Transcript
Speaker: How's it going everyone? Welcome to another episode of Soapstone. My name is Jake and I'm joined by my co-host as always Dave and we know how Dave is.
Speaker: going everyone welcome to another episode of soapstone my name is jake and i' am joined by my co-host as always dave and we know how da is
Speaker: they was just about Not knowingly. I didn't fall into it this time. It took a lot of willpower, but I did manage to avoid it. um How was your spiritual journey and our our time away from the podcast?
Speaker: It was intense. i learned a lot about myself. ah Rain and I were in the wilderness for that time. I think it's 40 days and nights, right? right Yeah. like thats it's hard to's It's hard to keep track when you're in the wilderness. The nights are the hard part because of the bears. Because the bears, yeah.
Speaker: They're so loud. They're all in ah marching bands and stuff like that. I was gonna say like they're all like doing like indie garage bands. Uh-huh. Garage bands good. I also would have accepted like some sort of Five Nights at Freddy's Freddy Fazbear like animatronic band or something like that. But that's fair.
Speaker: Yeah, for my time off, um I mostly played video games. So and and and worked. So pretty much what i usually do. So. I'll queue up the ah the spiritual journey next time. I'll head out in the wilderness and die. i will die. There will not be a dog to protect me.
Speaker: But, yeah. Outside of that, ah did you play anything out there in the wilderness? I did try a friend slop game with some friends one night called Dumb Ways to Build.
Speaker: m Dumb Ways to Build. I mean, that is kind of part of it. ah oh Because it is easy to die, either from fall damage or...
Speaker: other mishaps on the job site ah but basically you go and take these blocks or ladders or whatever the things you can find and then somebody else just shoots a nail gun at it and it kind of staples it to whatever right ah so you kind of need to build yourself a path to get to objectives uh and it's it's silly and fun and cute it's a nice little Let's do this for like a Friday evening.
Speaker: Oh, yeah. Yeah. The the categorical friend slop games. You have friends. They are sloppy. Play the game. but Yeah. Once you get to hour three, they get spicy. Uh-huh. Uh-huh.
Speaker: No, that's fair. i I kind of I was i would I would say I fell off the the friend slop wagon, but I don't know if I was ever fully on it. um I don't think I'm necessarily an adherent, given that my last touchstone was probably like I i was going to say lethal company. That's not right.
Speaker: I keep saying it wrong. It's not a lethal company. These companies are lethal company. Yeah, I said that and i was like nah nah You're confusing that with a lethal league and it's like nah nah you confuse that with a League of Legends and you're like nah nah nah Stupid neurons You're confused that with Legends of Mana Exactly um And I enjoyed it, you know like I definitely enjoy that but I I don't know. It's a little tough to sell people on something new, um especially if you kind of know that it's going to be a little short term.
Speaker: But I can't appreciate I can I can appreciate like if you have that group where people are willing to jump in and they everybody realizes they're like, hey, we are here for the social experience. This is worth the price of a coffee or i mean, with the prices these days, the price of half of a coffee.
Speaker: um Like, let's go have some fun. Yeah, it's nice when something's on sale. It's just like, who wants to go to the movies, but it's so much cheaper. Right.
Speaker: Yeah, the other one that I checked out and I would say more of was following is Valor Mortis. Which I've seen a little bit of. French Souls.
Speaker: Yeah. What if Dark Souls was French? That's what the f stands for in FPS. Yeah. that's not my joke that's jake's joke from french person shooter like oh no but yeah it is a first person point of view ah so i kind of enjoyed that as far as the melee combat it's just fun to parry stuff and then kick somebody's ass oh yeah yeah yeah
Speaker: I can't remember the the original game for that, but it was also first person, not a shooter, action type game. And they're like, all right, we're we're going to really focus on kinetic sword and board action. I want to feel like it's like it Might and Magic or something or Dark Messiah or something like that. I feel like that's pretty close. It's an old freaking game, not related to what you're talking about.
Speaker: Definitely not ah French, but... um But like what what were the defining parts of the game for you? I guess like what would what would sell people on this or potentially keep them away from Valor Mortis, which I like this. This month was packed.
Speaker: This is a fairly recent game, right? Like this came out this month. Yeah. um But I'm looking at the notable the the date and time in the bottom right corner of my monitor right now trying to like think back into when did it come out? It's been almost on the game and scene.
Speaker: I think it was early, early October. that's when it came out. ah But this is made by the same people ah who made Ghostrunner. And presumably Ghostrunner 2.
Speaker: Right. We offshored that one. It's fine. I'm forgetting the name of the studio. um I don't actually know either. I'll look it up just so they can get the credit because we're pretty we're pretty ah prestigious here.
Speaker: ah But there is some platforming and moving around. ah It's not insane. So if you're not super comfortable with platforming,
Speaker: You'll be fine. Right. um
Speaker: It has some wall running. It has some. Police stuff ah similar to. i guess what expedition 33 doing.
Speaker: It has some ah monkey bars. Right. The Prince of Persia-esque movement tech. Or I shouldn't even say tech because it's basically like mandatory. Traversal. There you go. Traversal.
Speaker: But yeah, it's a really gorgeous game. ah The weapons stuff um I enjoyed. Liked the progression. Thought the design of the world was cool.
Speaker: was very pretty in a lot that I saw. They had some really cool design, very pretty locales.
Speaker: But overall, it's not a terribly long game. But I think if you enjoy the genre, you would appreciate this game.
Speaker: yeah yeah Yeah, I think that's fair. um I was actually talking to my wife about this later because it's it's that old chestnut. We were talking about like how many elements of a Souls game do you need to inherit that... I don't want to say cursed moniker, but it's it is like a heavy burden. it is a it's It's definitely a shawl or something. brand, if you will.
