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What We Want from Our Video Game Villains | Windbreaker Podcast
7.5k Plays6 months ago
On this week’s episode of Windbreaker, Yahtzee, Frost, and Marty discuss what goes into a good video game villain, and where some games stumble.
Second Wind is fully independent, employee-owned and fan-funded. Consider supporting us on Patreon for as little as $1/month at patreon.com/SecondWindGroup
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Transcript
Introduction and Game Maker Promotion
00:00:00
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This video is brought to you by Game Maker, the free, fast, and easy to use 2D game engine that helps power modern classics like Undertale, Hotline Miami, and Hyper Light Drifter. Starter templates, official asset bundles, and a wealth of tutorials are available to help bring your ideas to life.
Podcast Introduction and Hosts
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And you can export and share your game for free on all non-console platforms.
00:00:20
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But you don't have to take my word for it, I'm just some jerk.
Game Maker Endorsement and Upcoming Game
00:00:23
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We have an actual bona fide game maker-er on hand. Oh shit, that's me. Yes, I've been using Game Maker for a long time. It's probably the most powerful and easiest to use engine for making 2D games out there. Suitable for both amateurs and hardcore coders, and with all the Steam and console integration stuff for when you're ready to start monetizing your hobbies. I'm using it for my upcoming smash hit game, Starstruck Back Upon. Which I assume will be a smash hit, because Game Maker's that bloody great.
00:00:49
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Head on over to the Game Maker link in the description to begin your game development journey today.
Podcast Anniversary and Content Discussion
00:00:57
Speaker
Hello everybody, welcome to the Web Breakers podcast. I'm your supporter, Andrew and very Frost and Marty. Whoa. Speed round, hi. Well, I have to get through it quickly because I have to tell everyone that it's the sixth month anniversary of a second wind. Whoo! Today, this very day, we've been doing this shit for six months. Incredible. I can't believe it. Amazing.
00:01:15
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And don't forget, if you're enjoying all the shit we're laying down here at Second Wind, you can support us on Patreon, or by giving super chats. Like what Your37 just did as I was talking.
00:01:29
Speaker
or just liking and subscribing, you know? That's like the bread and butter of YouTube. Truly is. And we're gonna have a big sixth anniversary shindig later on in the month, where we're gonna be hanging out, we're gonna be playing a bunch of games with you guys. Games, drinks. All sorts of new stuff. So familiar. We got new stuff. We have old stuff. We're done with the old stuff. We're not done with the old stuff. We're still doing all the old stuff, but we got new stuff. We are.
00:01:53
Speaker
We are just content pipes. We just puke it out all the day. It's very uncomfortable in daily life. Anyway.
Video Game Villains Discussion
00:02:03
Speaker
On the eve of Sony backtracking on the fucking Helldivers 2 bullshit, we thought it would be an appropriate time to talk about villains in video games. Like actually in-game villains or like game industry villains? Well, I think that goes without saying.
00:02:24
Speaker
Fucking pisses me off. I had my whole time as two review ready for this week and I included an extra bit over the weekend to reference Sony being bastards and then they fucking backtracked on it this morning. I mean... You just wait till Wednesday when that gets published. It'll change again. Something else will happen. Hold on to it for when they backtrack the backtrack and then it's like, I knew it. Yeah.
00:02:49
Speaker
I'm gonna keep the gag in because it made me laugh, but I had to add an extra addendum to the addendum in like the end credits. A hat on a hat. Yeah, just don't look at the comments going, actually Yahtzee, this was reverted, changed the whole video. Actually. Actually, actually, the game's been replaced with a fucking fishing simulator now. So everything you wrote in your review is now wrong.
00:03:10
Speaker
I play a little fishing simulator. That's why a live service paranoia. Like, actually, it's a whole different game now. Yeah, that's exactly why I don't review Early Access. But anyway, we did specifically want to talk about video game villains. And what is it we appreciate in a video game villain in a video game story? Yeah. And if the fact that it's a video game villain makes a difference to how we appreciate villains in non-video game sort of things.
00:03:40
Speaker
So, uh, Marty, who's your favorite villain in video games?
00:03:47
Speaker
That's a really hard question. Who asked these things? And I have a lot of them. But if I'm going to go with one, we'll rip the Band-Aid off right now and we'll start talking about Persona. Because I have a lot. I fucking knew you. I fucking knew you were going to. I couldn't wait with other ones. I thought it would be rude not to talk about Persona. No, no, no. I think I know what villain you're going to bring up in Persona. And I think I agree. Is it the principal? Ooh, no. This is going to be tough.
00:04:12
Speaker
Is it? I think it's going to be the first villain in Persona 5, the gym teacher. Yes, that was who I was going to bring up! Isn't he actually like a bit of a...
00:04:26
Speaker
He's a very effectively hateable villain. He's part of the reason why it's easy to get people into Persona 5 if you just get them to play through the first act. There's different sort of core pillars of villains, and one of them is just a villain you fucking want to hate.
00:04:43
Speaker
There's something where it's like you don't even want to find the humanity in them to try to be like, oh, I see where they're coming from kind of thing. And there are plenty of good villains like that. But Kamoshida or even someone like Senator Armstrong in Metal Gear Rising Revengeance is someone that you just learn to hate at their very core. And that is the fuel for your engine of getting through that opening of the game and being like, I want to crush this man out of existence for what he's doing.
00:05:08
Speaker
Well that wasn't the feeling I got with Senator Armstrong. Senator Armstrong was like, who is this guy and where can I find his biography? Because I want to support this man and listen to his podcast.
00:05:24
Speaker
It was fucking spectacular to watch. Kamishida's just a downright absolute bastard that only you know is a bastard and has escaped consequence for the longest time and you get to use your anime superpowers to make him face consequences in a very natural seeming way and it's all very fucking satisfying.
00:05:45
Speaker
Yeah. See, I never thought about a video game weaponizing your hatred, like just outright hatred and annoyance of a video game character, because you can't do that in like films and whatnot. Like we had the, what is it, most despicable person in TV and it ended up being Skylar.
00:06:03
Speaker
of all people because she's just annoyed the viewer. You know, not really a villain, she's just annoying. Whereas in a video game, it's like, you can just be annoying. That gets you through. My girlfriend's been playing through the fallout and you keep hearing that radio DJ over and over. Oh, and I'm like, shot the hell up. Find him, find him. I don't know where he is. We will find him. So yeah.
00:06:24
Speaker
The difference between character you most hate and character who is the villain. I mean, if it was down to character you most hate, I'd probably go for Claptrap from Borderlands, who's ostensibly someone you're supposed to like, who's got that sort of Jar Jar Binks problem. What if he turns on you? Would you? Yeah, we're using the term villain, but I think like there's a difference between even villain and antagonist. Like all villains are antagonists, but not all antagonists are villains.
00:06:51
Speaker
In the strict parlance of storytelling, the antagonist is just the character working against the goals of the protagonist. Yeah. And then you have a game like The Last of Us 2 where you play, where both characters are each other's antagonist, I guess, the two characters. There's no protagonist in this game. It just depends on who you're playing as, I guess. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah. Big wacky stuff. Oh my God. Hmmm. For us, who would be your go-to if you had to just name one villain?
00:07:20
Speaker
My go-to? I mean, it's probably stuck between Vos and Handsome Jack. Like, I just like these arrogant pricks who sometimes, like, Handsome Jack is just like, you're a scum, you're a scum, just go kill yourself already, get out of my face, go away! Whereas Vos is like, we're not too different, you and I. And I like it when he's actually like, he's not wrong, at the start you go, I'm nothing like you, and at the end, you know what, I miss him. Why am I fighting this other guy?
00:07:48
Speaker
Well that is, I think Vars gets a lot of the coverage when we talk about Far Cry 3, but as I said in my original review, I kind of liked the protagonist of Far Cry 3 more. I liked his arc as you say, he's completely outclassed by Vars at the beginning, but by the end of it he's become like a replacement monster in a way.
00:08:12
Speaker
Do we get that a lot in games where, uh, you know, there's a lot of media to where it's like, oh no, the person you're watching is not the good guy, like, uh, and Walter White.
00:08:22
Speaker
Very quickly, you're like, you had a lot of outs out of this and you didn't take any of them because you became obsessed with money and power. And so you are clearly becoming the antagonist here. Do we get that in games where the character we are controlling slowly does that? I was going to say that's kind of my favorite type. I think the fact that the game cannot control the actions of the player means video games can explore that in interesting ways. When you were talking about it just then, my first thought was the sequence in Half-Life 2 towards the end.
00:08:51
Speaker
when Dr. Breen is taunting you over the cameras and the security system. But he's not, you know, ha-ha big villain taunting you. He's like genuinely upset at you and genuinely not sure what you think you can gain from this. And he's like, tell me, Dr. Freeman, what have you achieved in life besides destroying things? Can you name even one thing? I thought not.
00:09:18
Speaker
And it's true that in most, like, this sort of thing, the villain is often the proactive figure, and the hero is just a reactive figure trying to re-establish the status quo. Yeah. And I think in video games, there's a lot of examples of really interesting, complex, new ones in video game villains, especially in, like, more story-focused, like, heavy RPG, choices-matter sort of thing.
00:09:47
Speaker
Because, of course, the player character often can't take the moral high ground. Because all they do is shoot and steal collectibles. Yeah, instead take pineapples from toilets and power shack. I mean, the entire Far Cry series has made a lot of meat out of this.
00:10:08
Speaker
It's almost become a thing, right? Where like the villain has become a selling point. Like, oh, we got Troy Baker or we got Giancarlo Esposito or like, you know, whoever there might be the villain or something like that. Like it almost seems like, you know, when the MCU cast their next person, they want to get people excited because they cast some big actor. God was doing that. You remember? Get a real villain in there. We went to jail for the mocap.
00:10:39
Speaker
It's so realistic, yeah. So I guess who would be your one that you would think of Yahtzee if you had to... Well, you know, I think there's a lot of games that do nuanced villainy in interesting ways, but possibly because of that, I sort of appreciate a villain who really leans into it. A villain who is absolutely 100% aware that they're the bad guy and just is absolutely having the best time with it. Is just living their best life.
00:11:05
Speaker
And when I think of characters like that, I think of the really operatic villains. And my favorite one in that area is Pius Augustus from Eternal Darkness on the GameCube. Yeah, that's a good one. Voiced by someone who's clearly having a great time. Yeah. I am your lord and conqueror. He's like Skeletor in a sort of grown up Lovecraftian setting and I love him for it. Yeah.
00:11:30
Speaker
That's great. That's also one of those villains that I like an unpredictable villain. I like someone that has like a bit of a wild card in them to where you don't know what they're gonna do at any given moment, which makes them feel a little more dangerous. I think both biases like that. I think Voss was like that, you know.
00:11:46
Speaker
I wasn't even like sure Pious was the villain until like a few levels into Eternal Darkness because of course you play him in the first chapter of the game. Yeah. Oh, so I had an offshoot where I was like favorite villain in the character when I can play as them. Yeah. Well, at the start, he's like a normal dude. And at the end of his prologue session, he's turned into like an undead lich. And by the end of the game, he's like, as I say, Skeletoring it up.
00:12:14
Speaker
What if it's like, I guess the Bioshock route, because the first one it's like, you don't really know who's who, but then an infinite, I mean, are we allowed to talk spoilers now? I think we... Well, Bioshock. It's you, but it's not you, you know? As long as we clearly state the name of the game, we're spoiling to give people a chance. I think you're good to go.
