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Time Travel (Guest: Dave Gilbert)
38 Plays6 days ago
Wadjet Eye Games has a new game coming out called Old Skies which deals heavily with time travel. So, for this episode, we have the Wadjet man himself, Dave Gilbert, talking about time travel mechanics, paradoxes, influences, and what might happen if you go back and snuff your own grandfather.
Check out Old Skies on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1346360/Old_Skies/
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Transcript
Introduction and Guest Teasing
00:00:30
Speaker
Right, well, welcome back to Backseat Designers. We are, of course, very... Let me start that again. I have no idea what the hell I'm saying. Yes. Hello, and welcome back to the Backseat Designers. We have in our midst ah my good friend, Frederick. Hello. And the erstwhile Professor Gareth. Erstwhile? I've never been a professor.
00:00:57
Speaker
ah should Well, um I am don't really know where to go with that. You will always be the professor in our hearts and minds and various other bodily appendages. written the book That makes you a professor.
00:01:12
Speaker
Yes. And in fact, forgoing our usual introductions where I just rattle off some nonsensical factoids about ourselves that may or may not be true. Well, you're rattling off nonsense right now. As always, I didn't think you'd interrupt me that quick. Yes, I'm always trying to break the record.
Time Travel in Fiction: An Overview
00:01:32
Speaker
Right, so ah today's episode is going to be about the subject of time travel, specifically time travel in fiction, because we have a very esteemed guest who has already jumped the gun and made a remark, but we'll come back to that. They're not supposed to. love so but you You can do anything. sir yeah you You're allowed to do whatever you want. I wasn't aware. i' now you' are You are a guest in our house. and yes Fred's the one that needs to wind his neck in.
00:01:57
Speaker
yeah You should probably introduce our guest, though, because I'm sure a lot of people will recognize the voice, but... Oh, yeah. um Well, we'll get there, because I had this little idea in my mind. I wanted to go around the table and quickly ask everyone, so what would you do if you had a time machine, Fred?
Personal Time Travel Fantasies
00:02:18
Speaker
Well, I mean, you you you did make that very truthful joke in our first episode after our ah reboot that I am a great fan of Peter Cushing. And I am, I also happen to be a great fan of Frank Zappa and both men unfortunately died around the same time coincidentally of prostate cancer. So if I had a time machine
00:02:44
Speaker
Let's just end it there, but suffice to say my index finger would be going places. so but Okay, so Fred wants to go back and poke famous people in the ass. At at the same time. Gentlemen, assume the positions. Speaking of assuming the positions, Gareth, if you had a time ma machine, what positions would you like people to assume?
00:03:06
Speaker
Well, Jesus Christ. Well, um my my first answer was going to be to this, that wherever I went, I'd just make copious notes because it would make my job easier because I am a historian. So I could just go back in time and and write down what happened. But actually, it's like this is the boring version of the climax of Indiana Jones 5. But actually, twelve based on our conversations recently, I think what I would do is I would use that time machine to go back in time and save your marriage.
00:03:34
Speaker
for those of you For those of you who aren't aware, Tolz told us ah confidentially confidentially, but I know that everybody listening to this is a big fan of the Space Quest historian who just wants the best for him. um He came onto the chat and said that he was deleting everything off his phone that had anything to do with meta. so god Oh, God. Brilliant. Brilliant. Okay. That deserves some sort of explanation. um We are not referring to the meta-cooperation in this instance, although we actually are, but my wife's name is Meta, spelled M-E-T-T-E. So that's the joke, fellas.
00:04:15
Speaker
yes um i didn't hear them i didn't know and so that's right but yes we had If we had been 80 years back in time, your wife's name would have been Metta as an M-E-T-A. this is st That is awful, Gareth. Thank you so much. You're welcome. It is true. I have quit, first of all, Twitter for obvious reasons, and I have decided not to pursue Facebook anymore, also for somewhat obvious reasons.
00:04:44
Speaker
um I've we've gone off on a tangent there haven't we. I'm not going to bore anyone with those details I am however going to ask the same question to our illustrious guests
Introducing 'Old Skies': A Game by Dave Gilbert
00:04:55
Speaker
Mr. Dave Gilbert of Waged Eye Games if you had a time machine what would be the first thing you do and how many asses would you probe.
00:05:03
Speaker
ah Well, there's there's two things. it's like would i What i what what like big thing would I do? like can i if you Or what like personal thing would I do? like There's the personal thing, and this is actually in Old Skies. It was in the demo that we released two years ago. like I would go to like every restaurant that ever closed that ever closed and I'd go back one more time because I was very nostalgic for that stuff. Honestly, like ah I'm a New Yorker. I would go back in time and... like
00:05:35
Speaker
Thank you for that answer, Mr. Gilbert. So you are currently on sort of ah an online press tour, one might say, because you've got a game coming out of very soon called Old Skies, which yeah great pretty much everyone knows about at this point, certainly in our little circle. ae you You always wonder when you're when you're like in the thick of it, like trying to promote yourself, like, is anyone noticing I'm shouting into the void? like Please pay attention. So it's good to hear you say that.
00:06:05
Speaker
Well, it's one thing that always strikes me is that whenever we go anywhere and we Catch up and meet because I dare say that we have become friends over the years and sister two ah Which is which is very nice and and you are Continually astonished that people recognize you and that people actually play games, which is just mind-boggling in so many moments Maybe not so much at the events we go to, like at Adventure X or the fanfare. like a i least I expect people to know who I am, but and at at a big event like PAX, what I do is in such a little niche that I'm always surprised. I'm always surprised when people just recognize me when I'm not like wearing any branding or whatever, because I don't consider myself terribly memorable.
00:06:55
Speaker
physically, but yet random people will come up to me like, oh, Dave Gilbert, I love your stuff. I'm like, how do you know me? like i i don't I don't know how people would recognize me just by sight alone, um but they do and ah that's kind of cool.
00:07:10
Speaker
yeah that's um I mean, to be fair, game designers aren't really like usually that physically memorable. you know it's not like we're you know ah it's It's not like they run around dressed like Motley Crue. That's my point. That fact that they do recognize me, is that's what always surprises me.
00:07:28
Speaker
Yeah, yeah but but I guess that the fact that you know that you're sort of non-assuming and just blend in means that you know your fans kind of have to adjust to that. know Just remembering lots of faces.
