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Episode 66 - Rosewater
2 Playsin 7 hours
This week, Roses's Google Home becomes possessed and Matt cannot stop talking about Little Problems. The game, not his PERSONAL little problems.
Then, Matt and Roses discuss a much-anticipated title from Grundislav Games - Rosewater! And well I'll be, it sure was a fun romp in the American Frontier.
Games mentioned:
- Hollow Knight: Silksong
- Little Problems
- The Golden Idol games
- Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon
- Rosewater
Email us! mattandroses@gmail.com
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Transcript
Potato Bear and Clay Class
00:00:00
Speaker
Hey, guess what? ah I couldn't possibly. You couldn't possibly? Really? You know me very well. I think you could. And you just told me I'm going to tell you about my potato bear right before you hit the record button. so I did say. do So I actually do know what.
00:00:18
Speaker
Well. You made a potato. You made a potato bear. I did. Just to reiterate to to the listeners, I'm taking a new clay class. I'm actually not doing wheel throwing right now because because the medical issues are making my stomach hurt. So I don't want to be hunched over a wheel, but I did want to work with clay. So I took a class called Ceramic Menagerie.
00:00:42
Speaker
Where the focus is making like creatures. Yes realistic animals. But also if you want to make like a dragon. You know they'll they'll guide you on making that. So this first class.
00:00:52
Speaker
So you get. so you take the play-doh mold. And you stuff the play-doh in. and then you press the little plunger. And it pushes out a potato bear.
00:01:05
Speaker
Yeah, didn't you know that there's extruders in the shape of potato bears, like specifically? No, this is professional firing ah firing clay. It's the brown sugar. Professional firing Play-Doh.
00:01:18
Speaker
Firing Play-Doh. Smells real bad or good, depending on who you ask, I suppose. I think it smells terrible. What, you think Play-Doh smells terrible? Yeah. What about clay itself?
00:01:29
Speaker
It doesn't really smell. It's just really messy. Yeah. Okay. Like horrendously messy. So here's the thing though. I was making a fox and then the instructor was like, that's a great bear.
00:01:47
Speaker
I was like, yes, thank you. It's a bear. So now it's a potato bear. He's going to be plopped on like a little plot of grass and just appreciating nature. Looking all derpy.
00:02:00
Speaker
You're going make grass out of fired clay yeah i don't think that's possible well hold my beer yes it's here it says here you can't do it i don't know i read it in the wiki oh well it must be true yeah well i wish you luck on your potato bear thank you it's a gift for you so oh
Introducing 'Save Your Game' Podcast
00:02:30
Speaker
ah
00:02:31
Speaker
I don't know how to. you oh my goodness. Don't you love him? Don't you love Potato Bear? I actually would really like a Potato Bear. And now I don't know if you're teasing me or not.
00:02:45
Speaker
Well, you'll just have to stay tuned. Everybody stay tuned to find out. Oh, wait, we're in the cold open. People can't hear this.
Challenges of Gaming as Adults
00:03:12
Speaker
Hey everybody, ah welcome to Save Your Game. I am your host, speaking out of his big ol' gob, it's Matt Aucamp. And with me, is your gob ready?
00:03:25
Speaker
It's so ready. It's been, it's, I've been born gob ready. is your guy Is your gob charged and armed? Yes. All right, well then let's let it loose. It's pushing up roses.
00:03:39
Speaker
All right, don't know if that. Okay. don't know if that was, don't know if hi. It's the sound of an armed gob.
00:03:50
Speaker
I was charging it for like overnight. i charged it overnight. You did that thing where you kind of like overcharge. Now it doesn't hold a battery charge for. Fuck, I ruined my gob's battery. You ruined your gob's charger. What do do?
00:04:06
Speaker
ah You might have to get a new gob. This is how I am now. You already did get a new gob. We detailed it step by step on this podcast. I did. And then I ruined it by overcharging my teeth.
00:04:21
Speaker
How is it going? ah ro Pushing up roses. It's good. I'm very excited about this episode, actually, because as you know, the listeners may not know, as you know, we've been kind of putting this game off a little bit. And not because we don't want to play adventure games, because sometimes longer adventure games when you're an adult impedes on your
Exploring 'Silksong' and Game Misunderstandings
00:04:43
Speaker
schedule. And it's it's really hard to make those things match up. And this happens to be a longer adventure game.
00:04:49
Speaker
Yeah, and I mean, I think in it Well, we'll talk about it, but in I think in a year in a year where a lot of really... and I think this game, i will I will have come to discover this game is very innovative, or this this game is doing a lot of very interesting and unique things.
00:05:07
Speaker
But and a in a year where a lot of really out-of-the-box adventure games... are coming fast and furious, but sitting down to play, ah what looked like a fairly traditional point and click it was not, it just kept being, it kept feeling like when you have a really good book on your shelf.
00:05:33
Speaker
Yeah. And you're kind of like, I know I'm going to love that, but I'm just having a hard time picking it up. Yeah. And, We picked it up.
00:05:44
Speaker
And spoilers for the episode. I think we both really liked it. Yes, definitely really liked it. It's one of those things that has kind of a slow start, but sometimes things with slow starts just end up being the best things.
00:06:00
Speaker
um Before we talk about that, though, I do want to say I'm still playing Silksong. Oh, nice. How's that going? It's going really it's going really well. It's tough. Yeah. um one The one thing I do want to add, i last episode i was saying how I didn't quite understand why rosary beads were a currency.
00:06:21
Speaker
And as I've been playing it more and more, I'm realizing that that was a stupid thing to say. Like, I i knew from the beginning that this game was about a religious thing. sort of like a religious cult that, and I didn't talk about the story at all because I don't know. i never,
00:06:41
Speaker
I wasn't too attached to the story of the first game. Of Hollow Knight. ah It felt just kind of like one of those flimsy. We need a story for a Metroidvania here. And yeah. If you want to really pay attention. And dig into it.
00:06:56
Speaker
I'm sure there was something interesting. And worthwhile there. But the story was not why I played Hollow Knight. The first. yeah um So now.
00:07:07
Speaker
As I'm playing Silksong. I don't think I at first appreciated. Just how interesting this story is. For one thing, Hollow Knight was a character who didn't talk.
00:07:18
Speaker
Right. And Hornet was a boss who did talk. So you're already going into this game knowing Hornet is going to speak. And that means she's going to have a personality. That means she's going to have a perspective on the things that are happening around her.
00:07:36
Speaker
And that has... added so much to this game writing-wise. Yeah, I bet. um Where
Emphasizing the Journey in 'Callahan's'
00:07:47
Speaker
she... So the game starts off, she's being kidnapped by some cultists and brought to this this world... This world that is clearly...
00:08:03
Speaker
being being ruled by what what seems like a god emperor of sorts and all these other bugs that you see are on this pilgrimage to get to again i'm not far enough in to know that this is true but what appears to be what seems as if it's going to be some sort of god emperor all these other bugs are just dying or suffering in their pursuit of this pilgrimage and And you, as Hornet, were kidnapped by these people and managed to, through some weird intervention of fate, break free.
00:08:41
Speaker
And now, despite the fact that everybody you see is like, this place is really dangerous, nobody survives this pilgrimage anymore. everybody undertakes it and we all die.
00:08:55
Speaker
Right. Hornet is just like, okay, well, that's fine. I'm going to go there. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it because I need to find out who kidnapped me. Like rather than just leaving, being like, oh, well, okay, well I escaped so I should go home.
00:09:07
Speaker
She's like, No, I think I'm going to go confront the person who kidnapped me. And then people are are like, okay, but everybody who tries to find this person dies. Or everybody who goes on this pilgrimage dies. And she's like, nah, it's fine.
00:09:20
Speaker
I'm going to find him. um And it's just a really strong premise for a character, right? Yeah, yeah.
00:09:33
Speaker
ah You just, you instantly feel connected to her. And I did too, but I just kind of like, the gameplay had ah captured my imagination so much more um that it took me slowing down.
00:09:47
Speaker
It took the game slowing down a bit as I as i started to like get lost. It's a Metroidvania, so you get right you get lost. You get lost in the big-ass map. um It took me getting lost and talking to people maybe for a second or third time and thinking about, like having time to think about the world I was in to start realizing that this is a cool story. This is a cool world.
00:10:10
Speaker
This is a cool character. And I should have mentioned that but when i talked about it on Save Your Game.
Introducing 'Rosewater' by Grundislav Games
00:10:17
Speaker
Also, before we get into the game we're talking about, I want to say just real quick, I haven't played it yet, but Little Problems.
00:10:24
Speaker
Yes! oh my god! i need to I need to get on that. Came out this week. Oh my god. Looks very cute. It's not getting the world's best reviews, but I don't think we expected it to, right?
00:10:38
Speaker
It is... it it is taking taking... a
00:10:46
Speaker
it's taking A genre that has thus far been known for its difficulty and puzzle solving. And reducing it into something cute and seemingly all ages, right? Right. So you could understand that. I think we could have expected some people were going to really grump about this game.
00:11:12
Speaker
Yeah, no, I could see that. But as long as it gives me more of what's in the demo, hey, I'm happy with it. For people who didn't hear us talk about this demo, Little Problems is like if
00:11:33
Speaker
the Golden Idol games were about homework or about who ate the last... cookie in the cookie jar.
00:11:44
Speaker
Right. ah Little problems. Solving mysteries. And collecting evidence about little problems. Yeah. I do wonder, like, if people are, even though it is called Little Problems, do wonder if people are just, like, so, they were so taken with Golden Idol that they just want more of that kind of, that that deep shit, you know? That deep shit. Yeah, that's, I mean, that's exactly what I'm thinking happened. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:12:13
Speaker
And how are you on Callahan's? How are you getting on with Callahan's? The best the best game ever. i didn't I didn't finish it. No, I know.
00:12:23
Speaker
That's why I'm talking at you. I'm so sorry. I didn't go ahead and finish it. I will say, and I've kind of made a little bit mention that I think Callahan's is is way more about being in the present journey.
00:12:39
Speaker
Yeah. The ending is just like, OK. Right. Right. You know, and like I know a lot a lot of adventures are like that, but I also think a lot of a lot of games do thrive on how it concludes. Right.
00:12:52
Speaker
Sure. Just in general, a lot of literary things do. Right. And sometimes it just kind of misses the mark. So if you want a good ending, maybe that's not the right game for you.
00:13:03
Speaker
Yeah. Like, it's fine, but, you know. I mean, i I think I'm going to I'm still going to I made it so far. I'm going to see it through.
Character Dynamics and Team Building
00:13:14
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah.
