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S2 Ep182: Talkcast - November 2021
76 Plays4 years ago
Join Dave and Jake as they talk about a few things that aren't Elden Ring and then a whole lot of things that are Elden Ring in this week's elden thing!
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Thoughts? Comments? Requests for new episodes? Feel free to email them in!
SoapstonePodcast@gmail.com
Like our podcast? Like our podcast! We'll post when new episodes are uploaded!
https://www.facebook.com/SoapstonePodcast/
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Transcript
Introduction & Weekend Vibes
00:00:50
Speaker
How's it going, everyone? Welcome to another episode of Soapstone. My name is Jake, and I'm joined by my co-host, as always, Dave. How's it going tonight, Dave? Um, quick answer is eh. Eh. Yeah. It's that noise with the shoulder shrug. The squeaky, the squeaky eh. Eh. Eh. It's, uh, it's fine enough, but I guess just waiting for the weekend. Am I right, people? Yeah.
00:01:18
Speaker
Yeah, the people who are now potentially coming right off of the weekend into Monday, it could still be true.
Fast Food Adventures
00:01:26
Speaker
Do you think anybody listens to this Sunday night?
00:01:29
Speaker
Jake, you had me out. Do you think anybody listens to this? Oh yeah. Classic joke. And the entire population has been exhausted from this qualifier. I really like the idea of one person who listens are like, you know what? I am ready for the weekend. Yeah. I'm on board with what this guy's saying. I think it's Calvin Harris, actually.
00:01:51
Speaker
Who? Calvin Harris. He's a musical person. He's got a song that's like ready for the weekend. It's like, I'm in my shoes and I'm ready for the weekend. That's a brand new concept that has just started within the last year of appreciating the weekend for not being work-related. What will this newest generation and their hot takes? Or McDonald's and their hotcakes.
00:02:17
Speaker
I raised my eyebrows and inhaled like, but I haven't had those in such a long time. Yeah. I just hear like the food cue and I'm like, Oh, what's up? Oh yeah. This is the start of the episode. I guess we should get to food at some point.
00:02:33
Speaker
I mean, I know you live by the McDonald's real close. Yeah. Have you guys been going? Have you still stopped there for lunch from time to time? We really need groceries. So like we have been getting food recently. Unfortunately, so we've literally had to pull the rip cord on a Taco Bell trip, which is how desperate the situation is. But we were going to turn into
00:03:00
Speaker
Taco Bell down the road not gonna say where but you know the one and It had we went to turn in and it's like a car that was already in line had to wait so I could like enter the actual parking lot and I'm like Hey, I'm not blocking the road so I guess we're all right and then like more cars continued to like pile in behind here and I'm like
00:03:25
Speaker
They're literally going to back out into the road. There were so many people in line at Taco Bell and it was moving so slowly. We abandoned. We were just like, pull off and leave. I think it was like, pull off, parked, walked in, got our food in life. It's so desperate. I realized that fast food in general, people have seen the help wanted signs all over the place.
00:03:50
Speaker
Like that, that franchise in particular, people are like, Taco Bell sounds pretty good. And like the employees are just like, God, no. Yeah. It's, uh, there are other fast food place seems to be like how Chick-fil-A is every time I've driven by one. I guess they're fucking delicious. Cause like the cars wrap all the way around from the start of the drive through to again, the start of the drive through. Yeah.
00:04:18
Speaker
Yeah. Some like, they literally just don't have the space for it anymore. Um, which is insane. Like compared to how things used to be, but those were the, the four times. And these are the current times where you
Cooking vs. Convenience
00:04:33
Speaker
really can't do that. So we have been ordering food, you know, door dash a bit more, um, making somebody else deal with the problem, I guess is really what that is. But I don't know. We tip. So.
00:04:45
Speaker
Oh, you do? I don't. It puts it in by default. I'm like, how about they get nothing? I actually make them pay me. Right. That's the joke I was going for. And then you rob them when you deliver your food with your delivery address and name and credit card information and all of that. I don't say leave at the door. I say, let me see the whites of their eyes.
00:05:08
Speaker
Mm hmm. This is the home alone. Keep the change. You filthy animal voice line on the other side of the door. Yeah. Yeah, I get that, though. There's times where I really do enjoy cooking, as you've heard me ramble about over the years. But there's so many times where I don't want to do anything. Yeah. Namely, like if I don't have company.
00:05:32
Speaker
I'll eat a cold can of cat food. I don't give a shit. There's sometimes it's just eating to live. And for me to want to live to eat, I need company to enjoy it with and be like, oh, I'll make the extra effort. Or I need to be in a really good mindset and be like, oh, it's Friday. I have some extra time. I'll go grocery shopping and plan a meal and do a whole two hour ordeal. Yeah.
00:05:56
Speaker
I mean, I don't really cook, so I can only empathize in spirit. But you did really sell the can of cat food thing. You looked like just a little bit scraggly, like maybe like there's some humidity. It's like the temperature's a little bit off. The way I have the headset and how my hair is like a little bit longer up top, it just looked like he did do that, huh? I would believe it, yeah. No, he's he fought a cat, a can of cat food. His feast was not actually that fancy. This guy's roughing it.
00:06:26
Speaker
Yeah, but I don't know, that's the way it be. We are planning on going out to get some food, probably local stuff first to get us through the week if we need to and then some actual grocery shopping, but it's honestly like two or three weeks overdue. I'm like looking at the fridge and it's like, it's so clean. Also, there's nothing here.
00:06:48
Speaker
What are you in the mood for eggs or the last bit of orange juice? I guess I guess we'll order something. Yeah, we have neither of those. It's it's all things that would go on to something else, like sauces or like condiments in general, things like that. It's very little, isn't it? Or like food that we should probably throw out at this point, because it's inedible. That's the other thing. Poison. I can also go on to stuff for sure, but I'd not recommend it. Yeah.
00:07:18
Speaker
But what's been funny is, like, even though we haven't had food, we've been getting there's like two Mexican places nearby. And I really love both of them. Crunchero. Now, that's the name of a burrito. What's the place? Pancero. It just went to flashbacks of a certain ready go. But Pancero and they have like these ridiculous I might have already talked about their burritos on here.
