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S6E10: Up Late - Doesn't Bode Well
89 Plays1 year ago
Our very first Pixels & Pints: Up Late episode! This new format will be mixed in with our usual recordings, but is shorter, punchier, and focuses in on just one topic. And for our very first of these recordings, we couldn't go past taking a deeeeeep dive into Star Wars Jedi Survivor!
Beers reviewed this episode:
- Bad Shepherd Brewing - Imperial Stout - 9.2%
- Little Bang Brewing - IRA - 6.0%
- Hawkers Beer - Four Seasons: Winter - Triple IPA - 10.0%
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Spoiler Alert
00:00:17
Speaker
Alright, and welcome back to Pixels and Pints Up Late. This is our one-shot episode that we're doing for your auditory satisfaction.
00:00:27
Speaker
Tonight, we have a new little segment we're doing. It's a little one-shot episode. We're trying something new. We're experimenting in the world of audio synapses. That's not a sentence, Tom. Well done. But with me as always, I have Pete. Howdy. And I've got Dan. Hello.
00:00:46
Speaker
And tonight for your ears pleasure, we are going to spoil the fuck out of Star Wars Jedi Survivor.
New Podcast Format and Beer Reviews
00:00:56
Speaker
This is our little one shot episode we're doing. We're focusing on the game that we all played recently. We're going to talk about everything. Story we're going to talk about.
00:01:04
Speaker
soundtrack. We're going to talk about gameplay. We are just breaking the shit down out of this game. We've also decided for this new, whatever we're going to call it, this new format we're doing of these little upload episodes that we are going to
00:01:21
Speaker
Try and focus on one high ABV veer. This is the nightcap of our podcast episodes for your auditory appreciation. Oral pleasure. There we go. That's the words I was looking for. Obviously, I haven't planned this. So yes, sit back, enjoy, and let our sultry tones take you into the deep darkness of the night. Pixies and pints, up late.
00:01:50
Speaker
Cue saxophone. Next time. Well, fuck, I'm done. I'm out. Anyway, so that's what we're doing. This is a new format we're trying. Full spoilers, one topic, one beer. Hour, hour and a half. Snacksized. Snacksized beer, don't show that. That's not a thing. Snacksized episodes rather than the usual banquets.
00:02:18
Speaker
No more three and a half hour, well, I say no more, this won't be a three and a half hour episode. So we'll do some of these and we'll do mainly our normal kind of format, I think. Hopefully this is our way of getting some content out more regularly because our three lives suck and don't gel well together, yes.
00:02:37
Speaker
So we can put two of us on this. I think they gel well together, just not the time. In terms of the podcast. Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. Yeah, no, no. Our lives work well together. It's just, yeah, when we're trying to record, it's like two of us are ready and the third one's like, nah, fuck you guys. I'm not doing this shit. I've got to work or I worked until stupid o'clock yesterday. It's always something. So yes, we would like, but on this though, like this is a test episode. So please give us some feedback on this. That would be really useful.
00:03:05
Speaker
And if you want more of these and you like this, then we'll keep doing them. So yeah, good. Let's get into it. Yeah, let's do it. All right. Time for the news. All right. So the PS Plus games are this month.
00:03:23
Speaker
I'm going to hit my beer first because I've already opened it, poured it and tried it and it's delicious. I've got the Imperial Stout 12 month aged Bad Shepherd Brewing from Victoria. It's 9.2% and it's delicious and chocolatey and boozy, but really good black malt, hard like bitterness to it, which I really love. Um, so.
00:03:50
Speaker
It says there's some vanilla aspects to it. It's of the Imperial Stout high ABV, so it's got a certain level of sweetness to it, but beautiful roast mold, black mold, burnt, burnt character to it. It's fantastic. Love it. Yeah, good. Nice. And what's it, sorry, what's it actually called? Is it the black can one, Imperial Stout rum?
00:04:10
Speaker
Um, it just, no, it just says Imperial Stout aged 12 months. It's got a queen, uh, a queen playing card on it with the bad shepherd. They released two versions of this and the artwork is so similar. It was incredibly frustrating. It's just one had a very small underneath the thing. It said rum edition. Yeah. Um, this is rum spiked. I found that one untapped, but not this one. Okay, cool. Sweet.
00:04:38
Speaker
Peter, what are you having? I didn't get the memo, so my ABV is not nearly as high as it should be, so I am drinking Little Bang Brewing's IRA, or India Red Ale, at 6%. Classic IRA. Look at him. He's such an IRA as well. You've got to really feel bad for whoever posted that photo if their name's not IRA, because they just look like an IRA.
00:05:04
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. As for the, oh, look at the colour on it. That's a, well, actually you probably can't see it properly, but it's the perfect colour for a red ale. It is what you'd expect out of a red ale. So lots and lots of malt. Very bitter, little bit of residual sweetness at the end. I'm kind of surprised by that actually. That's,
00:05:30
Speaker
That's very different. Meet Ira. He's not an IPA. He's not a red ale or some kind of pseudo-scotch ale, but a bit like all of them. IRA is different. IRA doesn't go for sports. He's not interested in school disco, but you should see his collection of vintage Spider-Man. He plays a mean oboe, and his cactus garden is borderline scary.
00:05:48
Speaker
Surely he's not the coolest beer style around. But beyond the socks and sandals Ira is having freaky thrills we can barely understand booze and ibis, toffee, pine cones, pineapple and dank. Is he weird or just a new kind of awesome?
00:06:03
Speaker
Okay, that didn't really help me in terms of understanding what I'm tasting, but that's okay. Yeah, lots of malt body. Toffee was a word that they just used and you certainly get a little bit of that, but just extremely bitter, which is everything I don't like about reds, but it's still well put together. So I'm going to give that a four.
00:06:27
Speaker
I don't think, Dan, we didn't get a rating from you, did we, mate? Oh, no. I'm going to give it that a solid four and three quarters.
00:06:40
Speaker
Wow. That is a big score. It was very, very pleasurable beer. Very good. Good to hear. Excellent. Tom, what are you drinking, mate? Mate, I am drinking the Hawker's Winter, which is part of their new Four Seasons range. This is the second one of the range.
00:07:01
Speaker
Look at the little skeletons having a fucking time. The first one I did was a red. It was their autumn. This is a triple West Coast IPA. It is 10 percent. And fuck me sideways. This is fucking good. We're on here, boys. We're on with a winner. This is super fucking hoppy. The mulch actually being been taken back at a little notch, which is kind of really working. It's bringing all that dankiness through.
00:07:31
Speaker
It's got that dankiness. I'm not sure dankiness is a word. Listen, I write the Oxford English Dictionary and I say it's a word. Your vocabulary is well above mine, so I'll take your word for it.
00:07:49
Speaker
It's dankiness baby. It's dankiness. Look, there's a sweetness that really hits through. That is really prevalent as soon as it's, it's boozy as fuck. There's, there's no hiding this 10%. You know, you get a couple of those neepers lately and it's just like, that's not 10%. That's, you know.
00:08:06
Speaker
Maybe eight, if I know my my ABVs off the top of my tongue. This is this feels like it's like 15 or 16. This is really smacked me in the face with a real hit of booze, which is what I wanted from it. This is what I want from a triple West Coast IPA. I want to be smacked in the face with booze. But it's not in that burning way. It's it's blended in.
00:08:27
Speaker
really, really well. It's a really well crafted beer. Yeah, it's super hoppy. It pours a beautiful golden colour. Look at that. That is sensational. That is what you want. I'm going to drink this far too quickly and we're going to see the side effects and that's going to be fun for everyone, including me. The only thing that really is a drawback for that
00:08:53
Speaker
And I just hit it home right then there as I took that sip was that sweetness. It's that like, you know, when you get to that triple stage, it's just like, it's not like a, like a really like candy, candy, like rock or like rock candy sweetness. It's just, it's that malt sweetness. And it's like, Ooh, this is almost syrupy without syrup being involved. Like, yeah, but it's very good. I'm giving that easily.
00:09:22
Speaker
Oh, that's a four and a half 4.75. That is right up there. Yeah. Nice. Yeah. Very nice. If you find this, go get, it's just been released as well. You see it, go grab it. But don't do it if you have to move heavy machinery. So I will go check that out and see if they've got it.
00:09:43
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, no, that's very good. Then the red they did before, I think that's still flying around a few bottle shops. The autumn release, I've still got a can of it. I got two because I didn't check what I bought. It was really, really good as well. Yeah, and it's cool cans.
00:10:02
Speaker
Very good, very nice. Isn't that nice? Dankness, according to the Cambridge University. No, dankiness. Dankiness. I'm not even sure dank is a word. No, but so dankness is dank-iness, not so much. Sounds better with an eye on it, though. Excuse me, I need to make a call.
00:10:23
Speaker
Hello Cambridge. Susie Dent at the Oxford English Museum. Let's kick it off. Yeah.
Jedi Survivor Story and Character Development
00:10:32
Speaker
Jedi Survivor. Tom, do you want to lead it to this? Seems you will be busting at the seams before we even started playing it. I've been waiting months to talk about this and you fuckers just had to get on the bandwagon late, didn't you? Um, no.
00:10:55
Speaker
This was such a beautiful game. It was a moving story. It was improvement in many ways on the original gameplay.
00:11:09
Speaker
I've got a big thing to talk about later about the music, especially hit me hard. Um, and I know we've got like that. That's like Pete's put out that really nice, like, let's talk about the things in that order, but I think it's a really good way to do it. Um, I think it is. Yeah. Yeah. The voice acting was, uh, from, for, especially for the, the major parts. Yeah. It was very on point. There are, yep. Dan's made some very good points about some of the, the, the,
00:11:38
Speaker
the supporting, supporting actors. Um, yeah. And, and, uh, I think the best thing for me was, um, in terms of especially from a gameplay style of talking about it. And you guys might agree, disagree was, um,
00:11:56
Speaker
And I think we actually touched on it a few episodes ago, was the way that you just moved naturally into this game. Even if you didn't play the first game again before, like I played Fallen Order straight into this. But the way they go, you know what? Most of you probably played the first game. We're not going to baby foot you back into the world.