00:13:15
Speaker
And who knows, maybe next episode I'll just touch on the app on the ending. But if i if I don't, if I forget, it's because of that thing you just said. ah Yeah. um Yeah, I'm not, I don't think it's going to change my experience of the game at all.
00:13:31
Speaker
For sure, yeah. Roses. Yes. I can't freaking for the life of me remember. Uh-huh. What did we play this week? We played.
00:13:43
Speaker
A lovely little game called Rosewater by our friend of the show, Grunislaw Games. Very, very talented game dev. ah We have finally had a chance to sit and play it after after saying we were going to play it for a very long time.
00:14:00
Speaker
And if I may, if I may, think we both liked it a lot. I know we both liked it a lot. So here's what I want you to do, if you don't mind.
00:14:12
Speaker
Yes. Could you please play Khaki Cargarino?
00:14:20
Speaker
Yes, I will play Khaki Cargarino.
00:14:35
Speaker
was so weird. What? My Google Home in the Living Room just randomly started playing... Like battle music. Like instrumental battle music.
00:14:47
Speaker
I don't know if it heard me. What did I say? ah you did you did tell me prepare for battle. but You did say prepare for battle. Your death will soon be upon you. Damn, why do I have to say that all the time? You did say that to me. And so maybe that's what it heard.
00:15:04
Speaker
And Google's like, I got you. Got it. Some battle music for you. Get him.
00:15:13
Speaker
I only lost my train of thought. I'm going to keep this all in. I was going to say, I think um our little comments about Our little comments about little problems.
00:15:26
Speaker
Yeah. i think I think probably should have been part of the discussion. Whoops. Like, I was thinking about it thinking about it after we said I was like... Yeah. but Yeah. Mentioning that it would be a game that I would like to play.
00:15:42
Speaker
i would like to just, like, have in the in my pocket for when i went, like... That is something I would have liked to mention about it. And I think what you said about... The reviews um being, you know. I mean, they're mostly positive. I just want to that out there. Reviews not quite.
00:16:02
Speaker
The comments. Comments, yeah. Comments being just like so regularly and weirdly opposed to cozies.
00:16:14
Speaker
Yeah. It's just like a ah toxic gamer thing. It can be. I definitely, i want to see what it's like to see if I feel the same way, if I feel like like if it's repetitive, for example. Sure.
00:16:28
Speaker
um But like I kind of told you, I think people are definitely enamored with, you know, Golden Idol and they're wanting maybe something a little deeper. But this is cozy to me.
00:16:39
Speaker
Like, even if it's not the most riveting game I've ever played, I still want something that makes me feel kind of good, you
Impactful Choices and Friendship Mechanics
00:16:47
Speaker
know? Again, I think, yeah, people um people are unfair to Kofi games. They are. They can be. Absolutely.
00:16:55
Speaker
constantly so i you know that's why i'm sort of not putting a lot of stock in yeah i mean i think people are unfair to hidden object games a lot of the time i think yeah some of them are great we did whole episode talking about that we did we have problems um all right you want to bring us back in yes i mean that's all maybe going to be part of it but we'll see that's fine Anyway,
00:17:22
Speaker
ah but got sidetracked by my Google Home playing battle music and Matt wanting to comment more on little problems. But what we're actually going to be speaking about today is a... It's cozy enough. It's cozy by nature just because it is a lovely point and click.
00:17:40
Speaker
We're going to be talking about rose water, as we mentioned before. And i am so excited because we are both like on our... I'm on my second playthrough, and you are on your third?
00:17:54
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. I'm on my third. don't know that I'm going to finish my third. I think I've learned everything that I wanted to out of this third playthrough. Yeah. um the only time The only reason I'll do a fourth is just to pick up some achievements, but I don't know that I'll do that. i Yeah.
00:18:11
Speaker
it You know, it's interesting. There's a lot of content in this game that you're not going to see on one three playthrough. Right. And I i actually, i feel like I didn't quite understand that yeah until until we kind of spoke very briefly about it yeah on a phone call.
00:18:29
Speaker
And things were happening and I'm like, what? What now?
Diverse Cultural Representation in 'Rosewater'
00:18:33
Speaker
So just to give an overview. So this is a game released by Grundislav Games, published by Application Systems Heidelberg um in March of this year.
00:18:44
Speaker
um it is a point and click adventure game. called It's called Rosewater. It takes place in, or at least starts in a Western like frontier town right called Rosewater.
00:19:00
Speaker
You play a character named Harley Legere, who is a former boxer. Spitfire Harley.
00:19:11
Speaker
Spitfire Harley and a current ah newspaper reporter. Who, you know, came here to write for the, you know, the the newspaper in Rosewater.
00:19:22
Speaker
It takes place in the same world as Lamplight City. Right. Another popular Grundislav game. um And the the important thing to know about this game is it takes place in three, what I would call three distinct acts.
00:19:39
Speaker
Sure. Sure. There is this beginning act where, again, you are it's focused almost entirely on Harley. Harley Legere.
00:19:49
Speaker
who again yeah The entire game you're playing Harley, the whole game is focused on Harley, but even more so in this first act where you are exploring the town of Rosewater and in pursuit of a story ah on a like ah ah like a Wild West showman named Gentleman Jake.
00:20:10
Speaker
Like you're a Buffalo Bill type, I think we can we can say, right? Absolutely. Yeah. um You're supposed to do a story on his Wild West kind of rodeo show.
00:20:22
Speaker
And you in pursuing that, you come across, you get, you end up like in a bar fight, you end up in going through some stuff and, ah Jake recruits you on a quest to find a dr Bennett Clark.
00:20:44
Speaker
you want to take it for a minute? you want to take for minute? Yeah. And in Jake's point of view, Dr. Bennett Clark is a scientist slash doctor who has disappeared, essentially.
00:20:56
Speaker
um He had been in Rosewater at one point. And Jake believes that due to his like previous work, which is work in ethericity, lu yeah Which we'll talk a little bit a little bit more about because if there's definitely ah that plot line.
00:21:12
Speaker
If you played Lamplight City, aethericity is a big point there too. Right. It's like a source of energy that the this doctor was experimenting with. sure um But he's since gone missing and Jake believes that he has left behind like a fortune.
00:21:30
Speaker
Because Jake, again, Jake is kind of... hes He's a showman. ah He wants money. And he's kind of roping us into going on this excursion with him to to find this stash, like find this fortune that Dr. Ben and Clark has left behind and they would split it.
00:21:49
Speaker
um And then as you are are about to pursue this, you actually... it's You know what it is? It's very almost a little Monkey Island-ish, isn't it? Because we have to find you have to find your crew.
00:22:04
Speaker
You have to find um transportation. It kind of gave me that vibe. I'm not saying it's a one-to-one. Sure. But I was kind of getting that vibe when Jake was like, all right, now you find the transportation and get back to me. And then we acquire a crew. Except that, you know, in Monkey Island, it's all...
00:22:23
Speaker
It's incompetent, right? Everybody in this game is very competent and very smart. In Monkey Island, it's it's that sort of point-and-click situation where it's like, oh, you got to go find three things. And in Monkey Island, it's find three people. In this game, you sort of organically come across your party members.
00:22:46
Speaker
That's true. It is it is like more of a vibe. Yeah, in my...
00:22:51
Speaker
To me, it's almost like assembling a tabletop role-playing game party, like ah like a D&D party in the Wild West. or Yeah. I'm sure if I was smarter about tabletop role-playing games, I would know one that did already take place in the Wild West. Yeah. um But yeah, it is...
00:23:11
Speaker
to it's it's ah It's a lot like that vibe. And the D&D comparison is one that I'm going to bring up, I think, several times during this discussion. Yeah.
00:23:23
Speaker
So in meeting Jake, he actually already has somebody on his crew that was ah in the show with him. His name is Danny. And he's awesome. I love that character. So he's automatically with you in this crew.
00:23:36
Speaker
You also need to find somebody to um a navigational guide. And so you find somebody named Lola Johnson. She's kind of this... ah no bullshit type of a character. Yeah.
00:23:51
Speaker
A very matter of fact doesn't seem to be very friendly, but is willing to, you know, take you on your way. And I'll say she's, she's the only one you really approach as like, we need a person to fulfill this role.
00:24:02
Speaker
Everybody else you encounter, know,
00:24:06
Speaker
ah organically. Right, right. The way you find the other crewmates are basically on these little mini adventures. ah You find another crewmate named Phil, ah who is awesome, and I wanted my character to hook up with him the whole time, but she did not.
00:24:23
Speaker
And Nadine, ah who is somebody you find on um an Indian reservation in in a tribe. And they both join you. And... Yeah, I guess they're, I mean, we say we meet them organically, but we also, you don't have a choice. I want to make that clear. Like, these are your these are your people.
00:24:43
Speaker
Phil is a a, right, Phil is a former um military general of right a revolution in in New Spain.
00:24:56
Speaker
yeah um ah A lot of this, you know, this frontier... this is sort of an alternate history America. Right. It seems like, um, if you think, you know, Spanish American war or not even, no, like the Mexican war for independence, really.
00:25:13
Speaker
ah He is a sort of freedom fright fighter in, what I believe is like occupied South America, occupied Mexico, I think.
00:25:29
Speaker
Right. Um, And again, what's called New Spain. And he well we learn a lot more about these people as we go along. I don't know why I'm yeah trying to give more, but that but that is an important thing. And also it's important to know Nadine Redbird is a person that you...
00:25:52
Speaker
You already said she's part of an... I don't know. I'm fucking She's not... apologize. You meet her because you're... ah You meet Nadine because you're being held captive in ah separate quest, only to find out that you're not really being held captive, you learn that um that a tribe nearby has been being attacked by the people of Rosewater, right? Or was it a different... um There's a fort outside...
00:26:21
Speaker
Okay. yeah we we're We're dancing around this. Might as well just like dig into it in order a little bit. you ah In seeking out Bennett Clark, you go to his abandoned laboratory out in the, you know, in the plains.
00:26:36
Speaker
Yeah. and you're having trouble getting in. So you go to visit a... ah military fort. Yeah. For like, for some dynamite. Yeah, exactly. the pla To collect some dynamite to blow your way in while you're there. That's where you meet Phil, General Marquez.
00:26:55
Speaker
um And in order to get the dynamite, it's the people in the fort. I can't remember what, what military rank he holds, but the military people are like, well, we just lost some people on a patrol.
00:27:10
Speaker
Right. And we um need to go find them. So if you come help us, you know, range and find these, you know, these are are missing patrolmen, you can have that dynamite.
00:27:29
Speaker
And while you're traveling, you end up getting ambushed by Native Americans. Right. Right. while in there and While in captivity, that's where you meet Nadine Redbird, who you find has been staying with this Native American tribe It's not her people, um but she has been staying with them.
