Transcript
Speaker: The
Speaker: How's it going, everyone? Welcome to another episode of Soapstone. My name is Jake, and I am joined by my co-host, as always, Dave. How's going today, Dave? Oh, no. He fell into the old trappings.
Speaker: I figure, well, here's the thing. Here's if I can just impromptu justify the question. It feels like it's been forever since we recorded. Like, I don't know what's going on in your life. You know, could be anything.
Speaker: um Could be nothing. It's impossible to know unless I ask. There was a single tornado that I was notified of. That's about it. Okay. i I actually was very confused because I didn't know the tornado happened.
Speaker: Like, I knew it was very windy, but I didn't know it was a tornado. And then I went out to, like, take out the garbage, and I was like, why are there just, like, branches all over my driveway? Like, some of these are pretty significant, too, and they're all, like, kind of, like, broken off cleanly. I looked at one of them, and it looked it broke in such a way that it kind of looked like someone sawed it off. And I was like, did someone, like...
Speaker: do pruning on my property, which isn't a bad thing. And they do it specifically during windy weather to throw you off the scent? Well, so what happened is my brain didn't put together... This was because I was taking the trash out after the wind was, like, gone. I didn't even think of that until, like, later in the week when people were talking about the tornado. And I was like, oh, right. Okay, all right. Because I was trying to, like, rationalize. was like, sometimes branches just fall off of trees. I've got, like, a lot of trees around my property.
Speaker: But not, like... multiple big ones and small ones and all at the same time like on the same night i was very very suspicious and then i just stopped thinking about it until i came back up the woodland creatures are revolting of our presence here they want to reclaim the land trying to scare us out i i mean it's just as likely as anything else i think um I also like just following off of what I just said, I realized that um like throughout history, there have been people that are inquisitive and they just don't let a question go and they make like huge breakthroughs because of it. You know, great people of learning and inventors and stuff like that.
Speaker: And I'm never going to be that person and because I was faced with a pretty big question that I found intriguing in the moment. And then I took the garbage out and then I just let it go. I just cleared the branches away. and I was like, I'm going to treat this the same way I treat a programming problem.
Speaker: If it only ever happens once, it's not real. i wait for the second occurrence and then it's confirmed. You get the ticket. You'd be like, hey, I can't ah reproduce this. It doesn't seem to be happening again. You're just like bury it. Bury it under the rug. Maybe it won't resurface. Uh-huh.
Speaker: Like part of that is a little bit pragmatic depending on your workload because it's also like, hey, can you get can you reproduce this? Like, can you give me steps? Because sometimes you only get the symptom and a symptom is not always enough to really determine a root cause all the time. it's not. it allows you to like start theorizing, but it's only that single piece of information. So it's very hard to.
Speaker: kind of backtrace where it's coming from. Oh, this, this just did a deep dive in my memory. It is actually a video game. And I, I'm going to be so surprised if you can remember it. I definitely can't, but there was like an old freaking, it must've been a DOS game and it was a murder mystery game.
Speaker: where ah someone would be murdered and you would like get the description of the circumstances. And then what you had to do was pick a place on the map, basically to be watching.
Speaker: And there was deduction involved. And so what you could do is try to figure out, you're like, oh, this person was murdered with an ice pick and this was what happened. And you would try to pick the next spot, hoping that you deduced what the pattern was.
Speaker: And the reason what we're talking about reminds me of this game is because that is like incident resolution. It's like someone was murdered. A member of QA was murdered.
Speaker: However, that is not enough for me to action right now. i need one other point of triangulation at least. Send the rest of QA back out. We will wait for the next one.
Speaker: They're all like um hands to shoulders in like a single file line. This is the happy path. This is the happy path. I will not stray. ah I'm imagining somebody's working like a non-technical job blessing this like fuck
Speaker: Oh, yeah. I mean, yeah, it's it's hard to reconcile tech sometimes. um Well, I think tech just introduces so many jargons and turn a phrase and some of that bleeds over from the business side, too.
Speaker: Yeah, no, it's definitely it's definitely true. I mean, jargon is like the worst. There have been multiple times, pretty much any time that we have any sort of like team integration or even just people being onboarded or something like that.
Speaker: I'll like finish a sentence and then like the new person's on the call and I'm trying to, but you know, be accommodating and. whatnot and so I'm like okay let me translate let let me let me just go back for like one second and pass that through an English filter to see how many of the things that I just said mean anything to somebody who's not like completely lost to the world and then sometimes it's just like Oh, that was just silenced. I passed it through the filter and I actually got nothing. and No hits for any meaningful words. You know what? We're gonna we're going to take a moment and explain that.
Speaker: Yeah. it's insane. Like, I... I grew up with computers. I mean, we both did. Children of the internet. um And so I think some of that is like an advantage a little bit kind of like baked in the ability to just jump into some elements of that subculture.
Speaker: um But I know like how my parents must have felt basically whenever you go back and you're like, let me take an English filter to what I just said with the jargon. And you're like, oh, this is why people think computers are magic.
Speaker: It's because someone was trying to explain like how a Postgres database connected to s three cloud resource over private endpoints with networking and whatever. And it's just like, yeah, none of that means anything. You you literally just said sounds. Right? Like, what what am I going to do with that?