00:12:38
Speaker
I mean I do I think I like a bit of framing my still favorite sort of like I am the bad guy game is Star Wars Battlefront 2 the original one because the whole time you are he is just talking about like just how it's like oh I respect today let's occur but we still had a killer like
00:12:56
Speaker
She got us out of there, I am indebted to her, but it hurt just a little more when we shot her in the back. He knows good and well, but it is framed as like, this is righteous and this is what we were paid to do and this is what we're gonna do. And you're like, I am the bad guy, absolutely. This is before I knew anything about Star Wars. It was the first Star Wars content I played and I go, I'm
00:13:15
Speaker
I'm the bad guy here. Surely. Yeah. See, that's interesting, because of course, remake Battlefront 2, you literally are the bad guy at the start. You work for the Empire. You're one of those Special Forces types. And then you just sort of switch to the rebel side with no apparent character growth on your part. That was like a four-sum leash as well, wasn't it? You even start as Vader.
00:13:38
Speaker
Yes, you started the game as the apprentice of Darth Vader, the secret apprentice of Darth Vader.
00:13:48
Speaker
Starkiller, which, fact fans, was one of the original suggested names for the protagonist of the original Star Wars, Luke Starkiller, before they went for the Skywalker. I think that's letting the player play as a villain for a little bit, I think, is a smart way of getting folks inside their head and being able to see if there's a power difference between them.
00:14:11
Speaker
I think there's a moment early in Final Fantasy 7, I think even in Final Fantasy 7 proper, even before the remake stuff, to where you play a flashback with Cloud and Sephiroth, and Sephiroth is in your party, and he's just so much more powerful than Cloud. And he's just one-shotting dudes, and he's got level three magic, and you're like, holy shit, I don't have level three magic. It's just both between you. Yeah, feels so big. And I think that's pretty effective when done in a game.
00:14:38
Speaker
Oh, yeah. Black Ops 2. There's a little point in the middle of the campaign where you play as the bad guy, as his village is being... Everything's on fire. He's trying to save his sister or his daughter or something, and then throw the flashbang in there the whole time. You're just rampaging through, getting shot, and you're like, ah! So, yeah, no, that was pretty effective in that moment of, like, who's really it, who's not. I don't know. Can you say, though, that he's the villain?
00:15:04
Speaker
when he doesn't even believe in himself. So I'm like, yeah, they tore up your village and they killed your sister. I can see that. Or is it just sympathetic? Yeah, I mean, there's a, you know, if there's there's villains who are just evil for the sake of being evil, which isn't necessarily bad thing. And then there's also villains who think they are on the, you know, the right side of history. I mean, I guess going back to persona, like in persona five, royal boilers for the last, I guess, for the
00:15:33
Speaker
new chunk of stuff at the end of Persona 5 Royal, but the main villain in the game ends up being someone who has a good reason for what they're doing and wants to remove pain from the world and is giving you this option to live in a world where these bad things haven't happened. He's not doing it out of, I want to be in control, but he's like, I don't want you guys to be feeling like this anymore.
00:15:57
Speaker
So, and there's even like a great moment there where throughout the game, every time you get ready to fight a boss of a palace, you have this thing where you like send them the calling card. It's like this really bad-ass moment of like them getting it and being like, oh shit, the Phantom Thieves are on to me. But in this one, like the two of you are at the coffee shop, you just throw the calling card on the table and you're like, all right, well, we can't meet on this. So we're coming at you. Yeah. And there is actually an option in game to side with the boss in the ending. And that really ending like shows.
00:16:25
Speaker
Everyone living sort of their delusional lives, but they look happy. It's almost like, eh, I gotta see where he's coming from. Like, maybe I do want to, want to live that life. Cause I'm not even, I'm not even sure it was delusional if he'd literally just recreated reality. Yeah. Yeah. And just, yeah, removed those painful moments for everyone. Whatever happened to Bowser?
00:16:45
Speaker
Bowser. Well, he was a bad guy, but then he's in the kart racing and in the Mario parties. I wouldn't invite him if you're inside of him. That's in some games. Yeah, that's that's definitely operatic villain area. Yeah. Which as I said, I appreciate. I mean, me and Jack in the theory a while back that maybe like the first Super Mario Brothers game is the only game where it's actually Bowser like doing something evil. And for every game after that, it's just a sort of
00:17:13
Speaker
good natured anniversary event where they sort of recreate the conflict with a little sort of like sort of school sports day where they where Bowser kidnaps the princess again and Mario does a sort of Olympic torch carrying ceremony where he goes through every single land in the world before and then like liberates the princess and then everyone just goes home and says right we're still on for go karting on Sunday
00:17:38
Speaker
That's how we were going to celebrate our six month anniversary is by everyone getting fired and quitting again. What's the tie in with like, you know, like King Dedede? I lose the plot on some villains. I can't tell if they're good, they're bad.
00:17:51
Speaker
I think it's classic. I think it's classic Saturday morning cartoon syndrome is that if you've got an established hero villain relationship that goes on long enough, eventually the hero side for the villain because the villain has to be defanged inevitably from being defeated over and over again. So the only thing you can do then to reestablish the stakes is to introduce a new villain who's even worse. I mean, that's like Skeletor did that like three times. Sure.
00:18:16
Speaker
Jesus. I like how do you guys feel about groups of villains? We've talked a lot of a singular villains. I think you can get a lot. You can get a lot when you have very different personalities. It's the same as the six, the, uh, the full sound unit for metal gear. Foxhound as well as going. Wait, what did you think that was? I thought you were saying team rocket.
00:18:41
Speaker
And we can also talk about Team Rocket. I like the two of them, Jesse and James. Well, that's another villain that got pretty severely defanged over the course of events. But yes, your classic Legion of Doom group of villains, which is a thing that has its own sort of language in video games because of the whole sequence of boss fights throughout the course of the plot. Hi-Fi Rush would be another good example. Yeah.
00:19:07
Speaker
Something like No More Heroes where you have to go through the 10 best assassins in the world. Even Bioshock a little bit, like the masters of each domain, whether it's Sandor Cohen or whoever sort of zone you're in. I do appreciate that sort of setup. I do appreciate a sort of boss rush style of game because the bosses are usually where all the interesting character ideas are put. Especially in something like No More Heroes.
00:19:32
Speaker
and you can really take a moment to enjoy the little like very quirky peccadillos of each individual boss.
00:19:43
Speaker
One thing games, there are obviously games that do it, but a lot of games stumble in a place that other forms of fiction don't, is that they seem hesitant to ever kind of remove the point of view away from the main character and show you what the villain is up to when they're not just directly confronting you.
00:20:04
Speaker
And again, any show from Game of Thrones to Breaking Bad to even Shogun this year, anything will be like, here's what's going on over there. We're going to get some time with the bad guys and you're going to get a little bit of depth on them. But games don't seem to do that very often. Games very much seem to want to keep the focus on the player. So interactions with the Agnist are
00:20:27
Speaker
direct sort of confrontational interactions as opposed to adding a little bit of depth and I think that's why so many games have you um the the villain is kind of piped into you you know whether it's a lion whether it's a glados whether it's a
00:20:42
Speaker
That's what I loved about Resident Evil 4, and that I was disappointed by the remake. Because throughout the entire second half of Resident Evil 4, the villains are just constantly up your ass on your, like, head-mounted speaker device. Just taunting you and giving, like, really badly thought-out one-liners. And Leon's not the least bit moved by any of it, and he's just countering with his own horribly thought-out one-liners. And it's like, you know, watching two frat bros confronting each other over a girl at a party.
00:21:11
Speaker
Yeah. And in the remake, they just cut all that out and by the end of it, Leon's hardly interacted with the villain at all. Yeah. Where's the, you know, the operatic shit that I keep talking about? You're like flair, don't you? Well, flair is dramatic. Imagine a game that- Certainly do.
00:21:27
Speaker
It rates you on how much flair you have and how dramatic you are, how much fear you strike into the hero, so you get to sort of like place the chair at a nice angle, practice your spin for when they arrive, you know? You don't normally want to see that like, was it Suicide Squad, the Joker, and all of his knives? Did you really want to see him placing all of these knives out before he like, oop.
00:21:50
Speaker
And he's like, he's getting some feedback. He's like, can you come in here and see? Does this work? Yeah, that looks like a penis. Oh, shit, it does look like a penis. Now I cannot see it again. Nice angels. Are there mechanical things a villain can do? Well, as we were talking about, what's the one thing I wanted to brought up regarding
00:22:15
Speaker
groups of villains is that in a video game, you can take the advantage of having different villains over the course of the game with different approaches to life to explore different fighting mechanics. I mean, something Metal Gear Solid did very well. You get the first game, you fight an ulcer lot in like a small enclosed space, and then you fight the dude in the tank in the big, empty snowfield, and there's a sniping boss.
00:22:40
Speaker
yeah there's the weird psychomantist thing yeah there's the weird psychomantist thing uh battle gear solid 3 did a lot of that as well very well the sorrow fight was probably one of the highlights of that game story wise for me yeah sure what was it uh playing through disco Elysium again and i would say there's a few sort of like soft villains and i like that in that same sense as except in a non-combat way they are sort of like
00:23:02
Speaker
fighting your ideology. You're like, okay, how do I deal with a guy who is all about communism? Or how do I deal with a guy who is like, just a contrarian for like, just for the sake of it and all this kind of stuff. Yeah, yeah. But it is almost like, I guess the embodiment of the different zones, like Pokemon regions and whatnot. Bioshock, like you said, I think each person you fight has a different idea of what makes a utopia.
00:23:26
Speaker
Like how we got into this situation to begin with. So yeah, I do like those. To explore a number of different philosophical stances on a specific situation. That being said, my favorite is still the guy who's just like, I just like it because it's fun. Did we play No Straight Roads? So like Broken Roads? I did not.
00:23:50
Speaker
No, not Broker Roads. No Stray Roads was that weird pseudo rhythm game where you were two colorful dudes who were in an indie band and had the sort of no more heroes approach to the villains where you had to go up against like six different themed villains, all themed around a certain kind of music. So there was like a K-pop band that was like literally robots because they were manufactured. And there was a classical music kid and there was like, yeah, the thing that we're seeing there had this weird sort of
00:24:21
Speaker
A.I. musician thing going on? Was it just a Miku thing? There was like stuff in between the boss battles. That was mostly kind of forgettable. But, you know, I appreciated that game for its approach to the like the boss team style. I just think the gameplay had some issues. That's Scott Pilgrim right there in it. Yeah, it's very Scott Pilgrim-y, that whole thing. Yeah.
00:24:51
Speaker
I also think, I think villains are interesting when they take something, video games are almost different in that a villain can take something away from you. That is, like you felt like you had, this was something that was mine and I no longer have this. Like I'm thinking of even small things like death at the beginning of Symphony of the Night.
00:25:12
Speaker
just strips you of all these cool abilities you have, and you're like, fuck, those were my things, and now I don't have them anymore. Or even if, you know, Final Fantasy VII, obviously as Sephiroth takes a member of your party out, in Persona 3, a member of your party gets killed, and you no longer have that party member anymore. And so it feels like you grow to hate these people even more because they literally took something that was yours throughout this game.
00:25:38
Speaker
You know, one that stood out, thief two, the bad guy in there, because of the close proximity you had to him, you could obviously you're a thief and you're hiding from everyone. So you can see this bastard framing you and putting it all on you. And you can't respond. You can't do anything about it. And you're just like, oh, what a twisted man. Like you're eavesdropping on the church. You're hearing all this villainy going on. And you were just minding your business. But somehow they dragged you into it. And I'm like, that's just unforgettable. Just minding business, making stuff.
00:26:09
Speaker
What are you going to do? Call the cops? Yeah.
00:26:14
Speaker
Unfortunately, as far as mechanics go, I'm a sucker for these old school villains. I guess this mostly is a prominent in fighting games, overpowered sons of bitches. Just, I cannot be you. And if I be you, I unlock you as a new character. Oh, I'll be there. Sure. Yeah. Every day, nine to five clocking in for another ass beating with Akuma or Montezuma or whoever it was. Yeah. Absolutely love that.
