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Gaming's Unforgivable Sins | Windbreaker Podcast
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On this week’s episode of Windbreaker, Marty, Frost, and JM8 discuss the unforgivable sins of video games.
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Transcript
Introduction and Sponsor
00:00:00
Speaker
This video is sponsored by Blood Servants, the upcoming cooperative hack and slash dungeon crawler. Head on over to the Steam page now to sign up for their playtest.
00:00:09
Speaker
Hello everyone and welcome to Windbreaker Podcast episode number 13 for Monday, March 4th, 2024. My name is Marty, I am joined by Frost, Jamaite filling in for Yahtzee and of course producer Eric behind the scenes.
Audience Support and Show Format
00:00:24
Speaker
Yahtzee is off filming Adventurous Knife season 4 at a secret undisclosed location with the rest of the adventurers
00:00:31
Speaker
which was funded partly by your incredible patronage, your support on Twitch, your support on merch, via Shark Robot Store, and of course, via Super Chats on shows just like this one.
Unforgivable Gaming Sins
00:00:43
Speaker
You know the drill with Windbreaker, we got a topic, we're gonna gab about it for the first half of the show, and then for the back half of the show, we're gonna read your Super Chats, and today's topic,
00:00:53
Speaker
Unforgivable gaming sins. Loving thy neighbor. Or thy neighbor's wife? What's the bad one? You're not supposed to covet- No, thy neighbor's wife. You can't covet- You took my first sin, to be honest. I was gonna say, coveting thy neighbor's game mechanics.
00:01:25
Speaker
Oh, I like that!
00:01:31
Speaker
No sense whatsoever after maddening the game died because four nine made enough money to kill it. It was unfortunate They did give all the money back So I I was an early adopter of paragon because I was a big fan of dota And I played a lot of it and I spent you could spend like an exorbitant amount of money to get a pack where you could give people Codes like there were only a limited amount in the early days. I spent like two hundred dollars in
00:01:57
Speaker
on getting my friends' codes, and when they cancelled the game, they gave all the money they made back to everyone. So I just randomly got $200 into my account. I was like, sick, let's go. Okay, that's not bad.
00:02:13
Speaker
Yeah, these are going to be the kind of things we're talking about, gaming since like design things, mechanical things, things that pop up, things that some of them might be small things that just irk us personally, some of them are sort of larger design problems as a whole. We're not just going to be like bad graphics and microtransactions because... I mean, for some people that is... I mean, I kind of do like bad graphics though. I love microtransactions.
00:02:37
Speaker
Yeah, those are the only two I brought to the table, guys. You've done me in. I love Michael and all of his transactions. So, yeah, I mean, I figure we could just keep going around and just, like, fucking riffing on a bunch of them, because I wrote down a ton of them, small things, really specific things. I also wrote down some
00:02:55
Speaker
sins I want to defend, things I think people hate, that I will go to bat for. This is where we're going to like split off and form a different church. Exactly. By the end, we just have three separate pillars of super chats going. Yeah, might move one just off the bat, which I think we could, if we want to go back to original sin, we can blame Destiny, but cursor-based menus on controllers.
00:03:22
Speaker
What do we do? What are we as a society doing when we're pretending our controllers, our mouse and keyboard? Controllers aren't mice and keyboards. Controllers are better than a mouse and keyboard. They shouldn't have to pretend that they're a freaking mouse in games like Destiny, in games like Gotham Knights, in games like Cyberpunk, in the new AC games.
00:03:40
Speaker
You're a designer. You understand the ins and outs better than we do. Why did this become a thing and is it ever going to go away? Hopefully it will go away. One of the problems is that
00:03:55
Speaker
You always start your initial designs for a specific platform. A lot of the times it was, you know, you start on console and then you work your way to PC or vice versa. And it seems like Destiny started on, well, I hope so, started on PC. Let's bring our systems in. But no, it is definitely a sin, mainly because
00:04:16
Speaker
It's not faster than just grid-based switching with your analog stick to move the cursor with your analog stick. It's not quicker. So if it was faster, but it felt a little bit cumbersome, I'd be able to forgive it. I'd be like, yeah, okay. It makes sense, but it doesn't know. It's just a compromise now. It's like either you get the game and it's going to have a horrible cursor based for controller, or you don't get the game at all. And I was like, you're fine. You know what? I'll take it.
00:04:44
Speaker
I'm used to it like on Netflix whenever you get like, Oh, what was it? Wasn't the original Netflix like cursor based, even though you had the remote? No. I swear it was something heinous. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it might've just been like pops up and there's like their first app might've been like, well, we're just used to the website. So we're just, we're just going to port the website over to the app. And you just have, yeah, it's
00:05:06
Speaker
not it's not ideal and they definitely could have done it in a way that was you know that would make sense on controller they just don't didn't want to probably a cost saving thing but yeah i'm trying to think of other games that have it
00:05:22
Speaker
Yeah, it's Hogwarts had it the other year, Gotham Knights. I mean, honestly, it's any of these games that have gear and like loot systems that feel like... Oh my god, no issues. Yeah, they all have this thing. The modern AC games have that thing where it's just... And it's also, I guess, that ties into the problem of, I hate
00:05:43
Speaker
being bogged down in a menu in a game. Like I noticed it really when I was playing God of War Ragnarok. If every time I grabbed something that would incrementally make me stronger, I would open up the menu and I'm like, what am I doing? Like this is supposed to be, like the whole thing of these games was like, we've created one interrupted shot that you, the player, will interrupt a million fucking times by pulling up your menu and being like, oh, Kratos got new glaives. It just, I don't know.
00:06:13
Speaker
Like I get the itch that scratches, but that's not an itch I want scratched. Let me, let it itch. I get your menus elsewhere. Um, uh, I didn't know you were going straight for like UI. Even though that is a, from someone who's like worked around in QA, those are one of the biggest branches of complaints. It's just the UI, the UI. I'm like, why do you love this thing so much? Just hit play, get in the game and look away.
00:06:33
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I guess that's one of those like one of those things like sound design a lot of times where it's if it's working well, it's kind of the unsung hero. Yeah, and you don't even comment on it. You're just like, oh, yeah, it worked well. Whereas when it stands out is when I'm like, oh, yeah, I get it. I get it from that perspective for us to being like, yeah, you know, just like
00:06:53
Speaker
get past it, get it back into the game, but when it's so intrusive to the actual playing experience, like it was talking about God of War, it's kind of egregious. But I think that's a systems issue, right? On top of having to use a cursor inside of those menus.
00:07:08
Speaker
It's that incremental nature of the loop. In my opinion, shouldn't have been in God of War. But then again, I think a lot of things shouldn't have been in God of War. I should probably make a video on that. What about his son? He shouldn't have had a son? He should just remain single so he can put you down in a dog. Should have been a dog. Oh God.
00:07:28
Speaker
Yeah, in the same vein of like Sunnisin menu systems It'd be like the card one of like hey look at all these microtransactions all these things that you can spend Here's the battle pass season pass and there's the play button skull and bones did that to me. I was like congratulations. Congratulations Congratulations, sort of conduct. I'm like for a pirate game that just feels wrong I'm not gonna rip some free speech in but still it's like oh you go to be a good pirate You don't want to be naughty out there
00:07:53
Speaker
One of the things with UI as well, if I try to leave a game and like, you know, oh, I need to go cook food. I'm going to go close the game down. If your quit button is not immediately on your menu and I have to go into another sub menu to get to it, I am never opening your game again. I'm done. In that Dark Souls.
00:08:11
Speaker
Yeah. Well, Dark Souls has some problems. I played a lot. I played a lot. I played a lot of Dark Souls. You may have just you've hoisted my petard.
Game Accessibility and Control Issues
00:08:20
Speaker
Yeah, it's it's horrible. I don't see the process of like, oh, well, we want to try and keep people on our games. Well, I am actively trying to leave. So don't stop me then. I've already made the decision. It feels like
00:08:39
Speaker
I'm going to try to not get arrested. Sometimes I watch sporting events via illegal websites. Sometimes I'm like this basketball game or this football game, I can't get in my local area, so I need to stream it via something illegal. You get to those websites and it's just the Wild West.
00:08:59
Speaker
There's just weird, you're like looking at the site and you're like, what here is the window I need to click to watch the thing? I know the game is somewhere in this window, but I don't know what it is. And then you click and an ad starts playing, you're like, did I click the right thing or did I click something else? And then there's a countdown and I'm like, ooh, should I not have done that? And sometimes game menus feel like that where you're like, I just want to play. Like I've already, especially for it's egregious in a game that isn't free to play, a game that you give money,
00:09:26
Speaker
at the beginning and then you get into this thing, you're like, I paid to get in here and you're still advertising to me. Like why, why is this happening? Why is the having fun button not right at the forefront?
00:09:37
Speaker
Didn't the new call, did it do that? It advertised you the game that you were playing until you go ahead and buy it and you're like, I'm playing it. My local theater, I went and I went and got high off the Spice Melange this weekend at Dune Part Two. My local movie theater, before the trailers start, have a preview for the theater. And I'm like, I'm here. Why are you advertising to me? I have poetry to the theater. Like they're showing me like, look how soft the seats are. And I'm like, yeah, I know I'm in the soft seat right now.
00:10:07
Speaker
Damn you, caress the armrest. It's just like, we have popcorn. I'm like, yeah, I'm aware. It was right at the front. I walked right by it. See, I could have used one of those. I didn't know my chair could lean back. So if I'd had the preview, I'd have known. You would have fallen asleep, though, on the deserts of Arrakis. I wasn't watching the deserts of Arrakis. Arrakis. I was watching Steven's player.
00:10:49
Speaker
It looks like
00:10:53
Speaker
And I don't know if I just want to get a quick nap and I'll go see the new Glenn Powell rom-com and just get a little 90 minute snoozer in. In terms of movie going experiences, it turns out England is a third world country. So I'm coming over, I'm popping over because we don't, we ain't got those. It's absurd how comfortable these seats are. Yeah, yeah, yeah, no. It depends on what you are. Yeah, I've seen those. Yeah. I get worried that there's some stuff going on in those beds though.
00:11:19
Speaker
Yeah, be careful. Change the sheets. Change the sheets every day. One can't be too comfortable in a movie theater, you know? No. And I kind of, my friends would always pay like extra for like big fancy ones. I'll take like five bucks, but the whole theater is mine. Absolutely. Chairs falling apart, you know, walk out without my shoes because the floors are too sticky. Main thing is I want my eyes to see the movie and my ears to hear it. And then I'm good.
00:11:47
Speaker
Yeah, those are close one and two. But, you know, previews of the thing that you're doing, continuing to sell you the thing that you do. That's even the trailer thing. I hate that. And I get that's because like our attention spans have been completely fucking obliterated on social media. But trailers that start with a three second sizzle of the trailer you're about to watch.
00:12:12
Speaker
It's like, I already clicked on this trailer. What are you watching it? Like I'm watching it or it's like, we're premiering the trailer. Watch the rest of it online. I'm like, but I'm here. Why don't you just show me to me? Oh, look at that. Oh no. Yeah. It's, it's, um, prisons.
00:12:29
Speaker
Wait, did I get put in a gaming prison? You're in a gamer prison, look at that. Oh no, I'm in a gamer prison! I got worried when you said, oh no, that my internet died. I'm like, oh no, it's happening. No, it's when Eric was unfolding it slowly, reminded me of old dial-up. Which is, honestly, that is one of the gaming sims I had, is my internet's fine, my PC's a beast, and it's just choppy out of hell.
00:12:50
Speaker
Like, what's going on? What's going on here? Skull and Bones. Loading screens up the wazoo. My character will get stuck in between transitions, just idling. Then I'd go to quit it, and the thing was quitting for like 15 minutes. I went and had lunch, come back, it was still quitting. Still going, yeah. Yeah. That's one of the things, like, I don't know, one of the reasons, like, I'm...
00:13:12
Speaker
I just prefer to play on consoles is if the experience is kind of shitty, that's on them. Like it's like, oh, you probably sent me a game that is not optimal. That is not just working well here. Whereas if a game is shitty, like not running well on my like, admittedly not great PC, part of me is like, this might be my fault. Like, I don't know who, I can't blame anyone. This might be my fault.
00:13:34
Speaker
But, yeah. I loved it with, what was it, what Todd Howard was saying, for Starfield, just upgrade, just upgrade your PC. And some guy on the Reddit, it was like, he posted all of his graphics and he had the latest specs of everything. He was a beast of a computer. And he says, upgrade to what, Todd? To what? What do you want me to do? For new stuff to come out. Going to the future and get one of those PCs. Yeah. That'll do that. Yeah, so the choppy feeling and all that. Oof. Yeah.
00:14:03
Speaker
Are we going to beat up on, on the, on the UIs or what, what are like the actual down in the meat of the game? What are the things that they do? You're talking about like mechanically. Mechanically. Yeah. Like story tropes. Like to me, I've always despised the, um, I have to follow an NPC that walks a little faster than I walk, but not as fast as I run. So I'm just there. Sure. All right. Yeah. I mean, I kind of despise that as.
00:14:33
Speaker
It just feels like that became a crutch that games have relied on to where it's like, well, this is ostensibly a cutscene, but we're going to give you a modicum of control during it. So you're going to just wander through this cutscene while we deliver exposition towards you.
00:14:49
Speaker
Yeah, and it gets especially frustrating when you have those moments where, like you said, if there's not a dedicated button to match speed, you're like, this looks stupid. Like what I'm doing right now looks stupid. I just start circling the character anymore. Every game does it. It's horrible. Yeah, circling over. One for me is like talking about dedicated buttons is
00:15:11
Speaker
games where they have different buttons for things that don't require different buttons. So a common one for this is so usually if you're on mouse and keyboard, interact will usually be on something like F. Yeah. Like pick something that will be F, but then in the same game, when you go and talk to someone, they'll put talk to the character on like E. So it's on a different button because it's a different thing. Yeah. You are interacting with that person. So compartmentalize it and put it on F.