00:12:20
Speaker
We're gonna throw you in and give you a couple of like, we're gonna make cow feel like he's developed. We're not going to do the classic classic sequel thing of being like, a Jedi stole your powers, they thrown you to hell. So you need to climb out of hell like God of War. Like, you know, the classic got the classic opening of God of War games from one, two and three was always like, you've got
00:12:41
Speaker
but you need to be sent to, sent to hell and then you need to climb your way out and then you start at level one again. This was all like, no, you're at, you're at level say 25. Let's get you up to 50. Like it's a really good way to build on successes you had before. I think it also, they actually did a recap. They offered you a recap at the start. They did. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Same. Yeah. A lot of games are doing that now, which is really good because obviously it's a few years between titles.
00:13:11
Speaker
And also represents five years of time for Cal himself. So it was a good little refresher. I think they probably could have done a better job of filling in some of the story beats from the first game in the refresher. But it was decent enough that you knew roughly what the fuck was going on when you started the game.
00:13:29
Speaker
Yeah. Okay. Well, we're talking about story. Why don't we delve into that? What do you feel they missed Pete? Let's recap right at the very beginning. Before we even load into the new game, let's look at the old game.
00:13:44
Speaker
Yeah, I just didn't, I didn't walk away from that recap having a, what I felt was a solid understanding of, or a reminder of the core storyline in the first game, other than he'd run away or he'd escaped, he'd escaped Order 66 and then he was, you know, he was working. But I actually found it prompted more my own memories than it filled in memories.
00:14:07
Speaker
So if I hadn't have played the first game, then that recap probably wouldn't have given me a solid grounding of who Cal was and where he'd been and where he'd come from. I think that's the only part of the storyline that was in the first one. There wasn't really a storyline other than his development and his
00:14:26
Speaker
interaction with the inquisits. Oh, and him meeting Cyr and all the characters on the ship, and then the characters going their own way. There was some slight romantic chemistry with him and Meron, but never really played out.
00:14:42
Speaker
Yeah. I don't know. I really found the whole first game was, was a reaction. It was a reaction to order 66. It was, it was the, you know, obviously he started by cutting himself off from the force and then he's gone back into slowly relearning through his own memories of his own activities. And that, they, they, that was actually the really, one of the best things about that first game was the way they showed you remembering powers you should have had.
00:15:07
Speaker
Yes. So remembering how to force pull, you remember your training with Jarrah Tapal and then suddenly you could force pull again. It's like, that's a really cool way of doing it because you.
00:15:19
Speaker
Like anyone who would have like a traumatic memory like order 66, if you go through PTSD, like, and like the therapy behind it, a lot of it is around memory and trying to process those memories. So if you can actually do that, it's like, oh shit, I can remember things better and clearer. And like, they're not as like, you know, scary and stuff. So like, I thought that was a really, really, really clever way of them showing that.
00:15:41
Speaker
And then like, but that, that, that was the whole story for me for fallen order was just that I've escaped. I survive. I keep going, but you don't have the future plan kind of thing. So it's like, that's what this game is about, which is this where exactly where this comes in. Yeah. Do you really think the game should have been named the opposite?
00:16:02
Speaker
It almost feels like that, yeah. I mean, I understand why they called it Fallen Order, but the first game was just about survival. Tom, you nailed it when you said it was a reaction. The whole game is a reaction to events, and he's starting to find a new family, and then the family breaks up for some very natural reasons at the end of the first game, and then we kind of thrust into the second game.
00:16:28
Speaker
So the story for the second game, do you think it, uh, it hit with, or obviously we've got Cal coming through as a very accomplished. For anyone who hasn't played it is listening to this and is spoiling the fuck out of this game. Hey, you're an idiot and stop now.
00:16:45
Speaker
put this on pause and go play the game. Like just serve you like do it. Come back in 30 hours. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. It's worth it. It's worth it. Listening to them. Don't eat, don't sleep. But they say it's like a five year gap.
00:17:00
Speaker
It is five years. He's not as, the gap isn't as noticeable as say Luke Skywalker between Empire and Jedi, sorry, in return. He doesn't come back a God, but he certainly still has his powers and he seems calm. He comes back so much more Han Solo-y than he does Luke Skywalker. He comes back an arrogant piece of shit and I fucking love it. Like I really actually enjoyed it when he was just like,
00:17:28
Speaker
Like in that first section when they take over from the senator and like they he swims around he's just like fucking got you man I've been doing this for a long time you're my bitch like it's like yeah that was good like until the inquisitor fucking nails him yeah well interesting you should say that Tom in the in under under character development I completely see where you're coming from he's really got that scoundrel
00:17:50
Speaker
characteristic going, but they do actually, I felt they lean actually quite hard into some of the expanded universe or legends universe Luke Skywalker, where later in the game he says, it talks about the attachment and exactly what Anakin was saying in the prequels that they're encouraged to love. Attachment is forbidden, but they're encouraged to love and
00:18:18
Speaker
This is where in Legends, Luke Skywalker rebuilds the Jedi Order with marriages and children. Because it's those attachments and those bonds to people and family that make them stronger, not weaker. That's one big aspect of Legends that they pulled and injected that into Cal. As soon as he started to talk about that in
00:18:42
Speaker
become more attached to Maron later on. That was where I was like, yeah, I'm locked in with this character. I really like how these they've expelled the legends cannon. And now all these people are cherry picking all these things that they go that shouldn't have been gotten rid of. Yeah, we need to pull that back in because it belongs here. Okay, different character. Similar situation. Let's let's load Luke Skywalker post Return of the Jedi.
00:19:11
Speaker
Yeah, Cal Castis and move forward if this is the timeline we've got to deal with. I also think there's some beautiful juxtaposition in all of that against Bode who has formed an attachment so strong to his daughter that he's prepared to do
00:19:29
Speaker
evil, evil, evil shit to protect her and to, you know, justify his behavior. I don't think Bode was ever, I don't, I never saw Bode as pure evil. No, he wasn't. Like, sorry, just to go back to what you're saying, evil, evil, shit. It's just like,
00:19:46
Speaker
It's not evil. It's just pure survival shit. Like, it may be if you're able to stand in a vacuum and go like, that's good. That's evil. Sure. But he was doing the wrong thing, though he admitted that he knew it. When he was when they had the big reveal when the when his daughter when cow walks in on his daughter, at the end of I can't remember the name of the Imperial Starbase over Garin. Yeah, thank you.
00:20:10
Speaker
He walks in and he is much as confesses that he knows that he's been doing the wrong things since order sixty six as a way of surviving and the only thing he cares about is his door. Yeah, but I think that's a reflection more on his throwback to like the Jedi doctrine more than like.
00:20:27
Speaker
Like when you actually put what he does in terms of yeah sorry he betrays his friends he does all this kind of stuff but he does it for a good reason is to make his daughter survive I think that's an inherently good thing is like to save like save your family you know he's not just doing it
00:20:43
Speaker
For his own, but he lost himself in the process. Yeah. Yeah. He's, but he's purely doing it for the sake of his daughter, whether or not he does it in the right way, but it's from good intentions kind of thing. I think that's, that's the, that's where I took it from. Yeah. So I think, I think we can come back to Bode being a properly fleshed out character because. Well, let's talk about who Bode was for anybody who hasn't played. Oh man. His fucking jet pack was sick as fuck.
00:21:07
Speaker
Before we jump into that, the actual point I was trying to make, though, back to what you were saying, Dan, is that is the type of attachment that was discouraged in the Jedi Order. That was the reason they discouraged attachment, was because you could use that attachment against people and the Jedi Order knew that people did bad shit and justified it using that attachment or because of that attachment.
00:21:32
Speaker
And I thought that was a good juxtaposition between how Kel dealt with that situation versus Bode. Yes. Yeah. I see where you're both coming from. And I think I probably agree with Tom a little bit more that I don't think that he fell completely. And my problem. Yeah. So my problem with that side of it was.
00:21:54
Speaker
If they hadn't have given him a red saber, I would have been much happier to have seen him with his blue or his green or whatever the color saber he had. And this comes back to the fight in episode three, and it's the best Jedi versus dark Jedi fight because it's blue saber versus blue saber. You can never tell who's winning. I've been saying this for fucking years. It is the best saber fight in any Star Wars film.
00:22:21
Speaker
Not because of the choreography, just because you can never tell which side is winning because it's purely an ethical debate, like in a lightsaber form. And you never know who's actually winning an ethical debate. Like one side thinks they're winning, one side thinks they're winning, but actually both sides are actually technically winning. It's just like, it was just, yeah. I agree. I really wish they hadn't given Bo to red saber. Yeah. Any other color, any other color.
00:22:45
Speaker
Yeah. I think he hadn't fallen far enough, uh, because you see the love for the daughter. So he wasn't completely selfish. Like the, the full, they, how they talk about the dark side people. Yeah. So yeah, he wasn't consumed. And I don't think he would have spent that time. He was not consumed. That's a very good way of putting it. Yeah.
00:23:06
Speaker
Yeah. And look, my opinion is Bode was well-written as a bad guy. All well-written bad guys are complicated, layered creatures who aren't pure and who always, who think they're the good guy. Or at least don't think that they're the bad guy. That's just fucking great writing.
00:23:28
Speaker
Yeah, I, I completely see where you're coming from. I don't think Bode thought he was either. I think he knew he wasn't the good guy, but he didn't think he was the bad guy. And I, I agree. Come back to that old Star Wars, Star Wars quote from a certain point of view.
00:23:45
Speaker
Mm hmm. So yeah, that's a really good way to look at the way that boat was developed is that was just from whatever view and that and that's the best thing about if I don't know if you did it Pete, I know that I talked to Dan about it. But did you go back post game and run through the levels and find the boat little force memories?
00:24:04
Speaker
Yes. Yeah. I don't think I found all of them, but I certainly found a dozen or so. Even hearing half of them. It was just like the fact that they did that post game where they- Was really cool. Yeah. And it was just a really good way of also developing his character. I think there's one particular one that really stuck with me and it's, you're in the Luca Hulk.
00:24:24
Speaker
And it's on like the second level from when you just walk in and it's bowed cheering cow on and then he goes fuck no I can't do this this guy is ruining what I need to do and it's my agenda. And it's like the there was like a cut he was at war at war with himself yeah yeah yeah yeah but it was that cut point of like.
00:24:47
Speaker
Look, I love and respect Cal and I think he's doing great things, but I just need to think about my daughter's survival. And as part of that, my own survival, which is where I actually think, you know, obviously that comes into the name. And like, I think that's, it's less about Cal. It's more about bowed, like in that sense of the word. Yeah.