00:26:40
Speaker
See, Matt, are you talking about villains doing a thing that affects your gameplay and makes you hate them? I don't think that makes me hate a character because I possibly, because this is me speaking as a game designer, I understand that such things are necessary for the creation of challenge. And if a boss just like creates a more interesting challenge for me, then I sort of appreciate it. Yeah. I mean, I hate bosses. If I hate a boss, it's usually just for story reasons, like Kamashida in Persona 5.
00:27:11
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I guess there's like good hate and bad hate, right? There's like compelling hate. That is, that is again, like fueling the engine. And that's, that's good hate, like, like fucking Joffrey in Game of Thrones or something, where it's like, like, me hating this kid is making me want to continue to get invested in this story. Because I want to see the characters you love to hate. Yeah, use the cliche. Yeah, whereas there's some, I guess I'm trying to think of now villains that just don't work for me.
00:27:42
Speaker
Eric, accusing the Camusita from the DS bazoon again. Yeah, is there anyone that sticks out as just like a villain that just did not land with you? I'm not even sure if I would. I didn't think about it beforehand, so I don't even know if I have.
00:27:59
Speaker
necessarily. Well, if a villain doesn't land, it's due because the whole plot doesn't land. Like I just finished Stellar Blade last week. I was like, none of those characters are interesting and the villain isn't either. Yeah, unfortunate.
00:28:12
Speaker
It feels like if the villain is introduced too early as too big and all powerful, there almost has to be, like Frost said, I like a villain who could kick my ass, but if the thing is just introduced as a god and it doesn't feel like there's any ramp up to it, it feels so almost so foreign that it's hard to
00:28:36
Speaker
Well, I guess a villain I hated in a bad way was the way they did Scarecrow in Arkham Knight. Because in Arkham Asylum, Scarecrow was great. He was the highlight of the game. And in Knight, they just turned him into a carbon copy of Hugo Strange in Arkham City. He was just gerry generic, the supervillain, who just stands at the top of things going, you can't defeat me, Batman. I have all that to do with the deep, emotionless voice. Yeah.
00:29:06
Speaker
It's funny, you've hit on my, I think the thing that stops me from progressing in Breath of the Wild. I show up, I come out of this tomb and they're like, oh yeah, Ganon's on Royds now. I'm like, what am I supposed to do about this? Let him have it. It just looks like a thunderstorm. He's so strong, he's become this force of nature. I'm just a small little twink out of my tiny tomb. I think it works better in something like Ocarina of Time when he's introduced as like,
00:29:36
Speaker
you know, royalty from a distant land and he's meeting the king and you see him through the window and then he gives you that look, you're like, ooh, this dude seems a little evil. Like he's introduced in a way, he's not introduced as like a giant pig monster. He's introduced as like something humanoid or something familiar and then obviously become something weird. I really liked how they did him in Wind Waker because that was sort of like bridging the, like the human Ganondorf to the evil God Ganondorf and he was sort of like melancholy about it.
00:30:05
Speaker
He was like, yeah, I guess I'm an evil god now. Kind of sucks sometimes. Anyway, guess we'd better fight.
00:30:12
Speaker
There you go. I like that. Especially a nice slow introduction like Nick's been playing bully. I think Gary, I think that's the main bad guy in there. As he's just slowly, slowly becoming more unhinged until eventually he turns on you and then you don't see him. You don't see him until because he's puppet mastering. He's just pulling strings and you're wondering where he could possibly be. I like that. I like to feel their presence, funny enough.
00:30:39
Speaker
I like a villain who understands their limitations. That's like, I'm not going to fight your head on. You'll kick my ass. Yeah. He actually says that. You know, that very line. I'm going to fight you. Is there anything, uh, visually that you like about a character is like a villain design? Nice, thick, curvy. I like, I like a villain. I like a game that pulls out a villain that kind of mirrors
00:31:05
Speaker
me. Um, do you like actual mirrors? Like, well, you have like a dark link. Those are always like fun. I guess those are, that's less a villain and more of just like an interesting boss encounter. Um, but, uh, boss encounters, some of my favorite boss encounters in souls games, as much as I love a big ass dragon or like a weird fucking horse demon is the more humanoid ones. The ones that do look familiar. You're like, you're, you're going to eat your rows. You're slave night, Gail. You're done leader. You're Artorias. You're dung eaters, the hunters.
00:31:35
Speaker
I love a dude who just eats his shit. He's an actual villain. Do you see the lore behind him? Now in Japan, they believe your soul is essentially in your prostate. So what he's doing is ending your cycle. He's just like, you just completely cease to exist now. He's an actual weird serial killer. Yeah. And maybe he eats. Yeah, Verdonial May Cry is a great poll as well, Chad.
00:32:02
Speaker
It's like, uh, standard, if you ask me, you know, just villain who's dark version of protagonist. There's like nine Spider-Man villains along those lines. Yeah, that's a little bit what, until Venom becomes nice, like a big old beefy Venom. That's just kind of what it is. Although I do like a rug pull like how in, uh, pokes, speaking of Pokemon from earlier, in gold and silver, when you get to the end of, of,
00:32:29
Speaker
Uh, was a victory row, whatever it's called, that you have to fight your trainer from the first game, that he's like the, he's the final showdown. And as I like that, that's like a little bit of having to confront your past. That's good stuff. That's good. Tell you what, a nice standout one, Spider-Man, if you beat it, you got to be the green goblin. And now you're playing the whole game, but with a glider and all these other different powers, I'm like, get out of town. Yeah.
00:32:51
Speaker
Did they actually change the story if you didn't know? I don't remember. I want to say it's hairy, but it's been a while. Because there's games, I want to say one of the beautiful Jo games. There was a version of it where you could just play through it as Dante from Devil May Cry. And they change all the dialogue so the story makes sense. Oh, that's cool.
00:33:13
Speaker
Oh, shoot. That reminds me of actually Bloody Roar. Yeah, because you can play as the villains on each side, and now you're getting completely from their perspective instead. Yeah. That's cool. I like that. I mean, when you play through Sonic 3 as Knuckles, then the Dr. Robotnik is replaced with just a generic robot dude, I think. That was a good one, Dr. Robotnik. That horned up Eggman? Dr. Eggman.
00:33:39
Speaker
I don't know how you said it with that accent. That makes me a little worried. I like hating the Nazis in Wolfenstein.
00:33:51
Speaker
Yeah, they were certainly leaning into it. That game was nothing if not melodramatic. Yeah. So let me punch a Nazi, that seems nice. Yeah, I do like a sort of, you know, for a sort of depersonalized villain, like Doom. You don't at any point in time go, I'm dealing with humans or anything. No, you're just ripping and tearing through hell. It's great. Well, some of them are for my humans.
00:34:18
Speaker
Well, at this point we're just ripping and tearing. We'll just give you the big old tear. There's a ripping and tear conga line you probably shouldn't have queued into. Yeah. Now we get to super chats. Yeah, I think they'll jog my memory on more videos. All right. All right, everyone. But now's your chance to nominate your personal favorite villain in games. And all you have to do is give us a super chat. Tom Nook.
00:34:44
Speaker
Fucking capitalism. Yeah. Well, capitalism was certainly the villain of Helldivers 2 recently. Womp womp. Let's go to another health bar. I'm going to switch to the funding tab. Hi, I'm Anarchy. Welcome to Tip Jar.
00:35:01
Speaker
Thank you, Ham. First of all. And then Hjorv87 gives 50 Danish krona and says, can't catch live tonight. Please state your favorite thing about Denmark's old villain, Sweden. Most wars fought in history, if I recall correctly. Wrong answers are okay. IKEA of Swedish meatballs. The Swedish fish. Great. Swedish fish, yeah. Swedish chef. Lars von Trier. I don't know if he's Swedish. I don't think he's Swedish.
00:35:31
Speaker
So apologies for naming Lars von Trier.
00:35:33
Speaker
He's definitely Scandinavian of some kind. PewDiePie, Swedish, you know? Yeah. Sweden seems great. I'm going to be honest. Denmark also. I feel like Denmark and Denmark is great. You all know like seven languages. You have walker villages. Nice biking. A while high. That's crazy that you guys can function. Scandinavia always rates pretty highly in like global happiness in most happy countries and all that. There you go. Yes, I'd like to live in Norway for a while, perhaps.
00:36:04
Speaker
That was the next one. Zoratha gives two hour dollars and says, happy half birthday, six months to go for the full one. Oh my God. What are we going to do in November? We should be that mom. That always calculates their child's age in months. It's like five years.
00:36:24
Speaker
Half birthdays are kind of bullshit, aren't they? It's not enough to throw a party because you're giving birth to a kid, you've got to have a fucking baby shower, you've got to have a fucking
00:36:37
Speaker
gender reveal party now is just remember it either all this effort they're going to ring as many parties as they can out of this shit i think a half birthday for your first half birthday is fine i think a six month celebration is great i think an 18 month celebration is a little crazy one year from now if we're talking about how we've been doing this for 18 months you could timestamp this we were fucking we fucking lost in the sauce we can't be doing
00:37:04
Speaker
I would argue in favor of celebrating 18 months for a child because there are so many like, uh, milestones that occur around that time. Okay. Cause they're changing so quickly, right? At what point half birthdays have to go though. I would say after two, after two 18 months fine. Then like just yearly after that. Gotcha. There you go.
00:37:31
Speaker
Uhh, Niras25 gives 25 rons and says, what are some twist villains in games you like, villains that start out as good guys before revealing themselves as the baddies? Bioshock. Oh, that old chestnut. Uhh... That wasn't the phrase.
00:37:53
Speaker
I guess I like Monika in Doki Doki Literature Club. Everything seems fine. And spoilers, things are not fine. I also like a villain where it seems like all of existence hinges on this villain. Like fuck. Like Monica, I could just delete this game off my hard drive. This isn't good.
00:38:11
Speaker
Does Undertale have sort of things like that? Yeah, kinda. That's sort of what Flowey does in the neutral and boss fight. They sort of rewrite your saves, so every time you restart the game, it just takes you straight to the boss fight. And Flowey taunts you some more. Did you guys know Sans is named because of the font comic Sans and Papyrus is named because of the font Papyrus?
00:38:31
Speaker
Yes, I know that because I told you it this morning and blew your mind. Blew my goddamn mind. Marty. Did you know sans serif is called sans serif because it is without serif. Yeah. That fucking rushed me this morning. Let me tell you, 10, 10 a.m. this morning blew my mind out of the back of my goddamn head. Oh, okay. Well, did you go to an underfunded high school? I absolutely did. I absolutely did. That probably explains a few things.
00:39:03
Speaker
Uh, FoxD gives side dollars and says in 30 years of trying, gaming's never topped Kefka Palazzo as a villain. Best multi-stage boss 5, best music, best everything. Ooh. He's FoxD, he's letting his nostalgia do the talking, I fear. He is great. He is great. I don't know how I'm gonna go best everything, but having just replayed Final Fantasy 6, he's great.
00:39:24
Speaker
Right? Like, the first couple hours of the game, the dude fucking poisons the water well of a whole town. Everyone in town fucking dies, including the wife and child of one of your characters. Let's do some straight evil. Yeah. Yeah. They have some crazy poison. I don't know how much poison it was, but see, I had to be a lot of poison. Evil clowns are the best. Just a good joker throughout the entire outcome series. That's great. What about when the villain's a narrator, like Darkest Dungeon?
