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Episode 15 - Disco Elysium, The Thaumaturge, and Francisco González
2.2k Plays6 months ago
Special guest Francisco González stops by and tells us a wild story about his new role playing hobby. Matt thinks Indika is weird and incredible. We talk for over an hour about how great Disco Elysium is, and then like 15 minutes about The Thaumaturge.
Email us! [email protected]
Games Mentioned:
- Rosewater
- Grand Theft Auto Online
- Indika
- Disco Elysium
- Planescape: Torment
- The Thaumaturge
- Lamplight City
Recommended
Transcript
Nostalgia and Misinterpretations in King's Quest III
00:00:00
Speaker
golden. I'm not just talking about my pee. It's a shame for the listeners because we've been talking about piss for 10 minutes and they only got to hear the tail end.
00:00:20
Speaker
And they missed me referencing a King's Quest III puzzle. It's not really a puzzle, is it? It's a chore. It's a chore, yeah, when you have to throw the chamber pot. I used to love doing that as a kid. I used to have been like, ew, so gross. Okay, so you knew what a chamber pot was because I didn't.
00:00:38
Speaker
when I played it. I had to ask. I had to ask. Yeah, that's a great question to ask, isn't it? Yeah. Well, I had a lot of questions about King's Quest III. There's like a spell that has like a horny toad in it. Oh, sure, sure, sure. And like my little young self is like, what's a horny toad? My grandpa's like, ah. I have a plan for you. Why do you know that word? It's like your grandma. I have a question. Matt! Matt! What? They made?
00:01:08
Speaker
If your grandparents weren't horny, you wouldn't be here. My God. I have a question for you about King's Quest 3. Okay. Okay, so you know the kitchen background? You can Google it. Google King's Quest 3 kitchen.
00:01:23
Speaker
Okay. I'm looking at it right now. Okay. I mean, it's embedded in my brain, but I will. Okay. Okay. Okay. I'm sure there's some, there's some, there's probably some like minute detail that we never noticed. Okay. No, it's not a minute detail. It's what the hell is it? What the hell is that yellow bell looking thing at the top there hanging with like all like above the fireplace?
00:01:42
Speaker
Right. Is that like a mushroom? It is. Oh, it's a mushroom in the foreground. Oh. Because I never knew. It's been bothering me for 40 years. It's like the very first time Sierra decides to play with perspective and it failed so spectacularly. Yeah. I always thought it was like a, I don't know, like a trumpet or something, an ear trumpet.
00:02:09
Speaker
My little pea brain thought it was a sombrero. My man just decides, he's like, Lydia, I have to go to a Cinco de Mayo party now. I'll be back. I'll be back in a couple days. Like, what?
00:02:25
Speaker
Yeah, that is that that is a mushroom. Thank you for asking. I don't remember. I don't remember how I figured it out. I don't remember how I recalled it. It might have been. I mean, I reviewed this game several years ago. I've streamed it. Somebody may have have like been like light bulb moment like it's not a hat as a mushroom drying out. And I guess you can kind of
00:02:49
Speaker
determine that because there are like herbs drying out. Yeah, but here's my problem with it though. The mushroom is so much bigger than everything else. Yeah, this is my problem with it is the herbs seem normal size where the mushroom seems huge and so it feels like the mushroom is hanging really close to the camera, but it's clearly attached to the far side of the pillars. So that is a mushroom that is bigger than a man.
00:03:15
Speaker
Yes. And honestly, I kind of thought that I was like, maybe, maybe it's a huge mushroom, to be honest with you. Like I because the foreshadowing is not working here. It could be a good a big wizard ingredient mushroom thing. Like maybe maybe it's a special mushroom that he only takes a little piece of. I don't know. I'm like magic.
00:03:37
Speaker
In the AGD interactive remake, they cut the mushroom. Oh, I bet people were real pissed about it. It was like that. That's like the Han shot first. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. King's quest three is like mushroom gate, mushroom gate. Where's the giant mushroom sellouts?
00:03:55
Speaker
The real question is, what is in those barrels? What is that yellow and blue stuff? Yellow and blue. So when you look at it, when you type look, like look barrel, it says, I'll never forget this.
Introduction and Guest Introduction
00:04:07
Speaker
It's burned into my brain. It's filled with food stuffs. Oh. One word. Food stuffs. This is my barrel of yellow. Every kitchen has to have a barrel of yellow and a barrel of blue. I mean, based on what we were talking before, you wanted me to have a barrel of yellow in my basement. That's true.
00:04:41
Speaker
Hey everybody and welcome to save your game a podcast. My name is Matt Aucamp with me is the superb
00:04:54
Speaker
the enigmatic, the indecipherable, I guess you got, there's mystery to you. It's Pushing Up Roses, my co-host.
Francisco Gonzalez's Gaming Journey
00:05:06
Speaker
I don't even know what to say to that. That was amazing, I'm such a mysterious being. Hey everyone, Pushing Up Roses here, welcome back to Save Your Game. I do like, Matt, that you said, Save Your Game, a podcast. Oh shit, sorry. That's okay, oh well, okay.
00:05:23
Speaker
That's my stop working alarm. I forgot. Wait, you know what? Way to make an introduction. I'm impressed. Yeah, to tell everybody who we have with us today, who needs to stop working immediately. Well, I can't be on this podcast anymore. Sorry. Bye.
00:05:47
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, this absolute rebel who's working well after his alarm goes off. It is a game developer. He is often known as Grundislav Games. You probably know him from the internet. It's Francisco Gonzalez. How are you doing, Francisco? Hello. I'm all right. How are you? Both. Oh, I'm doing well.
00:06:17
Speaker
I forgot to get my drink, so now I'm parched. Oh no. Thank you for asking. Well, get your drink then. Sorry, that was hard news for a second. I'll get it during the break, you guys. Oh, during the swanky Max Amino?
00:06:33
Speaker
Yeah, during the swanky max. See? That's right. I listen to this podcast. Nice. I love that. I'm excited to be here with Pushing Up Roses and the Special Boy. Thank you. We almost sort of know what we're talking about when it comes to adventure games. Listen, I hosted an adventure game podcast for 10 years and it's not easy. Well, I say that, but we recorded like 120 episodes in those 10 years, so it wasn't that exciting.
00:07:00
Speaker
So I know what it's like. It's hard. Especially when you have a co-host who doesn't listen to you and is... No, I'm kidding. I hosted with Ben Chandler. He was lovely. Oh, Ben is great. What a talent. Yeah, we had the Blue Cup Tools podcast way back when. And so it's nice to actually be on someone else's adventure podcast for a change. So thank you for having me. Isn't that nice? Yeah, I don't have to do any editing.
00:07:28
Speaker
I actually love being on podcasts. The only reason I have this podcast is because Matt really wanted this podcast and his excitement was, I don't know, I fell into it, man.
00:07:41
Speaker
Well, that's great. It's you guys are doing a great job. I honestly, I what? Okay. I don't, I don't want to sound like I'm like, you know, blowing smoke up your asses or anything, but I genuinely was okay. No. Um, I was genuinely excited when you would to be on here and I look forward every week to listening to the podcast while I work. So that's amazing. Thank you so much. Yeah. Yeah.
00:08:09
Speaker
Um, well, we're really excited to have you on. I, I'm curious. So your stop working alarm just went off. How, how, how was your day of work? What did you work on today? Well, I actually stopped working about two hours ago. Cause I started, I was, I was a liar.
00:08:27
Speaker
Okay. So I don't want to, I don't have to put the card in front of the horse, but like you're going to ask me what I've been playing. And the thing I've been playing has kind of been taking over my life. And so I stopped to work. I was bad and I stopped working today early so I could get a little time in before the podcast. Cause I knew I wasn't going to be able to play after work. So, you know, but to answer your initial question, I worked on some animation today. Nice. Wait, for what?
00:08:53
Speaker
for the game that I'm making. The adventure game that I'm making. That's right, I'm an adventure game developer. I am clutching my pearls right now. You have pearls? You wear pearls to record a podcast? Damn, I'm in my pajamas.
00:09:11
Speaker
I'm so poor. Can I please have some pearls? I'm so poor. What is the name of this so-called alleged game that you're working on? Why it's called pushing up rose water. No, I'm kidding. Game or gate? No. Yes.
00:09:31
Speaker
I can't believe you let him have that. I can't believe that got in there. I didn't think to do that before. Anyway, no, it's actually called Rosewater, and it's a Wild West adventure set in an alternate 19th century.
00:09:48
Speaker
Yeah, I've been following your updates and it looks lovely. Oh, thank you. Thank you. Yeah, it said in the same world as my previous game, Lamplight City, which was a detective adventure in the same alternate steampunk 19th century. And so yeah, I've been working on it for a really long time and I'm hoping it will be out later this year.
00:10:12
Speaker
And I don't want to talk about it anymore because it's the bane of my existence. But you know what, it's going to feel so good. It is, but at the same time, I'm sure, I know you're an artist, Rosa, so you probably have this same feeling, which is... How did you know that? Oh, because I listen to this podcast.
00:10:32
Speaker
Do you think, has she mentioned it? Well, here's the thing, here's the thing. There's an old saying, which is, how can you tell who's a vegan, who works out, and who's an artist?
00:10:46
Speaker
the people who tell you so yeah yeah you know so that's that's how it goes anyway so i'm sure you know the feeling of like you've been working on something for a really long time and part of you is like oh yeah i'll be so happy to to release it but then at the same time you're like but when i release it it will be out there and people will tell me what they think about it and that will hurt me so i i can't release it ever
00:11:09
Speaker
So you're torn between this desire to like get it out and this desire to like, well, if I never stop working on it, no one will ever tell me it's bad. So that's kind of where I am right now. That is a little, I mean, I've heard that as a defense mechanism. What's really helped me is to give no fucks. I literally put out my bad art to see if people like it.
00:11:37
Speaker
Well, I mean, just I mean, even as like, I know you're joking, but like that has to be the last step, right? Like,
00:11:48
Speaker
Art will literally never be done if you don't stop giving a fuck at some point. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's true. I mean, art is suffer after all, right? Art is suffer. Is art ever really finished, you guys? No. No. It's not. Never. I have to force myself to stop. And that goes for video work as well. I mean, you read the comments and everyone's like, you forgot this. And it's like, no, I promise I didn't. I just can't put every single thing
00:12:17
Speaker
Into a video. Otherwise, I'm gonna have a four-hour video like ala h bomber guy, which is not a slight by the way I love for
Exploring GTA Roleplay
00:12:25
Speaker
our video. We're coming for you h bomber guy. I Love them when someone else does them. I don't love them when I do them. We're gonna piss in your dumbwaiter h bomber guy
00:12:38
Speaker
Sorry, that was a little callback for the... Remember from before? Before when we did that. Yeah, that was good. But if I can just do one last bit of shameless self-promotion, please go on Steam and GOG and Wishlist Rosewater and buy Lamplight City. Thanks.
00:12:55
Speaker
Francisco promises it'll be out soon. He promises. That's right. He really promises. I mean, I do. Yes. I don't know any more. Well, Francisco, you've already teased it. So now I'm really curious. What have you been playing lately?
00:13:12
Speaker
Oh my god. Okay, so I've gotten into this thing that has apparently been around for a while but I've only just discovered it and I'm having way too much fun and I feel like such a dork. Do you guys know about Grand Theft Auto roleplay?