00:15:40
Speaker
So it's the same thing. You're never going to need to talk to someone and pick something up at the same time. Yeah. Just do that. I'm like, why is this key bind here? Another one for me is I hate, uh, like crouch or anything like that being on control because it's, I just, I hate how it feels. And I use like, I don't think I can put it in my cam. I use like a weird gaming Nostromo thing. It's hard to describe. It's like a gaming cam thing. What's going on there?
00:16:10
Speaker
I'll try and lift it up. I'll show you where they're trying to even picture it out of this thing. Oh, there you go. So that's for your left hand. I play a lot of MMOs, right? So I need lots of fast focus camera. I need lots of like fast access to buttons and it's got loads on it, but it doesn't have control.
00:16:30
Speaker
And so when I'm using that, I can't use control. So in default in Helldivers to use your strategies, it's like press or hold control and then do the taps. I would have to lift my hand off of my device, move to the keyboard and then start doing it. It was really clunky, but I think that's definitely a me problem.
Game Design and Narrative Challenges
00:16:51
Speaker
No, in a similar vein, if certain things are tethered to the L3 or R3 button, so like clicking in the analog sticks, specifically the L3 button, and I can't untether it, I end up accidentally hitting that so much because when shit hits the fan, stuff gets intense, or if I get started with a horror game, I will, without fail, when I hit that analog stick, I will press it in as well.
00:17:20
Speaker
And so I will, if that is use an item, I will use an item. If that is like throw my grenade, I will throw my grenade. I'm like, I didn't want to do any of this. Like I need to put this on a different button. That tied into, I guess that's the cause of the symptom I had written down, which is like, if my health is full and I accidentally press use health item, do not use me health item. Be aware of it. Not for me, sir.
00:17:45
Speaker
It'll be fun. It's like when, what is it? Like you don't have an, you're just wanting to arrest a gas station hot dog, you know, but you don't really have three bucks in your account. And they're like, all right, now it's a 50 buck hot dog. Cause you overdrew. And it's like, you could have just not let it go. Yeah. Yeah.
00:18:02
Speaker
I don't like when on FPS games where the aim down sights is on toggle rather than defaulting to hold. I hate like... Oh, okay. Yeah, that's a good one. Confused. I get it. But I think if you have those options, you should make them like in your tutorial, you should allow the player to pick what they're doing. That's where I show my hand as a bit of an extremist. I had one. It's absolutely not rational in any way, but I wish there was like for a specific genre, there was a universal
00:18:32
Speaker
key binding or control scheme so to speak because I'm tired of going through three different shooters and it's like your equip is on three different keys. The flashlight should always be F. We should always jump with spacebar. Grenade is always G or whatever. But then that just goes to more so like custom keybinds. If you don't let me customize the keybinds.
00:18:55
Speaker
That's, that's on you. But yeah, there's the controller saying, if you don't let me remap, I'm in, it really does me in. I do not like that at all because if you're juggling multiple games at once, which, you know, partly might be an us issue given our jobs, but also like, I don't know, a lot of people bounce between a couple of different games and if they have any similarity to them, then there are differences in controls. Like I was playing like a dragon persona, uh,
00:19:23
Speaker
Final Fantasy and Resident Evil 2 remake all like within the same time period and every time I would go to new one granted Resident Evil is Still a third-person game When I would get to those when I'd get to a new game It would just be like that Gandalf of like I have no memory of this place I've forgotten everything that this game taught me because I spent an hour in another game. I
00:19:45
Speaker
Not just that, but also accessibility. A good friend of mine, she only has one hand, and she cannot play games like God of War or The Witcher on console because they do not allow for remapping of controls, and the game is completely inaccessible to her. And remappable controls on controller is definitely something they could have done.
00:20:09
Speaker
You know, but they haven't and it's excluded a huge portion of people. Accessibility is a huge thing for me. If there are common accessibility options, like colorblind modes as someone who's colorblind, you know, if you don't have those, I'm just like, what are you doing? You know, like, especially if it's a multiplayer game where seeing colors of enemies and icons and stuff is really important. I'm glad you loved Ruiner. I can play my red game, Jay. Red game. Oh, God.
00:20:37
Speaker
accessibility options. Yeah, it's one that people I guess don't realize until they themselves are affected or somebody else is affected, right? But, you know, that can just mean the world to these people. Yeah, and it's, do you give indie games a pat, like,
00:20:54
Speaker
Do you weigh in terms of accessibility options? Do you like expect more from a first party Sony game than you would from? Yeah. Oh yeah. If it's AAA, I'm like, what are you doing? For AAA, I should be able to be in a coma and play your game. Yeah. Like that's the level of accessibility I'm expecting. Indy, I'm more lenient. It's a miracle you made the game, I guess. Yeah.
00:21:17
Speaker
It depends on the level. Like colorblind modes, if it's indie, I can forgive because it's not something that's game breaking. If you are in chat and you are making a game and you are indie, have remappable controls for controllers and PC because it will take you a while to do, but it will make your game accessible to a huge portion of people.
00:21:39
Speaker
So, that's one I can't really forgive. Unless it's an old game, you know, I don't expect to be remapping my controls in Beyond Good and Evil, you know? Yeah, yeah. It's funny you mentioning that. Like, that kind of reminds me of Frosty Video the other week of sort of advice that you'd give to indie developers making demos. Like, listen, these are like baseline things that if you don't include them, you're gonna lose like
00:22:02
Speaker
at least you, if not a sizable portion of a potential player base by being like, well, this isn't here, I'm just gonna go on to the next one.
00:22:09
Speaker
Yeah, it's just like that minimal line, just like going to any kind of diner. I'll always get some eggs for us to start with. I'm like, if you can't make these eggs, oh, I've got no faith for the rest of it. There's no hope. It's the easiest one there. Yeah. Same thing with the audio and whatnot. That's always been an issue, settings. I always feel like maybe people are being very irrational, right? But now I do find that the average player is more like
00:22:37
Speaker
picky with what they like in their games so like if it's if the audio is just one slider what have you done here yeah you know it's layered but it's just one slider what can i do there small little sin for me uh that thing where games um you turn them on for the first time and the audio is blaring out like why
00:22:54
Speaker
Why would you err on the quiet side? Yeah, why not quiet? Was this supposed to be played through my TV? Why? Yeah. Why are you so loud? The baseline has to be loud so that screens and devices that cannot go to higher volumes, that is playable. I understand why, as a sound designer, I get why they do it, but I still get audibly flashbanged by these things all the time.
00:23:20
Speaker
You can have it go louder just like start your game at 50% and then the options menu crank even crank it up those letters you want but like yeah getting getting Maybe it's a it's a literal flashbang effect Yeah, yeah, we get your attention
00:23:37
Speaker
Yeah, I had them. There was one game. I forgot what it was, but it was a very narrative heavy game with a narrator that like kind of follows you around and whatnot. But at the start, the first thing you see is a slider with audio and the narrator is going in a quieter way. He's saying, hey, can you hear me? And you can't essentially. So you're moving this slider and he's like, hey, how about now? How's this work for you? Oh, that's clever.
00:23:58
Speaker
I was like, okay, that's cool. It's like, yeah, like this is the level that you're going to hear me out for most of the games to get used to it. And like, yeah, that's really clever. That's a good way to change. Like, has anyone ever done a jump scare with like a horror game with your, uh, like your gamma and your brightness setting? You know how you start a game and you're like moving it up. Like, I feel like that's an easy place for like a real, a real quick fuck you from. Yeah, that's, that's a great idea. I'd love to make a game, um, that was just menus, like,
00:24:27
Speaker
You have to solve puzzles in a menu system. That would be funny. I did a lot of stuff like that in a few of his games. Yeah. But I'd love to make an entire game based around that. That'd be fun. And what was this thing? This is a very niche thing. It's probably not going to make much sense. But what was it?
00:24:45
Speaker
A lot of sliders are made incorrectly. That's why it's sort of like at 100% volume and at 75%, you can't really tell a difference. But then you're like, at 10% and 5%, it goes from I can kind of hear it to it's gone. Yeah. Yeah. Where it feels like it's not an actual percentage. Yeah. Or it's too drastic. I forgot what the name for that is. Some audio engineer will probably know. Yeah. Or someone who deals with sliders.
00:25:12
Speaker
It's called just lying. It's called straight up lying. No, it's a mathematical thing because if you go out like a bucket of quarters and it's just two quarters, if I remove one, it's going to look drastically different. Whereas if the bucket is full of quarters and I remove 10, you won't really notice it.
00:25:27
Speaker
Okay. So I forget what that effect is called, but that's why like, bucket, bucket, bucket of quarters. Yeah. Yeah. We're at the, at the higher end. There it is. Yeah. Volume isn't linear. It's, it's logarithmic, but it's, you get linear sliders.
00:25:47
Speaker
They display it as a linear slide. What's logarithmic? Logarithmic means it comes with nice jams. It logs and it's got rhythm. Oh, okay. Gotcha. Like a woodwind of some sorts. Woodwind slider, yeah, the best kind. I've been playing a lot of RPGs, so I have a couple RPG-centric
00:26:13
Speaker
little pet peeves. One, which most games have gotten past, but if I go to a store in an RPG and I'm looking at gear, and you aren't immediately comparing it to what I'm currently wearing, and then if I buy it, you don't immediately give me the option to equip it and then sell my old shit, what are we doing here? What are we doing? You need to make this, I'm a consumer in your fictional store, you need to make this accommodating for me, video game shopkeeper.
00:26:42
Speaker
Uh, that's one that annoys me. And then, uh, also an RPGs. If, if, if I have a party and I have four characters and the game ends, if the main character is down, that to me is ridiculous. When I'm like, I got three people, they have healing spells. They have items. Like they can, they can throw a Phoenix down my way. They can like cast a raise on me. Why is the game over? Just because there's this fucking yokel.
00:27:06
Speaker
yeah you could argue that it's a perspective thing oh you're playing from the perspective of this character but if you actively have spells to save other characters on other characters that makes no sense no it's silly it's like get out get out of town i don't like it yeah
00:27:22
Speaker
And then the last one that I noticed a little bit from Final Fantasy because it had this problem, but I'm just gonna dovetail in the FromSoft too.
Inventory and Cutscene Frustrations
00:27:31
Speaker
If your game has a finite amount of save spots in the year 2024, like Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, I think only has 12 save slots. So when you're saving the game, and I was saving like often because I was like, I'm gonna have to capture footage for the bite size and stuff like this.
00:27:50
Speaker
And why are there just 12 save slots? Why can't we just have infinite? What is the point of having only 12? It's not a memory card issue like it was on the PS1. It just feels ridiculous to me. And that's subtailing into FromSoft. I think having one save file that autosaves is bad. I think it's stupid. And I get that that's in the DNA of their games. I'm like, I think that's fucking stupid. No DNA is stupid.
00:28:19
Speaker
From a dev perspective, I'm not a programmer, but I was having this exact conversation with one of my programmer friends the other day. We're working on a game. And he was talking about making our saving a lot simpler and making it so that we can really bring down the data of how chunky these saves are.
00:28:42
Speaker
It takes up a lot of space and it can take up a lot of space on your computer based on how big the game is and how much data is actually being saved. So on games like where you're calculating what items people have, what spells they have available, where they are on a huge map, that's a lot of data. So if you have an infinite amount, there can be issues where the game can save itself a whole bunch.
00:29:07
Speaker
and then do it infinitely and then the game breaks because infinite is bad. So I get it but I agree that it shouldn't be like an arbitrarily small number like 12. It should be
00:29:22
Speaker
What are you doing saving so much, Marty? What do you need 12 saves for? I'm creating a bunch of, it was mostly for being able to go back and be like, oh, I could capture stuff at this point in the game and this point in the game. Cause they had like very specific capture guidelines for pre-release, but it's just in my main, this could be pure ignorance on my part, which it probably is. I just assumed save files were like 50 kilobytes.
00:29:46
Speaker
It depends on the game. It's definitely an optimization thing. And like I said, it depends on the type of game and, um, how it was made, what engine it was made in. There's so, there's so many factors, you know, even though we have, you know, game, uh, engines like UE five and unity and Godot and stuff like that, the method on how we do these things isn't standardized.
00:30:16
Speaker
So some games could just break if they had 13 saves and they don't know how to fix it. And to them, that's a low priority list from getting, you know, another character's model in and stuff like that. Yeah, low priority because it's only weirdos like me who are angry about it.
00:30:33
Speaker
Now, we're back in those old PlayStation days with Tarzan. You could get a save, but just like, remember this code now? Remember that? You had it like right now. The worst is when it would be like symbols. And I'm like, will you draw this right? It was like, banana, apple, orange, orange, orange, apple. Oh, no, apple and orange. I just put a circle. They both look exactly the same. Let's go back to those days. I'm keen. I want more secrets. I want more
00:30:58
Speaker
extra busy work. I don't think busy work is a bad thing. I think we need more of it. I think games are getting boring because we're not doing it.
00:31:06
Speaker
I also noticed when playing those games recently, this is a problem I could easily fix, I think, if I just go into my console settings. But I don't mind a game with long cutscenes. I think long cutscenes. I'm a big Kojima fan. I don't mind. If you want to sit me down for 90 minutes and story on me, then you can story all over me. When the console is like, you haven't touched a controller in a while, so I'm just going to dim. I'm like, OK, you guys got to speak to each other. You have to know I am watching this thing.