00:07:42
Speaker
They have to adjust to me. Let's go with that. I like that. yeah You could do the whole Clark Kent thing if you do need to go incognito. Just take the glasses off. Glasses off. That guy who's bumping into everything. That's got to be D. I don't consider myself famous in the slightest way, but I sort of drew the ah the short straw on that one because I'm like seven feet tall. The tall straw. And wear nail polish and shit. I've i've i've pretty much got recognition. that na well they didn't recognize you at the airport but that was because you left your passport behind you're never gonna let that go are you
00:08:21
Speaker
No, son of a bitch. okay I just get swallowed up by a crowd because I'm a short guy. All the pictures I've taken together with with Dave are fantastic. um Anyway, so
Time Travel Mechanics in Storytelling
00:08:32
Speaker
circling back. So you're you're you're doing this sort of promo tour because you've got a game coming out and that's perfectly understandable, but we are going to switch the tables on you a bit. um First of all, because the room is crowded and we have too many tables, but also because ah instead of just talking about how awesome your game is, because everyone knows it's going to be awesome at this point,
00:08:51
Speaker
I thought we'd take a bit of a helicopter ride and just talk about one of the major aspects of your game, which is the mechanics of time travel and how and how those those mechanics work and how they can be employed in fiction and the pitfalls of obviously dealing with something that has yet to be scientifically proven as even plausible possible and what the ramifications of that would be.
00:09:19
Speaker
Fun times, eh? I'm just going to throw out there that there is a picture of an Elon Musk lookalike having Louis Armstrong draw a trumpet on his face or on his head. That's out there. um i'm I'm going to leave it at that. Makes you think, huh? No, it doesn't. I mean, I don't know. It makes me think something. much What's the opposite of thinking? I didn't say your thoughts weren't going to be conflicted. I'm just saying it's out there.
00:09:49
Speaker
Well, let's hope Elon Musk never invents a time machine. Oh, yes. We've been in even deeper trouble than we are now. And it's going to explode and catch fire and someone's going to die horribly. That might actually be the most most fortuitous outcome. what What I will say after after a quick Google is that Louis Armstrong died the same year that Elon Musk was born. So I'm i'm guessing that it's not a real um picture. just Just putting that out there.
00:10:16
Speaker
but Perhaps. we We might. We'll we'll see. Interestingly, this this might actually lead into one of the things I was reading. Because i i was I attempted to do research for this episode because I like time travel stories. And I think we've all seen like Back to the Future and played Day of the Tentacle and stuff like that. So time travel has always been the key part. Yeah, those are the only two time travel stories in the world.
00:10:39
Speaker
H.G. Wells, get the fuck out. ah But and always been interested in time travel, but the actual mechanics, the actual metaphysical mechanics of time travel have always eluded me. So I attempted to do some research by looking up some recent research, academic research into how time travel works, how to solve temporal paradoxes and all of this shit. And one of the examples that paper gave was literally, here's Alice. She has a time machine. She puts a bomb in the time machine, sends it back. And when she opens the time, the bomb is rigged to to explode when she opens the time machine in the past. So who sent the bomb? I think a more pertinent question is, what the fuck is wrong with Alice?
00:11:21
Speaker
whoop um so So I wanted to ask ah David, so the but the mechanics of time travel and all the pitfalls and all that, how do you manage that in old skies? Going back in time and changing events, how does that play
Constraints and Paradoxes in Time Travel
00:11:35
Speaker
out? um Well, okay. I had to like really think about this because it could it could break your brain if you let it. And there's a reason why, like not just in terms of the rules and the mechanics of time travel, but also the possibilities are so endless that you need to put some guardrails up. um You mentioned Back to the Future before, and there's a reason. I mean, the the rules of time travel in that in that world are actually pretty simple, but beyond that, you'll notice that the the the stories, the movies,
00:12:13
Speaker
um i don't know I know there was like a a TV show and and even the Telltale series as well. um they never The stakes never expand beyond the... Physically, they never go beyond Hill Valley. And the stakes never go beyond like Marty and Doc and their immediate family. It's always very personal. Yes.
00:12:36
Speaker
um and Because I don't know if that was like a mandate, if that's how they limited themselves or what, because you can go down a rabbit hole of just possibly go get overwhelmed by the possibilities and break your brain. So by establishing like some limits and guardrails, that is a good way to keep it very, very focused. um So I think Back to the Future did that very, very well. It really stopped it from getting overwhelming.
00:13:02
Speaker
um Like ah there's there's a book and ah now a movie called Time Traveler's Wife, which is um ah sort of does it sort of does the same thing. it The rules are very, very rigid. And so the story follows them and can't really, but the rules are so rigid that it does kind of limit what ah can be done. So that also limits them. um Other stories, I'm thinking of like,
00:13:32
Speaker
um ah Legends of Tomorrow, which is a personal favorite. I don't know if any of you have watched that show. I'm doing it right now. Really freaking good. The first season is very janky, but the rest of it is just amazing. um It's a comedy, first and foremost, so you can get away with a little bit more. like You don't really care about the rules so much. um Awesome Powers did this. like and at One of the movies was a time travel story, and they just they kind of made it very clear, don't think about this too hard. We're just having fun.
00:13:59
Speaker
Yeah, that's one of my favorite examples i've mentioned it many times And that's also a rule and so I sort of that was sort of my rule for old skies I kind of wanted to keep it a little loose. I wanted to have fun with it I didn't want to like get too bogged down on the rules. There are rules um, mainly that there um any like restrictions That are placed on time travel are made by people their rules that people made to prevent everything from like getting to rent to control the chaos, in other words. The technology is there. It's going to be used. So here we have like oversight and oversight and oversight. And so we're really constricting how it's going to be used. But you can theoretically do whatever you want. The rules are just made by people and are enforced by people. So that that was my
Regulations and Bureaucracies in Fictional Time Travel
00:14:51
Speaker
limit. So there are limitations, but there's some wiggle room if I needed it. And also like in terms of
00:14:58
Speaker
Like where they can physically go, they can, they never go like outside of New York because that was just one constriction, one constraint I put in myself. Well, isn't that, isn't that really a constraint with all of your games? Like they all take place in New York. No, but it's like, why don't they, why don't they always in New York? I was like, Oh, this is the New York branch. They just deal with New York stuff. That's why. Um, but like for the most part, it's like there's, uh, You could do it, not whatever you want, but I didn't want to be too focused on paradoxes and preserving history. That's not what this is about. You can basically go back and do whatever you want, except you need... It goes through a big approval process.
00:15:40
Speaker
to get it done. And so you play this character named via who is taking approved clients on approved missions into the past. And of course, something inevitably goes wrong. And then you have to put it right. So that's the, that's like the, the, the basic elevator pitch for each of the six or seven missions and chapters that are in the game. Um, you know, obviously that there's, there's, ah there's a bit more than that, but that's like the basic, like one sentence, like, here's what it's about type thing.