00:13:26
Speaker
role play no i obviously don't know about this role play thing i'm sweating it's not a sex thing i'm okay right now it's not a sex thing okay okay so you know how you know how when gta 5 came out so many years ago they they put out gta online and they've been like constantly updating it like always and they're always
00:13:49
Speaker
You know, yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. So GTA online is like, you go online, you do the races, they have like a little story, blah, blah, blah. You can talk to other people, whatever. Sure. Okay. Cool. Well, GTA roleplay is, there's a whole bunch of servers for this, but I happened to, uh, have a friend of mine is it's always the same story, right? A friend of mine is who got me into it. And so I joined a private invite only server where everyone there is like,
00:14:18
Speaker
It's not rando 12 year olds running around shouting the n word. Oh, right. Yeah. Yeah. So it's basically GTA online, except instead of doing the races and stuff, it's literally just a giant, I mean, it's, it's the GTA five map. You create a character and you're supposed to role play as that character. So imagine.
00:14:43
Speaker
doing like an online larp MMO where you're just improving as your character that you've created and you're talking to people and like it's it's deep like there's people who own restaurants who you can order food from because because you have to keep your like hunger and thirst levels in check
00:15:03
Speaker
So you have to eat and drink occasionally. So you have to patronize the businesses. You can do crimes. You can form gangs. Yeah. So I started off making a noir private detective named Marvin O'Leary. His shtick was that he's just really lazy. So instead of solving crimes, he just buys replacements for the things that people have lost.
00:15:32
Speaker
Yeah, so I got bored of him and then I decided I was gonna add a little like flavor into the server because the server is based in the UK so pretty much everybody is in Scotland or in like the UK which is great because it means they're all in bed by like 8 p.m. My time so I don't have an excuse to
00:15:49
Speaker
Is there voice chat? Yes, that's the whole thing. So that's also got to be a great sonic. Exclusively voice chats. Yeah. That's going to be a great sonic experience, just like a bunch. Yeah, just so many Scottish accents yelling about American crime. Not always. Some of them put on accents. There's a couple of people who are doing these amazingly good Valley Girl accents that I'm like, wow, that's really good. There's one guy who's Australian who plays the town preacher and he gives him this horrible
00:16:17
Speaker
Southern accent that i've just ridiculous but i love it he's one of my favorite characters nothing is better than non americans doing american accents because they do they always go souther they always go souther or valley girl it's it's one or the other.
00:16:32
Speaker
The other thing, there's a third thing, which is just to completely flatten your voice. So you just kind of go like this. Hi, I'm from America. America. That's one of my favorite things. OK. Yeah.
00:16:49
Speaker
So, so I made a second character who I've been playing this week. Oh, but they but right but but the other side of the coin what I was saying about the time zone thing is it's great because they're all in bed by like 8pm so I'm not up until like three o'clock in the morning playing.
00:17:04
Speaker
But they usually get on around like 2 p.m. my time. So I'm like, oh, I need to stop working for the day and play. So that's that's kind of that's what I was doing before the podcast. So but yeah, I made it seems that we need to get on this. Oh, my God. Is there any part of you? Is there any part of you, Francisco, that's like having trouble adjusting to being Francisco again?
00:17:33
Speaker
Like, is there any part of you that's a little bit like... So the character, the second character that I made is named Eugenio Hernandez, but he goes by Yugi and he's like a stereotypical Cuban Papi from Vice City and I've been talking like this for like the past week so I can't get back into my normal voice. It's really hard.
00:17:50
Speaker
so yeah it's been it's been interesting um yeah yeah interesting is the word for it but it's basically like a giant adventure game because you're running around like doing stuff and and like and so he got a job at the local bar and apparently his boss is like a crime lord so i'm trying to like because you're supposed to stay in character so you can't know any information that like if someone live streams and you and you watch them you can't
00:18:20
Speaker
you can't know about what happened. You have to like completely keep in character. So you have to like, there's a lot of like, hinting and suggestions and like, I hear you might be into stuff. What are you talking about? Oh, I don't know. Just you know, so it's been it's been a lot of fun. And of course, and like the thing that's cool about, you know,
00:18:42
Speaker
the fact that everybody on the server knows each other is that everyone's really into it in a good way. So like everyone's really supportive and welcoming and like encouraging other people to improv and have fun. So we get into some really ridiculous situations.
00:18:55
Speaker
And then sometimes, yeah, sometimes there's like random fun bugs. Like today we were all hanging out in the bar and I was serving them and all of a sudden the bus appeared on the dance floor and killed me. And the EMS had to come and rescue me. Then you have to, hold on, so then you have to like role play a reason why that could have happened in a real world? Yeah, so our excuse is that the bar's haunted.
00:19:21
Speaker
So I know, so my friend has a character who wants to start up a ghost investigation group. Call what? Call what? Call what? The Bureau of Occult Observation, or BOO. If you got randomly hit by a ghost bus in your own bar, you will start a paranormal investigations group.
00:19:50
Speaker
To be fair, my character had been warned that there might be ghost cars. But I was like, oh man, I thought you just meant I would hear them. I didn't think I would get hit by one. So, yeah. I mean, that's a good assumption to make. It's very rare. Yeah, so. Unless it's a poltergeist. Exactly. It could be a poltergeist. Yeah. This could be the entire episode. It could be. I have so many questions. We need to revisit this. Yeah. We need to revisit this.
00:20:20
Speaker
Look it up. I just streamed it like two days ago. So if you go to my Twitch, the VOD should still be on there. Nice. Are there celebrities in this world? Are there people where it's like, oh, everybody knows? Well, there's the mayor who I have yet to meet in an official capacity. So actually, they just...
00:20:38
Speaker
This is so, this sounds so pathetic when I say, when I talk about it. They held a fundraiser for this one. Oh, that's the other thing. This server clearly has adventure game fans on it because the chief of police is Chuck LeChuck.
00:20:51
Speaker
And then there's, yeah. And then the guy who, who, one of the guys who works at the seafood restaurant is captain Randall Threepwood, who is a pirate. And Randall, Randall Threepwood. And, uh, I hope I'm not doxing everybody on the server, by the way, by saying these names, but when you say, is a pirate, are there boats in Grand Isle Online? Yes, there are. So actually they just held a fundraiser for him this past Sunday. So he could buy a new boat.
00:21:21
Speaker
And he did. He had his boat today. Everybody was standing at the pier. Yeah, I know. It's nuts, but it's hilarious. So that's what I've been playing. And that's what I've been playing. And apparently that is what Matt's going to be playing pretty soon, most likely. I don't know. I do not know that I can give myself over. Like I have a friend who larks. Yeah. And like.
00:21:51
Speaker
He tells me about how it's, oh, it's actually a lot more fun than you'd think. It's actually like, yeah, it's pretty nerdy, but like it's actually really cool. And it's like, I just don't know that that is a line I can cross. Like I've crossed so many lines of nerddom. And there's just some that I don't know, like I don't know that I'll ever come back.
00:22:14
Speaker
Yeah, there's so many things we can do as nerds. There's only so many interests we can in hobbies we can pick up. Yeah, yeah. And it's funny because I told to bring Ben Chandler back into this, I was talking to him the other day and telling him about it. And he was like, you live in like the theater city of the world.
00:22:35
Speaker
I'm like, yes, but I could join an improv group, but that would mean like standing on a stage and be like, oh no, this has happened. I can't physically run someone over and then be like, oh my God, and have to deal with the consequences in a theater group. I can't do that in GTA RV, but- You can't drop a bus on people on the stage. Exactly, exactly.
00:23:00
Speaker
Well, thank you for that. I'm going to take that as a recommendation to be honest with you. I mean, if you want to join the server, let me know. I'll put in a word because it's application only.
Gaming Insights: 'Thaumaturge' and 'Indica'
00:23:11
Speaker
You have to fill out a questionnaire about proving that you read the rules and stuff. That was so much more than I was expecting. Roses, I'm almost afraid to ask, but what have you been playing?
00:23:28
Speaker
Well, no, I have not been role playing. Well, I guess I have in a sense, because I've been playing the Thaumaturge, mostly for this episode. And I'm probably not going to have, I'm going to just preface this, I'm probably not going to have too much to say because I'm not enjoying it.
00:23:46
Speaker
prior to that, now listen, prior to that, I played disco Elysium and was obsessed just completely. So I don't know if, if, you know, coming off of disco, if my standards were to an impossible level now and, uh, yeah, so that's what I've been playing. I've been playing, uh, the thaumaturge, but wasn't really a fan. Matt. Okay.
00:24:11
Speaker
It's gonna be hard to keep this short, but I'm gonna try because I know this is gonna be a long episode anyway. I've been playing Indica. We talked about it on the show once before, because we both played the demo. Or no, I just played the demo. You were too scared of it, right, Roses? Yeah, because I looked at the screen caps and I'm like, no.
00:24:36
Speaker
Yeah, so those screen caps are a lot scarier than the actual game. The actual game's not really a horror game. It's just weird. So yeah, I've been playing this game. It is really wild. It is about, you're a young nun who is not fitting in in her convent. This is like,
00:25:01
Speaker
some alternate almost I think it's like a steampunk world but really you're not in a very technologically full area of the world and you play a young nun not really fitting into her convent she
00:25:18
Speaker
feels, she thinks she has the devil in her head. The devil, this demon is constantly talking to her and mocking her faith. And she feels like she is a sinner. She meets an escaped soldier, or escaped, a soldier who went to prison and escaped, and he believes that he is on a mission from God.
00:25:45
Speaker
So you got a guy with a godens head and a woman with the devil in her head and they are on a adventure together. Good Omens, the weird version.
00:26:03
Speaker
There's so much I could say about this, but it's a meditation about faith, so I'm just gonna describe one of the beginning scenes and then we can move on. There's a scene early on where an elder nun asks you to go get water.
00:26:19
Speaker
So as indica, you walk kind of very slowly up a snowy hill with a metal pail, and you go to the well, and you put down your pail on the side of the well, and then you grab the bucket that's attached to the rope. You use, you kind of spin the left, what do you call it, joystick to lower the bucket until it gets water in it, then you spin it the other way to raise it up.
00:26:45
Speaker
Then you pick up that full pail you dump it into your empty pail you slowly walk down that snowy hill And you dump your pail of water into a giant barrel and suddenly up comes This pop-up that says one out of five
00:27:10
Speaker
What? And it tells you, once you fill up this bucket, you get 100 points. Now the very first time you get a loading screen, the loading screen tells you, hey, don't worry about points, they're meaningless. Like on who's line? Yeah, like on who's line, the points are meaningless. Don't mean anything.
00:27:34
Speaker
So I think it's a meditation on faith, right? Like you can either be chasing points and just have faith that the game at the end will reward you for them, or you can ignore the points like these loading screens are telling you and just sort of enjoy the game. But a lot of the game is like that. It's like very difficult to play and not very enjoyable. And it's, I think it is incredible. I think like the,
00:28:04
Speaker
not to sound like a complete douchebag, but the ludological metaphors really hit and...
00:28:11
Speaker
I mean, that sounds very interesting to me. This game is, yeah, I found it incredible. It's, I don't think it's, it's not the most fun game in the world, but it's only about five hours long. Okay. Okay. I could go on about this for a while. So that's where I'm going to end it. Indica. It's really good.