00:31:48
Speaker
I agree the game should be communicating and doing movement in the background during it so it doesn't go into idle mode on the console.
00:31:59
Speaker
But another thing, I have a friend, which is the absolute extreme of this hate. I have a friend who will open a game, and if it opens with a cutscene, which most games do,
00:32:10
Speaker
If it is not skippable, he will immediately alt F4 and never open the game again. That's a very rational response. He should be able to do that. He's there for gameplay only. He doesn't care about story. Even in story-driven games, he just wants to play. And he'll pay attention if it grabs him. I know, he's strange. I love him to bits, but he's weird. No, but I do as much. Even though I love cutscenes, let me pause or skip whatever I want.
00:32:36
Speaker
Yeah. Well, I'd like a pause. I'd like a pause on a cut screen. I don't like feeling like I'm locked in and off. So like if I press anything, I don't know if you're one of those that's like pressing. I hate that worry where I'm like, if I, which is, I think less and less now, but if like, if I hit pause, are we just going to, Oh, you're just going to pause. Sometimes I'll be like, maybe I'll just back out to the Xbox menu. Like, I assume the game is just sitting there and everything's fine. Yeah.
00:32:58
Speaker
That's a weird one. I can kind of relate. I'm very like, give me the gameplay, give me the meat and whatnot. But yeah, if it's not anticipated, because I would have never guessed the new God of Wars to be so like cutscene heavy and like get moving and whatnot, especially coming from the older ones.
00:33:15
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. How does, would your friend Jay, like count what God of War does as cut scenes? Cause like it's all in engine and everything and like, but it does start with like minutes of non-interactivity, like that kind of thing.
00:33:32
Speaker
So I know he loves limits. It's an hour. He really likes it. And I think it all comes down to narrative delivery, right? So in my opinion, most people get engaged first by gameplay rather than narrative. A lot of people switch off. And so if you open your game with a cutscene, I think that's starting off on the wrong foot. I think you should start with gameplay, not knowing anything about the world.
00:33:56
Speaker
learned a bit of it digestically through the world and then be given a big cutscene and then you have they're like trying to give the context before they give the meat and I think you should give a little bit of meat and then give context to that meat and then you have
00:34:11
Speaker
a context for the context. Does that make sense? Yeah, what about those things where it's like tiny cutscene and then you don't realize that it's transitioned and it's you and you're just standing there as a lot of stuff's happening and you're like, all right, is it my turn? Oh.
00:34:26
Speaker
Yeah, definitely cry three playing through it with Casey for our Thursday night streams Without fail every boss fight would like halfway through the boss fight the boss would have some sort of a transformation and it would be like a cutscene and then the boss splits in half or pulls an extra sword out and Without fail the boss would in a cutscene start to do an attack It would switch to gameplay and you'd have a quarter of a second before you go
00:34:51
Speaker
And I'm like, this is ridiculous. And I guess it's like, you know, teaching you to always be paying attention, but like there needs to be like a slight buffer after a cutscene and just like make it, you know, like for us said, you need to let me know that I can currently play the video game, but then also don't just like put me on the defensive or defensive immediately.
00:35:13
Speaker
From a clever, they had a good framing during a boss fight where the boss would start doing that, right? But the whole time the camera was framed in a way so that I can see my character still moving. I'm still actually like actively there. Yeah, yeah. And I was more ready for that. But it is about the context and that like be ready for it, as was mentioned, like quick time events. I think I don't think people inherently hate them. It's just that it's like, oh, I thought I was watching a cutscene and now I fell.
00:35:39
Speaker
Again, with what I was saying about where you place a beginning cutscene, you are exposition. I think the same for transitions. I prefer it from gameplay to cutscene.
00:35:53
Speaker
Spider-Man 2 does this really well. They will take gameplay and movement and then transition you into certain animations that then roll into cutscenes. And I know this wasn't the case, but because sometimes they ask for quick time events in that game, if I felt like Spider-Man should jump, I would just try and jump and do things. And in those moments, it felt as if I was doing it. Yeah.
00:36:20
Speaker
obviously wasn't and I'm sure a lot of other people have done this as well but it felt really good so I think it would be cool to have a system where instead of having a needed you know quick time event let's say you're fighting a boss and it swings at you and he will your character will always dodge but if you try and dodge
00:36:38
Speaker
you get like a bonus, or I don't know, maybe more damage on the boss or something else happens, you know, there's a little bit of spice. And if the player is aware of it, I think that will allow them to pay more attention and naturally do the things they want rather than being told what to do. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, man. It's like a small segment of just cutscene sins. Like when you go through, you beat the boss's ass and you come out of the cutscene with you getting whacked.
00:37:03
Speaker
It's like I was winning before this cut. I was just as help bars down to zero. Why did I just get hit? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Or yeah.
00:37:12
Speaker
Oh, go ahead. This is kind of related to 3D modeling. So when you 3D model, everyone will know T-pose. And if people don't know why we do that, it's because of animations and you go to default so that when you model armpits and underarms, when you put the arms back down, they're not clipping into each other. And if they were modeled like this, when you would pull the arm up, the textures would stretch. So you start in T-pose.
00:37:39
Speaker
and one of the things in modelling and cutscenes that I hate is when you're watching a cutscene which people have slaved over for hundreds of hours and then you see a piece of armour like clipping through their body or like going through other items I irrationally hate clipping instead as my housemate it's it's very frustrating I'm like oh but I know how much it would take to fix it
00:38:04
Speaker
But it still, it irks me because it gives me the ick as the chillum would say. It gives me the ick. That is the phrasing though. I like having the ick. Yeah, I like the ick. Yeah, I don't... I'm trying to think of little things like that that really bug me. Like clipping and those visual things don't... I don't know, because I don't... I think I've said this before in the pod. I don't...
00:38:29
Speaker
Like when I'm watching a movie or playing a game, I'm never like so absorbed that I'm like, I am there. I am in this reality and I have now been removed from it, which just might be like a flaw in how I observe things. So like those little, those sort of things that like a glitch in the matrix doesn't really bother me, but you know, there's, there's plenty of those smaller things that
00:38:54
Speaker
Make it feels like I'm being talked to as opposed to talked with yeah, you know even as small as Which we've talked about before a ton on here of audio logs If I get an audio log and I need to sit in a menu to listen to it as opposed to listen to it while walking around your world Like why did you include this here? Like why did you even? Why did you even voice it if I if I can't listen to this especially if it's like one of those things where you collected a thing that is diagetically supposed to be
00:39:25
Speaker
playing that sound to you. Like you, you clip, you collected a tape or you hit a button on a, on a speaker or something. Just let me walk around, you know, the, the, the setting and still listen. I agree. But also within the same vein, I hate when I pick those up, those things immediately start playing and I can't stop them. Sure. If it's something like an opt in almost in a way, it should be like,
00:39:52
Speaker
single button press to pick up. And then there's a qualifier on the side of the screen where it comes up that says press A to listen. And if I don't, I can move on because I hate it when I'm playing these games, especially if they've not accounted for this. Your character will be talking or something will be happening. And then I'll be exploring. Oh, I'll pick up a log and then that will immediately start playing and they talk over each other. And yeah, Bioshock does this and it frustrates the hell out of me. Yeah.
00:40:20
Speaker
Why are they always so verbose? It's always these gut dang egghead scientists with a lot to say. If I was a guy, if I was a scientist and I had a vocal voice recording journal, I'd just be like, eggs, ham, lettuce, next time I'm at the groceries. And then like, oh yeah, I needed to swap out the fuse, which I left in the end and that's it.
00:40:39
Speaker
I love how those audio logs by scientists will always go from like, oh, we're here, we're doing it, everything's great. Oh no, everything fucked up. Every Resident Evil audio log is like, are we God? We might be God. Oh no, the monsters, the frog monsters we created.
00:40:57
Speaker
I got to do that in the game Vaproom. That was one of the bigger voicing things I'd done. And it's like, yeah, all right, you're exuberant. You're happy. You're the lead scientist here. It's like, oh, no, we're the bad guys. Something bad's happening. Damn, this sucks. I can't believe the zombies turned on us. I thought we'd be able to control them.
00:41:14
Speaker
It's just exposition. I hate optional or locked-in exposition. If I want to digest more of your story, I will digest more of your story. Souls does this really well. You can complete Dark Souls, pretty much any of them, and barely take in any of the story. But if you want to, and I think this is why Dark Souls channels dissect the
00:41:40
Speaker
the lore are so popular is because it is so not in your face and so hidden. And if a game starts and, you know, there's no cut scene, but I walk into a village and then the village elder comes up and he tells, he makes me sit there for five minutes, especially if I can, I still have control of the character and I can move around. My brain's like, I don't care because you're making me stop. Like, can we go? Can we do stuff? And then most of the times I'll just alter for like, I'm done. I'll go play Fortnite or whatever.
00:42:10
Speaker
There's a there's a there's a power to like opting in like it makes it makes the player feel like you have agency of being like alright I am choosing to listen to this story and I'm choosing to read this and dig deeper as opposed to the game is forcing it onto me.
00:42:27
Speaker
Yeah. Do you guys have any other ones? Or do you want to move to Super
Community Engagement and Super Chats
00:42:32
Speaker
Chats? We have a lot of Super Chats that are going to be for a lot of good spoofing and goofing. Yeah, I've got a bunch of quick fire ones, but I think that's why we'll be covering the Super Chats. Or do you think they'll show up? Surely. It can't be. See, maybe I'm just, again, irrational with what I like, because I play a lot of rogues I despise with the new loot gear system stuff, where it doesn't tell you what the thing does. It's like, it makes you faster.
00:42:54
Speaker
how faster which sure yeah yeah it makes you slightly tankier like in what way in what way i don't know that's also the whole thing like when i was complaining about
00:43:07
Speaker
God of War Ragnarok, how every time it'd be like, oh, plus 0.5% extra frost damage. And it's like, this is meaningless to me. This isn't like, to me, getting gear and getting new loot, new equipment is exciting when you're like, there is a tangible difference. I could see this now. I could see this in how I'm playing, how much damage I'm giving, how much damage I'm receiving. And when you get into that crazy minutia, you just can't
00:43:35
Speaker
They're not so expensive. No, I don't know. And you're better off not doing it. It actually does damage to your game. This is one of the things. I mean, I've made an episode on this. There's just don't get this. They think if you give people stuff, they'll be happy. And that's not how human reward works. Like how we. Not wrong, but I'm used to it. Yeah, it's the equivalent of like you get excited if you see if you find a dollar in your pocket, you don't get excited if you find a penny in your pocket.
00:44:05
Speaker
Like, if I reach into my pocket while I'm doing the laundry, and I'm like, oh shit, a dollar? That's cool. But if I reach into my pocket, and I'm like, there's a penny in here, I'm like, why was this in here? And yeah, contextualize it, be like, oh, you see, it's a very rare misprint, and it's actually worth all this much. And that's why, like, that last one was sort of, I despise, in looter shooters, when they give you the mandatory legendary, like, that's not legendary, that's not rare, that's not, everyone's got this.
00:44:28
Speaker
yeah yeah you had to say that i'm your boss you know yeah it's it's all about it
00:44:38
Speaker
Okay, the coin examples are a really great one because you can have it be two things. You can be like, well, if you find a coin, you can put it, but it allows you to teleport. Well, that's cool. But again, if you're like, this coin's a misprint and it's worth a hundred grand, but you have to go on this big, long journey to go hand this thing and do this stuff, which will lead you to more content, then that's entertaining. But loot shooters are just like, yeah, 0.5% frost damage. It's just, yeah. So I didn't even know we could do frost damage. That's fun.
00:45:10
Speaker
I feel bad every time frost damage is my go-to that I complain about. I feel bad whenever I say that around you because it sounds like I'm just mad at you. I'm just getting stronger. Your damage is up by 1%. Really quick, do you guys still use cash?
00:45:23
Speaker
Like physical cash? Like, uh, yes, I, I hit, I hit up the taco trucks and sometimes the thing's not working. So yeah, I still like hearing cash around lamp. He was surprised. I still carry cash. I still carry cash because there's like you said, certain small things like that, like, like food, food trucks and everything. Also, um, there's, there's certain dive bars. I like that are cash only. I, I will happily get cash out if it's like a local business and you know, like they can't, I mean, it's very, you know,
00:45:51
Speaker
easy to get card machines nowadays as loads of products that allow small businesses to use them. But if they're doing it for whatever reason, I'll happily you know, there's a stall at the Christmas market, I'll get some money out for them and like do stuff. But one of my pet peeves is if I walk in this isn't games, but if I walk into a store, and you don't have prices on your products, I will walk out.
00:46:11
Speaker
Oh, that's pretty bad. Because I hate it. I'm like, one, you're making me walk up to ask you so that when you tell me the price, people who are socially anxious feel guilty and will buy the thing. Yeah, yeah. And I think that's scummy as hell. I was in Glastonbury, which is a place in England, and there was these beautiful lamps. They were like stunning. So stunning to the point where me, someone who doesn't usually give a fuck about lamps, was like, I want one of these lamps.
00:46:38
Speaker
No prices. I'm out. You're not getting my money. See you later. Yeah. The game equivalent of that is like that five different currency things and now I can't keep track of the prices.
00:46:49
Speaker
Yeah. These are just real life sins. Listen, if you're selling a burger and it doesn't come with fries, get the fuck out of here. What are you doing? I'm not paying extra for 10 bucks. What do you mean? It's five guys. Maybe you should pay. Maybe you should fire three of the guys and just make it two guys. These guys. Five guys is ridiculous. Five guys is a Ponzi scheme. People out here paying. What's a Ponzi scheme about five guys? It's like $20 for a hamburger.