Speaker: Yeah, because it's like... People obviously have a lot of familiar. I mean, look at us, right? We've played like Souls games a ton. um I'm never like necessarily turned off by a game being like, oh, it has some of the Souls tags, but it's like You know, I was describing it as kind of this like French Souls game, action game, whatever. and you're like, well, what makes that? And it's like, well, I mean, when you die, you kind of go back to a bonfire esque thing and you got a recovery. and There's probably a dodge. And it's like, yeah, but that's like that's a lot. Right. Like at a certain point, do we need to diverge from this and find some other classifier other than souls?
Speaker: I think they're being... I'm going to kind of base this off of a Iron Pineapple. Yeah, Iron Pineapple's ah categorization where you have stamina, you have a bonfire-like thing.
Speaker: It has just some weighty combat to it. Right. They usually come in. But not all not all sorts Souls games have that. Like Dark Souls was known for that.
Speaker: You hit the button and you're in the animation. But if I recall correctly, like um puppet game, freaking Geppetto. Lies Yeah, Lies of P um did that less. Like they they allowed you to cancel out of stuff more.
Speaker: Yeah, they kind of gave you more options in general since you could change your build around. Mm-hmm. But sorry, you were going through the list. And then presumably all of these can be added up to give you a Souls score.
Speaker: Yeah. I think the the big bosses um being well designed and thought out.
Speaker: They've tried to disqualify Dark Souls 2 from being a Souls game. There's too many. This is just a guy. This is just a guy. Just a guy.
Speaker: It's true. It's true. though um There's going. and um It does have. I don't want to say a gimmick boss fight, but it has a
Speaker: a silly type of boss fight where I'm going to spoil what this is. Block out 30 seconds if you give a shit. Just to hit the next button. yeah yeah Valor Mortis, no.
Speaker: The whatever goo that is infecting the area, I guess, between that and some corpses in a nearby windmill creates the slaughterhouse. So you are kind of in this little tunnel and you are facing against a windmill and it's trying to blow you back. You're trying to like open doors to find its weak spots at a point you might need to platform on it.
Speaker: um But it's just like a really well designed thing. Yeah. And that's also like novel, right? That gets you a lot of points, I think. I think if you have like a design, if you have a boss that's both tedious and not interesting, congratulations, like take it from the game, right? We don't need it, right?
Speaker: um But it is possible to have a boss that's not really necessarily innovative mechanically, but it is like really cool, right? I think there always needs to be a...
Speaker: basic boss Mm-hmm or something that is Trying to force you to learn a mechanic, right? Like the oh, I'm do the wind-up for the like hey This is your eight second window to bear him right soldier of God Rick yeah I forgot about It's been so long uh-huh Yeah, I actually what's what's funny here is like um your gimmick boss taking this to Dark Souls for a second. The gimmick boss actually isn't a good one in Dark Souls. Like no one likes Moonlight Butterfly. It's neither interesting nor is it fun. Like there is no redeeming part to the boss. No, you literally have to get to the summon to make it not suck ass. Mm hmm.
Speaker: I thought you were going to talk about a Daughters of Chaos. Oh, yeah, yeah. Bed of Chaos. Bed of Chaos, yeah. I mean, also true. Well, Bed of Chaos at least is interesting, but it has dropped all of the points ah of mechanical interesting in favor lore interesting. Yeah. um And yeah, I mean, it was pretty clear that they were they were coming up on the end of their budget by the time they got to Bed of Chaos. Even the ruins of Izalith. It's like, we just phoning this in now? Like, the lava doesn't even hurt me anymore, guys. And you're like, yeah, yeah, kind of.
Speaker: But yeah, I mean, ah from what I saw the game, it looks really good. And I especially kind of like the... um the adventure elements to it. Like they had elements of verticality and hey, you can see something, but how do you get over there? A little bit of puzzle solving.
Speaker: um And yeah that was just pretty cool. Some stuff where if you want to be a completionist, if you keep an eye out for certain things, ah you might find some stuff tucked away.
Speaker: hmm. Yeah, the one thing I saw that I was like, every time it happened, I kind of was like, man, PC could do this better. This is clearly console controls was like the radial menu to switch between like guns and powers and stuff like that. um Because it's fine. Like it's not the worst. But I just think back to like, um,
Speaker: playing Subnautica and like one of the first mods I got was like let me use the entire number row I want one through zero at the minimum and equal sign would be better right like just give me everything um you have so many keys there and then I was like if if you see a radial menu where it's like you have six options but we had to still give you a radial menu I'm like yeah this is this is made for consoles um But it's fine. At least they slow time when you do that. Right. So you're not really at a disadvantage and you might even be able to use it to react to certain things. I'm not sure. I think it it pauses it.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. I think that's one thing I wanted to say. Yeah. um If you are afraid of picking up, because you're like, oh, this is souls type thing. It's going difficult.
Speaker: I did not think it was that bad. And Dave's only a professional. So as long as you're at least at Dave's level, you'll be OK.
Speaker: Yeah, that's true. No, I mean, I saw you fight a couple bosses and it kind of ah it looked like it had some of that mid I want to say like mid 2010s video game difficulty where it's like if you have you might come up to something and it's like crap I died to that but then you like know what the thing is and you're probably not going to die to it again right like there's a lot of bosses in the soul series where it's like this is a door and you are not getting through this until you literally get better at the game
Speaker: But I did see some bosses in this one where it's like, it does seem like when he does this, if I do this, then I won't die. And I died to it once, but it might not happen again. And it's kind of like a little bit more forgiving in that you can make fair number of mistakes. It feels very generous in comparison.