00:28:34
Speaker
OK, I will I'm also going to take that as a recommendation because now that you have now that you have assured me that it's not as scary as it's how I was perceiving the screenshots, I might I might look into it again.
Deep Dive into 'Disco Elysium'
00:28:49
Speaker
I am not a big fan. I'm sure everyone knows this by now. I'm not a big fan of this first person, right? No, it is third person. OK, there is a first person segment and at one point and
00:29:05
Speaker
There's a reason you're in first person. Again, game's highly metaphorical. Okay. Okay. I'm going to look into it anyway, because now, now I'm less afraid. So thank you for that. And on that note, uh, I think we should put on our favorite game. Swanky max. Amino, obviously. Yeah. Take a little break and we're going to talk about disco Elysium and the thaumaturge when we return. So hang tight.
00:29:33
Speaker
Roll that stanky back storino.
00:30:06
Speaker
Hey everyone, we're back. Welcome back to Save Your Game. I am pushing up roses with me, Matt Aucamp, and our special guest, Francisco Gonzalez, or Grunislav. You know what, I didn't ask Francisco, how would you like to be addressed in this podcast? You can call me Francisco.
00:30:23
Speaker
Perfect. So. I'm sure you've talked about this a thousand times, but what is the origin of Grundislav? Well, if you go to my website, Grundislav.games and go to the about section, there's actually a frequently asked questions that I put there because I got tired of answering. I'm good. I'm good. It's. No, I'm kidding. I'm good. Okay. Okay. Thanks. I think all you should listeners should do the same.
00:30:52
Speaker
Okay, so today we are going to be talking actually inspired by Francisco. Matt will maybe elaborate on that. We're going to be talking about Disco Elysium and the Thaumaturge. I have played both for this podcast. And I am very, very excited to talk about Disco Elysium. You guys, I hadn't played it before. I don't actually know what happened, but I think it had something to do with
00:31:18
Speaker
It got very popular, very fast. What was that 2019? I want to say. And so it got popular very fast. The fan base went a little off. Let's be honest. It happens. We've seen it before. We've seen it with Sonic or seeing it now. And I think I was put off a little bit. The two most famous games of all time, Sonic, the hedgehog and disco. So I actually put it off. I didn't play it even though
00:31:46
Speaker
You know, a lot of my adventure game peers really, really love that game. And I obviously trust their judgment. It was just not, I don't actually know what put me off of it. But then we spoke about it. Matt and I spoke about it a little bit. I'm like, you know what, it's time. So I booted it up and didn't put it down for like a week straight. I
00:32:07
Speaker
I fell in love with this game. You are playing a detective, but a very messed up detective like you, you enter the game on a severe hangover and you have amnesia. And so you're
00:32:24
Speaker
You're kind of dealing with your multiple subconscious is trying to talk to you as you're trying to just go through life and get your shoe off a balcony and get your tie off of a off of a fan. And the mechanic is very tabletop RPG. I want to make this clear that I do consider this a hybrid adventure game.
00:32:43
Speaker
I do, you are doing puzzles and fetch quests and dialogue trees that you would do. However, it does have a tabletop RPG mechanic. So when I went to get my tie off of the fan, I had to roll. I had to roll a dice check. So the dice are digital, completely randomized, and I failed. I nearly had a heart attack and died. And you know what? That grabbed me. I'm like, oh, this game is, this game is going to be special.
00:33:11
Speaker
It's something special. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's one of the funniest games I've ever played. It's it has a detective element. So, you know, your primary goal in this game is solving a murder. However, there are so many side quests and I did them all. I did every single task and I loved it. I loved the characters. It is a little dialogue heavy. I just want to put that out there. Maybe the most dialogue heavy game I've played personally.
00:33:41
Speaker
Yeah, it is very densely written. It is as, you know what, it's kind of like, I often wanna compare it to a novel, but it's almost like a series of novels all smashed into one game. Like, if you were to extract this story out into prose,
00:34:05
Speaker
And using all the dialogue and all the, you know, all the narration that's actually in the game, I think you'd end up with like four novels. Yeah, I would agree with that. It is kind of like reading.
00:34:21
Speaker
it is kind of like reading a book, honestly, very narrative heavy, very driven. So did you guys play it with I learned this later, I guess it was released without voice acting and later on voice acting was added. So I played it as it currently is with the voice acting. Did you guys play it with the voices?
00:34:41
Speaker
Well, it wasn't released without any voice acting. It was released with very limited voice acting. It was the kind of thing where when you first started talking to a character, their first few lines were voiced and some important lines were voiced. But yeah, that was the version I played when it first came out.
00:35:03
Speaker
That is also the version that I played. This is my first this this most recent playthrough that I did was my first time playing with full voice acting. And I don't know. And Francisco, maybe you can correct me on this. Some of the characters I don't think were voiced at all. Right. Some of these voice
00:35:23
Speaker
voices were entirely new? Is that true? That sounds right. Um, I don't really know because I started a play through of the game when they added the voices and I didn't get very far. I got distracted. Um, and I never went back to it, which is funny because it actually happened to me the first time I played it, but we'll, I'll talk about that later. Um, interesting.
00:35:47
Speaker
But yeah, I'm fairly certain that there were some characters that did not have voices at all in the original release. And I know that there were some characters who they changed voice actors for, like Kuno had a different voice in the original version.
00:36:01
Speaker
that might be what i'm thinking of is is that there are voices when i played this full on uh voice acting version um there are voices that i didn't recognize right and i guess i just yeah i assumed that maybe it's because they weren't voiced in the original but you're right maybe they were voiced by different people yeah because i think it was one of those situations where they might have done like the old sierra games and been like
00:36:25
Speaker
hey mom can you just read like two lines for me because this character needs a voice and then they were like oh shit we need professional actors now when they released the full voice version yeah so they did some recasting where necessary are you saying that there was possibly a different voice for kuno no i'm saying there definitely was a different voice for kuno that that blows my mind because kuno is such a
00:36:49
Speaker
This is a very specific character, yeah. Can you imagine? Yeah. Kuna was a lot more like... I don't know what word I can use to describe what he was like in the original version. I'm sure there's a YouTube video comparing the two.
00:37:03
Speaker
But he was a lot more abrasive in the original version, if that's even possible. How is that even possible? Yeah, I don't know. It just was. Amazing. But yeah, I am so... So here's how I was gonna play the game, right?
00:37:21
Speaker
I was going to be like super laid back and be like, you know what? Whatever dice roll I get is what I get. No, that doesn't work. I definitely save scummed a few times to get past things. I think we all we all do the best laid plans of mice and alcoholic detectives.
00:37:40
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, don't get me wrong. It's interesting that this game almost encourage you to take a loss, to take an L, because it's just so interesting of what happens. And taking an L doesn't necessarily mean you die. You can have a heart attack if you do something that maybe if your health is low or your morale is low. You can, which is why there are safe slots, which is lovely. You love a safe slot.
00:38:09
Speaker
But if you do fail and you don't die, it's not like you've ruined the game. You can continue with the game. Maybe your pride is hurt a little bit. And then, of course, yeah, you can you can save scum, which I did do a couple of times. I think it's it's worth mentioning you do have two kind of health meters. One is health.
00:38:27
Speaker
like physical health and one is morale and both can kill you. If you embarrass yourself too much or you remember too many traumatic things, your morale drops to zero and you just give up being a cop or sometimes I think you give up on life. Or you can get too injured and you know, in that,
00:38:52
Speaker
In that case, when you lose from lack of health, do you just die? Yeah, you have a heart attack. I believe you have a heart attack. Let's give a quick overview of the very basics of the plot.
00:39:10
Speaker
So you are, so kind of like Rosa said, you're a detective who is real fucked up. You are- He's real fucked up, you guys. You wake up on a, you know, on a hotel room floor and you don't remember your name. You don't remember who you are. You don't remember why you're here. You don't remember where you are. You don't even remember you're a cop. And you're completely nude and you have to sort of- Well, you're wearing your tighty whitey.
00:39:41
Speaker
So you have to- Some dignity left. Yeah, we have some dignity here. Come on now. You have to fix all that. You don't even have a portrait in, like, it's like a- No, that's so good when you look in the mirror the first time. That's great. Mm-hmm. You don't have a portrait in the bottom left of the screen where your health is. Your portrait is just blurred out until you look in the mirror. And you can choose to not look in the mirror. Wait, wait, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Can you go the entire game without having a portrait?
00:40:11
Speaker
I don't know. So throughout the game, almost everything you do, all of your inner workings, all of your mental processes are talking to you. So your electrochemistry will be talking to you or your sense of drama will be talking to you.
00:40:31
Speaker
to you or your weird tie will be talking to you you just have all these voices in your head that are pushing you in different directions and a lot of times these things will warn you like do not do this you cannot handle what's about to happen and one of the first ones is yeah looking in the mirror um one of your senses tells you
00:40:54
Speaker
you should not do this. This is not going to go well for you. But I did it. That was one of the warnings that I did not heed because I felt that somehow it was important to look in the mirror. But such an interesting contrast in an adventure game is when it tells you not to do something. You know what I mean?
00:41:17
Speaker
Yeah. It's interesting because I noticed that on the loading screen, one of the texts was like, don't be afraid to make the crazy decisions. Like, this is a fun game where you'll be rewarded. It doesn't say it in that many words, but it's basically saying like, don't be afraid to choose like the batshit insane answers because like it won't punish you for it, which
00:41:39
Speaker
is something that you really do have to you do have to like drive home in players i think right and like yeah i don't know it's just from a design perspective it's really hard to make a game where failure is an option because because like roses was saying like you think oh yeah i'm gonna play this and let the consequences go over but no in the end you want to win so like right you want to avoid failing as much as possible even if it's
00:42:09
Speaker
encouraging you to do so. So yeah, it's interesting. But I think Disco Elysium handles it well.
00:42:17
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, there's very few instances aside from like, but it's hilarious. Cause it's like, yeah, there's very few instances where you can die, but one of them is literally like the first action you can do. Yeah. So it's, it's not like it punishes you for, you know, you've been playing for hours and then all of a sudden you're like, Oh no, I didn't save and I died. And then you, you know, I don't think you can do that anyway. Right. But yeah.
00:42:43
Speaker
So, I mean, that's a very interesting thing about Disco Elysium is they're really encouraging you to live with your decisions and if you fail, in most cases, something interesting rather than something damaging happens.
00:43:04
Speaker
There's a point very early on where you find out, so yeah, just to, again, an overview of the plot, you end up going downstairs in this hotel room, finding out that you're a cop, that you have a partner that's been assigned to you, and you are both there to investigate a murder. The murder ends up being very complicated, very tied into the politics and the labor.
00:43:31
Speaker
of the area and the political history of the area, the entire thing takes place in this fictional world that is sort of a conglomeration of post-Soviet Eastern Europe. And maybe what?
00:43:53
Speaker
pre-revolution France? It's hard to tell. Is it pre or is it post? Disco Elysium is a little bit, I will say this, and it could be a pro or a con, depending on how you like to digest games, but even though it's kind of loosely based on these real politics, a lot of it is fictionalized and kind of made up.
