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Split Fiction
25 Plays1 month ago
Join Dave and Jake as they criss-cross and applesauce through each other's stories in this week's episode! Spoiler free until the disclaimer for those that want our opinions before they pick it up!
Intro:
- OCTOPATH TRAVELER II - Normal Battle 3
Outro:
- SHOGO OST - Red Riot
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Transcript
Introduction and Setup
00:00:47
Speaker
How's going, everyone? Welcome to another episode of Soapstone. my name is Jake, and I'm joined by my co-host, as always, Dave. How's going today, Dave? It's going at 120 miles per hour. Right.
00:00:59
Speaker
Sorry to keep up. It's an insanely intense kind of day. Lazy Sunday? No, no, no. Oh, no. Absolutely not. Not in this economy.
00:01:09
Speaker
That's fair. I should figure out how to transition away from that topic.
Game Overview and Comparison
00:01:14
Speaker
Anyways, today we're talking about a video game. Yeah! That was 30 seconds. That's very good. Very good for us.
00:01:22
Speaker
um Split fiction, ah which I don't own. Thank you for allowing me to play the game with you over the last couple days. Yeah, it's something that I wanted to get and play with friends anyway. And this has also been a a title that we've been looking forward to for a bit, as we've seen multiple previews at different game conferences.
00:01:45
Speaker
Yeah. um And basically, we're just entering with the question of how is it going to be like it takes two? What are they going to change? it's always It's always kind of a curiosity with one of these follow up games because Split Fiction is for the people who aren't familiar with It Takes
Accessibility and Gameplay Style
00:02:04
Speaker
Two. It's like the co-op game.
00:02:07
Speaker
Like as soon as it released, it basically became like the either couples game or co-op game or hey, do you want to get your friend who doesn't really play video games into game type of game?
00:02:21
Speaker
um Incredibly accessible. And the only thing that probably throws people off is, I guess, younger generations may not actually have the concept of split screen multiplayer anymore, because why would you ever really play a game like that?
00:02:38
Speaker
You know, that's true. i mean, the Internet is so prevalent and game technology has adapted with it so that you're playing at home. And other people can also play at home.
00:02:50
Speaker
We don't need to get together like, oh, hey, let's go in Eric's mom's basement and then use the one CRT and be like, I get this fraction of the screen. You get this fraction. We'll put some cardboard up so that we can't screen look on each other or whatever.
00:03:04
Speaker
but But did you actually ever do the cardboard? I didn't do cardboard. i didn't do cardboard. We just had like. I think our our policy was mostly at friends house. Like, don't be too obvious about everyone to a certain extent. It's like you can't turn off your peripheral vision. Like I see you're just sitting up there with the far sight in the toilet of the facility.
00:03:27
Speaker
what ah But yeah, I mean, it's it's kind of like a throwback because for both of these games, even when you're playing on your own computer,
00:03:40
Speaker
um they show you the other person's perspective, right? You always see that split screen or normally say see that split screen, I should say, um which it gives it that feel of being a retro game because they there's no reason that they had to do that. They could have changed the gameplay a little bit and then just not shown you the other person's perspective, right?
00:04:02
Speaker
That's how any other game would have done it. True. um But I mean, in both It Takes Two and Split Fiction, i think they make good use of that.
00:04:15
Speaker
The other part of it is i don't need to describe to Jake what I'm seeing. Right. And then he'd have to relay back to me what his be like. Oh, I might just look to the right or look to the left and be like, OK, here's what you're seeing on your side of things.
00:04:27
Speaker
What do we need to do to advance this puzzle or something?
Consumer-Friendly Features
00:04:30
Speaker
Exactly. and That is very convenient and it's really helpful with like timing puzzles and things like that. Oh, also i wanted to add ah for anybody who has not played these types of games before by Hazelight.
00:04:43
Speaker
um Part of the co-op is each of you will have different mechanics. Yes. So Jake will have a power that I do not have access to and vice versa per level.
00:04:56
Speaker
So. Let's say you're doing a boss fight. I might be doing something over here with one specific mechanic, but I can look over at Jake's screen and see an entirely different thing that he's doing.
00:05:07
Speaker
So I get to appreciate both without having to replay as that character, even though I will anyway. Yes. We were talking about that just before the episode, but you played It Takes Two several times ah with several friends.