Speaker: Yeah, it's it's hard to talk about some of that stuff because a lot of it you need to just be able to think abstractly and not necessarily always deal with specifics.
Speaker: But as far as the programming side of its stuff, it's really just a language like anything else. Like, are you going to know how to speak the language day one?
Speaker: No. But, you know, English and you can like start to find the ah the comparisons for what you understand in English to what you understand in that programming language.
Speaker: And then in a broader scope, if you look into other programming languages, you'll be like, huh, I'm noticing ah some patterns here as far as a certain rules are carried across for how things are structured.
Speaker: Mm hmm. Yeah, it's on json XML. Yeah. You're like, oh, these are markup languages or these are data structures or, you know, OK, this is it. it I have my gripes with how like we went to the same university.
Speaker: um I have my gripes with some of those programs. Now that part is fine, I guess. But the um I have some gripes with the program with like how it was run and stuff like that. but as far as the fundamentals of like how to actually understand programming and like the basics of logic and stuff like that. And when i say the basics of logic, I don't mean that as like a hey, was like this is like basic stuff. Literally anybody can learn programming. People say that it's like it's not true. Like it just does not hit for some people.
Speaker: They see like an if statement and their brain just turns off and it's not a bad thing. I'm not meaning that as like a dis against them, but it is like ah absolutely essential to start with that stuff because like you said, um one language in many ways is oftentimes just similar to the next language. It's like, okay, what is a for loop in X? What is a if statement in X? What is, how do you load external libraries? How do you do all this stuff? Yeah, like any of the stuff that I'm doing in Unity,
Speaker: I know it is um backed by dotnet, so that's what I'm coding in for any type of script. But I don't know what objects and functions Unity is expecting me to do versus what it's doing. So like, I still had to look up stuff for it.
Speaker: but The way I was searching was very much here's what I'm looking to do unity because I knew the right questions to ask. I just didn't know the the word in that language pretty much.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly. Right. And that's, I think, why programming seems like magic to so many people is they have neither. They don't know the question to ask that would be helpful to actually get a meaningful answer. But then they also don't know what the answer is. Right.
Speaker: um that's ah That's a toughie. that is That is kind of a toughie. So a lot of baseline programming is actually learning the questions. Yeah. i I feel like, i want to say ideally, but then that's very much me coloring it with my own perspective. Mm-hmm.
Speaker: But I think it's good to always state what the problem is, even if it is just rereading through the ticket, ah whatever that description is, and then start to backtrack of how did we get here whether that's going to be like going back and looking at logs or based on this this only could have gone through one end point right um stuff like that and a lot of it is just kind of experience over time or being familiar with the technology
Speaker: Yeah, it's the reason that like a well-written QA ticket or like user story or whatever it's called at your organization, wherever people are at, whatever organization they're at, everybody's at an organization. um Whatever format it takes, it should basically be like,
Speaker: painfully descriptive it should be like painfully explicit and like what steps are actually taken to end up there because you don't want something to be lost to nuance and you always you know want to know you want well ah one is you have to be able to re-walk the path in these cases um so yeah it's I'll be honest. ah It's not the most engaging job. And it's not because ah that that's something that, you know, I'm saying is lesser, but rather I am mad at it because my brain is just like, how do I do this faster? How do I do shortcuts? How do I like, like literally in
Speaker: ah my my My innovation today, this is one of the rare times I'll ever talk about work on the podcast, was i use um ah WSL, Windows Subsystem for Linux. And it's just like an Ubuntu operating system.
Speaker: And ah Very frequently I run two commands and here you go. Here's here's here's Jake's tips for freaking Ubuntu um for WSL specifically.
Speaker: i I use VS code as my text editor, which you can open. where you're at by just saying code.send it. There you go. It just opens it. Now you have a window that's connected to your your subsystem. You can edit your Linux files in a very friendly Windows editor with all your extensions and jazz like that. Super cool.
Speaker: um And then explorer.exe dot, very similar, right? What that does is it opens an Explorer window where you're at. So you can actually just use Windows Explorer if you need to for whatever files are there.
Speaker: These commands are a little bit too long. I know, yeah. but My two examples are literally how to just introduce more Windows into your Linux experience. But I mean, otherwise, I do use Linux a lot.
Speaker: um These are too long. So I'm just like, you know I'm going I'm going to alias these in my bash profile. So I can just do e dot C dot and then just hit enter E dot enter.
Speaker: Bam. Explorer where I'm at. C dot enter. Bam. Code opened where I'm at. And that is the epitome of laziness. Neither of those commands that I described are very long and they also have no inputs. They are. Who's very just going to tell Jake about shortcuts? I mean, that's what this is, though, right? Like youre two keyboard inputs and a shortcut and an enter. But somebody who does stuff like that is probably not also the person who's willing to run a really long path um to determine, you know, what a root cause is necessarily. Or i should say, like, document the entire thing. Yeah.
Speaker: I'm not descriptive enough to do well in QA that I know about myself. Yeah, I I would agree with that, but also for myself as well, because like a lot of times I will be speaking with um somebody else on the team regarding a project that I'm more familiar with.
Speaker: And I very much am speaking of like the work you're on the same page as me already, right? We're good. I'm going to keep going. Mm hmm.
