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Episode 31 - Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars
2.2k Plays2 months ago
Paris in the fall holds many memories for Matt and Roses. Memories of pushing their “woke” propaganda. Memories of pickles and olives.
Before we do our DEEP DIVE into the classic GRAND ADVENTURE from Revolution Software, Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars, we talk about our new Stardew-like obsession with Fields of Mistria. Who is your new romance? Marsh? Celine? Well don’t touch!! Because they’re ours. And then, go f*** your selfie, because Matt has some more to say about Life is Strange.
Then, we add 5 games to the ranked list of every adventure game ever.
(Also, we learn some important and not at all silly things about Dark Grim Mariupolis. If anyone has any info, btw, let us know. https://donate.khpg.org/en/ )
Email us! [email protected]
Games Mentioned:
- Fields of Mistria
- Life is Strange
- Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars (Circle of Blood)
- Beneath a Steel Sky
- Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers
- Cube Escape: The Lake
- Midnight Girl
- The 7th Guest (ew)
- Dark Grim Mariupolis
- Randal’s Monday
- The Last Half of Darkness: Beyond the Spirit’s Eye
Recommended
Transcript
Podcast Direction: Personal and Progressive Perspectives
00:00:00
Speaker
rosees Rose's. Yes. ah Before we record, I want to I got to talk. I got to talk to you about something kind of. Oh, my God. What's wrong? OK, you know how. All right. You know how we do a show? That's yeah about our perspectives and our opinions.
00:00:21
Speaker
Okay, well in a show like this, I i don just don't think there's room for you to keep forcing your perspective and opinions on the listener. I'm sorry? One listener, there's one particular listener, they kindly informed us that your progressive left-wing viewpoints have no place in a podcast where you share your personal viewpoints on things.
Subjectivity in Game Reviews: Can Humor Make Ratings Objective?
00:00:49
Speaker
oh If you see a depiction of a sex worker in a game that makes you uncomfortable, and you don't ask in any way that they change it, but you just share that it's uncomfortable to see. That's fascism, Roses. I liked that game. And look, I, okay, Roses, I'm guilty of it too. In the show where we talk about culture, I, I guess unthinkingly, I ignorantly made fun of a cultural figure for behaving like a buffoon in a donut shop.
00:01:17
Speaker
And there's just no place to make jokes about cultural figures on a show where we make jokes about culture. It's frankly, you know what it has done? It's stopped our audience from growing as this listener kindly pointed out. It did? Even though, okay, yeah, you might be saying like, oh yeah, we haven't lost any noticeable number of listeners any of the times that we've done it in those games.
00:01:40
Speaker
All right, what do you want to talk about instead? What should we talk about? What do you want from me? I guess any time we talk about a game, I guess we just have to what we have to say. We just have to do number ratings from now on. Just like objective. So fun. So, OK, like Monkey Island graphics out of 10. Well, I can't because it's my opinion. The most I can say about Monkey Island is that it has graphics.
00:02:09
Speaker
Okay, perfect. Okay, fun factor. It's a game. Okay, very good. See how much better this is? It was made in the early 90s, I think 1990. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. good This is really, really good context. Later, Diver Streetwood was voiced by Dominic Armato. That's who voiced him. There's a character. Get liberal.
00:02:39
Speaker
No, that was getting a little too liberal for me. Oh shit, sorry. What I meant to say is that it's done by LucasArts. Okay, yeah, you name a corporation. Yes, that's good. No, that's great. Thank you.
00:02:55
Speaker
yeah the Okay, so now I guess, now if you wanna start recording, we can
Recording Revelation & Political Satire: Mocking Ideologies
00:03:00
Speaker
start the show. Oh yeah, we've been recording the whole time. Fuck! This is all going out there. Oh no! This is for you, listener. Conservatives are whining little bitches, let's go.
00:03:31
Speaker
Hey, everyone. Welcome back to Save Your Game. I'm your host, leftist, liberal, ah staunch feminist. I hate fun pushing up roses. And this is my co-host, a fascist. A fascist liberal. i'm i'm a fat I'm a liberal fascist. I demand DEI in every corner.
00:03:59
Speaker
And what's this show about again? What do we talk about here at Save Your Game? Politics.
00:04:09
Speaker
Matt, please ah save it for the dinner table. I don't know where it's going with that. Our other podcast, Save Your Country. Oh, yes. Oh, gosh.
00:04:21
Speaker
but So yeah, go check out our other podcast. We would be so bad at being a but yeah because we can't take anything seriously. So like it would be salty all the time. We would get in trouble with every we'd get in trouble with everybody. Yeah. no but We'd be too like we'd be too angry at ah conservatives for them to listen. and But then we'd be too um we'd make fun of liberal stuff too often for them to listen. And they'd be like, yeah, but we agree with you, but we just can't take anything seriously. It's almost like people are complicated creatures and made of many facets.
Personal Food Dislikes: The Pickle and Olive Debate
00:05:00
Speaker
All people have a variety of opinions. Yeah. and For example, I don't like pickles.
00:05:09
Speaker
I got really quiet there for a second. Are you okay? No, it's not because I'm such a big fan of pickles. like i I can take them or leave them, but I know some people are so big of fans of pickles that we definitely just lost at least one list. I'm sorry to those who enjoy pickling as a hockey- I'm going to add to it. I fucking hate olives.
00:05:33
Speaker
I, hate oh my God, I hate olives though. There's no point. not There's no point. they're not They don't taste like food is the thing. Like you're eating an olive and you're like, you're just making yourself desensitized to the fact that it tastes like salty rubber. It does taste like, do here's the thing. Do you like it on things? Very occasionally. Or mixed in things, I should say. Very occasionally if it's a small amount.
00:06:00
Speaker
I see I don't even like that. I don't know. Absolutely not. I see an olive and I i i lose my mind. How are you? How are
Artistic Projects & Gaming: Roses' Creative Ventures
00:06:09
Speaker
you this week? Good. I've been doing a lot of art that no one likes, but it's fine. I'm fine. It's fine. It's fine. This is your this is your ah soda can art. You've talked about this on the show, right?
00:06:27
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Remember when I was like all excited and it was fresh, fresh little roses, all plucky and ready with her pop cans and then no one liked it. I don't think it can't be true that nobody liked it. I like it.
00:06:44
Speaker
There you go. There's what there's an audience. There's one person. but but Have you been playing anything while you've been popping out soda cans? I've been playing while we've been podcasting. Oh, no.
00:07:03
Speaker
I've been playing or trying ah Fields of Mistria because everyone is all up on it and I wanted to see what the hype was about and if it was a game that maybe I could get into personally and to be honest Matt this happens every time I start like a let's say quote a big game with like a lot of quests a lot of characters I always stare and I'm like I'm so overwhelmed why am I doing this?
00:07:32
Speaker
And it doesn't matter that I've beaten Stardew Valley, which is very overwhelming type of a game for the big learning curve. It doesn't matter. I look at fields of mystery. I'm like, Oh my God, the map is huge. Who is that character? I need to clear these weeds. These weeds are ruining my life. Yes. Oh my God. Clearing out the farm in mystery for some reason felt like It felt like doing 20 Stardew Valley farms. It took me the whole year. My sword is not it, man. It is not cutting those weeds the way it needs to be cutting those weeds. There's a cool thing that this game does where ah all you know how in Stardew, when you upgrade your hoe or your um watering can ah and you hold it down, it does a bigger like area.
00:08:24
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah. The axe and the pickaxe do that in this game as you upgrade them. Oh, that's not that's real nice. So it becomes a lot easier to clear out like the sticks that have fallen on the ground. Yeah. And it's very clear that they're making some of these things that were not very easy in Stardew. One could say annoying, even. They're making those things a little bit easier in this game. So I'm on my first quest.
00:08:54
Speaker
And that's just getting to know people. And that was your first quest in Stardew. It was like introducing people. And it can take a while in Stardew because if you're not friends with people, you cannot go into their rooms. you know They got their own schedules going on. It took me forever to say hello to Sebastian in Stardew. That guy is elusive, all right?
00:09:15
Speaker
Yeah. He is through the whole game. If you're trying to romance yeah Sebastian, it's a torture. Or if he gives you a if he gives you a quest, there are some days that Sebastian doesn't leave his room. and so if you So he'll like, he'll like ah bring me a jade, and then you're just standing outside of his room with a jade for two days. Like, come out! I didn't give you this jade!
00:09:39
Speaker
You asked for it ask for it No, this is obviously much easier i'm I'm introducing myself to everyone it's very cute like it's got a very JRPG feel to it while having obviously farming some stuff like everyone you know people gave me some seeds and And I'm just trying to get used to it, because it's not Stardew, you guys. A lot of people are comparing it. I'm having trouble with the comparison right now. It might change okay as I play it. But because I feel like the music is such a such a vibe, ah the caricatures are such a vibe. I like the dialogue more in this game than Stardew already. I think it's a low yeah yeah little little more, um you know, boisterous and and fun.
00:10:30
Speaker
Have you been to, have you gotten through a full week yet? No, no, no. Wow, okay. there's I'm just so overwhelmed by these weeks. Okay, okay.
00:10:45
Speaker
ah everybody i'll just I'll give you one of them. Everybody gathers together ah in the pub. every I think it's every Friday. Okay. To play Dungeons and Dragons.
00:10:59
Speaker
Oh fun! It's fun. It rules, yeah. So now there is romancing in this game, right? ah Yes. ah you that It has not been, so it's still, in and actually this slowed me down, to be honest, it is still in early access. So some of this stuff is not fully implemented. So I think you can't get above four stars with anybody right now or four hearts with anybody right now. So you can't get to the love thing. So actually I've slowed on it because knowing that I can't get to like the love scenes or whatever, for some reason has made me stop romancing people, even though like I know it's coming and I know there's plenty of other like,
00:11:37
Speaker
there will be there will be like a two-heart scene and a three-heart scene and a four-heart scene and they'll all be great. But for for some reason, just knowing that I can't get to the finish line of these people, which does not mean what it sounds like it means. All right, who's your person? Who's your mystery or person? Okay, what what why don't you ah take a guess? So you know my stardew person, right? Yes, Penny. Penny, Penny all the way, Penny 1000.
