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S2 Ep153: LISA: The Painful
78 Plays5 years ago
MAJOR SPOILERS: LISA: The Painful
MINOR SPOILERS: LISA: The First, The Last of Us: Part 1
Join Dave and Jake as they walk a mile in Brad's shoes as he makes his way through the dystopian post-societal wasteland in search of his adoptive daughter in this week's episode!
Thoughts? Comments? Requests for new episodes? Feel free to email them in!
SoapstonePodcast@gmail.com
Like our podcast? Like our podcast! We'll post when new episodes are uploaded!
https://www.facebook.com/SoapstonePodcast/
MINOR SPOILERS: LISA: The First, The Last of Us: Part 1
Join Dave and Jake as they walk a mile in Brad's shoes as he makes his way through the dystopian post-societal wasteland in search of his adoptive daughter in this week's episode!
Thoughts? Comments? Requests for new episodes? Feel free to email them in!
SoapstonePodcast@gmail.com
Like our podcast? Like our podcast! We'll post when new episodes are uploaded!
https://www.facebook.com/SoapstonePodcast/
Recommended
Transcript
Casual Catch-Up and Humor
00:00:50
Speaker
How's it going, everyone? Welcome to another episode of Soapstone. My name is Jake. I'm joined by my co-host is always Dave. How's it going today, Dave? I think good overall. I got to get in a walk, had some food and plan a new game. Did you use the walk for the food?
00:01:12
Speaker
Uh, it was the other order. Okay. Oh, are you asking, did I walk to the food? Okay. Yeah. Uh, no, I don't, I don't have that yet. That's fair. Maybe soon.
00:01:29
Speaker
If you're an ambitious listener, you can send Dave a walk. I don't need more cooking implements. I have a lot that I underutilize as is. But man, do I love food. Food is pretty good. Did you eat today?
00:01:45
Speaker
I did eat some food. I had a Wawa. So I got like they have a chicken parm like charity thing, which is pretty good. I'm going to look up exactly what it is. Do they donate chicken parms places? I mean, that sounds pretty good, right?
00:02:06
Speaker
I don't know how else I'd interpret that. It's like I buy chicken parm, they donate a chicken parm somewhere else as well. Whatever you don't eat at the chicken parm gets donated. Yeah, I don't know exactly what this product was now that I'm looking at it. Because it doesn't look like I look up charity in the articles from two years ago. Probably not that actually.
00:02:29
Speaker
But that's all right. It was a, it was pretty delicious though. The chicken parms are good. Um, and we got two of them. It was a good time. Um, nice. It's less interesting than like actually baking or talking about baking. We made mochi cake, which was a lot better once it was cold, not eating it hot. I think helps the gelatin type of texture to be a little less repulsive.
00:02:55
Speaker
I cannot imagine hot mochi. Yeah. Yeah. So recently I did try... Is it... Don Don? Dan Dan? It's like rice balls on a stick, essentially. Ooh, that sounds pretty good. So I wasn't super crazy about it as more so the sauce with it was nice because it was...
00:03:23
Speaker
very teriyaki umami in that family, but- Teriyaki's good. Umami is usually what I say when I get teriyaki also. Umami. People have stopped inviting me. But like, it was just kind of a plain rice ball on its own. And I mistakenly just kind of put the whole thing in my mouth. And then like, I tried chewing and my mouth was like,
00:03:49
Speaker
Bro, we need to start breathing through our nose. We fucked up. So maybe if it was flavored, because it was kind of like hot and fresh. Hot and fresh out the kitchen. I'm not doing this right now. No, no, OK. That's fair. But I am thinking about the lyrics as I'm trying not to say them, because it was like a cultural thing in my youth.
00:04:18
Speaker
You're rolling that body. I got every man in here wishing. I like rice stuff, but I feel like it needs either like a sauce or needs to be flavored as a part of what it is. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I'm not just eating plain rice, put some sauce on that shit. It's got to have sauce or something.
00:04:44
Speaker
I do like rice as the carb, though. Protein plus rice is probably a pretty good time with some sauce. That makes up a lot of dishes, and they're usually pretty good. Chicken, rice. Teriyaki, yes. And we'll throw in broccoli so you'll think it's healthy.
00:05:01
Speaker
It's got that green color. Just spray paint the rice. I thought you were going to go to the chicken. I was like, rice is probably better. Green chicken and rice. It's like off brand. Now I'm thinking about food stuff. I think for dinner, I got some patties, beef variety that I might try and cook up on a pan. Maybe put one of them in a roll.
00:05:32
Speaker
Oh, interesting. But not, but not make two burgers because carbs. Right. Carbs are mostly what I eat.
00:05:45
Speaker
It shows. That's why we do an audio only podcast. Roll it in to this episode. The blob.
Exploring the Game 'Lisa'
00:06:01
Speaker
The hardest part is just getting Jake to a physical location where the mic can reach him as he's still on the toilet. That's not a pretty image whatsoever. For the sake of the joke, I'm imagining
00:06:15
Speaker
You know, those over the top stretch arms where like the joints kind of ladder out and in. Mm hmm. It's like you do a fully extended grabo arm, but it's with the mic and it's like going through like rooms and hallways. It's terrifying. Speaking of body horror, this week's episode's about Lisa. I'll give you points for the transition. It's definitely a part of the game. Yeah.
00:06:46
Speaker
A lot of this I feel I put in the category of that's the kooky nonsense involved in the game, but everything in the game, there's still some kooky nonsense, but I'd say majority of the things that they put in the game do have a reason. It's not just completely asinine.