00:27:49
Speaker
And you find that they have been the victims of attacks from this general and not general...
00:28:04
Speaker
Marquez. the the the Yeah, not Philip. The American military guy. yeah um Or the Vespuchian military guy. Sorry. um ah That's what the country's called in this game.
00:28:17
Speaker
It's basically, you know, again, ah early America, frontier America. And you... Like 1800s America. Right. You. um So then you help them steal supplies back from ah military fort. And that's where you find you find some crates marked rosewater that don't appear to be going to rosewater and are full of what they call Orem, but it's basically gold.
00:28:46
Speaker
Right. um And so that's that's a mystery that then you basically sit on for the next several hours of the game. That's true. Yeah, that's true. I almost forgot that even happened.
00:28:59
Speaker
um And yeah then you get into Bennett Clark's laboratory. While you're digging around, you find a cult of people. that's where the game starts.
00:29:14
Speaker
That's where it starts getting interesting, I think. i don't i See, i think we I think it's even a little bit later where um I was really, really captured by it. ah Yeah.
00:29:24
Speaker
and Because, okay, so yeah then there's, you have to, through this cult, this aethericity cult who worships Dr. Bennett, you basically have to get, you're tracking down clues. You have to get information as to where he might have gone.
00:29:42
Speaker
Right. On, you're you know, you're on the trail to find his treasure. Yeah. And yeah, you basically you get a clue that he very likely is in the city of El Presidio, which you'll need a wagon and several weeks yeah to several weeks of travel get to.
00:30:06
Speaker
get to I mean, Lola, our navigator, she says it's like nine days, but this is an adventure game. You're gonna get like caught up in quests. So it does i I do think it does take several weeks in the end.
00:30:20
Speaker
And so that's yeah that's when you go find a wagon and you go recruit Lola back in Rosewater. um And this to me so this to me is the end of Act 1. Yes.
00:30:32
Speaker
And Act 2, you get on the road and... This is where the D&D metaphor comes back in. Because then basically the act two is all this travel, this on the road montage you have little adventures that function a lot like D&D encounters.
00:30:53
Speaker
you You're traveling and then the wagon stops and there is something outside that you have to deal with. Yeah. It's also a very like Oregon Trail-ish.
00:31:08
Speaker
Or Oregon. Did I say it wrong? ah I call it Oregon Trail. You're going to be mad at In what way is it? what Explain what you mean by it's like Oregon Trail. It's this vibe of you get a map that you're clearly you're plotting ah plotting along at and you're in this covered wagon. Now, granted, this is more of a steampunk wagon. It is not, you know, it's fueled by. What is it fueled by? There's no horses. There's engine. Yeah, there's no horses. yeah We don't see the end. just... just Just go with it. Yeah, it's like it's very steampunk looking. It's fine. um
00:31:43
Speaker
And just like in the Oregon Trail, every time you hit like a landmark, you stop and you have to do something. Now, granted, the Oregon Trail didn't have, you know, adventure game quests in it. Right. Not the kind of game that was right. But you have to make decisions in the Oregon Trail to decide how you cross a river or if you want to trade with people that you meet with, you know, at at certain ports. Yeah.
00:32:07
Speaker
And so it does kind of give me that vibe a little bit. ah Every time we're in the wagon, like we're we're traveling, we're getting somewhere, it's on the map, we stop at a land at like a landmark, and then we've got to make a decision on how to approach.
00:32:21
Speaker
ah You know, I think on Adventure Game Hotspot, actually, they differentiate all the quests between vignettes and excursions. And then there are things that happen that are also on the main timeline.
00:32:35
Speaker
And you're kind of doing all of these things in Act 2. So, okay. There are two types of encounters that you have while on the road.
00:32:46
Speaker
And do you want to describe not the ones that are specific to characters, ah but the other kind? characters? The random excursions.
00:32:58
Speaker
The random excursions? Okay. Yeah, sort of your random encounters. Do you want to describe just some – you want to – like, why don't we give some examples? Sure. So ah one of the encounters that I remember pretty well is that we are stopped in front of a ah post, a post office.
00:33:17
Speaker
And there's a mailman out there, and he's like, the devil is in my post office. this is what and This is kind of like a good example of what an encounter is. and Yeah. He's like, there's the there's there's something weird in the post office. I can't go in there. It's definitely the devil. It's definitely possessed.
00:33:34
Speaker
And so, you know, we take it upon ourselves, of course, to go see what's in in the post office. And it turns out it's just a wildcat. That's all it is. It's it's a cute little shadow.
00:33:46
Speaker
wildcat ears look like horns in the shadow. We find out this guy has been, we find out that this guy has been reading, this guy's incredibly suggestible man, and he's been reading horror stories.
00:33:59
Speaker
And there is a there's a criminal called the demon, or the devil, or whatever, who has been- Like there's a wanted poster for her up. So we find out that that's just he's just incredibly susceptible. just Very naive. Suggestion. Yeah. yeah And so now that you know what the problem is, then you would go about ah fixing it.
00:34:20
Speaker
And I feel like I don't know how you feel that I feel like these encounters where oh we find a person, they have a little bit of a problem. The encounters are. Fairly easy.
00:34:32
Speaker
they're They're meant to like de-escalate a situation. ah Sure. know They're a little bit easier on the on the puzzle side, but what they do is they provide this this kind of grand adventure. ah yeah Again, D&D, kind of role play type of thing.
00:34:51
Speaker
and For another example, one of my favorites was You Come Across a Castle. Yes, the castle. Just in the yeah in the middle of the prairie, right? Like in the middle, like outside of a town, a little western town. you You encounter a castle and you come out and you find out that it's just this man who's been building a castle from stones that he finds for seven years
00:35:17
Speaker
to try to woo a woman he hasn't seen for seven years who he met at a party once. Uh, and has been writing letters to and not getting letters in response.
00:35:30
Speaker
Yeah. But he's just been building this castle. for forget Building her a castle. And he's like, well, when she gets here, she's gonna marry me because I built her a castle. Yeah. Spoiler. No. Right. So this is the, you know, you just happen upon, yeah you just happen to find him the day that she is visiting. Right. The day that she finally arrives.
00:35:52
Speaker
Um, To marry him or to let him down. knows? And that's that's another thing where you have to kind of like diffuse the situation. You're not exactly like bonding with your crew on these encounters. You're just like, they're just fun. You know, they're just fun little little side quests.
00:36:11
Speaker
um It makes it feel like you're traveling and and meeting all these interesting characters. Speaking of bonding with your crew, there is another kind of encounter, which I guess...
00:36:24
Speaker
The guide you're referring to calls Excursions. Excursions, yeah. Which is you will be pulled aside by a specific member of your party and brought on like a tiny little adventure.
00:36:41
Speaker
A good example of this is Nadine will take you hunting for firewood. Right. And you just go, you're sort of wandering around collecting firewood until one of the sticks you go to pick up, a coyote grabs it and runs away.
00:36:55
Speaker
And so now you have to, perhaps with Nadine's help, perhaps without, try and get the firewood away from this coyote.
00:37:08
Speaker
Right. It becomes, you know, a little bit of an adventure game puzzle, right? Yeah. yeah And you can sort of choose, same as with the, you know, it's the same as with the wildcat and same as with, you can sort of choose how you handle it. Do you want to?
00:37:24
Speaker
use violence? Right. Do you want to use trickery? Do you, ah do you want to just give up? Right? Like, there's, there's different, you, the, the game gives you different options. Is there one that's particularly memorable to you?
00:37:40
Speaker
the For the options, you mean? For the coyotes? these excursions. Oh, okay. Yeah, I definitely liked the coyote one That felt very... I know i compare everything to everything, but it's just for a reference. It's just to give people references.
00:37:54
Speaker
It reminded me so hard of King's Quest V when you're just farting around the desert when you're trying to find the bandit camp. Okay, yeah. It was just giving me that that that vibe, which means I really liked it. Yeah.
00:38:07
Speaker
There is a, an excursion you do with ah the member named Danny, where he goes for a walk by a river.
00:38:18
Speaker
And one of two things can happen, but the one I liked more is he is contemplating his friend that he has lost. And he's just very down about it and grieving.
00:38:29
Speaker
And so you as Harley, we decide to help him build a memorial. ah to his friend. And I think you can do, once again, I think you can do different things. Like I chose to do like a memorial rock.
00:38:42
Speaker
I don't know if if you could do, I had different options. They're like, you could do it a tree. You can use a rock. I used a rock. Is that what you did? I used a rock too. Yeah. I didn't know you could, I didn't know you could use other things.
00:38:56
Speaker
I don't know if you can. okay She, when you're speaking to Danny, you can like kind of choose and maybe he's like tree. That's stupid. No, maybe we just chose correctly. was like, sometimes there is the illusion of choice and other times there is a legitimate choice and you don't always know what it is unless you save your game and try a bunch of ah options Yeah, I really liked that one. And I liked, i think the the very first excursion that I got was the one with Jake.
00:39:26
Speaker
oh yeah And that kind of this this really gave me an example of what the gameplay was going to be like from here on out with these excursions. And, you know, Jake, he brings you aside. He wants to talk to You you find yourselves by this pond and some rando comes up and he's like, hey hear about this pond?
00:39:43
Speaker
It's magical. And we're like, the fuck is up with this guy? And he like breaks a pipe and he's like, I'm so strong. Now you drink. You drink from the pond because I drink from it. And look at me. Now you drink.
00:39:56
Speaker
And Harley's like, do not drink from that spring. yeah I'm going to go look around to see if there's anything, so any evidence of of something else. And so you you go around, you find evidence of something else. And turns out, yes, it's a scam. Obviously, it's probably poison.
00:40:12
Speaker
Um, but if you find what you need to find, you can convince Jake that it is a scam and then you can decide how to deal with the scammer. Though it, you do have the option early on.
00:40:26
Speaker
Instead of doing this whole investigation, you can just ah tell Jake to go drink the... You can. Yeah. You just go ahead. Drink it. And then from then, there's like a series of options. you could The amount of cruel you are to Jake can just increase and increase and increase.
00:40:48
Speaker
it's It's pretty harsh. And that's important because i didn't quite realize, yeah again, until after we kind of talk about our separate experiences, that there's a friendship mechanic.
00:41:01
Speaker
And these excursions are important for your friendships. Exactly. All right, yeah, so let's let's go backwards a little bit and revisit the stuff we were just talking about because our games were not the same at all. Correct, correct. I was shocked.
00:41:16
Speaker
I was actually shocked when we briefly spoke about it. I'm like, what do you mean? I didn't get that. And the more we talked about it and the more I replayed it and probably you as well, the more I realized just how different two playthroughs can actually be. Yes.