00:07:46
Speaker
Um, but every time I go in person, the burrito size is like insane. Um, there's literally been multiple times that they have to double tortilla the burrito because it like starts to break. Um, Oh God, that would, that would kill me. It's so much. It's so much, but they're delicious. I was even joking with Jenny because the other ones you're going to mention, Limon. Yeah. Oh, the lemon and the lemon.
00:08:16
Speaker
I figured, like, hey, you got a burrito, didn't you? She's like, yeah. I'm like, did you cut it in half and then half again? Because they're huge. I've eaten the whole one, but then I've questioned everything. And it's not fun. But half is really good. And you have some chips and guac. Do you also like the burritos from there? Or you get something else? I do. I think last time I got enchiladas, like carnitas enchiladas.
00:08:41
Speaker
I think you're just saying Spanish words, Jake. Yeah. I honestly, the best, the next phase, the next level up in life, the requirement I have to meet is like make Mexican food and like have it on hand, just have like rice, beans, meat, figure out how you make Mexican food and then just go with it. Cheese, obviously, like probably ridiculous amounts of cheese also included, sour cream or whatever, but
00:09:09
Speaker
I mean, some of the recipes are not crazy to make homemade. Mm hmm. I would start with tacos. Everybody's favorite. Just like the brown ground beef add taco seasoning and put in a. I forget it was like the brain of like generic as tortillas. Right. I'm not sure. I haven't done the research for this life advancement yet, so I can't say, but I could make quesadillas. That was pretty easy. There you go. It's just like cheese.
00:09:39
Speaker
And again, you don't know. Weirdly, there's a lot of trouble with grilled cheese.
00:09:51
Speaker
We have a we have a heuristic for do we need to go grocery shopping? And it is we just ordered food to us or we went out to a fast food place. And the reason that we did was because we didn't have anything else to eat. And we failed the heuristic like six times consecutively. So it's time to resolve. Well, that's a
00:10:21
Speaker
I understand that for you guys, that seems like a very you guys thing. I'm like, oh yeah, I'm grocery shopping yet. But for me, I'm going every three days. Gotcha. Because I'm like.
00:10:34
Speaker
I don't know. I want to have something, but I want to get too much to where it's going to sit. And then I have to prepare something. Like right now, I have like some raw chicken because I only cooked one breast. And now I'm like, oh, I got to use that. I use that sometime. Can't be Saturday. And now I'm like. Yeah, I mean, that's a trick with food that doesn't keep, unfortunately, but. That's life, you know, we probably go shopping once a month.
00:11:04
Speaker
Grocery shopping once a month or so. What? Man, you guys better be going to like BJ's or something. Otherwise you're going to throw out a lot of that food. A lot of it. I mean, not all of it is disposable. I'll get like noodles and things like that.
00:11:20
Speaker
I don't know why, like, obviously like when you said noodles, you meant like pasta, like something in a box or something that's dry. I immediately went to like, why are they wet? Yeah. I just bring a bucket and I just throw some, some noodles in. You got any pre-sog to things? Yeah. It saves time when I'm home. I just heat it up and have the cheese. Sog is a really weird word. It sounds, it sounds weird.
00:11:50
Speaker
Do you prefer SOG or SAG? Hmm. I don't really like either. Um, what would you say that your, uh, alert alertness is right now? Like if, if somebody were to like throw noon choco at you, how, uh, how likely would you be able to be able to catch it? I'd be able to block part of my face and go, what the fuck? Um, I don't think I would catch it. That's fair.
00:12:20
Speaker
I'm very tired now looking down the hallway. I'm very tired. I feel like I just that would be how I go.
Elden Ring Hype
00:12:29
Speaker
Um, somebody throwing then shock that you're not, not hitting you with it. Yes. Yeah. I mean, if they, if they just approach and they're not literally, I guess, I guess if they're using nunchucks, they probably are some sort of martial artist with a good stealth skill. So.
00:12:47
Speaker
My thought was they can throw it at me and I wouldn't have the chance to respond, but they would just sneak up. They're clearly an interest. So you'd wait for the DM to say like roll for initiative. Right. But you just sat down with Diana one. You're like, listen, surprise around speaking. Oh my gosh. Thank God. I was wondering when the second day was coming. I stole it from you and I'm sorry.
00:13:16
Speaker
No, no, I absolutely needed it. I really want to talk about Elden Ring. Sure. It's been low key on the radar and then more high key on the radar. But they recently had a network test where a bunch of personalities in gaming or Dark Souls community specifically had a chance to play through a demo about like eight hours. And then everyone's like making content from it, which is great for me because I didn't get in that or know about it.
00:13:45
Speaker
But I get to see more of the game content and how it's looking. And it's looking good. It's a really generous amount of content. Like I half expected them to really. There is a blocker, so I wasn't sure. Literally, the videos people are putting out about this were like half an hour long and people are like, yeah, yeah, I did like eight run throughs and all this stuff. I'm like, what is going on? But there is like a ladder, I guess, at the end. It's sort of like an act one, just the first section of the open world type situation.
00:14:14
Speaker
Oh yeah, like they do gated at a point. Yeah.
00:14:17
Speaker
It is really funny, it's a ladder that just has a prompt, like an in-game pop-up that's just like, stay tuned for the full game or whatever. It kind of reminds me of like those older like shareware style games where you're like, just arbitrarily at some point, here's the cutoff, send us 10 bucks in the mail and we promise that we'll send you a CD. I mean, they could legitimately do that now and people would fall over to do so.
00:14:44
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, so point in fact, apparently somebody sold on eBay one of these early access codes or the not even early access. This is for clarity a network test code for four hundred and fifty dollars. Literally, this is the first part of the game and you can see the entirety of it on YouTube because people got in four hundred and fifty dollars.
00:15:14
Speaker
Yeah. Uh, some people have a lot more money than me. Uh, and that's, it's crazy. Yeah. But it looks good. It does. So far, this is like my blanket expression that I'm stealing from other YouTubers. It does seem like the culmination of their other games, not blood-borne specifically. Um, but like they have, hmm.