00:05:23
Speaker
um So you got the more full and complete experience. You're more of an expert ah expert in the haze like games than I am never played a way out, but yes, go on. No one did. No, no one's played. like No, I guess the last thing I would mention about like kind of the structure um and Part of this is just, I guess, general praise for how this is consumer friendly, but you only need one copy of the game.
Gameplay Mechanics and Interaction Differences
00:05:51
Speaker
Like I mentioned that at the start for myself. But um if you know you've got two people who want to play the game, if one of them owns the game, the other person can get ah can download a guest ah copy, basically, if it's like on Steam.
00:06:06
Speaker
It is fairly large. It's a little bit under 100 gigs, which is like that used to be insanely large, but all game sizes are just ballooning now. But yeah, that's that's that's really nice because otherwise, like if there's any other game that came out, say it's like Helldivers or Baldur's Gate or anything like that, you want to play with your friend, get yourself a copy, right? Like that's the standard. And they made a decision with the release of this game to be like,
00:06:33
Speaker
Well, we could double our sales. It wouldn't be double, but, you know, increase. ah But it'll be more accessible if we don't. Yeah. And it's like a huge appeal because I know when people get in the mood for like a new game coming out and they're like, all right, everybody who wants to play Monster Hunter Wilds. I'm like, don't talk to me for at least a year and a half. wow But it feels like if you don't immediately hop on and play when everybody else is playing, that even if you come back through later, you're not going be able to really play with friends and have that same experience. You feel ah bit of rap FOMO, fear of missing out, for me who's not aware, um of that experience with your friends.
00:07:15
Speaker
And you can really get that by purchasing the game when everybody else does. Whereas this, I can get my one copy and then anybody else can get a friend's pass.
00:07:26
Speaker
Right. It's not limited where it's like, oh, you can give one key to one friend. It's Jake can get it. Another friend can get it another. And technically, everybody could play through my one copy.
00:07:37
Speaker
yeah would take a very long time, but it is feasible. It's it's very reminiscent of inviting a friend over to play through the the X-Men campaign or something like that. Like this is it's exactly exactly the same deal.
00:07:51
Speaker
You have the game so other people can play with you. um And everything about the game is to replicate that. You're sitting on a couch, basically, experience. um I don't know if there's voice chat built in the game or not, but that's not even a consideration these days. No one uses in-game voice chat. Unless it has to be a setting.
00:08:10
Speaker
Unless it impacts, like, unless you're literally nerfing yourself for, like, a lethal company or something like that because it's more atmospheric. But, yes, that's the
Storytelling and Narrative
00:08:21
Speaker
that's the setup for this.
00:08:22
Speaker
How would you describe the overarching? What's your front-of-the-box, back-of-the-box pitch for what Split Fiction is about?
00:08:31
Speaker
For anybody who played, it takes two. um now I guess the box pitch would be
00:08:41
Speaker
unique co-op experience where it's distinct for each player. Right. That's fair. Yeah. Constantly going in between new areas, new mechanics.
00:08:59
Speaker
yeah always Always fresh co-op. Yeah, I think that's fair. um As far as the... i I just saw a trailer plot that the game would present for you. um You play as two characters, two different people,
00:09:13
Speaker
Um, who, have either an interest in fantasy worlds or an interest in science fiction worlds. Um, and you have to work together to solve all of your, all of your problems. Very similar in some cases to it takes you in that regard.
00:09:31
Speaker
Um, But you're gonna you're going to overcome adversity along the way. There's a whole bunch of different locales. There's a whole bunch of different settings, as you would expect for this type of game. But if you're not familiar, if you didn't play It Takes Two, probably will be surprising just how much variety is in these games um and ultimately ah i'm sure i'm sure the box mentions this as well you would need to get through all of it to um escape what's going on you without providing details um
00:10:05
Speaker
but But yeah, how ah what what what do you first want to start off
Graphics and Visuals
00:10:10
Speaker
with? talking Oh, actually, I was going to mention. I literally had this in the notes and I forgot. ah This is a recent release.
00:10:17
Speaker
We don't want to spoil it for people who haven't um played through it. ah So we're going to give our impressions generally about the game, and then we'll tell you when we're just going to just outright spoil everything.
00:10:28
Speaker
That's your opportunity to hit pause. um but We're going to come to your house and open your fridge door while you're away for the weekend. Exactly. But we want to give people the opportunity to get our impressions.
00:10:40
Speaker
um If you are on the fence about the game ah without literally so spoiling the entire experience. So ah we'll let you know when that comes up.