00:25:06
Speaker
Everybody was talking about who is the Jedi survivor and I mean it was talking about is it is it Cal is it Dagen but it's not I mean what Tom just said I think Bode is is the big vote who it's actually I mean I know it's talking about all of them in there in their certain way but the the one who really takes the show I think is Bode
00:25:27
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I agree. And for those who don't know who Bode is, Bode's a new character for this game that you're introduced into the very first level on Coruscant and he's part of Cal's, uh, yeah, his, his Imperial bounty hunting crew, I guess. Um, and they work for the Sorga era.
00:25:47
Speaker
Yeah. Rebellion bounty hunters. And the big twist later on is that the boat is, was also a Jedi that you don't find out until about 15 hours into the game. It's past the halfway point. It's going to be three quarters. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
00:26:10
Speaker
Yeah, because I mean, you fight Dagen Garrett with him and you think that's the that's the big bad and you're off to town or and then all of a sudden they throw this big twist at you for the last sort of five hours of the game. Did the did the twist land for you guys? Did you see it coming or did it surprise you? No, I was actually I was completely blown away and I was slightly devastated.
00:26:32
Speaker
Like I really cheered the boat. I thought he was the coolest fucking dude. And then when he was like, it was like a, a man. He was somewhere between walked in to watch me doing that as it happened. And I was just like, but also then my mouth was like dropped to the floor. Like I lost my bottom jaw. I don't know. I only picked it up three days ago. Kind of that kind of moment. Like it was, it blew me away. I didn't see it coming.
00:26:58
Speaker
I like, I agreed with you when you played it after me and you said you saw a betrayal coming and you couldn't pick who it was. I never, never fuck you. Fuck you, boat. Fuck God, man. That's why I have trust issues. Jesus Christ.
00:27:14
Speaker
The only thing I didn't like about Bode as a negative, like as a protagonist, antagonist rather, is when he's on Tranalor and his daughter, Tranalor? No. Tranalor. Thank you. Tranalor I think is where, or Transalor was where Doctor Who was killed.
00:27:38
Speaker
Right at the end, and his daughter's screaming at him to stop, and his daughter has sided with Cal and Marin, and I didn't feel like there was enough internal
00:27:54
Speaker
fight from Bode at the end. He just embraced, now fuck you guys, I've already picked my path, I'm not gonna be swayed and I'm ignoring my door. Yeah, the last bit was to know I'm turned now rather than I'm still conflicted. It's like, yeah. And it would have been a ripoff if he'd redeemed himself at the end in terms of they've set him up as the big bad, he can't come good right at the end and everyone walks away friends. So he had to die ultimately.
00:28:22
Speaker
But I don't think so. I think they could have gotten away with it. I think, I think there was enough dialogue leading through to that point that if Cal beat him down hard enough, like he did, and God, God damn that execution at the end was just, oh, chef's kiss. The fact that he did it with the blaster and not the fucking lightsaber. Yeah. Um, yeah, that was, yeah, that was a poignant return of the scene of handing him the blaster. Yeah.
00:28:50
Speaker
Yeah, I just think the I think there was a point that they they could have they could have had him turn around and being a kind of character that was
00:29:04
Speaker
on the inside, but out, if you know what I mean. They, they could have had him with, with the group, but never fully trusted. And somebody always has to be with him and like, get like, we're still going forward. You mean? Yeah. Yeah. If it survived. Yeah. If it, if it survived, if it turned back, but at the very least I expected more sadness in him and, um,
00:29:28
Speaker
you know, if he, if he wasn't going to redeem himself, at least at the end battle, internal conflict, you know, to see himself at war with himself, he almost goes to his daughter when she says, please stop. You know, you should have been able to see the tension in the air. And I just, it just to me was just, no, I'm like blood rage. I'm already on this path. This is the only path I'm on. Um, there wasn't even any sadness at the end after he realized that he was dead. It actually felt like a,
00:29:55
Speaker
And I know that I might get crucified for this, but it almost felt like a cheaper rendition of what Anakin did to Padme in that he had that blood rage and he didn't stop to see what she was trying to argue. And like, I know people have their problems with the prequels. I think they're absolute masterpieces, except for episode two. No one talked about that. It's, it's, we know you think that. Yeah. Um, but it's, I don't like sand gets everywhere.
00:30:24
Speaker
Yeah, that's episode two, man. Like, don't talk about episode two. Like, you know, you've got the middle child, you always forget it, you leave it at the bus stop, you leave at the airport. Whatever. No, no, it was, it was, it was that kind of, that was the vibe I got of like, right when Anakin had, Anakin had fully turned to the dark side, obviously, by this stage. But
00:30:44
Speaker
Like there was that part of how there was trying to turn him back. Whereas, you know, with with Bowdoin, his daughter was just like, it was it. I actually thought it was quite well done in terms of like the way that parents often really dismiss the innocent view that children have, even if they're actually doing like,
00:31:01
Speaker
And like, I obviously see parents do dumb shit at the brewery all the time. And a kid goes, don't do that. And they're like, nah, you're right. I'm like, I actually agree with your four-year-old. Don't do that. That's dumb. Yeah. So it's kind of that one of the things of like, oh, no, I'm older. I'm superior. I know what I'm talking about. You don't kind of thing. Which I get. But yeah, I agree in the, like,
00:31:24
Speaker
You really thought that the daughter was going to just pull him back that little bit at the end. That's what I thought. Yeah. Yeah. I actually, the best thing that I got from Bode and you, both of you having watched Clone Wars was just like,
00:31:39
Speaker
Now I really want to see a Clone Wars style, Clone Wars style animation and Clone Wars era, like show, like maybe it's a mini series, whatever, of Quinlan Vos and Bode being fucking spies during the Clone Wars. I think it could be like, like I love that, um, what's the Henry Cavill army hammer. Um.
00:32:03
Speaker
that sixties that the film that was like based on a comic book and they're like clone wars that are not cloned was playing from uncle man from uncle yeah man from uncle but star wars but it's going on boss and fucking boat is jetpack which is the sickest speed of technology i've ever seen in star wars in the last twenty years combine with quinlan boss being the fucking boss that he is like.
00:32:24
Speaker
That's my dream project like, you know, Filoni. Hello, Filoni, Filoni, listen, listen, make that. What did you guys think of the length of the story overall? Was it a good story? I think it could have been fleshed out like a teeny bit longer, maybe an extra five hours.
00:32:45
Speaker
I thought there was too much MacGuffin chasing here and there. Um, if they'd fleshed it out in, I thought the, the story mission parts of it were fantastic. I think the, the, the time you spend on Jetta and getting to the temple after you've, uh, gotten, gotten back with Marin, I thought all those sequences that were story driven parts to introduce you to a new part of the map were fantastic.
00:33:12
Speaker
And the thing I'm thinking of is I love Red Dead Redemption, but I find the mission parts, the story parts of Red Dead that introduce you to a new part of the map, infuriatingly short. They're over in five minutes and then you go, okay, here's your new area. You can now wander around in it.
00:33:33
Speaker
This sunk you into some of those areas for an hour while you went through and you encountered all the stormtroopers and the beasts and everything like that. And then you can come back later on and it's a little bit different as you go back through. I think on that that they underused Seir and Cordova.
00:33:55
Speaker
in that sense. Like I would love to a bit of it. Like I don't need Eno. So for those who haven't played, the guy you follow through fallen order, miss miraculously appears at the Jetta base when you get there. And it was a beautiful, I did not see that coming in. And I actually went, Oh, like I made that noise. Like, Oh, it's Eno. And it was like, who's Eno? I was like, doesn't matter. Like, you know, it's Eno. Like he's here. He's alive.
00:34:21
Speaker
And then Beatty One's reaction. Yeah, and then Beatty One goes fully fucking nuts, as you would. But let's just like, I would have liked to have like a...
00:34:28
Speaker
I thought it could have been a really fun section for him to like leave you in the bits of combat to be like, I don't do that anymore. I'm purely, but like also kind of like rip on Indiana Jones to be like, no, I'm an actual archeologist, so I don't fight. I'm going to leave you to do that. I'm going to like jump up here and go and start looking at the tomb or whatever and excavating and stuff.
00:34:53
Speaker
Once you're done with the fighting, come up and meet me and then we'll go through and like have a little history lesson and kind of say, I think that was a misbe. Um, I felt he was really underused for that reveal as well. Um, yeah, only to, to, to die. That was heartbreaking.
00:35:14
Speaker
It was, and then it's not too long after that seer dies as well. It's like, just felt like I was getting fucking punched. Oh, let's talk about that.
Climax and Character Critiques
00:35:21
Speaker
Like, I knew Vader was going to appear at some point. I didn't know I was actually going to have to fucking fight Vader. Geez, it was good though.
00:35:30
Speaker
It fucked me. I talked to Dan about this. I don't think I talked to you about this. Like that Vader fight fucked me. It took me an entire afternoon to get through that. I just, I don't know what I don't know. I think I actually felt fear of fighting Darth Vader. Like I think I actually choked up playing a video game being like, I can't beat Darth Vader.
00:35:48
Speaker
I think the first time I actually went through that fight, I thought, no, no, this is a scripted thing. I have to lose to him. Cause like, he's taking too much of a health chunk out every time he hits me. I was like, cool. I'm gonna, I'm gonna, all right. I've gotten through like the second section. And then I was like, cool. I've got to lose this. Let's just lose again. Throw it. And then I was like, it reset me. I was like,
00:36:07
Speaker
Oh, fuck. And I got in my own head. I was like, I'm not, I can't beat Vader as seer. That is stupid. That is the dumbest thing I've ever heard. It's funny that the timing was perfect for me because I got to the Jedi, sorry, I got to the Vader fight just after watching the episode of
00:36:26
Speaker
Rebels, where Ahsoka and Ezra Bridges fight Vader, or Vader comes down and disrupts Darth Maul and his plans and all the rest of it. The best episode of Rebels. Oh, don't say that. I'm only halfway through season three. I was looking forward to some more amazing
00:36:44
Speaker
Oh, there's some good stuff, but that is by far the most poignant moment. That Vader entrance was really reminiscent of him entering the Hoth Base too. Yes. I thought that was a beautiful little touch. Yeah. Also, I love that now they've just... Sorry, I've got to focus on that Vader fight for a second.