00:41:35
Speaker
Yes. Let's talk first about the random encounters. They are, they're not entirely random. There is, in each spot on your journey, I think there's two or three um encounters that can pop up.
00:41:56
Speaker
And those two or three, until something that ah I'll talk about much later, those two or three are entirely random. I've got ton, actually, of the vignettes.
00:42:07
Speaker
Well, right. What I'm saying is in each – like, you can't get, for example, the there's one – there's a character called Lady Taiki who is right reading – who is who was mind reader.
00:42:24
Speaker
Yeah. and you don't – you can't meet her as the first encounter, for example. Right, right. And actually, in my first playthrough, I never let met – Lady Taiki. Interesting. Yeah. So in each slot, there's four slots for these random encounters.
00:42:39
Speaker
And in each slot, there's only two or three options that could pop up. Right. So, yeah. So, like, in my first playthrough, I didn't see the castle at all.
00:42:52
Speaker
Yeah, same. I didn't see the castle either. I saw that on my second playthrough. I found, i met a man named Cormac. Who was building an oil rig all by himself in the middle of the desert and runs into some trouble.
00:43:04
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's wild just that there's, there's so many of these encounters that, um,
00:43:18
Speaker
uh, the postman is one that in my second playthrough, I didn't encounter. okay. I encountered him both times. And also, speaking of their randomization, I didn't even realize until because I also watched a few people's Let's Plays to see what their random like what they were being generated.
00:43:37
Speaker
I feel like I didn't realize that the the settings are also randomized. So you can see the post office in either like a lush forest or maybe in the prairie or it's very interesting.
00:43:52
Speaker
That is interesting. I didn't realize that. Yeah, yeah. They're in different settings sometimes. I think it's fair. Or like, yeah, the tarot card reader, Madame Taiki, she can be in a forest or, again, she can be maybe in a deserty area. It's it's so cool, honestly.
00:44:08
Speaker
That's interesting. Yeah, because you do – your path does lead you from, like desert prairie to forest. Right.
00:44:19
Speaker
that That makes a lot of sense. You wouldn't have an oil rig in the middle of the forest, right? Right. So the oil rig would have to be in the first half. That castle wouldn't make sense in the forest, so it has to in the first half. And there's there's a there's one where a man is making moving pictures.
00:44:33
Speaker
Yeah. and like got that in my first but in my first playthrough. And he's, you know, the thing that he's filming when you meet him is like a beautiful mountains and lake.
00:44:47
Speaker
He would not be, it wouldn't make sense if he was just filming some random... Some random empty prairie. So it makes sense that there are some that are only in the, set like only in some of the later slots and some that are only in the earlier slots.
00:45:02
Speaker
Right. um And some that can be in both. That's really interesting. I didn't know that. And these encounters are not, you know, simple things. So that being said, they're not like short, super short things. So that being said, it does make sense.
00:45:16
Speaker
Replay value pretty high to me because there there are differences in these gameplays. They're not minor differences, you know? Absolutely. So not only could these – you have completely different encounters or they could be in different orders or in different places.
00:45:32
Speaker
You can also handle them entirely differently. Correct. And – We'll get into this a little more, but based on some decisions that you've made in the past, you might have different options.
00:45:43
Speaker
Right. ah like There might be things that you live legitimately just don't have the option to do because you didn't do something earlier. Now, on that front, there is a friendship mechanic with each character.
00:45:59
Speaker
I had no idea that was even happening in the background. There's no clue whatsoever. Me me neither. Until way later, until I found out.
00:46:10
Speaker
um I don't even know. i never got stuck in this game. So I don't know what made me pull up a guide. I think maybe I just started to get a feeling yeah that some of this was choice-based.
00:46:25
Speaker
Right. Well, I mean, I knew it was choice based because I knew i was making choices, but that some of these those choices have um like trickled down. Yeah, yeah. and maybe maybe it was just going between seeing achievements pop up and playing the game.
00:46:43
Speaker
um That could be – My achievements turned off. So I wasn't even – like until until you told me that there are some – there are different you know excursions based on your friendship level with people, i I had no idea. And that inspired me to pick it back up to see what changed. and on It's so fun. It's so fun to see what changes. So this is this is what I was building to. Yeah.
00:47:08
Speaker
One of the things is depending on how high your friendship or low your friendship is with people, you will get each character has a different excursion. So if you have low friendship with Jake, you get the excursion by the lake.
00:47:26
Speaker
Yeah. With the, where you you can, you can, where somebody's trying to poison you. If you have high friendship with Jake, you have an entirely different thing you go and do.
00:47:38
Speaker
Right. It's at the same point in the game. But, and it starts the exact same way. It's like, you know, hey, Harley, can I go talk to you for a sec? And then, you know, he says to Lola, we're going to go walk into town for a second. Right. And in one, you guys walk to a lake. In another, you walk into a town and something completely different and a lot more personal to Jake happens.
00:48:02
Speaker
Right. The...
00:48:06
Speaker
Encounter you were talking about with Danny. Yeah. Where he confides in you about his lost friend. That is when you have high friendship with Danny. If you have low friendship with Danny, you come across a random kid in a tree.
00:48:20
Speaker
And he falls into the river. Danny jumps in to save him. And now your puzzle is how do you save him? Right. How do you save him Danny? Now.
00:48:31
Speaker
All right. Okay. I'm. There's some really. I did. I did a playthrough where I tried to do everything perfectly. Yeah. And get the highest friendships with everybody you can.
00:48:43
Speaker
And that had some interesting things. And then I did a playthrough where I did the worst things possible at every turn. And that had some interesting and interesting things. But I don't want to spoil too much. So we'll talk about that um at the end.
00:48:56
Speaker
Yeah. And I'll tell you an interesting some interesting things about some of these encounters. So what are some of the... do Do you have another example of like the difference between a high and a low?
00:49:11
Speaker
ah Danny's was the biggest one to me in my second playthrough. Okay. All right. ah so yeah his His was definitely the biggest change. I was really trying to get other things, but like I said, it it do take some experimentation, which is nice because it makes the it makes the replayability really nice.
00:49:31
Speaker
um yeah I was trying to get a better one with Nadine, um but I ended up getting you know the the coyote ah quest both times Nadine is the hardest one that I found. yeah um Jake, you just have to stroke his ego a lot.
00:49:48
Speaker
you did Yeah, you just have to stroke his ego. that You can't ever contradict him when you see him lying to people. um And phil you just have to drink with him. Which I've been doing. there's i've I've not hit it yet. I've not gotten in my second playthrough to Phil's excursion. But i dude, I am drinking so much mezcal with Phil.
00:50:09
Speaker
I'm telling him jokes. Like, like this is going to work. but The jokes can do either. The jokes can go either way, depending on where your friendship already is with him. if you I didn't realize that. If your friendship fairly high, they can do they can make him like you more.
00:50:25
Speaker
If your friendship is already fairly low, they can make him like you less. But there's a there's one event with Phil incredibly early on that, depending on how you handle it, whether you handle it like a human or whether you handle like a monster,
00:50:47
Speaker
your friendship with Phil starts off on a good or foot. Yes, yes, Absolutely. ah With Nadine, though, Nadine, I think, is the hardest because you have to
00:51:03
Speaker
her encounter is early enough on, and there's not that many opportunities to get her to like you. Right. as with jake You have an opportunity to stroke his ego constantly.
00:51:18
Speaker
With Dani, whose encounter is ah encounters also early, you have an opportunity to be nice to Dani often. With Nadine, what you need to do with her is just be as kind-hearted and pure in your intentions as possible.
00:51:33
Speaker
And you don't have a ton of opportunities to do that before her excursion. Right. So... i I had thought that I failed in my in my high friendship playthrough, my trying to get a perfect run.
00:51:54
Speaker
And then, thankfully, I must have at the last second got her final point. Nice. Because – and I'll tell you how I know that.
00:52:07
Speaker
Again, later. I don't want to give anything – I feel like we're and we're we're just overwhelming people with all the content, but there's so much. There's so much in this game. That's what's cool about it.
00:52:19
Speaker
There's a lot. There's a lot of different mechanics, a lot of different content and stories. It's great. You don't have to know any of this either. Yeah. That's another thing. If you are feeling overwhelmed and like, whoa, this game seems like a lot, you don't have to know this.
00:52:33
Speaker
You go through Act 1 and it is just a very, you know, The game feels linear no matter what. So you go through Act 1 and you're just, again, um learning your goal and assembling your party and, you know, going through a a few little adventures. And then you're on the road and you're just seeing a bunch of encounters.
00:52:54
Speaker
You don't have to care at all about your – you can just make your decisions and – Pick your dialogue choices and solve your puzzles as you see fit. And the game's going to be fun.
00:53:08
Speaker
Yeah, it's going to be fun. It might be little different, but it's going to be fun. There's not a bad, quote unquote, bad ending. Right. um there's like And none of these excursions are bad.
00:53:20
Speaker
They're all neutral. Yeah. And good is how would say. Like good and – yeah, there you go. Good and better. So like the Poisoned Lake excursion is great.
00:53:34
Speaker
Yeah. There's just another one that is also interesting. Yeah. The first ending I got – It's just interesting. go ahead. Sorry. The first ending I got of the entire game was good.
00:53:48
Speaker
Yeah. Later on, I got a better one. And it's not... I'm not in any way... I don't in any way look back on my first ending and think, like, ugh.
00:53:58
Speaker
right They were both great. But it does... and And we say this because I think a lot of people would be more prone to enjoying vastly different like outcomes and endings.
00:54:11
Speaker
But I really do think since the encounters and the excursions are a little bit more involved that it's different enough... to get a good replay from. ah Unlike, I'm going to throw an example, and we did replay this game a lot, which is Dreams in the Witch House.
00:54:25
Speaker
um One of my biggest ah criticisms of that game was you almost need to experiment with replaying it, yeah but it's so much of the same. You know what I mean? like it's just not It's not changing enough for me to really want to replay it, but this game did.
00:54:44
Speaker
This game changed enough to where I wanted to replay it. And I think one of the things about Dreams in the Witch House that is different than this one is dream Dreams in the Witch House, there were many – there were, you know – a hundred bad endings and one good one it's kind of deflating you know and it's just like what level of bad is it yeah is it that you starve to death in your room before you solve the adventure yeah or is it that at the end the devil like you get to the very end and the devil claims your soul like what what level of bad yeah ending do you want
00:55:23
Speaker
So they're almost kind of similar, right? it's Except for Dreams in the Witch House is either bad or worse. And this is either good or better. You know what And there's one very, very, very slim. There's one very narrow pathway in Dreams of the Witch House where you're like, that was good. I'm glad. yeah with it I'm happy with this.