00:15:38
Speaker
I would argue not Sekiro either. I'll let you finish your thought. I'm going to let you finish your thought. Then I'm going to go antagonist. All right. I'm going to go up defensive now. It has some Sekiro elements in that you can stealth a little bit as an option. Whereas before, stealth in Dark Souls was just walking slowly and trying to maybe get a backstab on an unaware NPC.
00:16:02
Speaker
They have so much fucking verticality now because it is an open world, but it's not flat. You can jump now, which is the first time ever in a Dark Souls before you had to do like a rigmarole command of some things. And yeah, it was it wasn't terrible in three.
00:16:20
Speaker
It was definitely better in three for like how you triggered it. Because it was just run and then middle, like just press L3, right? Like the joystick button. But if I remember correctly, older Dark Souls had some weird jank. It was like run with B and then like tap B. That's what it was. Yeah. Or something. It was really bad. It was a shitty input. That was right. But like they even in both videos, like they showed people like jumping to the edge of
00:16:49
Speaker
a castle, and then walking around some of the windows. Like, oh, Shed's an area you can actually get to. Maybe it's a plan similar to how it was in Dark Souls 1. Forgetting the name of the shitty area with the Giant Knight, the Silver Knights. Oh, Anor Londo. Anor Londo.
00:17:08
Speaker
Like, the amount of places you can go to now, it just, it seems wild. Yeah. It's really Sekiro-like verticality. Yeah. No grappling hook, unfortunately. But you can get a horse that can double jump. Yeah, a first for gaming, I think. We've arrived.
00:17:34
Speaker
They really were just like, how much do we owe our community the ability to jump? And then they all piled on. People were just like, no, let's spend six months in development just on jumping. Okay. The horse can double jump. You know, we need jump pads too, guys. Right. The one thing I haven't seen, I don't know if it's confirmed or not. If you can do a Yoshi dismount, you double jump and then abandon your horse for a third jump.
00:18:02
Speaker
I do not know about that. I've at least not seen it in the video, but you can kind of direct where you go off the jump pad. Yeah. So you're not like forced like, Oh, is an automatic going to reposition you from here to there? It's literally a, we're going to launch you up and you have some degree of drift to go kind of where we were pointing you or back or somewhere else. Yeah.
00:18:25
Speaker
And apparently, I didn't realize this, but are you familiar with Zuly the Witch? Yeah, her Dark Souls videos. She has Soulsborne content and stuff.
Elden Ring Mechanics & Comparisons
00:18:39
Speaker
She covered the fact that this is the first time
00:18:43
Speaker
that FromSoft seems to have actually pulled off having a mount and someone mounted on the mount. They aren't the same in PC, actually. Apparently even in Sekiro, the mounted boss.
00:18:57
Speaker
was just a single NPC, all of it was tied together and then just... Oh, they weren't separate rigging. Yeah, it was all just one set of rigging, but they pulled it off for Elden Ring. And it's not like the first... Once you think about that, you realize how much they've sort of avoided having mounted
00:19:20
Speaker
combatants and Dark Souls with like all of these bosses and even the, um, uh, the Lothric princes were like the part where the younger Prince is on the, um, older princes back. That's one character with a hidden NPC. That's like all it is. Um, so it's really hilarious. Like what they pulled off. Yeah. By the way, that's just like a cool fight, but in general, like
00:19:51
Speaker
So far, everything I've seen, to be fair, like I've been starved to Dark Souls content for a bit, but. It all looks so good. Yeah. Like even though when they just showed like, here's an enemy, like, Oh, cool. It's like the most basic enemy. They show the giants and I call my guys really. Ah, and then they show like some of the magic you can do and it doesn't look like shit. Yeah. And it seems viable.
00:20:21
Speaker
Yeah, I think like magic is probably one of the biggest jumps for me. But I did want to mention like how this fits into like the rest of their games. It almost I didn't expect Elden Ring to be as much Dark Souls as it is because of the explicit call out like, hey,
00:20:38
Speaker
Dark Souls is done. We're done with that and then they really Sekiro which although it has some similar DNA is actually a really different game. Yeah, it's much more different. It's more divergent from Dark Souls than Bloodborne was. Absolutely, like it's single-player. That's already massive.
00:20:58
Speaker
There are no summons. It's all based off sword sense. You don't have all of that. It's just focusing on sword gameplay and stealth and all of these things that really didn't exist in the previous games. And it's kind of interesting
00:21:14
Speaker
that coming off of that, like, yes, Elden Ring incorporates elements from Sekiro, but it is also a massive return to the Dark Souls formula, literally like, soul-like equivalents, bonfires, also Sekiro had that, but like, this exact same backstab animation, right, is like Dark Souls 3, it's, I wonder if at some point in the development, they were like,
00:21:43
Speaker
aiming for something else and they're like, ah, let's kind of just do another souls. Like, um, and that surprised me because, you know, they said they were done with Dark Souls and this could be a Dark Souls game from outlooks. Uh, I take some egress with your statement and this is like, I got to look up egress because I thought egress was like leaving.
00:22:13
Speaker
Maybe I'm thinking of a different word. Egress is the action of going out or leaving the place. So it's actually the way you said it is hilarious. That's just the best thing you leave. But you mean like a fence or what do you mean?
00:22:29
Speaker
I'll think of the other E word later. Take exception. I take some issue with your statement, basically. Because like you've mentioned that on multiple occasions that FromSoft is obviously like publicly said, hey, we're not doing Dark Souls anymore. So I just think they mean like that as this series.
00:22:47
Speaker
I still feel like they're going to have a lot of those elements in their games because it's worked. Yeah. It's like Kingsfield, right? Like even before people played their games, they had this formula they were iterating on.
00:23:01
Speaker
Yeah, and it's working for them. And I do think they're still going to keep playing with it. But I think like the major thing here is, hey, if we want to do an open world game, but kind of keep some of those core elements that we like doing and our player base likes, how do we incorporate that? Yeah. So.