00:10:51
Speaker
But that being said, what do you want to open with? what do you want to, how would you ah jump into it takes two?
00:11:02
Speaker
um It is difficult to do, sure um but maybe we could talk about maybe the graphics. I feel like this was and granted with the the game size between like 80 and 90 um Very visually impressive for everything that's going on.
00:11:25
Speaker
Ran very smoothly for me, thankfully. Same. um I have a pretty good graphics card, but yeah. it it's um That's not meant to be a flex. That's that's me saying like your mileage may i vary. Oh, true, true. Yeah, if you have weaker hardware.
00:11:42
Speaker
Yeah, um it's really exemplified by as you're going through all of these ah different areas and worlds and these setting changes.
00:11:53
Speaker
It's easy to like design a game where like, hey, here's kind of our overall thing and everything else will kind of be like this. It's going to be in this color palette, etc. Right. right
Engagement and Mechanics
00:12:03
Speaker
For split fiction, they're like, we refuse to do this.
00:12:07
Speaker
Yes. And you can honestly go from like some very visual pop type things to make granted going between your science fiction and your fantasy side of stuff.
00:12:19
Speaker
Like, oh, this is really cool, futuristic, and but also kind of dark and grungy. Whereas this is more whimsical and the sun is always out. Yes. Yeah, and there's definitely there's definitely some variety like...
00:12:32
Speaker
even in those two but like It's very funny to me like to think about what the artists essentially have to do when they're doing game design. Because what you described, it's like it's there's a lot more variety than other types of games. so I immediately went to like recently, Mandalore did a video on like Chronicles of Riddick or something.
00:12:52
Speaker
And it's like when you have the eyeshine on, everything's just washed out. like you can't It's just white and blue are the only two colors like on the screen. And a lot of games are made that way.
00:13:04
Speaker
um And you hope that it's not like that extreme. But there's also a benefit. Like, hey, if you're a graphics designer on its Doom series, you're probably going to really develop your reds and blacks and oranges in your palette. Because everything in that game that's not health is red and black and orange.
00:13:28
Speaker
um But it allows people to like reuse ah so many of their assets, right? Like you can reuse textures. You can like stay keep things like locally consistent and how they look.
00:13:40
Speaker
I imagine for it takes two or not. It takes two for split fiction. I might have called it. It takes two earlier for split fiction. um There's just like hard stops where they're like, hey, by the way, we're now done with this entire section.
00:13:55
Speaker
Make new assets, right? um And that that goes to more than just graphics, right? It also goes to sound, it goes to mechanics, it goes to animation. But the frequency with which they just drop something to introduce something new is still crazy to me.
00:14:14
Speaker
Yeah, I when I was playing with with Jake, we obviously had like some back and forth. And so for me, these games essentially are like movies where you are kind of the audience. You're obviously interacting more than you would for a movie, but you're kind of along for the ride. And as like these things change or happen quickly, you're like,
00:14:38
Speaker
Yeah, it's a movie. Let's go on to the next thing. Exactly. oh um And you're not necessarily looking at the whole game analytically or the movie analytically. You're just like along for the fun and new thing.
00:14:51
Speaker
Yeah. It's an in the moment experience a lot of the time, um which is it is different than like I could contrast this to a game that maybe a lot of listeners haven't played like ah Fury.
00:15:05
Speaker
where they specifically put sections between each of the action bits in order to like let you think a little bit and hypothesize about where things are heading, listen to someone who's just monologuing at you, and otherwise just kind of like soak in the vibes of the game.
00:15:23
Speaker
um It's not to say that it's constant action in split fiction, but if I were to like If there were to be like a heartbeat sensor for when there's intense action moments, there's a lot.
00:15:36
Speaker
And sometimes they go on for extended sequences, right? Like this would exhaust your grandma. That's the type of game split fiction is. um But I think it's because they that they want to emulate that sort of movie feel or very immersive experience like you're describing um and keep you in the moment.
00:15:59
Speaker
Yeah, there's nothing wrong with that approach. And from my experience, and I believe yours as well. It was fun to get the but new toy of a new mechanic or a new area. Be like, oh, what's this?
00:16:12
Speaker
What was that? And then getting to play around with it and figure things out again. Yeah. that Yeah, something about a lot of games is once you kind of figure out the basic principle of like, oh, this is how I move, this is how I do a puzzle, or this is how I do combat, you're like, okay, I'm to take that with me for the rest of the game.