00:47:29
Speaker
The other four guys are like, oh, why do prizes keep going up? No idea. I will. One guy's burger, too many fries. I want fries with that because it definitely does not come with it. Excellent. All right. We're jumping in a lot of super chats. Right off the bat, remember, thank you everyone who's already donated, who will donate. I believe our current funding goal is, I don't think we have a current funding goal.
00:47:40
Speaker
Oh, is it? I haven't been on a long time. That's don't go there. Don't go there. The guys are pocketing that money and they're probably, they're funding the terrorists. Yeah.
00:47:51
Speaker
Our current funding goal is everyone's salary because it turns out running a business with over a dozen full-time employees and several contractors and freelancers is very expensive. So thank you all so much. That is our funding goal. Evan M, supported over on CoFi. Thank you so much, Evan. That was yesterday. But I don't think anyone read it yesterday because we didn't have any streams yesterday.
00:48:12
Speaker
Uh, Jewel Rao, a new member in Tipchar. Thank you so much. Jewel Paul, $2 don't know. I hate waifus in video games. Paul, get the fuck out of here. I mean, uh, there's, that, there was a trend. I think it's kind of lightened up a little bit. Oh, so much fan service, right? And I was like- Are you anti fan service?
00:48:30
Speaker
Uh, to, to the detriment. At some point it's like, all right, I don't want anyone walking in behind me while I'm playing this. And it's always, it's always super unfair to, to the ladies, because it's always like big bosoms and big bare asses. Meanwhile, the male characters are like, oh, cool. He's a big bear. And like this one, he's a monster of sorts. And no, the women, it's like little fangs, big tits. Okay. Yeah. It's kind of boring. If anything else, yeah, it's just kind of boring.
00:48:58
Speaker
I respected that Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, went the fanservice route with the, I think, are you literally already showing it, Eric? That's incredible. Went the fanservice route with the bikinis and the beachwear for Aerith and Tifa and Yuffie. However, also, you can get shirtless cloud. It's fucking washboard abs. And you can also get Barrett in a sailor suit, which I think is great.
00:49:20
Speaker
Now you don't get, like, naked Derek, but you get Barrett in the sailor suit, who I think looks... It's like game 18 plus, because that's, that's all. I believe it should be, it should be equal. The women should get some grotesque skins as well, and the men should have some where they're just, like, in speedos. Sure. Yeah. Yeah.
00:49:36
Speaker
just options right like if you're if you're playing an mmm or something and the same exact gear looks like a massive chest plate on a dude but it's a bikini on a woman yeah just allow me to pick and have my muscled out roid freak in a bikini yeah and you know plate on my female character just let me choose oh we ask for it's too much
00:49:57
Speaker
Flop, with a $4.99 dono, thank you so much. Flop, after the last design delve on health bars, the secret second health bar, if without fanfare, is the worst sin. Nameless boss, that's actually two bosses.
00:50:12
Speaker
Yeah, so much messing around with the health bar was a bit annoying. It was a thymasia where it's like, hey, look, you hit them, they lose all this health, but then you have to do this other thing so that it stays gone. And I'm like, okay, I'm just playing with your health bars here. Yeah. It has to be something that's like, clever part of the story. Like the, um, the
00:50:38
Speaker
yeah the ape from sacro amazing amazing like subversion of expectations and that health bar second health bar is urn but it's if you destroy a boss's health the worst one is when they have five health bars and they're this long
00:50:56
Speaker
And you take down one, and then below it is another one, just a different color. And it goes down. Yeah, it's like, we're going to start green, and then we're going to go to orange, and then we're going to go to yellow, and then we're going to go to red. And we're like, when do you end? It doesn't make it feel any less gargantuan-y huge. Like, just stop. At that point, don't have a health bar. Or have you fight it until it dies? Let the health bar just be a full border around the screen. It looks like a Mario Kart track, and so I know how far I have. I would actually really like that.
00:51:25
Speaker
Um, yeah. And the, uh, the guardian ape thing feels like something you can only do once. Like that is a, like a sleight of hand trick or just like a surprise that doesn't work if you do it again, but she, you guys say surprise, but I was with Amy recently on that one and we'd already like, what, go each hero or whatever his name has got like three health bars. No, that from software is not sneaky with like, Oh, here comes another one. Like, no, damn, you cut his head off. No, you don't expect nothing.
00:51:54
Speaker
It's nothing to me as I was on the floor and takes 20 seconds to get back up. Like it's not like he goes into a cut scene and then he gets up in the cut scene. Yeah, but the fog never left or anything. I was like until I can see that like it's defeated and I can actually walk out of here. I'm like, no, it's going to it's going to come up. I don't give the splash. It says pray whatever it says. And then he comes back up. I do agree. They do do double health bars and souls a lot or, you know, push into a transition period where, you know, can each pulls a
00:52:22
Speaker
sort out of his face or whatever.
00:52:25
Speaker
Yeah. I thought you'd say his ass and I was like, that you shouldn't put us on. I was going to say ass, but samurai on a cob. The kids are here. The cop. Jesus. Uh, as our Arthur, thank you so much for the don't know. Uh, I can't be here live. So hi me from the future. Sorry about the mess. Uh, sin poorly planned checkpoints can make a difficulty spike feel like a chore. Uh, yes. I feel like if, I don't know, if your thing is,
00:52:55
Speaker
I get that like the point of a gauntlet might be, can you do the whole thing? But if at a certain point, if I've learned the beginning of it, and then that feels like busy work just to get to the middle of the thing that I'm trying to learn, it feels like that's just punishing me for trying.
00:53:12
Speaker
Right, yeah, the boss rushes and I get that. To me, I don't mind too much, so much as when the checkpoint is the only way to save. I'm like, oh my gosh, I haven't seen these in years. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like imagine if all your progress, like, disappeared if you didn't get to the next bonfire. And Dark Souls, like, just gone.
00:53:34
Speaker
Yeah. Well, it's like, it's the Ori and the Blind Forest idea. Imagine if all of your progress was deleted because you forgot to put down a checkpoint and it was an hour ago. It's like, Oh, well I'm just going to close the game then. I'm not coming back. What a great game. They left that system in, or in the will of worst. Forest is going to stay blind. Yeah. Um, yeah, that's, uh, that feels like
00:54:00
Speaker
Almost, I guess part of the checkpointing one feels like punishing the player for experimentation, which is something I was talking about on a stream the other day. Bloodborne, as much as I love Bloodborne, the blood vial system feels like it punishes experimentation and punishes
00:54:18
Speaker
Trying everything. It's a terrible system. It's garbage shows with there's a reason they haven't done it again Yeah, it's bad. I want to make my I want to make my game designer ranks all estus flasks video. Oh That's fun. That's one
00:54:34
Speaker
Yeah, because I've got lots to say about how souls have done all of the all of the different healing and blood vases by far in garbage F tier. Yeah, don't do this again. Yeah, they keep saying no, we're not going to just port it over to PC. We want to remaster it or re redo it.
00:54:53
Speaker
And then there was people like, why would you do that? But Miyazaki was saying like, be well, new tech, we can get away with new stuff that we couldn't back then. I was like, let him redo the blood files. Let him. There's only a finite number of them in the game. You have to go into the swamp and get them.
00:55:10
Speaker
There's only one. There's only one, right? You get to jargon it like a sunny day. I would say one of the things with the remaster is that I could be wrong, but I've heard that the physics system is tied to frame rate. And if you uncap the frame rate, the game breaks. So it's basically never going to get pointed to PC because of that, unless they redo the whole thing. Yeah, but I could be wrong on that. But yeah, I think blood valve break.
00:55:37
Speaker
They ruin the game for a huge majority of people. I mean, it doesn't exist anymore, but my old Bloodborne video, I spoke about this. It was a huge portion of my video. Maybe I should just make a whole episode on it. Or I'll do that ranking one. I don't know. But it ruins the game for a huge portion of players, and it doesn't affect the people at the top. And they are the people who say, well, it's not a problem for me. It's like, yeah, but you're not bad at this game, right? Sure. Yeah.
00:56:05
Speaker
Yeah, another, I think they've fixed it since then or added new modes since then, but Marvel Snap at launch, every match was a ranked match that if you lost, you would go down in rank. And so it kind of like encouraged you or discouraged you from experimenting with new decks.
00:56:28
Speaker
You know, you'd find what you were comfortable with and you'd lean on that because you didn't want to experiment with a new deck that you weren't sure of because if you did that you would just get creamed a bunch and then as you're learning how to play the deck and then lose a bunch of ranks and then the season would end and you wouldn't get all the goodies or whatever. You shouldn't be visible in my opinion. A lot of people have a problem with skill-based matchmaking and like hidden MMR.
00:56:50
Speaker
because one of the arguments is, well, I don't want to have to try every game, you know. Sometimes I just want to turn my brain off, you know. But depending on the game, you know, just go play a different game. It's making a fairest gameplay experience for a huge majority of people. A lot of the people who complain about skill-based matchmaking are people who are already very good at the game and want to just shit on bad players, and that's what they want to do.
00:57:16
Speaker
The skill-based matchmaking makes it a lot better for the majority of players, and that's why a lot of people use it. And having it be visible, like you said, makes you think, oh, well, I don't want to experiment. I don't want to try a new character in this mobile. I don't want to do this because it's going to ruin my rank. And that's why a lot of mobas in competitive games like this have ranked modes and casual modes. But in these casual modes, they still have skill-based matchmaking. It's just invisible. It's a hidden MMR.
00:57:42
Speaker
Yeah, but what I should have done there is at least separated it, because in Marvel Snap you can make decks, right? So you should have hidden MMR for the separate decks that way. If Marty's like, oh, I want to try these new cards, it starts them over from the bottom. And then if he's like, oh, this did pretty well, I'll make it my main deck. And then, you know, over there. You build up like a new MMR deck. Yeah, like, I think Dead by Daylight had that issue, because like, you could play, you could only, you could main one killer, and that was your MMR. And if you wanted to, hey, I'm going to try this new killer while you were stuck at that,
00:58:12
Speaker
new MMR, right? So it's like, imagine going from your main role MMR to your off role. And then now you're like, Oh, dear God, I don't even. Yeah. So I think that was just poor implementation.
00:58:23
Speaker
Yeah, that was something I'm relatively sure. I mean, I stopped playing after a little bit, but I think at some point they added like an unranked mode or just like a, hey, buck around with your decks here. Don't worry. It's not going to affect your battle pass score or whatever. Yeah. Got to love a battle pass score. Urbanem25zochi, thank you so much. Quick and dirty ports with mouse emulating game pads when porting to PC or locking frame rate because you can't be bothered to optimize for consoles.
00:58:53
Speaker
It feels like we've almost taken a collective step back in terms of our ports, whether it's PC to console or console to PC. I feel like more and more we're hearing high profile PC ports that are walked out at launch. Give and take now. From AAA publishers. Would you say we're taking? It's give and take now. I feel like we're hearing more about bad ports, but before we wouldn't have heard of the port, it just wouldn't have come through.
00:59:20
Speaker
Oh, okay. Yeah. So it's less of a percentage thing and more of just, there's just more of them now. Yeah, there's more. So there'll be more to complain about. That's what I figured. Like Bioshock on the switch is horrible, but it's either that or you don't get Bioshock. Yeah.
00:59:35
Speaker
I mean that's what yeah anytime there's like any game I know people are playing like doom on switch and I'm like if this bronze like shit What did you expect? That was funny
00:59:50
Speaker
You're like a big thing of poo water, but you're like, well, you want the Mortal Kombat. Poo water was good. Um, yeah, there's still aren't, aren't JRM ports, just like right click, save as dot PC. No, you got to go to rename and then change dot. Yeah. Change dot PS five to dot Xbox.
01:00:10
Speaker
No, it's like when I get it, when I get an image and it's a WebB image, which let me, let me see the one thing I don't like these WebP images. I don't know what those are. I agree. I will agree with that. Yeah. Whoever created those. Try them. And why did so many PNG websites have them saved like that? It's not a PNG. I came here for the PNGs. I want that to be PNG.
01:00:32
Speaker
Porting games is a massive undertaking. To the point where a lot of games will just make games for PC nowadays and then if they make a bunch of money, they'll start porting it because it's in a lot of cases, depending on the engine you're using, it's like building a new game. And that's not ideal, not good. And a lot of times not profitable, you know. So that's why they need to get profit first. But yeah, I get it. I don't get like the
01:01:02
Speaker
The frame caps I get, like a lot of the times, most of us can't see past 60 frames, so what's the point? You know, like just cap it at 60.
01:01:14
Speaker
Oh no, I can't. I've got like a really high refresh rate monitor and it just like doesn't affect me. I guess I've just got slow eyes. Yeah, slow eyes too. Yeah. Big Coke bottle glasses. Uh, Dower Dodger with a file or don't know. Thank you so much, Dower Dodger. Endless menus should earn you premium seating in hell.
01:01:33
Speaker
Oh, I thought you were just going to say premium currency. Like they should pay me for these horrible things. Premium currency on transatlantic flights. Yeah. Yeah. Endless menus. What are we doing? We used to be a country.
01:01:46
Speaker
We used to make, we used to make something. Uh, Hunter Rose with a $10 don't know. Thank you so much, Hunter. Uh, here's an easy one for you and escort quest where the escort T walks slower than your run speed and faster than your, uh, or slower than your, uh, walking faster than your runs. But yeah, that's what, uh, how do you feel about escort missions as a whole? So that's less the, um, like Frost, you were, uh, lamenting the ones where it's just like you're walking through a city alongside someone, exposition. What about needing to protect a helpless NPC?