00:37:08
Speaker
now they've decided that Vader can stop a lightsaber with his hand. Like he could stop a blaster bolt before and now he can do that. Look, it was a beautiful little moment in that cinematic fight sequence. Like when it cut to that and he just goes, no, fuck you. But I don't know if they'd have ever done that before. And like, I would, I would love to, like, I didn't look through the expanded universe, but that, that was a little like, all right, man, here you go. He's like a power boost, like a little steroid injection in you. Like, yeah.
00:37:37
Speaker
Um, just did a shot of back to before he started the fight. Yeah. Well, only in, only in Obi-Wan. That's the only other time we've seen it in play. Yeah, but this is post, this is post Obi-Wan. So it's kind of like, they've gone like, Oh yeah. Shit. We should do that too. That's cool. Don't get me wrong. It's fucking cool. Like, and given Vader's level of force power, he should be able to like,
00:38:01
Speaker
There are talk there, there's all this stuff in the expanded universe about people who absorb lights entire like there's in all Republic. The main chick that you like seeing all the trailers at one point she absorbs Darth Malax like lightsaber into a hand Yoda does that with force lightning and stuff like, and it can definitely be power enough to do that but it's just like,
00:38:20
Speaker
Oh, now we can? Just came out of nowhere. We should move on to some of the other characters. Yes. What did you guys think? I felt they were well fleshed out in terms of character development for being secondary characters. Oh, Grizz, my boy. He was less annoying in this game. I would follow him to the ends of the earth. Yeah.
00:38:48
Speaker
Yeah, I thought the main cast was great across the board. And main cast, I'm talking about Cal, Mirren, Bode, Grease, Seer, Cordova. Them to me are the other main cast. And BD. But BD takes the prize. BD was the best character in the whole fucking game.
00:39:13
Speaker
He is good. Yeah, the only one of those, yeah, I still say that Cordova was underused, unfortunately. Yeah, but in the terms of voice acting and portrayal of character. Yeah.
00:39:25
Speaker
Um, I was, I was, yeah, cause as I was playing it, obviously I was playing it at, at its kind of like hype release time. Um, so seeing things on, especially on Twitter and, and, and, uh, Instagram about like the love of Turgle, I was like, yeah, Turgle was fine, but everyone like got behind him. I was like, well, he didn't do much.
00:39:46
Speaker
In terms of the other characters in the cantina, the building of the cantina I particularly loved. I thought that was really cool. As I said to you guys, it really felt like...
00:39:57
Speaker
Like I felt like working in a bar again and you meet these locals and none of them should be friends. Like none of them should ever associate. But for some reason they sit together and have a drink and they're like, they're placid. But if you put them in separate situations, they'd never coexist. Like Moran, Moran's my favorite dude.
00:40:19
Speaker
The most bitter fucking ex-trader, weird fucking dude sitting in the bar, I thought he was the greatest. I particularly loved him. I loved that Monk was also a 1940s gangster bartender for no reason, other than that was funny to some developer to be like, nah, fuck it, but put him in, say. Make him serve drinks, say. He's going to shake up your cocktail. Here you go. Here's some blue milk. Drink it, boy.
00:40:46
Speaker
Like I really loved him. Um, but yes, except for I guess cage, the others, I, I, I agree. I found lacking and the DJs were weird. Should never be. The DJ should never, I don't, I get where they were trying to go, but yeah, I just had a jig box.
00:41:04
Speaker
It was, it was, it was weird. They were, they were all weird. It was a weird little rumor. It was weird when you came up to them and I didn't ever want to speak to them again. Well, I think you had to for one re one thing, but then also to change the music in the cantina. I always put the who the who band on every time I walked in. So yeah.
00:41:26
Speaker
That's it. Wrong who, Tom? I hated Cage's voice acting.
00:41:37
Speaker
I thought it was terrible. Did it remind you a bit of Omega? Omega. I thought it actually was Omega. I had to look it up and see whether it was Omega. I fucking hated it. I thought it was really way overdone. It was one of the most grating and overdone New Zealand accents I've heard in a long time. I felt like they couldn't decide if it was a New Zealand or a South African accent.
00:41:59
Speaker
It was just, I think they just got a Kiwi fruit, a fucking banana and whatever the South African fruits are. I know exactly what they thought. They thought that Tamara Morrison is a Kiwi and he obviously plays the ultimate bounty hunter in Django and Baba. But then they thought, you know what?
00:42:22
Speaker
in actual like world culture, there's a lot of South African bounty hunters. So let's just mash them together and hope for the fucking best. Yeah. Yeah. And we'll put it in a Cato Noemoidian and just see what happens. Yeah.
00:42:37
Speaker
Yes, terrible. Yeah, I agree. I agree. So many. This is this is I've put my gripe about the NPC voice out going out to you guys. I'm gonna drop it here and then walk away. Explain yourself.
00:42:53
Speaker
Oh no, I'm going to explain myself, but we don't need to spend too long on this. The, the biggest black down of talking to the alien races within the world, other than the two dog men that were accompanied Cal in the, uh, Coruscant mission. What race are they? Do you know, you remember, uh, the Bulldogs? Yeah. The bulldog, the bulldog, the NRL team from, um, yeah, Sydney. Yep.
00:43:16
Speaker
So they, they speak their alien language and they've kind of set that precedent from the very beginning, like the very start of the game. And then almost every other alien you meet with her throughout the game speaks in some fucking drawn out American old West Hollywood kind of fucking accent, like some rancher accent that would be in an old 1920s Hollywood movie.
00:43:43
Speaker
It was terrible it's like I can't remember one other alien in the game that actually speaks in an alien language the you run into. What. The dude in the squid man the guy that just randomly appeared in rise of Skywalker who was like the slug with tentacles.
00:44:03
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. So even, even that race that was in the Millennium Falcon and like doing, doing his mechanical work with no fucking hands, like, Oh, have you fixed the, like Poe yells at him? Have you fixed this on the way past? The guy doesn't have any fucking hands. He's an overgrown fucking slug. How is he going to fix anything? You got a straight S you straight up American accent out of that character. Like, okay.
00:44:28
Speaker
fantasy genetics aside, these aliens might not even have the vocal cords and the vocal ability to speak in common, let alone ignoring every other part of canon that has come through Star Wars from the very beginning, from A New Hope, that aliens
00:44:50
Speaker
generally speak their native language and people are fluent in a lot of these languages and common is only spoken amongst the humanoids.
00:44:59
Speaker
In the Star Wars universe, the most common languages are Galactic Basic, which is English, or Hutties. But that's the whole thing, is you need to be able to speak one of two of those to communicate in the greater Star Wars universe. Because after our discussion on text, I actually went up and looked it up. The other one they mentioned was Bochi, which is a third language to me, as C-3PO says. But that's purely droid language.
00:45:29
Speaker
So like you don't have to be able to speak to joys because generally there's translated or like they'll plug into a computer and you can read their readout of things. But yes, there should have been, if they couldn't speak basic, they should have been speaking Huttese. I've definitely come around on the way you were talking about that. I don't think every race should be speaking in their native tongue because it is like such a communal kind of breeding ground, but they should be either basic or Huttese.
00:45:58
Speaker
I think that should be like a really, and I think it's a good thing for game developers going forward in the Star Wars universe. That should maybe be like a basic fucking thing, like going forward, like especially the more outlandish, like, you know, slug man, which when I say that, I just think of like spoon man, which is the sound garden song. I just think of that like slug man. I just think he should be, he should be speaking RTS.
00:46:24
Speaker
Or like, especially like Rhodians should be speaking Huttese. Rhodians, that's it. Rhodians should be speaking Huttese. Or at least be speaking that to each other until you approach them to talk to them and they can switch to intergalactic common. So at least in the background din of the cantina, you have the music and then you have a bunch of foreign language. It would have given it a much more realistic atmosphere when you walked in.
00:46:47
Speaker
It was actually really world breaking for me. Every time I walked up to an alien, even if it was just a common person walking through the street and I'd just go, Oh yeah, I'm just going to see what this person has to say. Maybe they've got a rumor. They've just come to town kind of thing and just have a chat to them. And it just, it just, I was like, Oh, okay. That was, that was quite jarring to hear that. But
00:47:12
Speaker
The Mandalorian is doing that a lot too. They are trying to make it accessible there. But one thing that, once again, going back to the Slugman, the overgrown stale people, I should know all these, I'm a big Star Wars fan. You know, the mayor in
00:47:33
Speaker
that have the lips on either side of their heads and then they have the microphone just outside their lips, which then translates it into a digital common. So they're speaking their language and then it's translating it out.
00:47:47
Speaker
to be heard in common through a speaker. That's an easy thing to put into a game. Yeah, if you're going to have someone speaking hadith and you don't want to explain that Cal should be able to speak it, one, because he came up in the Jedi temple and should have been taught this shit from when he was knee high to a grasshopper.
00:48:12
Speaker
And it was just really, really breaking for me. And that was my biggest hatred of the entire fucking game. And I hated the NPCs and I hated talking to them because... An Ethorian male was the mayor of Mos Espa during the time of Boba Fett's takeover of the palace. I just found that online as well.
00:48:33
Speaker
And they, they appear in, um, they do actually speak common in, uh, Clone Wars or Rebels. Yeah. I don't know how the translator, but that's right. Yeah. I'll tell you what one other pet hate that I had, um, was after you finished the fractured, fractured butt holes. Um, it, it left, it left that, that, um, the tear had taste in your mouth.
00:49:01
Speaker
It's called a tang, if you are. It left the tear in the world so that you could revisit it, but it had that distortion effect as you approached it and it fucking pissed me off, particularly since there was one right next to Dome in her shop. So every time you walked in the shop after you did that. I didn't mind that. I didn't mind that because I imagine because it was a forced tear, like.
00:49:23
Speaker
Like, it would still have an effect even after you finished it kind of thing. Its radius was too much. Yeah, it just, you could not show up anymore without it. It was prolapsed. Yeah, it was goatee girl. But you couldn't show up anymore without that weird shimmering effect. I just found it fucking annoying. Anyway. No, no, you know what? I found fucking annoying. The fact they brought back that fucking toad fuck to fight.
00:49:46
Speaker
Fuck! He destroyed me for so long. And then you had to fight him and his dad. It was his son, wasn't it? Son of Ogrilogel or something, Ogrilog. Yeah, if anyone's played the first game and you're not expecting the fucking Toad come back, sorry Pete, he comes back. 50 minutes, 18. Thank you. Fucking Toad, fucking Mr. Toad. How dare you? Yeah.