00:16:08
Speaker
Okay, cool. I love the bureaucratic approach to it. likes said Yes, we can go back and change everything and cause this huge cascade of ah apocalyptic proportions, but it needs to be signed and triplicate. Pretty much, yes. It sort of makes sense, and it's funny that That's not usually a thing in time travel stories, you know, rules mandated by humans. Usually it's the laws of physics putting up the barriers, but yeah I mean, it makes sense. People still refer to the very, very fictional laws of robotics by Asimov as a real thing. And, you know, that has sort of seeped from fiction into our world when we consider the current applications of robotics and AI, which, you know, seem inevitable, scary enough.
00:16:52
Speaker
We should have like a countdown for AI discussions. They crop up in every fucking episode. The interesting thing about the Asimov like laws of robotics is like he kind of did the same thing. like He created these rules and then he would try to circumvent them. And that's what the that's where the the more interesting stories came from. There's a robot who killed someone. These these laws are immutable. they They exist and they cannot be changed. So how did this robot Like what what circumstances led the robot to do this? yeah And that that he he put those limits on himself and he created some very interesting stories with those limitations. and I'm sure that's why he did it.
00:17:30
Speaker
Oh, absolutely. I've i've read iRobot, the short story collection there. And and the the interesting thing, but the thing that robotics and AI engineers and all that never consider is that Asimov himself knew goddamn well that the, ah the you know, the three laws of robotics are fallible. They are not. they They don't actually work in practice. And that's the reason why he wrote short stories is is if you just sit down three you know, pretty straightforward rules, someone is going to find some way
Entertainment vs. Scientific Plausibility in Time Travel
00:18:00
Speaker
to break them. As with with time travel stories, um and Back to the Future, again, one of my favorite time travel stories of all time is just um fantastic, exciting, it's got everything. and But you go on YouTube and you Google... ah fact You go on YouTube and you Google... Well, it's the same company anyway. Sorry. What are the lines of blur? You search, yes. you so You search for any video on Back to the Future and it's just endless and an endless parade of people poking holes in the logic. And you just go, well, that's but that wasn't really the point of the movies, was it? The point of the movies was entertainment. And yes, they do fall apart under ah close scrutiny because of the whole paradox thing, which is
00:18:44
Speaker
another topic I want to discuss. So the whole... To be fair, every single time travel story is going to fall apart on some level because it seems unlikely that it exists. So even the whole paradox thing is entirely speculative. so you know But if you have nothing better to do other than to bitch about Back to the Future and YouTube comments, I can see why you would be peeved.
00:19:08
Speaker
ah Speaking of bitching about concepts, yes, I do want to go down the paradox ah rabbit hole because obviously that is going to be a major part of any time travel fiction. If you go back and change something, um different theories apply. One is that if you change something, you create a parallel timeline, which means that everyone now inhabits, and Back to the Future 2 actually did this, the skewed timeline where Marty changes something, goes back to 1985 or whatever it is you're from, it and he's created an alternate timeline. Without Crispin Glover, even. Without k Crispin Glover in it, a timeline where Crispin Glover doesn't exist. um But someone who looks like him does. Yeah.
00:19:56
Speaker
And the trouble with that is that, ah first of all, where where does that mean there's an infinite amount of timelines floating around down there? And second, how do people know that they are in a different timeline? And can you go back and fix things so that the timelines sort of coalesce back into one cohesive timeline?
00:20:15
Speaker
The research would say no, but fiction is of course not research. So, Dave, solving a time paradox, first of all, they must crop up in the game somewhere. Sort of. Sort of. I kind of didn't want to go there so much. Like, I kind of leaned into it.
00:20:33
Speaker
Like the very first scene of the game, this isn't really the spoiler, it's the very first scene, is um the main character, Fia, picking up a guy at a bar and it's going very well and then suddenly there's like this flash of purple light and he disappears.
00:20:49
Speaker
And then she is just like, well, you know, this is just another Tuesday like the guy just no longer exists because, you know, time changed. And this guy that she was flirting with was no longer born. And so she lives in a world like for her, she's aware of all these changes in in time in the timeline.
00:21:09
Speaker
and um it says just what I kind of leaned into that. like what What does that turn you into? you know what what kind of like What kind of person does that make you become? and It makes for this very like disaffected, kind of nihilistic person. and I kind of found that interesting because i i did write I did start writing this during um the the peak of of the pandemic, like during lockdown. And also, you know I'm at a certain age where it's like, all right, you but you wonder you you think about legacy, I'm not that old, but you you wonder about like you know what you're leaving behind and does your work matter and and all this stuff. And would you go back and change it if you could? Is it that important?
00:21:53
Speaker
like Is it still okay if you don't have one, that kind of thing? And so here is someone who literally cannot leave a mark on the world because nothing they do matters. And what does that do to you? And that was an interesting thing to explore with this character because paradoxes just happen.
00:22:12
Speaker
um like they're I think in the in the demo, like she's talking with her coworker about going to this curry place after work, and he's like, yeah, we can't go there, it no longer exists, sorry. And she's like, oh, I like that place. like that That's just normal for them. So I kind of leaned into that a bit because I didn't want to like deal with it too much.
Character Impact and Development Through Time Travel
00:22:34
Speaker
But also, like A, I didn't want to deal with it, and then I found it actually led to some interesting interesting ideas.
00:22:40
Speaker
I love the idea that she's like, she's got, she goes on the date. The dude disappears in the haze of purple. I just, he goes, Oh, not again. That's the start. That's the third one this week. Did you ever read this, uh, Stephen King novel? Uh, that's called, uh, 11 22 63. Yeah. As far as paradoxes go, I love the way it did that. It's like five pages or something in the, you know, the final chapters of the book describing how the main characters' time travels completely changed the world and, you know, everything is going to hell. And I loved it. And it's really a shame that the adaptation was very evidently low budget during that section because the book was something else. It wasn't bad, but yeah, it wasn't great. I liked it, but obviously you can't beat the book.