Speaker: And I think that like when I have passed off tickets to them, like I had something else on my plate. So we got like delegated down to where, to be fair, in my defense, this is how I got the ticket.
Speaker: Very poorly worded, not much information. But I was familiar enough to be like, I know what this means. I can go handle it. Yeah. um But it gets pointed out ah pretty quickly when it's given to somebody else. They're like, hey, what's the context for this?
Speaker: I don't know what this is or where this is or how you're expecting me to test it. And it's right for them to ask for more information. But I think it is easy to...
Speaker: assume that people are always on the same page as you. okay It's actually one of the reasons that, and we can talk about other things that just work like tasks, but it's also one of the reasons where if you need like technical documentations, one of the best people you can get to write that is someone who is not familiar with the process. Somebody bay who basically can take basic steps, yeah run it, and then just be like, yo, this was missing. Like you just did this, but it's not in the document. Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, because I think if it was given to somebody like us, we'd be like, here's step one. But step one actually is comprised of a lot of different other steps. But we're like, we understand this whole thing as this term. Right. um Versus if somebody doesn't know that they need to know, like, here's where this button is. Here's where you like the same type of stuff that I look up when it's like, hey, how do I do this one specific thing in my banking app?
Speaker: mhe And then it has like little arrows like it's over here. I'm like, thanks. For whatever reason, i couldn't search for it on the page. Yeah, 100%. 100%. hundred percent hundred percent
Speaker: What you been playing. So yeah, been a while since our last episode. um i finished Rogue Trader. um That was like 200 hours or some nonsense.
Speaker: It was a lot. um Taking a break from CRPGs for the time being. So i ah you know,
Speaker: To kind of work down the queue a little bit, I basically just went to my live service standbys and I have been playing ah some of the new content for Helldivers. lot of cool stuff there.
Speaker: Squids kidnapped a teddy bear or something. um And they had Warhammer 40k Warbond, which is actually pretty cool. um Doesn't have all of the cool stuff, but it's pretty cool.
Speaker: And ah I went back to Warframe because I almost made it one entire year without playing that game. And there is plenty of content to catch up for catch up on there. So, yeah, cool stuff. not goingnna Not going to dive deep into either of those because those are both like sub communities where Warframe has been around for like 14 years. Yeah.
Speaker: um ah I will say one thing, well i'm a little anecdote, I'll be free from it. um When I went back to the game, I was like, hey, I know they will have added quests for the new content. And usually the game is like, hey, there's a quest available. like Jump into it. Go do it. And like why wouldn't you? Because it generally unlocks more of the game whenever you're like getting through the quests.
Speaker: um So i was like, yeah, let's do it The old piece, the new expansion, let's jump right in there. And I load right in, and I'm like, this seems... This seems kind of like basic and not at all related to what was going on. ah Lo and behold, I realized about 20 minutes in when they give me a new gun and they start telling me how elemental affinities work in mods, I was like,
Speaker: This is the tutorial. So what they had done since I had last started playing and now was they added a new player tutorial. And ah anyone can just has they have it available and you get a gun at the end of it. And in Warframe, you generally want to at least max out all your guns once because it raises your mastery level.
Speaker: um so it would have actually the community might have complained if they didn't make it available to everyone but this is what the next thing was that it like jumped me into and uh yeah yeah that wasn't the new expansion that here's a gun the new players get to start the game with um it's like yeah shoot the targets and equip a mod and i'm like Guys, I do this a lot.
Speaker: I'm reminded of ah Destiny 2 doing that where I had played for a bit of time. People wouldn't play new content. They're like, oh, just hop on, log in, and you just got to go through like this first story mission that you can play with. I was like, yeah, cool. ah So I hop on.
Speaker: I start playing the story mission. After like 15 minutes, they're kind of like, Are you done? like can we Can we start playing? on What's going on? And I was like, oh, yeah, I just did this one thing. And they're like, that boss isn't even a part of this content.
Speaker: yeah And apparently it had put me in the first next available piece of content. But I assumed it was the latest one. And I was just playing some like this must be it. Surely. Yeah. The ah the destiny to mechanics were like or or like the gameplay design was like infamous for abducting the player. They're like new season. Oh, well, as soon as you load in, if there's a new season available, then we're just going to take your ship straight to it. You'll just load straight into it.
Speaker: It's like, you know, new expansion or whatever. Similar to you. Here you go straight into the expansion. Like heaven save you if you had multiple of those things queued up. Imagine if that's how the Dark Souls 3 DLC works instead of you going to a specific spot and having like an interaction to opt in.
Speaker: Just as soon as you launch, it's like you're in the new area. You're like, I was never here. My save's fucked. Uh-huh. There is something to be said for maybe maybe there's a middle ground between we literally abducted you as a player from whatever you actually planned on doing when you logged in to just drop you in this. And like step one, go find a golem that we hid in the world and rescue a girl from it.
Speaker: um But there's probably there's probably something between like almost impossible to find on your own and we stole you you're in the trunk right like yeah and also i was parsing that whole time like oh dark souls one yeah that was that's what the reference was although to be honest like it's not the its just jumping all the way to more recent stuff shadow of the urd tree like That's still pretty hidden. Like you're generally not going to find that unless you either just get super late in the game and then fight an optional boss.
