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Are you the center of the labyrinth?
48 Plays1 year ago
Join Dave and Jake as they talk about collectibles in games, briefly touch on the Labyrinth, not being the center of the universe, and the importance of supporting your community in this week's episode!
Intro:
- Roboquest - Journey
Outro:
- Roboquest - Higher
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Transcript
Introduction and Co-host Banter
00:00:42
Speaker
How's it going, everyone? Welcome to another episode of Soapstone. My name is Jake, and I am joined by my co-host, as always, Dave. How's it going tonight, Dave? It's going good. It's going oh so good. Oh, so good. Oh, so good. Nice. Glad to hear it. None of the other letters, just oh. Big oh of so good. Meaning that...
GeoGuessing YouTuber Spotlight
00:01:05
Speaker
I can really be anywhere. out You can run with it. Speaking of can be anywhere, um YouTube shorts have been recommending this ah guy who's really good at geo guessing. Oh no. It's like, it's absolutely absurd. Like to the point where I absolutely also understand if people would believe it's rigged.
00:01:28
Speaker
Um, but he's kind of, he's just interacting with the page. I don't know if you can like rig that where he's just like, okay, well I see a road and there's some fog here. and kind of looking at the wine the curvature of this road and the amount of fog. This is probably right here in the Andes and he's like 50 miles away or something. You're like, uh-huh, uh-huh. I mean, I guess they do it a lot. Yes, that's his thing. that that I don't understand the appeal of it from like, ah I want to do this for people or for people to watch it so much.
00:02:03
Speaker
there was, I think part of it is that there's a little bit more variety in it than there otherwise would be. One of them was a combination of like, um, kind of like drawful plus geo guesser where the person had to draw the location and then other like contestants were trying to like just rapidly type in guesses or whatever. And he's like, he got, a kind of like flat looking mountain, a sort of like flat looking mountain and then a line. And he's like, OK, that's a road. And then immediately guesses the location before anyone else even has any idea. And you're like, yeah, yeah, it's because there's flat mountains. And that's the that's the tell. Well, I mean, kudos to them for having a polished skill. I can't really say that for many or any things.
Gaming Achievements and Dedication
00:02:54
Speaker
um That's fair though. I mean, you've got a lot of binding of Isaac hours. So I know I do not. There's ah somebody on the the dota discord ah shout out to slug who has 100 percented Isaac. That's a lot of percent. Whatever you're thinking um for however many like characters and achievements and challenges there are, he did all of that. Yeah. Not on one save file. On three save files. Goodness gracious. Because that gives you a different background thing on the main menu. If you have three. Yes. Well, actually, that's like you the full thing to quote unquote 100 percent is to do it three times. um so And he did. And now he hasn't played Isaac in a bit. And it's been. I mean, it's nice. I feel like he's free now. Yeah. Until he gives himself another challenge. But like that's him.
00:03:52
Speaker
Yeah, I'm i'm both. um I appreciate challenges in games where they can like push you for something or reward you or whatever. But I do at the at my old wizened age, I realize there is a cut off for certain things. I look at the challenge and I'm like, this is meant for someone else. And I just leave it. I felt great. I mentioned this in previous episode felt great. Platinum in Bloodborne. That took probably like a week. If something requires more than a week of like dedicated game time, and this is not like a live service game or something, I'm i'm struggling i'm struggling, right? like Yeah, you really need to be driven by, oh, the gameplay is super fun. Yeah. like
00:04:37
Speaker
I mean, obviously Eldering is the token example for all things. Um, sank a lot of time into that, tried to get as much as I could as far as exploration and finding things. I've still missed stuff. I'm sure even in the DLC, maybe I'll find it on the next time I go around, but like, I don't want to get to the point where it's like, Hey, you're like missing three things. I'm like, ah, that's okay.
Collectibles and Gaming Enjoyment
00:05:01
Speaker
That's okay. Let's, let's leave it there. I don't want to force my way through it just to say, Yeah, I got the, the red arterial leaf. Yep. Up on the balcony, past the, in the DLC area. here Yeah. Yeah.
00:05:13
Speaker
After the jump puzzle? Like, i'm I'm good. Do you find it that that impacts your initial drive for challenges in games sometimes? Because I know that that does for me. For an example, like, if it's Assassin's Creed, as soon as I realize that there are feathers hidden everywhere, I specifically ignore the feathers. Like, if I happen to touch one, fine. I don't hate myself for that. But If I wasn't more aware of how all encompassing the challenge would be and how much of a fetch quest and stuff it would be. Yeah, it's maybe I'd get a couple more. I would like to know how many things I need to find, for example, like, hey, you have most of these armor sets, but it's like three or four are missing. and be Oh, which ones are they? And maybe I'll try and go for that. Or yeah, I try to think of the game I had just as literally as an example.
00:06:07
Speaker
um But it can be fun to do those things just to quote unquote collect, like in another crab's treasure. I'm just gonna only name souls legs. I have an example after that. It's only kind of like a soul's leg. Okay, good. We'll taper down. We have the souls leg gradient that's ah ever moving. um But basically I saw how many shells there were. And so like I had a bit of a drive to try and find as many as I could. But like when I had like a couple missing, I wasn't gonna look it up like, where are the other shells? yeah Or go back and explore everything. oh But I did make an effort to explore more toward to that end. and right there's there's There's the good faith effort to, we talked about it. Is this the critical path? Is this a side path? I'll check the side path. yeah But if you're actively just hiding stuff all over the place and there's not a big payoff for it, then,
00:07:03
Speaker
Good that's for someone else man. That's not for me um the example I was thinking of and the reason I think it's not necessarily souls like is because um It's just big enough that I know that there are articles relating it to souls like games is Breath I think breath of the wild had the mechanic definitely tears of the kingdom has the mechanic um legend of Zelda Korok seeds first impression No. right They hid them all over the place. It's just like you're doing whatever and you see that there's a rock that's slightly out of place. And if it was moved, it would be in a complete circle. And you're like, that's a core rock, right? It's just like it's an active perception check, um which I do not hate. But they're all over the place. Some of them are obnoxious. I wouldn't have bothered with them at all, except
00:07:55
Speaker
that can be used for in-game upgrades. That's the thing I was going to say. I was going to use Spider-Man as an example, where it's like, I have to collect these backpacks and take pictures of things from New York. By the way, New York, random facts about New York. um And it seems kind of like dumb and cheesy, but one, it's like a nice downtime from like some main quest stuff. Now granted, not all of the little side things are the most fun and engaging. But again, it's kind of like a mix up between the major cinematic stuff. But then also it gives you those tokens to upgrade things. right So it gives you the incentive to be like, hey, make sure to explore and like do some stuff if you want to get this one special suit type thing. right And I was always curious, like, oh, what's next? What's this thing that's kind of grayed out? Is that going to be cool? So it was a nice incentive.