00:23:26
Speaker
i think what I think what I like about this idea though that she kind of becomes nihilistic because nothing matters. That's also one of the problems with badly written and time travel stories, right? I think one of the reasons why I just ended up giving up completely on Star Trek enterprise was that they decided that their long running story arc was going to be time travel. And then it just became pretty clear that there were supposed to be sort of temporal Cold War rules that were written by humans that nobody is now following. So none of them matter. And it just became not only difficult to follow, but you were just like, yeah, but next week they could decide that the way to end this arc is just to
00:24:09
Speaker
do the final go back and then fix it type thing. So you just end up in this position where you're just like, why should I invest in anything going on around me? And I like this idea that those kinds of paradoxes also affect the characters in the fiction, not just the people watching it. I really like that. Well, that's sort of yeah just it's sort of starting her at that at that point where she feels like nothing matters. And you know, it's the the interesting thing was taking her from that and bringing her and kind of turning her into someone who cares about something by the end. And so that was, that was also interesting. And I also feel like I took a bit of a risk and I noticed a lot of the testers are a little put off by the character at first. Cause they're like, yeah, she's just very disaffected. Like it's hard to get her beat on her. I'm like,
00:24:59
Speaker
Yeah, that's very much by design. um and and i'm really that That's sort of like me crossing my fingers and hope people get it. Stick with it. stick with it i love I love that because then there are precious few examples of time travel fiction where the act of time traveling actually seems to have a negative mental consequence for these characters, which would you know in all likelihood be what would happen. But I can think only currently of late which turned into 12 monkeys, of course, and a number of cutscenes and terminators where Kyle Reese actually has a breakdown because he and Sarah Connor are walking around in this big forest and near where they're hiding from from the Terminator. And he just looks at ah all this nature and all this beauty he's not accustomed to and has a
00:25:49
Speaker
slightly less than stellar acted. Sorry, Michael Bean, breakdown. but But it's a very, very interesting aspect of this fictional concept. I would imagine major PTSD if you were to actually travel in time. Absolutely. Well, it's not PTSD so much as, you know,
00:26:09
Speaker
ah Again, just very disaffected. as how like a ah when you're When you're recruited for this kind of job, it's like, you know yeah, you're like immune from time paradoxes. You're not going to ever pop out of existence. like It's like you could see all the paths not taken. Isn't that exciting? And it's like that is like and then it just is another job at the end of the day.
00:26:33
Speaker
Oh yeah, we're just clocking in. Except the nine to five thing is is ah is a bit loose. i mean That is a joke in the game. There are way too many time-related puns in this game. five I think I've used them all. Did you have like any inspirations as far as other adventure games go?
00:26:56
Speaker
like for this specific time travel story. Because we were debating that earlier, like which adventure games actually pull this off. And for me, it sort of all comes back to day of the tentacle. Because not only is time travel a major story point in that, it's also used for a lot of the mechanics, like sending an inventory item back in time or forwards in time. But it actually dawned on me that there aren't that many of that many games that actually play with the concept.
00:27:26
Speaker
That game is so... I'm sorry, I totally interrupted you. No, no, that's okay. I just wanted to to say the other one. I thought it was Space Quest IV, and at first i I went, you know, that's not really using time travel. And then I thought of the hint book, which is a brilliant joke on several levels, but that's about it, really. You know, I'm sure there are others, but they're not known to me. The interesting thing about both of those examples, excuse me, is that they're both comedies.
00:27:54
Speaker
And so they can get away with a lot. There's a lot of like cartoony logic, especially in Day of the Tentacle, which I always feel like sometimes cartoony logic lends itself to better puzzles because you can get away with a lot. It's not as grounded as something like my work is usually is. And I actually was using um Day of the Tentacle as a bit of a template.
00:28:17
Speaker
At first I don't know if i've given some talks on this how For the first like year I was working on the game, which of course was 2020 so I I consider that year a mulligan anyway, but um The the biggest problem I had was
Using Comedy to Simplify Complex Mechanics
00:28:31
Speaker
that I was I had like maybe three or four different eras That you could travel to at any time And all of the puzzles it was like one big knot of day of the tentacle style stuff we're doing something in one era would affect another like you um you know like there's ah There's someone who's in jail in one era, but he was innocent of the crime, so you've got to go back in time and solve it. And then he's like a distinguished professor in the new timeline who can now help you with something, that kind of thing. it was like But all of that, it was so it broke my brain trying to put all this together.
00:29:07
Speaker
um And so I ended up doing what I'm doing now instead, which was making it a little bit more episodic. and um But the idea of the tentacle is is like gold standard for that kind of stuff. But I think making it a comedy enabled them to get away with a little bit more.
00:29:25
Speaker
Yeah, it also goes back to that Austin Powers line that you mentioned, because I've also mentioned that to trolls and Gareth and send them the clip of it. And I think it's a brilliant way of getting away with them and you know saying to the audience, literally, just go along for the ride. Don't take your that seriously. I'd argue back to the the future does the exact same thing. It just isn't communicated as a joke to the same extent.
00:29:49
Speaker
No, but it is a ah comedy in many aspects and and and time travel, especially in Backs of the Future, is more of a plot device than it is but the the the actual focal point of the story. There's a difference between something being a comedy and something being like a a pure cartoon, which is more what Day of the Tentacle is.
00:30:11
Speaker
Absolutely. And and other other less notable games have done the same comedy, time travel for comedic effects. There's a Sierra game called Pepper's Adventures in Time, which is like a children's game. You go back and you meet all these historical figures and then you go back to the present and, I don't know, impress your school teacher or something. I haven't actually played it.
00:30:30
Speaker
I'm trying to remember it was basically a time loop where you get beamed up to an alien spaceship and then they like they do something to you and they accidentally they think they're killing you but they send you back in time to before they picked you up and you got to like gather a bunch of stuff to bring back with you on the next loop.
00:30:49
Speaker
It escapes me because once once you said you know aliens bring you up to their spaceship and they do something too, I was immediately brought brought back to Fred in this prostate exam. I'm just going to use my finger. I don't need any sophisticated equipment for checking someone's prostate. Would you actually send them forwards in time and just go, oh, never mind. Yeah, absolutely. can we so Can we save this one?
00:31:12
Speaker
um had a worker title I'm not sure, I don't remember. um Anyway, yeah, that's one that's the that's the other only other adventure time travel game that I can think of. Yeah, there's also Delphine's Future Wars, which yeah but usually time travel is either a mechanic that you can employ during the game or it's something that just happens to you and you have to figure out a way back. And Future Wars does this thing where it just sort of happens to you, you get thrown back in time and you have to figure out how to even do anything. I don't think you even make it back. You just have to adapt to, okay, I guess I'm living in the past now. The interesting thing about time travel and the idea of paradoxes, something I just learned by reading this article, which I will attempt to link in the description of wherever you are currently listening and or watching this, is the idea of paradoxes
00:32:07
Speaker
can be sort of circumvented if in instead of thinking that every little change you make has this butterfly effect that affects everything and creates an entirely new separate timeline. Instead, you can think of it as sort of a spider web that branches out from the time machine itself. So if you, let's go back to Alice and her attempts to temporally commit suicide, she chucks a bomb at the time machine and it goes back.