00:44:18
Speaker
it can be a little overwhelming. And there were times when I legit felt stupid. I'm like, I don't know what's going on. And I'm, I don't know. It's not accessible in that way, I guess, if that makes sense. Don't get me wrong, you can still play it and have a blast. But don't feel bad if you're not on top of every plot point that's being thrown at you because it gets very complicated.
00:44:44
Speaker
The politics of the world are really dense, and yeah, I find it really easy to place it in post-Soviet Eastern Europe, right? But it's clearly also inspired by some point in history in France, but I had actually a really hard time placing where specifically. Yeah, but it's about what happens to a world after socialism, after communism has failed.
00:45:13
Speaker
And now there is a capitalistic like a centralized government and your revolution ended in slaughter. And how do you move forward from that politically? And how do people like how does that affect affect individual people?
00:45:35
Speaker
The politics are really complicated in the game, but they also really affect the day-to-day lives of pretty much every character in this game. It's funny because it's a game about a murder mystery where the murder mystery is the least important or least interesting thing about it.
00:45:54
Speaker
I know. Don't get me wrong. I was on top of it. I was Colombo-ing that shit. I'm like, I want to figure this out. Yeah, no. I mean, it's interesting, but it's like the least, comparatively speaking, it's the least interesting thing about it. Yeah. And you legitimately cannot figure out, like there's no way you would be able to guess what happened.
00:46:15
Speaker
in that murder case until the very last scene where it's revealed to you. It's almost like an afterthought compared to the experiences you've had and all that stuff. It's like, oh yeah, I guess I solved the case. Okay, great. Yeah, at the end of the game, because like I said, I did every task. I was like, look at my accomplishments. Yeah, I started a nightclub. I'm so cool.
00:46:38
Speaker
I'll start a nightclub. I sang karaoke. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Okay. Pin in that. Uh, I feel like we should probably like, obviously we're going to get into spoiler territory, right? Sure. Okay. Okay. Well, I want to start by saying spoilers. Um, so we were talking about how
00:46:58
Speaker
the dice rolls and when you fail them, sometimes an interesting thing happens. I think probably my favorite dice roll thing is that karaoke performance. Did you, did you get it? Did you guys like get it right or get it wrong? I got mine right. I wore the most ridiculous clothes that gave me the right stats. I dedicated my song to my partner. And yeah, he sung his little heart out. Yeah.
00:47:25
Speaker
Yeah, I've never failed at the karaoke. Oh my God.
00:47:29
Speaker
I think failing the karaoke is, is like the better choice of the two. If you get it right, he sings, he sings, he sings the song either way, but if you get it right, he sings it, he sings it in the, uh, I forget which thing the reptilian brain. No, not the rip. One of the brains. It's the reptilian brain. Okay. Well, he sings it in here in the, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh yeah. He sings it in like the very low, like Tom weights, like,
00:47:56
Speaker
if you get it wrong he sings it in the other one the other voice so he's like it's so bad but it's so funny
00:48:08
Speaker
So the limbic system, the limbic system. Yes, the limbic system sings the song and it's horrible and it's off key and it's super high pitched and it's like nails on a chalkboard. And at the end, like I think Kim's like the only one who claps out of politeness and it's like everyone else is dazed. And then you're like, and then you get the option to be like, thank you or like, well, fuck you too. It's great. Unbelievable. I had no idea. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:48:34
Speaker
Yeah, I was I was so desperate to do the karaoke that failing it didn't even cross my mind. Oh, yeah. No, you got to go back. You got to go back and fail it. I assumed you had to succeed it. There are some roles in the game that are pre scripted. There is a there are a few roles that you will always fail or you will always succeed. And usually it's to teach you something about the game. Right.
00:49:01
Speaker
One of my favorites is very early on in the game when you're talking to the manager of the hotel and he tells you about the money that you owe.
00:49:13
Speaker
and you can choose an option to run away from him. And if you succeed, it's like a little bit anticlimactic. He just kind of runs away to the door and then stops and then the guy's like very mature. But if you fail, he runs away and then he leaps in the air and he gives two middle fingers to the guy behind the counter
00:49:42
Speaker
And then the screen freezes and you are instantly aware that you were about to crash into a lady in a wheelchair. Oh no! With both middle fingers in the air. Oh god. And all your dialogue options at that point are all internal and it's things like...
00:50:02
Speaker
Like one of them, my favorite one is something to the effect of, why did I have to use both hands for this? It's one of the funniest moments of the entire game. And yeah, you do. You crash into the cryptozoologist in the wheelchair who is only nice to you through the whole game and you fall on the ground and it's very embarrassing and I think you lose a morale point.
00:50:33
Speaker
I would hope so bad. I would hope you look like my friend. Yeah. That's pretty bad. One of the things I love the most about this game, and I'm not going to say, I'm going to, I'm going to avoid the final ending. I'm going to avoid like kind of call it a twist, I guess. However, I will say I was so impressed by how things came around.
00:50:59
Speaker
uh that talking to people and doing these seemingly mundane tasks it's funny our partner you have to kind of earn his trust he's kind of she's very straight laced um every time i took a task he's like
00:51:14
Speaker
This is pertain to the case. And I'm like, yes. Yes. Finding this missing taco definitely pertain. You know, I would always, always take every case. Or just yelling at, yelling about random stuff, like telling him that, like you find a random dead guy and then you just declare there's a sequence killer. Like, like
00:51:37
Speaker
throughout the game, you can either follow these weird tracks or yell random stuff at your partner. And you also, you don't, you guys could correct me if I'm wrong. I don't think you have to take on every task or listen to every single dialogue tree. I did. And that gave me, my jaw was like a gape at the ending. I couldn't believe that they tied some of these things together that I was doing.
00:52:03
Speaker
That's one of the most amazing things about the game is all of that, everything you yell at your partner, every weird side quest you go on, every even like random thing that's brought up and you think it's just a silly joke generally gets tied into
00:52:25
Speaker
the main story of the game in ways that you don't expect. That's what we call setups and payoffs. It does do it very well, yeah. Yeah, that's the payoff for me at least. I think I beat that game and I texted Matt like a million times, like how excited and impressed I was.
00:52:48
Speaker
I'm going to ask you guys a couple more questions because I'm just being spoiler man now because I've only played the game once and not even like 0.5% because like I said I never went back to it.
00:53:06
Speaker
I guess now I can say like, I really liked the game, but I also kind of bounced off it the very first time I played because it was so overwhelming. There came a point, I think it was like...
00:53:18
Speaker
day three, maybe Wednesday or something like that, where I just had so many things to do and I didn't have a real clear picture of what to do, that I put it back, I put it down and I didn't come back to it for a few weeks. But then when I came back to it, I really got into it and I finished it. And I kind of, I kind of hit that same stopping point the second time I started playing it. And I wonder if that's a me thing or if it's just, I don't know, but, um,
00:53:46
Speaker
Well, sorry, go ahead. Let me respond to that real quick, because I had the same experience the first time I played it. It is just it is so dense. Yeah, there's like I don't mean to sound like a fucking caveman, but it's a lot of reading. It's a real lot of reading. Yeah. And yeah, I was really overwhelmed at first. Plus it's getting used to this idea of
00:54:16
Speaker
not save scumming, not min-maxing, you're basically playing an RPG where it is, like we said, perfectly okay to fail, was really hard to wrap my head around. So I kept trying to do everything perfectly and realizing that like,
00:54:31
Speaker
there were there were checks that I succeeded on that I got perfectly and it still had a bad outcome because I probably just shouldn't have done that thing and so finding the exact perfect path I had to realize like not really possible yeah and one of the things too I think that kind of I don't want to say it soured me but it definitely
00:54:55
Speaker
kind of made me a little wary was the fact that it puts that pressure on you right away to be like, well, you got to pay the guy that money or else you have no place to sleep. So it's like you spend the first day wandering around and you're like, well, I got to solve the murder mystery. But at the same time, I have to get money to sleep someplace. And then it's finally you find
00:55:14
Speaker
the lady on the boat and you're like, oh, thank God, she gave me money. You just ask her, you're like, can I have some money? And she gives you money. Oh, that's like, Oh, that's how mine went. That's interesting. Yeah, that's the first time I played. But yeah, no, I was like, I don't care about this money.
00:55:32
Speaker
Like, I went into this not giving two shits about paying them back. I'm like, whatever. I don't know what I'm doing. I'm I'm I just want to talk to these characters and like, you know, explore. And so by the end, I had like 13. What what what is the real real? Thank you. I like 13 real. And I was ready to like sleep on a bench or something. And then Lieutenant Kim is like, don't worry. I've got some stuff in the car that we can sell.
00:56:02
Speaker
And so he helped me pay for it. And then I realized like you could collect and that was the most expensive night. It's just that first night. And then I collected like the tar, the bottles and got money that way. So I was ready to not pay. I don't know what I was thinking.
00:56:23
Speaker
Cause yeah, I think there's, I think you can sleep on a bench and you get like a Hobo cop achievement or something like that. I had, I had the Hobo cop thing. You can get, I didn't know you could sleep on a bench. You can get Hobo cop. All right. This is something we should talk about. First of all, I want to say that I do think the, the pressure is maybe one of the very
00:56:50
Speaker
one of the very few flaws of the game, the pressure to have money. Yeah, I do think that puts you in a weird spot where the game clearly wants you to fail and clearly wants you to do just whatever you want to do. But it's also funneling you towards this one thing. So I do think that that is sort of antithetical to everything else that the game gives you. Yeah.
00:57:14
Speaker
But we should talk about this, the kappa types. Oh, right. I didn't pay too much attention to those. I didn't either. I was going to say that I didn't really. I don't know. That was my first playthrough and I really tried. It's like you guys said, it can be a little overwhelming with the amount of.
00:57:33
Speaker
what, mechanics, I guess, the amount of things you kind of need to keep an eye on? Yeah, because then there's also the whole like mind cabinet things and it's like, what is this? I never really fully understood those if I'm honest. It's essentially just a way of like adding perks to your traits. Right. Because it'll give you like, you know, plus two. But then you don't really know what it's going to give you until you fully develop the idea. So I want to explain some of these things to the listener.
00:58:02
Speaker
First of all, to explain what Francisco is talking about.
00:58:10
Speaker
attributes like in any RPG. Does anyone remember what they are? I think I have a screenshot. But you have, you know, you have four stats that determine, you know, whatever your abilities and then you get a bunch of skills that are all sort of.
00:58:37
Speaker
derivatives of those stats. And then on top of that, okay, the force attributes, I have them right here. Yeah, intellect, psyche, physique, and motorics.
00:58:51
Speaker
And then you have, you know, intellect has stuff like rhetoric, drama, visual calculus, psyche is stuff like empathy, suggestion, authority, physique has like endurance, pain threshold, and motorics has like eye hand coordination and perception, right? So it's basically intelligence, charisma, strength, and agility. Yeah, perfect. Let's pretend just sounding versions of
00:59:22
Speaker
or more pretending pretentious versions and then there's an extra thing that happens is when you encounter certain things in conversations or in the world you will get like notifications around your character to have to work on certain like thought processes and at any given point you can
00:59:45
Speaker
occupy your subconscious with developing a thought. Those thoughts will give you weird bonuses or they will give you specific options that come up in dialogue or throughout the world. If you have shivers, for example, suddenly as you're walking around the world, as things happen,
01:00:05
Speaker
you get like glimpses that come to you on the wind of things happening in other areas. If you have, you know, if you have, what's another one? What's another thought? Well, that's one of the skills. What's another thought? Oh, another like thought. Oh, oh, oh, Inland Empire. Was that a thought? That's a skill. It was something about like,
01:00:35
Speaker
God, it was like getting your shit together or something like that. And like you think about getting your shit together and then when you do, I forget what the bonus is. So getting your shit together, I think is one of the very first one, I think.