Speaker: Like a lot of actual souls bosses are looking to do things to fuck you up to then punish you. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Whereas this, like you were saying, felt more kind of standard arcadey, I guess.
Speaker: And the other thing was the parrying, right? Because I remember I commented on it when I was watching you play. um I was like, oh, this looks like really tight timing. Like it looks like it's a little bit more difficult. But you you pushed back against that a little bit. Do you remember what your take was kind of on the parrying system?
Speaker: It feels like Sekiro parrying, if that makes sense. Yeah. Where, and like, if you're mashing it and, like, attacks are coming, you'll probably be okay.
Speaker: Right. um You do need to be specific for... attacks like it can't be way off but a lot of the enemies do have like that wind up and tell and there's also things you can get to make parrying easier as well right but getting the parry is cool because when you're starting out with a basic adds it kind of takes their whole bar and then you can just execute them immediately right
Speaker: Yeah, I did think it was cool that like some of the more difficult enemies, um they would attack you with a chain of attacks and you may need to parry them multiple times in the chain. Because this is like this is both the skill requirement increasing to like accommodate the fact that parries might be a little... A parry on its own might be a little bit easier to land. Okay, but we're not going to give it to you for free. Now you've got to parry three in a row or something like that, right?
Speaker: Like that is cool. And also it always feels awesome to parry multiple attacks in a row. Like who are we right in like let's go right going back to the fucking puppet king. Hello. Yeah. that fight. Need to play.
Speaker: I need to once it's when it's on sale again. i'm going to buy the actual game and the peel lives of PLC. Yeah. she will Play the DLC at some point as well.
Speaker: I was he going to say. There is also a magic and ranged weapon options as well.
Speaker: Which is kind of interesting, like because I mean, you could change between them at will. Like you said, it it it pauses the game when you do that. um But I'm kind of used to playing something like I say used to playing Skyrim like it didn't come out.
Speaker: 15 years ago or whatever the crap now like literally actually um But you know your so your spell blade sword and board like ah burn him down and just you know chop him up with his hand or whatever It did feel like you were kind of committing to some tools at a time and then you just swap between them maybe even I Feel like doom is the wrong comparison, but you could tell me what it feels like I kind of see what you mean with that um there were certain enemies were like Typically, I'm running around with like the standard saber and pistol.
Speaker: You're kind of early like the first weapons you get are the weapons I'm pretty much always going to stay with until the end of the game. Unless I find something they really fucking cool. Which.
Speaker: I don't know. Pistol is pretty strong. There's no BFG in ah Valor Mortis. ah But if you ah use the pistol or any projectile weapon to find enemies weak spot, ah you can deal a lot of damage to them or possibly just kill them outright.
Speaker: So it's nice to be able to do that if you see an enemy at range that's not paying attention. Right. Um, And then as you round a corner, you can also just cut down the enemy in front of you there.
Speaker: Right. And then maybe see another enemy coming and then you parry and attack. Or maybe you then you see a shield guy come and you're like this motherfucker. And then you switch to using magic and you set him on fire.
Speaker: Right. Setting enemies on fire works for 90% of enemies. Most people don't like fire. Yeah, that's true. um Yeah, I did. I did see from when I was playing it that the game definitely we were playing it when I was playing it like mentally. i was like, look, I'm doing really well right now. I meant to say watching it.
Speaker: um But when I was watching you play it, the um The game plays with like levels of control. So it'll be like, hey, in a controlled situation, you're approaching enemies. You start out at range. You can chip them down. You can do good damage. You can finish them off with melee or whatever.
Speaker: But in other times, you're going to get ambushed. Maybe you fall through like weak flooring or something. Now you're really not going to have time to line up those precise shots. How do you get out of this? Right. Like they're putting you on the back foot a little bit.
Speaker: um which I think is good because it kind of like forces you to engage in the system in different ways. um But I don't want to oversell it, sell it, right? Like, like this looks, it looks good. It looks very fun. It looks like a game to play through and enjoy.
Speaker: um What's your ah overall a feeling for this? Like recommend buy it on a sale, buy it at full price, wait until it's more than full price and pay that.
Speaker: I don't remember how much this was. ah Right now in my head, if it's $30 or below... but Sorry, what did say? $40 is retail. In my head, it's worth $40. Yeah, it's actually not too bad. yeah I mean, it's like double-A price, right? You're not paying an anywhere near $60, $70, whatever it is. It was a solid game. I enjoyed my time with it.
Speaker: um I do not think it's perfect, but I like a lot of the ideas that they're incorporating. And i would like to see them do more of it yeah and kind of build on that.
Speaker: Yeah, the developer, by the way, and coming back to that, was it's ah one more level. So they, I got to give them props for having something that's so very different than Ghostrunner, right? Yeah.
Speaker: You can feel some of me some of the DNA. yeah um It does very much feel like its own game, though. Right. Yeah, and as you as I was watching you play it, like it a kill animations and stuff like that, it's like we were like, Dishonored? Yeah, it it does look a lot like Dishonored. The thing that immediately made me think that is if you go up to enemies, you can backstab them and there's like a little icon.
Speaker: But when you had the saber, you just kind of like go up, stab them through the heart and then pull it out real quick. I'm like, Corvo. Is that you? And he's back. Just when you think he's out.
Speaker: but Yeah, the the execute animations ah are cool and will vary based on which weapon you have as well. Mm hmm. Like there was a time I executed an the enemy and I had my pistol out in the other hand. I was using my web my sword to attack them, not the pistol. Right. So just blabbing them with the pistol.
Speaker: As I broke the parry and got the execute, I put the gun up to their head and them. Yeah. Yeah. You hit them with ah the gangland style of killing.