00:50:13
Speaker
He was faster too and he was more savage. He was. Yeah. Super aggressive. Yeah. Super aggressive. I actually really liked the four stairs. I know we all had that fucking annoying. I had a different one to you guys. The agility one. Yeah. I thought the agility ones were dumb. And I agree with Dan because the movement was not as tight as it needed to be to do those kinds of things.
00:50:37
Speaker
I agree. I found most of them to be like, I actually, when I found one, I was like, oh sick, let's go. Like I actually really relished the opportunity to go through them. Yeah.
00:50:48
Speaker
Yeah, I just found that those aerial only ones were fucking annoying. Yes. It was two of them. Yeah. It was two of them. And in fact, the one that I think Dan got stuck on, I got through faster than the one I got stuck on. Which was one you got stuck on? It was the other aerial one. The zipline one. Yeah, the zipline one. Exactly. Oh, when you had to jump back on the zipline? That was the one I got stuck on.
00:51:13
Speaker
Yeah you had the balance between ziplines, you had the lightning bolt. No, so if Dan was stuck on the other one, the other one I was like, because there were three altogether. Yeah, the one with the balloons was easy enough, the grapple balloons. I saw a video on Instagram or Facebook the other day where it was like, this is the hardest one, I was like,
00:51:34
Speaker
You haven't found the other ones, have you? Like otherwise you've been hurt in ways that I've never been hurt. I don't even remember the balloon one. So that's how unmemorable it was. In terms of the combat ones, I,
00:51:49
Speaker
The one that was the most annoying for me was definitely the two rankings because I got through it and then saved, finished for the night. I was like, I'm going to bed because nothing else I do tonight is going to be as good as that. And then the game updated overnight and didn't save it. So I had to do it again the next day. Oh, no. That's fucking annoying. And it was just that one hit lunge kill that really fucked me. Once I actually figured out that I could
00:52:18
Speaker
I definitely, I definitely spammed the, the double toad one because I found if you got one behind the other, they couldn't do the leap attack at you. So I'm gonna kill one of it and then be like, I think they deserve it. They deserve every fucking sea bomb on the planet. They are the worst enemies ever to exist in
00:52:42
Speaker
I was, look, I had trouble with the, um, the stupid rank or fucking grab and snack attack. The one hit fucking kill. That was frustrating as well, because if you didn't quite, if you, if you didn't see it coming or you weren't expecting it, or your attention was temporarily taken away by another enemy, you just game over.
00:53:00
Speaker
And it didn't matter how strong you were. Well, that was the same with the toads, the tongue one. With the tongue attack, yeah. If you literally, if you dive to the left or right, just that half second too late or too early. Too early. It was all over. But you're like, I'm not, I'm getting angry again. Yeah, exactly. Like, it was just like, I definitely dodged that. We're kind of in level design now, so I might, I might shuffle this.
00:53:28
Speaker
Well, we're kind of talking about the challenges and the puzzles, right? Yeah, that's fine. I thought the level design was beautiful. I particularly enjoyed the layout of Kobo. I thought Kobo was great. The only thing I had an issue with was
00:53:47
Speaker
Two desert planets in, in the one game felt a bit too like safe, I guess is probably the better way to do it. It wasn't, it wasn't lazy. Definitely they felt different. They were different on was like Savannah versus like actual desert, but I would have enjoyed having another, like more like.
00:54:07
Speaker
Like varyingly different escape to go through like because that's what that was the beautiful thing about fallen order was like, even though you got to visit him for like half a second, it was still a snow planet that you got to go through. You went to Kashyyyk, it was a full forest. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think I liked I liked Kaybo. I disagree in the sense that I think there was enough.
00:54:27
Speaker
It wasn't desert-like in a lot of places. You had the forest. The forest array quest was probably my favorite part in terms of game design or level design. It was pretty. I think the Shadow Moon was cool, too. That was a very different environment. The Shadow Moon was great. I loved running around that. Yeah. Lots of different levels to play with, particularly going back to collect all of the collectibles that I missed the first time. That was a lot of fun. How good is fast travel in one of those games? Oh, yeah. Yeah.
00:54:56
Speaker
Yeah, fucking oath. Did you guys hate any of the planets? Oh, I think I probably would have liked a bit more on Novogarin maybe. Yeah, I would have too. Yeah. And I think it just felt like you literally scraped the service. In terms of Tana lore and like how limited you had on that, I actually didn't mind that.
00:55:20
Speaker
Um, I felt it was like, uh, it definitely felt like a tease for the third game, which they're obviously going to make. Um, we fully get to explore. Um, in Cobo was, I could not get enough of Cobo. I would roam that for hours, just doing nothing.
00:55:38
Speaker
Um, that's what I was doing. Yeah. Yeah. I found Jetta. I thought Jetta was the puzzle. Temples were cool. And, but apart from that, it was just annoying. The base was the more complicated puzzle. Like finally figuring out the race to get everything around. I was just like, fuck that took me forever.
00:56:00
Speaker
Those puzzle temples were cool. They're a lot of fun. It was nice to go back to Jedi, I think. I think that was the best one. I loved Jedi. I loved all the storyline stuff on Jedi. I thought it felt like Jedi. This doesn't just apply to Jedi because I think it applies to the whole game.
00:56:21
Speaker
And it probably, maybe it applies to Jedi more because we've seen it in Rogue One, but it felt like Star Wars. Yes. Yes. I agree with that. For me, Kobo felt pure Star Wars.
00:56:33
Speaker
Yeah. Kobo felt like pure frontier space port and probably maybe a bit mass effecty. Yeah. But I really like the feel of Kobo. I could have run around Kobo. I honestly, I really loved
00:56:53
Speaker
the addition of the High Republic. I thought that was the best move they made post Fallen Order to bring in a lot of really deep High Republic lore. And I said to you guys when I first started playing, I was like, holy shit, this is open up to a whole new era of stars I've never touched. Because I hadn't touched any of the High Republic stuff in comics or books or, you know, there's no real, like,
00:57:19
Speaker
shows or nobody's nobody's nobody's touched it in the Disney High Republic books sold fuck all. Yeah, but like, I've gone now and read the Marvel High Republic comics. It made me want to read those. And I think it's I think it's a it's such a cool concept of an era. I love the art deco. Yeah, I love the art deco droid.
00:57:45
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Z was cool. Z was fucking cool. I could have put Z in a trash compactor and been quite happy. She was clearly Z's design. I like Z's design. Yes. I do like Z's design. But she was clearly glitching in the head, right? So it was something a couple of wires crossed up top.
00:58:04
Speaker
I like, I like that. I think the thing that really got me with that story, if we're talking about like level design and story and like the whole like mission together, like getting Grease back to pilot really made
Music and Sound Design of Jedi Survivor
00:58:16
Speaker
it for me. Like I don't want Cal to be, Cal needs a support crew. Yes. He's always carrying all that shit on his back.
00:58:23
Speaker
Plus, you don't want to be the all singing, all dancing antagonist when, or main character, when the whole point of the story from his perspective is it's about place in the universe and family. Yeah. It's about putting down roots and it's about it being OK to fall in love and think to the future. He couldn't have done that without a supporting cast. No, no, you're 100 percent right. And just I think having Grease back in the pilot seat,
00:58:49
Speaker
And it's one of those things that like, you know, I put Jasper in the car with me now to take him to the vet. And I'm like, take a seat, Cal. And he just always... Oh, he grabbed some seat. We're almost there. Just on the grease and a couple of the others, it was very, the humor that they injected in there wasn't anything new, but it was very well timed.
00:59:17
Speaker
Oh, I agree. Not new, but fresh. Not new, but fresh. Yeah. And I guess fresh for that world as well. It stepped away from the very- The band between Grease and Marron was very receptive of what they had at the end of Fallen Order. As you started going back through the levels to collect everything, when they were doing this, it was just like,
00:59:39
Speaker
Still got it. Well done. But it made it feel fleshed out. It made it feel like the crew was more than just a supporting cast for Cal. They were actually interacting with each other when you weren't around. And some of it was quite subtle too. I mean, the big ones you're talking about with Grease piloting is him screaming once they get out of the hyperspace jump to Tanylor. He's still screaming and they're there.
01:00:03
Speaker
So that, that was, that was one big point. I literally wasn't, I was literally talking about just the interaction between planets. Oh, I know. I know you would, but that was, that was what popped into my head. And the other, the other very subtle humorous part was, um, after Maren's surprise kiss, Cal and, uh, Cal's standing there with a dumb look on his face and Beatty just gives him this little tap on the shoulder. And he's like, just that, it's just,
01:00:29
Speaker
two second little tap, tap from your droid buddy on your back. And he's like, Oh yeah. Okay. Right. Yep. Cool. It takes you back to that. Like there's a classic name from, from episode three of, uh, um, Anakin and R2 like between, um, like going, going, going to, to, um, going to the planet. And they're just like, Hey man, R2 is just like, Hey, Hey Anakin, is everything, everything okay? He's like, yeah, bro. Everything's fine. It's like,
01:00:56
Speaker
You sure you want to talk about what just happened on Coruscant? Maybe it's just like, no, it's like, yeah, man, you droidsies fuck at everything. You got to remember that. You know, it's like your phone. It's constantly recording. Like, yeah, the way they upped the BD cow interaction.
01:01:16
Speaker
was subtle enough, but really good enough. Finding every, every time I found one of the, um, the, the, the steaming things, I was wondering what little animation are they going to do? So like, I want to really want to talk about the music. The music obviously is a really special part for
01:01:35
Speaker
Can I just throw one more BD thing in here that I noticed that people probably have just before you blow a valve? It happens randomly, whichever planet you're jumping to. And BD's standing on the console at the front, and he looks at Grease, and he shuffles over to the button, and he taps the button, and then he quickly shuffles back and looks at him, and there's this little twitch of his head while he looks at him. And Grease never notices. Grease never notices.
01:02:02
Speaker
It's those beautiful little things. And especially if you're not standing in the cockpit when that happens, you miss it. Like if you're off doing other things, it's just those, those beautiful little attention to details and the fleshing out of the car. Absolutely. And BD that beeps and boops, like he speaks in binary, like, and he's got so much personality. He's not a pet. He's not a pet.
