? It's about as clunky as mine. It's worse every time.
02:48:16
Speaker
You could have woven that in however you like, Dan. It was just a reminder. It was written in big gold letters on our notes, so it was coming out first. Because I did it before and you ignored it last episode. Oh, it's probably because by this stage, I'm usually far too gone to even bother having the notes open to read them. God, I didn't even read my own notes when I came to writing all that shit about Return to Moria.
02:48:40
Speaker
I don't know how I'm going to read your notes, but anyway, yes. Uh, so outside of return to the more return to Moria shadow of war, my two, my two solo play through games at the moment, uh, the rings kick. Yeah. My Lord of the rings. Kick my, my Friday night crew. We just finished.
02:48:55
Speaker
about a three month play through of a seven dollar game called Seven Days to Die, which is a zombie building survival game built by, I think it's built by one person, I don't know, but it's like every seventh day there's like hordes of, it's a blood moon basically and you get a massive horde, so you gotta hunker down somewhere and you reinforce the building through all the traps and everything that you've learned to build over your time and that.
02:49:23
Speaker
So that that's been that's been super fun. That's the that's the Friday nights I play with Kelvin, Sui and Steve. And we all take very different routes on how we play these play these games. So it's it's fun developing. I mean, this rolls off our unique gameplay experiences. I mean, these
02:49:39
Speaker
Pre procedurally generated worlds with four different people that can literally destroy the map to play so the last night we played seven days to die was last Friday and The the hospital that hospital. No, it wasn't like an industrial building that we'd hunkered down on for basically three quarters of the time we'd been playing our Goal was just destroy the building the zombies have to bring down the building so
02:50:09
Speaker
There's a certain server settings that they can put in. So Sui runs the server and he put in zombie damage to blocks was like 10 times the base amount and the nights were longer and all this. So we did that. We ran through two blood moons because it was a blood moon every night. I'm pretty sure it was the second blood moon that the building came down. So that was our goal at the end of that game because there's no story. So there's no real end game to it.
02:50:35
Speaker
So we ran a blood moon, we brought down that building and then we moved on. And then we started to play a game, a squad, a four man squad based game called GTFO.
02:50:49
Speaker
And it's been basically named as like the hardest squad game. Their tagline is work together or die together. I think they should take the work together out of it and just have die together as their tagline for their game. Because it is, we, we, I died four times in the tutorial.
02:51:09
Speaker
Like that's like, it just kicked my, it just kicked my ass like badly. Is that a balancing issue though? Or is it? No, no, no. It's like, it's meant to be like that. It's a, it's a tactical thing. You pick the wrong tactic. You pick the wrong. So it's a first person shooter. You're a prisoner of that needs to go there. There is some story to it. It's kind of like, it's, it's kind of like if, um,
02:51:32
Speaker
If aliens had taken a 20 year step forward and not had 70s, 80s futuristic retro kind of 70s and 80s tech and it was 90s tech in 2020, like
02:51:50
Speaker
2050 kind of thing. If it had taken that timeframe and just moved it forward, all the tech, all the computer-based systems are very DOS-based command systems. The IT guys, Pete, you don't understand too, because you understand that language. Kel sits there at the terminals and just types in commands to ping things and look things up on the map, but they're real-life commands that you have to put into these terminals to find things.
02:52:18
Speaker
But you're also incredibly fragile with a very limited ammo base. And we played the first map four or five times and just got fucking annihilated. Absolutely wiped out at the same point every time. Because you set a security door off and you just get a wave of these. They're called sleepers. They're kind of like the clickers in The Last of Us, but they're all the clickers. There's no in-betweens.
02:52:49
Speaker
And they just, they come at you and you set an alarm off. So they all hoard to where you are. They break down doors. You can only carry one tool, which is a turret or a gun that reinforces the door or a bio scanner or something like that. And two weapons, a main and a primary. And then you pick up bits and pieces away. You pick up ammo packs, but like super limited resources. And then basically you get to your objective and you GTFO.
02:53:17
Speaker
Uh, and we got to, we finally, after a couple of playthroughs, relievingly got to the primary objective and we're like, fuck, how do we play this? Like the game is called GTFO. Do we just get the fuck out or what do we do from here? Do we find the hoard that we know is coming or do we just fucking run? So we stupidly chose the wrong option to stay. Yep.
02:53:42
Speaker
You stayed to fight the Horde. Yeah, we stayed to fight the Horde. You got penis-y kid. We tried to move and then stop and fight and then move and then stop and fight and they just annihilated us because the big guys come, the tanks come and they just wiped us out. And anyway, we got through to the primary objective the next time because we knew where to lay the turrets and how to tactically work the level.