Speaker: And then when you have the fire out, you like burn their face. It's pretty gruesome, yeah. see like the fire kind of like come out of their eyes and mouth, kind of like bright lights, not like...
Speaker: You hit them with a cool effect. We're all familiar with Ghost Rider. You get it. hu They did look cool though. i'm a Part of me, it's it's it's the me that started playing games when i was much younger. i was just like, oh, kill animations. This is really cool. Let's go. um Yeah, they're well done from what I saw.
Speaker: For sure. but yeah I would say ah definitely worth checking out if you're into that stuff. um I just had something else I was going to say about it.
Speaker: Oh, I think this is the easiest game of soul genre stuff that I have played. Okay. Like Lies of P is a lot closer to a Dark Souls type of difficulty.
Speaker: I think that's fair. Yeah. Yeah, I believe it.
Speaker: Even ah I was about to I'm trying to be ah what is it antagonistic. I'll be like is it easier than like Senua but like Senua is not a Souls game. I don't know you can roll you know.
Speaker: So if you can roll in a game Senua is pretty easy. That's kind of Dark Souls thing. It is very hard to die in that game. Yeah. It's not really what they're trying to do. They want to show the struggle but actual defeat isn't very satisfying in that game.
Speaker: Yeah, I don't know. It's just it's good game. I know I'll probably go back through it at some point and experiment with a different build. Yeah, it looks it looks neat. And it kind of like I have this is the thing that kills me is before I went through and I use the like ah dynamic tags for everything in my Steam library. I realized that like every game that was ever made is an action adventure game.
Speaker: All of them. Like if you're lucky, maybe it's a puzzle game. a survival game or an action adventure game. And those are the three types of games. Um, survivor puzzle.
Speaker: i There you go. There you go. um a puzzle survivor game, probably pop survivor puzzle. Okay. All right. All right. was say survival puzzles turns into horror pretty quickly. You're like, i suck at puzzles. Um, uh, insert jigsaw here, I guess. But, um,
Speaker: unrelated because i think this did come out at some point semi recently endocopia okay are you aware of anything around that no nothing about this one okay um i know too much because i watched the lore video but it is a Kind of like old school style point and click puzzle game.
Speaker: That's the vibe. Okay. ah But there's a lot of other stuff going on
Speaker: Interesting. i i looked this up just so I could see how the name was at least spelled so we could add it to the podcast notes. And there are pictures for this game and I am so confused. Mm-hmm.
Speaker: So I will say from what I have seen of it, it is very unique and very much its own thing. hmm.
Speaker: And for every point of the game that I watched, I was like, did not expect that to go there. OK. aha Yeah, no, I don't know how to like describe what I'm seeing here, but um it looks like a person sitting on a very basic chair.
Speaker: Their arms are very long, but folded inward, kind of. And then their head is a gray mask with large buttons that are red, yellow, and cyan, I want to say, or green. I have no idea what this is. It's all like pixel art and crazy.
Speaker: um Yeah, it's like a mix of pixel art and.
Speaker: Actually, it's mostly pixel. It has some like 3D elements, too. Yeah, no, i I got nothing. I don't know what to add to this, but we yeah we can include it in the shout out list. I would say watch the trailer.
Speaker: And if you're that curious, check it out. Yeah, absolutely. um For things I've been playing recently. I have been completing Warframe dailies and feeding pieces of a moon to a giant spaceship.
Speaker: But that's just Warframe. Anything could happen there. um I was playing Crusader Kings 3, which is like a hilarious game. ah freaking, I don't know. I described it to my wife and i'm like, it pretty much is The Sims.
Speaker: um But Crusader Kings is Crusader Kings. So if you ever want to learn more about it, you can just look it up. I'm not going to but i going to spend time bothering. I'm trying to like, I was trying to reestablish. There's a dead religion.
Speaker: Zoastrian ism. It followed Zoaster, and it's where words like Azuramagda comes from, from or Ahriman, which you probably heard in different games and things like that over the years.
Speaker: um And I was like, it's literally like a dead religion for most of human civilization in any like ancient to modern times, basically. And I'm like, no, no, no.
Speaker: This one underdog. We're going to play these guys. We're going freaking take Persia. We're going to like fight back the Christians, fight back the Muslims. Let's go all of it for Ormazd. Let's go. and the It was not super wildly successful for a long time, but we have we eventually found a way.
Speaker: um Hilarious game, a lot more in common with EVE than it is sane to admit as far as menus are concerned. But not something you can really engage engagement bait people with in a podcast.
Speaker: What I picked up very recently, and I put 2.2 hours in is a little little indie number called Sovereign Tower. And are you familiar with this game, Dave?
Speaker: I am not. Okay, that was a fair answer. i was like, if you're familiar with this after I had nothing for Indicopia, I'm gonna be upset. Oh yeah, that one, oh yeah, that came out in 2000. It's actually also pretty recent, I believe.
Speaker: But um it's it's I would say it's a mix between a visual novel and the gameplay of Dispatch. So in dispatch, in theory, the gameplay was you pick your heroes, you look at their elements, the things that they're good at, their attributes, and then you send them to jobs that they're good at and try to be successful.
Speaker: But this was made by people who made, um, telltale games. So there is merely the illusion of consequence. Should you choose the wrong option?
Speaker: Um, There were very few choices in that. Basically, it's like, hey, do you want Moist Critical with you the whole time or not? that was That was kind of it. um But...
Speaker: ah That game kind of like it it doesn't do much with the gameplay of the actual dispatch element, even though that's the only gameplay in the game. Right. Which I don't consider much of gameplay from what I watched personally.
Speaker: That's an honest take. Like usually it's opinions versus facts and things like that. Like that's just a fact. What they were saying. um There's just not that much gameplay in it. But if you want to watch like.