00:16:32
Speaker
Yeah. And Split Fiction is like, hey, you know how you move? Well, keep that. Sometimes. Everything else is going to change. Yeah. Yeah. They love to do forced perspective shifts too, right? Like sometimes this is a third person shooter type game. Sometimes this is a top down type game. Sometimes it's isometric-ish, like, or it's a 2D platformer, right? um there's there There's so much variety there.
00:17:04
Speaker
But they only generally give you access to like a couple elements of interaction at a time. It's the same thing that It Takes Two does, right? To keep you from getting overwhelmed.
Character Development and Growth
00:17:14
Speaker
Because otherwise, if they were...
00:17:17
Speaker
Imagine that this was like Ratchet and Clank and every time that you got a new power or something like that, that was just another gun. You would have like 50 guns by the end of this game. right would also be one make for an insane fucking last level. It's like, you know, those 50 guns you have.
00:17:37
Speaker
Use all of them. Exactly. I need them. Right. Cause in this gun example, most of them aren't for shooting things. They're for solving puzzles, right? Yeah. Like you would be playing the Talos principle by the end of this. Like, um, instead, because they do remove your old access to mechanics, whenever there's a level shift or sometimes like in a side story, which we can talk about, um,
00:18:03
Speaker
They keep the pool of options available to you low, which allows them to keep the puzzles, although they can be like ah fresh, basically, like while you're adapting to the new mechanics, whatever you have access to.
00:18:18
Speaker
um They're never going to get that complicated because they don't rely on a whole lot of moving pieces. Yeah. If you look back to. a wildly different genre of like point and click adventure games.
00:18:30
Speaker
You could just accumulate items and then you would just be like, should I use the baloney in the lock? Do I get something else? It's a baloney. You don't have a baloney lock, but it's that thing of, you're not necessarily sure. And at least with old games like that, like King's quest, it could be something quirky. You're like, Oh, they're trying to do a pun here or something else that didn't fit with your brain's logic.
00:18:54
Speaker
Um, Whereas this is just much more straightforward. You're like, oh, these are my two things. It's probably one of these two things. Right. Which again, helps with the the ease of access. Because if somebody new is coming into a video game, they're like, what are my buttons? What do i do i don't want to fuck this up.
00:19:15
Speaker
Right. Yeah, I think the if if this game is frustrating to you, it may be frustrating because... you I think something's going on in your life, I think. Well, I mean, maybe true, too. But one of one of the reasons could be if you particularly enjoy some of the interactions, this is definitely my own personal feedback for it takes two as well.
00:19:37
Speaker
Sometimes there's something that I am still exploring. I'm still enjoying. I'm still extracting novel value out of. Um, and then, all right, that sequence is done.
00:19:48
Speaker
Right. So like I lose, i lose access to that. Um, there are but at the same time, it's better in a game design perspective to get people, give people what they want, but then take it away before they grow tired of it.
00:20:03
Speaker
That's this entire game is based around that idea. um this is why i have like a rotating thing of dog toys okay so she's always entertained yeah no it's a good strat um but like on the other side ah if you're someone who wants to continually engage with novel things right like you don't care how long you have the toy in your hands right now you want the toy that's in front of you this game is perfect for that it's like if you If you ever dislike one of the mechanics, that's I mean, sorry for the next five minutes, but it's then it's gone forever. so This too shall pass. Yes, it's this too shall pass is a very philosophical way to review this game. But yeah.
00:20:48
Speaker
um I think that's all accurate. um Without diving into their personal, the depths of their personality and what they all have
Narrative and Storytelling
00:20:59
Speaker
going on.
00:20:59
Speaker
How did you feel about the characters in It Takes Two? Because that was one of the but sorry. I'm never going to I'm never going to say this right. This is the Outer Wilds and Outer Worlds for me again. Split fiction.
00:21:12
Speaker
the Do I get a chance to respond? Yes. Sorry. i want I have to correct myself every time I say it takes two instead of split fiction. Now it's going to be, i need to find and replace once we get to the end characters, Dave, um, as with a good number of elements of this,
00:21:31
Speaker
ah The characters felt a little bit tropey for me. um almost made the reference to as we were playing like, oh, you know, Starfire and Raven, like your your day and night thing of they're very opposite in their personalities.