00:12:05
Speaker
Yeah, Penny 1000. Penny 1000 time, billion times. Okay. So, who do you... Okay, is it Celine? That, you know, I think Celine is going to be... I think Celine is going to be a lot of peoples. Yeah, I do too. Right? Celine is like...
00:12:28
Speaker
I think Selene is like the sex bomb of the town. Oh wait, I'm thinking of the wrong person, sorry. Let me go back. Selene has blonde hair, she's very charming. Is there Serena, is that another one? You were thinking of, let me look, let me look, let me look. Looking, oh, there's a lot of characters. Yeah, hold on, now I'm pulling up a wiki because I forgot. Are you thinking of the bath house woman? Yes, I am, what's her name?
00:12:57
Speaker
the dark vampirous woman? I don't. Juniper. yes Juniper is the sex bomb of the game, yeah. ah no She's the sex bomb. No, it's fucking Celine. It's Celine all the way. Celine rolls, Celine's great. So I got it, I'm right. Yes. Oh my god, I'm the best. Celine loves flowers. You can bring Celine every flower. Any flower, she loves them. And some of them, well, some of them she likes and some of them she loves. And she's just adorable. She's got penny energy.
00:13:26
Speaker
She got, that's why I said Celine. And when you're like, yeah, I don't know, I'm like, what, really? Am I wrong? I thought, for whatever reason, when you said Celine, I was picturing Juniper. Okay, yeah, yeah. Juniper's awesome. I haven't played in like two weeks, so give me a little bit of, but yeah, Juniper's cool.
00:13:45
Speaker
ah not Not my type romance wise. Right. Right. Same. I'm not going to romance Juniper, but I do want to be friends with Juniper because he seems like a badass. So I want to be. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. um I don't know if I know much enough about all the characters to say who I would romance yet. I do think Selena is going to be a lot of people's though.
00:14:10
Speaker
i wear pen where Penny was like a like a second or second string romance choice in Stardew for a lot of people, I think. Yeah. um Celine is Celine's on the fucking cover of the game, right? Like Celine is the one. Yeah. All right. So based on you remember mine, right? From Stardew. Sebastian. No. No. Yeah. Elliot. So who do you think the fields of mystery is going to be? Oh, man.
00:14:40
Speaker
tough one I don't know if there's actually a good comparison. There isn't, but I have i have two potentials. Okay. Hayden? I would agree. Yep, I'd agree with that. Okay. Okay. Is there there somebody else in mind? Yeah, there's like two. Baelor. No. Whoa! But maybe not. Rheus. Rheus. No.
00:15:09
Speaker
It's March, okay? It's the asshole character. I'm just a little curious, okay? I think what makes the most sense is Baylor for me. Yeah, yeah I think so too. well i ah know i thought Hayden was my first guess for several reasons, but then I was like then i thought Baylor. Yeah, March is the Shane of the game. Yeah, he's the Shane.
00:15:36
Speaker
He's just grumpy. He's grumpy. He's a cloud. For seemingly no reason. But there's yeah there's something there. He's drunk. No, I don't think he is. He's drunk. No, there's something there. There's something underneath. And I can fix him. I can fix it. I'm also really into Henrietta. That's a trick. All right, Gonzo, hold it together.
00:16:07
Speaker
Henrietta's cute. Look at her. Yeah, she's great. ah cutie You can bring her gifts and stuff. it he's She's great, yeah. She's not romanceable, but I bet you have heart ah events with her. Yeah, that'd be hilarious. And there's like a dog. Dozy. Dozy. Yeah, that's cute. i think I think in the end, Baylor is probably going to be Cause like it took me a while to get to Elliot. It took me a couple, like dude, I romanced Harvey first. Big mistake.
00:16:40
Speaker
what Our conversations were like, don't forget to take your vitamins. Like the fuck is this? This is not romantic Harvey. Okay. Like I like Leah too. And I, I've married Leah before, but then I'm like, I miss Penny. Did you know that Leah is an artist?
00:17:02
Speaker
Oh, Jesus. So you like so you're gonna keep up with Fields of Mystery, huh? Yeah, I'm gonna play after we wrap. You're gonna play wal wherere while we're recording, be honest.
Game Analysis: 'Life is Strange' and Its Narrative Impact
00:17:16
Speaker
um So I ah finished Life is Strange. Oh, how lovely. And what do you think?
00:17:27
Speaker
but OK, so i like I still liked it. I still felt the same way. There were some parts of it that were very affecting and the fifth chapter or is it the fourth? chapter There's five chapters total. Yeah, that sounds right.
00:17:41
Speaker
Okay, then the fourth chapter, wherever wherever all, there's one chapter that all that like action happens. Yeah, yeah there is, yeah. And um that chapter was fucking so good. It was so good, i was I was... edge of my seat, did not want to turn it off, like just wanted, it I was just glued to it. And then it's followed by that really, the final chapter, which is really like metaphysical and dreamy. And I didn't like that at all. I felt that was sort of like, I felt that was sort of like a cop out kind of like the, like the writers sort of lost the logic of what was going on. and So rather,
00:18:23
Speaker
And maybe we're afraid you didn't pick up on the themes. So they did like a big, giant, s playable two hour dream sequence. whatever You know, where everything was abstract and ah they were just yelling the themes of the game in your face. And it's like, i yeah.
00:18:44
Speaker
I already understood this stuff. I already got what the game was about. i didn't like I got that the game was about how you have to live with the consequences of your choices and I got that it was about responsibility and chaos theory and I got that it was about um You know, ah what is your responsibility to individuals versus your responsibility to a community? Like I understood all of these things and I loved all those themes. I didn't need them. I didn't need them delivered to me in such a direct.
00:19:20
Speaker
and almost like patronizing way. it it's like It's like when you're watching a sitcom and at the end they like, somebody's like, you know, we've all learned a thing or two today. um Which is, you know, like community does that and it is the worst part of community.
00:19:37
Speaker
yeah yeah yeah ah
00:19:42
Speaker
It's like, you could just trust, that people consuming your art to have gotten, yeah to have figured out the themes. that You don't need the characters to spell them out for you. but sure um And I mean, a lot of the characters did the same thing, right? Like at some point point, Victoria is like, you know, Max, I think I'm always mean to you just because I'm jealous and because I always thought you were cool and I always wished I could be, I could care less about the people. And it's like, I got that!
00:20:12
Speaker
like I got, I didn't need Victoria to tell me that. I got it. It was more effective before she just said it. Because now, yeah because it doesn't make sense. Once a character can say something like that, then why would they do it? If you are aware of these things about yourself, why keep doing them? The thing that makes fiction compelling is that the characters don't always know what the viewers know.
00:20:41
Speaker
You know that a character is driven by jealousy, but the character doesn't, so they can't fix it. Or if they learn how to fix it, it's through symbolic ways, just like we do in real life, right? Like I don't, I'm never saying to people like,
00:21:00
Speaker
Hey, ah the reason I was so ah mean to you was, the reason I'm always so mean to you is because I feel ah insecure about how you've succeeded in the parts of life I haven't and then continue to be mean to the person, right? Like that doesn't yeah happen. And and there's it's very rare in life that you actually get solid answers about your own behavior or other people's behaviors. i hate So I hate when it happens in games. Anyway.
00:21:28
Speaker
So what is your final, well, what's your final like, what do you- Oh, my number score. What's the fun factor? What's your number score? What's my numbers for the graphics? What do I think about the, the gameplay loop? No, my final sort of thoughts about the game are that it's, I have complicated ones. I think it is, I think it is good. I think I want to play the other Life is Strange games, but they are a little exhausting. Yeah.
00:21:59
Speaker
and there's parts of though my wish were a lot better um and I think could be better.
00:22:07
Speaker
Yeah, if they didn't, i think I think they could improve and maybe they have, right? Like there's been four, three or four games since this one. Yeah, there's been more. Have you played any of the other ones?
00:22:20
Speaker
I have not. I've only played The Original Life is Strange, to completion. It's been many years too, so I'm i like remembering bits and pieces as we talk about it because I know it goes off the rails at some point. yeah And I do remember it being very like satisfying to finish. But I personally didn't feel I didn't want to play anymore for whatever reason. I don't know why I didn't I just didn't I felt compelled to like leave it at that experience and not play any of the others for whatever reason.
00:22:52
Speaker
Sure, yeah, I think I could see that perspective. Like I don't want to play another one for another a couple months, right? Like I don't want to, yeah yeah I wouldn't jump into life is strange to tomorrow. ah Right. But but I think I like I do want to see what else this what else don't not does with the life is strange properties. And if they yeah, if they sort of got rid of some of these bad puzzles. ah yeah um And they didn't feel like they needed to explain every bit of the narrative to me. um
00:23:30
Speaker
And they didn't you know drop into a weird surreal dream sequence. i think this I think this game could have been an absolute masterpiece. But as it is, it's just like a very good and interesting game.
00:23:42
Speaker
Well, good. I'm glad you played it because I think it is one of those kind of important adventure games. I agree. um Yeah. And this is, you know, and I played Tell Me Why, which is a bit more of a.
00:23:58
Speaker
hi It does feel like this formula, but matured. Yeah. um So I think it feels like don't not have learned lessons over time, but sure. Yeah. Um, but yeah, I liked it. I'm glad I, I'm really glad I played it. Oh, good. I'm glad that makes me happy. Yeah. So what are we going to be talking about today?
Introduction to 'Broken Sword': Plot and Comparisons
00:24:25
Speaker
Roses? Oh my goodness. We've got a classic. Yeah. Well, we can call it a classic. I feel, I feel comfortable. It is absolutely a classic.
00:24:34
Speaker
Today, we're going to be talking about Broken Sword. um And this is a game that I know that you have finished and enjoy. Wait, are you talking about Circle of Blood? Yes, I'm talking about Shadows of the Templars or what the fuck ever.
00:24:52
Speaker
We don't call it Circle of Blood anymore, okay? i That is how I bought it. When I first bought it, it was I saw it at a store and it was called Circle of Blood. And later when I heard people talking about Broken Sword, I was like, what is Broken Sword? is this Did they do another one?
00:25:11
Speaker
it was yeah Honestly, two very, very different titles. Like what in the world? Yeah, I don't even know what Circle of Blood is supposed to mean. No, I don't either. it It doesn't really match. It doesn't really match the game at all, does it? I kind of don't know what Broken Sword is supposed to mean. I don't think any. I think it's all bad titles. I think the whole thing is bad titles. I mean, Shadow of the Templars makes sense. Yes. Like the the in parenthesis. Yeah. you know But what's the Broken Sword?