01:00:48
Speaker
And the shivers thing, I think I have wrong too. Like there's just so many and they're hard to remember. Shivers is a stat, you're right. I think it's the precarious world is the one where you, but you know, there's things like your own date of birth you can think about or this celebrity.
01:01:07
Speaker
you happen to know about or whether you have an actual art degree is one of them. And when you have these things, they they open little bits of the world that you wouldn't have otherwise. I mean, isn't one of them like is going to sound terrible, but one of those thoughts is like thinking about like the fascist regime, right? There's a yeah, there's a couple. There's one you can become. And that's what I was going to talk about, about the kappa types.
01:01:36
Speaker
So you can become a fascist in this game. You can also become a racist. Oh, God. Yeah. Put a pin in that. I have I have. Yeah. So there's a cop. So the cop types. Right. Are some of these thought like combinations of these thoughts and the consequences of your actions. If you say too many fascist things,
01:02:03
Speaker
then your character thinks he's a fascist cop. Or if you say a bunch of communist things, he thinks he's a communist cop. If you don't have the money to pay for room, you can become a hobo cop. If you keep referring to yourself as a superstar, you become the superstar cop. If you keep being wishy-washy, you become regular cop. You're the sorry cop. No, you're the sorry cop if you're wishy-washy.
01:02:27
Speaker
So you become the sorry cop if you keep apologizing for weird shit you did. I got that one in my first playthrough. I was very apologetic. I went the superstar route. I liked saying very strange things because my partner, Lieutenant Kim, I just liked hearing his response. He's just like, oh, just don't understand.
01:02:50
Speaker
Can I jump in real quick because I found a wiki kind of explaining the thought cabinet process a little better. So these thoughts, you get them by performing certain actions in the game, like that's how you unlock them.
01:03:10
Speaker
and so each of them has a specific time that it takes to research them that's in-game time and like the game the game time goes by by performing action so like every time you click a dialogue option or you look at something that advances the game time I don't think you're walking around
01:03:27
Speaker
No, when you're walking around a time stand still so right you don't have to worry about it that too much, right? So while you're while you're having the thought some of them Present penalties like it'll give you like a negative one to logic for example, right? That's all you're learning right? That's only while you're learning it though And then when you complete it it grants you the bonus that that thought gives you so like for as an example Hobo cop
01:03:55
Speaker
you get from referring to him or whoops i shouldn't say his name from the main player referring to himself as a hobo cop like if you pick it in dialogue like saying yeah i'm a hobo cop then it it uh it unlocks the thought so while you're researching the thought which takes four hours and 20 minutes of in-game time
01:04:15
Speaker
you have negative one composure. But then when you finish it, it says it reveals extra tear bottles on the map does not actually increase money from selling them despite its description and the learning cap for shivers, which is one of the skills is raised to six. Yeah, so they all have very specific things.
01:04:34
Speaker
I did learn a couple I I did because I almost went the route. There's okay guys, there's this racist you need to get past. There's two ways to go about that you can either like kind of subscribe to their ideals. So I kind of I learned the thought process or you could just punch him.
01:04:56
Speaker
I opted to punch him. It's very hard to punch him. He's also very huge. I did manage to do it. It did take a couple tries only because I really didn't want to go down this racist route.
01:05:14
Speaker
Yeah, this game is very good at like- So this is another spoiler and I learned about this second hand and I'm so glad that I didn't experience this because I love Kim Kitsuragi. Oh yeah. But apparently there's a way, you know, there's a scene late in the game when you're in this like church that's been converted into a dance club. Right.
01:05:35
Speaker
And apparently through your actions, there's a way to like nonchalantly, like say the most racist thing possible to Kim at that time. Yeah. Like I think it's when you're encouraging him to dance in my play through, I got him to dance with me and it was great. Oh my God. Really? Yeah. But there's apparently a way to like, be like, get on the floor of you. And then he calls him like a horrible slur.
01:06:01
Speaker
Yeah, that was my reaction too. I was like, no, why would you be able to do that? Exactly. Wow. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And leading into this, I'm assuming that both of you ended the game with Kim as your partner.
01:06:14
Speaker
Yes. Yes, I tell me you can lose Kim as your partner. You can lose Kim as your partner because he either hates you so much that he leaves or he gets shot during the stand off. Yeah. Stand up and then get this. Kuno becomes your partner.
01:06:34
Speaker
Wow. I was just talking to a friend of mine the other day, and I was like, oh, yeah, you finished Disco Elysium. He's like, yeah, it was weird. The ending was really strange. I was like, why? He's like, yeah, Kuno was my part. I'm like, what? OK, so for the listener, if you haven't played the game, Kuno is an obnoxious little boy who you meet. He's throwing rocks at the corpse whose murder you're trying to solve, trying to hit it in the dick.
01:07:03
Speaker
And he sells drugs that he steals from his passed out dad. And he's trying to start a new city called Night City full of locusts. And for my final spoiler question, comparative gameplay here. Did either of you keep the horrendous tie? I did. Yes, I did. So in the standoff, did you do what the tie told you to do?
01:07:33
Speaker
No, what does the tie tell you to do in the stand off? Tie tells you to do stuff in the stand off? So I had the tie, but I wasn't wearing it. But there's apparently. I wasn't wearing it. There's a speaking of setups and payoffs. There's apparently if you wear the tie throughout the whole game, the tie talks to you. Yes. And it's like and the payoff of it is at the very end, like during the standoff, the tie tells you to use it to make a Molotov cocktail to throw at the people. No way. Yes, I did that. Yes, I did that my first playthrough. You're right. I did do that.
01:08:02
Speaker
Is that a good payoff or a bad payoff? I don't know, because I didn't experience it. Tell us, was it good? There is a violent show off at one point in the game where a lot of the political factions in the town, like the representatives of each of the political factions in the world that all converge to kind of like create this mystery, in a sense. As far as you know, there's another factor which you won't know until the very end.
01:08:32
Speaker
They have a basically showdown in the middle of the town and based on your actions, a lot of characters can die. So they're one of the factors is whether or not you have a weapon.
01:08:46
Speaker
Well, you can have a sword that won't do anything, but if you have, whether or not you have- Or a pry bar, he's like, yeah, see my first play through, I am such a poop. I did not go find my weapon. I had a pry bar only, and I realized at that point, so this game is very smart at,
01:09:09
Speaker
I guess allowing you to save scum with little circumstance, little consequence or a lot of consequence. So if you decide to replay the showdown, let's say you mess up like me, you didn't have your gun, you had nothing else. Everyone eats it because of your mistakes and you weren't, you know, you have to go, this is not a save scum situation. You do have to go back very far.
01:09:36
Speaker
I mean, not like not like egregiously so, but you do have to go back and you have to replay that whole scene and you got to hope for better dice rolls. And yeah, that scene is that scene is long. That scene is long and unavoidable. Yeah, you don't get to decide, you know, you don't unless you know it's coming, you don't get to decide when that scene happens. And once you enter the scene, you cannot
01:10:03
Speaker
You can't go anywhere else. Yeah, you can't save until the next day when you wake up after. So. OK, so if you have the least amount of people I think that can die in that showdown is four.
01:10:23
Speaker
because four of what are basically it's hard to say who's a good guy and who's a bad guy but as far as good guys and bad guys go four of the good guys will always die and and then you can kill up to three of the quote-unquote bad guys it's rough man that yeah it's rough I this game makes me feel things you guys
01:10:50
Speaker
If you have the gun, the way to get the least amount of deaths is sort of before any of them can act, you shoot one of the, again, the mercenaries, the bad guys. Or if you have the Molotov Cocktail, you can throw that at him. It's called a spirit bomb.
01:11:13
Speaker
Um, so I think it does the exact same thing. So it doesn't change. It's the same as having the gun. It's just funny. I gotta try, man, this game, even though obviously it's set up to.
01:11:30
Speaker
You're never going to see everything in one playthrough. You're just not. It's impossible. So it's definitely set up for replayability, even though it's a long game to replay. But it really does make me think about my choices and the consequences and which things I want to redo. And I want to bring this up, too. I don't know if you guys felt this way.
01:11:55
Speaker
This game made me did a really good job of planting the seed that our character is actually so insane that we might be the murderer. And it only, it doesn't subtly, it plants it in your brain. And I'm like, where, where is this game going? Really? Like what? Yeah. Yeah. Now, when you get to the end, end of the game, there, there are ways to discuss whether or not this madness that you are
01:12:24
Speaker
engaged in throughout the game is part of your plan, whether this is intentional or you're just crazy because, I think you kind of discovered this far before the beginning. So this is a spoiler, but it's not a spoiler for the end. Your breakup, your heartbroken, and you're just kind of beaten down by the world.
01:12:53
Speaker
So depending on your dialogue at the end, I think there is a way, in every playthrough I've ever had, I'll say this, it has been the conclusion that this was all intentional. This was the best way in an insane world for an insane, for any sane man in an insane world to try and solve an insane crime, was to go insane themselves.
01:13:23
Speaker
But I believe through dialogue, you cannot do that. And you can just make everyone mad at you and think that you're crazy and stumbled into a solution. Yeah, I will say that I also really enjoyed how they kind of subverted the trope of with regards to the breakup, you know, because like usually in these kinds of detective stories, there's always like the tragedy, like the fridging of the of the wife or the romantic partner or whatever.
01:13:53
Speaker
And they subverted that in a very amusing way, I thought. Meaning, do we want to go into the spoiler of that? I mean, we've spoiled everything else. Why not? No, this is an in-depth discussion. The only thing I don't want to spoil is the very end kind of the twist, as it were. Anything else is on the table. So your ex-girlfriend who the entire game, because you don't have a memory, you think is your ex-wife, her name is Dora.
01:14:21
Speaker
You could just call her at one point. Yeah. And it's just kind of like it wasn't as involved a relationship as he seems to think it was. And it's kind of just like, well, oh, oh, okay, sure.
01:14:38
Speaker
It's very sad. I found these scenes very hard hitting, especially when you kind of look at this game and I'm going to be frank here. I didn't like the 3D elements of the game. I love the portraits because they look like oil paintings. They're incredible. I just love them so much, but I didn't even mind
01:15:01
Speaker
Uh, I didn't, I didn't even really mind like how my character looked because these scenes are so gut. Just everything is so impactful. Everything is done with such intention. You know what I mean? I agree. Do you guys have moments? Uh, cause I think we should start working towards wrapping this discussion up and moving on to our next game. But do you guys have moments that really, really stuck with you and like will stick with you forever?