Speaker: That's usually when we're looking up. You fight optional bosses because there's nothing that forces you. Over that way. Yeah, no, you can. You don't have to go to the but you can happen upon it in two places, possibly three. Yeah, but one of them is like one of them is like, did you do PvP stuff? And it doesn't have to be PvP. I think you can just like invade and then die or whatever or like um get the some of the resources from NPCs. I think they have some protections, which
Speaker: Side note, really nice if your game has multiplayer components to be like, hey, if multiplayer just doesn't exist at some point in the future, there's no one playing or whatever, here is the single player way to do it.
Speaker: like the peace to you and all of your offspring for years. Like this is great compared to with just locking stuff out ah ah behind strictly multiplayer.
Speaker: That was one way, though. You could work through it with a avare Oh, OK. Yeah, he would ah he would give you the, um, you had to, like, find a maiden and, like, get the the the dipped blood and stuff like that, and it's all just it's all just a bunch. Elden Ring's a weird game.
Speaker: Um, but that would give you the shortcut. He'd be like, hey, don't use this until it is time for the Dynasty to rise, and then, like, as soon as he hands it over to you, it just cuts to you, like, immediately using it and managing from sight. And he's like, dang it. Ha ha ha.
Speaker: I can't really stop you, I guess. So, all right. Uh-huh. I feel like maybe you were just playing me here to get access to giant birds you can shoot on a cliff. But okay. Yeah. um But yeah. that was That was one way. There's at least one other. I think you can get there naturally through um endgame underground, I want to say. Yeah.
Speaker: And there might be there might be some other way. I'm not sure, but but definitely like for a major DLC, Shadow of the Earth tree was actually very far from removed from the critical path. You're not going to like accidentally run across it unless you're just one. you already just know how to get there or you um are basically trying to like 100 percent the game.
Speaker: So.
Speaker: They're still pretty consistent. It's not a girl trapped in a golem hidden in Darkroot Basin or whatever, but it's like it's not that far removed. Yeah. Dark Souls 3 was a lot nicer where they just put somebody at a point in the game that you've probably already been to at this point, at least if you've beaten the game.
Speaker: And you just go there and you touch something and. Yeah. Mm hmm. It also had like thematic consistency. I liked that because like Dark Souls, this is we're just talking about Dark Souls. But I mean, look at the name of the podcast. What did you expect?
Speaker: But like the painted world in Dark Souls one was like, oh, this is a cool like side thing. And then like by the end of Dark Souls, you're like, is this the main thing? Like, is this is this the actual like end of the story plot line?
Speaker: um That's the through line like you took the painted worlds and made it the through line. But I don't know. I'm a sucker for that. I think it's cool world building.
Speaker: I think it is, too. um
Speaker: Something that I've been up to recently to follow suit with my it's probably a Darksled Blade thing, isn't it? Yep. So I started reading the Berserk manga. Oh, yeah. And getting like the.
Speaker: Eventually I'll just get the whole collection, but it's been nice to read through if I'm on like the treadmill or I just want to like sit down and read. hmm.
Speaker: And yeah, it's there's a lot of things where people always say, oh this is inspired by Berserk. Yeah. Yes. It all is If you're thinking a thing. Yes. Oh. um But it is cool to see that not everything gets kind of front loaded.
Speaker: Like it wasn't in Dark Souls one. Here's every single possible Berserk reference. ah But there are certain things that do kind of seem like a nod to it throughout.
Speaker: i think each of the games, there's a couple Yeah, it's always nice when like when your're your motivation, when your inspiration, your source of inspiration is like potent enough and interesting enough that it adds things to your game.
Speaker: um But you also just have your own good ideas that whatever you're creating isn't just like subsumed within the references, right? Like... Dark Souls stands alone even without the greatsword, for instance. Even though you're like, yeah yeah, there you go It's gut sword. like That's what it is. It's what it's always been. It's what it'll always be. Though to call it a sword might be. ah Right? um But yeah, no, 100%. And Berserk is just like... The thing I love about Berserk is like it is...
Speaker: never going to be accused of being too tame it is something that inspires things that do not need to rise to the level of explicit maturity as the source content but it itself is probably too much yeah like i i
Speaker: On one hand, I'm happy that they're not they're fine not shying away from darker topics that would be relevant for the world um in the writing space.
Speaker: But at the same time... Can we have less rape? Just a little feel like that was... There you go. That's the explicit ah content descriptor added. I mean, we add it to every episode, but sometimes we earn it. But yeah, it's... um Yeah, exactly. Right. It's I get it. Right. It's almost the um I don't want to like equate it to Game of Thrones, but there is like severe content warnings for for just certain things you could interact with.
Speaker: And like, I don't know, Game of Thrones seems like kind of like an ah Americanized version. I don't know because there's still severe stuff in it, right? There's still explicit content in it, right? But it's but it's not a lot more tame yeah compared to what they would put in a manga because you're you're drawing it. and And I feel like it's almost like performative by comparison. Berserk feels like brutal.
Speaker: Whereas like brutal things happen in Game of game of Thrones, but it's like, ah, you needed a brutal thing. So you put this in here, right? Whereas like Berserk is just like, no, no, the world is brutal.
Speaker: Like things will just happen to people and there may not be a reason for it, but it's never going to break verisimilitude for that because at no point did we indicate the world would be anything but brutal.