00:39:52
Speaker
That cool, sounding, awesome kickass June Moon or whatever his name is getting you through it. He's just trying to get you to kill him, essentially. There's this indie game, one of the 10,000 indie games coming out this week. It's called Crip Master. And that seems like it has a scary devil man who's your narrator. And I'm intrigued to play this game just because I want to know what this devil man's all about. Crip Master. He looks very scary. Fair enough.
00:40:29
Speaker
Yeah. Who's the bad guy of Dark Souls?
00:40:36
Speaker
Uh, the end of the world. Oh, entropy itself. Honestly, at the end, pretty much every boss is like a dude who wanted to do great things and was corrupted by their own ambition. Yeah. And then you have to fight the sad shell that remains. That's every boss. And they still kick your ass. Yeah. Yeah.
00:41:03
Speaker
Tommy Salty gives 10 PLNs and says, I like my villains with motivations and goals. Yeah. Give them a little taps. Give them a little taps. They don't need the ups. I mean, is there ever a villain in a game that's just like almost here? Well, then again, the Joker, the classic example of the villain who's just in it for the villainy. Yeah. The wildcard. An agent of chaos, as they say. They do say that.
00:41:34
Speaker
Robonop the Stomp gives 10 euros and says, I want a villain with Frost's voice, Yahtzee's wit, and Marty's cynicism, and a good song to boot. So I'm going with Danganronpa's true villain, if Frost sucked up Helium before talking they'd match.
00:41:56
Speaker
Me as cynical compared to last week's episode, Yahtzee was very optimistic and happy and smiling. Oh. Well, Ross Scott was there. I was in a good mood because I was looking to Ross Scott. Yeah, Ross every day. Fucking Mardi again. Get in my screen.
00:42:18
Speaker
Uh, Hawk abridging, gives 4.99. And speaking of nuanced villains, I finished We'll Leave the Galaxy on Friday. Great conclusion and was nice to see my theory from Destroy for Cash came true. I'm glad you enjoyed my book, Hawk abridging. Everyone else should buy it too. It's called We'll Leave the Galaxy for Good and is available and audible right now. And there's Danganronpa now. And a character with a disquietingly short skirt.
00:42:46
Speaker
Maybe this summer, you members of chat can join our Patreon at a certain tier and vote on Yahtzee's summer game, and maybe it could be Danganronpa this time. Well, that's up to them. What if it's just Crown Trigger again? That'd be great. Well, obviously that's not even going to be in the running, is it? Because that would be silly. But that's been so fun. It's the public's choosing.
00:43:09
Speaker
Where was I? Zoratha gives five R dollars and says, Maleficent. She's the mistress of all evil and what? She's not from games. She's in Kingdom Hearts, but she sucks there. How about Kefka then? There you go. That's two for Kefka. Proud of you, Kefka. Kingdom Hearts gets a little tricky. I was trying to even think of who my favorite villain in Kingdom Hearts is, and I'm going to be honest, I can't keep them all straight. There's a Xehanort. I think he's the main dude. I don't know what his deal is. There's too many games, too many villains.
00:43:40
Speaker
Well, it's all Disney villains, isn't it? Who's your favorite Disney villain? No, it's not all, they don't know. No, they're now all these original characters, dudes in black robes and fucking mirror images of people. Yeah, they all sort of blur together for me. I like Scar, because I like Jeremy Irons quite a bit. Scar the Lion from The Lion King. You like your gay-coded classic Disney villain? I absolutely do. Holy moly. Scar is wonderful.
00:44:06
Speaker
That's just a Disney villain. I think a Scar Ursula back to back. Hachimachi. Yeah. I think there's a super chat further down the line that will address this if we can talk about it more. Wonderful. Flixiebig4.99 and says, hello to the guy who recognized my second wind founder shirt at Uffington Scarecrow Festival yesterday. Don't ask. Keep up the awesome work, everyone. I'm glad to know Uffington has a festival in celebration of my favorite Batman villain, Flixiebig.
00:44:35
Speaker
Except in Arkham Knight. Do not talk about it. What is up again? I think it's a town in England. I clicked it and it's literally just, it is literally just a scarecrow festival. It seems early in the year for scarecrow festivals don't seem like they should be in May. They seem like they should be in October. Do they get Killian Murphy in as the keynote speaker? That would be the coup, wouldn't it?
00:45:00
Speaker
This guy. I'm scared of being noticed by the apparel that we wear. Like our own merchandise.
00:45:08
Speaker
So the things that are at the Uffington Scarecrow Festival include stuff like ice cream, dog shows, welly wanging, bric-a-brac stalls, and fire engine and police car with a little note saying that unless emergencies occur. So it seems like the top has like one police car at once. They're not going to be here if something starts on fire. Would you like me to explain welly wanging to you? Please do. Please do, yeah.
00:45:37
Speaker
It's a game in which you attempt to throw a rubber boot the furthest. Rubber boots known locally as wellies in the United Kingdom. Just chucking your boots. Just chucking a wellie. Because they're basically boomerang shaped. Does it have to come back?
00:45:56
Speaker
Oh, there he is. Look at that. He's just flinging your boots. It's just like caper tossing. Whoever throws it furthest wins. Of course. Just like caper tossing. Phenomenal. They fly pretty well, Willys. Fungus Finder gives $2 and says Anti-Spiral was cool, but Lord Janome was cooler. Oh, don't know who either of those characters are. I'm assuming they're anime villains. Anti-Spiral.
00:46:25
Speaker
Lord genome, um, Lord genome, uh, Simon versus Oh, Gurren login. Yep. Cold it. What's that? Uh, that's an anime. I watched one episode of it and then I stopped watching and people got angry at me. Oh, and the more they got angry at me, the least likely I am to continue it. Well, he just wants to keep just his nose poking out. That's the thing.
00:46:54
Speaker
Uh, Fox D gives $5 to some of my fave villains, the ones that come from emergent gameplay, the rival teams clean up hitter in a baseball game or bears in medieval dynasty. Okay. And ruin bears and Elden ring. I like the idea of people playing sports games enough to where they hate a specific player because like that player fucking owns them. Like that sounds great. That's probably how people get into sports. Yeah. Mm-hmm.
00:47:24
Speaker
Uh, Hawker Bridging gives $1.99 and says, Jack from Puss Pussin Boots 2, my favorite over-the-top villain. Well, that's not a video game, Hawker Bridging. They might've made it into a game. They're like a Game Boy Advance, like Porter or something. Wait, Jack, it wasn't Last Wish? That was a really recent movie, wasn't
Listener's College Anxiety and Comfort from Podcast
00:47:44
Speaker
it? That was a good movie. No, that was Puss Pussin Boots 3, like Last Wish, right? That was the third one, yeah.
00:47:50
Speaker
I actually don't know. That was the only one I saw. It was very good. Okay. Hushdanks7170 gives a hundred rupees and says, finishing college is making me very anxious over my future. I'm watching you guys has helped a lot in dealing with it. Thank you all so much for it. Oh, thank you so much, Hushdank. I was going to throw it and you wonder why was I even anxious to begin with? Yeah. Yeah. Like we were anxious about breaking off from the escapist and now we've made it. You know what they call puss in boots in the UK?
00:48:21
Speaker
Well, he's a very specific kind of boot. Like a Doc Martin? No.
Exploration of Villain Archetypes and Nuances
00:48:38
Speaker
Yeah. A gloss is, this is a Willy basically a rain boot, a gum boot, whatever you call this. Hmm.
00:48:49
Speaker
Still Otaku gives five Canadian dollars and says, has a villain ever ruined a game or a series for you? Say a nod from Kingdom Hearts annoys me because of how feeble his ideals were when he got beaten.
00:49:01
Speaker
Well I already said Scarecrow Knocked Night. A villain ruined a game. No, not sure, but I do dislike whenever I clearly just whooped his ass but then the cutscene comes through and I was the one that was losing. Yeah, I hate that. That's another thing that happens in anime games a lot.
00:49:24
Speaker
Ruined? See, I wouldn't say Far Cry 3 was ruined by the bigger villain, but I do wish it had ended, it was. I mean, I can say a similar thing about the first Bioshock, too, is the final encounter of the game is very dumb. Yeah, that was weird, wasn't it? Out of everything, all this, like, subterfuge and all this sneakiness, and then in the end, it's just, I guess, like Joker and...
00:49:48
Speaker
It was a lot of asylum, was it? Yeah, like Fontaine Final Boss Fight was like a last minute change, I think. I think originally the game was supposed to end not long after the Andrew Ryan encounter, but the publisher said, you gotta have a Final Boss Fight. Dumb. So, yeah. Yeah, I agree, because the whole way he's characterized all the way through that game, it doesn't make the slightest bit of sense that he'd suddenly start getting high on his own supply. Yeah.
00:50:16
Speaker
Ernesto gives $5 and says, I think the modern PS4 games, except AC6, do suffer a bit from not having a villain. Bosses are more like roadblocks. Any thoughts?
00:50:28
Speaker
Well, that's the thing is like, depending on how you view it, everyone's a villain. Everyone could essentially be you the villain. So like, yeah, the world is dying. We're all just fighting to be the last thing standing. And then we're just gonna go to sleep and die, I suppose. Yeah, that's the thing. You're somebody's bad guy. Like always.
00:50:48
Speaker
Yeah. Or if there's like more depth to them, you kind of usually, or I personally don't get it on an initial run of the game, uh, because I kind of need to either go through it again or watch like one of Vati's videos or iron pineapple or any lore master and be like, so what's, what's the deal with all these characters? And then I hear about them like, Oh damn. Yeah, that they sound pretty deep. I did not get any of that on my first place. I do like having to work, uh, sort of to,
00:51:13
Speaker
Get rid of the villainy while maybe I'm questionable, be it Dark Souls, be it Suicide Squad. I like the premise, not the game. And then Cuphead, that's a funny one where it's like, we can get you out of this contract, but you got to be slaying people until the bison time. Stop gambling. It's all about the horrors of gambling. Walk away.
00:51:36
Speaker
Mattia Gagliardi gives five euros and says, this is in all media, but I hate when a calm secondary character reveals to be the villain and goes full cartoonishly evil mode. I'll say the opposite of that is you get those characters that are just like, yes, let's help them. Yes, just blatantly. I'll tell you what leapt to mind when you talked about going full cartoonish evil. Mattia Gagliardi is Zelda Twilight Princess.
00:52:04
Speaker
Remember the dude in the weird armor suit? Zant? Yeah, who's like this calm Darth Vader villain for the longest time. Yeah. And then suddenly turns into whatever the fuck was going on there. Like Christopher Lloyd at the end of Who Framed Roger Rabbit mode.
00:52:24
Speaker
Yeah, I feel like Zelda kinda has a main villain problem as a whole. I obviously love the series, one of my favorite series ever.
00:52:36
Speaker
I don't know a lot of times it kind of fumbles villains to me it has really good boss fights or it has like a really good like but by the end of this I'm fighting Ganon I guess but like I don't know he's just kind of in the way yeah just sort of they always feel sort of like handcuffed to the whole Ganon has to be the final boss thing yeah the you know the tenth the temporary villain has to stand aside eventually
00:53:01
Speaker
Um, Liza P can't have that issue a little bit with their multiple endings where you're just like, okay, everything else in context kind of only makes sense with this one ending, right? Uh, metroidvania is in a way kind of do that too, where they'll have these characters that are almost
00:53:19
Speaker
I go, okay, what was with all the weird sinister laughing? It's like, oh, it's because it's a different ending. That makes sense. Like you were actually the bad guy if I had gotten to the third ending. Yeah. Yeah. A little plug and play there. Dr. Theo gives $2 and says, favorite villains are the ones that are gay coded. As in every single Disney villain from the nineties. Yes. Yeah. My great anime villains. So good.
00:53:46
Speaker
How do you feel about a villain that is a character overcoming something inside of themselves?