00:21:47
Speaker
um and I don't dislike the opposite portion. It's just certain things felt a little... like I was predicting the lines in cutscenes and i was like, oh no. ah So I could have done with a little bit less of that.
00:22:03
Speaker
But beyond that, like I still like them as characters. yeah they They also grew on me, obviously, over time. yeah I don't know to what extent that's intentional. That they're supposed to...
00:22:15
Speaker
Usually in a story, you have um some characters that are more sympathetic and some characters that are less sympathetic. And then over the course of the story, you learn more about them and your opinions of them develop or whatever. In this story, I wasn't sympathetic with either of the characters at the start. They were both like kind of obnoxious in their own way.
00:22:38
Speaker
um One person's very brooding and the other person's like very chipper like this is the person who talks to other people in social situations where other people don't want to be talked to like that's their their personality trait They will make eye contact in the grocery store and be like, oh hey, what are you looking for? Even though they don't work there. They're not they don't work there. Yeah, yeah, um and that what That was Ella, by the way. Ella is the the upbeat, outgoing one.
00:23:08
Speaker
Yes, and Mio is the brooding person. um But I agree that they do develop um to a certain extent, but they never escape tropes entirely. There's a little bit.
00:23:23
Speaker
There's a little bit. So I'm not going to say that there's not like character development there. But... but i So much of it seems in service of... It feels like there was a game design decision that's like, do not make these characters too complex.
00:23:39
Speaker
Because we need to have their characters literally line up like for the split perspective on the box art. Like... Like, they need to represent that. They have to show that in their early dialogue and their continuing dialogue through the mid-game.
00:23:57
Speaker
Like, this needs to be front and center, that these are different people. They're very different. They're different different worlds. And you're like, okay, sure. ah guess I got it. it's Do you remember, like, the 90s rom-coms where it's like,
00:24:13
Speaker
He's a busy lawyer. She's... How... Yeah, like, your worlds are different. Type thing, a little bit. um And again, I think that is fine to do in a game if that's not your focus.
00:24:28
Speaker
Yeah. But I will say, i prefer them not to do that in most most games. Yeah. Yeah, they could have been a little bit more normal, I think.
00:24:40
Speaker
um Or a little bit less... entirely caught up in their own personality quirks, I guess. Yeah. um might be Might be a way to put it.
00:24:51
Speaker
But they also didn't have, they didn't want to spend a lot of time characterizing um these people, like at the start of the game. This isn't something where like there's a prologue and you're going to like learn about their backstory and then there's going to be like years pass and there's thunderclouds and raining and stuff like that. And it's like, okay, we're continuing to follow their development and stuff like that.
00:25:13
Speaker
It's still pretty much an action game. So like, like they're going get you there pretty quickly. um So I can't really judge it. I can't really judge it based off that. Right. It's the same problem action movies have. Like how much time should you spend in explaining why people are here. how does Jason Statham feel in Crank? Exactly. exactly um So yeah, definitely not the ah not the low point for it for the series at all. I will say though, contrasting to It Takes Two, without spoiling It Takes Two either, because it would be
00:25:47
Speaker
a single line, essentially. i did like the characterization more there. And so as a trend, I'm hoping that Haze Light can improve both the character and storytelling aspects of their games, which is very funny because this is a game about writing.
00:26:05
Speaker
And yeah, ironically, the writing's kind of the weakest part. I was really hoping that they were going to go more meta with it. I was like, want give you that one benefit of doubt the one hand off the cliff. Maybe maybe they're going to surprise me later.
00:26:20
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. um We'll let you make your own opinion of the story when you play the game. We don't need to delve into that too, too much.
Recommendations and Impressions
00:26:31
Speaker
It might hit differently for you too, like based off of how just different types of characters that you like or dislike, you might not have the same impressions as we did here. um It's fine to be wrong, honestly. Yeah, most people are. Most people are um Gameplay for a second, just impressions over that.
00:26:52
Speaker
ah There's a lot of really cool sequences in this game, and there were multiple times where I was like, The game actually took me out of the game because I had to tell Dave that's awesome. Like there is the the sort of like it's the game reviewer brain, which I don't consider myself game reviewer, but like critic.
00:27:10
Speaker
You're like, crap, that was a really, really awesome thing. And I need to now store that or recount this to somebody else because it's a really awesome thing. It's anti immersive because it's too cool.
00:27:22
Speaker
um You know what i mean? Yeah. A lot of that actually in this game. Yeah. I think for each one of the levels.