01:02:16
Speaker
oh god that's the worst because i was like i'll kill you myself if you don't if you don't come with um i want them i want if the situation's dire act like it's it's dire all right number one and then number two i hate escort quests well no i'm they're like follow me but they won't move until i go like i have to go first
01:02:34
Speaker
I'm like, what am I following? You just said, follow me, but I'm the one that has to be in the foot. I'll follow from the rear. That's not how it works, yeah. Absolutely not how it works. Asgore of missions, they can be done well, but at that point I think the character itself needs to be almost god-like, you know? Is that delicate? I can't stand them.
01:02:51
Speaker
I am currently making an escort mission game. So this is close to my heart. Um, and we've been thinking about a lot of ways of how you make escort missions fun and what makes them bad. And one of the things that I feel is that a lot of the times in escort missions, you have specific game systems and then when the escort mission is added, this, your goal changes and it becomes something different. And that,
01:03:16
Speaker
i think is bad and what gives this harsh like change and what people find as a distaste also their fail state um usually comes a lot quicker because the creature or whatever you're protecting is slow um so i think it should always be attached to once you are escorting this thing it stays near you and your new fail state which is the same as it was before so let's say in a 2d stealth game if you are captured it's not that you die it's that this creature dies because it's
01:03:45
Speaker
whatever's chasing you is going to go for this thing you're escorting because it's fairly weaker because you're escorting it. So you're keeping the systems the same. You're just adding new stakes. And that's what I could make them think would make them entertaining. But we'll see in practice.
01:04:00
Speaker
Yeah, I mean a lot of it is too, is like do you have a bond and do you like really empathize with the thing you are escorting, whether it's another person or a creature or anything? I think the ones that do it well, like in Eco, that whole game is you escorting a
01:04:16
Speaker
the Princess Yorda. The bond between the two characters is so strong, right? From the get-go. The core mechanic is holding hands, and you are guiding this character, literally grasping onto them. Your save points are the two of you sitting on a bench, and when you reload a save, you've fallen asleep on each other, and you wake up from there.
01:04:39
Speaker
you get this like very strong, I will do anything to protect this character. Whereas in a lot of games, it's like, they'll just toss someone at you and you're like, well, I have no, I have no skin in this game other than literally getting to the next level. So I guess I will try to protect this person. Yeah. So it's as much the dress up as anyone, anything else. One of my favorite escort missions and they've done this and wow, is like when the character has a set path to get through and there's going to be a set amount of dangers and whatnot, but you can go ahead and like get rid of it all ahead of time.
01:05:07
Speaker
They're constantly coming at me. It's more like I just cleared out for them. But the one in WoW is a very drunk, egotistical pirate and you're killing everything ahead of him. And he gets through and he's like, yeah, no dangers that I can't take. And he's just stumbling through and having a good time. And I'm just watching him puke around the corner. And I'm like, well, you're kind of amusing. Yeah, it has to be fun. Simple as that.
01:05:32
Speaker
Uh, Jewel Rao, thank you so much for the don't know. A gaming sin is not being able to play certain big games on PC or a horrible PC port. Sad face. Also not being able to pet a dog or cat inside of a game. Cough cough, Nintendo cough cough. 100%. It feels like outside of Nintendo, we are entering a paradigm where like most games are getting PC ports. Uh, maybe it's a few years later, like...
01:05:55
Speaker
I'm sure Final Fantasy VII Rebirth will come to PC eventually, probably not for another year or two. But with Sony finally making the plunge and seeing success by their games, and something like Helldivers launching day and date on PC, I think that we're only going to get more and more. Whether the quality of the ports are there is another story. Agreed. Hopefully the quality's there.
01:06:16
Speaker
Uh, Old Hunter, thank you so much for a $5 donor. Massive difficulty or grind spikes near the end of a campaign. Let me finish your game. Thanks, fellas, for holding on the fort while dads are on a work trip. Thank you so much, Old Hunter. How do you feel about this? What should the end of the game be the hardest point in the game, or should the end of the game sort of be a come down?
01:06:39
Speaker
See, what it shouldn't be is an extreme divergence from everything else I've been doing thus far. Evil West, I thought it was pretty good. But then in the end, the entire boss arena was like, this guy doesn't move. He's a little like, boot scooting cowboy. He ain't rolling over these holes the way that they've assigned now. I'm like, this is just so out of left field. Like, I'm not sure what this was. I'm not sure what you're doing here.
01:07:04
Speaker
It's a final exam, but you're giving it on a course we didn't take. Why are you giving me an exam? This is a math class. Why are you giving me a literature exam? It's got some calculus for you. Spell it. That was awful. What was it? I think it was...
01:07:22
Speaker
Cause I'll take a power fantasy near the end where you just completely demolish the end bit. Or I'll take a like, damn, this is the hardest fight because it is, you know, and that's, that's what you were leading for. But don't, don't divulge too much from whatever it is that you were building up to. Savor it and have some respect for your ending. So that's all I want.
01:07:43
Speaker
Have respect for your players, do testing so that the majority of your testers could get through it with a fair challenge. And don't try and balance it so that everyone is going to have a hard time. Some players are just sick nasty at games and will absolutely demolish your game regardless. So stop trying to make it a big challenge for them. It should be...
01:08:00
Speaker
you know for your your average player because those really good players they're going to get to the end they're going to want out the boss and still think wow i am the tits you know this proves it just let them be the tits do you think do you think because and maybe this is unpopular i feel like a lot of games don't have an ending they more so just have the thing they put at the end of the game
01:08:21
Speaker
It feels like this kind of, I feel like you made this at some point in the middle of development and just went, you know what, that thing you made, just put that at the end. We have nowhere else we want to put it. Yeah. Do you mean like narratively or like narratively? I feel like they do their best mechanically where it's like, cause the tutorial modes aren't the first thing made, not always. I feel like the endings aren't also the last thing made. I feel like they're just kind of like, we made it and stick it at the end.
01:08:48
Speaker
Well, yeah, and sometimes you get to that end date, like the boss of the original Half-Life, the final boss, you're like, what the fuck is this? It's so different than everything that came before it. Like, that is one of those things where it's like a legendary game that you get to the end of and you're like, why am I fighting this thing? Like, where did this challenge come from? That was a Joker and Batman Arkham Asylum, wasn't it? Oh, yeah. When he gets all like buff and he takes the pain juice. What are we doing? What's happening, man? Silly.
01:09:14
Speaker
Ah, Dower Dodger with a two dollar
Personal Anecdotes and Gaming Stories
01:09:17
Speaker
donut. Thank you so much, Dower Dodger. My stars, Marty's a sports pirate. Straight to jail. Careful. I did that during the Mayweather fight and almost lost a Minecraft account.
01:09:29
Speaker
Oh, no. From Russia, it said it was Putin. It was Putin. Putin loved your little Minecraft world. Chris Ass, thank you so much, re-upping a tip jar. And Superboner, also re-upping a tip jar with the message, how about games which constantly steal control of the camera from a player at inopportune times? Alan Wake-1's baddies got so many cheap shots out of me each time the camera spun around during combat. Yeah, having a game take control of the camera is one of those
01:09:57
Speaker
you better know what you're doing kind of thing. If you're going to take control, you better have a firm hand on the wheel. Otherwise, it could quickly become annoying. What was it? Solstice, I think? It did that stationary camera as you transition through scenes over and over. But it would do this thing where you're going in one direction, the camera swaps, and now you have to go the other way. So you're just stuck with your character going between transitions because you're not moving the controls because you don't know what the next camera shot is going to come from.
01:10:27
Speaker
Yeah. It's really weird wonky. Yeah. Real wonkus. Wonkus. A real big wonkus. Stake of the Garden, thank you so much for a two euro, don't know. New Patreon tier, Eric Photoshop goofs on request. I mean, that's pretty much what these podcasts have become. There's a whole secret fourth corner of the podcast that I don't even look at throughout the stream. And then I go back later and I'm like, oh no, I went to prison?
01:10:56
Speaker
I don't remember that. With Yuji Naka? With me and Yuji Naka? How could we? Eric, you're great. John Connor, thank you so much for a two Canadian dollar donut. No skip button for pause for cut scenes, makes replays horrid. Yeah, it's especially annoying on if you're replaying something and they're like, how like, what do we, this should be like a DVD menu at this point. I should be able to just go wherever I want. This is a DVD menus.
01:11:22
Speaker
Yeah, I love this. Is it possible? I thought some games do that. Is it possible to where, like, if I have another save, that the game detects that it's like, oh, you've already beaten this game and you're doing another playthrough. You don't have to do the tutorial. Is that possible? Yeah.
01:11:37
Speaker
That's possible. What a Warcraft does that with the new patches. You complete the intro to a patch on one character. When you come there on an alternate character, it says, would you like to skip the opening? Or more of that. I guess it's the trade-off of these integrated tutorials that Yahtzee was talking about.
01:11:58
Speaker
or just allow players to skip it anyway. Some players are just cocky dickheads and, you know, then they'll blame the game. How do I jump? I think if you skip a tutorial, it should remove your ability to leave a Steam review. It should be like, you can skip this. You could totally skip this, but also your opinion is now invalid.
01:12:15
Speaker
Likewise, I miss old tutorial levels because maybe I did forget a thing or two and I'd like to go run through that course again. We'll just see it in a sub menu in the menus of just like a tutorial on how to do things and there's just like little indicators on how to do stuff. Gimme. Hroth87, thank you so much for the don't know. Cliff razors in Morrowind are the worst nuisance. What's that? Does anyone know Clifford razors?
01:12:46
Speaker
Only the little pterodactyl little things. I don't know. Judging by the video, I think that I might be right. Yeah, I mean a flying enemy in any game can quickly become a pain in the ass. Yeah.
01:13:02
Speaker
Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth has a lot of flying enemies and I'm like, my cloud is on the ground. You are so high up. How do I get up there? The irony. The irony that my name is cloud. His name should have just been shrubbed. Ground. Dirt. SES Guru, thank you so much for the dono. Toggle zoom should be weapon specific. Toggle should be default for snipers. That's true.
01:13:26
Speaker
No one wants to hold that down for a sniper rifle, right?
01:13:36
Speaker
Whatever the rest your game is doing, it should be doing that. Your controls and your systems should be consistent from the beginning to the end. This is what a lot of game endings do wrong, is they add a new mechanic cry at the end, or like slightly skew of one, and it just completely breaks the flow of the game. If from the beginning your game is toggled, and it's toggled for the rest of the game, that's fine, just give me an option to switch back. But if some weapons do one thing and the others do another, you're requiring the player to remember those things.
01:14:03
Speaker
And I think that's just wasted information. Just have it be a thing. Just one thing. And if players want to change it, give them the option to change it. I feel like a way to avoid so much of this is empower the player. Give the player the tools to sort of make the little tweaks that make their experience.
01:14:23
Speaker
Yeah. Stronger for what they're saying. Give me GTA codes. Just give me GTA codes. Just give me long codes that I need to enter. Add flying cars into every game. Yeah. And have the codes all be various fruits we have to enter like the Tarzan game. Tekken 7, flying cars. Let's go.
01:14:40
Speaker
Everyone loves Tekken 7. Dower Dodger with 100 American dollars. You know what President's on there? I don't know which one. Ford probably. Grant. Gotta be one of the grants. Dower Dodger, thank you so much for that don't know. A don't know for Eric being wonderful. I believe that was for Eric photoshopping Yuji Naka, sharing a cell with me, which by the way, I think would be great because I played down in Wonder World and I have a lot of thoughts on that show and that game.
01:15:08
Speaker
Yeah, you can talk during your incarceration, you can ask them. Yeah. We could make a little game design doc for Ballon 1 and World 2, the balloning. Jackson Jewel with a $5 don't know. Thank you so much, Jackson. Final Fantasy 16, I switched controls to be more like Dark Souls. Final Fantasy 7's default to Square Smashing Simulator. Please let me change it. My thumbs hurt.
01:15:33
Speaker
Yeah, just like, I don't, I don't understand. Is it Jay? Is it hard to allow the player to customize their controls? Is that like a thing that this can break the whole game? Like it feels like that should be an easy thing. No, it's just like the grand scheme of things. With anything accessibility, it's just low on the priority list. Um, and it shouldn't be, you know, it's, it's something that will take resources away from certain other aspects of the game and, uh, you know, producers and people who are looking to make money.
01:16:04
Speaker
changing your UI or your controls to being remappable is not going to get you more money, but adding another DLC is. Or, you know, adding another thing that you can put on the back of the box that can entice people in is. So they just, they get pushed down and down and down on the privacy list and, um,
01:16:23
Speaker
they shouldn't be because I actually think having your game be accessible and advertising that it is accessible is going to make all of the people who can't play thousands of other games come to play your game and support it. So I think accessibility options are an advertising point.
01:16:41
Speaker
Yeah, unless that's your sell point of like, you have to be the most gifted and able bodied gamer out there to get through this. I mean, I mean, 20, 20. But honestly, that is like, instead of, Oh, I'm going to have all these different game mechanics to appeal to different types of gamers, just appeal to different like, um,
01:17:03
Speaker
uh, ability levels of gamers. You know, you might, you're like, Oh, should I add a fishing mini game? Number one? Yes, of course. But you would probably get more by just like, Hey, I could, you could play on controller. Yeah. Definitely. Yeah. Uh, thank you so much. Jackson, the piss bandit.
01:17:23
Speaker
Stolar piss. With a $5 don't know, thank you so much Piss Bandit. 2K owes me financial compensation for the hearing damage opening X-Com 2 gave me. Also card games that are basically, I can't believe it's not magic. So all of them? No. What came before magic? Christmas cards. Christmas cards in solitaire, the big two.