00:07:05
Speaker
Yeah, I guess like, so we should preface probably at least a little bit. So you got this game a while back. I think Dunkey made a video on it a couple of years back or what have you. You got this a while back and you're like, hey, you should pick it up. We should play it. We should have an episode on it. And I'm like, yeah, Dave. And then years passed and, or at least a year, I don't know, maybe six months. It was finally on sale, picked it up and I didn't expect it to be like an RPG maker game.
00:07:33
Speaker
But they cover that pretty well. Like it's heavily customized compared to your average RPG maker game. Yeah. You know the ones that you see on Steam where it's like these are some generic fucking assets. Oh, it's an RPG person used attack. Their health went down three points. I'm like, bro, I've made this shit in MS paint from time to time. Yeah.
00:07:57
Speaker
But no, it definitely feels like a full fledged standalone game. Yeah. What I didn't know, though, is that it's actually part of a series. So what we went through was Lisa the Painful. Yes. But it's just said as Lisa on the store page. But there is a prequel.
00:08:16
Speaker
AKA the original one called just Lisa, I think. Yeah, Lisa the first. Lisa the first. So apparently there was- That's what you know they're going to make more. Yeah, right. And then afterwards, there's Lisa the joyful. Yeah. And so I feel like those other things definitely add more context to the game. But I feel as a standalone, you can still get a lot of what's going on. Yeah.
00:08:46
Speaker
I think it also like, so the main things that come from the other games aren't necessarily a massive explanation of everything that's going on. This is definitely, it takes place in like a wasteland sort of post-apocalyptic Mad Max-like society, where kind of anything goes, weird humor, very interesting characters that are very, very odd. And,
00:09:13
Speaker
That's not really explained as far as I can tell based off what I saw in the other games either. So it's as good an entry point as any. The only thing that really comes into play here is...
00:09:25
Speaker
The other two games are like shorter. This is like the more feature length game and, uh, make characters named Brad or Bradley and, and this one. And he, um, makes references to a tragedy that took place in Lisa the first. And they don't elaborate what that tragedy is at like at all in this game, but the first game is entirely about it.
00:09:50
Speaker
Yeah, so spoilers for that game, as we'll probably touch on it at least once. But yeah, this is very much a side-scrolling RPG-type game. And anytime you die, you have to restart from a save point.
Gameplay Mechanics and Challenges in 'Lisa'
00:10:11
Speaker
So if you haven't saved,
00:10:14
Speaker
Sucks. It's very much the old style of game where it's like, let me know when you want me to copy that save data down somewhere, otherwise it's all void. Yeah, and it's got a pain mode that you have the option to opt into pretty early in the prologue that opens up some scenes you wouldn't otherwise see in the game.
00:10:41
Speaker
Um, so there's exclusive content and boss fights and things like that that only show up in pain mode, but you can only use save points once it explodes after you use it. So there's literally a limited number of times you can save and pain mode. Damn. I don't like that idea. Spoilers. I didn't play on pain mode. Same.
00:11:05
Speaker
What is interesting though is even without pain mode, at least from my experience, because I was not good at it. The game is very brutal in that it's not set up for you to win and thrive.
00:11:23
Speaker
So save points are to save your data. And then there are rest points where if you want to get like full party heel type thing, basically. Yeah, literally. But the, the full party heel always has a chance for something to go wrong. So maybe when you wake up, if it's not a protected location. Yeah. I think, and maybe only protected spots.
00:11:51
Speaker
Yeah. So you have to go back and find one or risk the element, so to speak. I remember one time like, oh, let me rest here. And then my party awoke and was all poison because the snake had bit us in the night. Or you wake up. It's like, hey, one of your party members has been stolen. There's just a ransom note on the ground. Yeah. So you have to then go pay to get them back or you don't get them back.
00:12:19
Speaker
Yeah. Right? And if you say like, hey, I'm not going to pay, they will kill your party member. Yeah. This is something that's pretty frequent throughout the game. It's like, do you value your RPG party enough? Because you'll be in situations where it's like that, or maybe you have to make choices, as Jake was alluding to, for do you want to
00:12:41
Speaker
Keep your people or not, right? How many times would you say that that happened to you throughout the game? You had an explicit choice that could cost you people or how many people did I lose or opportunities to lose people? I'd probably say opportunities to lose party members. I think like if you count per party member, instead of a distinct event, I probably could have lost seven or eight people across my play through them. Yeah.
00:13:10
Speaker
There's like 15 party members or something total throughout the entire game. If anybody remembers Shining Force, a game I never get to reference, but occasionally do with intro music.
00:13:26
Speaker
Very much you'll have cannon party members that you'll kind of pick up along the way. But then there'll be a lot of optional characters that if you go out of your way, maybe you'll have to do some type of check or side quest or just handle the interaction a specific way. And they'll be like, cool, I'm a part of your party. Yeah. But like from at least what I saw Jake playing and from what I played, missed a whole bunch. Yeah, they're all over the place.
00:13:55
Speaker
There's a surprising amount of side optional content. Did you opt into a whole lot? Yeah, I did most of the side content. Some of it is locked behind pain mode, but I did a lot of like, there's an optional like trash island, which I did not a lot of content there. And you can kind of brute force the story. The story takes place across three acts, like three distinct areas.
00:14:24
Speaker
and then sort of like a final sort of epilogue, home run sort of segment. And there's a lot of side paths and things like that that could lead to gear, party members, optional boss fights,
Themes and Character Dynamics in 'Lisa'
00:14:37
Speaker
things like that, which is cool. I like that design. I think like it's nice to have the option to either trying to like press forward or be the super explorationist trying to find
00:14:51
Speaker
I realized that explorer is a word, but I said explorationist instead, trying to find everything. Yeah, it's, it's rewarding though. Cause at least from what I've seen, every single character is different. So like combat across the board, there's definitely your standard RPG attack, defend, use item, use magic.
