Transcript
Speaker: What's up and welcome to games. ah What's going on, Ali? Not too much, man. How are you doing? ah Kind of a lot is going on. I'm doing well. Things are well. Things are good. things That sounded confident. It is confident. I took some strides towards confidence this week. Well, that's good. and Yeah.
Speaker: So what have you been doing? I had a golden run in Ballotro and that felt pretty gosh darn unbelievable. Let me see if I can try to remember my golden run. It was every played face card is a plus five multiplier and it is also every played face card would retrigger. But I went for endless mode after that. It was a good time.
Speaker: ah There's still so you asked me if I beat Ballotro. I don't know. There's a lot to Ballotro. There's kind of a lot to that game. There's there's there's a lot of self -imposed limits that you can put on yourself. There's a lot of ankle weights and wrist weights to that game. What have you been playing? Well, a couple of things. The last last couple of days, actually, I did start playing Sonic Frontier.
Speaker: Really? yeah You did not tell me. This is news to me, ladies and gentlemen. ah yeah What are your thoughts? i'm um So it's not bad. ah My biggest complaint is that it feels very disjointed.
Speaker: um there's no like For a game that has like waypoints and everything like all over the place, it feels like I don't have direction. the The interesting thing is I was sitting there playing ah last night, actually, and my wife was watching and she loves Sonic games. the The reason that I own any Sonic games now is strictly because she wanted to play them. And I'm sitting here and I'm playing this game and I'm thinking, man, this feels really slow. I want, you know, Sonic to be faster. And then she she's sitting there and she's like,
Speaker: I don't think I could play this. It's too fast for me. And I'm just like, what? That's too fast for you. Are you kidding? OK, so there's a lot going up against it. ah ive I thank you first for giving me a platform to talk about the intricacies of the 3D Sonics, because I got a lot to say. ah The Hedgehog engine is pretty incredible. I love Sonic Unleashed. I loved Sonic Generations. Even between those two games, though, you can already tell there's like a tremendous difference in just like the intensity of the speed.
Speaker: but from I don't think we've ever seen a game as fast as Generations and Unleashed. Those two games pushed Sonic to his like quickest, quick reflexes, LBRB, lane switching, dividing the you know vertical movement into three paths. just There's a lot of really charming and smart ways they made Sonic feel fast. They lost all of that in frontiers and they lost all all of it in forces before that. I really I really appreciate these Sonic games because Sonic as just an intellectual property and as a mascot is just my he's my guy. I like him. He's ah he made being fast. Cool. Well, I like a good high speed game. Like a lot of times, even like when I started playing Final Fantasy 11,
Speaker: Uh, the first class that I chose was Lancer and my big complaint was, yeah, it's so slow. It needs more style. I need something faster, which is really weird because I play a healer now and let's be honest, healers aren't fast, but, um, that was, that was my start. And I was like, I need more speed. Of course, even as a healer, I choose the sage class, which is probably the fastest as far as motion and spell casting out of the bunch.
Speaker: But anyway, okay. I re -approached Beat Saber, uh, last night. Um, there's a new Metallica pack and I was unable to resist. Uh, so that was a lot of fun. What, uh, were the top three songs out of the metallic? I mean, I don't, I haven't played all of them yet. So I can't really say the top three. I only played two of the songs last night.
Speaker: I was more, I was more winded than I used to be playing, which just tells me that I need to play it more again. Uh, I used to play on, I used to play on expert plus, and now I had to play on expert. So I've slowed down a little bit and that's disappointing, but that's okay. Um, nothing else matters was exactly as easy as I expected it to be even on expert. Um,
Speaker: there was a few parts where I had to, you know, speed up a little bit with the most part. It's a slow song and just a good song. Um, as far as the unforgiven, Oh my gosh, man, I was not, that song is harder than it sounds like it would be. So, I mean, that was a lot of fun. Uh, but the real, the real breakout for me last night was I did, uh,
Speaker: triangle strategy in VR. You text. Yeah, you texted me about that. You're like, dude, this is actually pretty cool, man. So yeah what is that even like in VR? Because it's not something that. So, yeah, it is definitely is definitely Final Fantasy Tactics adjacent. It's definitely got those, you know, old school, like 16 bit sprites going on. um And I enjoyed that.
Speaker: But in this really neat 3D environment, quite literally, because I'm playing in VR. um And like you can you know move the table around so the the the board, the you know the game field is on a table. But you have to. Really? So it's like when you press like R and L with like the the old Final Fantasy Tactics, and it would just like change the whole 90 degree like like yeah the isometric view of it all. That's awesome.
Speaker: Except you're like actually grabbing the table and you yourself are turning it. which is kind That's actually amazing. um And what I really appreciated is ah I could play it in a pass -through mode. So it's like I have this massive ah you know turn -based strategy, RPG, table, you know, in the middle of my living room. It's like chess just starts being a thing when you put on these glasses, but like the coolest chess that you could ask for, you know? Right. And what was really neat to me was, you know, we've talked about this a couple of times in that I've been craving a good, you know,
Speaker: tactical RPG to play and there's so many now I've looked at triangle strategy a few times and I was just kind of like ah it's not a it's not something I'm familiar with I've thought about it and finally I just said you know what I'm gonna do it and man it was good I did the first battle and I was like this is really interesting there's a lot more depth here than I than you would initially think and it's it's very... It seems like it has like a nice political kind of like climate to it. It seems very...
Speaker: Very I've heard it's say that it's like it's Final Fantasy Tactics and it's Ogre Battle, but it's neither of those things. You know, it's it's got, you know, maybe not the same like ah similar qualities as far as like the the depth of character, the depth of story. But like it's just political, you know, warring factions between these two countries. I it overall appeals to me. It appeals to me because it's like. I don't know. I kind of want to play something where I'm where I'm just a ah country.
Speaker: taken over other countries, but in not in a, ah you know, Sid Meier kind of way. I want to do it. through, I've always really wanted to play the Brigandine games. Have you ever heard of the Brigandine PlayStation One games? Those fascinated me, but I haven't. OK, they actually just had something of a sequel like 20, 25 years later. But it was this it was this ah whole world that was sold as the game. And you could choose, you know, like one of six nations in between all of the the very multifaceted, complex, you know, world that was at at hand. And you just you chose a faction.
Speaker: You chose your side and you played the campaign. There's a couple other games that I think did that. I think there's this game I used to play called Cartier where I think you also had to go on like this. You made a decision really on as to like which adventure you're going on. It was like a kind of like a Resident Evil 2, you know, Leon Claire AB kind of decision.
Speaker: Very, it was very early attempts at like making your dollar stretch more, which kind of is, it's interesting that we're seeing all these really phenomenal turn -based like tactical RPGs just having this like Renaissance. There's so many games done by that team that did like project, you know, triangle strategy, which we came, you know, triangle strategy.
Speaker: in ever developed from there. ah They did the Octopath games. They just like, I don't know, they're kind of like in that team as a spiritual successor of what seems like something else. Oh my. The amount of people that tell me that Final Fantasy Tactics is their favorite is almost a meme at this point. and You know, I have people who either there they will they will discount. Everybody's got their limit of where Final Fantasy stops to them. And then there's the real fans like me and you who are, you know, it's like, no, no, no, you don't understand. there's There's this to this one. Is that to this one? Well, have you played tactics?
Speaker: I've played, uh, not very much of tactics actually, which is hilarious because I'm a humongous, uh, I think I would, I, for a long time, I was more into like the fire emblem strategy kind of games that I, for a long time, fire moments, like what I would have considered at the time, my, probably my favorite franchise.
Speaker: But I, no, to answer your question, no, I did not really play too much into Final Fantasy Tactics. I played the PSP version. And let me tell you, those cut scenes were amazing. ah I would hear these rumors and tell me how you know wrong I am. But like that in the PSP version, you can get like cloud and like a punch brother. Cloud care shows up in the original PlayStation version. So I wouldn't be surprised if he's in the PSP versions. That's hilarious. Ostensibly.
Speaker: the he shows up during his time in the live stream, ah which is kind of interesting because that's touched on in Rebirth as well, right? oh So ah adding to the parallel narrative, ah spoiler alert. um it's it's it's nah It's maybe the most complicated understanding of an intellectual property, you can ask someone to understand. So, but yeah, he shows up. He shows up there. Um, I'm kind of hoping to find, uh, you, you called it a spiritual successor earlier in homage. I'm hoping that ah as I continue through that story, it has the same depth that I found, at least especially in the combat and the story, uh, that I found in final fantasy tactics. Um,
Speaker: And the idea of a spiritual successor to a game as great as that is kind of nice, um especially you can't really get tactics easily on on a console anymore. It's not available on PC. It's just it's kind of there now. you have to You have to find a way to play it.