Speaker: We do not have chosen children here that just will make it to the very end of the story, despite all of the odds, just because they're the main character. um Yeah, gut gut Guts goes through it. ah Minor spoiler for some of the Berserk series. ah He's having a tough time at times. He ah he he is not he is not the shonen protagonist who just makes it through to the end unscathed.
Speaker: But I think as far as like edgy protagonist with a lot of tenacity, Phil's a cool spot there. Yeah, um he's kind of the OG for it in a lot of ways.
Speaker: Yeah, because again, talking about Dark Souls, um a lot of that character design inspired Artorias, who also was left handed. But oh, their arm don't work. So you're only fighting them when they can use their right hand and not their good hand. huh.
Speaker: yeah And just like ah or a farming like that. And again, Fish of the North Star, I would say is another I don't want direct descendant, but in the same family. Yeah, it's kind of hard to completely escape Berserk. like Because even if you're not drawing direct inspiration, like there's you you might be drawing inspiration from something that did draw inspiration from Berserk at this point.
Speaker: um Yeah. Last thing I'll say about it um I forgot how much I liked Puck as a character because I've watched some animated bits here and there through like a Netflix thing or an anime and it's very much like the only light-hearted bit is like the expressions they give like this very tiny elf.
Speaker: It's also kind of like... It's also odd, both in the the tone, tonality, like you're saying. But if I recall correctly, you can correct me if I'm wrong, but Puck also, like, approaches fourth wall breaks almost at different points with just, like, how the story is told. um I could be misremembering some of that. Or maybe it's just so late that it's a spoiler. I don't know. but i For where I'm at, um I do not think that is what's been happening with Puck.
Speaker: Yeah, I think. um I mean, like there are some. Maybe it just gets really meta. Maybe that's narration things at points like in between chapters.
Speaker: And I assumed it was like like I was watching um ah ah an anime. I'm just expecting it. Just somebody's doing a voiceover. It's not necessarily somebody in the universe, but. Oh, actually, i take back that I was about to take this back. I'm going to send you an exact excerpt from the from the manga that i that locks this in. We don't have to describe it or whatever. This is an aside that if we were higher effort, I would basically just...
Speaker: ah just removed from the recording because it's not going add anything to listeners but they literally do just break the fourth wall in the most direct way possible literally referencing the manga at some point but like if you look at frame one where it's like here's the detailed drawing what the character looks like versus the third frame where it's They're just being like squeezed and like their bodies kind of like bugging out a little bit and it's it's almost it's almost like slice of life ask. It's just complete tonal shift. and That's the thing. Whether it's fourth wall breaks or not, that they can definitely like associate to this character. It's like it's the only character that's animated in like a silly way. Mm hmm.
Speaker: and it kind of like highlights the um the the mature themes through the rest of the story because you're like, oh, this is the contrast, right? In some other in some other reality, Puck is just the main character and just having having a grand old time messing around with people.
Speaker: And they will do that here as well. But man, you're going to see the difference between this panel and this panel, right? um So I don't know. I think it's kind of a bold move.
Speaker: um to to introduce it and keep a character going like that yeah also berserk's gone for like forever i i'm going to look up when it started but it it is forever and i do know that the the author passed away not that long ago right uh maybe i know the name is kento moira yeah Probably mispronouncing the name a little bit.
Speaker: Yeah, it was 1989 to present. Kentaro something like that. But yes, passed away in 2021. So the continuation of the series since then is based off of his notes.
Speaker: um Similar to Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time, but different. in Because it's berserk.
Speaker: Well, one of the reasons I wanted to just get into it is been wanting to kind of delve deeper into... I guess some of my inspirations, some bit for like things that I like as far as like dark souls, skeletons, the uncut frogs. Yeah. Um, yeah. And just kind of looking deeper into some of their inspirations.
Speaker: I'm just kind of looking back in the space of like, what are people's current understanding of, to use the example, a skeleton? What things do they associate with them as far as if you had to like draw one from memory? Is it like the Jason and the Argonauts thing? Is it like a giant skeleton that shoots lasers?
Speaker: That's right. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, no, it's really, it's not going to have any flesh or eyes. Probably going to sound rattly. Rattle them boys. Yeah. No, I agree wholeheartedly. And especially for something that's like as monumental as Berserk, like.
Speaker: You can have and there have been so many discussions about whether a certain elements should or should not have been included. Certain panels should or should not have been included in Berserk ethics, all that stuff.
Speaker: Other conversation over there. the the From the the point of inspiration, just some of the ah some of the the designs and the concepts and the characters in Berserk are like evergreen sources of inspiration for everything that's extended in any sort of like a medieval fantasy type game.
Speaker: Mm-hmm. 100% 100% worth it. um You know, it's not overhyped. Right. So.
Speaker: Anyways, that's the Berserk episode. You should it you should have told me you're thinking about talking about Berserk because we could have had a Berserk episode for sure. But I need to finish going through the this series again. I'm sure I read it online at some point a very long time ago.
Speaker: Give me the Spark Notes. and You're like, nah, no, no. Spark Notes is just like I'm not going to do that. and Man kills. Man kills what? Everything. kind Kind of everything.
Speaker: ah bad But he's just one human? Yeah, it's just one human. He doesn't seem human. Pulling a lot of weight for just some guy. But alright.