00:15:17
Speaker
But every single character plays differently. So your main character, Brad, has fighting stances he can do.
00:15:26
Speaker
And when those fighting stances, it essentially equates to an ability, if you input the right commands. Or you can select the skill directly, which I think is less damage. Is that the trade-off? Yeah. Because if you manually input the, like, because I think keyboard's the default. If the combo is like ADDS or something like that, then you would do damage for every input, ADDS. Versus if you pick it in the skill thing, you only do the,
00:15:54
Speaker
damage for the final skill. You get all of the preceding hits if you put it in manually. But I think him and el rage use stances kind of like that. But then there's an archer. Then there's a guy who specifically puts like buffs or debuffs on people. Yeah. Then there's Terry hints.
00:16:21
Speaker
who is actually really good. He's actually great. I was watching part of a playthrough and he was just putting out the highest damage. Yeah. But in my playthrough, I he died. He died pretty early. Yeah. I gave him up to some bandits and then later had to face him as like a like midgame boss because he joined them. Terry the Terrible, right? Yeah. Yeah.
00:16:50
Speaker
Yeah, it's, I don't know, it's really unique as far as all the combat stuff. I feel like I never fully learned all of the mechanics as far as buffs and debuffs.
00:17:04
Speaker
Now, there was a crazy amount. I took a picture, actually, of the buffs and debuffs, because I was like, I'm going to need to reference this. And ultimately, I didn't. But there was a bunch that stood out. There's like better non-RPG normal. Like crying is one, which is like a debuff, but it can help you generate TP if your character has the option to cry, like it will. Then there's depression, which is bad.
00:17:35
Speaker
Joy, which is if you're taking like the drug Joy, which I don't know if this was stolen from like, We Happy Few, or if this came first. Nobody fucking took anything from that fucking game. But it is exactly like sort of the same. Take this drug, fit in, be happy. So it's kind of interesting that it has literally the same name proper now, but could be a real life connotation there. I also just have not seen
00:18:04
Speaker
Anyways, and then there's like withdrawal. So certain characters are addicted to joy. And if they're not on it, then they suffer debuffs to their stats.
00:18:15
Speaker
I didn't use any on my playthrough because I didn't feel like I needed to. And I was curious what happens if you don't partake of the drug. And there is actually an extra scene at the end of the game, which is cool. But it basically guarantees, like for certain characters, it more or less guarantees crits. If you have a guy that has a special attack where he hits like 10 times, you can do like 7,000 damage with just amp him up on Joy first and let them solo a boss. It's crazy.
00:18:44
Speaker
Also interesting is so like we're talking about like damage and buffs and debuffs
00:18:51
Speaker
If I'm still remembering correctly, a lot of them don't actually show. You never know an enemy's health bar for like, oh, should I use this big attack? Or should I save the mana and just kick him in the shins a couple of times? Right. You don't fucking know. You don't know his health bar. You do know his buffs if you go to select him, if he's going to be attacked. OK. There's little icons for him. So you would have to know what the icons mean, though.
00:19:15
Speaker
Yeah, but like if somebody is stunned, for example, knock down more possibly flammable and you then get to set them on fire. Cool. That's good stuff to know if you want to optimize. The I actually found so I was wrong. There's apparently 30 possible companions, but a lot of them are kind of hard to find. I don't know if all of these were for this Middle East again. Lisa, the painful either, but.
00:19:40
Speaker
My favorite companion, I think it's Bertie, is his name. I'm pretty sure it's Bertie. His auto attack move, his attack in the RPG Maker action list is like, take a sip of alcohol. And that's the only way he generates TP. And then he can spend that TP for a party-wide heal.
00:20:03
Speaker
Um, which is good. Uh, or he can like, uh, spit the alcohol like on the enemy and like oil, give them the oil debuff, which makes them vulnerable to fire. So you put him in your party and then a bunch of people that do fire moves and just blow the enemy up. So good.
00:20:26
Speaker
Yeah, I think I used him for a little bit. I just like because he's very much a he's like the town drunk, but like from the pioneer days, like that guy you'd see in like the old Western movies, you're like, oh, it's that guy. And like everyone knows his name. He's the town drunk. Yeah. It's really good.
00:20:52
Speaker
I also, I had a guy named Geese Thompson who has like a goose head. He's just like, he has like, you know how people wear horse heads or whatever, the masks. He has that as like a goose and it's unequippable in his inventory. You can't like remove it to see what he looks like. Oh, it's slotted you mean? Yeah. It's like a cursed item or permanently equipped to him.
00:21:19
Speaker
in the head slot, but he has like all these pec attacks and things like that. He had poison, which is also really much like Darkslows. Dots and things like that can be really powerful. Nice. So usually my strategy was try to like get all the dots on enemies.
00:21:40
Speaker
And then if they're vulnerable to some sort of CC, hit them with like trip or stun or something like that so that they don't use an instant kill move on my party. Yeah, there's definitely some enemies that are more difficult. But it's really hard, again, it's very hard to gauge what's coming at you until you get hit by something. Yeah. Because throughout the game, I feel
00:22:08
Speaker
There's not random encounters at all. There are areas where they exist, but they're like the swamp when you're running over. Okay, there's like snakes technically. And it's always like usually like a bush on the map. There's just a chance when you walk over the bush that you'll fight a snake. And I really, I didn't like those segments. I didn't think they added anything to the game at all.