00:25:42
Speaker
It's um a metaphor. ah Okay, because the Templars were a sword that got broken by... Life. Lifetime. Okay, sorry. Okay, you continue. Anyway, we're gonna talk about that. We're talking about Broken Sword, the first Broken Sword today. It's a game that I think you like and that I had not played in full until I sat down to play it for the podcast. ah Did I have a good time?
00:26:11
Speaker
I don't know. I'm very curious to see, yeah, to see how you feel. So that was really weird. I'll say that I'm excited to get into this. So I'm going to put on our break music or unless you have more to say about fields of mystery. ah Celine forever. Celine rolls.
00:26:48
Speaker
Hey everybody, welcome back to Save Your Game. I'm Ed Aucamp. This is Pushing Up Roses. Hey. We're gonna talk about, ah we're gonna talk about Broken Sword, I think. Would you like to do that with me today? Yeah, I guess. That's why we're here. Okay. So, I mean, for anybody who doesn't know, I think this game is interesting. I think like the inspiration for this game is interesting to talk about. And I know we don't always talk about like the histories here, but yeah I think it's cool. Like, ah so I think it's the, is it, was it the third game by Revolution Software? They were like,
00:27:26
Speaker
The, ah if there's LucasArts and there's Sierra, and those were the big classic adventure game companies, this sort of like runner up, this sort of like other guy running the race, right, was Revolution, and they made Lore of the Temptress in 1992, and then Beneath the Steel Sky in 1994. Which I have a review of on my channel, Beneath the Steel Sky, so go check that out.
00:27:54
Speaker
um And then they did Broken Sword in 1996. It was based off of, um so here's what's interesting about it. Not long after this game ca so this game came out in 1996 and then the Da Vinci Code came out in 2003. And the Da Vinci Code has a surprisingly similar plot ok to Broken Sword. And there's been a lot of like,
00:28:21
Speaker
question about like, oh, did Dan Brown play Broken Sword? And some people say yes, some people say no. But what everybody knows. Can you even imagine? Crack me up. But what everyone knows for sure.
00:28:35
Speaker
is that both of them, um both Charles Cecil, who wrote this game, and Dan Brown, who wrote Da Vinci Code, were both super, super influenced by a book called The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, which is about this whole, ah the Templars continued to exist to protect the blood of Christ's conspiracy theory, right?
00:29:00
Speaker
And so this game, yeah, ah released as Broken Sword Shadow at the Templars in the UK. And then when it came to the US, it was released, it was called Circle of Blood for some reason that no one's entirely sure of, I don't think. No, I don't understand that name at all. I would expect that to be some kind of a horror game. Yeah. Yeah.
00:29:22
Speaker
It's clearly influenced by like, it's clearly more influenced by the LucasArts games than the ah Sierra games, but it's trying to get away from like the comedy of that and try to lean more into like, ah what if Indiana Jones was just a dude?
00:29:42
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Right. Like what was just a random dude fell into an Indiana Jones adventure. I also think and we'll we'll get into it. I think this is just Gabriel Knight. but But there's more but there's more I have more reasons for that. I'll draw I'll draw like a lot of parallels and maybe you'll agree and maybe you will not agree.
00:30:01
Speaker
But yeah, I can obviously I can see why it's looks and feels like LucasArts. But for me, at every turn, I felt like I was playing Gabriel Knight. Yeah, it's kind of the the graphics are kind of like cartoony, but in a very serious or realistic way, like they are colorful, they are bright, they're strong lines, they're strong, but leg you know,
00:30:26
Speaker
ah It's very like comic book to me. it's It's very comic book illustration to me. Yeah, I can see that totally. yeah And I think, um at least in the remakes,
00:30:41
Speaker
I think Dave Gibbons, who wrote who drew Watchmen, had something to do with it. Yeah. in um I just pulled up the Wikipedia just now to double check. Yeah, in the remastered, in the game that you played, the director's cut. Yeah, I played that, yeah. Dave Gibbons, who drew Watchmen, and who also did the artwork for Beneath a Steel Sky. He did the character portraits. Okay, okay. And some other, I think, various artwork.
00:31:14
Speaker
It's not likely that I say this, but I feel like I didn't i didn't like the director's cut. i I would have preferred to play it not that. I would have preferred to play the quote original. I think that's going to come up a lot in this discussion. So now I want to hear your thoughts. So now and um I think I've given all the background that needs to be given.
00:31:33
Speaker
Okay. Well, yeah, I did play the director's cut not realizing because it has been many years since I played this game. Fun story. I played this game maybe like 12 years ago on stream and, and when you're streaming and playing a game that can be very stressful. So I never finished it because I felt it was actually too hard. Uh, I don't know if that was because I was streaming. I was trying to think of, of what I should do with the next puzzle. And then you're trying to deal with people giving you suggestions. That's just stressful.
00:32:04
Speaker
And I thought I got pretty far, but as it turns out, I don't think I did. I don't think I got as far as I remember. ah yes This game runs about know, five to seven hours, ah depending on if you're using a heavy walkthrough, obviously can take longer if you're getting stuck. ah Yeah, like in the old days. ah So I played the director's cut. And when I first started it, I was confused because it has you play as the secondary character named Nico or Nicole. I remember texting you and being like, I, I don't remember any and I have a good memory. I don't remember any of this. I am confused that I play the wrong game. And I didn't realize that there was an added scene for the director's cut, ah where you start as the you start as a secondary character, you're actually playing as George Stobart, who
00:32:56
Speaker
kind of just gets thrown in to an adventure. ah He witnesses a crime. He witnesses an explosion at a cafe that he's just having coffee or tea at in Paris, and he's there to witness it. yeah And because he's witnessed this, he is now thrown into yeah all of these things, these conspiracies and side stories and dangerous situations. And he just kind of takes it. He's just like, yeah, I'm George Stobart.
00:33:25
Speaker
he just made an instant decision like, oh, I'm gonna solve this. Yeah. And I think some of that was ah inspired by he also, we also as George, we meet Nico as well. She's a journalist. And so she was at the scene taking photos and we kind of decide to work together to unveil what really happened yeah in this explosion and in this bombing. um And so it's, yes, to me, as I was playing,
00:33:52
Speaker
and unraveling the story, which I found very confusing. And I think we we kind of discussed this too over text is that it is is a more thriller type of narrative. so And when you have a thriller narrative, sometimes this can be confusing, man. Like you have yeah all these get characters. you know yeah And you get lost and you're like, oh, that was such a cool scene. And you kind of understand the stakes. But then you you're like, wait, but why were those the stakes? I knew who the bad guy and the good guy in that scene were.
00:34:22
Speaker
Yeah, but now I don't understand who is on what t like why there are multiple teams. so what i Right. I think I can ah unravel a lot of it um in this podcast. But yeah, I absolutely agree with you.
00:34:36
Speaker
Yeah, it just, it was very, yeah, I don't know. Usually I see thrillers are my jam. Thriller is like my main genre. It's maybe my favorite genre even because it's kind of like a combo of like mystery and horror. So I love thrillers to death. But sometimes you kind of like, how is this character related to this character? And like, are they working together? Who's this? Like, who is this character? I don't even know.
00:35:02
Speaker
I don't even know what I'm looking for at this point. There's so many characters in this game too. like there's And the there's a lot of gray, like the bad guys.
00:35:15
Speaker
are the the bad guys and the good guys switch places a couple of times and then you know and then it turns out that the bad guys and the good guys are both bad guys. yeah ah And Nico and George are the only good guys. It's kind of like very basic almost Indiana Jones-esque type of a storyline. um you're almost and And also Gabriel Knight too, ah you're kind of uncovering like a secret society, um yeah like a cult, as it were. and they're And they're trying to work for this greater power. um And we don't really know why. And people are dying and people know too much. And it all takes place. Well, most of it takes place in Paris. You do travel.
00:35:56
Speaker
This wasn't something that really stuck with me, but thinking about it, yeah, you go to Ireland, you go to Spain, you go to Syria, you go to Scotland, you go all over the place. You must agree. Dude, I don't know where you're getting this money from to travel, but you just agree to do it. Well, that's the big fucking thing about this game, right? Is George is just like, we don't know anything about him in this first game. And now in the director's cut, I think they add a single line that tells us he's a lawyer.
00:36:25
Speaker
um But in the original game, there is no ah ah context for who he is. we We have nothing besides he's a guy, vacationing in Paris, and a cafe blew up next to him, and now he's hunting down an ancient conspiracy of right of of of murderers.
00:36:45
Speaker
ah right uh with a with a journalist who we also have no context as to why she cares so much about it like why she would do more in the director's cut i know and i feel like yeah yeah i feel like that's why they added that an extra scene in the director's cut where you learn more about nico um but as far as george goes i know nothing about this character he doesn't didn't i don know this goes fast this escalates quickly I didn't know he was a lawyer until the third game. Now, they might have referenced it in the second game, but I didn't know I didn't know he was a lawyer until game number three. Like I as a yeah human being. um Yeah.
00:37:26
Speaker
So it's ah it's a very strange, maybe even game number four now that I'm thinking about it. In game number four, I think you, in one of the two, one of the two 3D games, you go to his law office and you meet his law partner. i like You start in the US. And I can't remember which of the two games, or which, yeah, whether it's three or four.
00:37:46
Speaker
but Until that moment, I had no idea he was even a lawyer. But I guess that's how he gets the money. okay because and like When you eventually see his job, he's a struggling lawyer, but um maybe he used to not be. I don't know. it just It does escalate very quickly without knowing really much about the characters. And in that way, I'll give the game some credit.
00:38:14
Speaker
Because
'Broken Sword' Mechanics and Storytelling Comparisons
00:38:15
Speaker
sometimes I like it to move a little quickly, like I don't necessarily want to sit through a ton of exposition all the time. Sometimes I want the game and the journey to speak for us and give us the exposition, you know, kind of like reading a book. But in this case, it was pretty abrupt.
00:38:32
Speaker
Um, and I should say one of the other main, the main plots, the reason we even get into this is because we hear that the murderer or murderers, um, somebody is disguising themselves in costumes or called that. I think they're even called like the costume murderer or something.