00:27:35
Speaker
Mm hmm. mean, there's like multiple times you had to do different things with your character's specific powers or abilities. But none of them was like, eh, this one's kind of trash.
00:27:46
Speaker
Right. I was like, I'm really enjoying this one. But I was also kind of looking over the screen at Jake's like, I want to try that one at some point. Uh-huh. Yeah. I was kind of curious because there was a couple times like I had a power and I was like, oh, Dave stuck with the one that sucks or Dave isn't as cool as this one.
00:28:03
Speaker
um But I actually, since I wasn't using that, like the power that you had, I don't know if you had the exact same impression in the exact same moment, right? You're like, oh, look at this. Look at this trash. This guy's saddled with. I don't need that.
00:28:18
Speaker
Yeah. it is a It is funny for that. um I think I probably covered about as much as I personally would before just giving impressions. Is there anything else you want to cover before impressions? And then we open up the spoiler floodgate.
00:28:39
Speaker
I can't really think of anything that's not going to be spoiler related. Right. Cause lot things I want share are going to be with specific levels or interactions or our own personal experiences.
00:28:52
Speaker
Yeah. Do you recommend split fiction? I do recommend split fiction. I think if anything we've described sounds cool or you liked It Takes Two or you thought Get Out wasn't good, but you haven't played any of other games by Hazelight, I would say, yeah, check it out.
00:29:12
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, i agree. It's... um I think overall the experience is is even better from a gameplay perspective for me than it takes to. um And I'm curious to see where they go from here.
00:29:25
Speaker
I do hope for like a little bit more variety, right? They're kind of in a niche right now and it's a really cool niche and it's a niche that other people aren't really exploring. But like, don't know.
00:29:37
Speaker
I want to see what the next level is for them. But this game is excellent. It's basically a Hades 2 to Hades versus Bastion to Hades.
00:29:51
Speaker
like They're still using the same formula that's been working for them. It's not like a massive job. But it would cool be cool to see them break out of that. Even if they still kept the split-screen co-op, if there's a way to make it more novel or unique that it's not going to be like, oh, this is a...
00:30:09
Speaker
different asset version of one of the previous titles. Right. Like it feels wrong to call it cookie cutter, but it is formulaic. Right. Like that it's the same idea of world by world powers, characters, stuff like that, but um
Spoiler Section: Narrative Analysis
00:30:24
Speaker
definitely worth playing. So check it out.
00:30:26
Speaker
And if you're dropping here, then thanks for listening this far. Otherwise last morning, here we go to spoilers for split fiction.
00:30:36
Speaker
We're going to spoil everything. Do you want to just go in order? Yeah. um So first off, title card. Pretty good. The opening credits. I like the theme by John Williams. The score is very good.
00:30:51
Speaker
So ah first, let's talk about the the premise, which I know we've memed on quite a bit as we were playing through. Right. A quick over under is A bunch of artists are sorry, not artists.
00:31:05
Speaker
A bunch of authors were reached out by this publishing company like, ah come here, and we want to publish your work. Everyone's like, oh, my God, yes, finally a chance for me to get into the field.
00:31:16
Speaker
The starboard artists and. And they're like, hey, um now that you're here, put on this weird suit and hop in this machine. Yeah. And all of them are like, yeah, except for one person who's like, that seems a little bit weird. Yeah. isn't that Isn't it odd that we weren't told about this beforehand?
00:31:32
Speaker
and And they all have like Ender's Game spacesuits, basically something like that. It's it's it's very close. Yeah. Yeah, it's such a weird premise.
00:31:45
Speaker
yeah And we talked about this a little bit at length because the game doesn't. oh I think there are different ways you could approach the same thing. ah yeah but basically, their way of...
00:31:57
Speaker
kind of combining these two ideas together is basically this virtual reality machine that they're going into. ah Basically, somebody falls into somebody else's virtual reality bubble.
00:32:09
Speaker
Yeah, me and Ella's and they start to get a little bit conflated and overlap and hilarity ensues. Yes. um The game happens as a result of this, basically.
00:32:22
Speaker
Because I guess the idea is if this hadn't happened, then they would basically just be in virtual reality like to and with an unexplained method of communication, like basically creating these virtual worlds. They're basically making like and MMO environments or something like that, adventure game environments.
00:32:40
Speaker
um But it relates to whatever story um they remember or they're thinking of ah something that's drawn from them personally. And I do like that as a thematic thing because obviously you're essentially replaying stories that these authors have written.