01:15:30
Speaker
I do and it's really mundane, but it was one of those things where I was like, Oh, this is really clever. So you have to walk around a lot. Like it's a big map. You can traverse. There's no fast travel. So I ran around a lot at the beginning. And during the day one debrief, Kim was like, you really like running around, don't you? And I was like, Oh, that's awesome. He does say that. That's right. Yeah. And I was, I mean, I assume that he only says that if you have
01:16:00
Speaker
been running constantly, but I just thought it was such a cool little thing that the game reacted to that. That just stuck with me. That's a setup that gets paid off to the end.
01:16:16
Speaker
No, I don't think I do if you continue running for the entire game at the very which you're probably will because who wants to walk around an entire game slowly. I actually I think I stopped running because I didn't want to disappoint. So at the at the very end, if you've kept running.
01:16:38
Speaker
You ask, you meet some people from your past, you ask them who you are, and they tell you, you are a cop who used to be a gym teacher, and then everyone said, and then you and Kim both say, oh, that makes sense, you've been running everywhere. Yes, that's, yes.
01:16:58
Speaker
they tell you that you used to be a gym teacher no matter what but that oh really yeah yeah yeah but that you've been running any everywhere i didn't get that yeah he's like that explains he also is like that's what that's why you're so juvenile because you worked with someone right is it i didn't wow i don't think i got that line
01:17:19
Speaker
I did get the line that that's why you're obsessed with the boxer. What was his name? There was a there's a boxer that you have the option to talk about a lot at certain points. Oh, contact Mike.
01:17:38
Speaker
If you talk about contact Mike too much they go oh that makes so much sense that you're a gym teacher you wouldn't stop talking about Okay, so if I can put on my game designer hat again I think this game I think as we've we've proven through our discussion this game is like a master class on into reactivity in game yes like
01:18:05
Speaker
It doesn't matter. Like we, you know, there's, there's certain scenes that play out no matter what, and they have slight variations on them. And ultimately it all leads to the same ending, really kind of. There's not like wildly different endings, but the fact that it takes note of so many tiny details of what you did and tells you about them. And you're like, Oh shit, I did do that. That is what makes the game so great. Like, right. And I think that.
01:18:35
Speaker
in the bigger picture of just like, you know, figuring out how to design games and how to make people feel like the game is, you know, it's, it's a, it's a classic trick to make the game feel like it's more involved than it might actually be, you know, like compare it to like, say a telltale game or something where you have all these choices, and then they ultimately don't mean anything. Right.
01:18:55
Speaker
It's that reactivity that's important there. I'll get off my soapbox now. I think what I want to ask you, Francisco, is do you think, because a lot of people regard this as an adventure game, it's a little bit of hybrid. Oh, it absolutely is. Yeah. So do you think it was successful in that way? Is this a good way to kind of hybrid tabletop RPG and kind of decision making and also adventure game? I think so, because ultimately I think
01:19:24
Speaker
what people enjoy about adventure games is that exploration element and that feeling of interactivity and reactivity because, I mean, Baldur's Gate 3 is not an adventure game. It's clearly an RPG, but like people really enjoy the dialogue with the companions and stuff and the options and the choices and what have you. And yeah, I mean,
01:19:49
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, before this, the closest comparison that I would make with Disco Elysium was like, it's like Planescape Torment, which is an RPG, but like you can totally play it as an adventure game because you can, I think the only fight you have to participate in is like the mid boss fight. And yeah, because you can like, you can talk your way out of the very final battle with the final boss in Planescape. And it's the same thing. It's like, you know, you're a character who has amnesia,
01:20:18
Speaker
you're trying to figure out who you were, you were a bad person maybe. So- I didn't realize it was that similar. It's incredibly similar. Like the only difference is that in Planescape Torment, you can die and when you die, you just wake up again. So there's actually some mechanics where you have to die in order to proceed, which is great. But yeah, it's the same thing. It's essentially a game where you're exploring, you're talking to characters, you're not necessarily solving
01:20:48
Speaker
inventory puzzles, but you're proceeding by making choices and the game is acknowledging those choices, which I think is fun. Yeah, for sure. But I was going to say one more thing and I forgot what it was. So go on, if it comes back to me, I'll try. Was it about Kuno?
01:21:10
Speaker
It was not about Kuno, no. Did you shoot Kuno, by the way? You can shoot Kuno? You can shoot Kuno. He dares you to shoot him. And if you're good enough, you kill him. And then the game ends because you've murdered a kid. Because you've murdered a kid, yeah. I hit him. I hit him, and then he respected me from there on out. OK. Wow. Wonderful. There you go. Violence against children is the answer.
01:21:38
Speaker
Thanks, Disco Elysium. All right, Matt. Wait, yes, wait, did you hit Kuno, first of all? Are you asking me? Yes. I tried to and failed.
01:21:53
Speaker
Listen, I went with one of the three, you know, classes that like a lot of RPGs will give you a quest for glory does this too, you can like pick a class that has stats and it already fighter magician and thief or stealthy rogue, whatever. I picked the sensitive type. So my physicality was not on par. Okay. Right.
01:22:16
Speaker
So the first time I played this game, I allowed myself to like fail and succeed as best as I could. I ended up save scumming whenever like people died or I felt really bad about an outcome. This playthrough, I hacked the game to
01:22:32
Speaker
give my stat to make all my stats 20 so that I succeeded every dice roll so just I could see every bit of you literally hacked in the game well you can open up your save file and you can shit yeah you can change it's actually really easy but you can change all your stats to 20 so that you basically succeed every dice roll and then you can see a bunch of content that you otherwise wouldn't
01:22:56
Speaker
My next plan is to play the game with all ones, like all of my stats as one, because you don't have to spend all of your stat points when you create your character. And that's the play, that's the, that's the play through that I'm going to be a fascist and a racist and just like maybe, you know, alienate Kim and see what happens when you're just the worst.
01:23:22
Speaker
I remember now what I was going to say and it was actually a question because that for roses because you played the newer version which in addition to adding voices apparently added some like new side quests that were political focused okay and I didn't do any of those because I didn't play far enough on my second playthrough with the updated version to find them did either did you or did Matt did you find any of those and do those
01:23:48
Speaker
I would need to know what they are, but I'm pretty sure I did. I took on everything that was offered. If you're saying it's something you have to find, I'm pretty sure I did. I don't know because all I know is that in the like patch updates, it was like, oh, we've added some new like specific political side quests. So I don't know if it's that you have to like declare your political ideology and then, okay.
01:24:14
Speaker
You do, you have to declare your political ideology and then it offers you what's called a vision quest and you have to take it. I did not. I was a communist in this most recent playthrough and whatever the moment where you declare, where like you can
01:24:37
Speaker
declare who you are and then take the quest was the only moment that I like backed off from it because I didn't realize I think what was happening in that moment and I missed the quest. But yeah there are these vision quests and some people say that they're some of the best quests that are side quests in the game.
01:24:59
Speaker
Did you get one then, Roses? I believe I did. I think, but I'm not sure. My favorite side quest has nothing to do with politics at all. It's the nightclub. But it kind of does, right? Does the nightclub kind of have some...? I guess it does a little bit.
01:25:19
Speaker
Did you guys find the guy inside the packing? Not the packing. The container. The man who is so rich that light bends around him. Yes. Yes, I found him. Weirdo. Wait. Roses, you didn't answer, was there a moment that really stuck with you? Is there a moment that you will remember forever?
01:25:41
Speaker
Honestly, besides the ending, otherwise that would be that really honest to God will stick with me forever. I think the other thing and it's just something that I think is so clever. It's more of a little like a little little mystery side quest thing. But there's kind of this meta moment where you go into this bookstore and apparently there's a curse.
01:26:04
Speaker
in this bookstore. It's evil. There's someone lurking. I'm scared. I'm like, Oh, is this am I going to be scared? Is there a jump scare? There's not guys. And what I found was Pete like a group making an RPG game.
01:26:20
Speaker
What a weird way to flip it. I find this frankly frightening area, like back upstairs area of a bookstore. I'm thinking something's going to happen. And what do I find? RPG notes. I just thought it was fantastic.
01:26:41
Speaker
Um, there's a quote in this game that I think will stick with me for a long time. And I don't know, I don't know. Maybe this is basic and it just kind of hit me in a, in a, in a specific way. Um, but when you're talking to, so in that failed commercial zone, there is one woman who was part of the RPG.
01:27:02
Speaker
um team but now she's off on her own just yeah she's just off on her no not the programmer she's in the church later the woman who's making dice oh yes that yes yes um she says uh you're talking to her at some point and she tells she says um
01:27:25
Speaker
Every time you cast a die, I'm reading now, so I don't have this sort of memory. Every time you cast a die, something disappears, some alternative ending or an entirely different world. And. And that's a good quote. That really stuck with me because that's, I mean, first of all, that's how the game works. Yeah. And that's how life works. Every decision you make, you are closing off a world that you'll never, you'll never,
01:27:52
Speaker
be able to access again it has completely disappeared into nothingness and that would make a great movie you know like maybe some lady's running down the stairs to the subway and the doors close and then she doesn't know what's happening and then she sees the alternate of her life i'm talking about the gwyneth paltrow movie sliding doors it wasn't obvious which i've never seen incidentally but uh
01:28:17
Speaker
There's also a point in the game where somebody says, and I don't remember, I wrote this down because I think it made me tear up. And I do not remember where it happened, but somebody says, producing something extraordinary is hard.
01:28:35
Speaker
And that's so again so simple but like yeah, yeah, of course it's gonna be hard it's always hard to make something extraordinary I also think just in general the aftermath of the showdown where we're Presumably if you have Kim still just the
01:28:53
Speaker
I just loved their interactions after that. After the showdown, it's very clear that they're on each other's side. Well, unless you made Kim hate you, which the game kind of, you don't want to do that, trust me. Or you got him killed in that moment. Like I am so curious about the anti-Kim.
01:29:12
Speaker
Well, Matt, there is there is a dice roll right before that moment. Somebody is sneaking up behind Kim. And if you don't, you know, I think it's a reaction. You're right. I've never failed that dice roll. But yeah, I've never failed that dice. I feel like that's a dice roll that will only fail if you are at a certain point. But yeah, of negativity with Kim, because that makes sense. Right there. Yeah, there's some.
01:29:35
Speaker
There are some dice rolls that aren't true dice rolls. There are some dice rolls in the game that are always destined to fail, always destined to succeed, or based on your choices earlier, and it just, it doesn't tell you that. It pretends as if they are random, but they're not. Yeah. Those moments though with Kim, where your character, it's just really nice to slowly see him become more lucid.
01:30:00
Speaker
And like connected with reality, you're not you're not going to be connected with reality. You're kind of kind of note someone the game is a crazy person. Yeah. But however, you have these these moments of lucidity, especially with your partner. And there's just very some very sweet
01:30:18
Speaker
And it makes you feel really good about yourself. Like I had gotten the achievement, Kim really trusts you. That's one of the achievements. And I'm like, I am so happy. God, I wanted to, I thought it was time to wrap up, but I just want to talk about a couple of Kim things because Kim is such a good, Kim is such a good partner. So there is a moment where like early on in the game where Kim gives you a high five and then you can
01:30:47
Speaker
succeed or fail at the high five, and then you can turn it into a low five right afterwards. Oh, nice.
01:30:53
Speaker
And you get a thoughts based on both of those, aces high and aces low. Did you guys get those? No. No, I didn't. They feel really good. And then later, when you're talking to two, you're talking to two gang members. And one is wearing a jacket that says fuck the world. And the other one is wearing a jacket that says piss and then the F slur. Oh, right, yeah. Yeah.