01:02:23
Speaker
That move that you're talking about reminded me so much of one of my old cats. It's exactly the sort of shit they would do to get your attention. And I know that the intent was different between what you just described. But my cat would literally sit on the top shelf. Yeah, but your cat's not putting in the navigation points for a hypothetical. No, true. But she would literally sit on the top of the shelf. And if she wanted my attention, I was ignoring her. She'd push something off the shelf and then look at me and put her paw behind the next object. And she would literally threaten me.
01:02:53
Speaker
So that kind of reminded me of that kind of- No, I get what you were coming from. It was that pet-like thing of- It was, yeah. But it was also Beatty going like, Grease, you forgot this button again. I'm just going to push it. But it's not letting Grease know that he's never pushed that button. It's just like, I'm always here. That was my button when you weren't here for five years. I pushed that button, so I'm going to keep doing that now. No, I loved it. I loved all the animations.
01:03:21
Speaker
Yes, I really want to talk about the music because obviously I have a massive, massive John Williams diehard. Like I so for those who don't know me, and God bless you, you're welcome. But I listened to some form of Star Wars music at least once a week.
01:03:40
Speaker
Um, whether it's a cover, whether it's a soundtrack, whether it's like, you know, I messaged you guys before I was like getting jit up for this episode. I was listening to the Jedi survivor soundtrack again. Um, I haven't really come across a good successor for, um, John Williams. Obviously John Williams is 95. He's going to die any day now.
01:04:04
Speaker
I hate the idea of that happening. I will be devastated when that happens. That man has influenced my life more than most people I've ever known. And I've never met the guy, but he has an integral part in my heart and soul and has for many, many, many years.
01:04:26
Speaker
But Jesus Christ, Stephen Barton and Gordie Harb have really encapsulated the John Williams-esque atmosphere, the tonality, the instrumental use, the way they create the music, which is a homage to everything that John Williams has created. But at the same time, it is taking a step back and going, hang on, this is our music.
01:04:53
Speaker
It's like this is the thing, it's our music, it's not John Williams music. We obviously need to play to his strengths, but we're going to add our own flavor to it. I think is one of the cleverest fucking things I've ever heard in music in the last decade, 20 years, whenever. John Williams, as much as I believe in him as a creator and a musician,
01:05:21
Speaker
And this is going to sound controversial. He's a ripoff. John Williams really based a lot of his music in the late 20th century Roman Roman Russian composers. So a lot of Prokofiev, a lot of Dvorak, a lot of Rachmaninoff, like that's where he got all his influences. And it's beautiful the way he's brought them into the modern 20th century, like filmmaking things.
01:05:47
Speaker
And the way he's brought into like a because it's it's it's what is it? It's it's the way you describe that music is picturesque is not the way my mum would be killing me right now. She's saying this, but it invokes imagery in your in your mind. You hear the the the the symphony of the twin sons of Tatooine and you think twin sons.
01:06:12
Speaker
Like it's just that kind of like, that kind of music. And the way these guys have done it, compared to some of the other composers that have taken over a lot of the Star Wars music, because obviously John Williams can't, he's 95. He can't impose everything anymore. Like classic example is a Rogue One soundtrack. Great soundtrack. Don't get me wrong. Sounds like Star Wars, but that was Michael Guillenot.
01:06:38
Speaker
That probably absolutely butchered that. Michael, he did the most recent Star Trek films as well.
01:06:46
Speaker
He's done Dr. Strange. He's one of the busiest fucking dudes in modern composing for films. Giacchino, I think it is. Giacchino, yeah, yeah, you know, whatever. I don't know. I've never met the guy. He can correct me when he comes and has a beer with me. But the thing with his Star Wars music is, and especially all his other music is,
01:07:11
Speaker
you can feel his theme coming through again. It's like his line through that. I really find the way that Stephen Martin and Gordy Harb blend the way they create the Star Wars music into their own line of adding their little touch to it is seamless. I think it's one of the best
01:07:37
Speaker
They are the two guys to take over from John Williams to compose any sort of Star Wars music going forward. Kevin Kleiner, who did all of the Clone Wars and Rebels music is brilliant. Don't get me wrong. But these guys just feel more John Williams-y in the way they create it. It was seamless. I think seamless is the right word. Yeah, it's beautiful. I love it.
01:08:03
Speaker
You can't tell where the original music stopped and the new stuff started. No. And they rendition the music in Sia's funeral. Oh boy.
01:08:17
Speaker
So if anyone's actually, if I can give my, I've saved them. So my three, I did four tracks I saved from Jedi Survivor and they did the music for Fallen Order 2, don't be wrong. So go back and listen to the Fallen Order soundtrack. So actually there's the two,
01:08:35
Speaker
The two ones I particularly loved were in Fallen Order with Cal Kestis and Failure is Not the End. Failure is Not the End is the music they play when Cal finally gets his Saber Crystal. That is amazing. Gordy Harb, by the way, he's the second composer in that. He did all the Battlefront music for Battlefront 1 and Battlefront 2, the remakes. But then when you go into Jedi Survivor,
01:09:02
Speaker
The Frontier Welcome, Where the Neckos Roam. Where the Neckos Roam is one of the greatest pieces of Star Wars music I've heard in 20 years. It is beautiful. It is such a way of encapsulating the idea of a frontier. There's a lot of soft trills going through the start and into a really rousing brass thing. And that is classic John Williams as well. You need that big brass section to come through. Where the Neckos Roam.
01:09:31
Speaker
I can listen to them a frontier welcome and then where the neckos roam but they're all they're all around Kobo. They're the Kobo music like the Kobo background music.
01:09:41
Speaker
They were amazing. The guys they got in to do the riding on the back of the space camels, that scene, where it's Marin and Cal riding on. It's called Fields of Dusk. It's by a band named Tatran. They have an orchestral version, which you can find on Spotify. That's also amazing. It's really, really, really peaceful and relaxing music.
01:10:08
Speaker
Very good if you like trying to focus on something. So I really recommend that track and then cold dawn, which is the That's the burial one which you know, it jokes you up but like that's But again, it's just the way they encapsulate that John Williams esque But the the atmosphere the the tonality everything I can't like
01:10:32
Speaker
I'm sure there are music guys out there who could fault them, but I cannot fault them. I absolutely love those four tracks and I really recommend if you want to listen to anything from the Jedi Survivor soundtrack, they are the four that I could highly recommend that you go back and listen to.
01:10:51
Speaker
Anyway, that's my music job. That's good. Who was the band in the cantina that was very almost throat singer? The Who band. That's the Mongolian one. You fucking listen to me, you fucker. That's what I was saying earlier. Yeah, you just called them the Who. But is that the name of the band? The Who band hates you. OK. H you. OK.
01:11:13
Speaker
Yeah, Al went on about those guys. Go look up their shit on YouTube, man. It's fucking excellent. The Wolf Totem was their first, was their first big... I have looked them up. I have looked them up. This is, I think you and I have talked about them before. Okay, now that I know they're the Mongolian folk metal band. That's exactly what... Yeah, I kept putting them on every time I went into Pylon Saloon.
01:11:37
Speaker
Um, yeah, that's who I put. They, they called the Asgard or something. I had to look it up because I was trying to figure out what the fuck I was thinking of. Um, cool. Shall we move on to the mechanics?
Gameplay Mechanics and Customization
01:11:50
Speaker
I mean, I want to talk about light sabers. Let's talk about light sabers. I've got a P so you guys start. All right.
01:11:58
Speaker
Um, I mean, we already talked about it. So what was your favorite lightsaber style? Cause there's four styles in the game now. Four, five, five. Yeah. The, the boring old single handed.
01:12:10
Speaker
let's not say boring or single-handed. It is the classic single-handed. The classic single-handed. Well, I think this is a really cool fun thing to talk about from the first game and the development of this. So in the first game, you could either have single-handed or you could have dual bladed. And then eventually, for story reasons, you had a special ability, which was a dual saber attack.
01:12:34
Speaker
In this game they've started you out relatively early with their single Single double-weighted or jewel and then as you go through the story you eventually get blaster style or then you get cross guard Which is your claim or or very heavy saber? Dan I don't know if Dan sent it to you. There is a very good video on I think it's Kotaku's Kotaku's YouTube or website of a
01:13:03
Speaker
I'm a world renowned sword specialist ranking the actual combat for Jedi survivor it's very very cool if you're ever into that if you're not into that it's the nerdiest fucking thing you'll ever watch but it's it's actually cool what he says is how like actual research they did into those sword fighting styles and the way they use them.
01:13:25
Speaker
I watch a lot of those random videos on YouTube. It's like how real is the sniping or how is the medieval siege warfare or yeah. So I favored of the five styles. I favored blaster and dual wield. Okay.
01:13:43
Speaker
Yeah, and you favoured. So I switched halfway through. I respect. I was going to ask you guys if you guys ever respect throughout your play. No, once I got the ability to shoot in the face, I... Again with the C word. I've been drinking all day. It's an up late. It's an up late. It's an up late. Yeah, we swear all the time. The Americans, the Americans won't listen to it. That's fine.
01:14:06
Speaker
It's a culture thing. We can send our kids to school, don't worry. Tom Sabre Styles and then I'll get... Oh, I described all five Sabre Styles and then we were saying I was single blade, no, dual blade and then blaster.
01:14:26
Speaker
And Pete was saying that he respect. Yeah, so I started with double bladed and then started using cross guard and I had already specced into double bladed and then started speccing into cross guard. Then I used my free respec and started again with dual world and cross guard.
01:14:43
Speaker
And so, any time there was a boss fight or any of the larger droids, the massive raider with the hammer, I'd switch to cross guard. But for the most part, for day-to-day droid cleanup, and troopers, it's all your world. Oh, man, cross guard, shattered your tears, yeah. Oh, it just does so much damage, though. No, it's too fucking slow. I just got to get the timing right. Yeah, I thoroughly enjoyed it. If I'm drinking while I'm playing Star Wars, I'm not getting timing right, am I?
01:15:14
Speaker
It's a problem with Soles S games it's all about timing Yeah, I did cross guard and dual blade I did respect because I dropped all of my points into Just single blade because that's how I wanted to play it and that felt really underpowered Yeah while I was playing it and it felt like really they were pushing you they were pushing you out
01:15:38
Speaker
out of playing it in a, you know, a fallen order style. They're pushing you to the other styles. Which makes sense because you want Cal to grow. Like you want him to move away and develop something else. Like I think that's a good point from like a story style. Um, I, yeah, I just, I loved the customization of the blaster. I thought, Oh, it's so many. Well, not so much blasters. I have to admit I only customize it once or twice because I didn't play with it. Well, you didn't use it. So that makes sense. Yeah.