00:08:49
Speaker
And I think in both games, they checkpoint you on your rewards progress, right? Because if it was like, hey, gather 1,000 Koroks, and then you can play as Venom in Legend of Zelda, Tears of the Kingdom, I'd be like, I'm confused. I'd be like, I'm confused, and I don't want to do that. But that's not the way that they reward you. It's like, OK, well, the first four that you get, that's an upgrade. The next five you get, that's an upgrade or whatever. Right. so youre you You get these payoffs, even if you never committed to getting every single Korok in the game. And I didn't, ultimately, right? But I went out of my way if I saw something that could be Korok related, because I'm like, absolutely, I want to have 20 hammers on my back at a given time. Not giving that up.
00:09:42
Speaker
Yeah, it's it's just a nice way to, again, get people to explore a little bit. And also, like, you don't really have to engage. It can feel like, hey, I'm kicking ass doing great. Yeah. Awesome. You don't really need to do that. But right maybe if you're struggling or like, OK, I know this is a possible, quote unquote, upgrade path or a way to expand my kit, make myself stronger, whatever it is in at that given game. um And i like I've definitely used that in Soul-type games. I'm like, I need more of this resource. I need to go kill more enemies. I gotta do something. Find more seeds to upgrade my flasks. Right.
Motivating Player Engagement in Games
00:10:21
Speaker
But it's your choice in both of those games. You're not compelled to do it. It doesn't feel like it's all or nothing in the payout. it's You do it because you want to.
00:10:32
Speaker
And that that is absolutely the key. If it's the game to developer and designer, you're not giving people a reason to do it, other than 100% on their save file at the end of it. like That's enough for some people. it's It's not enough for me, unless I absolutely love the game. um Yeah. But like even with robo quest like it does unlock some stuff For exploring a little bit. So again, I feel incentivized to do it. I'm enjoying the gameplay bing bang boom They go great together, right? But If you're just trying to burn through a game, it's like hey, do you want to collect you're like shut the fuck up? No Let let me through please
00:11:12
Speaker
Yeah, and a lot of it comes down to like what you want to do in the game at the moment and is is the thing that they're introducing just a whiplash right turn angle. Like when I'm playing Assassin's Creed, I'm playing to Assassin's People's Creed, right? Like that is the gameplay. I want to be SS Eno. with arms wide open. Yeah, exactly. but um But yeah, running around collecting a bunch of feathers or see shanties or whatever, like, that is not the gameplay loop that I'm interested in. So
00:11:50
Speaker
It's, it's, it's not something that I'm going to want to pursue. Um, but if I only received one video game a year or something like that, I probably would have 100% everything that comes across the doorway, but we're, uh, we have options. So question for you for something that would be.
00:12:12
Speaker
So I'm gonna say this is progression related, but not like specifically an upgrade. ah Mario 64, classic example, you have all the ah stars defined and you need a certain amount of stars to get into certain levels. So you progress forward in the game. um And it doesn't really force you to go in a certain order. You do need to do X amount of them. Do you feel like that is essentially like setting little like a mile posts as you were saying before, or do you think it kind of like pads out the gameplay? I think it's 100% the mile post approach because they realize and they designed the game so you don't have to get all the stars. And on top of that,
00:12:56
Speaker
The stars are usually the, I'm going to say pinnacle reward, basically for accomplishing whatever mini game or task or whatever the input in front of you. Right. So the stars are literally success in the gameplay. um But in in games like that, I very never, I think, ah tried to collect all the moons or all the stars or something like that. Like with the fucking moons. Yeah. I remember there was an interview with some celebrity and not can remember their name in time. George Clooney. Yeah.
00:13:31
Speaker
I think it was like the lady who's married to John Legend. She's also somebody famous. Jill Legend. Mrs. Legend, I'm wiping out her name, unfortunately. But she was talking about like how she was really enjoying that game, Mario Odyssey, but she was still like missing some moons and she was frustrated that she couldn't quite get that 100%. I think that's another thing where you basically have, let's say 20 moons in a given area. Certain ones are like, I see it. It's right there. Another ones you see in the distance, like, how the fuck do I get there? Another ones you really do have to kind of explore for. But I feel like at least with Nintendo's level design, it's fun to explore and look around and then see what your movement tech with the hat you can do. Right. Yeah, it's.
00:14:22
Speaker
you know part of the key gameplay loop. if they If they remove the stars or the moons from Mario, it's they've removed an entire layer of gameplay, right? If they removed the feathers from Assassin's Creed, nobody would care. No one would notice. People would just complete the game faster. um And that's that's kind of it. Like, i maybe there were rewards. I don't I don't know what you got for the the feathers, but they definitely were not an integral part of the overarching gameplay or story. all Right. It's not like, OK, well, um crap, who do you play as for most of it? It's not Connor, is it? No. Connor's not screwed. Yeah, the the guy outside of the simulation for most of them.
00:15:11
Speaker
Oh, I have no idea. Cause then he plays Ezio and then he plays Connor, all that jazz. I can't remember his name. Everyone's yelling it right now at us, but I can't hear him. But there's not like, oh, well, you emerged from the simulation with 50 feathers. So here are your Icarus wings. So you can get a different ending. There's something like that, right? That was the whole goal all along, not to do this historical analysis to figure out stuff that happened, blah, blah, blah. It was to collect the feathers. Exactly. What a twist. um I did want to say one last thing. I know we're really just attacking this horse here, um but in the especially after the example you gave where it's like someone's like, oh, I'm missing a couple of moons. I really want to find them. Other people play games differently than I do. And to a certain extent, although occasionally I do focus on a game, Kafka Destiny.