Speaker: um Which is silly, because it has a whole franchise within itself. Like, first off, the naming conventions of the Tactics Advance series are silly. One of the titles is something crazy like Final Fantasy A2, Grimoire of the Rift. Like, it's so stupid. I love it, but it's so stupid.
Speaker: Uh, I have I've dabbled with all these because these games would come in at my game store and I would like have to test them, you know, just a little bits, uh, turn them on, make sure they function. So while I'm not at all intimately familiar, I'm in incredibly tangentially familiar with one all final fantasy. Let's let's get that out of the way. But specifically the tactics games. I know for a fact there's four or five games within that series and like they're all landlocked to like one handheld or the original, which has been remade a couple of times. Have you ever heard about how terrible the original translation of Final Fantasy Tactics is? I played the original translation. Yes. I'm going to look up some gem. Okay. There's one of the quotes is, I find that dead men route more easily. Blame yourself or God.
Speaker: Life is short. Bury. Steady sword. Layer upon layer, make your mark now. Haste. Earth's anger running through my arms. Earth, slash.
Speaker: ah No. Become a frog. Become a frog. Yeah, no, like these are unironically. These are. These are like early, you know,
Speaker: what's that anime that you ah ah ghost parade ghost ghost stories ghost stories ghost stories ghost stories is this okay thank you i don't need to explain it to you i'll explain to y 'all ghost stories is just this bastardization of what was the original intent. They were like, there's because there's two ways to translate something. There's, you know, translating it maybe literally, or there's like, you know, translating it for the the people who are going to be hearing it in a way that is serviceable to them. You know, not everybody's not every culture has idioms the way that Americans have idioms. um So, you know, um I don't know if I can really. explain I saw a great example of what you're saying right now recently.
Speaker: No se Papa don't know potato, but I mean talking about triangle strategy and just you know the goofiness of these these older games and ah It just makes me think like triangle strategy has been very well reviewed ah It's recognized as no as an homage ah maybe even in some in some cases as something of a spiritual successor um And it was it was really good um but what I What do you think makes it fit that classification? So like that's kind of the thing is like I would kind of make the argument that this team with with the most amount of respect do I i think they're doing good stuff. If not even great stuff. I haven't really played all the way through bravely default rocks path traveler even though I've heard them be screamed at me from a plethora of people.
Speaker: it seems like these people just kind of make ah this team seems like they specialize in in what seems to be like spiritual successors or And what does that term even mean, man? Like we've been talking about this back and forth. I guess it's kind of going to end up being the topic of today. It's certainly the things I have incidentally taken the most amount of notes on. But like when we think about these, because I really wanted to think about what these kinds of games are, every single one of them feels like a a repackaged promise of like a previous idea.
Speaker: so like octopath travelers sort of a you know what if we took like this really amazing story split it eight different ways got everybody together at the end the the ending theme is a banger um you know that the art is gorgeous it just was like hey like let's not reinvent the wheel let's just like solidify this this contract that we made long ago with our fans and let's just do the hell out of it you know um they made uh bravely default bravely defaults really good and it has its own you know combat system but as far as the feelings that evoking it was actually like sort of the sequel to uh a ds game that i my brother bought day one and i watched him and i asked him about it all the time
Speaker: it was this game called final fantasy the four years of lights it is something i've had my question for a minute my brother i always wanted to ask him you know what the game was like he got very frustrated and uh basically just dropped it when all the characters become became cats uh that was maybe actually not i think about it Right. The last game I ever saw him play on a handheld. And I'm talking like 12 years ago at this point. um Long story short, the studio just specializes in like spiritual successors, but like. In in in the homage type of way, because what is sort of happening is me and Ali were chilling on Final Fantasy 11, you heard him rep that earlier, ah and we were just sort of accidentally ended up talking about like, what even is a spiritual successor, man?
Speaker: Cause like when I, what is, let me ask you cause I have my answer. What is the first thing you think of when we talk spiritual successor? Oh, the first thing is going to be a, uh, intentional, I don't want to say aping because that's not, uh, that's not the right term here, but it kind of is, uh, a gameplay style and overall look feel of a game. Um,
Speaker: So that's like the concept. Is there a game you point to like that? Even if I can't describe it, that is a spiritual successor.
Speaker: So successor that I was aware of as a spiritual successor. Uh, the first time I heard this concept was mighty number nine, which is spectacularly awful. Um, yes, it is. I think it's really bad. And so it's spectacularly insulting to its audience for sure. Yeah. And I mean, the guy that, the guy that made it, uh, he was <unk> thirty and a phone like he was, you know,
Speaker: assistant in ah the original Mega Man series. He took lead for Mega Man X. He's the guy that designed Zero, who is honestly the coolest character. And he sure spent you know the next 10 years talking about it. ah He also got his filthy grubby paws on my Dead Rising and ah you know just decided it was just his name that needed to be on the main character's jacket. Do you know this?
Speaker: That dead rising twos chuck green as the protagonist says I check which is kg backwards Get your grubby mitts out of my dead rising you filthy stinkin director okay, but anyway and but like so that's the thing you point to is because that's what it like entered like the kind of the the zeitgeist, you know, like the the the Yeah, the world. And then I started looking, I was like, at that point, I was like, what is a spiritual successor? I started discovering some of these, some of the you know previous ones that have happened and some that kind of surprised me. But ah that is my, my first thought of a spiritual successor, like
Speaker: That's the number nine. as That's a great answer. That's not bad. No, so like, because here's the thing, we're we're going to go through a bunch of different things just right off the bat. They're like, we we kind of tre like, you know, smashed our noggins together and said, hey, what can we do to like define what if what a yeah spiritual successor is? And we define it on a lot of different grounds. But like, there's obviously the the the horrible example of Mega Man to Mighty Number Nine, where a man who took maybe too much credit for Mega Man for way too long,
Speaker: kind of showed what happened when the spotlight was on him. Then you got someone like, you know, so this is my answer. When I think of perfect spiritual successors, someone who has got an idea that they've just been trying to pass through the zeitgeist for a long time, we're talking about here in Obasaka Gucci and we are talking about Lost Odyssey blue dragon the last story ash ah on the ds in japan with as a fan translation um panta
Speaker: Fantasian that okay, so that's a little bit later. But yes, that is absolutely Just reminding me all the games. I can't afford right now To be honest, it's the's the time is the resource right now oh so That is the that is for ah The world right now our our stomachs are a little bit smaller than our mouths if you know what I mean Anyway, here no beside Koguchi was this guy who ran Final Fantasy from one to nine and as a franchise into the stratosphere that we know, you know, he is the he's Mr. Final Fantasy. He plays 14. He played 11. He was responsible for some hilarious flops. He was responsible for maybe the canonization of RPGs.
Speaker: JRPGs into the palatable gamer diet in America. He is the guy that made FF7 cool. He's one of the guys that made FF7. Tetsuya Nomura is a lot of people that made FF7 cool, but Mr. Sakaguchi was, you know, just left out to, after the failure of the Final Fantasy movie, he was left out to Pastry. He was put in a tiny room in a big office in Japan at his Square studio and they just said, hey,
Speaker: You are the brand you are a representative of the brand and you have defiled the brand So we're gonna put you in this room and you're just gonna collect a paycheck Maybe you get to talk to whatever people we send you, you know papers your way But he was just you know, totally left out on an island he was not going to have this he was a creator he needed to create and he still had a lot left to say as it turned out and he gave us the magnificence that is lost odyssey lost odyssey is such a good game that when i found out co -workers of mine played final fantasy i bought them copies of lost odyssey uh none of them played it
Speaker: I don't think that that would have changed when if I had gotten it brand new. I don't think it would have changed it no matter what, because there's something lost when you tell someone, no, no, no, you don't understand. It's like Final Fantasy, but it's like the real Final Fantasy because you have like Lost Odyssey is more of a, you know, Final Fantasy 10 in some ways than even Final Fantasy 10. But let's be real, it's it's like the Final Fantasy 13 that everybody was so disappointed at the time that they didn't get out of the lightning adventure and the lightning trilogy.
Speaker: um I think those games are fine. I think there's a lot wrong with them I'm very aware of those and I put those in a nice little corner in my head and I look at the art and I listen to music and I watch lightning actual tough That's how you have a good time with that game the lost Odyssey took all of these seven eight nine ten mature it has these like text adventure segments where you take on I think like 33 different stories and and these are like things that you'll read for anywhere from like seven minutes to 30 minutes. It can be you know 40 if you're an idiot slow reader with a lot going on.