00:32:33
Speaker
That time machine now exists in this in-between state, like a shirting as cat kind of thing, where if she doesn't open the time machine, then the timelines haven't changed yet. If she opens the time machines, then metaphysically she has created an alternate version of herself that did open the time machine, but everything else in the world remains unaffected unless they come into contact with Alice or whatever. So let's say she has an assistant that comes in to check on her.
00:33:02
Speaker
He has not been affected by the changes in the timeline until he goes in to actually check on her. If I had a time machine, I would go back to the time around season two when we were doing this drunk and attempt to do this episode. Right. Can I um can i ask a sort of a literary question, Dave? Because I think one of the reasons why time travel is so difficult is because we're used to a narrative traveling in one direction.
00:33:31
Speaker
Right? I mean, we we often you'll often see things that play around with um you have films where it won't necessarily be in sequence and it'll jump around. But our general sort of view of the world is that one thing leads to the next thing, leads to the next thing, leads to the next thing. And obviously time travel, one of the things that's interesting about it, but so difficult about it.
00:33:50
Speaker
is the fact that it changes and it isn't in the right order and causality isn't in the right order. How on earth do you keep all of that straight when you're trying to lay out the narrative arc of a game that as a human I'm going to have to play in the normal fourth dimension?
00:34:09
Speaker
this is an This is something I wrestled with. um Like I said, I originally tried designing a time travel story, Day of the Tentacle style, where everything was connected. But keeping all of that... cause like i I couldn't start any work on the game until I basically designed the whole thing. and Keeping all that straight in my head was impossible. ah so In the end, I gave up. and What I did instead was decided on this episodic format where you take these clients into into the past.
00:34:41
Speaker
And um to do something, you know various you know whatever whatever task they they want you to do. um And so another rule I set for myself was that, okay, here's this here's this client who wants to go back to the 1870s.
00:34:57
Speaker
um to meet, she's a boxer and she wants to meet this boxer that inspired her to get into boxing. She just wants to meet him. It's like her hero. And so, ah okay, you go back to the 1870s, you stay there. Like you don't, you just, you go there and you stay there until the mission's done and then you go back home. And so that, but if i guess like I guess my point is that like it's very important because time travel in itself is is clever. And there's this tendency to decide, I want to get clever with it. I want to be clever. And I think you can't that's a shitfall go into
00:35:39
Speaker
creating anything with the intention of wanting to be clever. Because that's not how that's not how organic storytelling happens. It has to happen organically. And so I thought, okay, I'm just going to start telling the story based on, here's what I'm here to do.
00:35:56
Speaker
And here's the complication. And let's see where this goes. And if something like cool or tiny wimey happens or comes to me while I'm doing it, then I'll i'll go with it and see where if it leads anywhere.
00:36:11
Speaker
um because that way it's organic and it feels a lot more natural than trying to shoehorn a twist. you know i think um im trying I'm not going to spoil anything, but there's a big twist on a vowed and I'm very proud of the fact that I didn't come up with that twist until I was like halfway through writing the thing.
00:36:28
Speaker
That one threw me for a loop, didn't it? This actually all fits really well. but And it works because I didn't know it was going to happen. So if I didn't know it was going to happen, then neither will the audience. And I think that's the most important thing is to like not um to not try to be so clever. that's the like i yeah That's what I try to do. I don't know if that makes any sense. Edit this always sounds smart.
00:36:51
Speaker
I'll do my best. I write each bit in isolation and see where it takes me. And if it's just a straightforward story, it's a straightforward story. If something interesting comes to me, I'll chase it and see where it goes and maybe I'll
Game Design: Puzzles and Player Experience
00:37:05
Speaker
end up using it. And I ah came up with some very interesting things that way.
00:37:08
Speaker
ah Some of the chapters are more straightforward than others. Some are bonkers and I kind of love that. um I just sort of followed the serotonin, like whatever made me happy or made me smile. I just went with it and see and just to see where it took me.
00:37:24
Speaker
and And so I didn't really think about, oh, I got to keep this all straight in my head. I deliberately kept things very simple and manageable to prevent things from getting you know too overwhelming. yeah So I kind of set out in advance to you know keep things grounded so I could keep it all in my head.
00:37:45
Speaker
Yeah, designed by Flowchart. That never really works very well, does it? Yeah, it really does. So so one one question I do have is, so you have this agency of time travelers that take on clients and lead them back into the past.
00:37:59
Speaker
um Do they sort of exist outside a given timeline or do they, how do they prevent their clients from going back and fucking everything up? ah You know, the Homer Simpson thing where he steps on a fish and all of a sudden donuts fall from the sky. That's literally what his job is.
00:38:18
Speaker
um and I mean, there's there's precautions. they have like There's something called a PFE, which I call a para Paradox Field Excluder, which protects you from paradoxes. If something happens where you like your ancestors die, you know you're you are preserved.
00:38:38
Speaker
Like your memory, your life is preserved, your history might have changed, but like you're preserved. And like part of the bureaucracy is that like, if that happens, you'll be compensated. Um, assuming it's not your fault. Like, you know, what's his name? You know how like Richard Garriott went into outer space. He paid a lot of money for the privilege. They're going to take care of him. But if he's up there and starts wrecking shit, like they're going to put him down. They're going to stop them. you know and They're going to probably sue them when they get back. um so that is sort of this That's how I think of it. is like you know you're They pay a lot of money to go on these trips, but if they fuck things up, like yeah, you got to stop it. ah and so That's your job, is to like you know make sure that they don't do that. Or if if something gets fucked up, you have to fix it. and That kind of stuff.
00:39:27
Speaker
Yeah, well, that's that's and very interesting. And I like the idea of introducing this. Let's be honest, this sort of magical device that sort of goes off when it says, oh, here's a change in the timeline. We might want to do something about that. um When you know the the the science says that even if a particle makes it into the ah a time pod or whatever, then then you know all shit gets fucked up. um So I really like that idea.
00:39:53
Speaker
and the I mean, it didn't like, ah it sounds clever, but it really was just through, um, it was through iteration. Cause at first, like when I started writing stuff, I just had this, like every time Fia picked something up or every time Fia did something, you know, it was always like, is this okay? Did this change anything? And I just realized how boring that and annoying that got. And and like, this is just annoying. Every time she did anything, it was always like, yeah, I don't, I don't see any changes. Yep. You're good to go. And this is, this is annoying. Let's just forget about that.
00:40:24
Speaker
This is not important, forget it. That is that that that is indeed the pitfall of of a time travel story because ah the more you start thinking about causality, the more shit starts to fall apart.
00:40:36
Speaker
which is ah guess why i um Not to impugn the the game, which I'm, ah of course, confident will be absolutely brilliant. um i i Thank you for your faith. no um i mean He's about to desert, so... that um just I think he's earned faith by now, Dave. I think you've got got a few brownie points in the bank. Just don't ruin them all on this.