00:16:03
Speaker
um I kind of just like ADHD, whatever is in front of me at a given point. And if there's ever a situation where I'm like, I absolutely don't want to do this, or I've just been doing this a whole lot, I tend to stop. um And just depending on the game, if it's a JRPG, it might be 100 hours, but I tend to stop.
00:16:28
Speaker
Yeah, JRPGs are, I mean, some of those things are specifically gated throughout. So like maybe if you go into the second area, you can't go back to the first area. Yes. And if you miss certain things, you're fucked. Yeah. I think it's Final Fantasy 10-2 that I've heard somebody say that it explicitly does that, which is bullshit. Yeah. If you're somebody who doesn't want to, 100 percent it. um Yeah. There was talking about completion in games. i have to I have to mention Guild Wars, because I don't know if I've ever said it on the podcast. If I did, it was years back. But like the standout for completing, in quotes, a game or like going for a maximum completion is in Guild Wars 1, which is an old, the old game at this point, right? like
00:17:22
Speaker
um It is very old by comparison.
Impossible Achievements and Frustrations
00:17:25
Speaker
um The opening area is all like basically a tutorial zone. And once you get to a certain point in the story, ah there's like a war, a battle breaks out, you participate in the battle and ah you get like either knocked forward in time or some sort of magical effect happens. And it's like 10 years later, there's a time skip. And everything's like desolate or whatever, right? But and you can never go back on that character. You never go back. So naturally, there's an entire community of people who never left. They just stay in the tutorial phase of the game because they're social spaces and stuff. And um there's an achievement for hitting max level in the tutorial area, which is only possible
00:18:17
Speaker
if once you reach a certain level, you start dying to an enemy, which will cause the enemy to level up since it's killing an opponent that's a higher level in itself. And then you kill the enemy for experience. You literally have to death level an enemy till it can reward you experience and then kill the enemy. And there's an achievement for it, for hitting maximum level in the tutorial and people have it on their characters. but Again, people who can do that and have that level of patience on my brain always goes to something like 500 days.
00:18:54
Speaker
Are you familiar with that game? I don't think so. No. Um, maybe called something else, but basically you're waiting for the return of the King. Oh yeah. yeah And you're just doing like really slow mundane stuff. And it's supposed to be like, uh, in an aesthetic environmental type, slow pace game for whatever. Um, but you have to do, I i assume 500 actual in game days. Yeah. Or Stanley's thing of like, Hey, don't play this game for five years. And it's like, these things are doable, of course. But like, at what point is it like asking, asking too much? Yeah, it's a little bit evil. Right? Like, but I don't know, there are people, there are people who get things out of that. I also know that there's the, uh,
00:19:43
Speaker
I kind of occasionally pick up a pitchfork and I join the people who protest. um achievements being too difficult or unattainable, because there's a specific group of people on Steam that try to get all of the achievements for every game that they get. And there are, I'm going to call them trap games, basically, where it's like, here's a game that exists on Steam and it has an achievement, but there's no way to trigger the achievement. You actually cannot get it.
00:20:15
Speaker
So they forever have like sold their library because they can't finish this game. It's very crazy where things go. I didn't realize there's such a ah deep community and anti-community around them. It's a fight. I like stuff where it's. Again, and we find other souls like I've had armor core six. Okay. Okay. So it has like, Hey, did you beat all of these levels? Did you get all of these items? Um, I think the other one is like, did you S rank all of these missions? Right. So all of them are like pretty obvious of like what it is, how to do it. And I've technically done all, but two, cause I did not S rank the final mission thing. I do not have the patience to maybe one day I'll go back.
Armored Core 6 and Gamer Dedication
00:21:02
Speaker
But if I do that one, I will have gotten on, uh, do all the achievements, which is the final achievement, yeah which is weird because in and of itself, it's kind of a paradoxical relationship. But anyway, um, they did the same thing for bloodborne. There's an achievement for getting all the achievement. Uh, we need one more. Um, did you do all of them? Yeah. Did you do all of them? We'll do that one. Yeah. I think the ah the achievement text is a trophy since it was PlayStation is hats off to you, which is that's funny. You know, it's like, yeah, yeah. Bloodborne aesthetic. Gotcha. um But yeah now that's crazy. I absolutely didn't even come close to us ranking most of the missions. I mean, I am not I haven't beaten the game, but for the ones that I completed,
00:21:52
Speaker
Um, there were very few that I got anywhere near an S rank on first pass, so I could applaud the dedication. I mean, some of it was just going back and it's like, Hey, I have quote unquote end game gear. I don't have to play the game now. Um, and you, maybe you do something specific just for that mission. Right. Um, and You raised the grind a little bit, but again, I was enjoying what I was playing. Yeah. So it didn't feel too out of the way. Right. It's it's not quite so severe on the way. um I got to pee at the wall, but also like, well, I'm here. I'm going to grab a hoagie, you know. Right. You know, I was going to say, it's not it's not quite so severe as like, hey, we just have the infinite ammo rocket launcher. I bet we can clear the Resident Evil levels pretty quick now, but something like that.
00:22:41
Speaker
go back on the new game plus with like the victory lap for any of the Metal Gear Solid and you're just like as you fire infinite bullets through the mission and this time shoots everybody. We're going loud. Yeah. That would be a great mod for and since they're doing the quote unquote remake of Metal Gear Solid 3, the Delta. Yeah. um they should have something where if you do go loud instead of going and then, you know, them calling our comms like, oh, he's here. They should just go into that music immediately. Right. Yeah. No, that's fair. I don't know how to transition to like you had Delta at all. Are you just kind of tracking it for the sake of let's see what the fuck Konami does?