01:16:08
Speaker
But the customization options in the lightsabers as well and BD1, fuck me, they spent a lot of time building these parts. Yeah, I actually really didn't customize BD1 past Nudo. I originally got him how I kind of liked his look because I had a few of the like the RTD2 Astromech one and then like one other one and like at the start and I think I
01:16:35
Speaker
basically had his basic head, his basic like antennas. He had the R2-D2 like Astromech body and legs and whatever else was the option. Was there one more option? There were five options you could accustomize them with. But yeah, it was like, I had them from very early on and then. Head is visor body legs. Yeah, visor. That was it.
01:16:59
Speaker
I think I eventually changed him to like the G&O's in Visor because I thought it was funny. But I... I used G&O's in for all of them. Oh, interesting. Yeah, right. And he matched my lightsaber in terms of colour as close as I could. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. As close as I could. I put him in a red, white and blue mix of R2 and R5 and I didn't change him from the start. Yeah.
01:17:23
Speaker
I customized a lightsaber every chance I got. As soon as I found new color, I was like, oh shit, I need to try this out. Yeah. It's funny because I did the same, but I actually only stuck with my changes twice. So I'd always try out a new paint scheme or a new part, but I really, the color scheme only changed really, you know, after tailoring it initially, I really only changed it once halfway through the game. And that was after I unlocked a very specific paint scheme.
01:17:53
Speaker
Yeah, right. Otherwise, it didn't really change. The parts themselves changed, but the actual lightsaber itself didn't. And I had the samurai sword gripped for the entire fucking game. Yeah, okay.
01:18:04
Speaker
Yeah. The, the, the actual, the traditional weave. Yeah. I use that one too. Was it the one I can't remember? Yeah. So, so the, the cover art for this episode will be, uh, my drawing interpretation of our three lightsabers. Um, so you're, I mean, for those listening at home, you'd be able to see what we're talking about. Yeah. Yeah. So as soon as I unlocked the best car, the best car metal, I messaged Dan, as soon as I unlocked the best car one, I was like, you're missing out. And he goes, Oh fuck, I need to play this game. Yeah.
01:18:34
Speaker
I think I bought it the next day or two days later or something. But I didn't use it on the blaster, I put it on the lightsaber. I liked it better on the lightsaber. I went through every single wood handle I could for my lightsaber. My lightsaber really was a mix between Obi-Wan's, Luke's, and then my second, that was on my main saber, was definitely a mix between Obi-Wan and Luke's. My blaster, I made it as chunky as fucking possible because it just,
01:19:04
Speaker
Especially when you did like, I don't know if you ever use that move, Pete, of, um, the closeup blaster, like reaction. You have shot. You have to get the plan off of the trophy. Like you, I use that far too often because it was just like, it was so meaty. Yeah. Oh, the way that hit. So I had like a really like gunslinger, like I said, it was a real gunslinger, like Western, Western one. Um,
01:19:29
Speaker
Yeah, I didn't use the cross guard at all. Despite the fact I made my cross guard angle a witcher silver sword, as you have to do, because that's just the law. I didn't use it once after that.
01:19:46
Speaker
I think I literally did it to take a photo to send to you guys, but then after that I didn't use it. I tried every style because by the end of the game, well, by the time I platinumed the game, I had every skill point unlocked. And so I tried all of the styles other than the basic standard single-hander. I never really messed around with that. I messed around with all the rest of them. I could not stand the blaster one at all.
01:20:11
Speaker
It was just yeah, okay. I really enjoyed it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Just wasn't for me. I loved going off. I loved finding the biggest group of B one droids I could find and just doing the, the, the, the full shot where you just mark them all. And then you just mow them all down. I didn't use that at all. Actually. Oh,
01:20:34
Speaker
that I really enjoyed. But I would I would be used the quick fire triangle shot. Especially in those like, those moments where I was like, I'm about to die from this Yeah, this this toad fucker. I'm gonna I'm gonna quickly jump away from take a cute few little quick slashes at him and keep rolling and dodging and then I'm gonna shoot him until he dies. And that's how I got through a lot of those boss fights. That's the thing for me blaster saved me in so many boss
Game's Timeline and Easter Eggs
01:21:01
Speaker
fights.
01:21:01
Speaker
So the cross guard has the best defense, that cross guard style has the best defense in terms of actually being able to block out of any of the lightsaber stances. My whole view on life is Leroy Jenkins, so I just run in fire.
01:21:17
Speaker
But I actually found that to your point, Dan, mowing down B1 battle droids, I used the double bladed or the dual weld for that. And you'd suck them all together with your force vacuum attack or whatever it is. And then I would just throw the lightsaber around me in the big circle. I think it was the double bladed. Yeah, that was the triangle attack. It was a lot of fun. In some of those challenges, the fractured butthole challenges, that was a lot of fun mowing down. There was a couple.
01:21:45
Speaker
of challenges where there were a thousand enemies in there. Yeah, there were a couple. Yeah, I really love the fact they went back to battle droids. I thought that was the best move. Well, it's exact center point between Revenge of the Third movie Revenge of the Sith. Revenge of the Sith, yeah. Yeah, it was right the first time and A New Hope. So it's exactly in the middle of those two core trilogies where the galactic- Which is where raiders would find abandoned
01:22:14
Speaker
Abandoned ships and yeah, they would take them over. Yeah, but it's it's but it's also the crossover point between stormtroopers and androids So I think they took full advantage of the timeline. Yeah, no, they didn't where they've where they've put it
01:22:28
Speaker
I thought it was, I thought it was great. I, I particularly loved obviously a massive love for clone wars here as well. So that, that, that really helped, but like, yeah, especially like being able to fight against, um, uh, the commando droids as well. Cause those pissed me off entirely through the, um, clone war series, the amount of times they killed, um, just innocent clone more soldiers. Um, those boys were innocent. Um, they never committed any war crimes.
01:22:53
Speaker
uh um but yeah to finally get my revenge on them um yeah i thought that was particularly cool i the bedlam raiders were
01:23:03
Speaker
Interesting enough. Yeah. Sammy, Sammy, Sammy, Sammy. Yeah. Um, I don't know if you guys did it, but, uh, if anyone who had, who's still listed this and hasn't played the game again, you're an idiot. Um, and I will fight you. Uh, but if you go to the hole where you fight, um, Ogdo Bogdo's son, um, did you know you could pull down the two hammer dudes and drop them in the pit?
01:23:31
Speaker
No, no. So you can pull down the two hammer dudes from above and drop them in the pit and they kill Ogdo Bogdo halfway and then you jump down and kill Ogdo Bogdo. Oh. That's it. Didn't know that. Yeah. Yeah. So like halfway through the game, I was like, I'm never going to feed Ogdo Bogdo. Oh, fuck it. I'll just kill those dudes up there. I can't wonder if I can force pull them. Oh, I can. Oh, they dropped into the hole. Oh, they're now fighting Ogdo Bogdo. This is brilliant.
01:23:55
Speaker
I'll just wait up here and pick off the survivor. And yeah, that's, that's how I finally made him. What were you going to say, Dan? Yeah. I was going to say the two things, which are kind of two things I want to talk about. And it kind of goes to Tom's soundtrack and that, but also talks to sound design in general. I thought the sound design was brilliant. And the stormtrooper banter. Oh, fuck me. Did I love the stormtrooper banter?
01:24:21
Speaker
There's a YouTube channel that I follow that is called AFK and he does builds of little Star Wars videos of these two stormtroopers. One's a seasoned veteran and one's a really off the cuff cadet.
01:24:39
Speaker
Yeah. And they just have this great banter between them. And I actually had to look it up. It was so close, the banter from AFK to the game. I had to look it up to see whether he wrote the banter, but he didn't. But I thought it was just, it was another one of those
01:24:56
Speaker
It could almost feel out of place in a serious storyline driven Star Wars game, but then you go, yeah, but these guys are fucking bored. They're out on the outer rim planets and they've been thrown into these patrol missions walking around this bloody.
01:25:14
Speaker
But the battle droids were the same. The banter between the droids and the raiders were hilarious as well. Especially the female raider talking to the battle droid and the battle droid saying that he's going to kill the Jedi. And she's like, well, you've got a high opinion of yourself. And that really slurred out speech or drawn out speech. I thought that was a great banter as well.
01:25:36
Speaker
And the overall sound design, the Sabre sounded brilliant. The blaster was chunky, especially with the fact that different lightsabers, colors had different Sabre sounds. And I never got bored of shattering those force crystals.
01:25:51
Speaker
kneeling down and just listening to that really thumpy chest. Well, I listened to on really good headphones. So that just that thump of that, that force crystal shattering and then being absorbed. I know you guys complained about it from the amount of times you had to restart the game, but I, I still.
01:26:10
Speaker
I still thoroughly enjoy the opening credits of that game of the, the, it's like the, you've obviously got, you've got some sort of deep state of trauma for it, but it's, it's almost like an explosion of like a ting sound. Like the way that, like it's, it's that Chris it's crystalline. It's that crystalline sound of like that being broken.
01:26:31
Speaker
Yeah, but I just want to play the game. No one cares about what you want. People obviously do, otherwise they wouldn't be fucking listening. I found the Realtors to be fucking annoying, just to change the subject. Those birds, the birds that you glide on.
01:26:49
Speaker
I really, they really pissed me off throughout the game. Oh, really? Just the control system just wasn't intuitive at all to go as far as possible. I mean, you're holding a bird by its legs and trying to control it. I think it's pretty intuitive. Left and right was fine, but like to, you have to press forward to go as far as it was possible to go. Oh, like the amount of times I fucking died at the start trying to get the hang of it was just- Oh, in that particular section outside that temple.
01:27:17
Speaker
Oh, no. The shattered remains. That's where you have to know how to fly them properly because otherwise you're just not going to be able to do that whole section of the game. But just anywhere that you had them, you'd pick them up on Cobo at the top of the building or mountain that you've climbed. And if the bird doesn't go faster when I push forward, then I'm going to stop pushing forward because it's just like it doesn't do anything except
01:27:38
Speaker
you can't go as far unless you push forward the whole time. It doesn't speed the bird up. It changes the distance that you travel. It was just so just fucking frustrating. It was just a little miss for me. I didn't, I didn't know that. I just miss me. I just used, they were, they were a means to an end for me. I can't jump off this and not die. So I'll grab this bird's legs and get as close to the ground as I can.