Speaker: But there's so much, there's so much in that game, Lost Odyssey, specifically. I do love Blue Dragon. I i played it first, but ah Lost Odyssey is just brimming, overflowing with ideas. Text adventure segments, you have art done by ah vagabonds. um Takiko Inoue, I think is his name. um yeah Anyway, ah you have music done by the you know classic trio of Nobue Uematsu, and it's just you got the Final Fantasy team back together. I didn't. ah
Speaker: Amano, do the ah artwork for it, too? You should talk about character design. No, actually, it was it was Takahiko no way. I do know that for a fact he because this is a man I hold up in the same regard as like Kentaro Mira when who is the other mangaka that steals my soul every time I read his work.
Speaker: I'm talking we know we did slam dunk and he did vagabond he's done some other stuff but those are his two big boos and that's what he has sort of this claim to famous so he did the the arts for all the characters that's why all these characters have like there's this incredible stature that they all have they're all very adults like um I also played Lost Odyssey in Japanese and I think that did a lot to my enjoyment of it. um the the There is a plot twist about 20 -25 hours into that game that I could tell you right now and in doing so I would absolutely get you to play the game and I'd absolutely
Speaker: hamper your enjoyment of it. And it's such a good plot twist. I respect the game too much to spoil it to you. But just know that I've played um ah played a lot of games in my life, and and Lost Odyssey has something magnificent about it. And really, it's it's it's just its final fantasy of of a legally distinct, different name. The most and important type of distinct.
Speaker: I mean, that's kind of the necessity for spiritual successors. I mean, to a degree, legally distinct. Absolutely. There's a reason that they're not calling a hat in time, you know, Super Mario 64 hat edition, you know, ah evil within. i we They want to say Resident Evil, but they can't.
Speaker: Ah. But I mean, so like these are these are sort of, I guess, if you're going to like crystallize this point, these are spiritual successors done by like creators, right? You know, Keiji Nafune, Koji Igarashi, Hironobu Sakaguchi, Shinji Mikami. These are all people that like had this original promise and they followed up with it with like a different technological palette, you know, different tableware in front of them to eat their meal a different way. But, you know, it ah it goes down the same.
Speaker: You know, decades might separate these games, but I mean, largely, I mean, I mean, you're you're right. ah You know, Koji Garashi did Bloodstained. And honestly, if I didn't know that it wasn't the Castlevania game, I would have thought it was. Absolutely. You would have thought it's it's a retrofied one of those late Wii era like remakes of their, you know, Konami classics or something. I would have thought that they just, you know, back and just decided to do a Symphony of the Night style.
Speaker: a Castlevania game just like Mega Man 9 and 10 were NES era Mega Man games even though they came out in the 2010s.
Speaker: and Honestly, those are sort of like... See, I don't think those are even a little bit touched or handled by Keiji Inafune. No. Or or maybe it is that they are... I don't think so. i We may be wrong on that. We'll have to check. But ah it's certainly an instance of like a franchise being its own spiritual successor. That might be the only one that kind of gets away with it because it took like 20, maybe like 10, 15 years for 8 to have a sequel. Keiji Inafune is the producer for Mega Man 9.
Speaker: see i kind of thought he did that because that was right around the time where like there was sort of this like inafune like renaissance before he left capcom they announced like this mega man universe they announced you know uh mega man legends 3 even had a short time where it was like a viable thing uh but i mean yeah like these are these are still the same creators just you know handling a different set of tools different teams same vision same, you know, thought tunnels, just, you know, different. It's it's like an assembly line. I don't know. it's It's I don't know. I don't want to get ship a thesis about it, but like, you know, it's like it's like building two ships trading out part by part feels feels different at the end. That's maybe not the best metaphor at all, actually. ah Well, I mean, ah it's not actually. It's a it's a pretty good metaphor.
Speaker: because if you think about it. Let's see if you can land this plane. We'll talk about Final Fantasy because obviously it's what I'm most familiar with. but um yeah you know you If you to take away all of the original parts, is it still the same ship? Is it the spirit that matters or is it the substance? The paneling.
Speaker: yeah So, I mean, if you take away... I think we're the first people to ever ask this question, by the way. If you take away, ah you know, if you take, if you take away the original creator, ah you know, Nobu Sakaguchi from Final Fantasy, and what, would is it still Final Fantasy? You know, at this point, I don't think there's anybody left in the development team that was on the original. and Granted, I mean, it's been,
Speaker: nearly 40 years, but the disparity, just how different it is. We talked about this last week. Um, it's staggering in how different the game is, even just compared to final fantasy nine, when it still had most of the, you know, the original core staff. Absolutely. Yeah. So, you know, ship of Theseus, like you just said, when you keep replacing a part of the parts, is it still the same thing?
Speaker: Especially when those parts are manufactured but on on like a corporate company level like it's it's just a square employee, right? Like if you take your no beside kaguchi out of it who owns the the rights to the name Final Fantasy Final Fantasy 14 exactly Final Fantasy 14 is like the biggest brand ah Like let's let's talk about like centralization of information we used to live in a world where you know like fireside chats were how we all centralized ourselves uh you know the the hank brothers i think made a good video about this but like we live in a really decentralized time you know nowadays we do like growing up there was when the games would release there was they were sort of a part of our like collective identity as a country as a gamer as like
Speaker: and all of us within ourselves are our own burgeoning identities that's would Define our taste but like we were throwing a lot of spaghetti at the walls and we were seeing what's stuck um Some of those things were amazing like Final Fantasy some of those things got forgotten and you there We had a centralized kind of palette. We were an American people that liked you know some Final Fantasy. We liked you know shooting games and arcades and driving real fast. And and all these games sort of came out to to to fulfill that thing.
Speaker: When you have indie games, in the very beginning, indie games were like this very direct response to what was not being fulfilled by you know the mainstream games. ah There was not any good platformers. There was not a lot of times put to you know just like roguelite games. like These are things that have only really become prominent in the past 10 to 15 years.
Speaker: and that is directly as a result of not only steam but just the the overall market and games like freedom planet are almost better than any sonic game you know i just want to say that we live in a decentralized time now where nobody really has the same taste Nobody really has the same wants. It's like, like, what is Final Fantasy? Is it 14? Because it's what the most people play. But I mean, as a but that's what's unfortunate is like Final Fantasy, I think when it's remembered in the greater zeitgeist, it needs to be remembered for all of the things that it did to push video games forward. I mean, we've said this before on the podcast, but it had the Thanos snap. It's like the first Thanos snap in like gaming history. It's like, how could we? It's it's almost like with video games,
Speaker: because there's so much that goes into every single game, we've forgotten that these steps were taken a long time ago to show how adult and mature this hobby could be, this medium could be. Yeah. And I think that's true. Even when you, when you look at like this spiritual successor idea, you know, we've grown up, our tastes have grown up, but even the medium has, you know, matured. But when you look at these spiritual successors, the idea,
Speaker: that's presented is, here's this new thing. Absolutely. But it's gonna hearken back to what we knew before. I remember, you know, when I was younger, and I'm sure it still happens, but ah I don't see it as much. But Do you remember when a new video game coming out was an event?
Speaker: absolutely i remember playing excited truck on the weed like as as just like a thing at the we target a target demo kiosk whatever thing you want to call but i would play games i didn't care about just so they, cause they were new and they were exciting. And now it, I, okay. So we both have and been employed at one point or another by GameStop, right? So you, in all sorts of retail peoples, I quit one of those this week, by the way, I'm not going to tell you which that's for me and my diary, but I got the last word anyway. Um, now they're still in business. They got the last word. The point I want to make though is, uh,
Speaker: what ah What is the point we want to make? You were making a point. but no like When the when a game a new game would come out, it would be a big it would be a big event. i mean I remember working midnight releases for video games and knowing that there was going to be a line. i My first day when I worked at GameStop, just to put an age on me, was for the Halo 2 release.
Speaker: Oh, God, that was my first day. Hell yeah. And and it was a big deal. People were lined up and camping out. I remember I genuinely I camped out for the week in like 2006. I was probably one of the last times I actually got to really have that that whole experience. I mean, I've stood in line for World of Warcraft expansions.
Speaker: I worked the midnight release for Destiny. I worked the midnight release for oh wow Call of Duty Black Ops 2. And they were an event like people were there. There was a party. People were ready to have fun. Does that happen anymore? Not at all. And that's that's exactly what I'm trying to say. Like you talked about these games being like sort of ah these modern you know promises on older games sort of carrying the torch almost.