00:22:32
Speaker
Thank you for correcting me there. But outside of that, I'm going to amend my statement to say there are no random encounters. Everything is scripted as far as you're going to have these enemies here. But every time you fight those enemies outside of the random caves or snake shit, they're different.
00:22:55
Speaker
A lot of them will be like thugs and goons. Some of them will be terrifying monsters. And some of them are more set piece type boss fights. Yeah. And like certain characters like, do you remember the bulldozer section?
00:23:12
Speaker
Yes. Yeah. So at some point in the game, you get a bulldozer and you're just like plowing through enemies. And it seems just like a vehicle section. I'm not even sure they were enemies. I think they were just construction workers. The game's just like you get experience for running over people in a bulldozer. I mean, you won't get experience if they were good guys. Right.
00:23:35
Speaker
But at a point, like you run into another person in a bulldozer and then you get like a three minute backstory about their life. Yeah. And then you fight them and you don't get that for everybody. And it's not necessarily part of game lore. It doesn't add anything.
00:23:52
Speaker
But they're just like, hey, let's flesh this out a little bit. I love that that guy's backstory was also like his spent his entire life trying to be like a bulldozer specialist. Like he got his technicians diploma or whatever in bulldozer in because he claimed a diploma that was for another person thinking that they like type out his name. And then the other person came in right after him and was like, hey, where's my diploma?
00:24:20
Speaker
He couldn't save his wife, his wife died because he had to use a bulldozer to save her and then it just flash forwards to her funeral. And then you fight the guy.
00:24:33
Speaker
Yeah. Well, by the way, the guy doesn't want to fight. He's like, hey, I'd really rather not to do this. Let me just back this bulldozer up and get out of your way. And then he steps on the gas because he doesn't know how to operate it. But it's like the game has so many little instances like that, whether it's through combat or through other means where.
00:24:55
Speaker
You don't know what to expect at any given point. And for me, that was a lot of the draw. Yeah. Like through Dunkey's video, you get to see instances of that. Or when you first meet Nern, and he starts telling you a story and you're like, oh, this is going on. Let me skip. And you think you're done. And then it keeps going.
00:25:14
Speaker
Yeah. Or when you walk away, he's like, oh, you're walking away with a posture. Someone wants to hear more of my story. And that just goes into it. Yeah. Like the writing is just really good. I feel like a lot of it, I appreciate more so of the comedic sides of it. Mm hmm.
00:25:37
Speaker
Nern is actually hilarious. Everything is dark and crazy. Because Nern almost tells you actual story plot about like the before times or what actually happened. He mentions like the White Flash, which you barely ever get references of, where like all women vanished from the world or died or something. But then he just derails into his own personal stupid story. And he keeps swearing at his wife.
00:26:05
Speaker
I've been saying God rest your soul. It's really good. Yeah, it's a little pockets of things like that. Do you have any specific favorites?
00:26:23
Speaker
I mean, mentioning Naren makes it pretty good. Terry Haynes is also great. I know we referenced him a little bit. And just his whole back and forth with encountering him later with like the changed name and he's no longer trying to give you hints about all this is good.
00:26:44
Speaker
trying to think who else. There's another guy who only can't remember exactly what his companion name was, but he only speaks in rhymes. Maybe it was Goose actually, which is kind of funny. And then there's just a bunch of nobodies. There's just like guys that some out of certain circumstance end up joining your party. And they're just like, it's just a guy. He's not like a great fighter or anything. It's basically a guy.
00:27:15
Speaker
I don't know. Yeah, it's it's good. It really is. I'm trying to think of like a specific one like a full disclaimer. I did not play the entire game. Mm hmm.
00:27:31
Speaker
I played it. Minor disclaimer, I used to guide. We cheated, we're sorry. But basically I played on and off for maybe like a month or two, but I feel like it's much better of an experience to sit down and play it in bigger chunks versus I played for like an hour or two at a time, come back like a week later and then be like,
00:27:55
Speaker
I remember what I was doing, what I was where I supposed to go. So it was hard to get back on track of like, I'm into the game. I'm in the story. Yeah. Because there's no like, hey, go here. It's like you figure that shit out based on the NPCs you've already talked to like two weeks ago, though. So I forgot. It's really not a good game for that, unfortunately, like there's there's a lot of connected
00:28:23
Speaker
This is a gripe. This is one of the gripes I have for the game. It's an indie game. I'm going to have gripes. It's not going to be perfect. Not that AAA games are gripe proof and are perfect either. Right. But tons of areas are connected by caves and.
00:28:39
Speaker
That's fine on its own, but it is. It just kind of does add to the length of the game and it does make it really hard to spatially keep track of how all these areas connect with no map and the game has no map. So. You enter an area and it's like, hey, there's five exits and they all go to caves. You're like, I, what am I going to do? Right. Maybe you got to do the old King's quest strat.
00:29:06
Speaker
Do you remember the days of King's Quest? I didn't play, but I'm familiar with it. What do you think? In King's Quest, I think it was seven. There is a sequence where you have to go across the desert. By the way, they all look the fucking same. All the tiles you go through and you don't really have any reference. You just kind of have to plug and play, figure that shit out.
00:29:29
Speaker
So I remember like writing down on a piece of paper, like I went right and I went right and I went up and then it's like it's literally just trial and error, which I don't usually like in games so much. That seems fair. But I mean, like you could write down disconnects to here. Right.
00:29:49
Speaker
I did play it through in like fewer sessions. I think I finished in like three sessions or something like that. And I got more interested in the game the longer it went on, which is kind of reverse. You know, the game should try to pull you in pretty early, but I don't know. It started to grow on me a little bit more as I continued to play.