00:41:01
Speaker
ah do my best why why Why would you start disappointing us now of of all times? But the idea of of um being unwittingly thrust through time and and because because you said something earlier, like if you buy a ticket to go back in time, one of the ways you could conceivably prevent people from fucking up the timeline was to say, it's a one way trip, dude, you're not coming back. That's not how this works. Um, cause that, that would inevitably construct the timeline where in the causality of them going back
00:41:36
Speaker
would not have any significant effect on the future. like that was That would be their destiny, so to speak. Trapping someone in the past would have more an effect on the future. Because then you can't control them. You'd have to monitor them their whole whole life. Well, they they would be unable to create a paradox in the sense that they only went one way. And sure, they can they can you know start fucking things up in the past. But whatever happened up to that point, someone has to get in the time machine. So inevitably, they would.
00:42:05
Speaker
be that person who went in the time machine. I mean, this is the reason why Austin Powers did what it did, because if they go for their great grandparents and put a bullet through their heads, you know, that's it. But that's where the paradox comes in, you know, not necessarily in terms of future events being affected, but also in terms of possibly affecting their own past.
00:42:28
Speaker
Which is OK. So here's here's the thing. Everyone always uses the example of, well, what happens if you go back in time and and kill your grandfather or something, which, of course, would negate your future existence? And then who is actually going back in the time pod? and why does You get sent back home and get arrested on the spot.
00:42:46
Speaker
that' exactly Also, you're an asshole who would kill their own grandfather. Yeah, that's that's that's just that's Which is why I like the ah the Futurama approach which was that he does go back in time But he becomes his own grandfather, which is somehow even dirtier. But That is just that is just and it almost happens in Back to the Future as well um Which is also why Disney didn't want to pick up the movie It's Dave Listeri's own dad
00:43:18
Speaker
Oh yeah, there's that bit as well. No, the the time loop for Red Dwarf is slightly different. he Yeah, he he leaves himself under the pool table as an orphan, something, something. Who cares? it's after did They finally, they did something interesting with that later. Like there was a a much later episode, I think it was called Father's Day, where he like, he he he never had his own father. He he missed having a dad. It's like on Father's Day, he like,
00:43:47
Speaker
right He records messages to himself and they get blackout drunk so he doesn't remember them on like watch them leaves messages to us to himself and then he can like receive them and it was actually very it it it finally did something interesting with that which i which i appreciate.
00:44:07
Speaker
Did you guys ever stop to consider why Marty McFly's parents didn't freak out as soon as he came of age and someone named Calvin Klein started manufacturing underwear? No, moving on. Well, we thought it was him. I just wanted to know because we mentioned day of the day of the tentacle. Dave of the tentacle.
00:44:30
Speaker
um there there's branding for yeah hello ah there if you ever want to do a he ti game there's your pitch um
00:44:44
Speaker
um i by the way Yeah, I propose we don't ah don't edit this out. This is brilliant. and This is gold. um You have my blessing. Keep it in. Lovely. Thank you. We were talking about Day of the Tentacle and its puzzles. And I just wanted to know, because now we've talked about how time travel informs the story and the characters, but did you Without spoiling anything, does time travel in any way inform your puzzle design? You mentioned having these contained episodes, but but can you move stuff from one time zone to another, so to speak? not quite I mean, basically, the um I always feel that you need to use the gimmick. And there is this like I said, if there was something clever I came up with in the course of writing um a mission or a story, I would i would see where it leads me. and that
00:45:36
Speaker
um often like If you have like a mystery, for example, and there's a thing about a mystery, or let's take just a murder mystery. um There's three like um things that need to work in parallel. There's three different stories you're telling. There's the story of what happened, you know how did the murder take place? There's the story of like you uncovering what happened.
00:46:01
Speaker
You know, there's like the there's there's the how the murder happened and there's what the people do like after the murder happened. And then there's the story of you uncovering what happened. And both of those have to be interesting.
00:46:14
Speaker
And sometimes one of them is a little more interesting than the other. you know Maybe like the actual mystery is really cool with all these moving pieces, but the the path you take to get there, is just and it's just it's just by the numbers. Maybe that's not very interesting. But with this time travel story, I found there was this one chapter which was basically kind of a mystery. And I found that all I was doing was going around and asking people, so what happened six months ago?
00:46:40
Speaker
And I realized that it was just a lot of expository stuff. And I realized, look, it's your freaking time travel. Just go back six months and see for yourself. And that that ah that opened up a whole bunch of possibilities. you know So you can kind of go back and forth between you know April and October. Like you're in October, you find out this thing happened. you know You're trying to find out what happened. So you go back um you know six months ago and then you know the you you get some more information, and then you can go forward in time and then ask people about it. like ask and then And it becomes a little more interesting that way. Oh yeah, that's great. And using the gimmick a little bit more. um And also, ah there is but also ah in in one chapter, that's they let's you see the before and after.
Portraying Real Historical Events in Fiction
00:47:31
Speaker
um There's this one chapter that takes place around the September 11th attacks, and originally it was gonna just take place the day before.
00:47:40
Speaker
And I realized I was having a similar problem where um you would do something and then your colleague in the future, his name is Nazo, would like tell you, oh, you did this. That caused this to happen. And that's bad. So you should do something else.
00:47:58
Speaker
And I found that very boring because it was just characters telling you no, but I'm thinking you have a time machine, you could go forward and see what happened. And so you go forward a couple of months to see the results of what you did. And what was interesting there is that you have the character just before the attacks and then just after. And so i was that was kind of interesting. I was able to kind of show the before and after of that and like,
00:48:24
Speaker
being a New Yorker at that time like it is drastic. you know like the before Everything was different, and being able to show that was actually, um was I don't want to say it was great, it was actually traumatic to relive all that, but it was very cathartic to be able to do that, um being able to use time travel to like explore these ideas.
00:48:45
Speaker
and And one fun thing that I that i did, um there was ah there' there was one section in the game, early in the game, where um you're trying to get through a um heist, like a robbery, and I figured like there needed to be some element of peril.
00:49:09
Speaker
and ah common sin in adventure games that's considered a sin is you can't kill the player. It's not it's not considered good. um And I thought, well, maybe Fia can die and because she's a time traveler, because she's a time traveler, she can get her personal timeline can get rewound, like Prince of Persia style. And that led to some very interesting puzzles, because there's a lot of situations like where I'll just kill Fia off.