Speaker: right like like earthbound it for anybody that's played it knows exactly what's amazing about it what is you know so so beautiful about that game and Instead of, you know, something like Undertale disqualifying it or or de necessitating it It's so good in the exact ways that made earthbound and mother good That it actually sort of acts as like a springboard you know, which is sort of great to think about because I'm not sure how many I know
Speaker: i Guess I guess it it is this idea that like whatever can get the people together is gonna be amazing You know, whatever gets the people in the streets and dancing, you know ah bread and circuses, right? So in that same vein because of something like Dark Souls Everyone played Demon Souls and because of something like Demon Souls Everybody at least tried to check out Kingsfield, right? Like doesn't it still have like this cascading effect? Yeah, good luck. But like that's what I think is really cool is I don't think any of these things eclipse like you in the reason I say that that is so important understand is think about what reboots are in like the cinematic world like we do not they there is reasons to watch the 1920s version of Nosferatu
Speaker: good in and tell that to any film professor though they will you know the lead before they they say that that is not the case but uh this newer version of no oh this is a bad example because the newer version of sriracha is also amazing but more often than not there are reboots in hollywood that straight up try to disqualify the the previous one Not always, but like when they tried to do like Christmas vacation, they were they were totally trying to put Ed Helms as the new Chevy Chase. like It's a really cruddy example, but it's also the exact example I'm after.
Speaker: They tried to remake Christmas vacation. How did I - Dude, okay. so The Ed Helms yeah the national lampooning, um man, that was that was like a reboot. They tried to squeeze past us like six years ago.
Speaker: And it's like, you ain't no Chevy Chase. And I love Christine Applegate, but she ain't no Beverly DeAngelo either. And whatever, you know, annoying freaking toddlers they got, they ain't going to be. That wasn't a that wasn't a reboot so much as it was a revival. But like what that was. ah He was.
Speaker: the son from the original, yeah he's taking his family on a vacation. He's a rust, that's right. So okay. But that didn't make it less bad, it was an awful movie. Okay, but just to show maybe how little information works in the real time, this is actually a really good example of why I'm wrong. ah Because to be fair, everybody sees that dog crap movie, and then they what they're like, no, no, no, do you understand, like the original was really good.
Speaker: So I don't know, what does this become? Is this some sort of meta commentary that like segmentified like, like a rope with notches in it, like thing that we can just keep pulling on is, is that what media is now? I dunno, is that what media has always been? I mean, I think it might be what it's kind of always been. Uh, and it's interesting when we're talking about spiritual successors that you just brought up, you know, this, this idea of segmented.
Speaker: ah when there's a really weird instance of spiritual successors that is truly, definitely segmented in ah in a weird way. And I'm not sure how it fits into all this either. And that is Xenogears, Xenosaga, and the Xenoblade Chronicles.
Speaker: um I remember in 1999, when Xenogears came out and I was like, this is awesome. And then I realized that it said - Part five of a six -part story. Yeah. Amazing. Then, you know, amazing years later, um for legal reasons, they could no longer call it Xenogears, but there was Xenosaga episode one so as the beginning of ah of the story, right? Yes, yes, yes. The legal reason being that it wasn't published ah by Squaresoft.
Speaker: Wasn't it like they got bought by Bandai Namco? And it's like the OK, I tell we're going to figure it out at some point, but like I'm pretty sure it was that it was it was a square thing. They sold Monolith Soft, I don't know, to Bandai Namco. I know when Bandai Namco was acquired, at least mostly by Nintendo, that gave them the the juice they needed to to make xenoblade. Yeah, right. You know,
Speaker: What was, what was really interesting regarding that is so Zeno saga episode one and two did not perform well. So they, think it was originally going to be a four part series. So episode one, episode two, episode three, episode four, and Zeno gears is episode five. It became episode one, two, and three. So there's still this hole in the story.
Speaker: And then even though they were connected, like a universe wise, I thought they were totally different things. They are totally different things. Oh, okay. Okay. That's, that's why it's, it's, it's a weird, it's a weird instance. And then you have Xenoblade Chronicles, which is the same team, the same studio.
Speaker: But all these years later, when all this may be connected, I don't know. Have you beaten any of those games? No. Have you have you beaten Xenoblade? How much have you played of Xenoblade? I played Xenoblade Chronicles X.
Speaker: OK. Oh, I cannot wait for that switchport, by the way. That was that was one of the last bastions of owning a Wii U. And um it was good enough. I've been told multiple times that it's not the best one of the of the games. That is the biggest. It is one of the biggest games I've ever come across, especially for the time that it came out, man. Um.
Speaker: But yeah, like so the the reason I say that is like, you know, OK, Xenoblade has like some really interesting things going on in its story. It's you start it. Have you like the reason I asked if you've started it and if you finished it is like, yeah, they started it. The start is amazing. You know, you have these like two ancient titans. We don't need to get into it, but it's it's a really strong opening. I so am floored by that game's opening.
Speaker: Well, um and I mean, and that's but that's the thing. Like, so we have this Xenoblade Xenoblade Chronicles is ostensibly a spiritual successor to Xeno saga and Xenogears. But in a weird, incongruent way, Xeno saga is a prequel spiritual successor would you call it a spiritual prequel to i would call those
Speaker: it's definitely spiritual it's there's no way in which it's not a spiritual successor or spiritual cousin ah but like you can file this under like I don't know, like corporate company mandated restructuring, like of of of an idea. Like, is isn't that what it is? I don't know. I don't know enough about these three individual franchises. I know also Sproxxaratustra, on top of being something I read in high school, was, ah you know, one of the best like PS2 RPGs. like People talk about Xenosaga 3 better than I talk about, you know, my dog. That's so because it was really good.
Speaker: I just, you know what, I'm trying to get my PS2 emulators working ah so I can get on that. But ah that has been the meta video game I've been playing all week. Let me tell you, ladies and gentlemen, and everyone out there, just listen to me for a second. There's so many video games. There's so many things that you can classify as video games.
Speaker: It is when you when you get a computer as as a console baby that I have been my whole life, as someone who if it didn't come manufactured on a disc, I just was not gonna be able to play it. And then you know digital stores came out and we had all these PC you know versions leaked and migrate their way onto consoles. But when you actually get a computer,
Speaker: and And someone shows you the silliness that is itch .io and all the nonsense that exists on all these fan -translated versions of games I never thought I'd get to play. I never thought I'd get to play Bahamut Lagoon. I never thought I'd get to play like the Berserk PS2 game. ah There's just so many games out there. I just want everybody to know that you don't need to you need to look forward to games. You can look backwards to games. We were talking about corporate bullcrap getting in the way of like You know, but what about when a corporation stays away and just lets the thing just happen? You know, that's you. If you think about it, that is Dragon Guard, dude. Dragon Guard is like the weirdest ex boyfriend that you still invite to the wedding.
Speaker: ah of a franchise a square could have ever had and then it develops so by the time he actually comes to the wedding he's just the best looking guy there he's getting up with all your family he's like oh cousin maven how you doing near near aged like a rizzler let's just say it right here right now it aged like a
Speaker: I don't think a lot of people know that Nier is in fact ah a sequel to Drakengard. It is set in the same world. It's so stupid, but it is. But it is. But it's it's very separated as well. It is. it So it is somehow simultaneously a sequel and a spiritual successor. Kinda like Xenosaga is a spiritual successor and prequel.
Speaker: Simultaneously. It actually might. If you think about it, it might be definitively a spiritual successor. Like it is within the canon that it is like a tan. It's like it is a Shin Megami Tensei to persona like branch splitting off. You know, it is it is Christians and Catholics just split off. It is it is on some like. I mean, but it's a good and it's a good metaphor, especially Shin Megami Tensei to persona.
Speaker: Yeah, right. And then all the other spin offs. But that's the main one, right? Yeah. Like digital devil's saga is in there. Yeah. But when you look at it, and you talk about, you know, you talk about the the the corporations and ah how does it how does it affect it? Well, what happens to a what happens to a team or a project when ah the team is changed, and they keep trying to work on the same thing?
Speaker: What makes you think that? Well, Final Fantasy for one. Fair. OK, definitely. I'm curious because I agree. um Like. It it changes the it changes the spirit of it for one, but it doesn't necessarily mean it's bad. And at that point, does that does that become a spiritual successor? Because it's not the same. It's not the same.