00:53:52
Speaker
I don't want to bring up Persona again, but I'm going to bring up Persona 4 this time. I like that each of the villains along the way is a character's shadow. That is a character having to come to terms with their flaws or their fears or their baggage. Well, it's certainly one way to gamify a fairly standard narrative character arc, the classic part of the hero's journey, the overcoming of the self.
00:54:20
Speaker
For some reason I'm thinking of the dude from Condemned 2, who's like the embodiment of your alcoholism. I think they literally call him the alcohol demon. And you have to have a sort of symbolic boss fight with him at one point. The hooch demon. Why do you feel, speaking of the body movements? Oh yeah, like bad, bad-assed. Is that what they call her? No. That'll line, that'll line.
00:54:45
Speaker
You're overcoming your own depression and alcoholism. Yes, Celeste. We haven't done the traditional bingo card filling out of talking about Silent Hill yet. How do you feel about Silent Hill? Cheers. See, I don't really classify anything in Silent Hill 2 as a villain.
00:55:06
Speaker
for much the reasons you describe. I mean, James Sunderland, it turns out he did a bad thing. But I don't think I'd say he's the villain of the piece. Yeah. I mean, I don't think Pyramid Head is either because he's literally just doing what James's subconscious says to do. He's just a janitor. Yeah. It doesn't have a clear cut, whereas Silent Hills one, three and four definitely have clear cut like, oh, yeah, this is who the bad guy is in this.
00:55:36
Speaker
I do like how Silent Hill 4 does it. Cause like you're in the villain's head from the beginning, almost literally. In contrast to Silent Hill 2, where like your subconscious is being reflected by the form Silent Hill takes. In Silent Hill 4, it's based around the subconscious of the villain rather than the protagonist. So you're the Walter Sullivan. I'm not condoning kid killing, but what if we kill this little kid?
00:56:04
Speaker
Just one. Just hear me out. Just one. Could you bring yourself to Strangle Baby Hitler? Sure. No, I-
00:56:18
Speaker
Yeah, you could strangle baby Hitler. I'm of the idea where like, that's as stable as a timeline gets, the one with Hitler in it, and it's only worse if you had. What if we do this? What if we train a baby assassin to kill Hitler? And then it's less weird because the baby is killing someone their own age. Just baby genius now.
00:56:41
Speaker
So you just train a baby to like climb up and sit on another baby's face until they suffocate? Little Jason Bourne. Oh, yeah. Oh, nice. Jason Bourne.
00:56:56
Speaker
Jason Bourne yesterday. The pissbandit gives $10 and says, I like Dr. Wily a lot. He's not the most complex villain or has a very compelling reason to be a villain, but him being responsible for everything going to shit in the Mega Man timeline is great. What a good look. It's got a good villain look. It's got its big eyebrows. It's got a big mustache. It creates a bunch of robots to throw at you. How I feel about Revenge, the you killed my father.
00:57:28
Speaker
So now in this iteration, in the sequel, I will now chase you down and try to kill you. So like the literal Last of Us 2 villain, Abby. Revenge is like a potent motivation, right? Well, you know what they say, before you seek revenge, dig two graves. Think about it. If I figure out you, I'm pointing for me. No points like that. No points like this.
00:57:56
Speaker
It's very hard to point a while back at yourself. Who was it? Why point like that? I think it's very easy to portray a revenge-seeking character as not quite having thought things through and it's sort of just sort of acting off of Emotion because they are I mean, there's no I mean, you know two wrongs that make a right and all that Yeah, and when you're when you're that angry, you're not you're not thinking clearly
00:58:20
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, obviously you'd want someone who killed your dad to be brought to justice, but to want to strangle them to death with your own hands, that's where you've probably gone a little bit off the deep end. Are we the baddies over there? I'd say so. I mean, no one's ever killed my dad, so I can't really... Can't relate. Relate. Dr. Thioges2.0 says, maybe the true villains are the friends we made.
00:58:49
Speaker
Aww. Those are fun. A nice, like, just, swap reveal. It was me!
00:58:56
Speaker
was Agatha all along. I would like a game where like you kind of, imagine the nemesis system, but it goes off of how you treat your friends too. And so like they start to maybe turn on you. Like you treat one guy as a pack mule and he's like, fuck it, I have your weapons now. Why won't I just use them? Yeah. You hit on one of their girlfriends at a mutual friends party and they start working with the villain.
00:59:25
Speaker
Who knows? Ooh, now see, now that could be interesting where like they're feeding them information. Yeah. So now like it's messing with your plans. You shouldn't have banged my wife. Yeah. Justified. Just because you could.
00:59:42
Speaker
Uh, witticism gives $5 and says big fan of the dragon from Dragon's Dogma 1, spoiler, he offers a deal but he's so smarmy you wanna kill him. And that starts the apocalypse. Whoops. I don't trust any dragons, if I'm being honest. I don't trust a single goddamn dragon. Just Spyro for me? I trust Spyro, nevermind. He was raised by dragonflies, you know? Yeah. Would you trust Puff the Magic Dragon? Sure, yeah, he lives by the sea.
01:00:09
Speaker
Trollex in the automation. Oh, I see. Well, we know he can afford the price used real estate then. Yeah, but you know when fucking climate change is coming for that house. It's going to sink right into the ocean. Oh, do you think he lives in Florida? The magic dragon has a share house in Miami. What is it? Um. Timeshare. Sorry, that was the word I was after. Thank you.
01:00:37
Speaker
Alex Armstrong gives $5. Sometimes I want a complex villain with a detailed backstory, and at other times a simple 90s douche going, I like crime and money is all I need for a fun time. Yeah, I don't mind an occasion where it's just a real dumb villain, just a real dumb villain who's just like a dog that's excited about getting what it wants. Oh, did you ever play Cave Story? I did play Cave Story, yeah. I was thinking of the suitcase boss villain. There you go. Yeah. Yeah, who's just really dumb. Yeah.
01:01:06
Speaker
Give me a nice, uh, jumbly wobbly gives two sizes. Come on yards. Villain talk at no undertale tusk. You mentioned flowey flow. We did talk. We did talk about everyone about the virus. We could be the bad guys. You know, it's got everything. And then like the established bad guy becomes eventually terrified of you. Yeah. So much worse than him. I accidentally started a genocide run and didn't know.
01:01:35
Speaker
Well, that's surprising because you kind of have to work at it to get the genocide run. Do you? I swear I was, I was, I was trying to talk them down and, but I kept getting the same options. So I guess I'll just hit them. And then I went, well, I've hit the other ones. I might as well hit the rest. Well, can you get the genocide run if you hang around an area long enough for random encounters to stop happening? Cause then, Oh yeah. Cause I was grinding.
01:02:01
Speaker
I was. Because if you're crying for long enough eventually it'll do like they're having counter noise and then like a capital drop saying but nobody came.
01:02:11
Speaker
I'm very smart. I know that game is full of that stuff, but that's just a really smart version of how you normally think in our game. Yeah. Games that present themselves as spreadsheets. I do see his number go up. So whoopsie. Yeah. Cause then like, that's how you get to the genocide run. You literally kill everything until there's nothing left. I'm more surprised we haven't mentioned, uh, GLaDOS portal.
01:02:35
Speaker
Oh yeah. Uh, well they're good cause they're funny. They're funny. They're dramatic while being in hindsight with two, they become tragic. Also still being insane. Yeah.
01:02:51
Speaker
Eric Weikart, the editor, the producer rather, comes along with 50 arses and says, an idea to celebrate six months of second wind? Let's watch Disney's Beverly Hills Chihuahua trilogy with Yahtzee. Please know these aren't good. Well, I did float an idea ages ago that maybe we could do a podcast where I watch a movie and then talk to Darren and maybe someone else about it. Could you recover from the three hours of not gaming?
01:03:18
Speaker
Yeah. We'll find you something that's a tight 90, a tight 90 minutes. I feel like it would be pretty easy to squeeze like a 90 minute movie into the weekly schedule somewhere. Sure. What are your thoughts on Austin Powers? Well, I've seen Austin Powers. I didn't always not watch movies. How good is Austin Powers? I think about Austin Powers a lot. It's great. Well, sure. The first one's pretty good, but then they just wanted to make that film again three times.
01:04:05
Speaker
Cause Zappa isn't really a Greek letter, but it is the name of Frank Zappa's daughter, Moon Unit Zappa. Oh, that's clever. Frank Zappa's daughter, he literally named her Moon Unit. That's a terrible, yeah. Why would you? That's neglect. Why would you do that? Well, firstly, his name is Frank Zappa and I think that pretty much tells you everything you need to know about him. Yes, that's true. Why double down?
01:04:08
Speaker
Yeah, but more British every time.
01:04:31
Speaker
Robonop the snob gives five euros and says 40 minutes in and Yahtzee hasn't mentioned Pyramid Head yet. We mentioned it after you sent that super chat. He's not a bad guy, he's just a social worker. He's just an aspect of James' own subconscious that's doing the job that's been assigned to him. He sees himself as this big fruit. Which is why it's so dumb that they keep bringing him back for future games as fanservice.
01:04:59
Speaker
Yeah, he does not exist without James. What if that's his story? The sexiness is too. Pyramid Head's his fursona. Look, there's a lot of complex lore I could go into here, but I don't want to drag things out too much. But there's a reason why he looks like he does, and there's a reason why James imagines his brutal, ultra-masculine subconscious self as him. He saw the best pro shop pyramid once. If you could go back in time, would you kill Baby Pyramid Head?
01:05:28
Speaker
How would you even straggle him? He's got a whole goddamn pyramid out of his eyes. He's got a neck. Let's go get under it. Well, I guess you just have to give James Sunderland a lobotomy because as we established, he is just born out of James's subconscious. Folks. Oh, missed one. Conflux Fighter gives $2 and says Handsome Jack.
01:05:48
Speaker
Which wasn't much of a super chat, but it was their very first one, so let's encourage him. Congrats! Is Handsome Jack the antagonist of all three borderlances? No, just the second one, I think. There you go. Well, yeah, yeah, yeah. Just number two, and he hates you the entire time, and he's smarter and cleverer and more handsome than you, but it's all a facade.
01:06:10
Speaker
I think in Borderlands 3, the villains were influencers. Yes, they were. They were streamers. Yeah. Um, no. The true villains. Uh, FoxD, you can sign dollars. There's half birthdays, get a remake, stroke, rebirth, stroke, encore version when you're 16 and a half and can get a driver's license in Massachusetts. 16 and a half in Massachusetts?
01:06:32
Speaker
That's really, it seems really dumb and arbitrary. Why is that? It's too close. 16 is too close to 15. We want you well over the line. I bought the Kennedys. They had something to do with it. You imagined you got into an accident. 16 and a half. Raising it up by six months. I think you have to be 17 to get a driver's license in England. Yeah, but you can also drink by then.
01:06:59
Speaker
at 18. You can have sex by then. Age of consent in England is 16. For the longest time, the heterosexual age of consent was 16 and the homosexual age of consent was 18. And that's only got changed relatively recently.
01:07:15
Speaker
Strange habit I'm not going to get into. But yeah, are you sure about this? Are you sure you're sure? That's weird. That's so weird. No one could really justify the difference between ages of consent except, you know, Nietzsche, conservative, wattage-ness. So strange compromise, sure. Yeah. Diane Spencer gives, oh, missed one again, the book to her dead uncle,
01:07:43
Speaker
gives five euros and says Yahtzee have you ever considered doing unique five in your yearly top bottom bland like the opposite of bland unique doesn't equal good or bad it's enough pain in the arse just doing 15 bloody games i mean that just promotes novelty doesn't it like ooh you control this game with just your elbows yeah i mean that's that's a gimmick
01:08:08
Speaker
What is the most unique game either of you have played this year? Unique? Oh god. Children of the Sun, possibly? Possibly. For this year, yeah. That or... Yellow Taxi? Yellow Taxi. Yeah. Balatro. Seems kinda... Yeah. Actually, that'll do it. Yep. Yeah.