01:17:48
Speaker
What is like is Magic the Gathering like the the err card game like all card games flow from Basically like competitive. I think I could be completely wrong like correct me in the chat if you want But yeah, I think most of them stem from a competitive 1v1 or 2v2 card games with health values and you know damage and
01:18:12
Speaker
Different qualifiers and effects on the cards a lot of them stem from that They give their own spin I think card games are really unique in the sense that nearly every card game I've played is trying to put a spin on it have the thing And a lot of times it works and a lot of the times it doesn't I think Marvel snap is a wonderful example of a game that does do stuff differently and Is unique and interesting but a lot of the times it is kind of just like well It's just magic, but it's got pyramids on it. Oh
01:18:40
Speaker
Which card game am I calling out? I'll let you decide. Oh no.
01:18:45
Speaker
Magic the Sphinx gathering. Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth has an amazing card game inside of it called Queen's Blood. That let me tell you, if they don't spin this off into its own standalone game, they're losing millions. Oh, look what happened to Gwent. They can't do it. No, but they will store all Gwent while Gwent fails.
01:19:11
Speaker
Gwent tripped over its own feet. Yeah, Gwent tripped over its own feet so that I could walk. Here you go. Ah, thank you so much, pissbandit. Robonob the snob with a 599 euro dono. Thank you so much. Nier Automata did that thing with the dialogue volume slider with subtitles appearing. If you set the volume to zero, that's neat. That's cool. Wow. That's also like a writer or a dev going, you will take in this exposition, damn you. Yeah.
01:19:42
Speaker
You will take this exposition about sad robots and you will enjoy it. Thank you, Robo Knob. Early berm, with a $10 don't know, thank you so much. Early berm, hey Marty, are you a good cook? You remind me of my good cooking friends. That's very sweet of you to say. I'm an eager cook and I'm a fearless cook. I don't think I'm a good cook. I'll try anything. I'll try anything.
01:20:08
Speaker
Yeah, I'll try anything. I'll get some sharp knives and some hot heat and I'll dig into any kind of food. Whether I'm good. That's just a walk then. Yeah, whether I'm good. Do you need to put in your 10,000 hours to be good? Like Michael Jordan basketball? Yeah, yeah. 10K. You consider yourself a good cook for us?
01:20:27
Speaker
Um, no, like you eager and fearless. Yeah. Um, and the things that I, I pop out do taste well. And if I get experimental with something, sometimes they don't, but daring. Yeah. It's good traits to have.
01:20:40
Speaker
Do you guys are cooking over there in England? We've never, no, we're all emaciated over here. Yeah. Um, no, I like, I cook a lot. Uh, I live with an ex Michelin star chef. So he usually does a lot of the cooking and I've picked up a lot from him. Um, I, again, I wouldn't say I'm considered, I would consider myself good, but I can cook specific meals quite well. I think I make a mean chili, but
01:21:08
Speaker
Other than that, or Scoopies, you're going to ask what they are. It's the whole thing. I was never going to ask what Scoopies are, because I definitely know what Scoopies are. But for a bunch of idiots in the audience who are Googling Scoopies right now, like I am, what are Scoopies? Scoopies are those tortilla chips. A lot of people call them other things. It's basically a baked potato, but you cook them and then you take it out and you make, like, effectively mashed potatoes with, you know, whatever.
01:21:34
Speaker
And you put it back and then you bake it again, and it's... I believe twice being Aedos is what they call here, but I like Scoopies better. We call them Scoopies because you scoop them out. Sure, well that makes perfect sense. In England, I call them Scoopies. No, it's not like that. It's the guy telling me that we call the... was it the fish filet, the McFishy?
01:21:57
Speaker
I think in the grand scheme of second wind though, we were probably in the upper half of cooking prowess. Because if you've ever watched like a Casey or a Jesse or a Nick stream, they're wonderful. But let me tell you, I don't know what's going on there. I don't know what's going on there with their meats, with their steaks. We average out to average. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
01:22:20
Speaker
Uh, thank you so much for your labor. Uh, Alex Armstrong with a $5 don't know, thank you so much. Endingtron 3000s and the quote, it was all a dream twists are bad. Oh joy.
Game Choices and Secrets
01:22:30
Speaker
None of the choices, consequences, or sacrifices I've made in the game matter. Yippee. Yeah, all choices matter. No, they don't. If they all matter, none of them matter.
01:22:40
Speaker
You did a free part series on the illusion of choice in games and how us as developers will trick people into making them think that what they're doing is impacting the game's narrative. Even games that do it really well like Disco Elysium are still doing this, they just hide it extremely well.
01:23:03
Speaker
And yeah, I think what I'm going to do is because I've been going back and remastering a lot of these episodes, I'm going to take all of the meat of all three of those episodes and condense them into one big video and remake it with me and Ludo and stuff like that and spruce it up. But yeah, none of your choices matter. But at the end of the day, you know, it was all a dream. Well, it's a video game. It's not real. So technically, it's always a dream. It's always all a dream.
01:23:31
Speaker
You can say that about movies, though. You can say that about life, really, if we think about it, you know. Listen, it's just all a dream and we're gonna wake up when we die. How do you not know when you die, you just don't wake up? At the back of a cart.
01:23:46
Speaker
Your life, Marty, is a barber Streisand dream. You're going to wake up with a bingo. Oh god, I'm getting Streisand! You know what? After experiencing the spice this weekend, I wouldn't put it past me. I don't know what's going on. After seeing those worms come out of the sand, who knows what's real? Who knows?
01:24:02
Speaker
If you can ride a big worm, anything's possible. Pundabaya, thank you so much for being in the Green Gang for two months. Big Secrets costs too much money nowadays. You always were going to meet Vincent and Yuffie in Final Fantasy VII Remake trilogy because all that animation and voice work costs. I think I might have just picked their next message. I don't even know if that was meant to be read. I just read it. But it is true that Big Secrets do cost money. And so I feel like the era of locking major things behind
01:24:30
Speaker
locking major things that are possibly missable by a huge percentage of your audience feels like that's gone by the wayside, especially in triple A games. That'd be my marketing bread and butter. You know, I want like five years after my games, not 20 years after my games heyday, somebody was like, dear God, I found this whole other half. Yeah. I guess that's Pennsylvania, isn't it?
01:24:51
Speaker
it's
01:25:12
Speaker
kids going to the playground and trying to tell them each other that they found certain things in certain games and you having to go hunt for and stuff like that because Google is exists and all information about a game is usually there before it's even come out. Legitimately that is one of one of the things I like about our job uh giving us the privilege of being able to play certain things early is that it all of that is just removed and I granted that's a self-control thing it can all be removed if you just don't fucking
01:25:40
Speaker
do that. But if you just go on the day Final Fantasy came out, if you just went on YouTube, the ending is just there, thumbnails are there spoiling everything. Even if you're not searching it, you could be spoiled. But like, yeah, when I played it the three weeks before it came out, like, no, there was just no one's, no one was talking about it. No one was playing it. It was nice.
01:25:57
Speaker
one of my pet peeves is if your game makes me tab out of your game and open a wiki to check what I have to do or what I need to do, your game's dead to me. It's like, you failed. You've failed in giving me the information I need to know what to do.
01:26:15
Speaker
your game's dead to me. And I complain about this, to be honest, I'm being a bit hypocritical because one of my favorite games of all time, Hollow Knight, makes you do this a lot because it's so maze-like and you might need to look up what the next progression point is. But yeah, it's so hard to do them and I miss that age of
01:26:37
Speaker
you know, being told a code for GTA and getting to see what wacky stuff it did or, you know, wanting to buy little books and codes and stuff. I was going to say, um, or is it augmented reality games? This don't have sort of come back in fashion to like inscription. There's actually a game within the game within the game that takes place in real life. It is like a big secret Easter egg hunt.
01:26:58
Speaker
Yeah, and then it's coming out now that like a few more games actually did have these secret features that you'd have to find in more of like a Pokemon Go kind of way, right? Where you just like actually go out into the real world and you need to find a tailor who understands what this notation means so that you can get the next clue, you know, and it's kind of wacky. It's interesting there, but I don't think it'll catch on in that same way because I'm very much in like
01:27:25
Speaker
With Jay here, if I have to tab out of your game, I might not come back. I want it in the game. There's just so much competing for our attention and time that yeah, if you lose me, you might not get me again.
01:27:40
Speaker
What Frost was saying there is really interesting as well because it's another thing that you can't do. So say you gather information and they say, well, you have to go to this area to get the next bit of information. You have to travel up the mountain to talk to the hag to get the information to come back down. Well, there's two scenarios here. One is that you don't want to do that. So you look it up and you get the information. So now the player has that information, but the game will not let you progress until you do those things. Yeah.
01:28:09
Speaker
or it allows you to just skip it and use the information to skip everything. Both of those scenarios are bad. Like, either the game makes you play through something you didn't want to do, or you skip content, and then you feel like none of it mattered anyway. So...
01:28:24
Speaker
making the player gather information just ruins it it's um yeah it's so hard to do secrets that they are dying in games but games like tunic that are built around it um was so successful at it maybe yeah maybe that's an episode the death of secrets in games oh man those tunic secrets yeah those tunic ones are fucking out of control right
01:28:45
Speaker
Yeah, Tunic Voidstranger inscription. Voidstranger, I'll write that down. Yeah, Voidstranger's a great one. Paul with a $2 don't know, thank you so much, Paul. Oh my god, I didn't know we were friends, Jimmate. Skyrim sucks. I believe that was sent when you mentioned your friend... Will's... Not liking, yeah, yeah, yeah. The second a game comes out, or the second you throw a unskippable cutscene, just fucking bounces from the game. Also, just a cheeky little Skyrim sucks, I don't know where that came from.
01:29:16
Speaker
I mean, see, if you don't like Skyrim, you just haven't modded it enough. Like, I've put in so many mods that it is essentially Doom 2016. If you don't like Skyrim, it's because you haven't played it completely. You haven't Frankenstein it enough. Skyrim could be anything. It could be Mario. You haven't modded it enough, simply put. I just think we need to put some respect on the Rod God's name. I don't like that Starfield...
01:29:41
Speaker
has been diminishing the good word. It doesn't count. Rod God Howard. Doesn't count? I don't think it counts now. It's like when Lil Wayne did a rock album instead of rap. It's like, this doesn't diminish your rap abilities, but that was bad. We got to see what happens when you get dragons back.
01:29:58
Speaker
Yeah, I'm pretty sure a lot of people are just like, Todd, I believe in you, as long as this Elder Scrolls, if you flub that one, then I'm like, all right, the Todd God's gone. That's a big one. That's really funny. And just as a, again, just reiterating, I don't play any Bethesda games. I just like calling him Todd the Rod God because someone, I think,
01:30:19
Speaker
Frost might have called him that and I found it. Me and Amy called God Howard. Yeah, I thought it was very funny. That's what I kept saying. Robonob with another 11.99 euro. Dono, thank you so much. Max Payne 3 was sinful as hell when it came to interrupting gameplay with cutscene. Open a door, it's a cutscene. Kill a dude, a cutscene. Hate that game. By the way, absolutely loving Design Delve.
01:30:41
Speaker
Cheers. Thank you so much. And I was a real, that was a real negative that that spun into a positive at the end. That was nice. Hey, that, that kind of juxtaposition really lifted my spirit. So maybe that was the intention. Yeah. Unlike Max Payne, who just takes a lot of pills because you said you just thought Max Payne three fucking ruled. I really like Max Payne three, but he does have a lot of bloody cussing. That game is grimy as shit. You need to take a shower after that game. Oh God.
01:31:09
Speaker
SDS Guru, thank you so much for a two-year-old. Dono, metal armor that bends. I hate it.
01:31:15
Speaker
Clipping? Clipping? How could you? Urban End with 50 Polish Swody. Thank you so much. Oh, another one. Surprise QTEs. Plot happens. You lean back to reach for a drink or a snack and then they have you press X. So you grab the controller and panic and everything ends up on the floor. My soup! My soup! My game or soup? It's one thing that developers miss in action games that downtime in difficulty curves is unbelievably important to process information and to
01:31:45
Speaker
like, have a break. Cutscenes used to be that, but QTEs just ruin that entirely. You can't sip your soup. You can't have a croton, you know. You gotta press X to tickle the dragon's balls. Listen, uh, Enron the dragon? Yeah. From Dragon Ball? Um, let me, I was, I was, I was like you.
01:32:08
Speaker
I was walking blindly through this world thinking QTEs were bad. I was like you a year ago. I don't think they're bad. I played Asura's Wrath and everything changed because it's the sickest shit ever and no game is ever going to top it. I think all games should become QTEs. That's God of War. The God of War was doing that. Not the new one, but the old one was doing that. No, but there was too much gameplay. That was the problem.
01:32:34
Speaker
That's what I was saying, like a Sura's Wrath, the gameplay takes you by surprise, not the quick time. Because you're there eating one hand, other controllers like pressing, smashing O or the circle, and then it's like, oh god, it's a fighting bit. You're telling me you're playing a Sura's Wrath, and you're doing these sick ass cutscenes, QTEs. Then the gameplay starts, and that's when you pick up the scene. And then I get angry, and I'm like, how do I skip this? I'm like, you're a friend where I'm like, let me skip this and get back to me. Let's get this horrible rail fighting.
01:33:02
Speaker
Uh, so that's great. Um, Jewel Ra with another two euro. Thank you so much. Dark Souls slash Elden Ring NPC quests. I'm too dumb. I mean, those are ones where it does feel like you need to open a wiki because those can be so like...