Speaker: Gosh, you know, it's funny because it was something like so I talked to you earlier about like Sakaguchi. So there's a lot of errors within like Final Fantasy. We can split them up graphically. We can split them up, you know, in their in terms of the adultness of the storytelling. Absolutely. Like, you know, three, one, three and five all sort of fit in the same camp as like two, four and six. You know, it's it's you can split these up a million different ways, but It's kind of tough to say something like Final Fantasy should happen because every one of those is sort of a spiritual successor. it's It's informed by the previous one. It capitalizes on the things you expect by giving you things you don't expect. And that's really why there is such like a back and forth nature between you know one through six.
Speaker: Seven, eight, nine, you know, the seven and eight are very much responses to each other. You know, seven years trapped in Midgard for like the first six hours. Eight. The first thing you do is leave this island that you leave the school to go to this island. I mean, these are responses to each other. And then they were like, after all the the adult nonsense and I know seven and eight. Exactly. That's same thing. We're both so serious.
Speaker: And then nine is well, not the nine is still my fantasy game. like You know what? That's going to be something our viewers might be able to catch me play for the first time, because despite being a Final Fantasy maven.
Speaker: with a lot of them, all of them under my belt in some way or another, beaten most of them. I've not played in beaten nine and I've not played in beaten eight. These are going to be very fun experiences. I'm very excited. Completely off her topic, but nine had a dungeon that had my favorite mechanic. Um, and that was, there's a point in the game where you get to this dungeon and the worst your equipment was,
Speaker: the more powerful it was in that dungeon. You wanna know something? Lost Odyssey does that same stuff, man. It's all that same stuff, man. It's all that same train. It's got the same Hobo sec. Dude, so, ah on dude, okay, i well, since we're talking about favorite things, I gotta say, my favorite dungeon that Saiga Gucci maybe ever did was in Lost Odyssey there is this this ginormous dungeon especially at the time that you were playing it on the 360 your whole RPG party is used that's what i really like about Lost Odyssey whole RPG party is split into two they are they are split in ways that i think you choose if i remember correctly but no matter what you're not going to have all your strong hitters on one team and if you do your your hoes and yourself
Speaker: That that dungeon, it's probably two hours and there's just not enough time for me to speak. That's an interesting mechanic as well. So if it's going back and forth in a in a narratively pleasing way. Oh, my goodness. That is so near automata is it does maybe like the most creative implementation of that idea. There is towards the end. ah There's five different, you know,
Speaker: There's a lot going on in that game. I'm not going to talk too much about it. But towards the end, there is one part where you're switching flippantly and with increasing ah volatility between two characters. So it's like 30 seconds, 30 seconds, like 25, 25, and it's like 15, 15. And you're switching back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. And it's, God, it's amazing. So we're talking about something as it matures. Like we're talking about Drakengard. We're talking about Nier.
Speaker: what happens when you know someone who understands like sonic went down this really really awful kind of trajectory um now it has it's like the sea it's like the prequel star wars films there's like this nostalgia for its clumsiness there's this nostalgia i don't think i'll ever be nostalgic for the 2006 sonic the hedgehog game listen i'm telling you right now you could dehydrate my ah enthusiasm and i would i would get it in a line with a razor blade and i would snort my my happiness that i felt for sonic 06 and the disappointment that would come mere seconds later i'm talking when i got out of the very first cutscene i knew immediately and i was like
Speaker: ah was like eleven and I could not be fooled. I knew so quickly what was wrong with that game. all right We're not talking about it. So Sonic was Shadow the Hedgehog with, you know, the inability for them to really capitalize off of whatever was working in Sonic Adventure 2, which were some things we have to be a little bit more honest about when Sonic did something pretty cool. Sonic if sonic and Shadow had some really good levels in Sonic Adventure 2. The tone and the characterization of the characters, it's not... It's not full metal alchemist. It's not cowboy bebop It's not something's gonna knock your socks off But it is consistent and it is a little bit more mature Than you were getting out of any other mascot at that time You might have had a little bit of what felt like a growth when you play Jack and Daxter or
Speaker: when Ratchet and Clank had got you know increasingly more ah distasteful titles, yeah more grumbling in their crass -icity. um But Sonic had like an identity crisis, and I think not only was it the fact that it struggled from 2D to 3D, I think it went a very particular way in its and the way that it tried to develop.
Speaker: And the way that they chose left enough room in the fan community for there to be something like this. And what I'm talking about, ladies and gentlemen, and everyone out there, is Freedom Planet. Freedom Planet is something i I love so much. There is a friend of mine who I honestly should probably send this podcast to. I haven't spoken to him in a minute.
Speaker: ah his name was his name was freedom planet he had a name that was not freedom planet when he got born but then he met me every time you would come into my game store he would just say oh and uh play freedom planet he made it public like a meme and after like two or three years i sat down with it
Speaker: and it's probably the best songing game like maybe ever it's it's honestly as far as the boss battles go as far as the the like it has some incredible timing with its ah was it's It's slashes feeling incredible. It's it feels more like an action game than Sonic has ever felt. It probably feels the most probably like a Sonic Advance, but yeah like that game is just tremendous and it's kind of a fan hack. I think it actually started as a fan hack. Undertale, hell, even started as a Earthbound Halloween kind of fan hack. So these are like what? That means spiritual successors of the ah a kind of a. It's it's more than it's different I think it's different than an homage, right?
Speaker: I think it maybe I think it's still kind of it's like it still is but it's like it's a different because it's sort of was like Sonic and freedom plant freedom planet started as an actual like ROM hack so it almost started off as like a Different type of translation cuz like when we're talking homages, we're talking to like modern tools, right? which I guess freedom planet does still use but Toby Fox, like for instance, specifically got a lot of practice on what would become Undertale out of his much -ballyhooed, much -maligned, by modern -day standards, Earthbound hack the earthtownund Halloween hack. So, it's not that these aren't homages, they're for sure homages. They're, you know, a fan doing what they thought was the coolest parts of their favorite thing.
Speaker: And it didn't just was a couple different parts. I don't know. I don't know. This is a great point. But I think I had to introduce. I think what you're getting freedom and I think I agree with you is that, you know, Undertale is an homage to Earthbound, but it also is a spiritual successor in that it takes something from the original and carries it forward.
Speaker: It does in so many ways that I can't even I i would have ruined everyone's time with it. But yes, I think it does a million things. Yes. You know, at the at the top of this, you asked me what makes something a spiritual successor. And I think we just kind of stumbled on that answer. It. Oh, yeah. It takes what? we Bring it home. It takes what was great about the original. And carries it forward.
Speaker: have We're going to talk about this a lot in the show, especially because you can play and beat three of the four Panzer Dragoon games within, you know, like all like three of those four in like five hours. You can beat all of them. um So Skies of Arcadia was made up. it's it's It was made by a team called Overworks on the Dreamcast, and it was made up of like old Panzer Dragoon people, totally different. Like there's there's a lot that those games don't share.
Speaker: But I can't I cannot explain it. I think anybody that has played these games will sort of understand what I'm coming from. There's so much in just the just the the feel, even though ones like this really whimsical, you know, ah young Harry Potter esque kind of tale of sky piracy.
Speaker: and like being like the good sky pirates and you know that whole kind of silly vibe it's very campy and like a very like um like a pokemon movie it's it's like a pokemon movie as far as it's adult scale but panzer lagoon is deep dark dune levels of like world building and like indifference to suffering and implications of like power and uh falls of civilizations i mean These games have couldn't couldn't be more thematically different, and yet they feel, and I know are made by some of the same people. So I don't know, it's a little bit like I'm cheating on my homework, because I know, because of Moby Games and Wikipedia, that these do share actual like team members. But even before then, I think I would say like they feel the same, you know? It's like, Yooka -Laylee is like... I mean, it's kind of unfair, because it's made by the X -Rare devs, so I guess another distinguishing factor.
Speaker: But like you you you played you claim more than I have hell. Um, actually, I've never played Yooka lately. You OK? Well, you were talking about you. I was talking about it. Yeah. So Yooka lately. The TV games are amazing. I legitimately thought that Yooka lately was a sequel to Banjo Kazooie. Up until really about a year ago, when I found out that it was completely separate.
Speaker: But I actually thought Yooka -Laylee was a spinoff or sequel to the Banjo -Kazooie games. That's how similar the gameplay looked. That's how similar the just the character designs, everything. It felt like the same the same franchise. I'm I'm almost certain it's made by X -Rared. I was like Playtonic.