01:08:27
Speaker
Day right there. There's a lot of uniqueness. Hang on. Just do you wait until Star Trek Vagabond comes out? Star Trek Vagabond. That's a unique approach to cozy live sim gameplay that I'm showing you. Like, Nancy, when can we play it? You can play it on May 24th, which is its announced release date. And also happens to be my birthday. That's why we picked it. Oh my God. So now you can all get me a birthday present by buying my game.
01:08:57
Speaker
Oh my god. I won't be at your party because I'll be playing your game. Go like and subscribe on. That's fine, I hate parties. I just want to sleep in and eat cake on my birthday. Uh, Diane Spencer gives 50 pounds. Speaking of my bullshit, says, thank you, Yahtzee, for such a fantastic book. I've already listened to it twice, your best book yet.
01:09:20
Speaker
That would be, we'll leave the galaxy for good. You're talking about Diane Spencer, which is available for multiple right now. Do you think it's your best book? Do you have a favorite book of yours? Yes, it's always my most recent book that I've written to encourage more sales. Do you have a favorite review of yours?
01:09:38
Speaker
Well, I do like to brag occasionally that there's a couple of very glowing reviews of a couple of my books on Goodreads written by Patrick Rothfuss. Wow. He's an author. I know. He writes his own books. He's a pretty famous author. I've read his book. He's praised my books on Goodreads. So yeah, I must be really good at writing books. What's he write? He wrote the King Killer books. Yeah. Name of the wind.
01:10:09
Speaker
I've read name of the wind. I haven't read any more cause I kind of wasn't really vibing with it. He's going to take you back. Well, you know, other people seem to like him. You know where he's from? Madison, Wisconsin, Wisconsin zone, the big three, Wisconsin, me, Jack, Pedro, and donkey, the big four and Willem Dafoe, the big five and Jeff and Jeffrey Dahmer, Jeffrey Dahmer.
01:10:40
Speaker
Man, Patrick Ruppfuss looks distractingly like Brian Blessed these days. Hashtag Brian Blessed. I don't know who that is. And he played the Hawkman from Flash Gordon. Scram! You know, Gordon's alive! That guy. I just caught like 20 minutes of Flash Gordon on TV yesterday.
01:11:02
Speaker
Which one? There was the movie. The more modern, the Queen one, the Queen soundtrack one. Yeah, that one. That's what I'm talking about. The Queen's English. Yeah. That's the one Brian Blessed's in. There you go. AZK gives $5 and then message retracted. Oh, mysterious. I have it down here though. Do you want to embarrass them with it? I mean, it's totally fine. Yeah. Is this illegal if I say it?
01:11:27
Speaker
They retracted it, I don't know. I don't know if they retracted it. They didn't retract it in time for me to grab it. Well, you can read it out if you want. Well, it was very nice. I want more games like The Witcher that let you roleplay as an expert in a field doing your job. I love things about people being good at their jobs. Well, there's a lot of simulator games in that way too. Unfortunately, they simulate you being bad at these jobs. So yeah, I'm with that. It's difficult to gap that mastery.
01:11:56
Speaker
Well, it wasn't relevant to the theme, but thanks anyway, is it okay? Maybe that's why you've embarrassed him, Marty. Oh, I shouldn't have read it. I'm sorry. Alex Armstrong gives $10 and says, Bowser's a classic villain. Yes, he's one track minded with kidnapping pitch, but at least his motivation never wavers and doesn't mind being called a villain. Robotnik, though, all he wants is a theme park. Who's the most recent villain icon in gaming?
01:12:22
Speaker
Because I was saying the other day, there's no more mascots. Are there no more villains too? The closest anything comes to a mascot is each big IP releasing their own things like Genshin. All of those are mascots for Genshin players and Apex Legends, all that kind of stuff. I'm going to go down all my recent episodes and tell you the one that has the most memorable villain in it. Final Fantasy still, Sephora.
01:12:50
Speaker
He's just your dad. He's just kind of a knob. He's a knob. He's kind of a knob. Would it be one of the party tonight guys? I guess. That's 2013, don't you give me that. That's so long, you know. There's got to be something since then. Lady D here. Was she naughty? She was only in the game for like an hour and a half. Mr. Scratch from Alan Wake.
01:13:19
Speaker
Scratch is pretty cool. Yeah. Okay. No, no, you mentioned it. I'm going down all my recent reviews and if it's not like an established IP, like Mortal Kombat or Suicide Squad, then yeah, there isn't really like an iconic villain in any of these games. There's your next Sammy Rambo right there. Literally no more heroes, no more villains. Oh, no more villains. Well, I was looking for a topic to write up this week. Mm-hmm. Perhaps that'll do.
01:13:48
Speaker
Incredible. Big lady from Resident 8 now. I mean, the thing about Lady Demetresk is she, everyone liked her, how she looked.
01:13:57
Speaker
but like she didn't, well, like what, she didn't really have anything going. She was like, she was like the first area boss. She was like, she did the following you around thing, just less interesting than other characters. Yeah. People were just sort of speed walked after you. Like she was cornering you at the Walmart to demand to speak to the manager. Oh God. Uber Karen. Yeah.
01:14:25
Speaker
It's got him thinking, look at him, he's like, wow, no villains.
01:14:29
Speaker
Divorce in a, it takes two marital strife is the true villain. Divorce. I'm also coming out. Dimension now. I liked Odin in God of War Ragnarok. I thought his performance was very good. Don't call in Odin. God, no, I can't not see that. He's just Toby Ziegler from the West Wing. He's just that incredible. Uh, I guess bomb rush cyber funk had a villain.
01:14:58
Speaker
Yeah, I don't really remember it. See all of the things with actual original villains, the villains tend to be either, you know, vaguely redemptive figures, like even like Yellow Taxi Goes Vroom has like a cartoon villain who's like Elon Musk, the mad scientist, but he sort of turns good at the end. Well, it was the last one that's just operatic commits to it goes for it.
01:15:23
Speaker
Yeah. I don't know. Hmm. Anyway. Off we go. Uh, fill my ass up, gives 50 Norwegian Chrono, and says, I kind of think the best villains are the ones you feel sorry for, like their actions are a result of desperation and their defeats stick longer. Yeah. Well, you get behind that. Okay.
01:15:46
Speaker
Uh, Laura, welcome to sponsor free videos. Thank you, Laura. And then Laura gives a $10 super chat to say big boss for Metal Gear MGS3 underrated, in my opinion. Wait, are you talking about the boss or big boss? Well, the boss is the Metal Gear Solid 3, but the whole reason big boss is called big boss is because he surpassed the boss. Oh, Laura had a much later has a super chat that just says I meant Metal Gear Solid 4. Oh, okay.
01:16:18
Speaker
Well, Big Boss only shows up right at the end, but then he just drops the dead. Who's this one? Eric's showing up too late now. That's Big Boss. The one with the eye patch is Big Boss. The lady in the flowers that you fight. That's the boss. That's no boss. Which isn't a villain or like it's like the probably the most tragic boss fight. Yeah.
01:16:38
Speaker
Metal Gear is great. I just want to say it. Oh, Higgs. Remember Troy Baker in Death Stranding? That was like six years ago. I don't know why I brought that up. I'm trying to think of recent ones.
01:16:49
Speaker
AZK gives side orders and says, is the Sony thing an example of an industry that'll learn anything tee hee hee? Referring to Sony attempting to mandate linking PlayStation Network accounts for Helldivers 2 and, as of yesterday, backtracking on that after massive fan outcry? Well, all I'm going to say about it is wait and see now, because Sony have shown their true colours.
01:17:17
Speaker
They're just waiting for everyone to forget about this so they can try their next bullshit money making scheme. That'd be interesting, especially if they don't wait too long. It's also next week. Traditionally they do this and that'd be the outcry then they'd like backtrack on it. But then someone else would do it and everyone was too exhausted from the last outcry so it just becomes normalized. Yeah. Or the compromise is something that's still worse off than it was a week ago.
01:17:46
Speaker
Mark Eyster gives 3,360 somethings and says, here's to the sixth month of second wind and for many more to come. Yeah. Well, well, you know how you can help with that. You can subscribe to the Patreon by going to patreon.com slash second wind.
Podcast Support and Gaming Critiques
01:18:02
Speaker
Oh, I'm not done talking generally now. Now you can ensure that there are many more months to come is subscribe to the Patreon like smart people like Mark Eyster, who gives us money.
01:18:14
Speaker
We ain't running a fucking charity. We've got salaries. I've got to feed my child, Jamaite. He likes his ice cream. You gotta get him some Wollies to wag. Was that what it was called? Wellies. Wellies to wang. Wellies to wang.
01:18:34
Speaker
What happened? Where'd Frost go? Where'd Frost go? Frost, come back. What just happened? You're back! Mazel tov! There he is. Mazel tov. Man, Eric, you were quick on the draw to turn that into three people. That was really impressive. You lost me, Wally. What was it? I lost my Wally wag!
01:18:50
Speaker
Well he wang. Uh, Yellow Cheese gives 15 Norwegian krona and says the master from the original Fallout is might be my favorite from a combination of ideology, voice acting, and how much dialogue interesting he has. Oh, the master. Shame he's got the same name as a Doctor Who villain, because that's the only one I can think of. That's what I thought, yeah. Do, uh, the Skyrim of bad guy? Is it just dragons?
01:19:18
Speaker
I don't even know. Yeah, there's like a main dragon you kill at the end, isn't there? Is that the one voiced by Mario? What's in there? Charles Martinet? Charles Martinet? I don't know. That is him, yeah. One of them is voiced by him. He goes, he's to me. Uh, Alex Armstrong gives side orders and says, playing Stardew Valley first time to get prepped for Starstruck Vagabond, but I'm too blind. Any wrong way to play? Time limits? Friendship goals? Grind?
01:19:48
Speaker
Uh, no, I wouldn't say there's a wrong way to play Starstruck Vagabond. The whole game's set up to be like, just do your thing, and wherever you go, there'll be always be new things to do. I love things. Things are great. Love them, thanks. Uh, Yellow Cheese gives 50 Norwegian Chrono and says, also, the Enclave from Fallout 2 has some of the funniest interactions I've had in a game. Where is you, Power Armor, from The Sergeant Always Gets Me?
01:20:17
Speaker
I feel like I'm always out of the loop when it comes to Fallout things, because all I know about Fallout is the TV show, and I enjoyed the TV show. I've played Fallout 3 and Fallout 4, but I still don't really understand most of the references from 1 and 2. You never played 1 and 2? No, I never played 1 and 2. I think I've played... I started playing 1, but just sort of lost interest. I don't really like... Oh yeah, I've played 76.
01:20:46
Speaker
Brought for a time and then stopped as one does with live services. Now they don't really go anywhere. That's a live service. Exactly. Yeah. Well, that's only six famously the live service that everybody hated. Oh, I thought it was just like, here's like a tiny little single player. And then it's just always here. No, they were trying to get on the crafting survival bandwagon. Oh dear God.
01:21:15
Speaker
Anyway, Alex Armstrong gives $2 and says, Metal Sonic, best rival, though dangerous and emotionless. I like a nice Metal Sonic. And first time you fight from Sonic 2, they don't give you any fucking rings. No. I don't know. Which is a pain in the ass. How about The Hand and Smash? Is that a villain? Master Hand? Yeah, it's supposed to be like The Hand of Sakurai. Playing with all of his toys. Sonic 2 is Metasonic, not Metal Sonic.