01:33:16
Speaker
opaque and you're like, what, what is this character you want me to do? Also, there's no log of this information, so I don't know where they said they were going to go. Also, knowing it's going to take you like if I try to do this myself, it's going to take me five hours and I'm going to get like one bare ass as a reward. I'll just look it up and just skip the middleman and do it in 10 minutes, you know.
01:33:37
Speaker
I'll just get the middleman in Google's bare ass. Yeah. This is my my own bare ass location. Go straight to that. Ah, many in my area. All right. 10 for hat time. I reckon developers are doing this so they can get more ad sense on their websites on their weekends. Right. That was me when, um, cause zombies are black on black ops always used to be a little lorry, right? A little like Dark Souls in that way, but then it became really,
01:34:06
Speaker
intensive and I was like I feel like them and Ali G or Ali A whatever his name I feel like they do with this they're in cahoots because he'll be the only one who actually somehow knows what's going on in this story all the traffic goes here and he's like the biggest cod shill that ever be and that goes straight back to Call of Duty and I'm like all right there is the in the mafia in the from yeah he is me as I did initially
01:34:31
Speaker
Yeah. I like, you said Ali G and I was like, the Sacha Baron Cohen character. No, no, no, it's Ali A. You're right. Ali G. I was like, wow, I didn't realize he loved those guys. Loved a big transit fan. Early on. What?
Famous Encounters and Anecdotes
01:34:47
Speaker
Jim the Fly. Asura's Wrath with my old schoolmate Liam just screaming angrily for hours. You went to school with Liam? The voice actor?
01:34:57
Speaker
Jim, the fly. Oh, well, was that by Lee Lee? I thought you were just literally talking about leave. Like, oh, I played this with my buddy. Yeah. Talking about literally Leo. Brian. Yeah. Leo. Because that's him screaming the whole whole. Yeah. He's very angry. And like, wow, he's just extremely bad. I feel like I'm whereas in near he's very he's he's fine because he's a book. He's a grimoire, if you will. Which I think just a fancy name for a book. He was a year behind you. I'll tweet a pic, let Jim the fly. Look at that.
01:35:26
Speaker
Who's the most famous person? Did you guys go to school with anyone famous? Amazing. No. No. In a bad way for my school, I think the most famous person to come out of it is now me, which is a very low bar. That's real. Yeah. That's how I was about to say my graduating class, it might be me. And that's extremely sad. Yeah. And I feel sorry for my school. I guess closest is like, um,
01:35:51
Speaker
In the area, the Shmo Yoho boys, they came out of that area and Michael Vick came out of that area. I love Michael Vick. Yeah, so that's about it. Chris Martin, lead singer of the Coldplay. He's from my hometown and his dad runs a caravan selling park in my hometown.
01:36:16
Speaker
Does his dad need to work? Yeah, it's called Martin's. They sell caravans. It's funny. Or motorhomes if you don't know what they are. I was thinking like a wagon caravan, so I'm glad you actually... Basically, yeah, basically you pull it along. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Early berm with a $5 don't know. Thank you so much early berm. Hey, Ludo's dad. Is Ludo around? Yes, she is. Let me grab her.
01:36:43
Speaker
Uh, we were, uh, there were, there was a possibility of Ludo of a Ludo cam on this, but Ludo is a very transient, uh, uh, free-spirited, free-spirited. Unlike, uh, unlike the lazy toffee. Um, Ludo's also just locked. Look at Ludo. If she is. It's not going to absolute doll, like an actual doll. It's funny. That's funny. If she is.
01:37:14
Speaker
I like that in order to get, listen, Ludo is so special that we needed a whole rigmarole. We needed to literally just restart the whole pod to be like, we gotta roll it up, play the ad again. I'll do the intro, the spiel again. Real star is here now. Real star. What a diva. Show it up. Fuck it. An hour and 40 minutes late after call time.
01:37:34
Speaker
Ludo, you're wonderful. SVSGuru, thank you so much for the
US Pricing and Tax Humor
01:37:40
Speaker
five-year-old don't know. I still don't understand how you tolerate shops not posting prices with tax included. That's not a choice of mine. I would very much like to see five bucks. Okay. That's it. My first time visiting America, I was unbelievably pissed off irrationally. Actually, no, rationally.
01:37:58
Speaker
it's rather rational okay in england we have something that you guys have which is like one pound stores like poundland and stuff like that where everything in there oh no we have poundlands here yeah you have like dollar tray and shit like that
01:38:14
Speaker
I'm gonna get some bargains, I'm gonna get some headphones that break my ears, I'm gonna get some cheap sweets." And I went in, just picking stuff up and I was like, ooh, all of this? Five dollars. But bargain went up and they were like, oh, that's nine dollars, sixty seven. I was like, what are you playing at? This is the Dollar Tree. What? They were like, oh, tax. Why isn't tax included? Oh, because it isn't. I was like, your country's backwards and I got on a plane.
01:38:38
Speaker
I'm never going to say that. I'm going to be moving there soon, but whatever. You hate it so much, why don't you move here? I find the one state that actually prices everything properly. We've been discussing this in the back end of where I'm going to move, and that is going to be the deciding factor if they include tags in their prices. I mean, we've got a wide audience here. Someone's probably in a state of like, yeah, they price accordingly.
01:39:02
Speaker
Tax included. Florida has no income tax, is that right? Because a lot of athletes love going to Florida because... No billionaires, yeah. You make more money? I think it pays on it. Delaware. There you go. Delaware. Crossin' Delaware. Shout out to Washington.
01:39:19
Speaker
New Hampshire. You know what I learned? You want to know what presidential fact I learned this weekend? I love talking about Taft. Taft is a great president. He was huge. One of the reasons I love him. Taft went to a baseball game once and it was like, oh, the president's at the baseball game. He needed
01:39:35
Speaker
Like, you know, two thirds through the game, he needed to get up. He needed to stretch a little bit. He stood up and stretched and everyone else in the stadium was like, well, the president is stretching, so we should stretch too. That is how the seventh inning stretch was created because Taft just needed to get some feeling back in his legs and get the blood flowing. Wow. Incredible. Thank you Taft. That's why. I'm not sourcing it, but I'm just telling you, that's the truth. There you go.
01:40:02
Speaker
No one Google it in case it's the truth. No one Google this just in case. No one Google it in case it's not the truth. Red Dwarf with a $10 donut. Oh my God. Look at, look. Look at Lido. You're so strong.
01:40:13
Speaker
If you're only listening to this, if you're only listening to this on one of our podcast services, thank you so much. And also you're missing video of Strong Dog. Strong Dog. Oh God. Red Dwarf, thank
Souls Games Storytelling Debate
01:40:25
Speaker
you so much. I'm one of the few that dislikes how Souls tells a story. I'm not dumb, I promise. And I have no idea what the story of a Souls game is on my own. Fatty Video is the only way I have a clue of what's going on. It does ask a lot. It asks a lot out of you.
01:40:39
Speaker
If nothing else it's kind of nice because It almost I'm glad it creates a space for someone like body to exist Because I don't think I'd enjoy it as much if it hadn't been for like, oh this this fella did a little lore video and I was like Well, yeah back in and play through knowing that's cool. Yeah, and I don't think I want every game to be like that But I like that there is this
01:41:20
Speaker
this niche of it.
01:41:20
Speaker
I don't think FromSoft was doing it with the intention of, oh, maybe we'll build a cottage industry that acts as free promotion for our games. That wasn't their intention, whereas that's how it feels, games that try to mimic that personally.
01:41:37
Speaker
Robon out the snob. Thank you so much with a 599 euro don't know almost all sins you listed were featured in last year's fourth solace unironically worse than golem insultingly bad Wow, that's been on my list. That was the one starring Troy Baker and What's the guy's name the guy who played Arthur Morgan in Red Dead 2 it's like a very cinematic walkabout shit's happening on a space station kind of game
01:42:04
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know anything about it. It came out like at a busy time. I think it came out, might've came out right around the time we ended up not working at the escapist and working here instead, which is understandable. The event. Yeah, the event. The event. The event we do not mention. The brain sturgeon with a six euro dono, thank you so much. Frost, did you hear the story about the huge Eve scam? Guy stole billions of ISK from a major corp claiming to have Dreadnought blueprints.
01:42:31
Speaker
possible chronicle again to God we can't eat twice you can't even one series and I can I double dip on the EU my thing is also I'm slow to jump on things whenever I feel like there's a wave coming right I feel like yeah just give it a few months it's gonna be something even more preposterous yeah you gotta wait until everyone involved has died instead you know that there's no more updates and no one can like correct me either if they're all dead yeah yeah if you want to use that TAF one you could you could use that TAF one if you want
01:43:01
Speaker
There you go. Yeah. Presidential Chronicle. Again, don't, don't Google it in case it's not true. Uh, snake of the garden with a two Euro, don't know. Thank you so much. Snake your thoughts on speedos on men, sexy or nah? I'm wearing three pairs right now, baby. Three? Three of them. Yeah. Three of them. I've got some on my feet. They act as good socks if you wear them just right. Incredible. Yeah. Guess it was. We'll let you walk on water. European, very European. It is very European. Yeah. Being a European, you know,
01:43:30
Speaker
I personally, I prefer if we're going to go in the small zone, like a nice brief, like looking at Sean Connery coming out of the water in Bond or even Daniel Craig coming out of the water. I like that. I like that.
01:43:48
Speaker
You gotta know. You just have to be like... Before the beach, I did like 300 press-ups, 500 squats, and I'm also incredibly well endowed, you know? It's a demanding piece of garment to wear. I could pull it off. Or if you have confidence. If you have pure confidence and you rock it, who might have said no? I'm not going to be yucky or young.
01:44:09
Speaker
uh thank you so much snake lampy with a five pound don't know thank you so much snake no don't tempt eric to make a photo of the guys wearing budgie smugglers budgie smugglers that's what they call uh speedos budgie smugglers your smugglers and what are you scoopies what was the name of your potatoes yeah it's a little bird it's a you're wearing budgie smugglers
01:44:35
Speaker
Incredible. Oh, wow. And Snake with another two euro down. Oh, thank you so much. Because Lampy is a scampi, plus always makes us laugh. That sounded like a little rhyme. That was beautiful. Humane Shield with $2 down. Oh, thank you so much. Does Ballon Wonderworld count as an unforgivable sin? I don't think so because there are some good ideas in Ballon. I experienced Ballon snout to trout, or what do you call it?
01:45:01
Speaker
Like, front to back. Snout to trout. Snout to trout. On my nose to my fish. I experienced that snout to trout. And there are some good ideas in there. So no, it is not unforgivable. It was not executed well, and the game is bad. But there was some good. And you know what they say, Mr. Frodo? There's still some good in the world, and it's worth fighting for. And what's my favorite Gollum quote? Yeah. Yeah, I feel like he said something like, I feel like butter spread too thin or something.
01:45:30
Speaker
Two little brother butter spread over too much bread. Yeah, it's good. I got a bloody Lord of the Rings tie you like three days ago. Oh of what? Saruman the wise shot the shards of Narsil the shattering of night. Hey Yeah, it's a blade. Oh, yeah good that hmm a plus that
01:45:50
Speaker
Uh, chili head gaming with a two-year-old. Oh, no, thank you so much crafting arrows in games like Tomb Raider Yeah, that's just become like a thing now. I don't know. It's just you don't find it you find the things that you combine to make the things and I guess it's like Gives you a little bit of player agency in terms of well, I found this wood Do I use it for arrows or do I use it for?
01:46:15
Speaker
sticks to grain distractions. Yeah, exactly. The Resi remakes are the same thing of, OK, you have these different combinations of crafting materials. Do you combine them to make handgun bullets or combine them to make acid rounds for your grenade launcher? I guess that's just another small modicum of player agency. But yeah, it's just kind of become a default. And I'm not 100% sure why. Yes.
01:46:45
Speaker
Sebastian with a five dollar don't know thank you so much Sebastian is it too much to ask you have the to match the Escortes place in an escort mission I constantly running ahead and stopping it feels like this might be the one people are mad at the most It's fine if like, you know what? I'll just go on ahead to the area because the volume is like the dialogue still just playing overhead But the one where the further you get away the quieter it gets and like damn you really want me to like stay here
01:47:12
Speaker
doubling and tripling down on me being near this guy. Okay. You need to have it. Yeah. Have the, have the character starts screaming the further away. Yeah, I don't know. That seems, I don't know. Certain things just seem like, well, this is the way things are. So, um, like some of those trends, you're like, I don't know where this came from, but this is just, uh, this is just where we are now.
01:47:41
Speaker
I don't know why. There's really no way to know. HunterRoj gifted five second-win memberships over in YouTube to Lev, to Aaron, to Huma, to the Fez Hat, and to Tim. HunterRoj, thank you so much. And remember, we've upgraded our YouTube memberships. We have a $5 ad-free tier. Ooh, I don't know what the tiers are. One is ad-free podcasts and one is ad-free premium videos, maybe?
01:48:09
Speaker
I actually don't know what the tears are, so I shouldn't have even mentioned that. I wish I didn't mention it. I'll break that with a quote from Nick in the chat, which is the typo I'm hoping, hell from DC and the land of adventures now. Nick, you had one job and it was just to put the fifth letter in hell.
01:48:27
Speaker
Is that like, is that Hell DLC? You got to put one left. You got to pay to get the last O. Captain President with a $10 dono. Thank you so much, Captain. President support for Waldors and Waldorf salads. Speaking of, we get to the Waldors and Nick has been summoned. Nick has a Waldor. I don't know if you heard about his Waldor.