Speaker: i think makes yeah it's platonic yeah um they definitely were some of the x rare devs i only know that because i was working in video you know game retail and they probably were playing that commercial all the time uh but yeah like i mean there's times where you have an idea that like it just isn't being shown to fruition i mean how many I mean, this may be a different topic, but like how many of those like Jet Set radio games are there? Like how many Banjo Kazooie games inspired? There's um not a lot. I would argue that jack that textter the original is inspired by Banjo Kazooie as well. Ratchet and Clank as well. And Banjo Kazooie's just got its own little little slice of frustrations, though. Like Banjo Kazooie has a lot of the same feel as Super Mario 64 for sure, as like it's. Yeah.
Speaker: I don't know. There's something I really have a hard time appreciating about Banjo -Kazooie. I would even actually go as far as to say something that's going to give you make you give me a weird look here, but. OK, let's do it. Mario Odyssey owes a little bit to Banjo -Kazooie as well.
Speaker: Think about it. In all the games that I just mentioned, you have a main character with a little sidekick that adds extra power ups for the character. In Mario Odyssey, it's Mario and his hat. and Jack and Daxter, it's Daxter in Ratchet and Clank. And in each of these cases, um the sidekick partner that is always with the main character is a pivotal part of the actual gameplay.
Speaker: And they're all platformers. Yeah, yeah, you have you unfortunately. Very, very unfortunately have a point because like here's the thing, if you like ah I'm not going to shy away from all the ways that Tim Rogers has influenced my mindset and my ways of thinking, but he really does call out the banjo kazooie games for being like very classless European humor filled like just just so much vitriol is thrown up from banjo at first to kazooie it's i mean it's not conquer's bad verde is just the same thing with a stiffener you know what i mean it's just the same thing after a you know a little bit of a night out and uh a little bit too little sleep but like i don't know i don't know i don't know what makes a spiritual successor i don't think this topic is
Speaker: if you've gotten here to thank you and we do appreciate your time we will not try to waste it i don't know that we have like a real point i don't think there's like a singular i think it's like it's like math is just this you know abstract way to like explain to the best possible ability what reality is about but it's like you know a thing is not born as like a one it's Things are what we describe them as, and in the same way, spiritual successors just like this weird approximation of us just to just spend an hour far too long on a topic and just consider all the ways that we can, you know, ah be like a Redditor with just a bunch of threads and in thumbtacks just connecting pictures and ideas. You know, is is is Pizza Tower a spiritual successor of Warrior Land? Yes.
Speaker: Yes. is Is sleeping dogs the spiritual successor of true crime? ah Sure. Is Shenmue out of Yakuza? The other way around. That's, I don't, I don't know. Maybe that one's a little harder to say, but at least a little bit. Yes. I don't know. I don't know. We try to trace the logic back, but man, we're just, we're just some guys. I think that's where we can fall back on the very simple way of saying is,
Speaker: It takes something from the from the original that we loved or takes a lot from the original that we loved and carries it forward into something new. The reason that Mighty Number 9 didn't work wasn't because the idea wasn't good. Oh, yeah, because it wasn't good. But it was because it took the original idea and it felt like it carried it backwards. And it's marketing is some of the worst marketing you could ever do to a video game. It's a game with some of the worst things you could ever do to a video game. Nice. Come on with both barrels. And and you know, you know very well that I i love the Mega Man series.
Speaker: And for me to say that, like when that, when that game was announced, I was so excited. I was like, okay, finally something new in Mega Man, because all I've been left with lately is this battle network stuff that doesn't even play the same. I don't know. That works. I don't want a weird attempt like RPG style, uh, Mega Man game. I want the blue bomber. I want to go jumping up and down and try and you know, shoot people and not land on spikes. That's what I want. Yeah, man. You know what I want out of Mega Man is just a bunch of just a bunch of me and Spike. Just ah is that that's the guy from Mega Man Legends, right? He's got like a name. I don't know. But I like Mega Man Legends and I like putting down everything that isn't Mega Man Legends.
Speaker: ah I like Mega Man X. I actually really like every like cartoon I've seen of Mega Man. We should have just called this, I have a new title for like what this whole thing should have been called, is is how many RPGs are inspired by Chrono Trigger. It's just spiritual successors.
Speaker: what do you have like I am sets in a gloss sphere was trying to I think was trying to do the same thing ah ah that really terrible sea of stars game um What's going on with those advanced war spinoffs, too? And how many like Stardew Valley Harvest Moon games are there? I know Stardew Valley. More than I can count. I'm not an idiot. But there is a lot of that type of game. There are four. I think people like that 11. How is that kind of cozy, relaxed gameplay style as well? I know a few people ah that really particularly that's what they want. They want their game to be just this chill experience. I mean,
Speaker: That's the kind of person that plays infinity Nikki. Yeah. And I think the type of person that plays infinity Nikki is me. If I only had a phone, if I, if I only had, you know, the big daddy iPhone is or something like that. It's boring. Maybe. Yeah. At least I think it was boring. You know, what's really not boring is spending so much money on V -books. Dude, I got so many Fortnite costumes. You don't even know.
Speaker: Do you? No. it
Speaker: um last you know you know why when someone When someone asks me what V -Bucks are, I say, listen, I like Cyberpunk a lot, but I don't have the currency. That's a good joke. It's interesting that you mentioned Chrono Trigger earlier. um You also mentioned Blue Dragon.
Speaker: You know what that is actually kind of interesting is Chrono Trigger and Blue Dragon both have artwork done by Kira Toriyama. And yet, may hear us in peace however, there is like honestly a lot more final like early Final Fantasy in in Blue Dragon than there is like Chrono Trigger, you know.
Speaker: I also think there's a lot of Dragon Quest in in Blue Dragon. that I mean, there's a lot more early Final Fantasy and Chrono Trigger than is often realized. And yes, I mean, it's disappointing. Chrono Trigger is another one of those interesting ones that it's like, this is such a great game. And while we're talking about, you know, these these pixel remasters or the 2D 3D remakes that are all of a sudden all the rage. Why hasn't Chrono Trigger happened yet? I would like to see that.
Speaker: honestly it's it's it almost feels like it's gonna get like a megalopolis kind of treatment you know like that like Francis Ford Coppola just made like megalopolis which is like his dream film you know his wife's passed away you know he's he's at the end of his life and he just wants to make like the best stuff he can get away with and like these studios need something incredible to pimp out and megalopolis came out it wasn't very good I sincerely think we're going to have that that thing happen. I think at a certain point, Final Fantasy is going like we're sort of in this post modernification. I truly believe of like the dissolution of like brands, you know,
Speaker: we're We're seeing a lot of reboots, we're seeing, you know, Onimusha and Okami come back. But like, what how many more times are they gonna do that? Like three times? Are we gonna cancel Okami three because it it maybe had a little longer of a lifespan, but they're still gonna can it? Like, I don't think these companies have learned the lesson. I don't think they've gotten wiser. I think they're same and the same short -sighted fools they've always been.
Speaker: And I don't think anybody making decisions has like an honest understanding of what like the future is going to be. I don't, we don't either for, for what it's worth, but, uh, I don't know. Things are, I mean, things are being increasingly diluted. It feels like in a brand way. I feel like, you know, Sven Vinke, um,
Speaker: At the game awards. I think is the second or third time. I'm ri referencing this but Great speech, you know, he says ah It's real simple but we keep forgetting it we just yeah it's not about loot boxes or microtransactions or predatory gameplay or you know dollar it's the good games that are gonna be remembered the the godfathers of video games and They're good because they're good. Like people still play FF6, you know? Yeah. ah That and Chrono Trigger, I think, are games that ah ah Square is scared to mess up a remake of. And that's the thing. If you're not going to improve something, like you you only get a few opportunities to make a Blade Runner 2049, which for for about the past 15 years, I've considered Blade Runner my favorite movie.
Speaker: You look like you're poised. Which which version of Blade Runner? It's not my fault. I was exposed to the Final Cut first, however... I mean, I've seen I think five different versions of the film. Now, one of my friends gave me ah like a to this day, it's like a mystically rare five disc Blu -ray collector set. I think it was even like European. um But I mean, I've seen the Dangerous Days ah documentary. I've seen I've read the books, you know, all these things, the future noir, all that stuff.
Speaker: But there is um dennyville lauv is a very particularly creative individual especially in the medium of film right now he made doing part two he made enemy he made arrival he made all these incredible films arrival ah if you think arrival is good enemy is my favorite film he's done and i cannot tell you how good the last 30 minutes of Dune 2 are. And enemy still, as like this character piece, really nails its aesthetic. there has there's There's three spiders in that film. And let me just tell you that second spider is about one of the most insane experiences I've ever had with with with art in general. ah it's It's something so literal, spiders.