02:54:08
Speaker
Uh, and then, uh, we got the fuck out. But, and that was, that was round one. That was map one, map one. Uh, and so we played map two, uh, and yeah, we got fucked like totally because you just have to throw those tactics out the window and you have to take a little bit of what you learn and go forward. But the maps are completely adaptable. There's a fine line in these types of games between.
02:54:38
Speaker
forcing a group of people to work together and adapt to each other's personalities and overcome through coming together versus just being too fucking difficult and getting frustrating and people are bending the game. And it's a very fine line between those two extremes. And I think this game absolutely sits on the working together side of that line.
02:55:02
Speaker
It's it's that's cool. It's that's really cool. Incredibly difficult. Considering four people that have been playing video games for 25 years. And these types of games too that were just annihilated. We could churn our way through it. But you come down to talking about your hunter drawing the entire the entire dungeon to you in the second map, we were getting to these rooms that were just filled with fog. And we're like, fuck.
02:55:33
Speaker
do we try and take the first couple out and then sneak in and take the next couple, which is the idea of it. What we thought was the idea of it. But I think what we discovered about that second map was just draw each room to you, set up a kill zone, draw each room to you, which is not how the first map ran.
02:55:53
Speaker
So be interesting if we can get through this second map, what the third map then holds and what the future holds. Because there must be, I think on this first level, there's one, two, seven, maybe nine missions within the first tier. And then there's only three lots of tiers to go.
02:56:17
Speaker
I think it's an incredibly well-created game. I love how they've created the maps and the HUDs and it all feels, it's all meant to lead to you being a little bit insane and being quite disturbing. And I think the sound design and the map design and everything is just that little bit frustrating, but well-designed frustrating. It's not poorly designed, it's the sound design and how they've structured it all that makes your brain itch a little bit.
02:56:47
Speaker
Yes, I'm winning. Are you winning, son? Pete? That's cool. After that, I don't even know how to follow that. Probably talk about your game.
02:56:57
Speaker
I am absolutely winning. This is, yeah. But I've had, the problem is we get to the end of the episode and I've had enough time for the alcohol to really soak into my brain. And so I feel like the, are you winning sun segment for me is always just this blah, blah, blah. Yeah, it was really fucking good. Um, but yes, it is. Then write notes.
02:57:18
Speaker
I've got, I've got a million notes, but yeah, I should write them. So, so, so Baldur's Gate three is one of the very first games that I have ever played that I have finished. I've put 160 hours into to finish the game and then immediately gone back to the very beginning of the game. And instead of doing a speed run to clean up trophies,
02:57:44
Speaker
I am playing the game through like I did the first time around, playing it slow. So you're not playing it differently? Or would you? You know what? I went in with the intention of playing it difficult, differently. And it's funny how it's, it's shaken out because so I went, so the first time, first time around I played probably the really traditional, typical,
02:58:11
Speaker
soy boy playthrough. I was a paladin, so I was super good, kind-hearted, protected all of the the innocence. You know, I was a goody-goody two-shoes all the way through. So the exact opposite of you. Yeah, right. Yeah, because I'm chaos incarnate. I had a relationship with the character that's very clearly designed to be the one that you have the relationship with, because even when you're not romancing her, she's still flirty as fuck every time she talks to you.
02:58:41
Speaker
And I played that supporting character in her original in game class, like I didn't fuck with anyone's classes. So you pick up all these side characters from the tutorial mission onwards throughout the course of act one and act two. You pick up all of these extra characters that you can then bring into your party of four.
02:59:04
Speaker
How many characters are there and like, is it like a like a cost of 12 or? Oh, I want to say there's probably 10 to 12. Some I didn't even meet until the start of, sorry, the end of act two.
02:59:19
Speaker
So like two thirds of the way through the game, I'm meeting this character. And they've all, they all come with classes that they're predisposed to their background and their race supports them. They're already in that class. So they could be a ranger or a wizard or a rogue or a sorcerer or whatever.
02:59:37
Speaker
And so my first playthrough, my main character that you get to roll was a paladin, and then I had a cleric, a rogue, and a wizard, which is a very traditional D&D party of four. Because you have a tank, who's your palley, you've got a healer, your cleric, and then you've got two DPSs. Usually you want a melee DPS, who in my case was a rogue because he could pick locks, and then a magical DPS.