01:21:43
Speaker
mecha sonic is way different than metal sonic you f***ing do this. Forgive me. Simpleton. Oh well. Simpleton. Apologies for not studying up on f***ing deep sonic lore before this.
01:22:00
Speaker
Jewel Rowe, a member of the Two Months in Tip Jar, thank you very much, and then says, maybe the bestestestest villain is yourself. Dun dun duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu
01:22:22
Speaker
Uh, FoxD gives hydrogen says universal rule of fiction killing Hitler equals worse outcome loophole pull strings to get Hitler into art school with a scholarship. I think his problems were deeper seated than not getting into art school vegan. Yeah, I force feed him a few cheeseburgers mellow him out a bit. Put them on the right path. Yeah.
01:22:49
Speaker
Mel Surigan gives $10 and says, a robot named Fight has a lovely bad guy in the form of the Megabeast. Instead of one PC bringing it down, it is implied that multiple heroes had to rally and bring it down, hence the roguelite. Oh, that's interesting. I like that. I like the name of the game a robot named Fight. I think that's a good name for a game. It's nice to see an actually interesting name in indie games these days.
01:23:15
Speaker
running out of names. That'd be crazy this year. Bellato, Taxi Goes Vroom, meme name, but still. Yeah, those are the, those are the two names you remember. Endica. Reminds me of weed. Sativa. Yeah. Yes, he knows. Thank you, Eric. Thank you for bringing the point across in an appropriate way.
01:23:40
Speaker
SP rocks gives $5 and says long time viewer here. Just got my PC back from the repair shops. So I figured I'd celebrate with a small donation to my favorite podcast. Oh, thanks. Give a small donation to us. You bastard. We're the ones. Oh, it's his favorite podcast. He gave money to Marin. Oh, we're his favorite podcast. Oh, Rogan experience. Dance undefeated.
01:24:09
Speaker
Alex Armstrong gives $2 and says, MST 3K second wind edition, new monthly funding goal. MST 3K was actually a very tightly scripted show. Probably a lot of work goes into making that.
01:24:25
Speaker
Because if you don't, it's very easy for that sort of thing to turn into some asshole talking over the film in the cinema who thinks they're missing. I don't want to be some assholes. It would be us, the assholes. Yeah. Us being assholes. Us, comma, the assholes. Us, comma, the asshole. Yeah. Jumbly Wobbly gives side orders and says, Yahtzee watches a film each month and reports to Darren. Put the funding goal up, chief. We have a winner. Every month now we're getting a little crazy. He's going to put you through like Dune.
01:24:54
Speaker
I don't even know where we'd slot that podcast in. I mean, we've already got a new one starting this week. This Friday at noon, dev heads be there. Oh, I podcast about game dev. I can't wait.
01:25:12
Speaker
Easy Cave gives $5 and says, does Arkham Game Joker count? Mark Hamill not limited by the children's cartoon format. Yeah, I'd say Joker in the Arkham games is a very good villain in video games. Until the final fight. That's just any other PlayStation bad guy. Yeah. He just turns into a monster. But aside from that, he was great.
01:25:36
Speaker
I think it's sort of more justified than the biogenic example. Cause at that point he had like the thing that turns people into monsters and he just turned himself into one. Cause he was just kind of bored at the end. He was like, ah, fuck it. This is, this is feels like a very agent of chaos thing to do. Yeah. Laura gives $2 and says, I meant MGS four. Okay. Thank you, Laura. Thanks, Laura.
01:26:03
Speaker
The dogmatic director gives $2 and says, on note of Starstruck Vagabond, any chance at a dev diary revival? Yeah, Yahtzee, when are you going to make a game a month again, huh? Yahtzee makes a lot of videos for Yahtzee. Look, the semi-ramble of Yahtzee, formerly extra punctuation, was the replacement for dev diary. I literally can't squeeze any more into my schedule.
01:26:27
Speaker
You sound like the fucking escapist CEOs right now. Oh my god. Say, why couldn't he make three zero punctuations a week? What could possibly be stopping him from doing that? He's got kids. Brilliant. So train them. Besides the need to sleep.
01:26:47
Speaker
Oh, I am actually probably gonna guest on the DevHeads podcast to talk about Starstruck Vagabond when it comes out. There you go. Keep an eye out for that. That'll be an honorary dev diary. Jeremy Golurk goes side dollars and says, to quote an old demotivational poster, just because you are unique does not mean you are useful. Wow.
01:27:10
Speaker
I'm here to be entertained, not to find new ways to open eggs, really. Jeremy Goeller, I bet you're one of those people who goes around modern art galleries going, ugh, my kid could have done that. Could have well done. Things don't have to be useful to be worth having, you know. Well, they were standing up for you for the not needing to have a top five unique games. Oh, OK. Well, I talk to you anyway. It's my thing.
01:27:36
Speaker
My brand. Uh, Robonov the Snob gives 10 euros and says, not afraid Blooberty might create an awful origin story for Pyramid Head, like revealing he's actually an Egyptian architect so passionate about his job that he carries on his duty of creating tombs. I'd love that. I really would. I would give him the Maleficent treatment of like, Oh, you know, she's traumatized. Cruella may have killed a hundred dogs, but it's always fucking trauma, isn't it?
01:28:05
Speaker
Trauma again. Tsunami Dushi gives $20. There's greetings, gentlemen. Yahtzee, I've heard you talk about Pyramid Head in Sion Hill 2 for decades, including your Sion Hill 2's EP. Are you ever going to completely deconstruct Pyramid Head for us in entirety or have an essay, you'd cosign? Yeah, you and Hbomberguy. The big... People have been writing essays about Sion Hill 2 for decades. I would really just be adding to the noise at this point.
01:28:31
Speaker
I don't think I'd have had any particularly unique insights in that area. All right. A handful of games. It just feels like everything that's been said about them has been said. Oh, toffee thinks my hand is tasty. Oh, that's toffee right there. So what is toffee thoughts on pyramid? He thinks that everyone should join our Patreons so he can have more food in his tummy. Incredible. Can't you tell? What you calling your dog fat?
01:28:59
Speaker
He is, actually. We've had to cut down his food because he was putting on the pounds. Oh yeah, Toffee. And because the kids keep throwing discarded sandwich crusts at him. And we tell them to stop, but they keep doing it because it's fun to watch Toffee eating their food, I guess.
01:29:21
Speaker
Circai25 gives $10 and says, not related to the topic, but I just wanted to thank Yahtzee for his latest book, great wrap-up to the series, and quite the surprise ending. Wow. Yeah, and if you want to get in on that conversation, you'll have to buy it yourself. From Audible.com. I hope it's like you, Reader, were the bad guy the whole time. Mmm. Error0 gives Fire of Canadian Dollars and says, I want more comedy villains like Volkov from No One Lives Forever 2. He's in a frickin' wheelchair and he's so much fun.
01:29:52
Speaker
I'm a new villain. See, I'm trying to bring up villains that aren't from the bloody PlayStation 1 and 2. What an era. What an era! I don't remember Volcov. No, I never played No One Lives Forever 2. Which is funny because I really liked No One Lives Forever 1. I don't know if I ever played 2 either. And now you can't play those games, they're in like Abandonware ownership hell.
01:30:21
Speaker
I can... what a... what a terrible situation to be in. Uh, Doran Grossman-Neeples gives tired dollars and says, Lady D has a cut voice line where she says, good girl. And I think that's why people like her. Yeah. Big pale mama, are you? Big pale mama. PMA Strippolito, remember for three months in the Green Gang, says Spirit Fairer, the villainous tear ducts.
01:30:49
Speaker
Ah, there's no villain in Spiritfarer. It's just everyone moving on and having a nice time. Just sad. Death. The true villain comes for all of us. It wasn't really a villain though, it was just sort of like the inevitable moving on of things. Sure. Entropy, as in other words. There you go. It's nice Dark Souls. Yeah. The two sides of entropy, on the one side there's Dark Souls, on the other side there's Spiritfarer. There you go.
01:31:19
Speaker
A brick in the head gives $5 and says if none of the insects in chat have mentioned her yet, Shodan. God, the title suits her well. Funny kind of god, can't even fix their own fucking speech impediment. Oh no. Shodan. I don't know anything about Shodan. Are you talking System Shock? Yeah. I hope so. And System Shock 2. She was better in System Shock 2, I'll say. Oh, she's in both of them? Yep.
01:31:47
Speaker
Well, I guess that's kind of a spoiler, actually. Yeah, that's fine. Gailed on usage. Remember for five months in tip jar. Thank you very much. Fungus finder gives $2. Did you all actually mention GLaDOS? She's in the pick. Yeah, did eventually. Fungus finder, get those fucking mushrooms out of here.
01:32:09
Speaker
Dear God, I'm going through a list of, like, top video game villains of all time, and I don't think there's any from, like, even remotely recent. You got Bowser, Ganon, Robotnik, Sephiroth, Kefka, GLaDOS, Vaz, Albert Wesker, Handsome Jack, Michael Bell, that's Red Dead, Ridley, General Scheffner. Oh, yes, we did talk about Rockstar. And Dr. Wily and Lavos. Don't we think the Rockstar does villains well?
01:32:40
Speaker
Well, they didn't bully. Rockstar does good characters generally, I'd say. But again, in a lot of their games, it's just, you know, the villain is society. Yeah. I like, I like a Dutch and a Micah in Red Dead 2. Yeah. Dutch and Red Dead is a pretty good villain. Yeah. Arthur.
01:33:06
Speaker
That was my Dutch impression, saying the name Arceus. Yes, it was very good. Thank you. dsilver369 gives two euros. Oh, hang on. Wizard of the Void gives $20 and says, just joined. Really looking forward to Starstruck Vagabond. Here's some for future games. Wishlist everyone, as you should be looking forward to Starstruck Vagabond, Wizard of the Void. It's coming out very soon, and it will be very tight, and we'll have had all its bugs fixed. Probably. You're saying, oh god, he's Sean Murray, and don't tell people. He's Sean Murray, and...
01:33:36
Speaker
Well, the last thing you want to do is Sean Murray. Well, the last thing you want to do is Yandere Dev. But Sean Murray is pretty high up there with the last things you should do. Yandere, Sean Murray. Ended up fighting for Sean Murray now, and he got to do it again. He got to run it back. He didn't want to get shot whenever he was out in public. He's like, I'll fix it. I'll fix it.
01:33:56
Speaker
Uh, uh, yeah. D silver three six nine gives two euros says Maruki, best persona villain. RIP Billy comets. Yeah. The, the voice actor passed away. That was the, uh, that was the villain I was talking about in persona five, but I didn't do spoilers. That's a shame.
01:34:13
Speaker
Pranic Lift gives $9, says Carmen Sandiego somehow stole like every major world landmark and throughout history via time travel with style. You think that's how Pyramid Head got his Pyramid Head? Oh Christ. Yeah, it was actually her child and somehow got fused. Pyramid Head's Pyramid Head isn't even like proportioned like a classic Pyramid. That's one of the many intriguing things about him. Yeah, but that's a bunch of that's because a bunch of it's under the sand. If you dug it up, it'd look like that.
01:34:41
Speaker
No, it's like a weird right-angled triangle Pyramid Head's got. An isosceles, I gotcha. Favorite philosopher? Isosceles is just like not equilateral, right? I don't... You're asking me? What's a good tongue cruise movie? Is it is isosceles if every side is a different length or is it only isosceles if two sides of the same length? I swear isosceles was like two corners with 30.
01:35:10
Speaker
No, hold on. 180. There's no way to know. Like mathematicians are still debating what the Sausalis triangle is. Sausalis triangle is a triangle that has two sides of equal length. Sometimes it's best to have exactly two sides of equal length. Yes. So what's the classification for triangles where every length is a different side? It's different sides. Triangle? Who the fuck knows?