00:38:49
Speaker
And so really, we're trying that's our lead, right? Somebody in a costume. um Like in the in the first scene, it was like a mime in the second scene, it was like an evil clown. ah So we want to figure out who that is, what their motives are. And as we do that, we just unravel more about this kind of secret, ah secret society and how everybody is intertwined ah together.
00:39:14
Speaker
The thing that's funny to me is that, so we see him dressed as a clown, we see him dressed as a mime, we hear of him dressed as a pixie, which just I think they just mean leprechaun. i Yeah, I think they mean fae, like a fae folk. Right, yeah, because it's in it's in Ireland, they call him a pixie, but there's like a thumbnail of him and he's basically wearing just like a green hat. Yeah. um yeah So, ah
00:39:42
Speaker
ah they They reference him having been dressed as a snowman and a penguin though, and I really would have loved to see that. That's so funny. I love that. um but yeah so Yeah, so the game begins with... ni How did you feel about the Nikko sequences? Oh, man. I didn't like it, and I wanted to because, man, I am all about a very cool You know, a female character. um They don't even have to be written like super strongly. I'm kind of in the in the I kind of subscribe to Sigourney Weaver's ah opinion on that. She did an interview where somebody like she said that people were asking her, how do you feel about playing strong care like strong women? She said, I just play women who and they are and women are strong. I'm just playing women. So for me, like I love your Laura Bose and your your Nikos, your kind of
00:40:35
Speaker
um opposite of Lara Croft, you know. um You're Angela Lansbury's, even, right? um So I really liked Nico a lot, but I didn't like her sequences. I felt like they dragged. um And I guess I felt a little confused. And maybe that's my fault because I did start this game without the director's cut. So almost immediately, I have no idea what's going on. I thought I played as George Stobart. Well, OK, so in the Nico sequences, they're slide puzzles, which is already. Oh, God, you just reminded me of that. Oh, my God. Oh, I hated those. No, I hated those. They're they're also they also just they don't they don't do much. They don't do much to to really enrich her character or add to the story. Right. And very I'm going to say especially because they don't really edit her scenes with George.
00:41:33
Speaker
So when she's with George, she still seems pretty disaffected and um almost bored. She still has that same, so until later in the game where she gets really excited, but she still seems to be, ah
00:41:49
Speaker
Like, oh, this is just one of the stories I'm working on is what the vibe you get from her. When now that they've added that beginning, it's like, oh, you just found out your fucking dead dad was involved in this conspiracy and maybe killed by that conspiracy. like and you're And then when George calls you up right after you discover that, you're just like, bonjour, collard. It's like, dude. Bonjour. Bonjour, collard.
00:42:19
Speaker
um Yeah, ah so I mean, yeah, okay. So like, just to give a really basic of oh where we're at in the story. So yeah, George is outside of a cafe. The cafe gets bombed. um He goes in. Yeah, yeah he starts he starts chasing the killer who is dressed as a clown. And he starts to uncover this killer is ah stole a manuscript.
00:42:45
Speaker
from the guy that he killed. And Niko was supposed to meet that guy for a story ah about this costume killer. um Or does does she know what's about the costume killer? Or did she think these are separate stories at that point? I don't know if she connected it at first. um as far as i As far as I can see from that from the sequence when she meets Stobart. You end up getting the manuscript. And i that was one of my favorite puzzles.
00:43:14
Speaker
Okay. Because you have to, well, so all right. A lot of it is just you keep going up to us the same woman and telling her you need her to do something for you and then she does it for you. Like that's most of the puzzles in the hotel where you're trying to get whatever. umma And that woman is great. Lady Piermont. Oh, Lady Piermont, that character cracked me up. I was like,
00:43:40
Speaker
That, that, that, and I know that they said they, you said that, um, Oh gosh, what was his name? Cecil? George Cecil. Charles Cecil. Charles Cecil. I'm just making up people. I know, I know. but Dave Blarems. He said that he wanted to kind of depart from humor. But I found this to be a humorous game and and kind of cartoony almost which is interesting because if you look at the box art, you'd be like, Oh, that's a serious mystery game right there. And maybe that's why they wanted to call it circle of blood.
00:44:19
Speaker
uh but there's a lot of scenes in this game where it's very and the graphics too contribute to that but i also think it's kind of kind of silly and kind of goofy you know yeah like again two puzzles in a row are solved by just telling a woman like telling like an obnoxious eric aristocratic woman that you need that a guy won't help you. And she's just like, let me take care of it. And then she just goes and yells at the guy until he does the thing you want. I think I even sent you a text that just said, Lady Pieron.
00:44:59
Speaker
um But i okay I genuinely that was actually one of the parts of the game that I generally enjoyed. There's a string of um puzzles in a hotel and kind of like a little kind of a little snooping section where you're like trying to gather clues or sneaking into rooms. I actually very much liked that those string of puzzles. So I have to tell you, there's something in that string that was um that was in only in the director's cut.
00:45:28
Speaker
And that is when you're playing with the pants. There's a scene where you're just playing with a pair of pants. You're like turning them over and you're pulling a thread and it unveils a secret pocket and stuff. I think in the original game, if I'm remembering correctly, it's been a little while, but in the original game, I think you just click on the pants and he searches the pants. Okay, I didn't know that. Yeah, I don't think that like the pants is in its own like interface.
00:45:53
Speaker
That's why it looked a little weird. Yeah, it looked different than everything else, yeah. It actually, I felt like it didn't actually fit in. and I was kind of wondering why I was even doing it. But I was like, yeah, whatever, you know? Wow. um So the puzzle that I really loved there is that there's two guys, and these guys, I think, are what make the game so much more confusing. Yeah. Because they are two thugs.
00:46:24
Speaker
who you other the gangsters yeah who you assume are on the side of the killer. right And you don't find out until much later that they are actually on the side of the people that the killer is killing.
00:46:38
Speaker
Oh, it's so confusing. So, OK, so um you there. OK, so there's two guys, two like rough. Rough dude standing out front, they're named Flap and Guido, and they will every time you leave the hotel, they will pat you down. And if you have something, they're going to take it um because clearly they're looking for something that is in the hotel before it comes out.
00:47:05
Speaker
So you get this manuscript and you're like, oh, Flapp and Guido are you going to take it. So name I know. So what do you so what do you do? You this it's the simplest thing. And this is I think what a good adventure game puzzle is. It is a very simple solution that is not immediately obvious. It is you go up.
00:47:29
Speaker
to like at one point you broke into a hotel room by going into a different hotel room and then skirting along the window, ledge, whatever. yeah You go back up to the window ledge and you chuck the manuscript down into the alley. So that when you go down, they pat you down, you don't have it. And then you go back to the alley to get it. When I solved that as like a little kid, I was like, I am the smartest boy. I'm the smartest boy.
00:47:56
Speaker
And as we know, I would grow up to still be, to then be the smartest boy, but like. Yeah, and a good jumper. Wow. Yeah. ah ah Yeah. If it had been me, I would have just jumped off the ledge with the manuscript and landed. I i landed perfectly on the balls of my feet and then slowly lowered down to my. but too And then I just would have sauntered out of there or I would have just jumped off the rooftop all the way back to Nico's apartment.
00:48:24
Speaker
You know what's great about that puzzle is I got it right away because of my experience in other adventure games where I can't leave a place without like tossing it out like a window. Not this. I know how to toss these out of a window.
00:48:39
Speaker
um but so i So after that, yeah, then it then it gets a little confusing because then you're like digging through a manuscript and trying to uncover some thing about the Knight's Templar and you don't really know why and don't really know what the connection is to all the murders. um But you're like chasing down artifacts that are,
00:49:02
Speaker
kind of related to the pictures on the manuscript, and yeah you go to Syria, you go to Ireland, and that's where it gets really, I think that's where it gets really confusing, because you're like, okay, how are these two things even tied together?
00:49:17
Speaker
yeah I was confused a lot of the time. But it wasn't, interestingly, it wasn't a type of confusion that made me want to stop playing the game. Because I enjoyed the experience of playing the game, even though maybe I was a little bit confused by the plot a little bit.
00:49:37
Speaker
But I think that can be said for a lot of things that you've done for the first time. It's kind of like, if I play this again, I'll probably understand it even more ah the same way I had to watch like Ari Aster films a couple of times to yeah get everything out of it. That's like an extreme example, right? but
Character Development in 'Broken Sword': George and Nico
00:49:55
Speaker
Ari Aster films are different too because it he leaves so much in there that you're like, okay, am I am i inventing this or did he intend this? And you and we will never know the answer.
00:50:07
Speaker
Yeah. So like I, if I played this game again, I think I would understand more, but I overall, I understood the plot because I can connect it with other thriller plots and cult like plots. So I didn't need to connect everything to have it still be a good time and to still know, Oh, this is a bad situation. Um, I do have a question though, that maybe you can answer. I have always been told being in Ireland. What? No, it's not.
00:50:37
Speaker
i mean is it a puzzle that happens in ireland it is okay all right ray ok I was always told that quote the goat puzzle was a very hard and stupid puzzle.
00:50:50
Speaker
but I did the puzzle and it was fine. And I was wondering like, oh, maybe it's just the director's cut. Maybe they changed it and made it easier, but it's not. It's always been the same. And I don't understand why this has made so many, you know, ridiculous puzzle lists, I guess, because i I got it immediately and it was fine. Okay. So it,
00:51:18
Speaker
why When you say it is just the it is not just the director's cut, what drives that? Why why do you believe that? Why do I, why do I not? Because it was just so simple? No, why do you believe it was only, it was not just in the director's cut? Oh, because I looked it up. Okay. Because I was curious. I'm like, clearly they've changed this. So I looked up ah i like a long play. Oh, they did. Okay. Okay. So in their original,
00:51:47
Speaker
you have to get the goat to charge you so is so he's facing and it so his rope is in a certain direction, then you have to quickly run over and move the ah plow so that now he charges you in the other direction and then he gets caught on the plow. In the director's cut, all you have to do is move the plow and he'll get caught.