03:00:04
Speaker
That way you can pretty much overcome any challenge most D&D, DMs, Dungeon Masters would throw at you. That was my first playthrough. And because I'm a completionist and I like Platinum trophies, I played every side quest I could find. I went out of my way to explore every, to unlock the fog of war on every map. I played every quest, I talked to every NPC.
03:00:29
Speaker
I completed the game as best as I possibly could. And so when it came to the second playthrough, I'm like, well.
03:00:36
Speaker
The one issue I've got with this game is pacing for experience. You hit level cap at the start of the third act, not the end of the third act. And I've got to say that is a problem for pacing in the game. There's nothing to look forward to in terms of character progression other than, you know, half a percent increase in stats because you found a new piece of loot. That's the only reason to do it other than narrative and close the quests. I did it anyway.
03:01:06
Speaker
when to play through the second time. And I thought, you know what, this time I'm going to min max. I'm playing in tactician mode to get the trophy. It's the most difficult level, most difficulty that the game offers, the highest level of difficulty that the game offers. And it does scale up difficulty in lots of interesting ways. You get less turns to do any of the timed quests. So it's a bunch of time quests where, you know, in my first play through, which was on balance, you got six turns to complete the whole map.
03:01:35
Speaker
for this mini quest, now I will only get four. Turns out that the roll to attack, which is something that Daniel understand being a DM. So you roll a d20 and you have to exceed armor class after you add all of these bonuses. Well, there's a synthetic two hit, minus two penalty in tactician mode. So there's a bunch of other ways that they've ramped difficulty beyond the obvious of just extra hit points and lower damage.
03:02:05
Speaker
Um, but I've tried to do all the same question the same way, but this time I thought, fuck it. I'm going to min max. I'm going to multi-class all my characters. I'm going to exploit the shit out of the D and D fifth edition rules as best I can. So I don't have a rogue. I've got a ranger who at sixth level is also a level one rogue. So she can stack her bonuses to range damage with her bonuses to melee damage because a crossbow is technically a melee weapon, just a distance based one.
03:02:34
Speaker
And yet I'm still getting my ass kicked. I'm still trying to do all the same side quests the same way. I'm still a decent character. I'm not quite perfect, but I'm decent. And ironically, my main is still a pally. And yet my second playthrough is very fucking different to the first.
03:02:54
Speaker
I, I met a character that I didn't think you could even meet until act two. I walked past him at the start of act one. I'm like, the fuck are you doing here? I spoke to everyone. Where the fuck were you the first time round? Yeah. And that was in my camp. I've had NPCs in my camp that I didn't even know that you could put in your camp.
03:03:19
Speaker
And I'm, so I'm, I'm halfway through. Yeah. I want to say I'm three quarters of the way through act one, second time around, played it back to back, not bored. Just want to abandon my, my career to just go play this video game. Still, you know, in terms of engagement level, it's one of the very few games I've ever finished a 150, 160 hour play through and just being just as keen to start again as I was the first time around.
03:03:48
Speaker
Yeah. Interesting. You said about the, uh, the finding different characters play through and like, you tried to do it the exact same way. I just remembered that I've, I've actively exact same way. I know what you mean, but yeah. I've actively tried to find the ways where I can use the characters in my party to skip certain boss fights. And I've going on this nightmare play through and I've sacrificed NPCs at the sake of skipping a boss fight. Cause it's too hard.
03:04:14
Speaker
Yep. Like, cause they just made these bullets funded enemies. It's not the clever upscaling that you're talking about. Whereas it is, it is a game. So it makes a lot of sense.
03:04:25
Speaker
So, so this playthrough, I'm also trying to pick up a bunch of trophies that are challenges that would be like a cakewalk if I did this on the easiest difficulty. Ah, good. Like there's ones where, like there's a, there's a boss you have to fight where he's only, he's only vulnerable when he's exposed to lava and then when he's exposed to, and then you, I'm trying to avoid spoilers because I know you've only played through, I think act one.
03:04:53
Speaker
Did you? I've played through to the end of the play testing, whatever. I'm not even sure that was. Okay. Did you fire? Did you, did you have to, did you get to the adamantine forge?
03:05:13
Speaker
I don't think so. It's a very specific question. OK, so so there's a mini boss that is extremely difficult to beat and I really struggled with him. There's an environmental mechanic baked into that level design and you are supposed to defeat him using the environmental mechanics and it's still difficult.