00:23:20
Speaker
They did it by like, here's an open world section and you have smaller dungeons and you have bigger areas with like bosses. You'll have some scattered content in an open world game that just rewards you for exploration. It's still keeping all of those open world things there, but adding a
00:23:38
Speaker
I guess a solsy twist, like what's familiar there? Yeah, and I don't mean to like reduce the effort required. Like if you were to pick a modifier, the two like most expensive modifiers to add to the description of a game to make it like worse or less likely to ever launch, it's like MMO and open world. Like those are literally the ones. That's how you you can absolutely ruin a game.
00:24:08
Speaker
And this doesn't look bad at all. All of the early impressions, admittedly a lot of them are coming from people who are Soulsborne content creators and their entire livelihoods depend on this game doing well. So, grain of salt.
00:24:23
Speaker
but it does look really good. And I'm not disappointed that it's a return to the Souls-like formula, even more so, I think, than Sekiro. It's like Sekiro was a branch out. If this was like a tree, Sekiro was departing to become something else, and then it wrapped back in, and Elden Ring joined the trunk of all of the concepts of play. We're at the top of the Caduceus, which is a word I never get to say.
00:24:53
Speaker
Yeah, that was the guy who was saying a bunch of smart things in China.
00:24:59
Speaker
I'm going to leave it there is actually a good joke. But yeah, it does look it does look quite good. And the other aspect can't be overstated is Sekiro had no multiplayer component and Dark Souls has a community, I should hope, like for our sake, I should hope. And the return of multiplayer is big.
00:25:27
Speaker
Yeah, I definitely want to touch more on that a sec, but I will forget if I don't mention it now. Did you see that power stancing is back? I did. Yeah. Which is it's funny. It's like. I don't know, they had some fake power stancing in
00:25:47
Speaker
Dark Souls 3, I think the last DLC, the double twin great swords. Oh, yeah. But that was just a single item, really. Not actually equipping two different items. It was one weapon that you happen to have two weapons for. But yeah, they're taking stuff out of Dark Souls 2. So Vindication in Dark Souls 2 was not completely a throwaway. But it probably will just be power stance that they take from Dark Souls 2.
00:26:19
Speaker
But also, like, to go back on the magic a little bit. Oh, yeah, we took over it way too fast. Demon Souls, obviously, like from a graphical fidelity standpoint, blew everything out of the water for everything they've done previously, because it was on new hardware and it looks really good. This is the remakes. We'll get to it. This is the remake. This isn't PS3. Oh, not PS3. Gotcha. Gotcha.
00:26:47
Speaker
I forgot that's when the original came out. That's so long. Yeah. But like the spells that they were showing, even just like the trailer, but much more so with like the network test, like it looks impactful. It's not like, here's my soul dart. Here's my soul arrow. Here's my soul bigger arrow and beam.
00:27:08
Speaker
It's like, hey, I'm calling in all of the gods to help me out with this magical ability. And it's like raining down shit and there's particle effects and it looks like it. It's going to fuck some shit up. Yeah. There's a diversity to.
00:27:24
Speaker
Like some of those more dramatic ones look kind of channeled and like Dark Souls has channeled spells. Usually I think pyromancy, it's more associated with like flames erupting all around you or something, but none of them. It's rare that there's this massive area. I mean, I guess it's because it's an open world game, right? Like so you can have massive spell area effects and have it actually look good and not be miserable.
00:27:49
Speaker
It's also going to be like a way to help deal with like, Oh, you run into a mob of people. There's like 13 enemies in a camp and you didn't use stealth or you fucked up stealth. How do I fight 13 people at once? Do I run in kite or do I have some more AOE viable magic? Right. Like what I was seeing a lot was like, they kind of have like these claws they drag along the ground. And then as the animation finishes, like you see some like spectral claws or like huge kind of go along the ground. It looks really cool.
00:28:17
Speaker
it's really obvious that they were operating with some pretty explicit constraints for the spells in previous games. Like, before you even mentioned, like, soul dart, like, dart in soul arrow, homing soul arrow, great soul arrow, all of that stuff, I was just like, yeah, it is, that's all I have associated with classic sorcery. There are some cool things that they had in the past, you know, like,
00:28:42
Speaker
great sword swing, temporary great sword or life on size. But those are exceptions. And even then, they aren't the fanciest. They could be a little bit better. It's and it's kind of their nature. Yeah. In comparison.
00:28:58
Speaker
they really ramped it up. The fact you can cast while on horseback is huge. But I didn't realize literally until I was watching this where I was like, and they showed some magic earlier, but people will do things if they look cool.
00:29:15
Speaker
Like I bet a lot of people literally never did a magic playthrough in Dark Souls because you just stand there, wave your stick in the air, and then a little blue sprite runs over and hits somebody. Oh, it's like the first Harry Potter game type magic. It's really, really, really. It's been the armors for me.
00:29:33
Speaker
It's just intrinsically less intense than cutting somebody up with a Uchikatana or parrying or anything else cool. Also like the weapons have really cool weapon arts now too. Yeah. Like there was one with, I think the weapon arts are not specifically always tied to the weapon specifically. It might be the type of weapon. So it's like bladed or a pole arm or something else. Yeah, which is smart.
00:29:59
Speaker
Yeah, it's it's nicer to move it around and not feel like I really like this one ability, but I hate how it plays in the damage. Just freedom of player choice. But basically, like they're spinning the blade around really quick around their hand and then like they kind of like drop it in the ground. Yeah. I'm describing it poorly, but it looked badass.
00:30:18
Speaker
Yeah, they kind of spin it like they spin it like Ebola or something like that. Like so rapidly it becomes just a disc, a blade. Yeah. Now, it looks really cool. The graphical impact to combat seems like it's seen a lot of extra fidelity and effort into it, which is good because I mean, for the most part, other than some cool locales and some cool bosses,
00:30:47
Speaker
Dark Souls, for the most part, is pretty muddy, sort of basic fighting arenas. There are pretty parts to the game. Majula, Dark Souls 2, great area. Looks very pretty. Majula on the Legata? Yeah, yeah. That's the one. But as soon as the fight breaks out, a lot of that fidelity is lost most of the time, with few exceptions.