Speaker: Met of literal and metaphorical spiders. That's the beauty of the way that Denis Villeneuve handles symbolism. He really understands spiders to give everybody, you know, a very diet and very, you know, tick tock quick level of a rundown of that film. It deals a lot with femininity. Femininity in that movie is represented by spiders.
Speaker: Mother spiders, girlfriend spiders, you know, ah spiders, you squish for some sort of sexual validation. Watch the film. ah But the enemy is again, I'm curious. ah Watch it and then tell me next week either how right or wrong I am about how cool it is. But um all three spiders are going to F with the way you change. You experienced that movie. Thank you. So but I want to get back to something that you were you were commenting on earlier.
Speaker: Uh, and also, you know, Sven Vinky kind of said, it's not about loot boxes and, uh, you know, all the commercialization. When I look at, you know, we talked about earlier earlier also that.
Speaker: These video games used to be events. they do Mario Brothers 3 was an event and it didn't have loot boxes. The whole movie came out just to advertise Super Mario Bros. 3. The Wizard. the wiz The Wizard, yes. The Wizard is different. Yeah. Yeah, very dirt different. Very different film, yes.
Speaker: But be careful. I mean, when you look at when you look at it and and and you say, OK, well, Mario Brothers 3 didn't have DLC. It didn't have loot boxes. It didn't have all the microtransactions. And it's still great. And here we are. We're talking about spiritual successors. And when we've talked about all of these, there's something that ah they all have that isn't really. In most games now, and that is DLC You know, I think we could take that a step further
Speaker: In fact, I think I'd like to bring it home at this point. We don't have those things because it's no longer about making the best product. It's just not. I mean, we had a guy come out and look at our dishwasher the other day. Our dishwasher is a tank. You know, that technology started in, like, I think the 50s and 60s. It is. it It got to its peak like with same with like a lot of cars, a lot of ah dishwashers, a lot of ah washing machines, dryers.
Speaker: There's technology that peaked in the 90s and we have been dumbing it down in a in an effort to recertify and resell. It's the metaphor of like, it's not there's no you don't want to buy a gym set. They want to keep you with a gym membership. If you lived your whole life with a gym membership, you are not you are going to be paying far and away more than the machines that you would use.
Speaker: it's yeah I'm making a very bad metaphor, but my point is pretty easy to understand. And I don't think that there's a lot of people out here that would listen to this podcast and then you know carry a torch and stake to my house for in an effort to defend the companies. I don't think any i don't think anyone has a trouble believing that corporations don't make the best things anymore. They just don't. they theyre They're much more focused on giving you a serviceable product.
Speaker: that is not great, but good enough. Netflix makes shows with writer's instructions not to give you the best entertainment that they can. They want you to be able to, they want to repeat information. They want to say things two or three times so that even if you're on your phone playing, you know, ball breakers, whatever the heck. This is a video game show. That's not even a video game.
Speaker: Uh, it's, it's meant to keep you satiated. We are all just the fat people in Wally now. And like, that really bums me out. I mean, I would take it a step further. Uh, not just serviceable. I think intentionally bad. Most of our consumer things are now meant to be disposable, meant to be replaceable. Uh, everything is so, so cookie cutter. And when you look at the,
Speaker: the stuff that like hits like the game awards, right? um Yeah, they may have elements from you know all these different places that they pulled it to make this one game. But at the end of the day, they made something that was unique for for this day. And those are the things that are going to stand out.
Speaker: Uh, you've referenced Ballotro a lot. I mean, you could call it a spiritual successor to poker. Yeah, you really could. A lot of people would get behind that. What makes, what makes it special? It's something unique. It's not the same regurgitated, holy verse stuff.
Speaker: You know, we were talking, ah I was talking earlier about all the different ways that you can play video games, and this is something we're gonna talk and much more about in the future because I, and and this is may be a little too hokey, this is maybe something I'll regret putting online, but like, I honestly think games and gaming is one of the best human inventions ever. I think when used properly, we are all what?
Speaker: tribalistic, warring, team driven, competitive, you know meat puppets. And we have thoughts and we have our fans of things, but like we we like to we like to get better at stuff and we like to do so through competition. And I think when healthily marketed and healthily put together and with a a compassionate understanding and framework, there's a lot of cool stuff that can be done by just picking up a controller.
Speaker: than putting down a phone as Tim Rogers would say. But like, yeah man, I just think ah i think gaming has a really large potential that isn't being recognized for, it's it's being you know with With the way that capitalism really truly is right now, especially American capitalism, ah you can look at all these you know graphs of like what accompanie's what a person's value was in 2012 versus now, and then they'll you know show you that minimum wage hasn't changed since 2007.
Speaker: ah The more and more people that can make that have the power and the economic weight to make these decisions, and the more they're doing it based on these short -term gains, the the absolute less is going to be put into the product. the the the The worse our products are going to be, the worse the final product is, and the more they can justify you know spacing it out. you know If they wanted to, i mean they could They could put every single Fortnite character in there and never take it away. When they take it away, they create an impulse. And when you follow that impulse, you play their game. But they create this FOMO. And people think that they're, you know, choosing to play with their friends. And I think there's a lot of choices that are being made for them. And that's not always a bad thing. I think that in life, there's a lot of illusions of choices, you know?
Speaker: you don't really get to choose to pay your taxes. You kind of do, or you kind of get a knock, you know? Well, and when you're looking at a, when you're looking at games like that, uh, you know, you're talking about the, the free to play slash pay to win stuff. I don't, I don't necessarily have a problem with the free to play game. That's a, that charges microtransactions because that means that they're, it makes the game more accessible to other people. But when you have these, these games that are making money, you know, they're, they're, They're making many hand over fist and it's just kind of like at least put out a good game. And, and you know, we talked about like games in the nineties. How much were they?
Speaker: Like $80, $90, $100 if you wanted to play like Phantasy Star 4, you know? There were some crazy expensive cartridges, and the value of the dollar has gotten smaller. And yet games are actually, you know, at most $70 without any DLC -ification of the product, right?
Speaker: So why is that? That's because it's a lot of short term. The reason I don't think there should be any free to play games. I think always should be demos. Maybe there should be games that are free, but I think free to play is inherently I think it absolutely creates the incentive that you should spend money on it eventually. I think, yes, you can take an FFXIV trial to the to the tips of 70 at every character. You can absolutely get your money out of that. You can do that. But that's not how they're designed. That is. Oh, yeah. And it's kind of interesting. Final Fantasy 14. It's a I mean, it's a subscription based game. You you pay every month to play it.
Speaker: But it also has microtransactions. You can go to the Final Fantasy 14 store and buy that mount that you want for your character. And that's like a whole other weird economy within an economy of like you I don't know if we have enough of an economics background to say everything that needs to be said about like, you know, community, cause what's that star out star citizen alpha that has not even released and it's like 70 million, 700 million hours into that or something like that. And it's also been what, 20 years since it was announced. yeah Um, now it's two games instead of one.
Speaker: to to diametrically. I loved. Yeah, Utah. I love I love Wing Commander and Star Citizen is supposed to be a spiritual successor to to Wing Commander. You know, played it the spiritual I played it and I feel like ah Chris Roberts might have missed the mark. I think so.
Speaker: those people i'm i'm sorry to keep bringing you in real close like i'm your bud but i don't want i just i don't know here's the thing that those people are not making decisions for everyone those people when they are making that game are trying to get the whales the idiots with so much family money with so much you know succession level stupidity that they just think that they're serious people and they're not serious people. That's a succession reference. um They are not serious people. These games are being made for very unserious people. And I would ah i would i would alter it and say that they're not they're not the serious gamers. And when you really break it down, the majority of the games that are being made now are being made for the,
Speaker: I don't want to say lowest common denominator because it makes it sound like I'm, I'm putting people down and I don't want it to be taken that way, but there, all the games are being made for that, that casual gamer now. Um, even if you look at games that we love, like, you know, I'm going to use final fantasy 14, there is accommodations made within the game for the casual gamer.
Speaker: ah World of Warcraft is a great example. When it came out, it was incredibly difficult. And then as it's progressed, they've they've simplified it from one expansion to the next in the name of appealing to the casual gamer. And then and and it it expands beyond um expands beyond video games, too. like I'm a Dungeons and Dragons player, and I remember fourth edition came out when Fourth Edition came out,
Speaker: It was basically turning World of Warcraft into Dungeons and Dragons. It was really oversimplifying ah oversimplifying the game to the point that people didn't really like it and they had to backtrack for 5th edition. There's been a couple of instances of that happening over the years.