Speaker: um But one thing that I thought, this is my last aside, but an example of some of like the design stuff, obviously because it is very dark, darkly toned. There's a lot of stuff talking about like the church and like witch hunting and like torture and stuff.
Speaker: Yeah. And. the the wheel skeletons, which you'll remember from Dark Souls one. hmm. was like, that seems like that came out of like fucking nowhere. huh. But very, very cool idea. and I very much appreciated Actually, don't know if I can... Yeah, appreciates the wrong word. The other thing was going to say might be a spoiler for you because it's something in another game. Okay, okay. um So hold off on that thought.
Speaker: I will acknowledge that even outside Dark Souls, wheel skeletons do exist. like it It is a ah recurring thing that's come up. Okay. um But I think the inspiration...
Speaker: possibly was related to Berserk, because in that time period, ah one of their methods of torture was the wheel where they'd use a giant wheel.
Speaker: Break all your bones. um and then essentially would tie your dismembered limbs and you to the top of the wheel and kind of like just set you up.
Speaker: And again, it's just like a torturous, slow death, but that would kind of have the person's body fixed with the wheel. Uh huh.
Speaker: Yeah. No, I think you're 100 percent correct. I did see something about this. Actually, i can't I can't recall how long ago, but someone was like, ah there was some other game that had wheel skeletons. they're like, oh my gosh, I can't believe they're stealing these from Dark Souls. And then the comments or whatever, just like, you mean like Dark Souls took these from Berserk? Like, what are you talking about? Like, everything is Berserk. Like, if you think that everything is not Berserk, look deeper because all things flow from Berserk. um
Speaker: And it's only sometimes wrong. It's mostly right. Yeah, it is kind of cool to be able to see that, I guess, thread.
Speaker: Yeah. That you can kind of like weave between like some media. And again, like if you go through any of the FromSoft titles, it's just fun for me, at least, to be like, okay, I can appreciate that a little more because that was based off of this idea over here. Mm-hmm.
Speaker: Yeah, no, it's true. And it also kind of becomes like, at least to me, sort of like... you're being brought into a internal reference, right? It's kind of like when a friend group explained something to you and it's like, oh, the reason we say this is because there was the one time back in high school when this guy did this and you're like, oh, okay.
Speaker: That doesn't seem important enough for it to like be a full reference forever, but I appreciate it and I'm now going to use it because it's what the friend group does. um Then it has your meaning and it's like,
Speaker: It kind of takes something where you thought you understood the like the scope, the appreciation for it, but instead it extends further back. Right. It's just like one of those detective things where it's like, oh, we we unveiled where this clue went.
Speaker: And you're like, oh, it goes even further than I even realized. Right. This it all just goes back to Berserk. You can't really abstract this to other things because it's all just Berserk. Like it's not it's it's never anything else But that is why it's worth, you know, ah going through and reading Berserk. Definitely, i would say...
Speaker: um ah look up a content disclaimer first for it doesn't have to be a spoilers based one but like there's a lot of stuff in berserk that you don't want to just accidentally run across um yeah I feel like to a small degree i'm desensitized from having been on the internet as long as I have sure yeah but even so I'm not somebody who's going out and looking for any type of like gore or violence or sexual arm stuff.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. It's it's definitely like, i I want to say that like there are other things out there where it's um kind of a voyeuristic expression of of content in some way. It's just like, ah, this is torture porn or this is porn or whatever. Yeah.
Speaker: Berserk is not necessarily that I've never gotten that impression of it. um It's more like this is tragedy. Like this is going to mess with your emotions because terrible things are happening to good people, um which if you've got some measure of empathy.
Speaker: at some point should resonate as like, ah, I don't like this. Right. Um, uh, but yeah, it's, it's definitely, that's the only reason I, I issue that disclaimer is anytime that you have, anytime you recommend something like berserk, you have to be like,
Speaker: And just know that there are a lot of, you know, content summaries you can review first out there to see if it's going to ah run across anything that's going to be aligned for you.
Speaker: um But, yeah, I mean, it's not for kids. There you go. How old does my child need to be to watch a Kamehagakill? Uh-huh, uh-huh.
Speaker: Yeah. You know something else, though, that was inspired by Berserk?
Speaker: Every FromSoft game. And one of those is the Duskbloods, which very recently... inspired the revival of this podcast. so Just kidding. By coincidence ah that we got a lot more information.
Speaker: ah Not that long ago, actually. Did you catch up on what is out there for Duskblood, Steve? ah ah Did you step up on the Vaati? I did not get into any Vaati.
Speaker: content unless his was the like I watched a 10 minute update from one of the Dark Souls ah space youtubers mm-hmm I just as far as you know what actually probably was body fuck it sounds like it could be everywhere that might not be um yeah just kind of going over his experience with the play test and the mechanics of the game mm-hmm and
Speaker: i don't know. I'm skeptical, but like I was also skeptical of Night Rain and then like I can now appreciate Night Rain for what it is. But I'm looking at this from the lens of.
Speaker: Yeah, but we already have Night Rain. Mm hmm. Yeah. And this seems more of like a initially a PVE set up where you're trying to go around and kill things or capture things for points and then again, over the course of three days, um it's going to whittle down the the bottom.