00:31:13
Speaker
Well, I feel like they definitely got better with Sekiro. Oh yeah, Sekiro. Once you go up to the palace. Yes. That's looking pretty nice. As soon as the Japanese game developers go back to Japan, they put a lot of effort into it for some reason. But I actually forget about Sekiro and some of these comparisons because it's so, again, so much of a departure.
00:31:41
Speaker
from my perspective, that it's weird to compare that in the same way. I can compare Elden Ring much more closely to Dark Souls 3, Dark Souls 2. Even Bloodborne than Sekiro.
00:31:53
Speaker
I agree with that. But yeah, Dark Souls 1 and 2 are much more function over form, which is fine. There's never any point in like, this looks so bad. I don't understand what's going on visually, which if your game is ever at a point with that, it sucks. Because you as a player are trying to figure out what's going on, trying to experience the game. Right. But this isn't a Korean MMO, right? Yeah. You're occluded by numbers or text or some other bullshit going on.
00:32:21
Speaker
It's like the same reason that they will highlight enemy projectiles in like Toho games or In Isaac or other things like oh, that's my tell that that's okay visual indicator helpful, right? So sorry to pull the pin out of the multiplayer thing cuz I will forget going back to it So they have invasions again. Yeah. Did you see how they worked? I did. Yeah Okay, so
00:32:47
Speaker
It looks weird. I'm not sure how I feel about it. You can describe it. Okay. So for the listener, by default, if it's just you, you cannot be invaded.
Open World and Invasion Strategies
00:32:59
Speaker
But if you summon someone in to help, then you can be invaded. If I'm saying that correctly. Yeah.
00:33:06
Speaker
So you can never be like just going through a single player and enjoying your time and then get ganked. Whereas previous games, you would be embered or you'd have humanity and you'd have more health, but then someone would come in and gank your shit. So you don't have to worry about that if you just want to experience the game single player, which is, I think, a cool change.
00:33:30
Speaker
I think Dark Souls is harder for an invader too because now it's always at least one other person. Right. I think Dark Souls 2 is the only one that didn't have a condition. There was an internal cooldown, I think, but didn't have like a character. You have humanity or your invert type condition that
00:33:50
Speaker
was the prerequisite to being ganked. You could just be invaded repeatedly in Dark Souls 2, although there was a cooldown, I believe, internally. It's weird to take it completely up. Dark Souls 2, really well represented and the community loves it.
00:34:08
Speaker
It's really weird to take that out of the solo gameplay. Basically, if you take the solo player pool out of the antagonistic PvP. You're not going to have that many people in the pool like there's literally.
00:34:24
Speaker
Uh, like a situation and Dark Souls one is if you died in an area, there was no reason to necessarily use humanity. If, uh, you felt like you could get through with half health, cause it was half health and Dark Souls one. Right. That drastic was definitely a good bump.
00:34:43
Speaker
Yeah, maybe it wasn't it wasn't that bad. There was a ring that reduced it. Anyways, I digress. But a lot of people like ran through hollow because it was just more effort to get humanity or you would run out until you literally get to the boss. Then you pop humanity. So many phantoms or whatever beat the boss. And Jake, you watch me play. What's going on? This is a commonplace output. Like the reason I explain that is because like Elden Ring is
00:35:11
Speaker
that essentially, right? Like, unless you're explicitly bringing in players to kind of like help you out, you're not even eligible to be invaded. That's weird. I mean, a bit. I've always been over the camp of I don't I don't want people fucking on my shit. Yeah, it is fun to fuck up other people's shit, though. But it is nice that's now an opt in.
00:35:39
Speaker
Because I'm definitely going to want to play certain parts co-op. Or maybe we'll just hop on play together and just explore. And maybe we will be invaded and we'll get to fight people. It'll be fun to have that engagement and plan.
00:35:53
Speaker
Because the other thing is with this, because it's open world, there's not a, oh, they're going to be posted up at this one spot. It's, they could be anywhere. Um, maybe they'll be hiding behind something. Maybe they'll jump out over something because they can now. Yeah. Any creator has a tool to help them with that, right?
00:36:12
Speaker
Yeah, they have items now when you invade. I think it's 10 uses. It's basically if you're too far away from an enemy, you can use it to kind of reappear closer to them. So you don't have to like just chase after them because I think horses are disabled during that. So you're not. If you're in co-op even before the invasion happens, horses are disabled is what I heard. Yep.
00:36:35
Speaker
But the other thing I've heard about that is if let's say you're fighting an invader They can use it mid fight. Yeah, essentially get out really yeah reset their position Yeah, I don't know how I feel about that last one. That seems like it could be the most obnoxious thing like I Don't know. It's not a great on paper. This setup doesn't seem great for me I don't know how many invaders you can have at once like so like a fight club like situation and
00:37:04
Speaker
I think you have to opt into that a little more, but it's probably consumable.
00:37:09
Speaker
Yeah, but like in Dark Souls 3, if the fight's going poorly, either party could potentially like Estus or heal. I think there was a way to heal as an invader. I mean, you might even get Estus a little bit. You get some Estus. And like Dark Souls 2, it was disabled and Dark Souls 1, I think Estus is disabled for invaders, but there's other consumables. And in Dark Souls 1, people are going to have like a ridiculous amount of humanity.
00:37:36
Speaker
You can farm that stuff in the DLC. I recommend it. Great spot. But when it comes to like resetting, like a hard reset, I'm just not here anymore. That sounds really obnoxious to do 10 times with how quickly this item activates. Like how many times do you really want to beat the same invader?
00:37:59
Speaker
Yeah, I don't want it to be like, Hey, Hey again, Juliana. Are you getting Oreos on aisle three? I'll see you there. Yeah. Yeah. I'd be very frustrated if I got like, Oh, I've nearly fended them off. Oh, they've disappeared again. Yeah. They've healed. They're going to show up again in three minutes when it's inconvenient for me.
00:38:18
Speaker
And you made the joke, but like I feel like I should mention the way Deathloop handles it is Juliana only shows up once per map if she shows up. So like if you get invaded, high tension. But as soon as you beat Juliana, you know that she's not eligible to attack again like during that map and you can go about your business. Having that knowledge is really nice compared to like
00:38:48
Speaker
a really harassing invader. Like we don't know. I guess the balancing aspect of this is they're they're only going to invade if you have multiple people. But then you just kick your friend out. But it's very much like.