00:52:12
Speaker
Oh, I didn't know I didn't know that because that what I did was what you said. I got charged because I'm like because I didn't know what was going to happen. Right. Yeah. So I got charged and then I'm like, well, there's only one other thing on the screen and it's this plow. You got you got charged and he knocked you over. He knocked me over. Yeah. OK. So that would have at that point you would have already if I'm remembering correctly, I think at that point you would have already you would have already kind of reset the puzzle. I think there I'm not.
00:52:42
Speaker
I might not be remembering this entirely correctly, because ah the last time I played this, it was the director's cut. But the first time I played it was the original. um And it I think you there's another way to get the goat to charge you that he doesn't hit you. And then you run over and move the plow. And then he charges you where he would normally hit you. He instead gets charge caught on the plow, I believe.
00:53:09
Speaker
okay So the problem with it is there's no other puzzle in the entire game that involves you moving the character to two different places. Every other puzzle in the game is solved by dialogue or using an object inventory object with another inventory object or clicking on an inventory object. There's no other puzzle in the rest of the game that involves you moving your physical character in this space um in a specific way. um So that is,
00:53:39
Speaker
at least the analysis of why people think the goat puzzle was so hard for people. Like, it's been a mystery. Like, like people have tried to dive into this in like a psych, like with like a,
00:53:57
Speaker
psychology sort of academia, right? ah yeah Because it's like, why is this puzzle's fairly simple. Why was it so hard for everybody? And I think what generally people have come to is because it is the only time. And it is the only ah only puzzle in the game. I think maybe there's one other when you're about to get shot, but there are only two puzzles in the game I think where time is of the essence. Okay.
00:54:25
Speaker
where if you don't do something fast enough, you don't get it. That's fair. That's fair. And like maybe I just got kind of ah and lucky even. um Because that I don't know. There's just nothing else to do on the screen. You know what I mean? So like it's my it's my nature to just click on everything. Yeah. So imagine if you'd clicked on the ah um plow first and George picked it up.
00:54:55
Speaker
and then put it down and nothing happened. Right. You might not have thought to click on the plow again. OK. Because you didn't do anything. That makes more sense. Yeah, that makes more sense. I wasn't I wasn't I just wasn't sure because there's just been so many games that I'm like this puzzle really like the one I'm not supposed to talk about that I've been banned ah from talking about that I won't say what it is. But I think we all know.
00:55:23
Speaker
what the worst puzzle in the world is. Oh, okay. So I pulled up the Wiki just to make sure. So you do get knocked over by the goat. It is when you get knocked over, you just have to, while you're still like on your butt, you have to click the plow. Interesting. So he hops up really fast and runs and moves it.
00:55:44
Speaker
They did change that in the director's cut because I was able to click on, ah get ramped by the goat. And then he like went back over to where he was. And then I clicked on the plow. So I played this puzzle just to make sure I knew what I was talking about. Not the yeah puzzle. I played the modern puzzle to make sure I knew why you were confused by it in the director's cut. And I got into the room, immediately clicked on the plow and it worked.
00:56:11
Speaker
And it worked. Okay. So now and now, so in the director's cut, anytime you click on the plow, it works. Well, good. Awesome idea. Sure. I've been calling it a plow this whole time. It might be, but anyway. Well, I'm glad they fixed it. Um, uh, that being said, or whatever I do, I did find some of the puzzles, not particularly fun. Um,
00:56:35
Speaker
And do you wanna know why I think it's like Gabriel Knight then? You kind of like get a little jiggle when I'm like, okay, when I said that. So literally I felt that the mechanics were extremely Gabriel Knight. I felt that George Stobart was Gabriel Knight. I felt like Nico was Grace, our kind of fiery little, what's your name again? Research assistant. Research assistant, yep, yep, yep.
00:57:02
Speaker
um I felt like the map travel was the same. I felt that we're like slowly uncovering this weird like murder that has like a cult aspect to it. um I felt like, oh, if but especially I felt like the interrogations were very similar. This is a very interrogative game because it's a mystery. We're trying to figure out, we're we're we're interrogating people for the most part. So there's a lot of interrogation. Most of the puzzles are just solved with ah
00:57:33
Speaker
with interrogation, most of the puzzles are just solved by clicking on, yeah like by by talking to people. Yeah. And granted, the tone might be different. um The cult aspects, they have their different cults that were following, but it really felt like that. Just everything I was unraveling made me ah feel like Gabriel Knight, disguising myself as somebody else to talk to people, ah talking to these like old traditional people in different countries. You go to yeah you know Germany at the end and Gabriel Knight,
00:58:10
Speaker
I don't know. I felt it. I felt there was a lot of parallels. I know you're not as big as a Gabriel Knight fan, maybe as I am. So I felt like I was drawing just so many parallels. I am a Gabriel Knight fan. um But ah but you're but you're right. Yeah, no, I don't think I drew as many parallels and because I played this game.
00:58:31
Speaker
20 years before I played Gabriel Knight. Oh, okay. Fair. Yeah, fair. I played Gabriel Knight when I was a teen, so. And I don't think George Stovart is anything similar to Gabriel. He is not. No, you're right. He is not. I'm more talking about like the mechanic of it to like where I keep going back to Niko, telling them what I found the same way Gabriel Knight keeps relying.
00:58:55
Speaker
on grace. That's actually something I really appreciated about Broken Sword is every time we figured out something, we get this little cutscene where we're updating, you know, our assistant. That's nice. hey He always runs right back to Nico. And there's a thing that so um Broken Sword has dynamic music.
00:59:20
Speaker
um yeah which ah this is something that stuck with me my entire life is ah I can remember the music hits. Like I remember the solutions to some puzzles because I remember what I was doing when those big theatrical mo music swells happen. They're so epic and they're so uplifting that when you do like that moment where you pick up the manuscript in the alley, the music sweeps and swirls around you and you're like,
00:59:50
Speaker
This is epic. I rule. Like it's so good. Yeah. it It's, it feels very, I say, I say this when I feel very strongly about a world or a gameplay, it feels very grand. It feels grand adventure, just like that sub genre on home of the underdogs. How did venture was one of the, was actually one of the ah genres that you can choose. Yeah.
01:00:15
Speaker
And yeah, that's how I would describe, this is a grand adventure and story in in so many aspects. How do you feel about George Stovart? Okay, I think he's kind of a dingus, but that's just my opinion. I don't know. I don't know. He was just a dingus like Guybrush or okay. No, not like Guybrush. Guybrush is an idiot that everyone loves. George is smarter, obviously smarter than that. He's not as irresponsible as Guybrush 3 would, who makes very bad decisions. um George, I guess George for me,
01:00:53
Speaker
it was maybe lacking in personality. So the only personality I really could assign to him, like you said, you didn't even know he was a lawyer, you didn't even know his occupation. At least we know Guybrush is a mighty pirate. Like, at least we know. um So I guess the only thing I could assign to him was that he was kind of a dingus and kind of super into Nico, you know, he has this, this romantic interest.
01:01:18
Speaker
and Niko. And in the beginning of the game, they kind of imply that just a slight implication that he's a little bit of a flirt, a little bit of a ladies man. Because he was kind of like, oh, the waitress, I think she's really into me. But they never really stuck with that. And then really upset when she when she talked to another dude. Yeah, bites his, his like toothpick. He's like,
01:01:42
Speaker
But like as the game goes, you don't really get that aspect of him. ah He's just into Nico, a woman he does not know very well. But I suppose it's implied that when he goes back to talk to her, they are having in-depth talks, and we as the player, we're not getting that. We're supposed to use our imaginations a little bit. you know Yeah, nothing's really revealed about who he is. um I think it's an interesting choice, to be honest. I don't know if it is...
01:02:12
Speaker
I don't know if that is a choice that they they thought, hey, why don't we leave this guy?
01:02:20
Speaker
Very ambiguous, or right if it's just. They
Conspiracy in 'Broken Sword': Templar Factions and Betrayals
01:02:26
Speaker
didn't think to put more, you know, i like who who knows, they were they were more focused on plot than character.
01:02:31
Speaker
Um, like I, I, again, I don't know that it was a full creative choice, but right I don't mind it. I, I like George. i I think his voice actor gives him a lot of character. think I think I had a hard time with it because it reminded me of max from sanitarium who talks a little like this, but ah but the guy who does vote George's voice, it's not.
01:02:59
Speaker
it's i he doesn't He doesn't act poorly. He's not like a bad actor. No, not um not at all. His line deliveries are are are great, but he's got a really unique voice. And I guess you're saying it sounds it sounded a little like Max to you. So maybe it wasn't as unique to you. But at night it to me, it's sort of like a Dominic Armato thing where or the ah It's a very simple, like almost regular like sounding voice, but one that you could not imitate if you tried.
01:03:33
Speaker
Yeah, no, I agree, I agree. It's got something really interesting and special about it. And that is, I think, what made me feel close to George. And I kind of have my whole life, right? Like, I've always identified with George, even though I knew nothing about him. Blonde, I don't know, maybe that matters. Oh, I see. I see. Just blonde boys. You're just relating to George. Adventure some blonde boys who flirt too much. Who are irresponsible and they turn their girlfriends into gold and leave them on an island. We've all been there. And I ask everybody about every inventory item I'm holding. That is my favorite thing about George. That, I think, is what made me like him as a character.
01:04:23
Speaker
um is that it's so funny that you can ask every character about every inventory item and there's a unique dialogue for each one. There's not, people aren't just like, nope, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know about that. People don't say that. People have, died so like the whole game you're carrying around a tissue covered in grease paint that you found in the sewer. And it makes sense that you're carrying it around because you were chasing a clown who just killed a bunch of people. yeah But,
01:04:53
Speaker
In reality, you're walking around with a tissue, a soil tissue you found in the sewer. So when you ask people about it, people are like, what is that? you know I tried to show Nico and she's like, oh, show us, this is disgusting. Yeah. and mean Another person goes, oh, it looks like a tissue that somebody's emptied their nose into. And people go, that's disgusting. Why would you show that to me? You're like, oh, great.
01:05:16
Speaker
Like, what is that? It's like a tissue. And where did you find it? The sewer. And they're like and you just decided to carry it around with you.