00:30:10
Speaker
And then I didn't have as much trouble remembering areas. I'm like, okay, I'm pretty sure I go through this dark cave through this place and that takes me out to this other area and then whatever. But I can't imagine playing in like single hour trunks or two hour trunks over a long period of time because I would lose all of that context. I heavily goofed. Heavily goofed.
00:30:32
Speaker
Yeah. Um, I guess we haven't talked at all about the story, um, which the game does explicitly like hit you with at the beginning. They're like narrative sequence go.
Storyline and Moral Dilemmas in 'Lisa'
00:30:47
Speaker
Right. Um,
00:30:50
Speaker
Do you want to delve again? Yeah. Yeah. So you play as Brad. And when you start the game, this is all post the White Flash, which was some catastrophic event. But there's no women anymore. It's very much a lot of guys in the Badlands. So.
00:31:12
Speaker
You find a child which kind of implicates that there must be a lady somewhere because how'd this kid get here? Because when you started the game
00:31:24
Speaker
Sorry, when you have flashback sequences to the before times, it's been 20, 30 years. So finding a kid is a huge fucking deal. So you as Brad, because of the previous events in the first game, you feel responsible
00:31:42
Speaker
And you want a second chance to redeem yourself. So you're like, oh, I will take care of this kid. And then you find out that the kid's a girl. You're like, oh, this could be bad. Because all guys know women. So he becomes very protective and fatherly. And him and his friends, for a number of years, hide and protect the child and take care of it.
00:32:06
Speaker
Yeah, and then straight up like they dig out like a tunnel or a hidden room underneath like his house Where she lives and grows up and makes wall drawings and stuff It was basically four men and a baby. Yeah, it's two guys a girl and then other two guys. I think was the show Yeah
00:32:29
Speaker
I don't have two guys a girl in the pizza place. Reference is still the land. 2021. You can say pizza place. I'm like, I got you. Yeah. But basically, like you see from like the early sequence, because you're so sheltered all the time, she wants to get out and like explore the world. She's very much kind of trapped inside. So
00:32:56
Speaker
I think one day you as Brad, who's still like coping with all the events of the before that we don't really know too much about, he goes off to take the drug Joy, kind of away from the house. And it makes you feel really good. And in game, it makes you essentially invincible in combat. Yeah, where you just don't take damage, and you have better chance of crits.
00:33:20
Speaker
But when he wakes up, he meets Terry Hintz, our boy Terry. And then he goes back to the house to find one of his friends who is dying. And then nobody else is there. Basically, some people came and took your effectively adopted daughter. Buddy. Yeah. Which is a funny name for a girl, but whatever. Well, he first calls like, hey, it's OK, little buddy. So it just became Buddy because he didn't have a better name.
00:33:51
Speaker
So the overall plot is you trying to find and rescue Buddy. Yeah, it's taken. The movie. Yeah, it's about the movie. The movie taken, yes.
00:34:07
Speaker
So yeah. Yeah. I was just going to say, like, there's a lot of this prefix, a lot of this pre preface is to like the relationship, like he makes a mask for her. So when they go out that she won't be known as as a girl. And like it really focuses on the ways that he cares for her kind of in the opening.
00:34:31
Speaker
which I think narratively is cool because this all gets reinterpreted later. It's all like, oh, snap, looking back on that, him not letting her go out at all, unless it's for these supervised walks and things like that. Yeah, she wouldn't interpret that well, would she? Stuff like that. But yeah, it's a plenty good motivator to get out there and explore the world.
00:35:01
Speaker
Yeah, just to give Brad's thoughts, context, the reason he wants to protect her and from everybody, because she is the only girl, he's worried that she's going to be used by men to essentially repopulate the world. Yeah. And he's like, she's just a kid that shouldn't be like chosen for her, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah. So he's very much driven to
00:35:31
Speaker
find his daughter to like get her back and make sure she can still be protected. Yeah. So that's his whole thing. Exclusively like the protector role, but his friends and the rest of the remnants of society to some degree of degeneracy or just pragmatic perspective see her as the salvation of mankind because
00:35:59
Speaker
without her, the human race dies out. Yeah, I would say a handful of people think that, though. Yeah, I feel like in the badlands, there's a lot more degeneracy. Mm hmm. So one of the side characters you can pick up, everything that we're talking about is fairly early on, so I don't mind mentioning it. Yeah, I mean, I'm probably going to spoil it later anyways. But remember when you pick up Fardee?
00:36:26
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you go into this building and you see all these guys in the house trying to like get in. It's like, oh, there's a girl in there who like we can have sex with.
00:36:35
Speaker
So that seems very much their driving motivator. But when you go in and fight through some people, you find the girl they're referring to, and it's just like an old fat truck driver guy who had a wig on. And then when you pick him up and he joins your party, he has one move, which is called cry. So that's a lot of the people who you meet are very self-serving in that regard.
00:37:03
Speaker
But later on you find out, um, your friends who you've known since childhood are kind of like, Hey, she should deserve to like make her own choices and be known. She should be made known of what her options are. Right. Which is something Brad's not willing to do whatsoever. He wants to protect her completely. Yeah. So he doesn't want her making a choice that could hurt her or.
00:37:33
Speaker
He doesn't really want her to make the choice, honestly. He's so protective that he wants to make the choice for her.
00:37:41
Speaker
And yeah, it's I mean, you spend almost the entirety of the game chasing after trying to catch her. There's a couple of different like main groups that you interact with. One of them is like Rando's crew. And Rando's like he's kind of like a Sith Lord or something. He's got like a black cape and a red mask.