Speaker: a pretty well done story and anime basically or, you know, American animation. It's pretty good. I actually enjoy just dispatch for that. Just don't expect it to be like a game.
Speaker: This one actually has some of that. So the setting is without spoiling things. This is just like the box art, the stuff you'll see in like the Steam page. um You play as the sovereign in a tower, ah the sovereign tower.
Speaker: And ah you have knights that you need to send out to help the realm, to defend against attackers, to help local people do all this stuff. You have different groups that you're trying to like win favor with, like the peasants or the nobles or the merchants or whatever.
Speaker: I'm imagining just go up to the peasants and you're like giving them like flowers and bread just being all sweet on them. her I mean it probably worked their peasants right they have standards. um But ah it has a very similar attribute system like your knights are getting better when they succeed in quests you can level them up you can increase their attributes you can equip them um you can pick like a mount a weapon ah like a tonic slot all these other things.
Speaker: um Tonic slots what I call my Yeah yeah um But You won't always know What a given quest Might require for attributes you might see Some of them but others will be hidden So it's like oh I need somebody who's lucky And they're strong but like I don't Really know about the other pieces um So you're like, I'll do my best bet. i'llll I'll try to put someone there who fits the best.
Speaker: But I mean, there were a bunch of quests and maybe I can't get it all done. I'm going to just let these expire. i'm not going to worry about those. Yada, yada, yada. um And you do your best. But like they can literally die. um Like they'll take damage just naturally and you can like repair it like at the you can repair their armor basically. But they can also just die and there could be unexpected outcomes to the quest where you if you send a particular person with a particular hook to a particular quest, it'll always have that outcome. and It's kind of weird that I phrased it like that.
Speaker: I get what you mean, though. It's like certain events are going to happen. hmm. And the the trick, so the first thing is like the characters are actually pretty good. um ah they're They're enjoyable. They're sometimes tropes and things like that.
Speaker: But I like them. um But here was the problem is Dispatch could not make the game difficult because it wouldn't be fun to just replay the Dispatch gameplay and do better. You know, just like, what's the point, right? Right.
Speaker: It literally would have made the game worse if they made it challenging in a way, which is like an insane insane thing think of. It's like if you're going through a movie, basically, and you you want to give people something to interact with,
Speaker: You don't want to have something that's going to prevent them from the rest of the movie. Exactly. You know what you're good at, right? So how do you make a game? How do you balance this out? How do you make this an actual game where it doesn't suck to lose?
Speaker: Well, I'm not going to spoil exactly what the mechanic is, but you learn very early. ah You can rewind time in Sovereign Tower. um And your power to rewind time is absolute.
Speaker: ah Which is to say the game is split up through like multiple days and different sections. They're like sub slices to each day where you could maybe make some decisions. And pretty much at any point, you can just go back in time.
Speaker: Just go back in time. Um... And this would be boring if everything played out the same, but it doesn't because your character remembers everything that happened, everything that went well and everything that failed.
Speaker: And so you'll have different choices because your character is prescient at this point. ah okay And then and i'm not going to spoil this and I'm very early in the game, but Other things start to change that are a little bit different after you've gone back in time.
Speaker: And I had i'll I'll give one really obscure example, but I had someone make it really far. One of my nights, a really cool guy.
Speaker: And he made it really far and i made a bad decision and pretty much everyone died. it was kind of depressing. and I was like, well, time to learn what the rewind mechanic does.
Speaker: Go back in time. i pick some other decisions and somebody dies. And I was like, That was really early. i am concerned this is far worse than the last attempt.
Speaker: But you know what? I'll learn some things. I'll do some different things. My character will learn some things. Exercise the prescience. You can also learn tags about your knights. um That's basically persistent. You learn what they're good at, what they're bad at, what they're afraid of, things like that.
Speaker: Um, and someone else came and joined as a knight because that first person was dead. And I'm not going to spoil it, but it's very dark and it's very related to the, the, the, the first person.
Speaker: Um, and I'm like, oh crap. Loss in this game, like losing, having bad things happen to you may actually open other paths later in the story.
Speaker: And no, it's good. So check out Sovereign Tower. It's 20 bucks on Steam, full retail. i I got it for, I think, a couple bucks off on sale.
Speaker: And that is... Currently 18. That's a pretty good deal. That's a couple bucks off.
Speaker: That might actually be full full retail. If it says that it is, then I round it in my head to 20. um But if you like ah narrative stories, if you like narrative stories that have some gameplay, if the idea of playing a game that can be difficult, but also undermines its own difficulty by allowing you to rewind time, Sovereign Tower.
Speaker: Check it out. Oh, it's 18, I think, because I have a different game already. Oh, you have like a bundle. So there's a bundle discount. Yeah, that makes sense. So 20 correct. Sorry.
Speaker: No, that's all good. sorry. Please. And I'm ah very early into it. Like I said, two and a half or 2.2 hours. But I want to put more time into it. But I also wanted it to. like It's one of those games where I'm like, I want to pay attention to things. I want to take notes. I want to be immersed.
Speaker: in it and sometimes you can't nail that during like a work week so it's like we're gonna wait on it well I will download the demo heck yeah speaking of demos that takes us to news um because that's all I played recently um ah there's been there's been a lot since we lasted an episode um Notably, we had Steam Next Fest not that long ago.
Speaker: And ah it was newsworthy that a lot of games pulled their demos. If you had to guess, like you didn't already know what the answer was, why would why would you think people would be pulling their demos, Dave? Like this is the one way that indies get their name out there. they get there They their words in people's mouths.
Speaker: I think it's how you say it.