01:05:26
Speaker
um it's It's so funny to me. And the the he proudly shows everybody. Like, if you show anybody the sewer key early in the game, you open a sewer a yeah with a sewer key. And if you show anybody,
01:05:42
Speaker
George is so proud of the fact that he got his sewer key and opened a sewer. He's like, hey, do you know what this is? And people are like, no, what? He's like, it's a sewer key. Use it to open a sewer. And people are like, oh, okay. Or when somebody's like, oh, that's a sewer key. Use it to open a sewer. He's like, what? How did you know that? Like, he's so upset because he thought he was, like, it's so funny. I love,
01:06:10
Speaker
I love that aspect of the game. And that that to me is the funniest part. You can steal stuff from people, then show it to them. And they're like, I think that's the key that I just told you you couldn't have. And he's like, oh, it's so good. I didn't even think to do that because I didn't want to get in trouble.
01:06:31
Speaker
ah it's so but yeah it's it's It's like LucasArts, you can't lose this game. I mean, you can die, I think, in two specific spots. You can definitely get stuck. just You just restart. Yeah, yeah. Which is nice, because that gives you you know a chance to to goof around. And yeah, like kind of like Laura Bow, you can talk to people and you can show them, you can ask about inventory items in kind of this interesting detective-esque way.
01:07:00
Speaker
ah Yeah, i I did like doing that, and I did like that the descriptions were... So, okay. ah Sometimes I'm kind of not enthusiastic about showing people my inventory, because it can get a little long-winded. Talking to you, Discworld, what are you even doing? I i didn't need a five-paragraph essay on this drumstick. I showed nobody. You know what I mean?
01:07:26
Speaker
um But in this game, the ah responses are a little more terse. And they're funny, even if it's just like, oh, that is disgusting. and But that's it. You know what I mean? That's it. Yeah. um And some of the responses are like, no, I don't know anything about that. ah It's a nice balance of like comical responses and and honest, you know, honest answers of, yeah, I don't know. I don't know what that is. but Yeah.
01:07:50
Speaker
um The other ah thing that's very funny to show everybody is the blood pressure. At some point you get a blood pressure measuring device. Yes. It's the opposite of the ah sewer key where he's showing everyone the sewer key because he's proud that he has one. He used to open a sewer and knows what it is. When he shows people the blood pressure device, he has no idea what blood is. In fact, this is so funny to me because everybody's gotten their blood pressure taken before. So you know how basically to work a blood pressure device. yeah At some point, george George has to, and he just drops it on a guy's stomach and starts pumping it. And the guy's like, I don't think that's how it works. And he's like, oh, okay. And that's another thing that's so funny about George is his like,
01:08:42
Speaker
his willingness to just when somebody calls him stupid or somebody like tells him he's doing something wrong he's just like oh okay it's so good and so so he shows everybody this blood pressure device because he assumes that they also either they will know what it is and they'll tell him or they don't also don't know what it is and neither does he and but so some of my those are some of my favorite ah god ah Yeah, that that these are the things that make me love this game.
01:09:14
Speaker
Yeah, no, it it it is a very likable game. I'll give it that. I didn't yeah always like the ah the story or the puzzles. But that I think could be said about any grand adventure game. um There's going to be misses in it. There's no perfect. game There's a perfect piece of art. There's no perfect game. But did I enjoy it? Yeah. And I did see the charm of it. I saw the charm of the of the characters.
01:09:40
Speaker
ah Yeah, yeah, I kind of went into the podcast being like, I don't know, I might be a little more cruel towards this game and a little more, you know, give it a little more, a more critical look, but actually, I liked it. When you're looking back on it, it's kind of, yeah.
01:09:59
Speaker
But when I'm like actually thinking about it and talking about each like element like compartmentalized, I think. um You have like good memories. Now, do I like it as much as other games I've played? No. not it It does not compare to that. I would say I'm not a big fan of the Revolution games. But this one is certainly at the top of the Revolution games.
01:10:22
Speaker
Yeah, ah so before we get out of this segment and then go rank every adventure game ever. I want to I want to do two things. First, I want to ask you about Voodoo. What is your understanding of what the plot is now that we've gotten through it? OK, so is this meant to make me look stupid? No, no, no, no. I want us to try and break. I want us to try and um break it down because there's so many characters. So the two things I wanna do is I wanna ask you about the plot and now and then ah there's two very distinct factions in the game. And I wanna ask you about various characters and see what faction you think they're associated with. Okay, go for it, ask me questions. Okay, well, first I just wanna ask you, what do you think like the very top level, what is the plot of this game? What is the conspiracy that George is unraveling?
01:11:16
Speaker
I think he is trying to uncover this cult called the Knights of the Templar. The game is called the Shadows of the Templar. I think he's trying to uncover this secret society called the Knights of the Templar that used to be a good cult, but have slowly gotten a little power crazy. And I think this cult is trying to much like many cults, ah they're trying to like,
01:11:39
Speaker
get powers of like demonic force so they can be all powerful that that's to me like the the main thing right so like these new templars are not good they're not good guys where are all those yeah yeah yeah what are all these murders then okay that's an amazing question
01:12:05
Speaker
I'm wondering if the murders, this is how I interpret it, at least it could be so totally wrong. I think the murders are, I think there is a cult member or an assassin who is murdering cult members who are go- going rogue. That was what I got from it. Like,
01:12:25
Speaker
people who like strayed from the Templars are being murdered. So I don't think the people who are being murdered are good guys either. I think the people who have gotten have been murdered are in their own little conspiracy. Okay, so I think you are very close. Yay! The murders are actually the being done by a rival sect.
01:12:52
Speaker
to the Templars. So what you start doing is, you by in the beginning of the game, George is unraveling. a conspiracy around who is murdering the Templars. And as he's unraveling this and conspiracy, he's starting to discover that the Templars are actually a bigger conspiracy. He didn't even know obviously that the Templars existed still, um but he finds that the Templars for some reason are seeking something that he doesn't really know what that it is.
01:13:24
Speaker
yeah ah right um And So you're kind of trying to stay ahead of the assassin to keep the Templars from getting murdered while also right trying to find what the Templars are looking for. um So I get the feeling that- I thought the Templars who were being murdered had gone rogue and started their own thing. No. So, okay. So the Hashashin- Yeah.
01:13:54
Speaker
is the order of assassins that is opposing the Templars and they are trying to stop the Templars from, and this is where it gets a little confusing. I think they are trying to,
01:14:05
Speaker
um
01:14:09
Speaker
they're trying to like get the, something about Baphomet. They're trying to like get his power to take over the world or something. And the Hashoshin are trying to stop them.
01:14:23
Speaker
okay but they're doing it with murder. but So yeah the first person I'll ask you about is Khan.
01:14:31
Speaker
ok What side is he on, the Hashashin or the Templars? Opposing. Yeah, he's the Hashashin, obviously. He's the one who's been killing everybody. He's the one who's been dressing up. He's the murderer, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yes. So then there's some weird ones, right? Like, okay, how about...
01:14:48
Speaker
um How about ah Plantard, the first guy who gets murdered? That, I think, is a Templar, Knights of Templar. Yes, exactly. Yes, yes. I'm so smart. How about Fitzgerald? but Sean Fitzgerald. Who the fuck is Fitzgerald? He is the Irish guy who is working. Oh, right. Yeah. Well, I won't tell you who he's working for. I'll explain. so Right, right, right. OK, let me. Oh, my God, this is a good question, because that guy did kind of confuse me.
01:15:17
Speaker
Yes, that's I think where the plot starts to get really confusing is when you're in Ireland. Yes, okay, so I'm gonna say, I'm gonna he was opposed. So he was working for the Templars, but unwittingly. So- Oh, I see. Professor Peagrum gave,
01:15:42
Speaker
who ah gave Marquette
01:15:48
Speaker
the diamond, or the gem that he found in his dig, and then gave it to Fitzgerald to do something with. I'm not exactly sure what. So I'm close, because i thought but I thought maybe he was like a mole. Because he i know but then I knew he was working with Pigram. I know Pigram is a templar. So I thought that, yeah. When we caught him working for Pigram,
01:16:13
Speaker
um he, which he was denying. He ran away and got killed by the Hashashin, kind of like hit by a car and then thrown in the car and we never see him again, right? And then he dropped the diamond and then Khan comes and asks you when you find the diamond. So you know that Peagram is, how about the Nobel Prize winner? What's his name? I can't remember. Rosso, is it Rosso? No, yeah.
01:16:45
Speaker
The Nobel Prize winner, the guy who's reading the newspaper in the hotel. Right. Oh, that guy. Um, shit. I do not remember what side he was. He was at the end. he would see Here's the thing, he was at the end in the Templar, but like somebody turned heel or something, and I don't know if it was him or not. Yeah, he was the he was a Templar. Okay, that's what I thought, but now this whole conversation is making me think. I know, yeah. No, he was at the end. He was there. It's confusing, yeah. like Yeah, it's confusing. This one, I'm not entirely sure of. I think I know, but I'm not.
01:17:26
Speaker
I'm not entirely sure. The the cop, the lead investigator. Now that is a good question. That's maybe the most confusing. I was gonna say the Hashishin. I think the cop is a Templar. Oh, okay. Or he's working with the Templars.
01:17:50
Speaker
Yeah, I know he's not a good person. I know that he, you know yeah obviously there's always, in these kind of thrillers, there's always like some kind of corrupt cop character. So I knew i knew he was not good. I knew he was bad. Yeah, he was bad. Okay, and then here's my, oh, that's the that's Rosso. That's the inspector, Inspector Rosso.
01:18:11
Speaker
yeah yeah
01:18:15
Speaker
And he does, ah turn He's the one who turns. Okay, right, yes. He saves George from, oh god, what's that guy's name?
01:18:28
Speaker
the the Yeah, the main dude. He saves George from Eklund. This is confusing. I know, this is where it gets confusing because Eklund is the one who killed Marquette. Yeah. So he was the one who,
01:18:48
Speaker
dressed as a ah doctor to kill Marquette. Oh, right, right, yes, yeah, I remember, yeah. So why did one Templar kill another Templar, unless Marquette was a, maybe I've gotten that confused, but yeah, Rossell was a Templar, and he's the one who turned at the last minute. So here is the final one, I'll ask the final, my final thing, flapping Guido. I knew it was coming, and I still don't fucking know. I think maybe the Hashishin, though.
01:19:15
Speaker
So this is what' this is another thing that gets so confusing. So Flap and Guido are working for the Templars. two at that time Who at that time, you don't know are the bad guys. At that time, Khan is the bad guy. So you assume Flap and Guido are on the same side as Khan, who's the bad guy. And then it flips, Flap and Guido are actually working for the Templars.