00:23:35
Speaker
Oh, for the for the remakes. I mean, I don't know. a I'll be honest, my um my interest and ethical obligation. are if any time that they're in the same direction, I tend to not to pick something up. Sometimes if my interest is really high and my ethical obligation is a little bit in the other direction, I still buy it, whatever, right? Like um I would probably pick up the Hogwarts game if I had more interest in the Hogwarts game, for instance. But in this particular instance,
00:24:13
Speaker
expletive Konami. um And I don't know if I would personally get a whole lot out of the old MGS games, but I feel that. Yeah. Cause like they might technically have gotten David Hader again, which is the kind of identity of snake. Um, but it would feel wrong without Kojima cause it's been his, his baby the whole time. I feel like we're we're talking about like, Oh yeah, we know Kojima. Yeah. His ex-girlfriend. They were, they were like a part of our group, but I mean, she kind of dumped him and we're really on his side type of deal. Uh-huh.
00:24:54
Speaker
Yeah, it pretty much is the professional version of that. The only thing keeping me a little bit distance from Kojima right now is like, we were hanging out all of that jazz and he's like, Hey, huge death stranding. and I'm like, this is pretty weird. and I mean, I guess I'm enjoying it. So kudos for that. But like, I don't know where this is going. He's like, yeah, I'm going to make another one. I'm like, maybe we should just. Christmas. Yeah. Right. No. Yeah. That's training, too, is not out. I will say it. I remember the trailer. It had like a guy with like an orange guitar weapon. Again, seems badass and random and cool because that's his motif as his stick. But. I don't know, I feel like I got the the core part in the first game.
00:25:45
Speaker
and I don't know what they would add in the second game to be like, hey, more more of that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I know we had our episode on it, but from a story perspective, like I got almost nothing out of that stranding. It's, it's actually kind of just insane.
00:26:08
Speaker
It's kind of like Kingdom Hearts in a way. worries You're not wrong. You're not wrong. Both of them are games where they want you to get heavily emotionally invested, but they absolutely are nonsense in the moment to moment, whatever's happening. um And I know that that's literally his brand. Like that is what Kojima does is he makes absolutely mushroom trip inspired characters and then tries to make them fit into a universe. And he just makes the universe crazy enough that they kind of fit. But. Yeah, you just need some level of mystery and other stuff going on. You can be like, oh, yeah, I'm this lady who has like her
00:26:57
Speaker
like a fetus attached to her. It's a ghost fetus. Don't worry about that. yeah Mama. Yeah. Little on the nose. Oh, it was a, that makes so much sense. But yeah, like a heart man who has like an undersized heart and he lives on a heart shaped island in the middle of a heart shaped lake. And you're like, uh huh. Right. Go on. I do kind of like when games just um make it a thing.
00:27:34
Speaker
And I don't really like apologize for it. There's like, Hey, this is the end universe thing. Why? Cause we thought it was cool. Like you don't really need to look into it. Like, why is it a heart? What does that mean? It's just, I'd say it's some of that anime effect where you just want things to be. catch you off guard and be kind of cool. Right. You're never going to say it's not interesting. Exactly. That's the the truth of the Kojima game is it's like. Regardless of whether you're a fan of FedEx gameplay or like the the dialogue or any of that stuff, weird things are going to be happening. Yes, it recycles your waste and shower cutscenes so that you can make grenades
00:28:22
Speaker
Yes, you can drink three cans of Mountain Dew or or they were they a monster monster three cans of monster ticket and in-game buff and the most blatant marketplace like marketing placement of all time um But be sure to pee out that monster at some point because you do have fluid levels you have to monitor. Exactly. And if you do that in one of the rest areas, you can make another grenade. so And there's an in-game effect for this because it helps distract the BTs. so like Also, don't shake the baby. Make sure you have good balance.
00:29:02
Speaker
Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Otherwise, your controller will yell at you. It's so... It's got to be so much better on PC for that reason. It was, I guess, I played on it. I played on PlayStation as well, actually. Didn't they make a PC port last a little bit? They did, yeah. It's on Steam. I could see it. It's probably visually even more impressive, because I played on, like, PS4 Pro, but... um I was going to say I do like, again, that part of it of just kind of establishing something and not apologizing for it and just yes sharing their random fucking designs and ideas. ah Going to a movie reference, Labyrinth, with David Bowie's Balls. and Do you remember David Bowie's outline crotch, the whole movie? So I haven't seen the entirety of it. I've seen I've seen clips of this. I do know that David Bowie was in it and that it was very weird.
00:30:00
Speaker
It is it is a really good movie. It's a Jim Henson thing. So great puppeteering and set design. Not Pan's Labyrinth. This is a different one. No, no, no, no. Yeah. By the way, I grew up watching Labyrinth first because obviously it came out first. And then when like Pan's Labyrinth came out, I'm like, they're doing another Labyrinth movie? Fuck yeah. And I watched it. I'm like, this is not what I expected. Not remotely close. Still very interesting. um
00:30:32
Speaker
But yeah, it was cool to see the director's vision of, hey, here's this whole alternate universe we created, ah led by the Goblin King. yeah and And there's this giant maze, aka the labyrinth, um that this person, Jennifer Connelly, has to go through to save her baby brother. um And really, it's just a blank slate to be like, you know what would be cool? This. And then you can just be like, oh, here's the next part of the labyrinth. Because it's all this mystical, magical thing. You don't really have to explain anything that's here. This is a part of the world. You have to accept that. Yeah.
00:31:10
Speaker
It's nice to be transported in that way. That's, that that's, that's a really good word for it. And I agree that Kojima basically is like, here, there, here is center here, right? Here is sanity. There's a sphere at the normal tiers of game design and games tend to have Inspired design a really interesting design if they explode out from that in a given direction and Kojima like has anti-friction cheat codes attached to his design. He goes so far out there And no one can stop him and I don't know if people try um Based off the stuff that comes out But because there is so much like
00:31:57
Speaker
It's crazy given this, but like consistency in the absurdity that it builds verisimilitude in the universe, um except when you're drinking freaking monster. um But in ways similar to your example of like the labyrinth, right you're like you accept that it's
Kojima's Unique Game Universes
00:32:16
Speaker
a fantasy world. The people treat it like a fantasy world. It's just the world to them. pretty much all of the great um like additions in media like Baldur's Gate 3 or like um old Bioware games or whatever, they did this. They set up the world and then they played it straight. They're like, when you engage with the things in the world, these people believe they're in the world. They're acting like they're in the world. We're not here to take you out of it. We're here to show you.