Speaker: I guess if they thought the product was not ready to demo would be the first thing I would think to go to. That would be reasonable, but it's not the answer I'm looking for.
Speaker: Unfortunately, we live in a world where if you put your demo out there, someone's just going to reverse engineer it and then release a rip off of your game. And notably, I read an article a while back where they talk about this. um There was a game about finding a needle in a haystack.
Speaker: And they pretty much like showed the premise on like Blue Sky or X or whatever the crap. And they were like, hey, we're going to make a game that's literally just about finding a needle in a haystack. And you perverts out there are going to eat this up.
Speaker: um And like people were actually really excited for it. So after some people saw that people were really excited for it, that is a very easy slop game. You can make something like that, but there's AI generate it so fast And so there were like four or five functional copies of this game, you know, different assets or whatever the crap.
Speaker: But they all just ripped off the premise of this is a simulator for finding a needle in a haystack. um And a lot of people saw that and they're like, oh, that's bad.
Speaker: Or sometimes you would release a game that has a fully functional engine. But the gameplay just ends after like chapter one or something like that. Right. That's your classic demo. Congratulations. You played for enough. ah now Now it's done.
Speaker: If you go back a little earlier than that in time, we used to have in my day, we used to have demos where it's like you can play for 30 minutes. But it was like the entire game and that it was just like, hey, is there any way that we can just kind of like you know grab that 30 minute limit and just remove it and have the game?
Speaker: um Not so much what we do these days. But if you have the whole engine there and you have like one chapter, that might be enough for people to just kind of reverse engineer it and do whatever they want with the assets.
Speaker: You're a game developer, Dave, so like what is how does this make you feel? ah Well, I do use other people's assets, but they come from the Unity Asset Store.
Speaker: right So it falls under a license where it is fair use.
Speaker: I think a lot of them just need to be credited if it's a commercial use. Yeah, but I mean, like this is a degree beyond this. This is steal your idea, steal your engine, steal your assets, make your own thing.
Speaker: I'd beat the shit out of somebody. That would be my instinct. I don't think I could actually beat the shit out of somebody. No, it's legal. It's legal. No, you can do it. yeah
Speaker: Yeah, it would be very upsetting because what I have in Unity right now still feels like barely a thing, but I feel attached to it because I've spent a lot of time in it. Right. And even though it's very flawed,
Speaker: it's my flawed failure and the things are based off of my thoughts, my ideas, my inspirations. So
Speaker: so yeah, it would it would suck to see a shallow copy of a thing and just it take off with AI before i could release the actual thing.
Speaker: Right. And like we've talked about how hard it is to kind of nail it as an indie these days anyways, right? Like there's a lot of games that come out. You don't need to be competing with four copies of your game that are just lower quality. Sure. But they also make it to market first, right? Because they're just being yada yada out the door.
Speaker: um And yeah, it's... Like, Valve has literally acknowledged that they have a cloning and AI slop problem. A lot of developers, including Moonlight developer, have come out and said, like, hey, you know, we're not really seeing demos to our games because it's too much of a risk. Someone's just going to decompile this and ah basically undercut us to to the door.
Speaker: um And, yeah, it's... It's kind of ridiculous. um I feel like we're we're coming to a head here. Something has to change in the the indie market um because it's kind of just one of the other places where it's not that good games aren't being made. We talked about good games even like in this episode.
Speaker: But like they are besieged at all sides by people who are putting in far less effort to basically steal ideas. You're like, it's allowing them to be more creative. By not putting in. Oh, yeah. It's like, what if ah what if the Sims was in Doom?
Speaker: You know, like, OK, but like those are the Sims models and Doom levels. Like maybe we should have developed this. I'm not saying Sims in Doom is a bad idea. I'm just saying maybe you should have had a more unique take on some of the implementation here instead of literally putting them in the Doom engine.
Speaker: with yeah EA models, you know? And that's kind of the issue. Because, like... I don't know. It's like... i yeah I like to think of AI as, like, the future technology of...
Speaker: you can go up and ask for any food and it will give it to you type thing. Right? The replicator. And I go and ask for 500 cigarettes, right?
Speaker: o my My mind just goes to the spy from TF2 with like the the picture of him with like a million cigarettes in his mouth. i don't know if you remember that or not, but gentle mental. Oh, man. Some good memes came out of that era. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
Speaker: But yeah, it's where was it? You're talking about the replicator and oh yeah, it's like it you can get literally anything that you ask for. And I'm like.
Speaker: A chicken sandwich and I get a chicken sandwich and then I hold it up to everybody like I made a chicken sandwich! Uh-huh. It was like, yeah! Yeah, freaking chicken sandwich!
Speaker: But yeah, you can anybody can go up to the yeah the free anything machine and have it spit out something. And it's like it's not even just that because I agree with what you're saying. Right. It devalues the product in the first place that there wasn't any effort put into it.
Speaker: Like, I'll be honest, I'll admit it up here and people can hate me for it. Like I use AI for like personal projects and stuff like that. But even for myself, I don't think that those projects are worth anything you know what i mean like because if anyone else could make it in a day even if it's a useful tool for me awesome that's all i get out of it is the utilitarian benefit to some scripting or something like that but like anyone could do it in like two days it doesn't require coding and access it doesn't require like any specialized skills you've lowered the floor and you've lowered the value and like what that could be
Speaker: But like even a lot of people there, when we're talking about people ripping off indie devs, it's even worse than that. And it's like, oh no, they just they just stole your assets. right like It's just outright theft. And they're just relying on the fact that indies don't have the ability to come after them.
Speaker: with like ah DMCA strikes and things like that. You know, you can't hit people with IP ah infringement notices and whatever. Rob the bank. and You rob the old people who are getting Social Security checks by taking cut. Exactly. You get it. You get it.