00:38:06
Speaker
And I think the first time you run into him, you literally run into him and that you just completed a motorcycle segment. Yeah, you crash into him and then he apologizes to you and then gives you rations. Yeah, like eight rando rations. Those are full heels. Yeah, it's kind of nuts.
00:38:26
Speaker
But that's, and again, it's very uncommon for Badlands type characters to be nice to another individual. His crew does not necessarily feel the same way. Like after he leaves, they're like, you kind of just took our fucking food. He's like, you don't deserve his kindness.
00:38:49
Speaker
Yeah, Rando's crew, which we don't know too, too much about them as we go through. There's Buzzo's group who are like the smiling mask guys. Yeah. He's real serious. Yeah. He's basically a sociopath who every time you encounter him, forces you to
00:39:11
Speaker
ingest the joy drug and then does something horrible. We were talking about options before. There are times where it's like, hey, do you want to lose these party members or do you want me to remove your arm?
00:39:26
Speaker
Yeah. So when you move your arm, it literally gets removed. You have some of your moveset as no longer an option, because it's not like you can use that arm for anything. It's literally a button on your keyboard, too. So your keys are like WASD. And if you have them remove your arm, you lose the S key and your combos. So you can still cast them. I think Fireball requires S.
00:39:55
Speaker
And you can cast that from skills still, but you can't put it as part of your combo input, so you can't get that bonus damage in. Yeah. That's really cool as far as the consistency thing, that they're like, this arm actually does have a purpose. Yeah. But as you go throughout the game, there's a lot of instances like that where you run into that sociopath who makes you lose something or multiple things. And you can't fight him. He's an impossible...
00:40:21
Speaker
boss fight. He's actually ridiculously strong, and if you do manage to beat him through literally cheating, the game gets you a game over anyways. They're like, you cheated. There you go, game over. Oh, wow. Yeah. That's intense. Yeah.
00:40:41
Speaker
Yeah, and he actually gives you an option later. So the first one is lose a party member or lose an arm. I chose to lose an arm because I was like, eh, still have some good combos with one arm. If you lose the second arm, you just have like bite attacks, which is kind of funny. Bite and headbutt.
00:41:00
Speaker
Uh, it's that, that option was the second time losing an arm or lose all of your possessions, but the games like kind of bugged. It just takes your healing items and your money and it unequips your gear, but you can just be like. And then there's, there's a really weird one. So like the game has dark humor and some of it is like, this would not exist in a more mainstream game.
00:41:31
Speaker
Like, so there's an option where he's captured, he's captured buddy and he's like, Hey, ultimatum. I will kill the three members of your party. Just have them gunned down in front of you, or I can like cut off her nipple. And that's weird. That's weird for me to say now in the podcast, it was weird when I played the game and rest in peace, my party members, cause I don't know. I make weird decisions and he's disgusted. If you make that decision, Buzzo's just like,
00:42:02
Speaker
I think even less of you, you know, you can make no sacrifices. Yeah. It's I like that the game goes into heavier shit. Like, you know, from flashbacks, like your dad was an abusive piece of shit. And that probably influenced a lot of.
00:42:22
Speaker
your formative years. But also, you're killing people constantly. So you're not averse to violence really at this point in the game, but you still feel a
00:42:38
Speaker
paternal nature towards Buddy. So I like that they tie in like, hey, again, it's just a game. So do you want option A or option B? But from a gameplay standpoint, it's this won't affect my party at all. It's this child character will have part of their flesh removed. Yeah. Or like I lose my actual party. Yeah.
00:43:05
Speaker
So it becomes like a, how much of this is still gamified. We're like, well, this is going to hurt my progression versus am I actually just a shitty person? Yeah. Yeah. And that's, that's how the way Buzzo presents it too, is he's just like, he actually confirms with you after you make the choice. He's like, you're seriously making this decision. Like this is just a flesh wound versus the lives of three men.
00:43:31
Speaker
And you're just like, yeah, you go with it. It's like, I hate you so much. And he's like, all right, shoot them and move on. You killed your party there? Yes. Yeah. Because I was just like, I'm not coming. These guys are all weirdos and I know I have a bunch of party members. Let's see what happens, I guess.
00:43:53
Speaker
The other option was more uncomfortable for me. And I guess this is the trolley problem. Three guys on one rail versus a nipple. And like, that's a very classic trolley problem. I think we all went over that one in school. But it's like, Buddy's also like,
00:44:13
Speaker
not that old. She's got to be like 10, 11, 12, something like that. Like not, it's hard to tell exactly how old everybody is. And she's wearing like a parka or something, but, and there's like a short character overall. This is all like sprites and pixel art throughout the whole game. So you can't really tell, but you're just like, that one feels more uncomfortable, right? To me. Yeah, it definitely does.
00:44:40
Speaker
But again, it's like that level of attachment and humanity versus like, like Jake said, like you do have benched party members. So like he would lose his current party, but then he could reform his party, be like, who else is still alive? Who's the B team? And like, yeah. And like swap them in. Yeah. The game really doesn't pull any punches as far as like,
00:45:11
Speaker
Usually in games, your party's very much with you. And, and this one, they're of a much more transient nature. Like the idea is loyalty, actual loyalty is really rare. And sometimes if you're like camping, like out in the open, not in an inn, one of the random events you can get is just people desert you. They just leave. They just go back to whatever they were doing and they're gone from the game.
00:45:39
Speaker
And that kind of,
Player Experience and Narrative Significance
00:45:41
Speaker
I think all of that kind of fed into that decision being a little bit less insane on my part as a justification, I guess, for letting three party members get gunned down instead of having Buddy be injured.