01:35:35
Speaker
kinds of triangles. I spelled triangles wrong. There's acute obtuse, right, isosceles, equilateral, and scalene. No one ever gives any fucking credit to scalene. Oh, no one remember scalene. What's a scalene then? Out here just working hard every day. That's what scalene's up to.
01:35:53
Speaker
Um, obtuse to angle the triangle. I don't know anything about this when none of the sides of the triangle are equal. Okay. So that's what I meant. The sides. There you go. Oh, so a right angle triangle can be right angled and scaling. The wonders of geometry. I don't get it.
01:36:20
Speaker
Oh boy, a whole bunch more just showed up. Uh, Senou gives $1.99 and says, Frost, what happened to Better with Friends? Rescheduling. Keep an eye out.
01:36:31
Speaker
Eric Weikart comes back with 50 arses and says, Inscription, a recent enough game for a villain, the one that helps you ends being the villain and literally changes the whole game twice. He's like a big old shadow, but every time I hear something about Inscription, I wonder if I actually beat the game. Like there's, cause he's got more and more all the time. He's got more. He was good, but like, I don't think it's like, it's not one of those villains that's like entered sort of the, the, the pop culture lexicon in the way that all those villains that Frost named on that list, like
01:37:00
Speaker
Who would be big enough to be on that list? Nowadays. It's just old IP. Old ips. Galdon Yetich gives 10 dollars and says, I like the idea of video game villains who don't just wait around for the player to kill them. While that's very inaccessible to players, I like immersion and this seems like an unproductive life goal.
01:37:22
Speaker
Yeah, I always think of Zelda Majora's Mask. I mean, the fact that it's on a timer. Yeah, they're not just gonna hang around in the final boss arena waiting for your dumb ass. If you just piss about for three days, that moon's fucking hitting the earth. Jesus. I like that.
01:37:40
Speaker
Eddie from Outer Space gives five euros and says, the xenomorph in Alien Isolation is worth mentioning, though not as humorous, but the more terrifying. GG on your six month anniversary. Hey, thank you. I know it's hard to classify like a mindless, like animal villain as like a villain. It's just, it's just sort of like a environmental hazard, really. Yeah.
01:38:06
Speaker
They're spooky. Yeah, they certainly are. Tsunami do should give side dollars and says, great villain, Huey from the MGS series, your villain friend that lies to themselves that they are innocent. Yeah, it's interesting what they did with him, because of course, in the first game, he's in Peace Walker, he's basically just the Otacon stand in the way Naked Snake is the solid snake stand in in that game. Yeah. But then in like, I guess I did five, Huey just has this whole arc where it turns out he's a
01:38:34
Speaker
cowardly asshole who kills people to, uh, further his goals and refuses to admit wrongdoing. That being said, naked snakes, not, not, not doing a great job on his own. I call him naked snake. Oh, is he naked? Oh, cause I think he was, he was dropped behind enemy lines in. Yeah, he was naked snake in three and then he was a big boss.
01:39:02
Speaker
And then they always change their names. Venom Snake and Punished Snake, right? Yes, Venom Snake and Punished Snake being distinct in some way. And one of them not even actually being him, just being the dude. Spoilers! Spoilers! It is impossible to spoil Metal Gear because none of it makes sense. I love it and none of it makes sense.
01:39:22
Speaker
What a game. PZK gives 120 somethings. Oh no, wait. II gives 120 CZKs. I says, will somebody from second wind be reviewing Starstruck Vagabond? Will it be Yenkatsi brochure perchance?
01:39:38
Speaker
Well, I can't review the game. I made it. I'd like to literally know everything that happens in it. That would be pointless. Then it should be an easy review for you, right? We're going to get John Romero to review it in his stead. I know Nix was like half serious when he said that. He should have been full serious. Travis did. I'm sure John Romero has better things to do. I don't know. Maybe, maybe you could review it, Matty. In your best Yahtzee voice. Is that a switch?
01:40:09
Speaker
No, maybe if it's really pop, maybe it's really popular and I can like partner with a publisher who knows how to port things to switch. Do you just copy paste, I think. Yeah. Right click, save as .switch. You should hold a sweepstakes. The best Yahtzee-esque review of Starstruck Vagabond gets put on the channel. Cause you know, there'll be a few on YouTube pretty fucking quick. Too early. Todd says imagine if the escapist reviewed it. That would be a very well performing video.
01:40:40
Speaker
If any of our friends thought the escape is, you should review the game. I think it would perform very well. Yeah. Not to, you know, give advice to a rival content creator then, but yeah, that would probably do pretty well for you.
01:40:55
Speaker
The Brain Sturgeon gives six euros, says the true villain with the friends he made on the way. Seriously, Kane in Soul Reaver. Tragic, Shakespearean. But he became playable in Legacy of Kane Defiance. He was playable in the very first Legacy of Kane game. Oh, brother, hold up. That just, you just... Poof, my mind, moon scars. All right, so spoilers, because none of you guys are gonna play it, because you're babies. This, you are... The villain is the real version of you. You are the clay clone, essentially.
01:41:26
Speaker
And yeah, it's throwing you off because there's other clay clones of you around the place. And you feel like you're hunting the rogues, but no, you're the only one with a conscience. So you're Arnold Schwarzenegger in the sixth day? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Kind of like that. Without the accent. Yeah. When was the last time you saw that movie? You did not expect a sixth age or how? Holy moly. I think I watched it when it was a show on TV like ages and ages ago. Right.
01:41:51
Speaker
But yeah, that was a really cool twist. You end up getting there and you're just like, finally, the baddest clone. It's like, no, you're the clone. Oh, no. I think you're going to play it because you're babies, which is true. No, not just you two, everyone else here. A lot of babies here. Yeah.
01:42:11
Speaker
John Brooks gives 10 pounds and says, most annoying villain in games these days, day one patch or update, which crashes your saved playthrough. Looking at you, creative assembly, looking forward to Starstruck. Yeah, what's to be expected in the day one patch? I'm going to change the little number on the title screen to 1.00 rather than whatever it is now. Call it a day fun patch. I'm going to have to start a whole new playthrough.
01:42:43
Speaker
Spicy.BP gives side orders and says, I want Frost to do a FR style review on Starstruck Vagabond. That's difficult. We've got different cadences. You have a very... You can make yours really dense.
01:42:59
Speaker
for so many words. That was the mistake I did. I'm gonna tell people this. When we first came through here, and they were asking me for video series, and I was like, I don't know how people write. So I go to Yahtzee's scripts, because the old escapist website used to have the transcripts. I was like, how many words are his average? He put so many goddamn words into five minutes that I accidentally made that the standard. So that's why mine are eight minutes, because it's the same amount of words. He just talks so much faster than just anyone.
01:43:25
Speaker
How many words is it an average of my reviews incident? Yours average like around like 1500 thereabouts. Depends on what kind of mood you're in. You're very good with stacking little tiny words but also sometimes you get some big ones.
01:43:41
Speaker
That's what she said. He's talking about his pee pee. That's the last save for chat. We might as well wrap things up. Thank you. Thank you for listening to the Windbreaker podcast. And if you've been around since the beginning, thank you very much for sticking with us for a six entire months, six whole 30 day segments of the year.
01:44:07
Speaker
Who would have thought we'd be here after so many months doing basically the same podcast we were doing right after we started doing Second Wind? Seems like an easy thing to do. Yeah. Yeah, pretty much. I was Yahtzee. I was joined by Marty and Frost. Now comes the plug-a-thon.
01:44:29
Speaker
Don't mess fully Ramblamatic this week, it's gonna be on Helltivers too! And yes, I did have to make little edit to it over the weekend after recent news events. So there's that. I've got a semi-Ramblamatic dropping this week. I know, because I need to write another one. And of course Yahtzee Tries will be streaming on Wednesday afternoon at the usual time.
01:44:56
Speaker
I think that's it for me. Frost, plug more things. We've got a brand new cold take talking about the old DLC bait and switch from Tarkov. Oh, the silly man. Very negative hype. Very just factual and actual. And I get a little sand garden in the back. I don't know how people use that. I've lost half the sand since I've gotten that thing. Where did it go?
01:45:21
Speaker
What do you mean? Everywhere. Like you barely move it and it just goes flying. It just falls off the table. Yeah. Yeah, buy more sand.
01:45:27
Speaker
Apparently so. Sand's free. You gotta go to parks and whatnot. You can get a bunch of free sand beaches. Yeah. Oh, well you'll get some funny looks. Children's play area and just push a couple of toddlers aside and put some sand in your pockets and run away. It's not, it's not, there's no sand here. I'm so landlocked. We've got gravel, big bits of gravel. They're just rocks. I want gravel garden then. That sounds nice. You can probably order some like sand online or something.
01:45:52
Speaker
Yeah, sand.org. You can order something like Game of Girls Sand from the way they have in their Game of Girls Sandboxes. My favorite. So there's that. As far as streams go.
01:46:04
Speaker
Next one, we got some shoot the shit coming through. Keep your eyes out, as I said, for better with friends, not wearing the... I'm spoiling. No. Retracting everything. It never happens. Don't keep your eyes out. Fuck it, forgive me. Marty, what do we have here? Don't keep your eyes out. Later this evening, 6 p.m., the Hot Monday Energy crew are going to be back playing Lee's Funga.
01:46:27
Speaker
I think it's maybe has something to do with the time loop. I don't know. Oh, yes, I played that. It is a time loop game that integrates time loops into moment to moment combat. Oh, that's cool. Check that out. Darren will have a new backdrop tomorrow on how why the live action Disney remakes feel so lifeless compared to their original counterparts. Speaking of a lot of those aforementioned villains from earlier in the stream.
01:46:55
Speaker
Yeah. And bring up gay coded villains as well while you're at it. I'm sure he's the Darren cover. I'm sure he got it all of his eyes and crossed every T Thursday. You're going to have a semi-ramatic, right? Yes. It's going to be on the subject of fuck. I've forgotten what I wrote like two weeks ago. Uh, probably something jolly interesting.
01:47:19
Speaker
What was it? Yeah, I fucking read it. And I was like, it's good. I think my one note was like, you used the same word twice. That was my only note. Oh, it's about yellow paint ledges and platforms. Oh, yeah, that was it. The evolution of platforming in video games. The thing is, you write these things a while ago.
01:47:37
Speaker
Yeah. And Matt's editing them. We just forget these things exist. Well, blame Matt because he asked me to turn the transcripts in earlier so he could have more time to work on the videos. You know what, Matt is fucking perfect and I would never blame him. The hero of Australia. Friday will be, obviously, like we mentioned before, Design Delve and at Friday at noon will be the premiere of Dev Heads, the new podcast that is
01:47:58
Speaker
is hosting with new friends to the channel, Tina and Mikey. And then later this week, I'll have my first little bite size review on a game called Animal Well, which is the first game published by Dunkey's new publishing label, Big Mode. That's the game I'm probably going to spend most of this afternoon playing, actually. If you need any questions. If you have questions, please have questions. Please have questions. We just want to talk about the game. Yeah.
01:48:29
Speaker
All right, well that's it then. Thanks for your super chat. Oh, so he did. There's always one, isn't there? Fungus finding his $2 and says, Nick in first class trouble is best villain. Isn't he just? He's got the sinister laugh down, Pat. Dang. I do enjoy a nice villain and a Scremlin.
01:48:49
Speaker
Oh, and Fungus Finder comes back with another $2 and says, happy six month Jusan stream. But is it a hidden gem? We'll never know. It's still there. Longest stream of my life. Incredible. All right. Bye-bye, everyone. Bye, everyone. Bye.
01:49:20
Speaker
you