Speaker: But yeah, like you don't have a legal department if you're a solo dev. So how do you push back against the tide of people who want to just you know, put in very little effort and beat you to actual audience.
Speaker: It's tough and it's, it's not great. And we need to find some ways to like actually lock this down and regulate it. I mean, steam kind of does the only people with power to Epic's never going to, because Tim Sweeney's insane. And he freaking loves AI. Tim weenie. Uh, um,
Speaker: But yeah, anyways, that's the whole topic. People have probably heard about it at this point. um We got to figure out a way to do better. The thing that's funny here is if there is pushback, it might actually just come from major publishers because they're seeing their own games get decompiled.
Speaker: You know, ah consoles get rooted and people are running rich white men are angry. Change will happen. There you go. So you got to So you got to do So anyways, you can play Halo in a web browser. As far as I can tell, it doesn't have anything to do with this.
Speaker: But i I saw an article about that and I thought that was pretty neat. um If you had to play a game in a web browser, Halo is ah not a bad one. True. Yeah. With multiplayer.
Speaker: Neither is Azeroth Online or whatever the fuck I was playing the other day. Yeah.
Speaker: Dave sent me a link to I'm expecting that to be taken down. And you described this. what What is the thing that you sent me? This is if it's like a vampire survivors of World of Warcraft that you can play with your friends for free.
Speaker: In a browser. In a browser. It's so dumb. like Yeah, they just ripped all of Blizzard's stuff.
Speaker: off I'm looking at their code base now in GitHub. And yeah, there's there's zero percent chance.
Speaker: When Dave says like rip the World of Warcraft stuff, like character select, official branding, Warcraft logo, the world. like Like if you saw this like fresh with no other context, you'd be like, oh, what did Blizzard make? This looks like a cool new thing.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah, it's it's kind of crazy. I have to assume that you know AI tooling went into this based off the languages, but I don't know, right? And that's kind of the problem also.
Speaker: i don't know. you know
Speaker: i don't know. Actually, wait, no, I can look for em dashes. a yeah AI tool um There you go. That's all you gotta do. um I feel bad for the people that lost the MDash like ah authors and ah people in reporting and stuff like that and they're like I can literally never use this again and it had its place in in actual prose but now it doesn't. See you guys. um Yeah.
Speaker: It looks insane by the way. I don't even know if like we can link to it because it's probably somehow piracy but um yeah, I wouldn't link anything.
Speaker: Yeah, but ah shit do be crazy out here. really do. I realize that I'm expecting to see that same type of thing.
Speaker: um or I think we are seeing it outside of gaming as well. But just like the the copying and devaluing of so many things, like you'll see an Instagram account spin up and it just generates memes. But but boom um I saw it and anywhere you can expect that to be used. That's how it's being used. You know, the thing that hit me and made me sad was like I for a while, I really like background listening music like long YouTube. Here's just a really freaking long video. You just listen to it. i was like, nice. This is like non obtrusive.
Speaker: Sounds kind of cool. could just like vibe to this or whatever. And then I realized that by realizd someone told me and then I started to see it everywhere. It's all AI generated, literally all of it.
Speaker: And I was like, oh, and part of me just died. Right. um Because i' like, I don't want to support this. And if like it's ah ah musicians already don't make any money. So like if I'm going to listen to something, if I'm going to give somebody literally two copper pennies.
Speaker: I would rather it be, you know, an actual musician. Somebody's just like, give me. um yeah That's the thing. AI artists as well on Spotify. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's like it's crazy. um And I know there are people out there. i saw was like I don't know what's going on with the SAG-AFTRA situation.
Speaker: Because they're talking about an AI. Well, I'm sure more than one AI actor by now. Oh, yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I mean, there's obviously a lot of blowback against that, but it's just like, hey, you can hire our trained model for your movie or whatever. And it's like, yeah, is that where we're at?
Speaker: I don't know if I like where we're at, but okay. Um, but yeah, I saw a YouTube comment that was like, yeah, this is the reason that I only listen to music that are, uh, like YouTube videos for music that came out 10 years ago. It's like, oh, here was the cutoff where like everything exploded with AI. And so you just listen beyond it.
Speaker: was like, that's sad and kind of smart, but like, I mean, it sucks to be putting your actual human music on YouTube right now. I a bet. The one thing I don't want believe is, ai is um
Speaker: the Linkin Park album done by the Penguin from Super Mario 64. Do you know what I'm talking about? Yeah, I mean, and that's the problem is they like that type of video is 100% like on that line. It's the... What if we cross this with this? It's cyberpunk, but it's old English or something. And you're like, man, I would love it if a person made this, but I'm not sure if they did.
Speaker: I think stuff like that is just meant to bait because it's like two popular things. So it's natural to think, huh?
Speaker: I wonder what that would be like. Right. It engages your brain briefly, enters your thoughts, takes up some space. Yeah. Yeah. It's just like, oh, that's novel. It's very novel.
Speaker: Right. Yeah. I got to talk about the top story, which I had skipped past and there was plenty of other stuff here, but would be remiss not to mention ah with EA's sell to Saudi Arabia and ah President's son, I guess.
Speaker: ah home ah They have finally shut down BioWare.
Speaker: And somehow...
Speaker: They finally shut down Bioware. I don't know. It's kind of crazy.
Speaker: Yeah. It's again, I think.
Speaker: I think everybody with money thinks that AI is going to solve everything. here So they want to close down studios, get rid of people, they don't have to pay. Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, i mean, it's not on this list. Well, I mean, they probably have to pay ah some degree, but yeah we're talking about like tokens versus a salary. Mm-hmm.