00:32:46
Speaker
how great like how much how much is going on, you know, tell you about it. That activates your Explorer sense as ah as a little game player or movie watcher or whatever. I am the moviegoer explorer. I'm here to see the entire movie and then I'll go home after I've thoroughly explored.
00:33:09
Speaker
But yeah, I think
Anticipation for Dragon Age: Dread Wolf
00:33:12
Speaker
that's essential. I was actually we were talking on Discord last night about what it takes to be an immersive sim and like hopes for the next BioWare game and like because ah they're making another Dragon Age game, Dread Wolf or whatever it's called. And You know, hopes and fears, I would say, actually. um but But Ian, friend of the show, special guest, was there and he was talking about like what it takes to be an immersive sim. And we were talking about Prey, obviously, and in contender for my favorite game of all time.
00:33:54
Speaker
um
00:33:57
Speaker
And it's just like, that's one of the reasons that it's so good is it pulls you in and outside of this little title sequence, which is so cool in its own right. Like it doesn't let you go. um It's all learning about the world learning about the characters figuring out how things work self-progression accomplishing tasks all of that within the game and it's just so um Immersive isn't enough of a word like flashed out that I just I love it. It's so good Yeah, where you when you can't see the seams of a video game I think that's when they shine the brightest
00:34:37
Speaker
Um, cause like it's really obvious in certain triplet games where it's like, I'm an NPC. I give a quest. You're like, Jesus Christ versus in ballers gate three. Like it's a really well voice acted. Um, the quest make a lot of sense in universe. There's usually some stake in it besides just, Hey, I'm a random NPC. Like right there is meaning behind you doing that. It will, they will remember that in a future act type thing. Um, it's I feel like we must have said it before, but the most important thing for your characters in whatever you're making, doesn't matter if you're writing a book, if you're making a video game, if you're making a movie, is people have motives.
Character Motives and World-Building
00:35:21
Speaker
And their motives need to inform how they act with the world.
00:35:26
Speaker
Yes. And if you can do that consistently, like this seems like such a basic thing, but it's actually contrary to the way some people develop games. You're like, oh, I need the player to go on a quest. Yeah. So I need a person to give them the quest so they can go do the quest or whatever. Right. If you do that, the player just sees a quest giver. Right. But if you're like, I have a guy and he ah killed his brother in law. And he really, really doesn't want anyone to find out about it. And he wants to make the player your character culpable in this plot.
00:36:06
Speaker
that's a character with a motive that you could then go to make a quest for them or whatever, right? But you can like design their dialogue, design how they approach you, how they interact with you, ah what they're afraid of, if you're talking to them, what they're you know ah trying to avoid. um You can do all of that just because you started by, you started from the character's perspective, not the player's perspective. and then introduce the stuff that would cause them to run across each other. Right. Yeah. Like if you make things flushed out and interesting enough, um the player will be interested and do that. Yeah. Like I know certain things are MSQ, but like ah the Red Baron in Witcher 3. Yeah. One of the most interesting quest lines, I think, of a lot of games. Mm hmm.
00:36:59
Speaker
um Yeah, and it really kept you going because there's like an air of mystery in their universe. Just like, oh, it could have been so many things. And then as you start to unravel it, you're like, how deep is this rabbit hole? Yeah. Oh, this is a terrible rabbit hole. Yeah. And there are multiple times where the thing is like that character is consistent though. They weren't just like, we need the player to go here. We need the player to go here. We need the player to go here. Like the Red Baron is hiding stuff from you. And the way that he interacts with you is to basically
00:37:38
Speaker
get the most help out of you that he can, but um you know once you start to overstep your bounds a little bit, you're getting a little bit more involved in his personal business, he may or may not like be pissed at you for what you do. um and ah No, it's great. like the In order to have an interesting question that the player wants to figure out, like, if you want to have the player invested in what you're trying to do, you have to have something interesting for them to figure out. And there's nothing more interesting than people. Like, at their peak, there's nothing more interesting than people. Human problems, even if it's aliens or whatever in Mass Effect. Yeah, it's.
00:38:25
Speaker
There's so many things that you can make relatable to players because players are human. So if you put other humans in the game, what are they like? How do they act? How do they interact? right Why would they do this? um How would they do certain things and really just fleshing that out to make the world more tangible and accessible. Because again, it is really easy in some AAA games to see the seams of like they needed a thing, so they just stuffed it in here. Yeah. um And you just kind of do the thing because you have to. um
00:39:06
Speaker
Yeah, the more immersive a game can be in their worlds, The better I think I think there's a situation where I wouldn't Yeah, I would always grew at that statement You don't have to have everybody be like Automatically aligned with the player character also or just like straight up the devil Like this is kind of the western media problem it's like everyone's there to help you on your quest or hinder your quest and you're like Why do they care about your quest? Like every villain is the hero of their own story. So shouldn't they have their own things that they're worried about? Yeah, there should always, if you look at a,
00:39:53
Speaker
Oh, no, I'm going to try and describe a ah mental picture now. But if you imagine like there's branching paths as far as like the choices you can make within the world. Yeah. um Kind of adjacent to you, but invisible are just out of view. There should be essentially the same thing for other characters in the game. Right. You don't necessarily need to know their whole backstory and all their motives and stuff. Maybe you can find out some things over time. But there should be assumption that you're already in an established world, not just Oh, hey, I'm the shop owner. I'll sell something ah that works for early games, of course, because it's just a means to an end. Right. um But if you want to have somebody care about like the Smith, ah you look at something like God of War and you make the characters interesting and give them motivations and a personality and have them act off of that again. the
00:40:46
Speaker
I can never say the word verisimilitude. Yeah. Verisimilitude. Yeah. I crushed it. Mark that down. We'll record it in audio in the podcast. Oh, thank God. Yeah. Just having things be believable in universe. It goes such a far way. a long way. Yeah. Think about like how far you mentioned the dwarves in God of War, like how far the series has come that the without going into spoilers, we haven't beaten Ragnarok. Like there are cut scenes, there are things at the very end of the game involving some of these side characters and.