00:32:59
Speaker
Yeah. Whether it Mio running from the SRI ah regarding traffic fines or something more so in the fantasy space. Yeah.
00:33:13
Speaker
Yeah, it just branches a really good wealth of things, personally. You will find that, ah at least between Mio and Ella, they didn't have a lot of dialogue in their stories. There was a lot of running from one place to another place, or escaping something.
00:33:32
Speaker
But that's the conceit when you actually have to make an actual game um that follows this, and you didn't want to like make The Sims.
00:33:43
Speaker
um That is i that that's fine that that I give up like for for for free. There's the issue I actually have with the plot and we'll get into this as we get through some other um some of the other examples. But like the antagonizing antagonists don't really make any sense to me.
00:34:05
Speaker
And a lot of things aren't really defined because they just didn't want to spend. They didn't want that camera time basically showing what was going on in the background. But as a result,
00:34:17
Speaker
I got to the end that was like, couldn't you just resolve this in an email or something like that? Right. Yeah. i but I, when I was describing this ah with Jake last night as we were wrapping up our time with it. It has big spy kids energy.
00:34:32
Speaker
Yes. Where it's like, Oh, I'm a kid watching a movie. Everything is very fantastical. And you're not really thinking about the motivations of certain characters. You're like, how the fuck is this even a thing?
00:34:44
Speaker
They're just like, yeah, cats and dogs talk now and they're versing each other. um So I think you just have to kind of take that with a grain of salt and not focus on because I think like Jake was saying, that is just a weaker aspect of it.
00:35:00
Speaker
Yes. Yeah, definitely don't go in expecting groundbreaking twists and things like that. Any sort of twist that the story has, you'll probably see coming.
00:35:11
Speaker
um And that's not necessarily a bad thing, right? Because the opposite is an un-telegraphed twist, which also isn't rewarding in its own regard. That's what that's what the term deus ex machina comes from, right? It's like, oh, I guess God has to do something here because otherwise, you know, we're not moving the story in the direction we need to.
00:35:31
Speaker
But at the same time, I don't know why we're kind of like talking around it. The characters like um their personal trauma is that ah Mio's grandfather, grandfather, dad is in ah the hospital and is like, I guess, a subject to the American health care system or something like that in the future. And ah so all these financial troubles and things like that, and she's worried about it.
00:35:57
Speaker
And ah Ella is a twin and her sister drowned in a river. um And then there you go. That's their personal traumas. The game makes it a little bit more dramatic than I did. But yeah, basically, you part of the game's storyline is you understanding why they wrote certain stories and which aspect of either personal trauma or something in their past is like kind of snuck its way into the influence yeah for that story. And I like that.
00:36:35
Speaker
that's an nice That's a neat thing. And they they do explicitly like say it basically in the game. They're like, oh, I believe that a part of you always ends up in your story. um And so it's a good way to tie it all together, um I suppose. And it explains how like their friendship develops over the course of the game, how they open up to each other and stuff like that.
00:36:57
Speaker
I don't really have any gripes with that. I think that's fine. um It all works. I would say the story really doesn't advance without Ella's heavy lifting.
00:37:09
Speaker
Because she's outgoing and like is trying to move things forward and connect with me. Oh, me is like, I just want to get through this thing so we can be out of this thing that we somehow got tricked into.
00:37:19
Speaker
She just wants to escape. but um and And the reason she ends up in the pod is because she's resisting going into her own pod and ends up like in a physical altercation with the staff at the facility, in particular, Raider, who's like the the big bad guy, the CEO.
00:37:36
Speaker
ah Also, the device that does all this cool storytelling and virtual reality stuff is just called the machine. That's the only name they give it. yeah The first time it shows up, it's actually, you know, i Pascal case capitalization, capital T, capital M, the machine, or at least capital It's That's dumb. Don't name your things that.
00:38:03
Speaker
Yeah. So I feel like for some of it, they definitely did want to have a kind of some generic movie tropes where it's kind of like over the top or nonsensical.
00:38:14
Speaker
Yeah. Because they really didn't want to talk about how the machine worked at all. There's like the machine. Yeah, that's. it's What's really funny here is it seems like it's it goes back to the paradox for me that they seem, Hazelight in this particular case, doesn't seem to really want to spend any time doing world building.