00:49:35
Speaker
And then she'll remember, you know, she'll remember everything that she did. So she'll be able to find a way to circumvent that the next time around. And I found that a lot of fun to design puzzles around. Oh, yeah. ah You can't rewind just whenever you want. That would be too complicated to implement. But like during specific moments, like Fia can die and then you have to figure out a way to get around that.
00:49:59
Speaker
and kind of using the knowledge of the previous loop. So I could kind of indulge in a bit of mood logic. It's like you you know you you you move something and that causes something else to happen on the other side of the room. um You know that in advance, so you could take advantage of that, that kind of thing. And as a side effect, it kind of gives Thea um this very ah lackadaisical attitude towards dying, which never stopped being funny.
00:50:29
Speaker
Well, you can have your cake and eat it too, right? You can have your Sierra-style deaths. and I'm sorry, Scarra's just had to stand up for a while now. No, no, it's just ah that that whole process that you were talking about, this is one of the reasons why I always like listening to your talks, Dave, is because I always take something away from it from my own kind of perspective. And this is one of the ways that I think as well is sort of start writing and see where it goes and sort of using that as ah as a thinking mechanism. Given the nature of this game, do you feel that you were doing more of that in this project than you have in any of your previous ones?
00:51:02
Speaker
Yes. um I feel like with um ah Blackwell was always dialogue first. I'd always start writing, having the characters talk, and then see where that led me. um unavowwed ah a little bit more, it was a little bit looser. I started, I kind of did the, it was more an explanation exploration based. So I'd start with the environments and have the characters walk around and kind of see where that got me. But for a time travel story, it required a bit more careful plotting in advance. So I found myself really having to think about this um a lot before I could even start making it. It wasn't something I could make up as I went along.
00:51:46
Speaker
um Which is usually how I did my how i do my design is I see where things go as I'm physically making it. But I couldn't really do that with old skies because time travel requires a lot more careful It requires a lot, a lot more. um I can't change things as I go, because then that'll just break everything, because everything is just, narrative-wise, just so carefully
Development Challenges and Iterative Processes
00:52:09
Speaker
balanced. And so um I had to, yeah, I did do that a lot more ah for Old Skies. I did a lot more, you know, pre-production than I normally do. Which is also why it's taken so damn long. Also that and the whole unity thing. um I don't use unity, dude.
00:52:29
Speaker
Oh, no, no, no. Never. I never have. Well, I tried, but I've never... like Yeah, I was trying to skirt around that. I did i did see your your initial ah works on your date. It wasn't <unk>t like terrible or anything. i'm I'm actually having a good time with the... You streamed it, right? The jam game.
00:52:47
Speaker
I did ah yeah did a jam game and and went out of bounds and thought I was supposed to, and that was sounds interesting. i was right um I kind of want to go back to something you mentioned. ah ah Let's let's let's take this take the helicopter up a bit. ah You mentioned the whole time rewind mechanic, which ah was it which reminded me of one of my favorite modern adventure games, ah Life is Strange, which has that as a central mechanic in that if you are in some sort of peril or if something you're about to do is gonna fuck up the timeline, you can just rewind for a bit, not as far back as you want, but for a bit. I think it's like a couple of minutes or something. Yeah. And that mechanic also
00:53:35
Speaker
I mean, obviously, the the whole the more you get into the story, the more things start fucking up as as far as timeline is concerned. And they even had alternate paths. As in, you do something in one episode, and you know many episodes down the line, you realize that whatever choice you made has now affected the timeline irrevocably. Is there anything in and in Old Skies that plays with that concept? Like, can you... Not necessarily fuck up at some point in the past but can you ever quickly change what happens later on in the game like you sort of have to live with that consequence there's no not a lot of choice in consequence like there was without about adding.
00:54:20
Speaker
multiple paths or branching stories on top of the time travel that have broken me. i mean There are things like if there's a like a plot beat in an early so in early chapter that does have ripple effects down the line, but that's like you know it's not something you can you choose. It's something that's like a you know fixed point in the story. You can't get out of it. That's just the story. um so not really I mean, I tried. There's some like little moments where you can choose to do one thing versus the other, um but it's not it's not like on a vow where things really did branch to some degree.
00:55:04
Speaker
um that ah doing that on top of time travel would have just melted my brain. so i didn't believe I would have loved to if I had that, if I had like a team of writers, maybe. Yeah, I forgot about Life is Strange. Life is Strange did that really well. And there was another game that came out last summer called The Holy Gosh Darn, which basically takes that whole time rewinding concept and makes the whole game out of it.
00:55:34
Speaker
It's incredibly done. It's really good. it's sort of I've seen the title and I was like, really? Really? cool it's It's a weird title, but the game is really good. I played it. I wouldn't have, it would have completely flowed out of my radar if I hadn't played it at, um,
00:55:52
Speaker
at WASD in London last year. It was its surprisingly, it's it sneaks up on you. And it's short, but it's so tight. It's so funny. ah And actually the lead actress um played Petra in Emerald City Confidential, which I didn't know at the time. Ah, i saw I thought we didn't talk about Emerald City Confidential. It's like that and the unity escapades. It's like, mm-mm. We talk about Emerald City all the time. I've got no problem with Emerald City Confidential.
00:56:18
Speaker
um And anyone who's confused about this, just just look it up. You'll see. Thank you. ah but and And I suppose I should backpedal a little because ah Life is Strange does. the The scene I was thinking of is actually not one that you directly influence. It's the one where you arrive at your friend's house to discover that she's now in a wheelchair and she's like terminally ill or something. and and you have to go back in time through a photograph for some strange reason and fix that. Yeah, which is an ah which was a gorgeous heartbreaking moment for me and I'm not usually heartbroken by games. that's so only That silhouette of him at the door. It was so beautiful. Yeah, goddamn. I expected it to be like this like cheesy you know teenager. you know Which it also was. It is, but it's very sincere, and I i loved it. I haven't played the follow-ups. I've never played the other. Oh, I mean, Life is Strange 2, I haven't played that one, but the ah prequel one, goddamn. Sorry. And it doesn't use Ashley Burch, right? She's not in it?
00:57:25
Speaker
Uh, no, it it it doesn't focus on Max at all. Uh, and it's just, no actually but she's um, uh, the actress who played Chloe, she's not asked to go to no, no, that's right. They recast the role as well. No, here's an interesting, from a narrative standpoint, the interesting thing about, uh, before the flood, I think it's called, um,
00:57:43
Speaker
the interesting thing about that one is if from a narrative standpoint it is so overwritten and so melodramatic like it takes it takes everything from the first game that was you know funny and quirky and interesting and sort of threw it out and decided to do like full-on teenage drama instead and that's what so that's that's actually also an interesting question like have you ever um gone over something that you have written and and looked at it and thought, this is an episode of EastEnders. but What am I doing with my life?