03:05:37
Speaker
Right. So I'm trying to be as cryptic as I can while still having a conversation. I kind of understand what you're talking about. I think I've pieced two and two together. Yeah. There is a fight. Sorry. There's a trophy where you're not allowed to use the environment at all. Yeah. And I'm like, that's good challenge trophy. That's yeah. That's
03:05:55
Speaker
Even on balanced, I'm gonna like, I really struggled to see how I would have defeated him the first time around. And the second time around, I'm now playing as, as tactician mode. And I'm actually anxious because I know I'm getting to that point in the game. And I'm like, what other quests and what other parts of the map haven't I explored that I can kind of change the order of operations here so that I can be a higher level when I finally get to him. Um, and that's the other thing I'm finding is.
03:06:22
Speaker
Like if I look at one of the side quests that didn't end up being at all important and I really stressed about the first time around, if I Google now, how many ways can you play through this quest? There's four entry points.
03:06:38
Speaker
There's two physical entry points into the start point. So you can walk down this path, you can go around the back accidentally and just kind of wander in. There's literally four entry points in the start of the quest. And there ends up being 16 different ways that you can end the quest. And each one of those 16 ways feeds into the entry point of other quests around it. And there's like 10 quests around it. And this is where you get to the 17,000 possible endings.
03:07:06
Speaker
Is every single quest interacts with every single other quest around it in this ever growing circle and it's just, I don't even know how you would map it as a player, let alone as the fucking development team.
03:07:22
Speaker
I mean, it's just that's somebody sitting there that's experienced with the D&D game design and just gone, this is how this shit plays out. But it's not even game mechanics, it's quests. Yeah. If you killed this person because you convinced this other person to help you, that's a different outcome than if you just killed them because you're an asshole. Yeah.
03:07:45
Speaker
And that's a different that's different again than if you killed them after failing a persuasion check and them attacking you, and yet each of those three circumstances still ended up with him dead, but the next quest giver will treat you totally differently. And then times that by the, I don't know, I reckon there's maybe 250 quests in the game.
03:08:07
Speaker
And all of them interact with each other. It's a lot of red string that someone's tying on. That's taking a real time DM dealing with what the players are doing in real time and mentally calculating where their story's going and having the next village or the next quest giver or the return quest giver.
03:08:32
Speaker
react differently to what the fuck you did. That's a human preempting the bullshit that the players are going to do. The difference being that it's the one thing the MCU is missing right now.
03:08:48
Speaker
They just need a good DM is what they need. The other thing is a DM will change the ending point depending on the narrative. Whereas obviously in a video game, they've got to predict every possible narrative impact to land in roughly the same place. Because overall, you're still going in the same spot. You're still going to fight the same bosses.
03:09:07
Speaker
So you can imagine that in their development, they were just playing hours and hours of this campaign, just doing every single- You can easily understand- Bring in different D&D groups to play this campaign. Potentially, yeah. But you can understand why it also spent two years in Early Access. Oh, absolutely, yeah. Because it was two years of players going, I wonder what happens if I kill this fucker before I even start talking to him, before the quest even begins. I wonder what happens. I'm struggling with that at the moment because there are a couple of quests
03:09:37
Speaker
There's save a goblin in three different cities. And then because there's goblins are obviously bad guys and then there's save the tiefling refugees which again needs you to save every single refugee and then this week little refugees in three different cities across three acts. And you like.
03:09:58
Speaker
And you read online and it's like, oh, I killed the three bosses and then she just, the goblin just randomly died. She just literally, she was standing there one minute and she just killed over and died and I missed out on the trophy. And so it's forcing me to make slightly different decisions in different orders to kind of try and keep everyone alive in certain circumstances. Again, I'm trying to avoid spoilers, but there's just like, obviously a lot of interaction.
03:10:27
Speaker
God, I hope that's full of beer, Tom. Straight moonshine. Hot nigga damn! We're two steppin'. Anyway, that's it for me. I'm like, again, I'm seriously impressed by this game. Look, it's just sounding like more and more bad. It just deserves the game of the year. Like awards.
03:10:53
Speaker
Just on a storytelling perspective, just from a storytelling perspective and the way that it interacts with the game mechanics. I don't know that there's a peer to it. And like I've said to you, it's one of the few games that's up for Game of the Year in the Game Awards that's multi-platform, which should be a bare minimum requirement.
03:11:20
Speaker
Other than Xbox, it's still not released for Xbox because they've still got some bugs apparently. Because as much as fanboys would like you to ignore the fact, the hardware just doesn't keep up on certain, in certain areas. Right. Yeah. Anyway, that's it for me. Definitely. I think it's time. I think it's time to say goodbye.
03:11:48
Speaker
Yeah. Goodbye. Yeah, I don't know. Well, thank you very much. There should be some sort of background like symphonic music starts to play. Bolts and hoes.