01:19:42
Speaker
and when you kill Khan later in the game, he tells you the truth that he you and him were supposed to be on the same side the whole time. Right, yeah, right. Because he was working for the Hashashin, he was trying to stop the Templars, just in a way that maybe you guys wouldn't have, like you wouldn't have gone around assassinating people. Yeah. yeah This is how confusing this game is. I don't understand. At one point, like literally at one point, I thought that Flap and Guido were their own thing. I'm just like, you know, together, I don't know what they're. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. yeah ah Well.
'Broken Sword' Review: Inventory System and Nostalgia
01:20:30
Speaker
So that's Broken Sword. Do you have anything else to say on that before? I tried to do a How Much to My Pants way for this one, but really, bor they mostly carry stuff that is pretty light and yeah made of paper, except for George spends the entire game with a giant sewer key down his pant life. And he's so proud of it. Final thoughts, final score.
01:20:55
Speaker
um you know You cannot bring your liberal bullshit into this. No, I did i did like retroactively. I appreciate this game a lot. Yeah. um It is not one of my favorite games. And maybe if I had nostalgia for it, it would be different. But I do think if you like games like Curse of Monkey Island or if you like the interrogative cult aspect of Gabriel Knight and you combine that, I think i think this game is great. I think you will like this game if you like those elements.
Anticipation for 'Broken Sword' Remaster: Expectations vs. Reality
01:21:27
Speaker
just know that it's kind of a long one without a walkthrough. And ah don't be afraid to use a walkthrough because I don't find all the puzzles to be very easy. Awesome. I think we should continue tackling Broken Sword games, by the way. Yeah, yeah. I have them all. I bought the trilogy. Well, I have the... Sorry, excuse me. I have i knew you were going to say something. I have the first three. I have the first three games.
01:21:55
Speaker
Okay, yeah. and The other thing that we have to say, because people are going to be so confused when they see this episode. yeah um And they're going to have to wait until right now to hear that ah we planned this episode before we knew how close this would be to the remaster being released.
01:22:16
Speaker
Yeah, I had no idea, honestly, and I didn't, apparently there's gonna be even another Broken Sword game coming out, I don't know. It's Percival Stone. um So as of right now, as we're recording this, the remaster is ah is being released tomorrow. So it'll it'll be you know so it'll be like ah i six days or something. and that this, after the release, that this episode will go up. But neither of us have played the remaster. ah We reached out for a code. We didn't hear anything back, which isn't uncommon. um It looks great. I can tell you from trailers and stuff, it looks beautiful. Oh, excellent. it's Love to hear that. It seems like it'll be, if you' if you've never played this game and now you want to, based on what we've talked about, it seems like
01:23:09
Speaker
um the remaster would be the way to go. Not the director's cut. but Not the director's cut. i I hate to say it. I really do because I think a lot of work goes into these. I didn't find the director's cut worth it personally. I do like they they included portraits like talking portraits. It's fine. ah That's fine. But it didn't bring anything new to me. So I would be interested in in a remaster. Yeah. See what that's like. All right.
01:23:37
Speaker
Well, that's our talk about Broken Sword. Do you want to do our outro now before the other segment or after the
Outro Struggles and Listener Engagement
01:23:44
Speaker
other segment? Yes, I do. Leave it to me. I got this. Please and I won't botch it like I have Okay, all right but so yeah and We just want to say that we are part of the adventure game hotspot net did I already fuck it up adventure hot adventure game No, you got it, right? I got it right just that I doubted myself. yeah ah Oh No a botch
01:24:11
Speaker
I can't even believe this. I just want to go play Beals of Nistria and cry into some ice cream that we're a part of the Adventure Game Hotspot Network. Go over there, a lot of reviews on Adventure Games. Matt writes Adventure Games for the site. We're happy to be partnered with them. I don't write Adventure Games for the site. You do not write Adventure Games, but honestly, probably could. Oh, I wish. Yeah, let's do it.
01:24:34
Speaker
We know enough about them where we could do it. And also, questions, complaints, reviews, email us at maddenrosins at gmail dot.com.
01:24:47
Speaker
ah That sounds great. Want me to yell at you because you have a shitty opinion ah but on my podcast? That's fine, I get it. Yeah, hey, look, ah we make fun of all sorts of stuff here. If if that didn't completely drive you away,
01:25:05
Speaker
a guy who left the review that we totally disagree with. If that didn't completely drive you away and you're still listening, um we don't like hate you or anything. It's not ah against you, we just disagree with your shit and we make fun of things we don't like and we don't disagree with. like like ah Don't take it personally. um But you probably- Adventure gamers were a salty salty people. And so but you've probably stopped and so we're comedians and so like that's what we're so uh if you you've probably stopped listening by now but leave reviews yeah leave a review uh send us an email obviously every now and then we do suggestions we look at adventure games that you have suggested every now we then we play them and they become part of the content so
01:25:54
Speaker
feel free to do that. ah So I'm going to put on ah swanky maxes and we're going to come back and rate every adventure game ever made. Yes!
01:26:26
Speaker
Hey everyone.
Ranking Adventure Games: Cube Escape & More
01:26:27
Speaker
Welcome back. I'm pushing up roses. This is my co-host Matt Aucamp. And I hope you're ready because we are going to rank every adventure game ever made. Hell yes. We have 26 on the list now. We're about to add at least five more. Um, okay. Roses, are you ready? All right. Hit me. I am so ready. So our first game.
01:26:49
Speaker
Number 1,499 in our solid number of and list of around 3,000 is Cube Escape. I'm sorry, what? Cube Escape,
01:27:05
Speaker
the lake. Is this gonna be a missed clone? No, no, this is a great game, actually. Oh, hey. It is one of the Rusty Lake games. Hey, this looks great.
01:27:18
Speaker
Yes, it is really good. So if you guys have never played them, the Rusty Lake Games. Okay, the the the company Rusty Lake made a bunch of games called Cube Escape. And they were like these little ah escape rooms that, it was called a cube escape because the room was four walls, it was like ah it was a cube. but um And I think they're boom their third one maybe ok um was called, I'll look it up as we're talking, but that I think the third one was called um
01:27:55
Speaker
cube escape the lake, and I believe the whole thing, yeah, just kind of like takes place by a lake in like a little lake house. Yeah, I mean, right away it's very intriguing to me, like immediately. Yeah, they're think these games are really good, and eventually um out out of that same lore,
01:28:20
Speaker
ah came the rusty Lake games, which became, which I think got like a lot more popular than the Cube Escape games were. um But you can get the entire Cube Escape series. Oh, Cube Escape the Lake was number two.
01:28:35
Speaker
ok um So it was early on. And and it was, ah if I remember correctly, it was one of the first ones to have like, to start building the ah they greater world and the story. yeah um And shortly after the Cube Escape games came Rusty Lake Hotel, which again, got a lot more popular than Cube Escape games were. But you can currently, I believe, get all the Cube Escape games for free on your phone. that's awesome And they're very inexpensive anyway.
01:29:02
Speaker
Yes, you can get the entire collection, which is what I did on um on Steam. Yeah, I think it's five bucks gets you the first but whatever the first nine games. This is kind of high on the list for me. I think in terms yeah yeah, in terms of quality, um intrigue,
01:29:29
Speaker
I've played it and beat it, and i I love it. I think this goes higher than Scratch's. Yeah, yeah. And I think if we were to do the Cube Escape franchise entirely, I might even put it above ah Papers, Please. But I think just cut because we're just doing the lake, I think it goes below. i but In my opinion, yes, I think it'll go below.
01:29:55
Speaker
Okay, so it is our new, if you would so if you don't have any arguments, it is our new number four, Keep Escape the Lake. Nice, feel good about that. That's a good one, all right. Here's one, and well, is this is a very recent one, so ah we'll have to see if, sometimes with the recent ones, we find out they never actually were, they weren't actually released. Sure, yeah, it happens, yeah, it happens.
01:30:20
Speaker
OK, so this is number three thousand one hundred and fifteen. Oh, by the developer Italic. It's called Midnight Girl. I like the name. And it looks really you. OK, you're like a burglar in France in the 1960s. This looks awesome. Breaking the houses. This looks really good. This looks so cool.
01:30:47
Speaker
I'm sorry, the art style, I'm just like- This art style is great, these puzzles, I'm looking at a video real quick, and just to get, I'm not gonna look at much of it, because it looks so good, I'm definitely gonna fucking play this game. I know. This rules, add to cart.
01:31:06
Speaker
ah I'm gonna go smoke. Wow. Okay. Yeah. Midnight girl. This looks great. Um, it's great. I love this. It doesn't have many reviews. So I don't know if many people know that it's out there, but yeah, I really, Ooh, uh, it looks like everything I want.
01:31:27
Speaker
ah Okay. Wow. All right. Yeah. What do we. Well, it's definitely going above mediocre, but since we are, we're kind of judging this based on what we're seeing. um It is ah very positively reviewed, which is great sign. I think adventure gamers definitely are very honest with their reviews. I would like to put it though, I think it should go below scratches. um I think it should go below those games.
01:31:57
Speaker
But I think I think so too. I think you go. Yeah, I think it should go above like murder. She wrote maybe even above Byzantine the betrayal. I would put it above Byzantine. Yes, absolutely. I would. I think it belongs like, yeah, among wave tail, maybe even above Amos Green's final repose. Oh, yeah. Put it above Amos Green. I want to put it below wave tail because I think, well,
01:32:22
Speaker
Both of both wave tail and midnight girl are really intriguing to me. Both of the are games I want to play. So I I'm going to actually put it below wave tail because wave tail looks like a bit more of an achievement. What are you? Yes, I think that's very fair. OK. Yeah.
01:32:37
Speaker
All right, next ah next game is number 253 on the list.
The Seventh Guest: Historical Significance vs. Personal Dislike
01:32:44
Speaker
And remembering, you can always skip one. Sorry, I didn't set that up before. I don't think we're going to want to skip this one. but um
01:32:51
Speaker
and we'll just And if you skip one, we don't delete it. We leave it on the list and we can tackle it later. OK. Um, this is number two 53 an early game is from 1993 is by the studio trilobite. Oh, it is called the seventh guest.