00:45:58
Speaker
But it's also definitely the choice Brad would actually pick based off of his options in the game. His whole modus operandi is, I don't want Buddy to be hurt in any way, shape, or form. I want to protect Buddy. So other people are kind of more of a means to an end. So the reason he has party members is to help him kill people to get to his goal more so than anything else. There's no point in the game where it's like,
00:46:27
Speaker
Oh, remember that one thing where everyone's hanging and drinking at the bar? What good times we had swapping stories about the old days? No, you don't have that. They show up in combat, otherwise it's like you move as Brad moving throughout the map or the world. And they're not really a part of it.
00:46:47
Speaker
And Brad barely talks. Like the only people he really talks to are the main antagonists. I think like Rando a little bit and Buzzo a fair amount. And then the friends that he grew up with that ultimately like left. Why you betray me? Yeah.
00:47:08
Speaker
Otherwise like so every character in the game every companion Has like an end of combat dialogue line and like level up dialogue line and Brad's is just ellipsis for both He doesn't say anything. It's not his focus. He's the silent murderous psychopath Out there to save his daughter And the game really like It one thing I really like is it pushes
00:47:36
Speaker
like this ominous notion that Brad's not really even in control of himself with the joy for one. But there comes a part where he's interrogating. One of his friends who he's tied up against like a phone pole who ran off and wasn't giving him answers to find out where Buddy is.
00:47:57
Speaker
because he ran off with Buddy, or they ran off with Buddy. And the guy starts to give him answers. He starts, he's like, okay, don't know more, like stop punching me, stop beating me to death. He starts to give you answers and Brad cuts him off in the middle of the answers to continue to like beat him to death. And there's like a flash in the back, there's this red like,
00:48:22
Speaker
mother earth bound sort of like a guy gas sort of like Sprite nonsense in the background that usually shows that he's having a super violent episode. And he legitimately like works against his goal inadvertently because he can't control his anger anymore. It's great. It's a great dark plot or like dark themes.
00:48:50
Speaker
So one thing I wanted to mention with that, because from what I've seen of this, I kind of drew a corollary to Last of Us, where later on in the game, you're Joel, you're trying to get Ellie back.
00:49:07
Speaker
And you want to just protect Ellie. But they're like, hey, we got to sacrifice for the good of humanity. And you're like, but what if I killed everybody instead? And that's very much kind of what Brad's whole thing is.
00:49:22
Speaker
But in both cases, you're very much if you want the game to progress, you have to go through that. So you have to kind of injure your friends there with that violent episode. Yeah. And other friends later on as well. And then at a point, even like your whole party is like, hey, listen, it was a good run, but I feel like what we're doing is kind of crazy. We should just.
00:49:51
Speaker
let her go be free and then you fucking fight your party. Yeah. And they don't fight back. Like they just, they're just sad.
00:50:03
Speaker
So what are your thoughts on games, or at least with this game, of having to go through with this is what my character's doing in the game? Right. I think you got to earn it a little bit. It would be frustrating to qualify that. It would be frustrating if playing as Brad
00:50:23
Speaker
you got like to the end of the game and he fights his party and because for me at least I don't know if it like it works a little bit differently depending on your choices but for me like my party was just like
00:50:36
Speaker
She is the future of humankind. Like, you can't, you know, kill everyone who is thinking rationally here. And then they actually like fought me. And if that would have happened, but I felt like I couldn't understand the stance that Brad was taking and didn't have any like empathy for what Brad was feeling in this case.
00:51:05
Speaker
It would have been frustrating. Nobody likes to kill off your party for no reason. That would be terrible in a game. But Brad does so much foreshadowing to lead up to this. He leaves his party behind to go off and try and save her himself. And when the guy that was literally helping him
00:51:24
Speaker
get across this body of water. He has a little fan and he's blowing the fan to generate propulsion for the boat. When he's like, oh no, I'm here to have sex with her, Brad kills him instantly. So Brad's motivation at this point is completely ingrained in the character and his psychosis and his willingness to kill his own party makes complete sense by the end of the game. So I feel like it was completely earned and that's important.
00:51:54
Speaker
Okay. So you think like the buildup as the character made sense to justify that? Exactly. Yeah. Like he sacrificed everything else to get to buddy. Why would the people that have helped him get here be any different? Right? Yeah. It's a dark spot. A good way to put it. That's Brad. Yeah.
00:52:17
Speaker
It's kind of slow as it goes, but you do lose an arm. Spoiler, you end up losing the other arm, most likely, if you choose to give up the other arm. And then you're losing party members. All this bad shit's happening to you throughout the game, but you and the character are still driving forward. It can't all be for nothing. And also, I have to protect Buddy. Yeah.
00:52:46
Speaker
He's basically, Brad has a Terminator sort of moment toward the end of the game where he's just like pushing through 30 guys all attacking him. And he's literally, the animations, we didn't talk really about the animations and moves and things. They're kind of silly, especially like El Rage.
00:53:07
Speaker
where he kind of just throws himself at the enemies. And that's what my Brad was doing at the end of the game, too. He was just running past, just trying to body these groups of enemies, and then sliding across the ground while being lit on fire to trip them. And it's just the stupidest stuff. That's the dark humor, though, is at odds with what's actually happening, right?
00:53:31
Speaker
Yeah, it's the game is really good of having it in a style where it's kind of, I guess, reminiscent to Earthbound where it's very out there. It's not like, oh, this is standard RPG set up. It's like, I kind of see what's going on, but maybe you have some janky interactions.