00:39:02
Speaker
Let's say you see like a spider on your desk. I'm not talking about the experience or anything. Um, and you go to hit it and then it runs under your desk. Okay. You've already lost that, but you don't know when it's going to appear again. How much time do you spend looking for it? Yeah. Or do you just wait for it to rear its head again?
00:39:23
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know. It seems like it'll be tough. There's probably people who spend time PvP and we'll probably find their spots just like death loop, just like older dark souls, but older dark souls had like a few areas per map or invaders would actually appear. Hmm.
00:39:41
Speaker
And that was it. So I don't know. I guess we'll have to see. I suspect out of everything I've seen, this is what I expect to change most before the game actually goes live. Because it doesn't seem like this reposition consumable item is meant to really get you out of combat. It's more like.
00:40:03
Speaker
They're running away from me and we're the same speed. I need to like come upon them when they're unawares. They don't know I'm right behind them versus things just very slowly going across the screen at the exact same pace.
00:40:19
Speaker
I had a thought and I finally nailed it down. The thing this reminds me of is left for dead versus. You could run away from the survivors. If you got far enough behind, there was a button to press that would put you back in spawn mode. You'd be like a really quick ghost. You could. You didn't interact with anything, but you could reposition, climb a wall and they'd be like, I want to respawn here. Exactly. Yeah.
00:40:41
Speaker
And it was only eligible if if you were actually already spawned in, it was only eligible if you were really far behind them. Otherwise, when you were in spawn mode, you could hit a button to like warp back up to the front of the pack and find a spot. But yeah, that's just immediate convenience because.
00:40:58
Speaker
I don't know. Running around and just chasing something sucks. But another convenience change they did, stamina does not exist or drain if you're running and not in combat. Right. Yeah, that's actually huge.
00:41:13
Speaker
So in an open world game, like, okay, you don't get the horse immediately. Imagine running, just exploring, but having to be like, all right, let's, uh, stop exploring for a bit. Let's look at this tree. Nice tree. Okay. Sam was back. And then you have to go and you keep having those interruptions as you're exploring and playing kind of sucks. So that's a really nice change. The only reason it was tolerable in breath of the wild was literally because you had the horse, like most of the game. Otherwise it would have been an absolute pain to run around, but.
00:41:43
Speaker
I mean, like I get putting in a meter from time to time. Um, but this isn't a survival crafting game. So it is, it has crafting though. That is excellent plan segue. We know very little about crafting. It seems like it's like basic consumables, maybe like arrows and things.
00:42:04
Speaker
Well, the one I'm most curious about that seems at this point very strong are the sleep arrows. Right. So you can do your bow on horseback. You can do jumping bow shots. And initially, like when they showed the sleeping dart in the trailer, just like here's like the curated playthrough. They use a sleeping dart on a guy at a camp. OK, he's unconscious now. I don't have to worry about him for a little bit. I can attack other people.
00:42:31
Speaker
When I watched a YouTuber who I follow show it, there was a giant. One of the giants was like carrying or pulling the carts, chasing after him, and he sleep darted him and he fell asleep in combat. Holy fuck. You can also hit like multiple people with that too. It seems potentially really strong.
00:42:53
Speaker
I'm curious who all, I mean, you assume bosses, obviously you're immune, but I'm curious like how many situations they were. That's their one oversight, superhero works on everybody. Critical hit. That would be funny. You just death blow repeatedly. They're just like, oh god, my face. And then you put them back to sleep, do it again.
00:43:15
Speaker
Oh, it's it's worth mentioning there was another change quality of life change I really like Landing so in in the souls like souls born series like there's different ways you could get Critical hits the most common way was you did so much the equivalent of like poise damage possibly an enemy that Yeah posture
00:43:37
Speaker
Sekiro makes this much more obvious why it's literally just building the combat around posture as a mechanic, but you're wailing on an enemy, they take enough posture damage and they fall into a vulnerable state and you can run up and stab them in the face or something like that, which is usually reserved for if you parried in PvP or against somebody that's parryable or Gwyn and did a riposte type animation.
00:44:07
Speaker
If you play Bloodborne, these are the ones where it was like absolutely covered in blood. It just sprays everywhere. Those are their critical hits. And in this, in Elden Ring, they're literally taking a page out of the Resident Evil playbook and they're introducing glowing weak spots that show you where you need to interact once that stature is broken. And I like it. I miss that weirdly.
00:44:31
Speaker
Yeah, I like it because this isn't like a boss fight where you're shooting the glowing weak spot, which is.
00:44:40
Speaker
It's okay. It's not inspired. No one's going to call that inspired design. Um, but once you've already done gone through the work of landing enough consecutive high posture damage hits on a boss that they literally have to take a knee. That's your work. Your work shouldn't be trying to determine where on this boss's hit box you swing in order to get the special move. Right.
00:45:02
Speaker
Yeah, they're deadly times where you go up to a dragon or something like this is really big and you're just you're fighting for your life out there and You know, you don't want to try like is it the tail that would pour the tail the wink. No. Okay the face I was doing some right like it it sucks to have to Figure that out. I think a lot of times in previous from soft games. It didn't matter damage was damaged and
00:45:29
Speaker
You will always deal more damage. You would always do more damage if they were in a staggered state. But there would usually be like, OK, you hit them from the front. Now you'll go for like an animation stab like effect. Yeah. But I'm asking like, did they have more location based damage for certain parts of enemies or bosses? Some of them usually like headshots and things like that.
00:45:54
Speaker
It's a sword swinging game. There's only so much like locational damage you can really optimize for. It's at least not been like a hugely prevalent mechanic where it mattered. Yeah. If you needed to track that or not.
00:46:09
Speaker
I haven't seen it in Elden Ring really either from what I've examined, like actual boss weak points. Um, it's just the critical stab here when they're taking a knee, uh, that's being added and I guess I'm a fan. That's the part. Okay. Yeah. They're just making it. That's the glowing spot is once they're actually stagger broken.