01:33:11
Speaker
I hate that game. It's not good. It's not a good game. Notoriously, I hate that game. But here's the thing, right? Now i'm I'm just making excuses right away. It's an innovative game with a very experimental interesting soundtrack by George Stanger.
01:33:30
Speaker
It inspired a lot of people. It did. It's very influential, but it's kind of like Mike Nesmith said, who is a former member of the monkeys. If you don't know, just because you're the first to do something doesn't mean you're the best. People may not remember you. And now I think the seventh guest is remembered for being kind of bad. And but it is one of those early examples of this other way of making adventure games, which is um individual puzzles right that are loosely strung together by a narrative, but the puzzles are completely divorced from the narrative, um yeah which I don't hate games like that. I know they're not ah they're not the greatest. like I prefer the puzzles to be looped into the narrative, but I like to every now and then play a game like this and I wouldn't have them without the seventh guest.
01:34:20
Speaker
Yeah. And there is a charm to it. Like, I don't want to play this game, you guys. I don't want to play this game, but yeah is it extremely charming? Yeah. Is it like one of the first CD-ROM games? Yeah. It did a lot. It really did a lot. um And even though I don't like it,
01:34:40
Speaker
it has a history that makes me want to put it at least not in mediocre. it Because it doesn't yeah it doesn't deserve that, you know? I agree. Doesn't matter if I don't like it. I would say it doesn't have the problematic stuff of like Deponia Doomsday. Right. So I would put it up above Deponia. I would put it above Deponia because it's more of an achievement. Yeah. Yeah.
01:35:08
Speaker
but I don't know that I can put it above these games that look really interesting, like Dark Grim Maripolis, which, oh my God, by the way, sorry, pause, we got an email about Dark Grim Maripolis. We did? And I'm not gonna wait till the email segment, or the email episode, I'm gonna talk about it now. Greetings from Ukraine, it says, and Andri, he, him, writes to us telling us that um ah the,
01:35:39
Speaker
The game, Mariupol is a city in Ukraine that was besieged and heavily bombarded during the spring of 2022 by the Russians um and was and still is occupied. Thousands of civilians were killed. um Steam page of the game enforced my suspicions that the gra game has Ukrainian localization and the Twitter account of the game creator um i confirmed it was a Ukrainian team Okay. And here's the sad thing. The game was released some years ago and the Twitter account has been silent since February of 2022 and the YouTube channel deleted. Oh my God. So the Russian invasion of Mariupol, let me look it up, was in May 2022. So just three months after their last tweet.
01:36:37
Speaker
So my god we hope for the best. Yeah, of course. Team Mariupolis. Yeah, of course. But ah yeah,
01:36:50
Speaker
so that that is a, he says, though, as I said, I do not have any exact information and these are just my speculations, I just wanted to share some context context as this humorous title of dark grim Mariupolis sounds rather grim to me now.
01:37:03
Speaker
yeah so Yeah, same. Just wanted to share what Andri passed on to us. Yeah, thank you for sharing that. Yeah, thank you so much. That is an interesting bit of context. um I had no idea. I just thought Mariupolis sounded weird when I tried to pronounce it. um And it makes me want to, you know, I think ah we've talked about how that game actually looks very interesting.
01:37:33
Speaker
Yes, it does, I very much would like to play it. So, um along with um but ah Midnight Girl, I think I'm adding Dark Grim Mario Bliss to my Steam cart right now. Perfect. um So anyway, just wanted to share that. Now let's get back to fucking ah talking about the seventh guest. I think. It's bullshit, like seventh guest.
01:37:58
Speaker
I think it goes above the Pony of Doomsday, but below a Whisper in the Twilight, but I would, I would listen to arguments of it going higher. Let me look up a Whisper in the Twilight one more time. You don't have to. All you have to know is it's our number 17th game of all time. Okay. But this is going to come down to a matter of like preference. I would put it above Whisper in the Twilight. Okay.
01:38:26
Speaker
I'm just going to say ah yes to that. I don't have any yeah argument about it. So seventh guest goes below dark grim mariupolis and what if this segment ruins our friendship. what What if we have such an insane disagreement? Just one of them. We just have a real huge fucking argument. OK, can't get over it.
Nostalgia and Charm: The Last Half of Darkness Series
01:38:46
Speaker
Here's something funny, because this next game,
01:38:50
Speaker
that just came up, number 1,433 is the game that I constantly reference when we're talking about mediocre games. Oh my God, what is it? It is Randall's Monday. Oh yeah, you have. When I think of the most middle of the road modern, ah yeah I don't know, do you feel the same way? When I think of the most middle of the road modern point and click adventure game, Randall's Monday immediately leaps to my head.
01:39:20
Speaker
It doesn't like, it doesn't like immediately spring to my head, but I 100% understand your perspective. Like I would be like, yeah, it's fine. Right. Yeah. i mean like it's I've never played the whole thing. I've played a little bit. I think I played the demo a while ago yeah and it was just like, yeah, it's very.
01:39:39
Speaker
It's very point and click. It's a little South Park humor. Yeah. Doesn't I'm not I'm not like a huge fan of the Dadelic entertainment games. Well, that's not the developer, though. That's the. No, no. Yeah. Yes, it is not the developer, but it does remind me of a little bit of a Dadelic Dadelic. Yeah. Sort of deal. So. Yeah. Mm hmm. So I you know what? I'm I think just to be silly, I think we put it below the game that I'm always comparing it to, okay which is k Crabat and the Secret of the Sorbian King. I'd say we put it below.
01:40:23
Speaker
Yeah, do it. Okay, all right, all right. It's so funny now because we have Deponia, Doomsday, Crabat and the Secret of the Sorbian King, and Randall's Monday. Just three games that you could just grab assets from one and replace them with the other and no one would notice. You just take a background from Randall's Monday, throw it into Ponia and people would be like, oh yeah. Or you could take a character from Crobot and throw them into Ponia doomsday or in Randall's Monday and people would be like, oh, there's yeah. Okay. I can't wait for like this hybrid game of like,
01:41:01
Speaker
on on Monday or something. Be fantastic. Okay, what's our la our last entry? So, this is number 895 from 2007. Oh, I already hate it. I already hate it. It is called ah Last Half of Darkness.
01:41:27
Speaker
beyond the spirit's eye. Oh, oh, wait. Okay. Okay. Last half of darkness. Okay. This is, this is actually the best. You know this? Yes, I do. I know. No way. I know my listeners do too. Shout out to old school fans who were there when me and Lazy Game Reviews played all of the last half of darkness. No way. Oh my God. They're all on YouTube.
01:41:55
Speaker
all that is the most ah generic sounding 2007 ass game title I've ever heard. Last half of darkness, beyond the spirit's eye. And you're like, oh yeah, I played that. So it's actually a franchise. Okay.
01:42:13
Speaker
I need you to look up the original Last Half of Darkness, because Lazy Game Reviews and I, we played through the original Last Haves. They're very old school, kind of crappy looking adventure games. Go ahead, just look up Last Half of Darkness. last half of Oh, my God. Okay. All right. So, okay. The first left half Last Half of Darkness is like MS Paint. Yes. Like very old, almost looks like ah Like, what's that game, Shadow's Gate? Shadow Gate. Oh, Shadow Gate? Yeah, almost looks a little bit like that. Or like the Manhunter games from Sierra. Yep. Oh, a lot like the Manhunter games from Sierra. It's got even like the eggs and stuff. Maybe a little deja vu, a little kind of, yeah. Yeah, so we played through all the original last halves.
01:43:05
Speaker
Okay. And we were always, and we had a great time playing these now. okay I have a little bit of a a connection to this game because it used to be on one of the first compilations I ever got on CD-ROM. It was just a compilation of just games. And there was an adventure game section in Last Half of Darkness was ah in that section. And I'd play the hell out of it. It's terrible, awful game.
01:43:29
Speaker
But we had so much fun playing it. Beyond the Spirit's Eye looks like bad 3D. It is bad 3D. So they did continue. Yeah, they continued the franchise and they went kind of they, you know, they updated their graphics. They went 3D. Later. Yeah, they have a game called Society of the Serpent Moon, which came out in 2011 then and is a third person 3D game. Wow. these Yeah, they've they kept doing it. hu They kept doing it even though they started like that.
01:43:59
Speaker
Wow Okay, so there's something kind of impressive about that Yeah, so I've only played very little of this game because it was very difficult to run as I said I said I hated it immediately when you said 2007 those games are harder to run and I'm trying not to let my Connection to the first three games like color what I feel yeah about the newer games But I do I do think these are like like good games, like I think the atmosphere of these games is really nice and like we ah we joke, me and LGR joke about eerie ambience because in the games it's like there's an eerie ambience. It does, good here it ambience. And so I'm proud to put it above mediocre for that reason. Yeah, and you know, it it is giving me sort of similar vibes to the,
01:44:51
Speaker
OK, granted, this came out in 2007. Yeah, but it looks dated for 2007. Yes, it looks older than games made in 2007. The first half, like last half, those three, they look dated for their time, too. Yeah. So when I look at this, I look I think of the late 90s, I think of like Byzantine the betrayal. So if you're trying to put it above mediocre,
01:45:17
Speaker
That's where my mind immediately goes. I would say I have two thoughts or I would put it around like hell a cyberpunk thriller. I would put it around there that it gives me similar vibes for sure.
01:45:29
Speaker
So yeah, would you put it? Okay, so Hell of Cyberpunk Thriller is our number 15. And Byzantine the Betrayal's number 11. I would put it above because I think it's impressive that this franchise has done what it did. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, like, honestly, like... And it's fun that they keep making games that are just a little behind the era that they're in.
01:45:53
Speaker
All right, so do you wanna put it all the way up at number 11, over Byzantine the Betrayal, below Amos Green's final repose? Yes, I put it above Byzantine and I would, yes, I would put it below Amos Green. Okay, well, we have our top 30, wait, how do we have 30? This is, I think, what's confusing me. Okay, everybody, Rose has just had, ah here's what I just told her. It sounded like her mic was playing through ah an Atari speaker at the bottom of the ocean. It just sounded so wild. So ah ah what she already knows deep down in her heart, I guess, is that artists suffer, but what she forgot to know first was that podcast is art. Bye.