Speaker: Yeah, they get squid. Two or three. Yeah. yeah And then at the end, I think it's just a PvP Royale. Mm hmm. For this one, at least.
Speaker: Vani mentions in his video that there's going to be like other endings. And it seems like so one's a platforming. but It would be funny. I just shift you to like Mario or something.
Speaker: um Man, platforming an Elden Ring engine sounds like the worst thing. Admittedly, um there is like freaking quadruple jumps some of these characters can do like the actual this is the first time we've seen like a lot of the combat and it looks unhinged to me like it is full anime Actually, i guess before you even say that, the style is very Bloodborne.
Speaker: Like, we we saw it in some of the teasers, but that is held. ah I saw a comment where someone was like, the palette that they went for is, like, purple for this game. And it it it kind of is. Like, the sky is just purple, and it looks like the entire game could have taken place in Old Yharnam.
Speaker: And it's just like... I don't know. It's very Bloodborne, which is funny. It's kind of like a monkey's paw thing. It's like, hey, you get you get another game that's like Bloodborne and it's a Switch 2 exclusive and it's a multiplayer competitive slash co-op type game.
Speaker: Yeah. um But do you think it's going to do well? Will it meet your expectations? Or you just don't think it's going to pan out? I think it's an accomplishment that after you're basically convincing at least a significant portion of the community that Night Reign was the right decision,
Speaker: This game is so far out there that that self-same portion of the community is questioning whether Duskbloods is the right decision. um I find myself amongst their number. It is... i have no idea whether I would enjoy this game or not.
Speaker: Yeah, it's... Ever since... It's always been like a single player type game of performative game coming out from from soft titles. hmm.
Speaker: They do a really good job of world design and everything and for how it's laid out and how you progress through. And. I think some people, I think me and I'm projecting a lot um is a little concerned that they're not going to have another single player title for a while. I know they are planning the... Their Elden Ring follow-up.
Speaker: Yeah, the follow-up DLC. um But they've already said they're not going to do more Dark Souls, which I'm fine with. You don't need to keep tacking on sequel after sequel, and then you have to tie everything together. Go to to that old canvas, right? yeah Yeah. Souls reference. Yeah.
Speaker: But yeah, I think it would be cool just to see them work in other spaces. hmm. Like, yeah, I love me some dark fantasy, but I believe if they went to something else that I could find myself getting on board based on how they present it and the had a good history of doing so.
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, I agree wholeheartedly. I feel like they continue to like I have a specific example Where the for for Night Rain, the thing to overcome was we're going to put you in a multiplayer encouraged originally closer to launch like you can do solo now. It's not really as good, but like multiplayer encouraged time limited recurring loop type game basically, which is so far divorced from what Elden Ring is that like there's a lot of hesitancy for that.
Speaker: And they're like, oh, also, you know, forced co-op, basically. A lot of people only play Elden Ring solo. They never saw another person. um And then they're like, okay, well, okay, now that we've kind of sold you on that one,
Speaker: Now it's sometimes going to be co-op, like if you want to, if other people want to, if you trust on like strangers and the Internet to to play along. um But then also sometimes you'll just end up at the end of the match and the people that you are co-oping with, you'll have to kill them, right? Like you'll just you'll just have to kill each other. And there is a massive gap between that, right? Like opting into a co-op exclusive experience or a competitive exclusive experience.
Speaker: is something a lot of games ask of you opting into a game that's gonna hybridize both is super weird and a lot of people who want to play games with their friends are just gonna be like oh sometimes I have to fight my friends at the end I'm out I'm just gonna I'm just gonna do anything else um And so like I respect FromSoft for like continuing to push the boundaries here.
Speaker: But that does not mean and it gives it gives us great content to talk about and critique. But it does not mean that I'm going to actually follow them over those boundaries all the time if they they go too far with this. I kind of ask, you know, like, are they just seeing what they can get away with at this point? Are they just like?
Speaker: these These people play literally anything we make, right? Like, we could we can push any boundaries. They do a Dark Souls series dating sim. Mm-hmm. mean, that might get more adoption than this, right? i don't know.
Speaker: Put Emerald Herald in there. it's I mean, I'd buy it. It's fine. um But yeah, I don't know. The thing that's interesting, this is the curse. This is the curse, Dave.
Speaker: There's so many reasons not to play this game. And then like they start to talk about how some of the items will like influence the gameplay a little bit. You can make it like more co-op focused. You can make it more PvP focused. You can do this other stuff.
Speaker: I think about how like I had no interest in the Night Reign character stories. And then by the end of it, I was like playing Night Reign for the character stories. i was like, are they goingnna are they going to somehow land this like for the Switch 2?
Speaker: That's the last element that I don't know if they can solve for me. is like I literally have a Switch 2, but like am I going to play this game solo or just like with randoms online? Am I going to try to convince friends to buy a Switch 2 that is now $50 more expensive than it was a couple months ago?
Speaker: like I just need you to get on board with this sizable investment. Right? Yeah. The low, low entry price of this new, uh, this new game. Also, hopefully it's not like full retail. Night Rain was cheaper. I think it was like 40 or 50. I think it was 40.
Speaker: I think it was 40. Yeah. For PC at least. Um, but this is a Nintendo game. Nintendo games can cost up to $80 these days. So I'm like 90, I think for one of them, maybe it was 80.