00:58:18
Speaker
I mean, not really. i and I could say that with Old Skies. I did get out of my comfort zone a little bit because I um ah sort of found myself writing a love story. um it It just turned into a love story eventually. And I ended up rewriting a chunk of it to kind of well um make that a bigger focus. There's just these two characters that ended up becoming really engaging, like their relationship became really engaging. And I found myself really like getting emotionally invested in them. And I just went with it, again, following the serotonin. And I had never done that before. And I actually kind of like it. I actually kind of enjoyed writing that because it's just something I'd never done before.
00:59:06
Speaker
um I don't know if like it's, I hope I didn't get to Schmaltzy and soap opera-y, but I enjoyed it. And plus, this well, it's also added time travel into the mix. So it's a time travel love story, as it turns out. But that that ended up being something fun that I never knew I could do and ended up being very engaging. And the testers seem to like it too, so I'm happy.
00:59:27
Speaker
Oh, yeah. Well, it takes a lot. It takes a lot for a game to hit you on an emotional level. And like I say, I'm i probably very jaded on that point. Like I recently finished Stray, which everyone says has the most emotional ending of all time. And I was like, yeah, nah, fucking really. I enjoy the hell out of Stray, but I mean, it's a cat.
00:59:46
Speaker
it Yeah, agreed. The cat was the selling point for me. No, I've actually got a whole video prepared for my thoughts on straight. So I'm not going to spoil any of that here. And unfortunately, we've also hit the one hour mark. We've sort of promised ourselves because we're all family members. Well,
01:00:05
Speaker
Gareth is married to the Empire, of course, but... of course Of course. Other than that... We're all family members, don't you mean family men? yeah Otherwise, this is the biggest you know bombshell of the century. We're all related. and And that's the time paradox of today. Remember this, Dave. When you go on Quest Quest, you won't get this quality of organization.
01:00:29
Speaker
Oh, that's the, ah that's ah Dave. No, sorry. Jess was a decaf Jedi. I was God dammit. Decaf Jedi's podcast. ah The Adventure Game podcast market is really saturated at this point. And ah ah Joshua from the Adventure Game hotspot wants to kick one off. I mean, I have it on good authority from Adventure X, but we did it first.
01:00:49
Speaker
one of their correspondents, I don't know, writers or whatever, Nat Aucamp lives very close to me now. So like he's actually going to be like coming to my house and interviewing me here. So that's going to be cool. Oh, I met him at the fanfare. He's not as intimidating as you might think. i'm how So he's a lovely guy. Great dude. and It turns out he used to live like across the street from where I'm living now. So he comes here. It's like, you know, returning home for him.
01:01:18
Speaker
Oh shit. That was, that was like when I, when I was an exchange student in in Syracuse in New York back in 97 and 98, apparently I was living like a 20 minute drive away from Steven Alexander of IQ adventures. So if I had known him at the time, I could have been hanging out with Steven Alexander. She ran like ended up like, she'd lived five blocks from me in in Manhattan at the same time as me. And I had no idea she existed back then. but This is where the time machine comes in.
01:01:47
Speaker
Yeah. That would actually be great. Maybe we could go back in time and find a useful liver for Steve. That'd be great. It's not as funny as the prostate, but it's a kidney. Sorry. God damn it. Where's my mind right now? Okay. So ah real, real quick and really strange ah postscript to that is um not to get all personal and everything, but I had my first romantic encounter when I was an exchange student and I told Steve this and he went, Oh, I probably know her.
01:02:17
Speaker
that's exactly what you want to hear oh god i hope not as long as you didn't go you've tapped that too did he know her i i don't know i didn't tell tell him her her fucking name are you crazy you didn't want to know absolutely not no absolutely not Then that will remain a mystery until his last kid begins out. Oh, dude. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,
01:02:44
Speaker
i um good authority that he enjoys gallows humor like i've always i've always i've always held back on that sort of shit and i was gone i had a joke ready but you probably wouldn and he' just went now bring it to it bring it sorry i'm comfortable in saying that I think it was like, um you know, there was the meme like about a decade ago where, you know, stop dying, Steve. Yeah, that was me. Oh, yeah, that was good. but You know, there was a I think it was, oh, my God, blanking on his name. Broomey was at Adventure X. He was talking about Steve.
01:03:19
Speaker
Um, and he had a bunch of like, you know quotes from people talking about steve And like he put mine up there. We just said stop dying steve texas and Maybe look at the biggest jerk To i mean to be fair he he hasn't died yet, which is christian He's got to be beating some kind of record because like yeah, he just keeps ticking on and it's amazing And that's a good thing. Steve, we love you to bits, man. Well, um unfortunately, we are going to have to wrap this up. Is there anything from, ah I actually have co-hosts. It's amazing, isn't it? Sometimes I let them talk. So I'm going to let them talk right now. Is there anything anything you guys want to add to the conversation?
01:04:04
Speaker
I'm still trying to recover from that one kidney joke. At this point, I can only do wrong, so there is absolutely nothing I want to add. I'm just glad that we got the opportunity to talk to Dave again, because as I said, it's always I always learn something from talking to him about managing a project or being creative.
01:04:26
Speaker
Well, yeah, you've got one person that you speak to who gets something from it. so now I will second that emotion. i think Thank you. all I will readily third it. I am actually quite um sort of amazed and a little confused, but also very grateful that you concur in the friendship department. And it's always a pleasure to talk to you, sir. Well, after this one, he's not coming back. No, I know. We've burnt all of our bridges at this point. It doesn't matter. I've been in this joke recently. If someone asks me to be interviewed by them, I'll be like, okay. and I'll just hop on. and I'm just waiting for the day I accidentally end up on some alt-right Nazi podcast. I never bothered to check who they were. It hasn't happened yet. But like if you want to talk to me, I'm happy to talk about myself for as long as
01:05:19
Speaker
Anyone loves me, so it's... And there it is. That's why he keeps coming back late. That's absolutely it. You let me talk about myself. good now Seriously, it's always a pleasure. I look forward to the day we get to hang out again. And until then, say goodbye, Fred. It's really good what happens this year. Yes. God damn it. Yes. Yes. Yes. Well, say goodbye, Fred. Bye. Say goodbye, Professor.
01:05:45
Speaker
yeahka got lee coa okay god fuck And on that note, please check your prostate's chin, sir. I'm coming for you. Yeah, we have an ah RSS feed. We don't have a website. You can check us out on YouTube. That is it. It's just so long, Dave. Bye.
01:06:13
Speaker
No, de leckered. Yeah, auntie Fiesen. Yeah, I can't be cool, sir.