Speaker: and I think so we talked about so many things when we're talking about like people being suckers right you know we're not talking like humanity isn't stupid I mean maybe we are Billy I don't I don't think like I don't think personally we are I think we're misguided I think maybe there's a lot of structures I'm I'm you know from a state in this United States of America that ah cut its funding for my state's education funding has been cut um I can't give you the numbers without revealing my location, but I mean the second to third most in the entire union. And I just found out that I was just a statistic of that. You know, I I statistically have been given a worse education than so many people decades after me. And unfortunately, it looks like it's only going to get worse. So, man, we're doing this crap right here, not because it because like it if we're not, it feels like everybody's just going to become
Speaker: further and further enveloped into this, you know, free to play, gambling a vacation of just everything.
Speaker: Yeah. And I mean, really at the end of the day, it all comes down to one thing. You know, we, we, we talked about the idea of, of a spiritual successor as, you know, taking what you love and moving it forward.
Speaker: fair. That's, that's a fair way to phrase it. The, this is true with any game that comes out. If you can point me at a game that doesn't have influences from something else, then you can legitimately point me to a game that is not in some way a spiritual successor to something. That being said, and won we're not talking about mighty number nine because that does not move the medium forward at all. When you look at it that way, every game is some kind of spiritual successor. The question is, does it move the medium forward? Or is it keeping it stagnant? i think what do you think What do you think is a game that does move me in the medium forward?
Speaker: Seriously? Well, we've talked about the fact that I believe VR is the future of gaming. the in In this, there's a lot of evidence. But I mean, moving the medium forward is Elden Ring um by presenting something that's more challenging ah in a way that people didn't expect because that challenge feels, when you when you get to the end of it, it feels exceptionally rewarding. you've You had to work for it.
Speaker: um talk about Beat Saber. We've mentioned that earlier. That's the only game like that. DDR. There's it's yeah, DDR. Yeah, guitar hero. All of them did something even the karaoke games did something that brought something new to the medium and moved it forward. And you know, each of those have their myriad clones and other attempts that you know might not have measured up but they still did something different to move the medium forward even if moving them by even if by failing they moved the medium forward I think I think I can give you two examples of games that I think not only move the medium forward but but if played appropriately like might move humanity forward I think Undertale really understood the power of empathy I think it understand
Speaker: The exact way to gamify it, I think it implemented it perfectly. I think the humor is amazing. I think the layers, what I think I truly appreciate about Undertale, and something I still can't get out of my brain every time I think about it, is the ways in which it repurposes its content. Have you ever heard of a show called The Leftovers? I've heard of, and I think I actually watched a couple episodes of it. It's the greatest piece of art of all time.
Speaker: I'm gonna say that one more time, just for everybody so everybody thinks i'm i'm not just so everybody knows how serious I am. The Leftovers is probably the great it the leftovers is the greatest, most sincere, most vulnerable, and most profound show and thing I think I've ever experienced. Anybody who's ever gone the full distance with that show looks at me and nods.
Speaker: Everyone who ever gets that recommendation years down the line I've gone to family events Years later after recommending some stuff and I've had people grab my arm squeeze and say thank you. Having said that, there's a reason that the leftovers is so good. What I think is amazing, I think it's really bad when you spend 10 chapters saying that the butler did it and then at the last moment you say, no, it wasn't the butler, it was that other guy. That's cheap writing. That's bad writing. It's poor characterization and it's a waste of everyone's time.
Speaker: What the Leftovers does is it's actually the first season is based off of a book of the same name, and that's really where the story ended. The book was so good it was adapted into an HBO show, and the first season falls, generally speaking, the scope of the show of the book. Seasons two and three are sequels that never should have been. They're sequels that were never intended, and they're sequels that aren't written for any sort of capitalized intent.
Speaker: It is something that repurposes its characters. It re value it it redefines and revalues its characters and its messages in different ways. Undertale is maybe the only game I've ever really played that understands the value of giving you an interpretation of something, tweaking with that interpretation, and then tweaking with it again.
Speaker: I think the only other thing that it can I can maybe think of so quickly um is Outer Wilds. I think Outer Wilds does the same thing. I think it drip feeds you its story in such an amazing way that ah you think it's about 90 different things until you understand what it is actually about. um Those are two things that I think move the the medium forward. I want people to understand that like or not yeah this is how to enjoy, and we just spend an hour and a half complaining.
Speaker: about what games aren't doing. And I think that's indicative of what this whole show is. it's not about It's about antagonizing the things we love so that we can love them more because there is no happily ever after. We have to keep growing or we get worse and I hope we don't get worse. I agree with that. um Is it, I don't know if I'd really say we've been complaining though, because really when we've talked, everything we've talked about is while we're saying these are things that that it's done poorly, we've talked about the reasons that we love them too. Oh yeah. This isn't what made complaining twins. this What, what made, um, Final Fantasy 14 something we love. What makes it, I should say, what made the original Castlevania something that we love.
Speaker: Why do I love Mega Man so much? But why was Mighty No. 9 not a success? you know I think it's ah think it's really clear. it's it's like you know It's like the Supreme Court definition of of pornography. you don't you don't you don't You just know it when you see it. You just know this is a bastardization of a really cool left to right 2D platformer with a lot of shooty shoot jump jump mechanics.
Speaker: and they just It just failed to live up. I think it takes about two seconds for someone to shake your hand and tell you if you're a phony. It might take 10 years for you to learn that information, but people know very quickly, I think, people's vibes. People's education is at an all -time low with all of the resources to make their education at an all time high. And these are, I'm being very hyperbolic. People are smarter than I'm giving them credit for, but people are also tricked in a way that I don't think has ever been so prevalent. Um, I think you got to fight and you got to vote and you got to think, I think that, uh, that's a topic for a later episode, uh, particularly talking about those, those free to play and pay to win model games because
Speaker: people being preyed upon. Is there and one free to play game that you actually can recommend to a lot of people? Oh, and in in let me just say, when you recommend it, it has to be specifically because it's free to play. Like, there is a like, I want to give you an example, like Final Fantasy seven was going to have this like mobile remake for a long time. And then they turned it into a gotcha. And it's it's very It's a very poor way to follow through on that promise. There's there's a lot of free -to -play games that I've really enjoyed ah that I did play because they were free. um you know There's Neverwinter, there's ah Star Trek Online, DC Universe Online. ah Each of them had the same problem.
Speaker: you get to a certain point and you kind of hit a paywall. Yeah. Destiny, Destiny 2 has a, maybe the same problem without the monetary frustration as being as prevalent as a thing, but even just like poor game mechanics being implemented because they couldn't just have the stones to just say like, Hey, here's a $60, $70 game. You know, here's the good, here's the bad. You don't got to redo a ah million, like the same couple missions. Yeah.
Speaker: But that's a topic for another day. I think we've exhausted. I think, uh, I think we've exhausted me. I think we've, I think we've, I think we've answered the question. I don't think we're close to answering the question, but I think we got to stop for sure.
Speaker: but i mean the question was what is a spiritual successor i don't know thanks i think we've answered i think we've answered it moves the medium forward they all are honestly we're all just ripping off each other we're all just you know Or I'll just steal it. There's a show called Mr. Robot. it's It's less ubiquitous now than it used to be, but it was the thing for a while. um On Mr. Robot, the the director basically just said, I don't know why people think I'm creative. I've just been stealing from everybody all the time, always. And there's like a lot of Fight Club references. You can see V for Vendetta references, all sorts of stuff.
Speaker: but What's interesting though, is he's not acting like it's his ideas. He's wearing these these influences so on his sleeve that you can see it. He's not trying to be like, no no, no, no, no, that was my idea. You don't understand. I was smarter than you. He's not doing that. He's being like, no, I'm an idiot. I liked some good stuff. Maybe you can accuse me of having good taste. That's about it. Mr. Robot is also something I hold in very high regards.
Speaker: And, and that's what it is. That's what being a spiritual successor is. That's the real stuff. G well,
Speaker: well everybody, uh, as usual, you can find us on Facebook. Uh, we do now now have a, uh, a Facebook page. It is how to enjoy, uh, you be able to find it by recognizing the logo.
Speaker: that you see on the podcast. Also the letters that make up the words.
Speaker: And, uh, Alec can be found on Twitch on, I am, uh, the lawn lawn ranch, D E L O N L O N ranch. Uh, come stop by where the only thing we milk is your glands for a good time. And I'll be a findable as the dad pods and to take ah to take Alex's phrase, always game on. There it is, boy howdy.