00:41:31
Speaker
It could have absolutely been a mistake if nobody liked these characters, if there was no investment in these characters at all, right? If they had not actually gotten you your own motivations, aligned with the motivations of the side characters, instead of just having the main character be the the primary world line and everything just diverts into your own goals and aspirations. Like by the end of God of War, Ragnarok, to a kind of large extent, what Kratos wants isn't even important anymore compared to everything else going on, which is crazy as the protagonist. But it's because the things going on are so interesting. They're, I don't know, good game, by the way. Hot take. Wow. OK. Yeah. Say that the Christopher Judge and then
00:42:29
Speaker
stay on the phone with them for three hours. Yeah. I like I do enjoy playing games where it's like, hey, you are the center of all the important thing things going on. But that is also most games, right? Yeah. In most games, you're the chosen one, the most powerful one, the only one who can defeat the big, bad whatever. It's nice for a little mix up now and then or at least have to deal with ah some non chosen one problems along the way.
Solo Play and Narrative Challenges
00:43:04
Speaker
Related question for you, because as I was thinking about this, um because we're talking about the different characters and having them fleshed out. Obviously, there's a lot of different archetypes of characters and how they will be in games. um and One of the reasons that becomes interesting is, I mean, obviously, the personalities interacting.
00:43:22
Speaker
So how they will play off of each other for given scenarios. Um, again, uh, builds the world feel, but the other part of it, I was curious about is, can you think of a game that you've played, let's say seven semi recently, or even longer than that, where you don't have multiple characters where you just basically have you as like the primary character. And then there's like the bad guys. Right. If you're doing something like Crash Bandicoot, I know you have the mask, but like using that as an example, it's very much a you go to the main character, you play through the game, you hit the bad guys. Obviously, not the most story heavy game, but. Hmm. I mean, it's usually if there's kind of more narrative stuff going on, you you kind of have allies to some extent. So it's a little harder for me to think of
00:44:21
Speaker
a fairly recent game where you don't have that I played. where We don't really have allies because they're RPGs. You're always going to have multiple people, multiple, multiple people.
00:44:32
Speaker
um Yeah. And the examples I can think of are generally like less narrative. Right. Like my my brain actually just goes to doom. That's definitely a game where it's pretty much you and the bad guys and very little in the middle. But I guess like what angle are you thinking of? Did you have a game? No, I didn't have a specific one in mind. I was thinking that a lot of the games I have been playing, i mean obviously that would be more narrative based, are always going to have multiple, multiple characters. Yeah, it's tough it's tough not to. We mentioned The Witcher. So people are thinking this, I'm sure. The reason I didn't just say The Witcher is because
00:45:12
Speaker
You kind of have allies as the Witcher, but I wouldn't count those. But there are segments where you play as Siri, who is the co-pro-tagonist of the Witcher and the Witcher 3. So it's not technically correct, the worst type of incorrect. Ghost Runner single player. Oh, no, you're interacting with other entities. I mean, Ghost Runner kind of, though, yeah, because they're they're basically like hub and PCs or voices on the radio. But Ghost Runner 2?
00:45:43
Speaker
It's just the same. It's pretty much the same oven, VCs, voices on the radio. I guess I would just be curious like if that would be possible to be well received or basically a challenge of just having a really good narrative game. Yeah. That's very single player. I mean, I guess you'd have to kind of be talking to yourself a lot, a lot of exposition. Yeah. I mean, there are a lot of games that actually fall under this, like Jedi Survivor, for the most part, you're just playing as Cal Kestis, I think his name is. This is the stupid answer, but I think it's correct. um The m MMO Final Fantasy XIV is, from a story perspective, a single player game. like
00:46:31
Speaker
And it's really funny when a lot of games do this, right? You are the hero of Azeroth, you are the warrior of light, whatever, even if it's an MMO, you're the main protagonist. Canonically, your guy did all those things, whatever, right? um And I think that's very funny. um But I understand it, I guess. I need some multiverse excuse for justification in Final Fantasy 14. How they have several million heroes. There's just different timelines, you know. There's one boss fight. I haven't done the most recent expansion, but there's one boss fight in the game. Right. um Lots of boss fights where you need ah four people as a small light party. I think eight people is the amount you'd normally take for like
00:47:19
Speaker
a big boss fight. You have other players alongside you for most of the game, right, when it comes to this type of content. There's exactly one boss fight where, canonically, there is a reason that the people fighting alongside you are alternate warriors of light or whatever, right? Like, it's literally like, here's the multiverse gambit type thing where it's like, all right, here's the big bad, and you're pulling people out. Here's the Power Rangers from the past 10 seasons. Uh-huh, exactly. You got all the original actors. Don't worry. Don't look into the masks.
00:47:55
Speaker
And I think it's the only place in the game where they actually just do that. Because otherwise, as soon as you finish a boss fight, like and if there's a cutscene or something, it's just you there. The defeated enemy is like, yeah, I'm pretty good. I'm kind of hot so. I did it without any help. Ignore the seven people running away in the background trying to get out of frame.
00:48:22
Speaker
Yeah. I need to get some type of game like that that has more multiplayer ability. Yeah. Mainly cause like I do dota two, but not as much as other people do dota two and I'm getting old and I need, I need another social game as an option. That's fair. I'm sure people will start something up at some point. I know. Uh, the trick is do what, what multiplayer game do you want to play? That's not one of the horsemen of the apocalypse. those are the one i acting For a weekend. Um, survival crafting early access.