00:55:41
Speaker
Yeah. um So like you said, as you go through... This act two, there's also a main path. There's some missions that always happen. you want to just give like one quick example about that? I'll give, yeah, I'll give my favorite one. Sure.
00:55:55
Speaker
There's one where we encounter of this, we get into a dust storm and we have to pull over. We find this house and it's inhabited by a captain, an old sea captain named Captain Boylan.
00:56:07
Speaker
And he seems just, you know, very lonely. And he seems really happy to have like our crew there. we have dinner. We make dinner together. We have dinner. We tell stories. It's really great. We drink later.
00:56:18
Speaker
yeah And then it kind of takes a turn after the captain goes to bed because it turns out that he's actually suffering from PTSD. Yeah. from one of his from from From one of his excursions. And so now it gets a little serious, right? Like we have to.
00:56:33
Speaker
What? I said, yeah, yeah poor guy. It's so sad, honestly. You find him collapsed in a secret yeah room. like So sad. Like moaning about.
00:56:44
Speaker
Some horrible nightmare he's trapped It's so sad. for a Poor Captain. But we we kind of... We all come together and we decide to help him with his PTSD. Nadine is a healer and wants to study medicine.
00:57:00
Speaker
And so she comes up with this idea and it becomes an adventure game puzzle. Because of course it does. Of course. Where you know we have to learn who was on his crew. We have to learn things about them ah you know by just going through the house. It's very...
00:57:14
Speaker
It's very, it's kind of like a mystery that needs to be solved in that particular storyline. And I just really loved that one. I loved that one. I wanted to help. I wanted to help this captain so much.
00:57:27
Speaker
one One of the main story ones that comes towards the end is you find another cult. And it's like a yeah it's like a Christian cult, sort of. They don't mention Christianity. i't Well, maybe they do.
00:57:39
Speaker
They don't. No, they don't. It's just got God. God. It's God. ah Well, no, there's a picture of Jesus in the one cabin. Oh, and there is a cross, though. And there's crosses. Yeah. So it is a Christian cult. Yeah, we can assume it's Christian. Yeah. um And I'm not going to give away, since this is late enough in the game and it's it's enough of like a mystery, I'm not going to give away too much about it.
00:57:58
Speaker
But I did want to bring it up because roses. There's two important things about this encounter. I know. Matt and roses are in the background.
00:58:12
Speaker
we' Wait, what? I missed it! There are two characters that are based around me and you, and we're in the background of one of the scenes with the cult.
00:58:23
Speaker
Oh my god, I need to go look at it. i do Do continue. And, if you listen real closely, when the whole cult says, Amen!
00:58:35
Speaker
You might be able to hear ah little Matt Ockham voice. Aw, Matt, you're in a video game. So, this is number one. Number two, other important thing.
00:58:47
Speaker
There's a loose crank! There's a loose crank, and they call it cra a loose crank. There's a loose crank. They've got a loose crank. Listen, you guys know that Grundoslav Francisco Gonzalez has been on this podcast twice, listens to this podcast, I think, at least occasionally.
00:59:06
Speaker
Yep. He had to know. He had to know. He had to know. He wasn't just going to put a loose crank in his game without us, without thinking of us. I would like to think that that loose crank is dedicated to us. It's a tribute to us.
00:59:25
Speaker
The Matt and Rose's... um I was going to say memorial. What's the thing when you're still alive? We died. It's a memorial.
00:59:35
Speaker
It's a thing when you're dead. ah Yeah, it's the Madden Rose's memorial loose crank. um Okay. So that's act two.
00:59:48
Speaker
Right. um Act two ends in something wild that I'm not going to tell anybody about because fuck. Yeah, it insane. We will have to get insane. and saying We will have to get into it when we start getting into a deeper spoiler part of this episode. But um Act 3, obviously you arrive in El Presidio.
01:00:13
Speaker
And right it it it has a little bit of that thing that we've talked about before, which is this idea of in a point-and-click game, sometimes you end you arrive at a new location and that location feels big and expansive, even if they're...
01:00:28
Speaker
there Even if the locations are limited and what you do in each location is limited, you arrive in this new big area and it can feel overwhelming. And this is a thing that will make me put down Adventure Games.
01:00:40
Speaker
Not forever. Right. Right. But it'll make me save my game and turn it off and say, I'll deal with it tomorrow. And it might be yeah a week of tomorrows, a week's worth of tomorrows before I pick it back up.
01:00:54
Speaker
Sometimes it might be a month. Depends on how much I liked the game. In this instance, it was only a few days um because I liked that Act 2 so, so much. I did too.
01:01:05
Speaker
Yeah, I really did. I really liked Act 2. And it's interesting because El Presidio is where we're meant to be going. That's the, yeah that you're supposed to be eager to to see where this is going. But you have such a fun kind of grand time in Act 2.
01:01:20
Speaker
so You get to your destination and like, is it over? And El Presidio, and like, yeah, it's it's a little deflating. El Presidio is a great location. There's a lot of cool stuff there. There's some cool characters. There's cool puzzles.
01:01:34
Speaker
There's cool adventures and decision points. um It leads to a really, really interesting and exciting final conclusion. yeah um The ending of this game is amazing. Yeah, I love the end of this game.
01:01:51
Speaker
But El Presidio does feel a little deflating. I advise you, if you are the type of person like us who, when you get to that moment, that you know You've fallen into a rhythm, and then suddenly the adventure game changes, and you're at this entirely new map that opens up, and there's all these locations, and all these people, and all these new puzzles.
01:02:14
Speaker
And you're like, ugh, push through, because El Presidio has a lot of cool, valuable stuff to explore explore.
01:02:26
Speaker
The ending is just so great that it's, you know, even if you don't enjoy El Presidio, like even if you get past that moment and find you still don't enjoy it, you'll like the, end you'll love the ending.
01:02:38
Speaker
Yeah. I feel like this happens so much in adventure games. Like I think I threw out, when we last spoke about this, I threw out Grim Fandango because I loved Rubik's so much.
01:02:51
Speaker
I don't want to go anywhere else. Why would I want to go anywhere else when there's this really cool adventure game setting, you know, that's that's going on. And I wonder if we dedicate kind of an episode to this like phenomenon that happens. Yeah.
01:03:06
Speaker
I don't know how people avoid it. Right. Like, I don't know how you avoid doing it. why Like how without making your game feel and like way too linear.
01:03:18
Speaker
Here's an interesting thought. I mean, i think that I think the Drifter did it. i think I didn't get completely engrossed in any one place. And I wonder if that's because the the Drifter was so much more high octane. You're just moving. You're moving, moving, moving.
01:03:32
Speaker
Maybe. I'll say the first place that we talked about this, though, was in the Drifter episode. Oh, it was the Drifter, though. You're right. Because it was when we got to the secret... military base. Right. No, you're right. You're right.
01:03:44
Speaker
I was... And interestingly, I was thinking about the the the parts I liked a lot, and then I'm like, oh, wait a minute. Oh, yeah. Right. Yeah. Right. um Yeah, no.
01:03:56
Speaker
I don't know how you would avoid it without your game. I mean... ah
01:04:02
Speaker
Rosewater's encounter system, the road trip idea, is such such a brilliant way to handle introducing new settings and new puzzles and new scenarios into your adventure game. like i I really deeply loved what Grindislav did here.
01:04:23
Speaker
i do too. I'm so impressed. So... yeah so I think that is... you know,
01:04:34
Speaker
oh way to do it. Yeah. I don't know that, but you know, again, even though they, he did it,
01:04:46
Speaker
he still fell into the trap ah yeah right afterwards. So I don't know. I don't know. you know Maybe that's just human psychology. Maybe it's just no matter what, we're going to get um attached to certain places. I mean, I feel that way about some of my favorite books, right? Like, I'll come across, like, my favorite part in a book, and I'm like, oh, it's over. You know what I mean? Like, maybe that's just the nature of it.
01:05:12
Speaker
Yeah, i think there's ah I think that is very Very likely true. um and And again, like I think, yeah, it may be the case that you can't fully avoid that throughout your whole game without, while still introducing new elements to the game and and keeping it fresh and like having enough there to make it a full experience and a full adventure.
01:05:36
Speaker
ah But I don't know. um I'd like to hear from the the listeners, actually, on games that they felt like were smooth, you know, the whole way through, where you didn't feel attached to maybe one part more than another part.
01:05:52
Speaker
Or, yeah like, that didn't have this problem either way. That didn't feel so linear that it got redundant or that it got bland. But didn't open up to this moment Where you were like, ugh, okay, all right, well, I'm just going to save my game and shut it off for a little bit because I don't know if I want to do... I know, it's so overwhelming. don't know want to go through this. Yeah, this overwhelm this feeling of overwhelm.
01:06:19
Speaker
Yeah. um Okay. Before we get into like a pretty... Like a mediocre and then a heavy, I think, our spoiler territory...
01:06:32
Speaker
territory I think we should talk a little bit about some of the cool things about this game. For example, yeah um Phil plays a bunch of songs throughout this game that are incredible.
01:06:48
Speaker
I'm so glad I've been learning Spanish because I understood them. It was like Phil was serenading me. He plays songs in spanishan he plays um like Spanish guitar several times yeah throughout this game. and see And there's a couple musical sections.
01:07:08
Speaker
Is there two? Does he sing? He only sings one song. I think sings but there are two little musical interludes. um Oh, three. um Because when he first gets the guitar, he does one. Right. Yes.
01:07:21
Speaker
He does one during one of the... scripted like the the inevitable encounters um and he does one and then and the end and then it might be that same scene where he does he sings It might be. Yeah. It might be the same thing.
01:07:44
Speaker
It's great. I really love it. And you, that's so interesting because you typically don't like it when like, there's like a crappy guitar interlude. That's not this though. This is not a crappy guitar interlude. Yeah.
01:07:58
Speaker
No, this is incredible. I really, i really loved this. um What, what are some other things that like, if somebody's like, I, I, i want to hear more opinions, but I want zero I don't want spoilers.
01:08:14
Speaker
don't want like story spoilers. I don't want any any deeper spoilers than you've already given. What are some other cool things that you've that about this game? I think that the... Unknowingly, right? I think the best thing I really like about this game is experimentation with the friendship mechanic.
01:08:31
Speaker
Right. it's And it also has... i don't quite know how to articulate this, but it has a has an interestingly classic feel about it in terms of adventure game, because these things are not exactly like the most deep things that one can can encounter, right? These are kind of lighthearted quests.