00:46:28
Speaker
I thought you were saying this person's knee is going to glow, so hit that part, it's a weak spell. Oh, no, no, no. Yeah, that would be bad. That would be back to basic boss design, right? You're just like, OK, I get it. I'll hit the leg. And here I was blatantly defending it like, yes, that was good. Right. I was curious. I was like, he seems a little bit offended that they're introducing this. No, it's only after you've knocked the boss to the ground that you know where to hit him next.
00:46:54
Speaker
Yeah.
Summoning Mechanics & Starting Classes
00:46:55
Speaker
So to clarify my bandwagoning point, it sucks to like have them staggered. And you're like, this is my opportunity. I know I have to do something. I know I have to punish. Then you go up and you just do like a basic R1. You're like, I fucked it. Yeah, right. You would miss it, lose some damage. And the boss is just like, OK, yes, if you're not going to. The smash equivalent is like breaking somebody's shield. And you're like, oh, I'm cut. And you just like press. I want the ledge.
00:47:23
Speaker
Yeah. So I'm a fan of that. There's a lot of other mechanics that have been introduced. There's the the NPC summons in groups and like the selectable NPC summons, which is something that's kind of cool. Apparently only seems to work for like the big groups or something like that. And like the overall work, you can't like bring it to a boss like surprise. Yeah. Although there was an example of a boss fight with a summon, it just didn't seem like
00:47:53
Speaker
That was one where you could bring the whole troop. I don't know exactly what the limit is. Maybe it's like multiple versus
00:47:59
Speaker
Yeah. Cause there was like, there was an enemy encampment and apparently there's like a totem or something like that determines if you can summon in your crew. Um, and, uh, he just like summons four or five guys and she's like, all right, there's just five, five shirts and skins. Let's go. Um, and, or plate male versus leather is the case maybe. Um,
00:48:25
Speaker
It looks good. It's a cool mechanic and I like the, I really liked the idea of building a squad of summons that you like because like Black Iron Tarkis through the entirety of Dark Souls 1, please beat the game for me. Black Iron Tarkis, we win. Let's go. Black Iron Tarkis versus the Rock Havill. Tarkis will lose, but that's okay. He'll do his best.
00:48:56
Speaker
Oh, target's only good against really, really tall people. Yeah, if he can hit the legs and knock them off the platform, that's his win con. Havel versus Gwen, though, is actually a lore appropriate fight, so that's the one I would love to have, but that's fine.
00:49:13
Speaker
Cause he rejected the gods, correct? Yeah. He, um, uh, I think one of the big tells for it is like, when you get his set hidden behind, I think it was an illusory wall on a fireplace or something in Anor Londo. Um, he has an occult club and the occult clubs are specifically like bonus damage versus divine beans. And you're like, huh, odd for you to have that Mr. Night person.
00:49:42
Speaker
But yeah, we're not a Dark Souls lore podcast. That's our other one. Please tune in. It's just called to not a Dark Souls lore podcast. And we actually just talk about Dark Souls lore. So I assume you saw those starting classes.
00:50:03
Speaker
Yeah. And it doesn't matter anyway, because you're going to pick a bloody wolf like everybody else. It looks really good. Bloody wolf did. So the list was warrior, enchanted knight, prophet, champion and bloody wolf. Bloody wolf is what anybody would have seen in the trailers. Really cool starting armor. Oh, yeah. Where's chain mail? Over the face. I mean, like a hood? No, no, no. Over the face.
00:50:32
Speaker
Yeah, it's I don't know. I haven't seen too much about each of the classes yet, but I mean, I know it functions the same as previous Dark Souls games, where it's like, this is your starting attribute spread. And yeah, probably starting items that help for that. But then you can branch out or switch into higher latches. Harder to from the get go. The real question is like, why is there and this is this is where this is where Elgin Ring loses all the points. Why is there no deprived?
00:51:06
Speaker
You're right, Jake. That's my enjoyment of the game. Nobody picked it anyways, but besides like Lenny. No, I mean, they all are cool. And they're probably going to even add more, honestly, unless that was their announcement of like, we're only doing these five fuck off. Right. I mean, I imagine it can be hard to add them.
00:51:33
Speaker
Uh, new, very similar model change base. That's cool. Go. I hope it's model. I realized that like two degree, I imagine it's possible. Um, yeah.
00:51:48
Speaker
Because the previous ones were relatively moddable, not like Bethesda games. You can just literally take our previous game and put it in this game and tie the content together. But there were some cool mods and things for Dark Souls.
00:52:03
Speaker
I still remember, actually, a really stupid one. In Dark Souls 1, there was a modded Zweihander model that looked really cool. It was higher res. But it also just said, prepare to die on the blade. I sent you a picture to it. Oh, yeah. That's awesome. It was really funny. It's incredibly meta for prepare to die edition of Dark Souls. But it was great. There's also an alternate version of the mod that was just, instead of prepare to die, it said,
00:52:31
Speaker
uh base cannon which was pretty funny too but that's why hander was a fun weapon still is um i can't remember what you're talking about something about elden ring i think yeah um you're gonna buy it i am yeah i'm
00:52:53
Speaker
This is like the first time I've ever even remotely considered like getting a special edition for something because I don't really I'm not one for knickknacks and in general as I cover part of the camera that would be like some stuff on my desk. I think in total I have.
00:53:14
Speaker
maybe 15 figurines or like small toy representations of a character. But that's been accrued over my lifetime. Right. It's not about how long Dark Souls games and FromSoft games have been coming out. Oh, shit, yeah. But I just I really like everything about it. I've been hyped about this more so than I have been Tunic, which is the other game I occasionally mention once a year of like,
00:53:43
Speaker
I'm kind of curious to see what happens with this, because it looks cute. Yeah, it's on Dark Souls. That's the key. That'll be my comment on their game. Not Dark Souls. Four out of five. So far, this seems to be hitting.
00:54:02
Speaker
all of the bases or all the check boxes that I didn't even know were on the page. So I'm just excited for that. There's also just a bit of like, I'll take whatever they give me. I'm just really happy with everything I've been shown so far. They haven't really released anything.