01:31:19
Speaker
and you can, if you succeeded enough checks, and I think there's like a few of them you have to succeed at to get this, you can get the jackets from the gang members, you can put on the fuck the world jacket, and you can get Kim to put on the piss F slur jacket, and then you guys walk around as like,
01:31:48
Speaker
Yeah, it's just so good when you get Kim to play along with your bullshit yeah, yeah, I
01:31:57
Speaker
the very, very first time I played, and I don't know if I just misread what it said, or I don't know, but I feel like maybe it was because I had a certain stat, I don't know, but there's a moment where you first meet Kim, and there's the option to ask your subconscious, who is this guy to me? Who is this man to me? And the response is, from my understanding, very in earnest, it said, he's your half-brother.
01:32:26
Speaker
and i was like what what and that like it never came up again yeah and i was just like well is that like he feels like that's who he is because he's endeared to him from just meeting him or like is he literally your half brother like what what
01:32:44
Speaker
So I don't know. One of your traits in that exact same moment will say this man will do anything from you. This man would leap in front of a bullet for you. Yeah. OK. Yeah. Yeah. So it's just a flowery way of saying I don't know loyal. Look, I have no idea. It would not shock me if that would be revealed to be true, basically, just based on the nature of this game.
01:33:10
Speaker
Also, if you think
Analyzing 'The Thaumaturge'
01:33:12
Speaker
about the, there's one thought called the homosexual underground. And if you think about that thought, and you have a good relationship with Kim, you can get him to open up about his sexuality to you. Oh, wow. Well, now I gotta replay the damn thing. Another 30 hours. Kim's gay. There, you don't have to replay.
01:33:34
Speaker
You know, we're going to talk about another game and it's going to be a much shorter discussion than this. Yeah, sure. Because we're over again. I have my book club meeting in 47 minutes or 57 minutes. We have at least 56 minutes to talk about this. Roses, why don't you throw on the music?
01:33:53
Speaker
OK, and then we'll come back and then I will explain why we're talking about this game and we'll talk about this game. And it's not it does. I guarantee it's not going to spark as much. It will not. It will not. All right. Here comes the.
01:34:21
Speaker
Yeah.
01:34:28
Speaker
Hey, everybody. Welcome back to Save Your Game. I'm Matt Aucamp. This is Pushing Up Roses. Hi. And this is Francisco Gonzalez. Hello. And I'm going to tell you why we're doing this double feature here. Me and Francisco were both on a live stream announcing various events for the Adventure Game Fanfare, which is an adventure game convention happening in Tacoma, Washington, July 26th through the 28th. You can check it out at adventuregamehotspot.com.
01:34:57
Speaker
During this livestream, uh, Francisco mentioned a game that he was playing called The Thaumaturge. This game, it's an RPG game with a lot of adventure game elements, and Francisco described it as Disco Elysium.
01:35:16
Speaker
Although, but instead of Kim Kitsuragi, you have a Rasputin. The historical figure Rasputin as your site. Grigori Rasputin. And I was so, so intrigued. And I checked out the Thaumaturge and I played
01:35:35
Speaker
The intro to it and there was you know, there's obviously it's different than to Scholesium. It takes place in 1905 Russia, so a kind of a similar Poland actually, it's in Warsaw, but well of the Soviet Russian
01:35:56
Speaker
Don't you better not Soviet, but you start off in Russia and then you go to. Oh, OK. I believe you're right. You're right. Yeah. In the intro, you were not in Poland yet. I actually don't know exactly where you are in the intro. You might be in Georgia. That sounds right. I just played and I think Georgia is correct. You're. Yeah, I think you're in Georgia. But yeah, so you're in pre USSR, Russia and.
01:36:23
Speaker
right as things are starting to, the USSR, like the Soviets are starting to kind of like incorporate all these different nations, right? And you play a detective who is kind of a little unhinged, a little insane and a little depressed. And- Gee, this sounds really familiar.
01:36:50
Speaker
You're saying we're in a pre-post-revolutionary world playing as a unhinged, insane, depressed detective who talks to people who aren't there. Right. And it seems to be largely an RPG that isn't based around combat. It seems to be. Well... Seems to be that. Right. Seems very early on it seems to be that. But... But, so...
01:37:20
Speaker
Okay, Francisco, that's how you felt. I'm guessing you were about where I was. I'm going to take full responsibility for this because, yeah, when I was on this livestream, yeah, I think I had just played the prologue and had just gotten to Warsaw.
01:37:41
Speaker
Right. That is when I decided that's when I told roses, hey, let's do a double feature episode of these two games. Yeah. OK. Listen, to your guys's credit, though, if you buy this on Steam, which I did, it does make a note that people are they do kind of compare this to Disco Elysium. So it's.
01:38:04
Speaker
I feel that way by mechanic in the prologue only and by kind of the nature of it. It's got some, you know, politic talk in the intro. I don't know how much further it goes from the prologue because I had a very hard time.
01:38:24
Speaker
In the show notes, we will put an image of the roller coaster of messages I sent to Matt when I was playing this game. I want to see those. I will show it to you. I really liked the prologue. Like you said, Roses, there was a lot of talk about the politics of the region. It made it seem as if that was going to be a big theme of the game.
01:38:48
Speaker
You also, you play a detective who is a thaumaturge. You are like psychically sensitive to the, like psychic traces left on objects and you can influence or read the emotions of people. And it seems really promising and then intro creates a really like, yeah, a game, creates an image of a game that's,
01:39:16
Speaker
going to be really, really cool. Although there's a couple bits of combat in that intro that you're like, ah, did these need to be here? These don't really feel like they're adding to the game. And we, I want to say they are turn based. Uh, cause I think that's important distinction.
01:39:33
Speaker
Um, so yeah, as a thaumaturge, you collect basically these spirits, um, of what, I guess, or Eastern European mythology, maybe? Yes, because I will confess to you, I'm slightly embarrassed to confess this, but my book club, which I am having a meeting with 45 minutes, we are currently reading Twilight. Um,
01:39:59
Speaker
Yeah, it's a long story as to why we read classic literature. The idea is that we're supposed to read literature that passed us by. And we read a really heavy book and we decided we wanted something light and fluffy. And none of us had read Twilight, so we decided, fuck it, let's read Twilight. And Twilight actually mentions that Opeirs are Polish vampires.
01:40:19
Speaker
And Oopier happens to be the name of your initial ghost demon thing, which the game calls a Salutor, which you go collecting like Pokemon. Yes. And, you know, Rose has said when I first brought this game up on the show, she said, oh, like Pokemon? And I was like, no, not like Pokemon. But let me revisit it and say it's kind of like Pokemon.
01:40:45
Speaker
It's card-based combat and you collect demons. It's Pokemon. I think I've actually never played a Pokemon game in my life. Pokemon games aren't card-based, but it feels very much like you are just throwing these demons at people and having them attack for you. Right, right, right.
01:41:01
Speaker
There's a lot of writing and there's some really interesting ideas. I don't think the writing's bad, but the really interesting politics that are set up in the intro, unlike Disco Elysium, which really explores the politics and explains how politics is personal and how personal is politics, right?
01:41:22
Speaker
In the Thaumaturge, it's just like any everyday fantasy story where the politics basically boil down to the bad guy wants to make you illegal and now you have to fight against the bad guy. Which is just like the politics in Harry Potter or any other fantasy story, right? I will say to the game's credit, I do think that the setting is probably one of the most fascinating things about it.
01:41:52
Speaker
I have not played too much more of it. I want to say I'm probably about halfway through because I've collected four out of the eight salutors where I left off. My partner who is currently playing it right now, as I mentioned, I saw the Steam achievement go up while we were recording. We started recording, so I know she's playing it right now.
01:42:13
Speaker
She's further along and I've caught glimpses here and there of like what where the story goes and there's some weird stuff that comes up that I'm curious to see how Yeah, but but yeah as far as the setting it's it's interesting I Mean I don't dislike the game. I'm willing to give it a chance, but I I will say this
01:42:39
Speaker
One of the things that is preventing me from enjoying it is the voice acting. Same. Right. Yeah. I'm on the same page. It is all over the place because it's like, I get what they're doing. Like they're trying to, to show that Warsaw in 1905 is a place where there's lots of different people from lots of different countries. And so they give, they do the classic thing where like some people are British, some people are American, some people actually sound like they're Polish. Yeah.
01:43:07
Speaker
But the voice acting is a very mixed bag. I mean, it ranges from passable to just like cartoonish. And the main character, I couldn't put my finger on what it was about the main character that I just couldn't get on board with. And then I realized he sounds like he's drunk.
01:43:26
Speaker
He sounds like he's drunk. He's always like, hello, my name is Victor Julesky and I'm here to talk to you about the thing. So then I was like, well, this puts an interesting spin on it. Because what if, like, it's a little too laid back to where he sounds drunk, but that, but now I'm playing the game thinking, well, what if all of this is in his head?
01:43:46
Speaker
head and he's just an insane person going around going because he's drunk and he's just running around instigating fights with people and like the demons are all his personal demons and he's just like oh my flaw is pride oh I'm crazy so this has made the game much more entertaining however if you look at it from that perspective yeah no if you look at it it's great
01:44:13
Speaker
However, however, I will say because the thought crossed my mind when I first started playing it It's a it's it's a game developed by a Polish team Yeah, and I was like, it's really weird that they the only voice acting is in English But I did read that they are going to release an update with full Polish voice acting so I'm waiting for that So then I'll play the I'll play the game in Polish with English subtitles and maybe that'll make it better. I
01:44:36
Speaker
Yeah, it could be. I mean, it's interesting because Disco Elysium is doing that same thing. They're having different, different, you come across people in characters with different accents and different reflections. But it works, I think. And maybe the reason it works is because while I can see the comparisons like between mechanics
01:44:59
Speaker
and political things. It doesn't the thaumaturge doesn't have the edge that disco Elysium has in terms of writing, you know, it's not only dark, but it's it's hilarious and then writerly and poetic. And in that way, even when the voice acting is a little over the top, it makes sense because this game does have an unhinged quality to it.
01:45:23
Speaker
Well, yeah, the thometers at the very beginning reminded me of Disco Elysium. The further I got into it, it started to remind me of like, I don't know, Assassin's Creed or something, where you're just running around looking for who has check marks over their head. And their dialogue isn't that intriguing. You don't feel like you're talking to most of the time. There are some. But you don't feel like you're talking to characters so much as you're talking to quest givers.
01:45:48
Speaker
And there's almost no time where the game is enhanced by the combat. Early on also I thought that the combat was going to be mostly optional. It felt in the demo very much like
01:46:06
Speaker
you could choose, you could talk your way through situations, you could fight your way through situations, or like it felt like there was a bunch of different ways, but the further into the game I got, the more almost every situation requires one to three combats. Which I don't think I'm really,
01:46:29
Speaker
don't get me wrong, some of my favorite JRPGs are exactly that. It's a lot of grind, it's a lot of turn-based combat, but for some reason, because it opened with more of that like,
01:46:41
Speaker
you know, check your perception, look around here, talk to this character. I don't think I was ready for just random combat. You know what I mean? I just wasn't, my brain wasn't, wasn't computing this type of hybrid. I also the thing that irritates me gameplay wise is like there's the whole thing where it's like you're gathering clues. Yes. And then once you gather a certain number of clues, it's like, draw a conclusion. And then the game just does it for you.