01:48:52
Speaker
what isn't on doors, always on walls. That's what we all think. But he has specific wall doors. So, um, I also liked that Nick was like so busy that he just typed that and he couldn't say anything. He's like, I couldn't say anything else. We got it. Yeah. And then I'm gone. It's held. He's fighting off demons. He's fighting off demons. Yeah. Could be Mars. Who knows? Uh, can president again with a $10 demo. Thank you so much. Captain president games should have skippable tutorials and cut scenes simply for replay value. I agree.
01:49:22
Speaker
I don't know. I agree. It feels like there's no reason not to. One start pauses it, and then when you're paused, you can choose to hit another button to skip it. Seems that simple. I don't know why we're not doing that. Lampe with a two pound dono. Thank you so much. Games without a quote Marty mode are the greatest of sins. I agree. A Marty mode is when the game is just easy as piss.
01:49:44
Speaker
and that there's no fear of dying even though you can still die in Marty mode. There's ways. There's absolutely ways to die in a Marty mode. Oh, I found ways, says Marty. Oh, I found ways. Pay attention somehow. Yeah, exactly. So it's impossible to die on the splash screen. Marty's like, try me, bitch. No, you guys got to patch that out. It is possible to die. I've found a way.
01:50:06
Speaker
uh, lampy with another 10 pound dono, thank you so much. A sin I see people do is remapping controls as soon as they open the game. At that point, they have no idea how much controls will work with the game mechanics, then complain that the controls don't feel good. That feels like something before you've tasted the food, right? Like, oh, you have a salt problem, you. Yeah.
01:50:26
Speaker
I'll always try for a while. I was doing the Immediately get rid of motion blur and you know the usual stuff that people definitely don't like in their video games Until I think it was evil worst I'd gotten through quite a bit of it and it was until I went to go record for the three or more And I was like, oh I had motion blur on this whole time and it was actually quite good. Oh
01:50:47
Speaker
Oh, wow. Interesting. Yeah. They seem to be getting better. That's kind of what I like to do. If there's something I don't like every five years, I'm like, okay, have we like figured this out or is it still stupid? Have we progressed past this yet? Have we solved this problem yet? Yeah. Some things no.
01:51:04
Speaker
No, with a lot of things, though, for me, honestly. Uhhh, Comgeninja with a $10 don't know, thank you so much, wanted to bring to your attention to Love Live School Idol Festival 2. Crap live service game, notable only because they announced the servers were shutting down in the same tweet.
01:51:20
Speaker
announcing the launch date. Yeah, we talked about that on a stream a little while ago. And it was apparently it was like the game had been out in Asia and they were contractually obligated to release it in the West. And by the time the Western version was done, they had already been like, yeah, we're actually getting rid of this game. And so they were like, the game is coming out in March, but also the game is ending in April.
01:51:44
Speaker
So, yeah, it just doubles down on the idea of these live service games are going the way of the food industry. And that is sort of like the that pop-up diner. That's like we're here for five months and then the Shrek catch up believing. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's.
01:52:04
Speaker
Like that Dark Souls one you went to or something? Oh yeah, we had like the deep black katsu sauce and like when you went to the bathroom at night, it was like, what happened? I just Miyazaki swamped. I just absolutely Miyazaki swamped. Jeremy Gola with a $5 dono, thank you so much. Frost, have you ever made or had mole sauce with peanut butter instead of chocolate? Every other Mexican family I've asked thought I was kidding.
01:52:33
Speaker
I've seen those. I have seen those. Personally, I don't like either. And at that point, it's kind of like, yeah, it's not, it's not a mole then. It's like, well, I guess it's, it's, I still like it, but it's not of the, oh, I must have one. But yeah, I've seen, I've seen the nut based one as well as the chocolate one.
01:53:07
Speaker
pre-animated takedowns. I like pre-animated takedowns in like a Batman game. Like the Arkham ones feel good, right? Spider-Man pre-animated takedowns feel good. I like the ones that end in encounter. Like, you can only pre-animated takedown the last guy instead of just like, okay, seven week foes and I'm about to pre-animate all of you. Line up. Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha. There you go. Pre-animated takedowns. Is that like a pre-canned cocktail kind of?
01:53:14
Speaker
Uh, duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh
01:53:33
Speaker
Yeah, something like that. I think it was, what's that game, that bad game, Casey loves? Want to- World of Avium? No, wanted dead? Oh, wanted dead. Yeah, yeah. Where he was saying that it has pre-animated, but you could like line them up and it would actually knock them down or some other system. Yeah, yeah. It was a very interactive way of doing it. So you'd want to get as many into stagger before you started the chain. And I was like, that sounds, that sounds interesting. See, there you go. Yeah, it's fun ways.
01:53:59
Speaker
Uh, only a couple more super chats left. Uh, snake of the garden with a two euro dono. Thank you so much. Adding quote gameplay to story press F to pay respects.
01:54:09
Speaker
Yeah. Oh, God. Stuff where you're like, why are we even, why are we doing this? Again, to bring up Final Fantasy again, that definitely had some moments where it was like, you need to turn a valve, and in order to do so, you need to hold both triggers several times, and there will be resistance on the triggers because of the dual sense. And I'm like, why doesn't he just turn the valve? I don't need to like, finally, I will experience what it's like for a soldier first class to turn this valve. That's not one of the magical things I needed to know in life.
01:54:38
Speaker
That's why I play Call of Duty. I don't know about you. To pay all the respects. Also, if you're going to do that, don't be a coward and just make your whole game a QT. I don't want to half measure. That's my thing with QTs. You need to go whole ass. You need to put your entire ass in there. Commit. Yeah, exactly. Alex Armstrong with a $2 don't know. Thank you so much. Alex, Marty, I demand you get a Mojito and party tonight. Eric had that ready. God damn.
01:55:04
Speaker
That was incredible. Oh my. That was wonderful. That was quick. I'm going to be on Hidden Gems later tonight with Jess, so I cannot Mojito. I have no mouth and I will not Mojito. You're in the passenger seat. No, I'm hosting. No, I'm not drinking and streaming. I fucked up. Only if you're driving. Only if you're driving. Mojito needs muddling. I'm not going to muddle on the stream.
01:55:30
Speaker
Cause I know what Eric does. And if I do this on a stream a bunch, he's going to take that and he's going to fucking, he's going to put it everywhere. Show up to hidden gems, like Margarita and like doing a very serious cutscene lick at the salt rim. We're playing Abzu, which is a sea bass game. So I would need some sort of like.
01:55:50
Speaker
Well, I guess that's like tropical tropical cocktails, right? It's just water. Water with a salt rim. Jewel Rao with a two euro don't know. Thank you so much. Jewel, the main character in atomic heart quipping. Yuck. I feel like everyone's just forgotten about atomic heart, if I'm being honest.
01:56:10
Speaker
Like I think people- Oh, I remember now, yeah, he was a bit weird about it, wasn't he? Yes, he, it's funny because if you justify, if your narrative in the end is like, your character's brain damaged, I let everything go. Cause like hair clipping, I'm like, he's brain damaged, he's in his head.
01:56:30
Speaker
They even have moments where he's deluded. He's going through, like, these weird moments. I'm like, oh, that makes total, like, this is janky, this character makes no sense, and the dialogue is, it's just my character's interpretation of the world right now. I love it. It's like a get out of jail free card, Freddy, every weird bullshit.
01:56:45
Speaker
There's a part where you're just in this dreamy scape collecting cherries, big floating cherries like a Pac-Man. I was like, that's so odd, but yeah, he's got... He's essentially brain dead and brought back, so like... He suffered a head injury, everyone be kind to him.
01:57:03
Speaker
Lampy with a 10 pound dono, thank you so much. My two favorite Marty mode deaths, Trico killing him at the start of a cutscene and Trico just leaving during a puzzle and never coming back resulting in a softlock. I'm replaying The Last Guardian, which is a game that I haven't played it since it first came out and I feel exactly the same where the game has incredible highs and the game has like baffling lows.
01:57:25
Speaker
Well, like when the game works it is like among the most meaningful interactive things I've ever experienced in a game and then it doesn't work and it is like this fucking dog This is the stupidest goddamn dog I've ever seen in my life. I'm not sorry. I'm not talking about loot. I'm talking about the bird dog
01:57:41
Speaker
Yeah, I was going to say, well, she's too busy humping this blanket. Sure, as one is wont to do. It is baffling. But I guess, again, like, quote, unquote, realistic in terms of like, well, this is a huge animal. So, you know. Oh, is that Trico, the big?
01:57:58
Speaker
Yeah, Trico's the big bird. The guardian? Yeah, the big guardian. The titular last guardian. Yeah, real dick. Great game. Seven out of ten. Dale Mallows with a $5 dono. Thank you so much, Dale. I am back. Say silly wimple for my pleasure. There you go. Silly wimple. Silly wimple? Is that a British thing? Is that like a big potato? Twice a big potato? No, I just said it in a dumb accent. I thought your accent was beautiful.
01:58:28
Speaker
Cheers. Thank you so much. Dale, Captain President, gifted 50. I didn't even know there was 50. I did not. I don't know numbers go that high. Everyone's green now. I didn't know numbers go that high. I'm not going to read them all out. Soon everyone, every sub is going to have a membership soon. Thank you so much. To TSP, to Dean, you know who the third one was? To me. I got a membership. Oh my God. You know what I'm going to do with it?
01:58:57
Speaker
I don't know what I'm gonna do with it. I might try to sell it. Do you think I could secondhand it? Yeah, yeah, 100%. Second wind it. Second wind it. Beautiful. Captain President, thank you so much. It's an incredibly kind of you. Uh, Alex Armstrong, $5 don't know. Here's a gaming feature that should come with future games. You win the game by paying money to second wind. Oh no. Pay to play. I don't know. The game of life. You get good content. Yeah. You win. Think about it. Pay to spray.
01:59:26
Speaker
Ren Momo, $3 don't know. Looking forward to watching this later. Designed Elf, 100%. Hell yeah, thanks baby. I feel like we got, it's got to be 90 because you always got to have room to grow. It's very true. Unless you're going to like 100% mode, like 101 mode, which is what games do. Designed Elf has been 100%. Designed Elf has been 100%. Cult takes been 100%. Everything's been 100%. We've been cooking, we've been cooking with gasoline. And that's it. We did it. We did a whole podcast.
01:59:56
Speaker
We made it. God dang. I'm really proud of us. As we wrap up, let me tell you our schedule for the rest of the week. It's gonna be a little wonky. Obviously a lot of folks out for the next two weeks. So stuff like we won't have a fire lane podcast this week. Obviously there will not be a Yahtzee tries this week because there is no titular Yahtzee to try.
02:00:17
Speaker
However, we'll have stuff like Hidden Gems later tonight at 6pm playing Abzu. Tomorrow I think we're going to be signing up a cheeky little Final Fantasy stream. I'll do mostly be a vibe check. I'll just be going around the world being like, I like this room. Let's go into this room. I'm going to show you why I like this table. I need gazpacho in this room.
02:00:35
Speaker
top five gazpachas in the game. And then, yeah, you guys will have a sponsored stream on Wednesday, so we'll be having streams every day, but the schedule will be coming in a little bit hot and loose, but we appreciate that. Jay, what do you have going on besides trying to capture that last guardian behind you?
02:00:57
Speaker
Um, what are we going on? So I just had a design of a release last Friday on health bars and how they might be ruining games. So check that if you haven't, uh, my next episode could be one of a few things. Uh, I haven't fully settled on it. I wrote half a script today, but now some things we've spoke about in this podcast have changed my mind that I might make something else. Um, we shall see, but yeah, uh, we've got a lot of things cooking in the background. Going to be heading to GDC soon.
02:01:25
Speaker
to make some wonderful content along with Nick, Omar, Matt, and Yahtzee. So look forward to that. We're going to have multiple episodes of whatever we do there. And also on the topic of podcasts, we are currently working on a game dev podcast with me and two other wonderful hosts. So yeah, that's currently cooking. So look forward to that in the future. But that's all me.
02:01:49
Speaker
Excellent process, buddy. What do you got going on? Oh, I see. A review went up for Skull and Bones as we are now shifting to Cultek on the Mondays and then trying out newer things and whatnot. It's going to be a good one next week. You can expect a little Bellantro, a little card game based cilantro, the illegal gambling game. Oh, man, that's going to be an exciting one to do. But yeah. They've gotten in some trouble because they said it's promoting real gambling, which it's not, which is very ridiculous.
02:02:16
Speaker
If anything, it saved me from gambling. I was going to go to the casino. I was like, I'm going to play a couple before I go. And I was there all night. There you go. Cured me. Cured you. In my Coke habit with meth. Cured you of your woes.
02:02:34
Speaker
Cool, yeah, and like I mentioned, I'll be back 6 p.m. Central tonight playing Abzu for Hymn Gems. I think most of our streams this week will probably be at that noon slot, especially what you make, because that's a nice not too late for him kind of thing. So expect maybe that Final Fantasy stream at noon tomorrow, that sponsored stream noon on Wednesday, probably some more surprises.
02:02:57
Speaker
But yeah, thank you guys so much. Thank you to everyone who watched, everyone who donated. Thank you so much. Everyone who supported us. Anyone who's listening on Spotify or your podcast services of choice, thank you so much. You know what? Give us a rating. Give us 10 stars. On Yelp. Yeah. Write a nice comment. Rank the top five fish. It's a good tie five. Yeah.
02:03:17
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. So for Jamaite, for Frost, and for producer Eric, this has been Marty. This has been Windbreakers, episode number 13. Thank you all so much for tuning in. I hope you guys have a wonderful rest of your afternoons, and we'll see you later tonight for Hidden Gems. Bye, everyone. Bye.
02:03:51
Speaker
you