00:49:01
Speaker
What was the other one? Free to play? Free to play, yep. Yeah, I don't know. That's definitely going to be hard to find. Yeah. I think it's fine to have some of those. It'll just be a weekend game as well. Yeah. It's just for a nice little shared experience. Speaking of, are you looking forward to playing more chain together or are you apprehensive? I mean, I will i will definitely play it. There were points where it was enjoyable for sure. um It's very much one of the games
00:49:35
Speaker
that is carried by the social interaction, and obviously. um But it's like, The example I would use is co-op games kind of get a pass when it comes to the quote the fun quotient because it's like you could kick a can back and forth in an alleyway and it would be fun if you were with friends, right? um And this game stresses that. It's like, yeah, what if your friends were kicking the can at you and they only tried to hit your head really?
00:50:09
Speaker
ah It's not quite that bad. I like a little stuff like this. I mean, because having such a ah small game overlap with people or different gaming schedules, it's nice to have just like a little one off. Oh, this thing came out. It's pretty cheap. It's like going to a movie together, right? You don't know if it's going to be a good movie, but it's popular. It's out now. It's something it's something to do. Right. But again, it's because you're with friends. You can talk about the game or the movie afterwards and
00:50:43
Speaker
highlight some funny moments or... Yeah, it's pretty much it. it's yeah It's making shared memories, I would say. Yeah, that's that's clearly if we were to get to the essence of this type of game.
The Challenge of Dark Souls
00:50:59
Speaker
Like, it's similar to obviously Bennett Foddy getting over it. and that the game wouldn't be a game if it didn't just kick you in the shin periodically. If this was just us succeeding and jump after jump after jump all the way to the end, there would not actually be gameplay. It's it's literally a frustration simulator. like That is the existence of it. um It's also overcoming obstacle simulator.
00:51:35
Speaker
But it's not a game if it would have been easy. Yeah. It would just kind of be an experience. And that brings me to why there should not be an easy mode in Dark Souls.
00:51:48
Speaker
what What do you classify the easy mode in Dark Souls to be? I don't know. I just know there's an answer. It's a Use a shield. There have been so many memes I've been sitting on for Elden Ring DLC that I've been wanting to give you around that topic. um That's fair. Yeah, i like I like it as it is. I do like accessibility in games, but I think there's different ways to provide it. Right. And Dark Souls goes the way of you have a wide array of utility. Yes. ah You still need to level up your... Oh, my general hand waving has summoned the dog. Hello. You have um the wide array of utility, but you still need that personal skill to develop to successfully use those tools.
00:52:42
Speaker
Yeah. Because you can give me a hammer at level one. I'll be like, I don't know what I'm doing, but I'm going to hit this tree. Right. That's that's wrong. Right. Yeah. It's about as and efficient as punching it as it turns out. So what are you going to do? So pretty good. Yeah. Reasonably effective. Yeah. They're supposed to be. Occasionally I do get curious about like how much they've added to Minecraft since I last played it, but I've also played a lot of Minecraft and I don't think it could ever be a, um, going back to what you said more than a weekend type game.
Minecraft's Evolution and Mods
00:53:16
Speaker
It's like you scratch your creativity itch, you build the base, explore, see some of the new features added. And then there's not really much to do unless you're making like a mega base, which I think some people might like the initial idea of, yeah but on like day two, you're like,
00:53:33
Speaker
We could be playing other stuff. That's a little more actively engaging. Yeah. It's, it doesn't, there are so many videos on this that I feel bad even mentioning it, but like, uh, survive, like survival Minecraft stops being a survival game very quickly. Oh yeah. And it just turns into. Well, do you want to go through the effort to kill the Wither? Do you want to go through the effort to kill the Ender Dragon? Like, do you want to explore some of the tougher biomes? Do you want max gear? Like, these are all goals you can accomplish, but you may have already done them in previous playthrough. Do you want to just do it again? Right. So what is the thing that you pursue here?
00:54:17
Speaker
um New base, different biome. Yeah. Sometimes, but like we haven't tried the nether yet, but I haven't seen the new nether at all. I know that they have like nether right or whatever is tired here than diamond and no experience with that. But I've also played mods that had that kind of experience like years ago. Right. Yeah. So I didn't say that it's going to be a massive difference for me. But again, I'm always praising the mod community because they're
00:54:48
Speaker
doing cool things that I would never be willing to make the effort in. And I get to reap the benefits of that. But I feel like almost every major game company or just game franchise should try and employ the occasional modder or two. Yeah. Because like they can add so much good stuff or maybe they just didn't have the time and development for it. Or maybe they thought it'd be too much of a hassle, whatever it is. um But you see it a lot with Bethesda games where does the game will come out and like two days later, someone's like, I fixed this issue. I did this thing here. I added a fun mod for this and people can read the benefit of it. And it seems like if they were able to do it so quickly, why not just add it to the game? Right. Using the binding of Isaac example.
00:55:42
Speaker
They had I think it was anti-birth, which was made by somebody else separately. And then they're like, hey, that's actually really cool stuff that you made. Do you want to just add it? We can add it into the game. Right.
00:55:56
Speaker
It's probably easier to do for for some of those games, but no excuse. It's also completely integrated into Bethesda games. It's very funny because you set up a segue that like, I don't think you intended to set up at all, but literally today you were talking about modding and then you brought up Bethesda and was like, does he know? what Is he, is he a knower? Is he in the know? Um, so fallout London released today, which is literally just, I I'm almost entirely certain it's in the fallout four engine, but like an entire new campaign basically for fallout and an entirely different location. All is a fan created mod over the course of like, however many years it's been since fallout four came out. yeah um So good example of that. There's the plug. Um,
00:56:45
Speaker
I think that Bethesda, honestly, I would love to give them more credit, but I can't anymore because so many times things get solved via mods and it's like, this is a massive improvement. And then they make the next game and it's like, why did none of your people play the version that fixed all of this? Seriously, like. Think about how many games that you have played, and this is to the audience, that you've had to run with some other specific mod. Yeah. Now, certain things were just like additive and fun, like um Lethal Company has a lot of stuff. yeah I'm sure Lethal Company is still adding content, um but the modding community is obviously going to be much faster. Yeah. They had monsters and maps and all kinds of stuff.