01:08:53
Speaker
And it's just giving a lot of, what's a game that I like that it's kind of reminding me of? Actually, oh my God, you know what it gives? It gives a little bit Freddy Farkas, which is also a Frontier related game. But it's kind of similar in that you are kind of constantly encountering these different quests, which I feel, and and they do it in Willy Beamish too. You have different quests that you go on and it has just this very classic feel to me, but it's modern. It's modernized and it works. Sure.
01:09:23
Speaker
and But but my honestly, my favorite thing in my second playthrough was seeing how random I could get it and what I missed and what I could say you know to my characters. Because they're not ah small little minor differences. They're these entire scenes.
01:09:39
Speaker
And I just think the... I think what's really nice is just the attention to detail to this game. It really, we say it a lot and I probably say it more than Matt, but this is like, by definition, like grand adventure.
01:09:55
Speaker
You are doing that. You're traveling across country in a wagon, doing quests for people, doing main storyline, and you've got this goal, right, of finding a lost person and a lost stash.
01:10:08
Speaker
um So without giving away, you know, the story, I just think the the kind of grandness of it, this like long-term, weeks-long adventure where you're connecting with people, it's just so good.
01:10:21
Speaker
don't, who cares about Dr. Clark when you've got this cool like adventure to go on, you know? i think I think that's true. I think there's a thing we haven't touched on very much yet, and that is the diversity of these characters.
01:10:39
Speaker
and Yes. I'm going to have a little more to say about this in the spoiler territory, but I want to touch on it now in case somebody's going to turn it off. the it's In case somebody doesn't want any spoilers, it's going to turn it off. So the wagon driver, navigator, her her name is Lola. She's a black American. Right.
01:10:57
Speaker
Nadine Redbird. is a Native American. Phil Marquez is a Latin American. Danny Luo, who I am not confident that I wrote his name down wrong or right, his actual name, but he has, that is that is the name that, that is his, like, Americanized name he has. Right.
01:11:18
Speaker
ah and name is another name he is an asian american and yeah um chinese i believe chinese yes yes and he has a chinese name um and then harley leger and um jay gentleman jake ackerman are both white harley leger's a woman jke jake's man i think this is important because they these it's this diverse group of people all of whom existed in
01:11:49
Speaker
frontier America in the 19th century United States um on this journey of discovery along the frontier. Right. And each of them are integral to this journey.
01:12:02
Speaker
They each have their own experiences and skills and personalities, um some of which are derived from their nationalities, some of which are derived from their ethnicities and their cultures. Right.
01:12:18
Speaker
that contribute to...
01:12:24
Speaker
ah successfully completing this journey, solving the puzzles that you encounter, solving the various problems you encounter. And I think that's true of Frontier America, right? Yeah. It was a diverse world.
01:12:39
Speaker
It was a diverse country where it took the cultures and experiences of all these different people from across the world to build The frontier to build America.
01:12:55
Speaker
Right. um The America that we now live in. Right. Some of them, it was a really horrible experience. You know, ah Black Americans, the amount of infrastructure that they were forced to build
01:13:15
Speaker
as slaves is ah incalculable. Right. What would our country look like if black Americans hadn't built that infrastructure, it's, it's really, it's nearly impossible to say Latin Americans, uh, were an incredibly important part of the, uh, of the American South build the building of the American South and even still incredibly important part of the um,
01:13:48
Speaker
ah American labor force? And again, what would America look like without them? um And i I don't know if I don't know how many of our listeners know the story of the Chinese railroad workers, but the we would not have the railroad system we have in the United States today without the have brutal and exploited labor of Asian Americans in the 19th century.
01:14:16
Speaker
Yeah, and in in that way, because we were we were kind of talking, it's not that this game goes very deep with things. It's more of a... It's more of a celebration of the diversity and a celebration of what different people have brought to the country.
01:14:33
Speaker
It doesn't directly um tackle like racial problems, though, I would say. Okay. I agree. At least not not explicitly. It does a little bit in in storyline. But you know would this is this realistic? Probably not.
01:14:51
Speaker
I think – sorry. I didn't mean to remark. Oh, that's okay. I was just going to say it's not – it's maybe not the most – it doesn't go into detail of major hatred between people.
01:15:04
Speaker
It is mostly friendly and i hopeful, I think. So I agree in that in that one thing that Grunaslav does not put in this world is – at least that I was able to see was is racism, right?
01:15:19
Speaker
um Yeah, yeah. Racism, hatred. There is no – yeah, there's no cultural – tapestry of racism in that that um in that social there social tapestry is what I'll say instead. There's no social tapestry of racism in this game.
01:15:39
Speaker
Nobody throws around racial slurs in this game. Nobody treats people differently because they are of a different color or race or ethnicity or um because they are immigrants.
01:15:50
Speaker
That doesn't happen in this game. However, Phil's experience is built around the struggles he went through. Right. As a citizen of New Spain.
01:16:04
Speaker
Right. And the war that he's had to live through basically his entire life and the struggle for freedom. all Right. Even in small things, like he is an explosives expert and he's an explosives expert because he had to be as a general in a revolution, as a guerrilla General and like what attempt essentially was likely a guerrilla army struggling against a much stronger, more powerful force.
01:16:31
Speaker
Right. um Nadine Redbird, her entire story is based around losing her connection to her culture. Right. um At a very young age.
01:16:44
Speaker
And then what draws her to us is the oppression of Native American, the violent oppression of Native Americans, right? Like we told you that story at the beginning of this podcast, the beginning of this whole segment, how we met Nadine Redbird was that the ah military commander was attacking the tribe that she was staying with.
01:17:08
Speaker
Right. Which turns out not to be her tribe, but we won't really get into that. And Danny, his entire character his entire character is built around this idea that he's he is the talent in his partnership with Jake Ackerman.
01:17:25
Speaker
And Jake Ackerman is consistently sort of using him and undervaluing him. And as a result, he has an in a deep lack of confidence in who he is.
01:17:37
Speaker
Right. And I also think he has kind of a lack of maybe knowledge about his own culture because throughout the game, he's kind of encouraged to go travel to China, to to look back into those things, right?
01:17:51
Speaker
Like he was making mention of of of reinvigorating that interest, you know? And when we get to El Presidio, we find out that... Well, a couple different times. We find out that he grew up rough because of his race. Because he grew up in Chinatown. um and then And then Lola, we meet and she is a homeless... Basically homeless besides her wagon.
01:18:17
Speaker
And she's sleeping in the abandoned blacksmith shop. Right. um And she... she is afraid to get close to any person. She has absolutely no trust of any other person.
01:18:33
Speaker
Yeah. um Just that they experience a lot of black Americans in the 19th century and in America. Right? So, like, I do think he has included these cultural elements.
01:18:47
Speaker
Right. and again, very tangible historical elements. Right. Right, and and respecting the struggle. There's no, like we said, there's no just um blatant racism.
01:19:01
Speaker
but they But yes, they do go over the character's struggles within their their culture. Yes, and there's one other strong
01:19:13
Speaker
there's one other strong parallel here that I will bring up in the spoiler section because I can't without giving away yeah the part of the story that is not as it seems.
01:19:23
Speaker
Right. um But I do think that is worth noting when playing Rosewater is that the diversity here is, i think, saying something really important about the strength that diversity brings.
01:19:38
Speaker
Yes. And the... the
01:19:44
Speaker
birth of America, right? Like the building of America on the strength of that diversity. Yes. Yeah, i agree. You can view this entire, the sort of thing that metaphors arise out of things, whether you intend them to or not, because when you're telling the truth, the truth is applied to multiple different situations, right? course, yeah. I think you can view this journey across Vespuchia as in a metaphor for the building of the American West.
01:20:20
Speaker
Right. Um, and i think it's a very powerful one. Yeah, I do too. I agree. And in that way, it is, it is very celebratory and you, you come to really, I think, connect with these characters because of it.
01:20:35
Speaker
I agree. Yeah. I think that's, that's really important. Um, I'm going to pull the rug out of that later in the spoiler section. ah Okay. and Speaking of spoiler sections, we're, we're going long here. Should we get into our, should we drop some, should we spit some facts?
01:20:52
Speaker
Let's spit some facts. All right. If you don't want to hear any spoilers about this game, fuck off. Wow. Politely. i mean that respectfully. Respectfully. Hey, ag heads.
01:21:05
Speaker
Yeah. We love you. fuck off. Fuck off. if you don't want to hear spoilers. Fuck off. Thank you, Matt. All right. So I guess we're going to mention the the biggest spoiler. Yeah. Do you want to?
01:21:19
Speaker
I don't know if we're thinking of the same thing. But I'm thinking of the fact that that Jake abandons us, even though this was his his idea, his excursion. You know, we get into a situation where we are attacked by bandits.
01:21:37
Speaker
And Jake is like, nah. like the He abandons us. He abandons the party. And we actually go to el Presidio without him.
01:21:48
Speaker
Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
Secrets and Outcomes in the Game
01:21:51
Speaker
ah Yeah, so two things happen here. um So first, yeah, Jake was lying to us the entire time. Yes, yeah. We were not after a the Dr. Clark's treasure.
01:22:02
Speaker
Right. Jake had taken a contract from a wealthy oil corporation to find Dr. Clark and bring him to them.
01:22:14
Speaker
And he lied to us. He's planning – I don't know if he was planning on betraying us yeah or if he – and absconding with the money when he found Dr. Clark or if he was – if he just thought we wouldn't go along with him.
01:22:33
Speaker
Right. If we knew why. um Or if he was just trying to leave himself some options open by not being honest about it. It's hard to say. Yeah.
01:22:43
Speaker
Kind of seems like he was going to ditch us in El Presidio, though. Yeah. And yeah when we get attacked by some thugs, he decides it's too dangerous and he runs. Right. um
01:22:57
Speaker
Depending on your friendship with Jake, since we're in spoiler territory here, that may be the last time you see Jake. Right. He did come back for mine. And I'm assuming that's because I had a good enough friendship with him.
01:23:10
Speaker
My first playthrough, he did not come back. My second playthrough, he did. And we won't tell... we We're not going to spoil the very end, but man, it's a good... It's a good moment.
01:23:23
Speaker
Yeah. And when he comes back, it's great. It's great. Yeah, i love it. Another thing that happens that we kind of discovered is is vastly different is that a character can die or a couple characters can die or they might not, depending on your friendship with them, which is wild.
01:23:43
Speaker
You lose a party member. So yes somebody gets shot. here. there's like ah there's like a There's a shootout and somebody gets shot. Who was your first person shot? ah Phil. Me too. and i haven't I haven't gotten to that to the that place in my second playthrough, but I'm hoping ah Phil will survive this.