01:28:04
Speaker
So I want to talk about one of the biggest spoilers in the game, actually talking about those birds. OK, we're going to have to wrap soon, too. Yes, yes. Which is the thing that's held me back from showing my Platinum for so long is the brilliance of having Boba Fett come in at the end of the bounty hunter story that really made that whole, whole drawn out. And I was the one who had to wait for them to patch it so I could keep doing that story. And when I came back, I was like,
01:28:33
Speaker
That was worth the wait. That was worth the fucking wait. Like, cause that is my pla- that's my pla- pla- thing is just, it's, it's Cal picking up the blaster and it's Boba standing there being like, Hey man, I've got no problem with you except the fact you're a fucking Jedi and I hate you as a principal, but
01:28:52
Speaker
I might one day have a problem with you and you'll fucking find out about it." And I was like, boy, you're a fucking barf, that's gonna fuck me. And it sounded like Tamara did the voice for it too. It was, yeah. It was Tamara, yeah. So I thought that was a really, really fun moment. I never expected that through the entire bounty hunter quest. I thought it was just like, yeah, cool, kill them all.
01:29:16
Speaker
I was saving them for the end because I was like, yeah, these are fun fights. Like, I really enjoyed. I saved Rick the Dorman for nothing. I was a door technician. He was great. No, no, no. I think we really need to talk about this. That is one of the best bits of gameplay I've had in a decade.
01:29:35
Speaker
So for those who haven't played it, it is one of the hardest fucking bits of Jedi Survivor. You go through an entire Imperial base, every single enemy they go through, like they throw at you through lifts and you're just like, fuck, is this not over?
01:29:49
Speaker
You get to the end of it. So I got to the end of it with half a life bar and one fucking like stim left. And I was like, shit, cool. I know there's a save point just up ahead. I've just got to get to there. I can save. It'll reset when I save and rest. It doesn't matter. I can go back and fight some like basic grunts.
01:30:08
Speaker
And then this boss of fucking appears down a long fucking hallway. And you're like, Jesus Christ. No, not now. I don't want to do that again. It's a scout trooper. It's called Rick the door technician. And he runs at you and then you kill him in one hit. And you go, I lost it. I think I threw the controller in laughter. I could not control myself.
01:30:31
Speaker
And you know what? The developers knew this because they tested that sequence multiple times, put that boss at the end, and the reactions they got from every test player was hysterical laughter. They go, we need to keep this in. This is one of the greatest pranks we've ever played on gamers ever.
01:30:50
Speaker
Yeah. And the hype. Respawn. I absolutely applaud you. That was one of the most beautiful gaming moments I've ever experienced. And, you know, like, wow. That was, it was so fucking funny. It was so unexpected. And it was just like that, that absolute tense moment of, fuck a boss.
01:31:22
Speaker
I thought it was cool the fans jumped on that bandwagon because there was a lot of stuff on reddit saying the hardest boss in the whole game is Rick the door taking and it was starting to pick up its own little hype train.
01:31:33
Speaker
Oh, there's fan art about Rick the dog technician as an entire Star Wars character. The Star Wars post is made with Rick as the central character. It was it was one of the most beautiful moments has ever happened in gaming in the last 10 years. I think it's just it's absolutely sensational. And I had off to respawn for thinking of that. It's genius. It's now also a very good in joke. It's one of those things. If you know, you know. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
01:32:00
Speaker
All right, just closing out.
Evolution from Fallen Order and Reception
01:32:03
Speaker
How did we rate this compared to Fallen Order? My whole thing with this versus Fallen Order, I'm going to jump right in here because I am quick off the mark. Fallen Order was really a, as we said, it was a discovery story. It was a running away story. It was trying to hide. This was almost like
01:32:24
Speaker
It was an arrogant story to the point where it was like, I want you to find me, but I know I can beat you kind of thing. It was like, it was a really nice jump from Cal five years ago to Cal now. And then halfway through it really ripped the rug out from underneath me and became quite a personal story and like personal growth and like.
01:32:47
Speaker
Cal, you really don't need to, you don't need to be, you don't need to take the empire on yourself. Like there is a lot of preservation you can do. That's a deep cut.
01:33:03
Speaker
And I found that to be a really important growth point for the character and I felt the other characters they didn't need to like fall in line with that growth but they really like the way they wrote them like really built up that growth for Cal.
01:33:22
Speaker
It was incredibly moving. The end story, I still choke up about it. It really fucking hit me. That whole end post the betrayal on Jeddah, I emotionally still have not recovered from that. It fucked me. I was so committed to the idea of Bode and Cal taking on the Empire together. That really fucking hit me hard.
01:33:50
Speaker
And that end, that end, it's that end burial sequence, like the music around it as well. And the way they, they just like did it through like cows in slow motion, but everyone else is in like regular motion. That was a beautifully shot sequence. That really hit me hard.
01:34:07
Speaker
Um, and I said, I said to Dan when he finished it and like hadn't had the chance to talk to you about it, but just like I pulled my controller down and just went and sat outside for like an hour. Just like it really, really, really hit me. Um, uh, but I really, on the same page, I really liked the, um, the, the loneliness of fallen order. I think it's probably the best way to describe it of like.
01:34:35
Speaker
It really, really encapsulated that whole like, holy shit, order 66 just happened. You might just be the last Jedi, like in the universe. We know he's not. But like, it really, really like portrayed that kind of thing. This just felt like more like, yeah, look, being the last Jedi probably isn't the greatest thing. You know, it's the greatest thing is actually helping the rebellion. Like it was a real movement forward for him. So that's where I left it, yeah.
01:35:03
Speaker
Um, I'm excited that there's obviously going to be a third. Like if they left it there, I think there definitely will be. Like I, I would probably start, I would start crucifying people. Um, yeah, there has to be a third, but like, I think they've left it in a really, really strong point to grow off. Yeah. Like, yeah. Great. Dan.
01:35:24
Speaker
Yeah, I think the growth of Kal and this one was the biggest thing for me, his character. Well, I guess all of their character growth, even through people that you don't interact with that much, even though she's spoken of a lot and you do play of it, Sia. The growth of Sia's character from, you can see she's come a long way from rejecting the Force because the loss of her Padawan in the first one to
01:35:52
Speaker
to reconnecting at the end of the first one to becoming this archivist for the entire order, for what's left of the order in this one. I thought it was brilliant character growth on all of their behalf, but I think it was also... I felt it was a real flex for the studio as well. The first one was such a huge success from them not having made a game in this vein before.
01:36:19
Speaker
And they were very much on trial for the first one. They were very much, if this works, we might give you a sequel. If it doesn't, you know what? Single player games are dead, which is exactly what all those big companies were saying at the time. And then fucking Respawn hits it out of the park with fallen order. And they go, you know what? OK, we'll give you a sequel, see how it goes. And what I think they've done here is they've just
01:36:45
Speaker
Whether or not it really happened, it felt like a really big fuck you. Single player games are not dead. Look at what we can do. You gave us a limited budget for the first one. You gave us a bigger budget for this one. Look at what we've done. We've made the best Star Wars content in the last
01:37:05
Speaker
10, 12, 15 years since Revenge of the Sith. We've made the best Star Wars content here with the writers we've got and it's a fucking video game. You know what? Fuck you mainstream media. This is what can be done with the IP in the right hands. And that to me was the biggest thing.
01:37:26
Speaker
Yeah. It was a small story. It was small. It has a big backdrop and has important, it has important. Your comment around it's a small story with the big backdrop really hit me. Like that was like, yeah, that's a really good way of describing it. Yeah.
01:37:42
Speaker
So, yeah, and I, for me, I thought I, the Fallen Order was a, almost a, who am I knee jerk reaction to the situation that's going on around me. I don't really have time to think too hard about things. I'm kind of just falling into myself.
01:37:59
Speaker
Whereas this second game, he has an opportunity to decide the direction and he needs to figure himself out. And I felt like I connected with the themes in this game a lot better than I did the first one. Like I said to me, it was a lot about family, about making the right decisions.
01:38:16
Speaker
to hang on to that family and to find your place in the universe. That's really what he's trying to do. Brilliant. I reckon that's a perfect first up late episode. I'm going to drop some facts on everyone at the end of this episode. We just talked about how it was received by especially EA as a first player game.
01:38:42
Speaker
So, Fallen Order was released in November 2019. EA confirmed that it was the fastest-selling digital launch for any Star Wars game within the first two weeks on sale. It had sold 8 million copies by the end of January 2020.
01:39:01
Speaker
more than 10 million units were sold by March 31st, 2020. By the end of June 21, the game had attracted more than 20 million players. So for those, anyone who's ever said that a Star Wars like single player game is dead, uh,
01:39:24
Speaker
He's an idiot. You're wrong. I'm just bringing up the survivor. I'll see if I can get the sales ones of that.
01:39:34
Speaker
Well, the survivor as well in terms of its like reception, it got nines and fours out of nines out of 10s, fours out of fives across the board. Sales. Within the first week, it sold 16,000 physical copies, which doesn't take into account all the digital copies that people bought. In the United Kingdom, Star Wars survivor were 30% higher than that of foreign order.
01:40:06
Speaker
So it was the most downloaded game on the US and European play session store in April and May, 2023. So it's obviously, it's a winning formula. So I know that execs look at just that. And as Star Wars fans, we actually kind of need to look at that to be like,
01:40:24
Speaker
If we're going to get it, we need to make sure that the exec's going to go, yes, we get all the money. But we're like, cool, we get a fucking amazing Star Wars game. I think the point is it was a good story, and then it was a good Star Wars game.
01:40:41
Speaker
They put storytelling and plot first and then used Star Wars universe and lore as a plot vehicle, but that's all. It wasn't about Star Wars. It was about Cal Kestis and his friends in a Star Wars universe. Yeah, you were 100% right.
01:41:01
Speaker
All right, I think we might leave it there. Got for our Bitesize episode. Ran a little bit over, but you know, it wouldn't be pixels and pints if we didn't. No, it's close enough. Close enough. Take all your sea bombs out and I'll be under 90 minutes. Well, if you're doing that, then let me take you out for the end of the night. Thank you very much for listening. We're going to go to bed now. So sweet dreams and everything for you. This has been Pixels and Pints Up Late. Night, night now.