00:57:36
Speaker
outfits, different gestures. Um, you can do woo fingers now.
00:57:43
Speaker
Yeah. I, I don't know. I think part of it comes from like, and this is speculation on my part. Maybe I'm wrong. If you're on the Bethesda side, I know you guys listen to the podcast. Just come on. You can defend your stance. But I think part of it comes from hubris where they're like, They are admittedly putting a bunch of work into making this this game, but there are, I don't know, because they've gotten away with so much, I think it's the same issue that Arkane had. um there was I heard it was either from an interview or something like that, that when they were having issues in the development of Redfall,
00:58:25
Speaker
They were like, OK, well, we're we're definitely going to get it together before the end. Right. It's just a little bit of the arcane magic or whatever. It's to use a stupid expression, too much sniffing of their own farts. Right. It's like they they have unwarranted faith that it will all come together in the end. And Bethesda has been a massively successful studio in so many ways. Fallout 76 humbled them a little bit and then it turned around and made a lot of money. Now a lot of people play it now.
Bethesda's Modding Community Issues
00:58:58
Speaker
And so it's like, I don't know if that stuck as a lesson. Yeah. Uh, 100%. Um, in the same way we've talked about Pokemon before.
00:59:08
Speaker
where certain things that they do, ah I at least see as subpar as far as like, you could have made the effort to just do a little more with it yeah to make it kind of a modern game instead of like 10 years old. um But they don't, but they don't have to because no one's saying that they have to. right Like if your games are selling really well, they're not gonna say, Oh, this one guy on the internet with a podcast because he said it, right? They need to get the idea that the community feels that way who they're trying to provide for. Right. But obviously they're OK with how it is currently enough for them to get doing that. Same with Bethesda. As long as it sells, that's the only thing that a lot of people will pay attention to at the end of the day. Right. Well, how does it impact the balance sheet? um And
01:00:01
Speaker
I think that the the bridge too far, if Bethesda crosses it, and they they kind of started to a little bit with Starfield is um they're like, Hey, we're not going to support public mods anymore. If they ever do that, and they're like, Oh, it's private mods only. Um, there's just going to be absolutely massive backlash because they see their modders as this, this spice on top of the product. And the reality is. For a lot of people, myself included, like the mods make the games so much more playable. Yes. So much more interesting. They fix so many things. There's an unofficial patch for like every Bethesda game that's ever existed. And it's literally just a massive compation compilation of things that the developers never fixed. And yeah.
01:00:56
Speaker
Yeah, I want to get in this whole side discussion about like how games should be unreleased. I know we've talked about that um ad nauseam. Don't cave over it, though. They did with Fallout. You you got you started this. I'm sorry. Last thing, last thing. I don't remember that time. But they literally patched Fallout with this minor graphical improvement thing or like frame rate unlock, whatever it was. Fine. People who are enjoying the game already enjoy the game, but they broke all of the mods that existed when they did this. And they thought that that was acceptable. And that's insanity, right? Like how it's not cloud strike insane, but it's really, really bad. Right. I mean, a lot of things have that issue.
01:01:44
Speaker
Even like the, the discord API for like bots, ah um, same friend who did the binding of Isaac thing, you know, has a bot and it constantly runs into issues because as things change, other things get deprecated and you have to fix and go back and do it. And it's huge pain in the ass, right? Yeah. Um, but imagine like you were playing a game as you wanted to, uh, you were playing the sky craft mod for Minecraft and having a great time. And now it doesn't work because they patch something ah just because like, Oh, we had to add this graphical shader and I crashed everything else. Right. Yeah. That's a huge kick in the dictionary community that you didn't need to do. Right. Exactly.
01:02:29
Speaker
So for stuff like that, you either need to be supporting multiple versions, which I think Minecraft does a decent job of allowing you to do that.
Community Contributions to Gaming
01:02:38
Speaker
Yeah. Or also just pick it, allow people to mod stuff and incorporate that and maybe hear me out, maybe pay them for it. Yeah. If somebody is able to fix some major issues for your post release game, Give them something for it. They're doing you a huge favor. Yeah. Because they're basically helping you with your homework on the group project um because they cared. Yeah.
01:03:07
Speaker
And I know the haters will say, Bethesda has hired people from the modding community before, and they absolutely have props for it. But it doesn't mean anything if they go around and break all of the mods with a patch. And they're just like, ha ha, isn't this cool that we released it with our show? People love the show. You like this mod too, right? We're the best. You're like, you destroyed everything. Show was fun. Did you have to burn the house down in order to deliver this? Maybe not. I don't know. um
01:03:39
Speaker
But yeah, community is good. Valve understands. I know we're we're past time at this point, but TF2 just had a major update. Everything that they added to the game, I'm pretty sure the community made. Yeah, that that's been the case for a while, kind of for TF2. And if they ever stop. Running that game or allowing modding, I think I think that would be in some shit. So I feel like a large part of the player base is still, a lot of people still give a crap about TF2 and obviously Counter-Strike 2 being a major thing as well. yeah But it's a big part of the community is having that other forms of accessibility in kind of gaming the way you want to, or being able to fix some things that, it's just like having settings in games really, right? Yeah.
01:04:33
Speaker
It's just an external, someone else is doing the work for you type of thing to enable said settings. Foster co-ownership with your community. You will never have a group that is more invested than the people who want to play and improve your game. Yes. There you go. That's my, that's my advice at the end of the episode. ah Hello, custom games and Overwatch. What's up? At least they support him. Yeah, that's nice.
Listener Participation Encouragement
01:05:00
Speaker
um But If you have ideas for custom games and Overwatch, that's very specific. What is your favorite community game? Send those in substonepodcastatgmail.com or I guess community for a game. I can think of some good ones. We'll see if you think of the same ones. Substonepodcastatgmail.com or join the community on Facebook. Facebook dot.com slash substonepodcast. And as always, we'll see you in the next one.
01:05:30
Speaker
Do you think they added versus 100 Kamala Harris's yet?