Speaker: um I assume that they were only going to do that with like their ah main IP stuff. Mm hmm. I mean, i hope, but I mean, i guess I don't know if I see this being less than 60. I hope it's. I don't know. I think. But I think Nintendo games start at 60.
Speaker: Yeah. m Because there's the console tax that never actually went away. It's just some PC games got bumped up to the console tax price. um Because there was just I'll be honest. I think the legacy reason for that was like licensing and royalties and stuff like that or whatever. Maybe it wasn't royalties. It was ah it was licensing and like service costs.
Speaker: And now that's not even really a factor because like you release on Steam and you're paying money to Steam. You at release on Xbox, you're paying money to Microsoft. Like, so it's just PC is a more competitive market from a deals perspective.
Speaker: Like you could be like, hey, what if I don't buy that? And instead there's 95% off this freaking whatever game. Let me go grab that instead.
Speaker: But. I don't know. The games, i'm I'm going to, no matter what, give them credit for trying something completely different because at the very least, it is that. You can play as a vampire senator that turns into ah a dinosaur.
Speaker: That is not something I said on accident. That's literally in the game, right? But,
Speaker: but yeah. Yeah. um I guess my last thought just but playing off that I read an article. I can't even remember where from you could find it, but it's just like I think it's PC gamer i could talk you and it's like Duskbloods.
Speaker: All of the playable characters are like absolute weirdos. They're all just doofuses. They look ridiculous. There's like one of them. That's just a traditional edge lord and everybody else like this. The guy is just wearing like a metal mask and pajamas and he's the axe wielder that does acrobatic moves and has a bunch of jumps like I don't know. right Like, I don't know. maybe this is how they transition into, like, making more anime type games.
Speaker: Yeah. Their closest thing really was, like, Armored Core, actually. And that's just because mecha anime is a thing. By the way, Armored Core 6, so good. going to have to play that one these days. Get that one. When's that coming Shout out to anybody who has not completed the game. This is my bat signal. hu It is on the list. I think at this point, I probably, like, if I don't start a new save, I...
Speaker: at least replay a couple missions on my existing save. Because one thing I loved about that game was that you could just keep grinding currency and stuff by you're like, oh, I'm pretty good at this mission. Money. you Give me money. Yeah, I feel like games should always have a a way for you to all alternatively still progress. Because like, let's say you're getting checked by a certain level. Yeah.
Speaker: And you don't have the the functional mechanical skills or the hand-eye coordination, whatever it is. Yeah. You're lacking that. But you can make up for it in other ways by upgrading your gear, getting passive upgrades for more health or stuff like that.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: Yeah, I'll be honest. I know that we said wait away from Duskbloods, but everything you just said just made me think of another issue we might have with Duskbloods for a lot of people, which is like there's eight players per match. We didn't mention that. But night one, two of them get cold.
Speaker: What when I say cold, it's not like C-O-L-D. It's C-U-L-L-E-D. um What if you're just yeah a lower skill player and you just consistently get knocked out night one in this competitive game? Right. Then what is the difference between this game and Fortnite to you or Apex Legends or whatever the crap? Right. Like there's a risk of that that didn't exist in Night Rain where you can get hard carried in Night Rain.
Speaker: Source. I am and have been constantly hard carried in Night Ring. um But it's fun, you know, because, you know, you can at least share in the victory at the end.
Speaker: um But this one, it's like, what if you only ever see you were cold? End of night one, you were cold. End of night one, you were cold. End of night one, you were cold.
Speaker: Feasible, right? Especially if people start sweating. Gameplay loop is very short, right? And like, it's not like I trust FromSoft to have skill-based matchmaking.
Speaker: Do you? like No, it's going to be some arbitrary number for how many times you've logged in, maybe. ah Anyways, that's that's another concern I have for it. So they have they have some uphill to go with that game. So we're going to about it because it's very interesting. It's more interesting to me than GTA, but...
Speaker: Well, hopefully at some point in the future, I would like to talk about another Souls-related game. Sure. Mortal Shell 2. The second one.
Speaker: Electric Boogaloo. It came out a couple days ago as a recording. I haven't checked it out yet. I'm keeping myself spoiler-free. Sure. But we'll probably pick it up and play it on the PS5 if it's still in disc format. Uh-huh.
Speaker: Yeah, we really diverged. We really just like minimized our ability to have console content on the podcast because you got a PS5 and I got to switch to.
Speaker: Well, what we got to do is it's Xbox. Xbox will bring us back together. It'll come out with like Mortals Hell 3 or whatever. And we'll all i'll i'll play on that.
Speaker: That's likely, right? That's not like the entire company is going to collapse or anything like that. No, definitely the the last major gaming company that's still heavily using disks. Mm hmm.
Speaker: Yeah. Sega will save us any minute now. Any minute.
Speaker: Well, if you guys have any ah insider information on how we can ah we can find common games to play together across all of these consoles, maybe even PC. Who's to say? You know, they they put me games for that and your game suggestions for what we should cover here. um We're just going to keep talking about Duskbloods and Berserk until until you guys actually send stuff in. So, you know, get on that unless you're really into Duskbloods and Berserk, in which case, I guess remain silent.
Speaker: um Send that feedback in, though. Our contact information is down in the show notes. And as always, we'll see you in the next one. Have a good one.