Speaker: I mean, for these people, yeah there's the upfront severance. But then, yeah, then they're then they're gone. There are like so many ways you could discuss this. It's really funny. In the pregame, I was talking to Dave about this topic. I was like, we might just be able to talk about this. And then i brought it up with like four minutes left.
Speaker: ah But there are so many angles to it because like one, it's really unfortunate for Bioware to not.
Speaker: I don't want to belittle the people that were still there. Obviously, we have a lot of Bioware listeners for this podcast, but like a lot of people also left Bioware. They were working at different studios.
Speaker: It's been you know a long time since it was the same group of people that made a lot of the games that they're known for. um It's like this season's cast of SNL. note you yeah Yeah, exactly that.
Speaker: Um, they spent, I think six years, I want to say working on the next mass effect game, which was now, now canceled mass effect universe. Um, and I mean, that's kind of like a long time. And there's a lot of stories about people being like, Oh, it was going to be so good. And it's like, it's not that far off. We just need someone to buy it. And it's like, yeah, but really, I don't know if I believe it, to be honest.
Speaker: Um, I don't believe anything. Yeah. Because like so it sucks. and I think the reason that they are in particular out the door um are are really unfortunate.
Speaker: Right. Like it could literally just be like Saudi Arabia is like, hey, you put gay people in your game. So stop doing that. Right. Like read an article that like the cover for the Sims is just like for everyone else. It's just like a group of people hanging out and some people leaning into kiss or whatever.
Speaker: but in Saudi Arabia, the cover for the Sims is just like a bunch of guys standing there. I haven't seen it, but just the idea that that is true was very funny to me. Um, and terrifying, right? Like these people own the Sims now.
Speaker: Um, But yeah, I don't know. It sucks for Bioware. I do think that there's some truth to the fact that AAA gaming is really out of control and that there was always going to be a pullback um and there were going to be a lot of cuts.
Speaker: But I mean, that doesn't excuse... hey, we got to fire you so we can pay buy more data centers. You know what I mean? Like, I don't know. it sucks.
Speaker: um I'm hoping that AI will just crash the economy as a whole. Yeah. i mean And then we can just start fresh. Like at the end of Fight Club, you know?
Speaker: Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They'll fly AI into some buildings. and Whereas my mind will kick in the pixies. um I mean, probably.
Speaker: Statistically, you look at the numbers and you're like, hmm, this doesn't make any sense. So, yeah, probably. The people that are still betting on it are basically betting on the bubble not popping yet is my understanding. And then there's some absolute insane people behind that that are like, no, no, we can throw billions of dollars at this.
Speaker: But I digress. Yeah. I hope that the people who are, you know, no longer, i mean, one, the petitions to save Bioware or stuff like that, I have no idea what that could accomplish. I mean, I guess it's a nice outpouring um of sentiment.
Speaker: ah But I mean, like, you're not going to change EA's mind or the new owner's minds with that. Maybe it's nice for the people that left. um But like, I don't know. I feel like that that's not it. Instead, what you got to do is you got to find these people and you got to get them jobs. That's the actual answer is if they're if they're out there on the job market. Give them a hand. Give them a job. Exactly. Exactly. fake those Thank them for their contributions. A round of applause and then give them employment like Dave's saying.
Speaker: um But yeah, so we'll see. I played a lot of the games. I had a really good time with them. And, you know, I wouldn't want to see it all go to crap and become some facsimile of what it was if other people tried to make stuff with the IP. So.
Speaker: You are through time. A copy of a copy of a copy. Exactly. Exactly. Sorry, still have a lot of control in the brain.
Speaker: I mean, it's really good. It's really good. We did an episode on that, right? We did. Yeah. I think we did an episode and we're like, how are ever going to live up to this? And that's what led to the the brief hiatus.
Speaker: Because it's just like the come down. This is the comeback episode. It's supposed to be. It's supposed to be. No, I'm just kidding. Anything else you want to you want to mention for all all those people out there?
Speaker: Put you on the spot, Dave. It's what I do.
Speaker: Do the Tina noise.
Speaker: What should people eat? Hmm.
Speaker: how do they How do they vary their their culinary intake Well, I think as the weather's getting a little chillier, it's never too bad for a chili. That's true. Put some beans and beef and other stuff in a crock pot and just wait. That's true.
Speaker: And then have that with some rice or noodles or whatever the fuck you want. It's freaking good. Beans are really good. Yeah. Yeah. just It's nice to have like...
Speaker: a hot meal that you can top with like a little bit of cheese or sour cream. don't know. Maybe that's the American in me, but it's it's a nice comfort food. Yeah. Very filling, very warm.
Speaker: Cold weather. Chili is kind of the best. Get some cornbread or something. Oh, dude. Yeah. So good. Honestly, if you don't want to make cornbread, which I typically don't, um just getting stuff at the store yeah As like you're checking out or it's just under like a little label. Anything from the store. Like they all taste good.
Speaker: Yeah. Just buy stuff. Honestly. Consumerism is the key. The key. Cornbread. Banana bread. Yes. most times Most kinds of bread, i'm I'm fine. I really am just carb loading all the time. That's basically the lesson.
Speaker: But want to thank you guys for listening, for coming back, listening to our episode once more. We're always here except the times that we're not. if there are things that we missed, you know, in our little little break over the October, ah go ahead, let us know. Or if there's stuff that's upcoming that you want to hear about, we have opinions about all kinds of things.
Speaker: um Bridges paid a tremendous amount of money ah to to talk on the podcast. So it really doesn't matter what about. Let us know your topics. Our socials are down in the show notes.
Speaker: And as always, we'll see you in the next one. Have a happy Halloween. That was yesterday, but hope it was good.