01:24:02
Speaker
I thought that was the... I thought that was scripted. I thought that was the only thing that happened until I saw that there are some achievements ha where Phil solved some puzzles.
01:24:14
Speaker
Yeah. um That happened later. and i was like, what? ah And when I played through a second time, Phil didn't get shot. You to know who did? Nadine. Nadine got shot and survived.
01:24:27
Speaker
Oh, cool. That's awesome. um so nobody dies. in that instance in that yeah and that scenario yeah in my third playthrough guess who got shot Danny Danny and he dies oh don't like that yeah so it's so it's it's really tragic no matter what right like yeah matter what happens here it's really tragic but in and and so we don't know if it's like there's I have a couple theories here number one i have a feeling i have a that there's a possibility that it's random absolutely random right right
01:25:04
Speaker
My number two theory is that it is dependent on your average friendship with the entire party. Yeah. Okay. And if your friendship is low, Danny dies.
01:25:19
Speaker
If your friendship is medium, Phil dies and if your friendship is high, you're basically headed towards a golden ending, right? You're headed towards the ending where everything works out for everybody.
01:25:32
Speaker
And so that – I don't think it was – because I don't think it was a –
01:25:40
Speaker
i don't think it was random. Right. Like I don't think it was ah just a coincidence that in my playthrough where I had gotten everybody to the highest friendship I could – Was the one where, again, Jake returns and nobody dies.
01:25:58
Speaker
Right. That would be a very strange thing to... That would have been a very fortuitous bit of serendipity, right? Right. And I don't think... And the saddest possible person to die is Danny.
01:26:12
Speaker
And so I don't think it is... So the coincidence that Danny dies in the playthrough where I have the lowest friendship with everybody... Yeah. It's also would be a wild coincidence.
01:26:25
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I agree. agree. I definitely think there's a mechanic that drives some of these things. Although I do wonder because we had a difference of gameplay or game story that does feel random.
01:26:42
Speaker
You want to tell them? um I won't go into hyper specific, but in Matt's game, two of the characters hooked up. And I had no idea what he was talking about. I assumed that it was, i assumed that it would happen every time.
01:26:55
Speaker
So it's like, and it's subtle ah a little bit. yeah they're Yeah. It's subtle enough that I think a person, probably not roses, probably not me, but a person in the world could have missed it.
01:27:07
Speaker
And so i was like, roses, did you not pick up on this? No, it just didn't happen because I played it again and it didn't happen. So I looked, i had to look it up and I'm like, no, this is, this did not happen in my playthrough. it seems random. And I don't know if it's, if it's random or if it's based on your friendship score. No idea. Yeah.
01:27:29
Speaker
The only time it didn't happen for me was in the low friendship score playthrough. So okay I'm going spoil something else. After you beat this game, you get new game plus.
01:27:39
Speaker
And that is how I know about these friendships. That is how I know what friendship levels I was at with these people. New Game Plus has a little menu. If you press press control R at any point, you can see what friendship levels you are with people. So in my best playthrough, people were at like, like Lola was at 28.
01:27:59
Speaker
Jake was, I think, at 23. Danny was at 26. Nadine was at 25. And I think so was Phil. five and i think so was ah ah phil they were the And 28 is off the scale. Like it, when somebody is at 25, it looks like the scale is filled.
01:28:18
Speaker
So I was pretty surprised that Lola got up to 28. I don't know if it's up to 30. I don't know if it's like out of a possible 30, but man, yeah, it was, they were about as high as I think I could have possibly gotten them. yeah and um and that was where I got the best ending. And that's where, again, and in that one,
01:28:38
Speaker
Like in my first playthrough, there's two characters hooked up. And that's the one where nobody died. like how you're just like, ah Roses, did you not pick up a but pickup on it? Of course I would pick up on it.
01:28:54
Speaker
want all the characters to hook up. Yeah, I know. um Now, my bad playthrough, everybody was negative.
01:29:06
Speaker
ah but The one that was hardest to get negative because she likes grumpiness is Lola. And so when you're making everybody else mad, she's happy about it.
01:29:20
Speaker
so So, she was hovering around like two and one for so long. And then it was like, finally, after her encounter, I got her to negative one. um But goddamn, that was rough. I got everybody to negative.
01:29:35
Speaker
um And that's the one where Danny got shot and died. And I don't know what the, I haven't gotten to the ending yet, but some other interesting stuff happened. So if you have super high friendship with everybody, things open up that you, that weren't there before.
01:29:52
Speaker
So for example, in that wildcat, the postman scene. Mm-hmm. you can poison the wildcat and put it to sleep.
01:30:03
Speaker
I did not know that. That's very interesting. Nadine has a herbal poultice. Okay. ah
01:30:17
Speaker
Let's see. In the in the moving pictures thing? Mm-hmm. If you have low friendship, there's a character you literally cannot convince to do the thing. Oh, I convinced all of them.
01:30:27
Speaker
Yeah, you cannot. You don't have those dialogue options. Right. Okay. there's If you're if you're you have low friendship with and everybody, she just starts saying ruder things.
01:30:40
Speaker
And again, um ah she's just mean. And some puzzle options just aren't available. And amazing if you have better friendship, you just you have more options like there's things you can do that I that even in my relatively good playthrough the first my first time through.
01:30:59
Speaker
Yeah, was like, oh, I didn't know you could do this because the option just wasn't there.
01:31:06
Speaker
That's so interesting. I just, I don't have it in me to play like that. I just don't. I don't want my character to be mean and rude.
01:31:16
Speaker
It was hard. So in the in the the poisoning. well Okay, so there's some things that you can do. There's some there's some horrible things you can do. So in the and the the one with Danny.
01:31:27
Speaker
Or sorry, sorry. The one with, yeah, okay. The one with Danny. The bad... Excursion is where a kid is climbing on a tree. Tree branch breaks. He falls into the water. Danny dives in to save him.
01:31:40
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. You can force. If you ask him what to do.
01:31:49
Speaker
He's like, I don't i don't know. Throw me something. And then you can make Jake run back to the wagon. Oh, my God. basically Are you sure? It doesn't seem like we have that much time. Yeah.
01:32:01
Speaker
Do it. And he does, and by the time he gets back, you throw the rope, and you lose the kid, and the kid goes flying down the river. My god. There's a little moment of dialogue left, like, right afterwards, where Jake is like...
01:32:17
Speaker
thank goodness his parents were camping down the river and they caught him before he drowned. I was going to say, like, did this kid just die? But I thought that for like a full minute. I was laughing so hard. Like, oh my God, they killed the kid. All right. So ah Cormac, when he's dangling from the oil rig.
01:32:35
Speaker
Yeah. You can make before you're supposed to lasso him, pull him closer to you and then have Jake throw a knife. You have Danny last one, pull him closer. You have Jake throw a knife and then it frees him and then you save him.
01:32:50
Speaker
Yeah. You can make Danny ah shoot the rope out when he's still just hanging there. Oh my God. And then he just falls into the pit. Also, if you get Harley to throw the knife, it lodges in his foot or in his leg.
01:33:04
Speaker
So you can stab him in the leg and then drop him down an oil well. Yeah.
01:33:12
Speaker
ah Okay. All right. so one thing So more things. So Jake, you can poison him. you can You can just say, go ahead and drink the water. And he'll drink the water. And then you can walk over to him and he's like, what happened? You could say, your stupidity got us robbed. Yeah.
01:33:28
Speaker
And then Nadine comes in and she's like, what's wrong? Is he okay? And you can say, and she's like, I can do something to to ease his pain. And you can say to Nadine, save the supplies. He needs to learn a lesson.
01:33:42
Speaker
And I accidentally did that in my, it was an accident. I just took too much time. And he, I felt so terrible. I had to, I did actually choose like, yeah, just don't, don't treat him.
01:33:56
Speaker
He to learn a lesson and he, he doesn't die or anything like that. He comes around. I just felt so horrific about it that I restored it and fixed it. In the Captain Boylan thing, um there's ah that puzzle that you were talking about, that intricate puzzle where you have to go around learning things and then you have to role play.
01:34:13
Speaker
Yep. You can pretty much right away, as soon as you find his diary, as soon as you find the names of all his crewmen.
01:34:25
Speaker
you can say to Nadine, all right, I'm ready. And then she'll say, are you sure? And you can say, yup. And then none of your crew transform into his crew.
01:34:41
Speaker
Okay. He's confused about everything everybody's saying. no. You don't end up on his ship in like, because it's like in If you played the game, you know what I'm talking about. if Yeah. ah Whatever.
01:34:58
Speaker
um You don't. He doesn't. And then. He's not OK. no. No. And you just say, OK, guess it failed. And then you leave.
01:35:10
Speaker
And then in the morning, he's like, that was a horrible night's sleep. Oh, no. Oh, that's so crappy. ah So I'm just telling you about the ones that we brought up in this episode.
01:35:24
Speaker
There's so many more that are all just so bad. You can just be an absolute piece of shit. Oh my gosh. It's funny and horrible basically every time.
01:35:38
Speaker
Yeah. Oh my gosh. I can't even bring myself... to do such a thing. I don't want to mess with somebody's PTSD and just confuse it. Oh my gosh.
Themes of Exploitation and Replayability
01:35:50
Speaker
You know, here's the bad thing. Okay. So there's a thing that you can do when you reach out Presidio, which is ah you get a quest.
01:35:57
Speaker
um One of the ways to try and break into this club where you need to go to try to find Bennett Clark is you have to And this involves a gears puzzle.
01:36:09
Speaker
You guys know those those gears puzzles where it's like... Where all the cogs have to fit get something moved. no we we can we can do without those, honestly. Those can go away forever.
01:36:19
Speaker
yeah um they're like They're the other slider puzzle, basically. They're just like a slider puzzle um yeah on the same level. You put together a watch and then...
01:36:31
Speaker
um is the Chinese underground of ah of El Presidio, use it to make a bomb and you deliver a bomb to um the Union headquarters.
01:36:44
Speaker
Now, if you have Phil with you, he can disarm the bomb. If you have Nadine with you, she's like, i have a bad feeling about that and you can go back and warn them.
01:36:56
Speaker
On my bad playthrough, I would love to blow up the Union building. Right. But Danny's dead, so I can't. Oh, okay. Dang.
01:37:07
Speaker
Yeah. i know I don't know if it's like Grundislav was like, look, if it is based on your total, um like your average score and the lowest score, maybe there's a little bit of Grundislav being like, look, don't be app don't be as horrible as a person possibly.
01:37:25
Speaker
I He's like, I got to put my foot down somewhere here, guys.