00:53:52
Speaker
Uh, like rolling. Um, also the music is out there. It's really good. A lot of it's like really fucking catchy, but you're like, what? Like, I don't know if you remember the music from like the fitness club. Oh my gosh. I immediately thought of the fitness clubs. Yeah. I I'm probably using it for the intro. I'll be honest. Um, like they just have stuff like that where it's like a little bit chaotic. Mm-hmm.
00:54:23
Speaker
So you're not, it's not like this constant oppressive, like this is the dark mood we're going for. Yeah. It's like the janky interactions and experiences along the way interspersed with like, here's some pretty deep, heavy plot. Yeah.
Impact of Gaming Personalities
00:54:42
Speaker
I think they do a really good job of balancing it to get to that point.
00:54:47
Speaker
It kind of reminds me of like the tone of old Fallout games where it was just like, this is a Monty Python sketch dealing with really dark themes or something like that. Right. It's like there's hilarity on top of all of this, but you have to like separate in order for you to really appreciate the hilarity here. You have to separate your mind a little bit from what's happening.
00:55:12
Speaker
Underneath what's like presented like the under the under layers of what's happening are disturbing But we're gonna put jokes on top of that. So like have a good time with it. And that's the game basically Without balance it just becomes requiem for a dream and yes, that's exactly like I read the
00:55:32
Speaker
I read up on Wikipedia once I was done with the game, and a lot of the underlying themes of this series are very dark and disturbing, but the game's not 100% that. There's moments of levity and hilarious jokes and great writing.
00:55:53
Speaker
Um, and that just makes it an engaging experience where it's not like completely tonally consistent all the way through weird stuff's going to happen and it'll be funny and terrible. Yeah, it was a very good, but unique experience from, from what little I played. Um, but like, from what I watched Jake play and like the playthroughs I've watched,
00:56:22
Speaker
I still like it overall. Yeah. I don't feel the need to go back and play through it to have that exact experience, but I still think it's a worthwhile experience. What are your thoughts? I think it's a game I... This is going to suck. It's a game I kind of appreciate a bit, and I enjoyed
00:56:47
Speaker
the segments of the story that kind of like pulled me in and then there's like all of this crap with like random encounters and like spending time going through caves and like I think there's enough time spent in the game where you're not interacting with the superior writing or some of the more interesting boss fights
00:57:07
Speaker
where overall, I don't know if there's a specific person I'd recommend the game to. It's basically what I was building up to.
00:57:20
Speaker
It is still really cool for the world building and story. Um, I guess if you, if you could, if you could stand like RPG maker games and you're like, if Undertale or something like that hit 200% for you and play in like a more classical standard, explore a lot, RPG can get you to like a hundred percent. This one will get to a hundred percent and you should pick it up, but you do have to be ready for that kind of old adventure style game.
00:57:51
Speaker
I need a palm shadows. Where's the pipe? Go find it. OK. Yeah, it doesn't rise quite to the level of like point and click nonsense. Like combine all of these pieces together, but very much you don't have the thing. Go find the thing.
00:58:11
Speaker
And farm shadows in the in the pitch black cave. It's like area one. It's like our area two really early in the game. Best place to farm in the entire game. Do that and everything else is a good time. More handleable, at least. Yeah, I think if anybody likes to. Persist through RPG type games. It's probably worthwhile. If you just go in there for like
00:58:41
Speaker
the quick memes you saw on Dunkey's thing. Still a good time, but like maybe get it on sale. Cause it is interspersed throughout the game. But like a lot of what Dunkey showed is fairly early on in comparison.
00:58:54
Speaker
Yeah. He also, I kind of, I really liked that he did this. He misrepresents the game pretty hard. He shows you all the, like the jokes and the like, haha, F you moments and stuff like that. And completely neglects all of the dark themes. So he's kind of in on it, I think. Oh yeah. That was definitely an intentional choice. But like that was enough to get me interested in the game because outside of that video,
00:59:22
Speaker
I hadn't heard fucking anything about it. Like I don't have friends who are like, you got to check this out. They're like, I think I've heard the name from the Simpsons or something, but. Yeah, it's really, I don't, I don't want to start a full discussion of this in like the last few minutes. Um, but an interesting possible followup topic or something we could talk about is the nature of.
00:59:46
Speaker
I don't want to call them video game influencers, but like VIPs for gaming and how that can reflect the games that we actually buy, like Dunkey, Seth, Mandalore. Like they cover a game and you're like, that kind of looks good. Like, and you go out and you buy the game or it takes like an indie game that didn't have much coverage at all and it explodes. I think that could be an interesting topic. Yeah. It's.
01:00:13
Speaker
I definitely get it more so from that or from like you or other people who I play games with. I trust your opinion on games. We have similar interests. I consider myself something of an influencer. Check out just Instagram, please. I don't have one. I'm always going to take somebody's recommendation if I know and trust and like them over just some random person's word of mouth.
01:00:43
Speaker
IGN gave this a nine. You're like, oh great, I guess I'll pick it up. Good thing it doesn't have any of those water levels. Oh, thank God. Ever since Ocarina of Time, never the same. Yeah. Anyways, I digress. That's a different episode. What about you? I actually already said you would recommend this to people who liked RPG type games. Do you have any final thoughts, words of wisdom for the audience, for our dear listeners?
01:01:15
Speaker
No, as always, I don't actually think I do today. That's good. All right. Stay healthy. Um, take a walk, make food with walks, play some games, and let us know if you have any ideas for future episodes. You can send those in at soapstone podcast, gmail.com, or you could join the discussion on Facebook at facebook.com slash soapstone podcast. And as always, we'll see you in the next one. Have a good day.
01:01:49
Speaker
I'm
01:02:46
Speaker
I'll see you next time.