00:54:20
Speaker
Disengaging from the defending Dark Souls 2 meme persona for a second. It was rushed. It was by a subset of the studio. It didn't have all hands on deck for it. And it's considered to be the most flawed or incomplete of the Dark Souls, which is hilarious because there's a million bosses in Dark Souls 2.
00:54:42
Speaker
But it's also the closest thing to like a misstep Dark Souls from soft has ever done like Since Dark Souls one at least, you know, I can't speak to Kingsfield That came out. I wasn't even kidding apparently One came out in 1994 basically. Yes the literal duration of our lives from some games have been coming up but Yeah, I mean
00:55:10
Speaker
We live in an age of a lot of game developers, game publishers losing face.
00:55:18
Speaker
Maybe you love stuff that Square Enix does. You probably don't love all of it. Like, really? You like Marvel Avengers that much? You think that was a good call? I love Final Fantasy XIV as much as the next guy, but like people make missteps. And FromSoft, like I don't even have to mention Bethesda, right? But FromSoft so far has not squandered that goodwill that they built up with their community.
00:55:44
Speaker
And they tend to cultivate it even when they do reuse concepts and build upon them. So basically what Jake is saying is jump ship from your shitty fandoms and join the cool one. I mean, yes, that's that's essentially what I'm saying. Like don't preorder games in general. Oh, no, no, no. I do sometimes because I can't I don't have my own standards. But if I were to preorder,
00:56:12
Speaker
game upcoming and thus inadvertently doomed the fan base based off of my previous decisions it would be Elden Ring it looks really good and the fact like I realize I'm just chaining comments but like
00:56:27
Speaker
Looking back to when Cyberpunk came out, they didn't show actual gameplay, release, reviewable content until like the week before, maybe two weeks at most before launch. Elbow and Ring doesn't come out for like another two months. And they literally gave away the first part of the game visually, like in video form to all these people.
00:56:57
Speaker
This is why I send pictures to anybody before I get married to them. We'll let them know what's up before I get on the plane. I'm just imagining it's like this is the mail order has been there. Just picture of Dave smiling. Looking straight at the camera. It's funny if you can see my facial expression, but imagine it's slightly mischievous, but also heartwarming. Yeah. Yeah.
00:57:25
Speaker
But yeah, I would never say to anybody like as much backing as I have for FromSoft and their stuff.
00:57:34
Speaker
I would still not tell people like, hey, just go in blind to something because everyone else says it's good. In general, the purpose of a business is to make sales. The way they do that is by saying, hey, here's what we're offering. Isn't it cool? Isn't it great? Sometimes it can be, and sometimes it'd be a big pile of shit. Cyberpunk being an example of
00:57:56
Speaker
It was not marketed for what was sold. Fallout 76, No Man's Sky, you name it. There have been definite missteps in the gaming industry as far as what's marketed versus what you actually get. So part of it is knowing the game company and their history, not to say that like FromSlav could make a mistake for sure. But I haven't had that experience yet.
00:58:24
Speaker
I will wait to be disappointed. Yeah. I'm not going to preorder it per se. I'm just looking forward to it. Right. I might. If the green man gaming version is cheaper, if I preorder it, I'm probably going to do that. Because it's less expensive. I'm going to buy it, right? I'll just wait until you're done. I'll borrow your copy. That's not what's going to happen. We'll do an episode on it eventually. Yeah.
00:58:50
Speaker
This is a joke because they've like routinely like just slides games into my console gaming space of like Switch and PlayStation variety. I'm like, huh, I just kind of like shove them back into the corner of the room. It's eventually potentially playing. I got like a dancing game on loan from you. What I have. It definitely has some sort of rhythm, dancey thing. And then Katamari Katamari Damacy.
00:59:19
Speaker
And I want to circle back off podcast. What dancing game you're borrowing from me? I feel like I have at least something. I don't know. I haven't looked that closely. I was like, thanks again. I turned turned back to my computer and neglected him for the rest of the visit.
00:59:38
Speaker
No, I would be very surprised if this is not a day one pickup for both of us. It would have represented a massive red flag coming out between now and January. And my heart can't handle that, OK? I need something. Yeah. Cyberpunk did you dirty? They delayed 14. I don't know if you'd really play that anymore, though. Not actively. I'm waiting for the expansion, more or less. OK. But you will hop on once it's up and live with Google? Yeah.
01:00:09
Speaker
but get the gang back together and do some social stuff across the holidays. It should be fun. Yeah. I mean, I'm definitely looking forward to playing Destiny 2 with everybody again. So once they make that game not shit, I'll definitely play with you guys. Yeah. They're taking Gambit out. I realize we're literally at the end of the recording, but that's one of the things they were sunsetting was legitimately like half of the PvP scene just being sunsetted.
01:00:39
Speaker
Which is a decision. Next episode, we'll talk about sunsetting. It'll be like, what games do this? And the only example will be Destiny 2. I had only heard that term previously in a job context.
01:01:04
Speaker
I mean, I inadvertently did kind of get laid off from that job, but it was in regards to an application that would no longer be supported in the future. So they're kind of like, yeah, we'll get people to stop using it.
01:01:20
Speaker
They're just like operators. You're just going to condition people. Like you throw away their lunch every time that they actually use the application, but you never explain it. And eventually they're just like, it seems like I, I, I, someone always eats my lunch when I use this application. Yeah. You just give them a negative association with it. Ring a bell. And people hate bells. Yeah. It's very true. It's very true.
01:01:50
Speaker
Uh, there's a whole bunch of things other than Elden Ring, um, that we were never going to talk about because, um, I don't know. I mean, like it's the only thing we have for content in the coming year. Yeah. It's, it's all I've been waiting for all of my life. So don't take this from me, please. But, uh, we'll definitely talk about some other things we've been playing recently in the next tall cast. And we definitely won't mention it in the first 10 minutes of another episode. That's very true.
01:02:20
Speaker
But if you guys have anything you'd like us to mention in the first minutes of the next episode, you can always send that in. So some podcasts at gmail.com or you can join the discussion on Facebook. It's a social network. I think facebook.com slash soapstone podcast. And as always, we'll see you in the next one. Have a good night.