01:37:33
Speaker
Oh, man. um But i so I do want to say, sorry, I know I've been talking for a while. But i do want to I do want to say my extension of that metaphor is just this idea that Jake lies to you.
01:37:48
Speaker
Yes. Jake lies to his, again, this diverse group of people, um and he tricks them into crossing the country to chase a fortune that doesn't exist.
01:37:58
Speaker
Right. Instead, they're serving the interests of a rich oil magnate at the behest of the only white man in and the group. Right. If we are to follow this metaphor of um the diversity of human beings,
01:38:16
Speaker
That helped build America and that journey across the West as a metaphor for that building of America. i think there's something poignant to be said about um
01:38:32
Speaker
black and Asian and Latin and Native Americans helping to build a country. Yeah. Based on the lie That at the end they will find their fortune.
01:38:46
Speaker
They will find a yeah treasure. And instead... Working for the interests of the already rich... To build a country... That...
01:39:01
Speaker
How many people... Did... Colonial Americans... Trick... Into building a country that... would was designed to harm them right yeah building a machine specifically that was specifically going to be weaponized against them the builders yeah and
01:39:31
Speaker
you know while the weaponization doesn't happen in this metaphor I think just this idea of tricking Diverse people into chasing their fortune across the West, across the, you know, undiscovered frontier or and unsettled frontier.
01:39:49
Speaker
um When really they were secretly following corporate interests is it really rounds that metaphor out in a way that I found very poignant.
01:40:00
Speaker
Yeah. got a lot of meaning out of. Yeah, I definitely agree. I feel like i didn't I didn't deep dive into that as much as you did prior to speaking about it now. Yeah. ah but now that But yeah, absolutely. I do see it that way. And I do see it as kind of a celebration of diversity working together ah because that is the best way to work and build something. Yeah.
01:40:27
Speaker
But yeah, no, I totally i totally get where where you're coming from with that. It does feel like a more lighthearted romp. ah But if you look into it, yeah, absolutely. Well, it makes that betrayal hit a lot harder.
01:40:40
Speaker
And, yeah you know, and I think it is a lighthearted romp because you're you're right. It is a celebration, but there is a dark side to it, right? Yeah. um Just like. the Wild West is fun.
01:40:53
Speaker
It is a fun yeah setting. The history of the Wild West is fun. There's so many cool things that happened in frontier America. There's so many crazy characters and interesting vignettes yeah in the history of Western America.
01:41:10
Speaker
And yet there's this really dark side yeah that mostly fell upon the People of color. um The non-white Americans.
01:41:21
Speaker
And... so i think both things can happen. And like you said like you were saying, your your brain didn't go there when you were playing. i think there is... Just like... I don't know Grundislav's intentions in writing.
01:41:37
Speaker
But I think there are these things that are passively communicated and passively absorbed. Yeah. That... Whether or not you're reading it um um with the language that I'm using. Yeah.
01:41:56
Speaker
Or whether Grunislav was writing it with the language of metaphor that I'm using. That is still being communicated from him to us. um Well, from them. there's a co he had a co-writer in this game.
01:42:09
Speaker
Yeah. um From them to us...
01:42:17
Speaker
just based on a shared understanding of truth. I mean, like this that's that's semiotics, right? you know um were We always speak in symbols, whether we want to or not.
01:42:29
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. And we're going to interpret it how we how we interpret it. Yes. But... Yeah, obviously we can't speak on ah Francisco's intentions, but I think it is so well done that it kind of gives us these ideas to ponder on in the first place.
01:42:48
Speaker
Yeah, again, I – yeah, metaphors aren't always intentional, um but they shine through no matter what. They shine through anyway, right?
01:42:59
Speaker
Yeah. now that we're Since we're in this spoiler section, before before we start and the descent, what what else is there anything else you definitely want to talk about that you couldn't talk about when we weren't spoiling?
01:43:12
Speaker
I don't think so. I think we definitely spoiled some stuff. um i don't i don't even want to spoil the very, very end if Jake comes back to your party because it's such a cool thing.
01:43:27
Speaker
So I'm going to keep that under wraps. And there's just, we can't spoil this whole game. Right. There are so many different things you can do that we didn't even allude to.
01:43:42
Speaker
Right. And I'm sure there are things that we have no idea about. Yeah, that's true. Especially me. I'm still only, you know, doing this for a second time. So I don't even, I don't even know what to expect. But yeah, I'm glad it's so replayable and and delightful and surprising.
01:44:01
Speaker
The one thing I'll say about replaying is you do – you are – since there are some – you do really have to just click through so much of Act 1. That's true. Yes.
01:44:12
Speaker
There's going to be some some backtracking for sure. And there's some things you can't skip, like Phil's song with vocals. Right. Or um Jake's Wild West show. I was going to say the Wild West show, too. Yeah. So, you know, and Jake's Wild West show, you can you have to either cheer, say nothing, applaud or boo.
01:44:35
Speaker
ah Heckle, I mean. Yeah. Heckle. Yeah. So funny heckling. I couldn't do it. I'm just like, absolutely not. um and he recognized he remembers you if you have remembers yeah he points it out when he meets you uh man it's just so impressive the clockwork behind this game yes is unbelievably impressive Yeah, it's it's way it's so much more than I thought it would be.
01:45:06
Speaker
It's very similar to how I felt about when we played Dreams in the Witch House, where I was expecting a certain kind of adventure game. But what I got were all kinds of different mechanics, and I feel that way about Rosewater. I was kind of delighted, actually, when I got got into it I knew I would like this game.
01:45:26
Speaker
I did not realize...
01:45:29
Speaker
how much I would like this game. Even when I got to Act 2 and I was like, it went from I really like this game to I love this game. Right. It wasn't until I realized the replayability and then started trying out some of those things that it went from i love it to this is going to be part of our Game of the Year discussion.
01:45:55
Speaker
Yeah, for sure. Absolutely agreed. Yeah. This is good. Yeah. So, you know, ah we've talked about the bulk of it, but this is everybody brace yourselves. This game is going to come back up on this podcast. Yeah, probably. gave Hands down.
01:46:11
Speaker
Yeah. 100%. All right.
01:46:17
Speaker
Well, Rosas, thank you so much for talking about this game with me. I had a lot to say. i Yeah, thank you for like encouraging both of us to really sit down and really play with it. so you know Sometimes these longer adventure games can be a little daunting. you know We all have schedules. We all have limited time. But I think another thing is you've got to ah treat yourself to something like this every now and then.
01:46:45
Speaker
you know You have to allow yourself to to really get into something. And also, not even just treat and allow. i think I think it is valuable to force ourselves to undertake things like a big novel.
01:46:59
Speaker
Yes. Right? To sometimes say, you know, you might be worried about your Goodreads score. and You might be like, well, I have to read a bunch of short novels. Or like, I want to read as many novels as i can, so I'm going to read – three 200 page ones it is important to sometimes be like no I'm gonna fucking sit down with a 600 page novel yeah and I'm going to read it because it is going to bring so much value to my life and there's a i there's a value not even just that it's going to be good i think there's a value in dedicating yourself to a singular piece of art for a longer time
01:47:41
Speaker
I do too. Yeah. And I don't want to say like I forced myself to do it, but there was extra encouragement needed ah to really sit down and do it.
01:47:53
Speaker
Even though i was like waffling, you know? It did feel like a, i agree. It felt, it felt like, felt like taking on a novel. Yes. Yeah. um Okay.
01:48:04
Speaker
I knew I would like it. I knew I'd get a lot out of it. But but It was like, oh, do I really want to start a novel today? Yes. Yeah. This happens to me all the time, especially since we started doing this podcast where you'll you'll say, think you would like this, Roses. And I'll be like, oh, super don't want. And then I end up loving it and it becomes my identity for like a week.
01:48:34
Speaker
Well, that was Rosewater. Thank you guys so much for listening. um Next week.
01:48:43
Speaker
All right. I guess.
01:48:46
Speaker
All right. Here's what I'll say.
Looking Forward: 'Strange Antiquities' Review Plans
01:48:48
Speaker
Next week, are our intention is to play and talk about strange antiquities. Correct.
01:48:58
Speaker
um I don't know that that'll work out. I don't either, but I so hope... Either way, it's going to happen soon-ish.
01:49:10
Speaker
If not next week. we We will definitely talk about it after you know after it's out and everything, but I just don't know if we are going to get copies of Strange Antiquities in time. and Right.
01:49:22
Speaker
I... we are waiting on review copies. And, um, I, I honestly, I just, I don't know if we're going to get pre-release copy, like early access copies or not. I don't know.
01:49:34
Speaker
um if we don't, Strange Antiquities is going to be ah couple of weeks away. Yeah. And I don't know what we're talking about next week. If we do, Hey, you Strange Antiquities, right?
01:49:47
Speaker
Yeah. Um, Anyway. Stoked for it. Me too. I'm so excited. Thank you, everybody, for listening and sticking with us.
01:50:00
Speaker
And what else do you – where do you want to send the people, Roses? I want to send the people, firstly, to email. If you have any questions, pet peeves, suggestions, if you want to share your favorite food, email us at mattandroses at gmail.com. You can also find us on Instagram at savergamepodcast.
01:50:22
Speaker
Yes. but Before the next – we need to bring this up immediately. Okay. This can't wait until our next Q&A episode.
01:50:34
Speaker
And ah Alex emailed us. Okay. To tell us that while he was at his church this week – sorry, while they were at their church this week – They found on the floor vi got a loose crank in the actual world.
01:51:02
Speaker
They sent us a picture. i'll Amazing. I'll see if we can get permission to repost this picture. Yeah, but if we can put it on Instagram or something, that'd be so funny. Oh, my gosh.
01:51:12
Speaker
It happened. In the history of ever. The only time it's ever going to happen. It happened. It's loose crank on the floor. Loose um crank. So, yeah. Email us. MattRoses at gmail.com.
01:51:26
Speaker
Yes. Where else do you want to send them? Let's send them to your other podcast, Beauty Menace. I'm sure you'll you'll link that in the show notes. Or you could go to my YouTube channel where I talk about stuff.
01:51:40
Speaker
Please do. You like stuff? Yeah. Then you're going to like it And we know you like stuff. Don't fucking lie to us. yeah I like stuff. We talk about it all the time. Any parting words?
01:51:56
Speaker
um Well, yeah. i mean I do want to send them to our Instagram. Save Your Game Podcast on Instagram. And then, man, there's only one more parting word I want to say.
01:52:09
Speaker
And it is... Hot damn.
01:52:16
Speaker
What's your parting word? Well, I'll be.
01:52:22
Speaker
There's only few amount of people who are going to get that. And I'm okay with it. Yeah. So also podcast is art. And artists suffer.