01:47:07
Speaker
Like, yeah, I'm spoiled by games like, you know, Sherlock Holmes crimes and punishments, or even like Obra Dinn, where you have to do all the deduction yourself. The game just does it for you. You press a button and it's like, okay, I found the hotspots by right clicking a whole bunch to see where the radar made me have to go. And that's it. Like the game plays a little lacking. There's a lot of cool things like that, that
01:47:32
Speaker
radar sense kind of thing is as a thaumaturge if you right click or if you use a controller you can press the shoulder buttons and there's like I guess he taps on his grimoire and yeah this like red mist
01:47:49
Speaker
radiates from out out from him and a little red sparkles gather around clues. And that's how you find clues in the world. And also it gives like this really satisfying little snapping sound. I do like that. I do. Yeah, I found that satisfying too.
01:48:07
Speaker
But yeah, Francisco, you're absolutely right. Then once you find the clues, you feel like you're becoming a detective and then it just does it for you. And it just feels, it starts to feel less like clue gathering and more like fetch quest hidden objects. Right. Yeah, it essentially is a big hidden object game. Now you say that.
01:48:31
Speaker
And, you know, I do think there's some interesting things going on in the narrative, even if the politics aren't really doing it for me. And most of the characters are pretty one dimensional. There's apparently also an obnoxious child character.
01:48:49
Speaker
Yes, he's voiced. Oh, I haven't met him yet in my. Yeah, I haven't met him yet, but like he's clearly voiced by like a woman doing a high pitched an adult woman. Yeah. It's like a Bart Simpson kind of. Yeah. Yeah. Only Bart Simpson, I think, is more more neutral than just, you know, yeah. That character is really bad. A lot of the characters voices are really bad. You meet what I guess.
01:49:17
Speaker
A guy with an American accent and he's like the badass, crazy, chaotic crime friend. Oh, is this the guy from Albuquerque?
01:49:28
Speaker
Is he from Albuquerque? There's a guy from Albuquerque who has an American accent. I don't know if it's the same guy. Oh, that's another thing. I want to mention, there's like really weird blatant pop culture references that come out of nowhere. Like there's a scene where you're going to a seance and they're like, oh, they're up in room 237. It's like, oh, okay.
01:49:49
Speaker
I don't like when that happens. Yeah. And then the guy that, that character from Albuquerque, his last name is Pinkman. I'm like, Oh, okay. Is he selling blue crystal meth too? Like
01:50:08
Speaker
There's a lot in this game, like this game is just packed full of good ideas that are executed poorly. And I think one of the things this game does successfully is, okay, if Disco Elysium is the subversion of a tabletop role-playing game,
01:50:28
Speaker
The Thaumaturge is a lot like what a tabletop role-playing game ends up being, where you have a friend who's your game master or dungeon master, and they have a really cool story that you guys are all enjoying, but most sessions, they had a busy week, so they just throw you into a random combat.
01:50:49
Speaker
is what the Thaumaturge feels like. It's like, you come across something interesting and you're really, you're following an interesting lead and then, ah, you just gotta fight the guys. Also, I should mention that the combat music is the same every single time. So I've had that goddamn combat music stuck in my head for weeks now because I hear it.
01:51:11
Speaker
That music is good at first. Do you hear it 30 times in a row? Yeah. Oh my God. And that's everything in the game. Like the background music is the same everywhere you go. And at the beginning, you're like, this is really good music. And then after a while, you're like, oh my God. And Francisco, like you're saying about the guy sounds drunk at the very beginning, he is going through some shit.
01:51:38
Speaker
So I was like, oh, this voice actor is really good. But then you get a couple hours in and you're like, oh, man, he's still on his bender. Yeah. So I would say there was one scene that actually I did feel like, oh, wow, like it was tense. There's like a Russian roulette scene in a bar. Yes.
01:51:59
Speaker
And I was like, Oh my God. I was also, it was also late at night. So I actually kind of was falling asleep through the scene. But when I was awake, I was like, Oh shit, this is tense. But that's just cause I'm old. There's some good things about the thaumaturge and I understand why people are digging it. Yeah. Now I will also full disclosure. I didn't pay for my copy of the game. It was actually very graciously sent to me by one of the, uh, the PR people at the, at 11 bit.
01:52:36
Speaker
I don't know if I would be so generous about my opinion of it had I paid full price for it.
01:52:45
Speaker
your mileage may vary? Yeah, I think I think your mileage may vary is definitely the thing. Yeah, if you like turn based combat, you're going to get a lot of it. And, you know, at least you'll get some cool story in a very cool setting along with it. But yeah, so that is
01:53:06
Speaker
the thaumaturge a little underwhelming a little underwhelming but yeah some really interesting ideas especially coming off of disco Elysium where i felt so elated and like kind of accomplished i think the thaumaturge
01:53:22
Speaker
what it lacks mainly even more than like kind of kind of some of this gameplay is just personality. I would like to have it. See, I would like to see it have more of a distinguished tone, distinguished personality like disco had. But that's just my opinion. Yeah. The the main guy you play, Victor, Victor is just he is just angsty protagonist. Yeah. And that's it. There's not much to him.
01:53:51
Speaker
Well, the protagonist with daddy issues. Don't forget that daddy issues. That's in place of a personality. All right. Well, that's the thaumaturge. Um, do you want to put on just like five seconds? Like we should cleanse. You want to put on like five seconds of swampy jampadino and then we'll come back and say goodbye. Yeah, I can do that.
01:54:13
Speaker
I hope you're compiling a list of all of the variations of the name that Matt has called. Oh, if I'm not someone else's, trust me. There should be a wiki. My favorite is Sam and Max and Reno. Wait, did you say that? Yeah. You did? When did you say that? I don't know. That was, I think, my second one or whatever.
01:54:45
Speaker
Hey, everyone. Welcome back to Save Your Game. I am pushing up roses with me, as always. Yeah, they're still here. Matt Aucamp? I left. Okay. Bye. I'm gone. And Francisco Gonzalez. Hello. I've always been here. He's always been here. Matt left, I guess, but Francisco. We forget to mention that Francisco's been on every episode. He's just really quiet. I've just been quiet and hiding in the corner.
01:55:12
Speaker
Every now and then, if you listen really closely, you can hear him crying. That's accurate. Yeah. Quietly at the corner. Yeah.
01:55:25
Speaker
Um francisco, you have a game coming out this year. It's called rose water. I do It is what do you want to tell the people about it before you you skidaddle off into the sunset sunset. Yep Oh how appropriate you say that because that's what happens in westerns And yeah, as I mentioned rose water is a point and click western Uh, it is not a comedy western like you might think of most adventure games. It's uh, it's more of an indiana jones sort of uh
01:55:53
Speaker
I say it's like a road trip with your friends. There's companion characters. You're on a treasure hunt. It's real exciting. It's got a great voice cast and it's coming hopefully later this year. Also, I should probably mention that if you enjoy games where failure is an option and you like detective stuff,
01:56:15
Speaker
I mentioned that the previous game I did that's set in the same world is Lamplight City, and that is a detective game where you can also screw things up. And you also play as a detective who has a substance abuse problem and hears voices. And it doesn't have any inventory, much like Disco Elysium, but you don't need an inventory for an adventure game. So you can check those games out. You can check out all my other games. I'm all over
Promoting 'Rosewater'
01:56:41
Speaker
the place. Should I drop my socials?
01:56:44
Speaker
Absolutely. Is that what the kids say nowadays? Yeah, drop them socials. Drop them socials. This is what the kids say. Yeah, all the kids listening to this are like, wow, these guys are hip. Oh, yeah. All the kids listening to the Adventure Game podcast. Yeah, man. Them hip cats. All right. My son won't even listen to this thing.
01:57:06
Speaker
Well, I mean, I wouldn't either if my dad was doing an adventure game podcast. Wait, if your dad was doing an adventure game podcast, you wouldn't listen? Oh no! So remember I said before about daddy issues? Yeah, let's not say that anyway.
01:57:24
Speaker
That's too much about me. Anyway, if my dad started doing an adventure game podcast, I would just listen out of pure like confusion. Well, what? Yeah, I don't know. Anyway, I'm on Twitter.
01:57:39
Speaker
I'm Grundislav Games, that's G-R-U-N-D-I-S-L-A-V, games, all one word, and you can find me pretty much everywhere else as either Grundislav Games or Grundislav. I'm on Blue Sky, I'm on Mastodon, I'm on Instagram, I'm on Twitch. As Grundislav, I do a weekly dev stream every Wednesday at 1pm Eastern called Wild West Wednesday, where I do a dev stream of Rosewater.
01:58:02
Speaker
I'm also I've also been streaming my GTA role-playing. So if you're interested in that you can check that out Yeah, I have a YouTube channel Where I just put BODs of stuff. What else what else what else? I think that's about it Oh, yeah, I have my website Grundislav dot games and my games are all on Steam and GOG calm and
01:58:25
Speaker
And I think that's it. Sweet. Thank you. That was a good that was a good wrap up. Honestly, I love it when people like know how to like plug themselves and concisely plug. Yeah, because I don't I always feel like I do. I'm like, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Just Google it. You know, we will definitely mention when
01:58:49
Speaker
when Rosewater comes out. This will be a topic of conversation, so you guys don't, listeners do not have to worry that you'll miss it. If you keep listening to this podcast, you will know when Rosewater is coming out. For sure. Rose, is anything going on with you that you want the people to come see? Listen, I'm doing a video on diagnosis murder.
01:59:12
Speaker
And all the 80 year olds are gonna flock to my channel. Maybe Dick Van Dyke himself will watch it. That would be amazing. The goat. So crazy that that guy's still alive. You hushed your mouth. If he dies tomorrow, I'm blaming you. He's never going to die.
01:59:38
Speaker
I found an episode that I really wanted to do and I watched it. It was streaming. Next day, the whole season I watched it from was taken down everywhere. Wow. So now I have a full DVD set of the second season of diagnosis marker. But that's what's going on with me. Keep an eye on the channel because that should be I'm recording the VO after this podcast. So it'll be out soon. Amazing.
02:00:08
Speaker
Well, everybody, make sure that you, ugh, God, give us, you know, rate us on all the podcasting things. We can't. We've gotta tell them to, right? It's annoying, but you gotta go do it. Look, all of us have to do things in our lives that we're not happy with, and what you guys have to go do is rate and review us on all the stuff.
02:00:31
Speaker
podcasting apps and tell your friends and blah, blah, blah. And come back here. Do it because I had to buy a whole season of diagnosis murder for one review. We're part of the adventure game hotspot network. Go check them out. I plugged them earlier in the show, so I'm not going to do it again. Come back next Wednesday and we'll talk about some more shit.
02:00:59
Speaker
Who wants to Francisco you listened? Uh-huh. Why don't you do you want to do the outro? Can I our goodbye? Yeah, please. Oh, wow. Oh man. This is a this is very a lot of pressure. Okay. Podcast is art art is suffer. Yeah
02:02:06
Speaker
wa wa wa wa wa wa wa wa wa wa wa wa wa wa