00:38:37
Speaker
which is very funny because literally what the game is, is world building. Right. But when I say world building, I mean like grounding these concepts, explaining why the villain didn't just ask for people to participate in this kind of experimental machine and just communicate upfront why he's a villain in the first place versus just like a researcher who's doing science.
World-Building and Plot Critique
00:39:03
Speaker
Yeah. So like, I don't know. Like, those are the things that I wish that there was more justification for because it would have helped me appreciate more of the rest of the game.
00:39:14
Speaker
And so I kind of like taking me out of it. um Yeah, it does feel weird after you've done like a really cool, well put together level with interesting mechanics, gorgeous lighting. um Everything's makes sense. And then you're like going between. It's like one guy being like, we've got to get them out of the machine. she What's happening here again?
00:39:34
Speaker
Uh-huh. Because one of the one of the gripes I had is there's like two staff basically assistants that are helping like ah man the machine. They're at the consoles and things like that.
00:39:46
Speaker
And they're complicit with like all everything leading up to this. The whole idea of bringing people in, not telling them anything about the process until they're in the building. um All of this until like an arbitrary sort of point in the story where they got bad guys like all right yeah we can't let this go on any further. We have to like do this and operation or whatever. and they're like, no, that could hurt them. And they're like, what are you what are you talking about? like They're already in there against their will. like are you not
00:40:18
Speaker
Are you good guys, actually? like Are you not bad guys? And in a better story, that could have been described as just like... nobody is outright good. no one is outright evil.
00:40:31
Speaker
um This could have been like the bridge too far or something like that. But instead, you're just like, you're already running science experiments on people who don't understand what's happening.
00:40:43
Speaker
Yeah. And there's this implication that people like have their other stories stolen by the machine. And the researchers would have needed to be complicit in that as well.
00:40:54
Speaker
But it seems like only the big bad guy really... cares, I guess. I don't know. I mean, i feel like other people would have to know because even when like when he's talking to the board yeah and he's reporting back to them, they're like, hey, why are things so fucked up? He's like, ah everything's fine here. Don't worry about it.
00:41:14
Speaker
They have to know what the machine is because it's going public in two weeks, um etct etc., etc. There has to be like some type of marketing around it.
00:41:25
Speaker
It's just like None of that outside story stuff really helped, in my opinion. Like, if it would have been very focused on just what the characters were doing in the worlds and them exploring their trauma and things like that, that would have been fine.
00:41:41
Speaker
I literally think you could be like, oh, two people went to an arcade. They're trying a new VR machine. Yeah. There's and like an electrical flux and they get stuck in there. And this is what happens.
00:41:55
Speaker
yeah Yeah. 100% fine. In my opinion, Tron did it. And it was a buy a better story. So it just feels like a weird turn for them just to get to that
Level Design and Mechanics
00:42:05
Speaker
point. But.
00:42:06
Speaker
Yeah, I do wanna want to talk about some of the levels and not absolutely the story, which again, there's not really one um overarching at least. Where do you want to jump in for levels?
00:42:19
Speaker
Um,
00:42:24
Speaker
i want I just want to go to my favorite one immediately. sure It's hard to not. ah Level seven, which we're calling the Dark Souls level. ah This is where you go into Ella's subconscious and you're learning more about...
00:42:39
Speaker
her But her fantasy world that you've kind of experienced before and is always bright and shiny is now kind of dreary and Dark Souls 3. Yeah, and it's catacombs. It's it's real dar it's ah the building has been destroyed there for hundreds of years types of thing.
00:42:57
Speaker
Yeah, um but we each get a type of spirit pets. ah Mine was a fish and Jake got a bird. ah But Jake's bird was able to light up things and provide like a light surface.
00:43:13
Speaker
Right. It's a hard light. Basically, you can run on it. Yeah. And then I got fish powers where I put a portal in and then it would essentially try and grab the nearest surface.
00:43:27
Speaker
Um, so it's cool because I would be able to move lights. Uh, that might be our way of transportation forward of, I need to pull us to the next thing. There's a lot of cool things with it.
00:43:39
Speaker
And thematically everything was just chef's kiss. the The biggest thing for me with the light was, um, the dynamic physics and it's still being hard light during that. right Because there's this there's plenty of games where you can like create an energy bridge or something like that.
00:43:58
Speaker
um a Halo um has it. right You're like, OK, well, now I can run across this because the bridge is online. This is like that. But then imagine that something flies through the bridge or there's a mirror in the middle that causes part of the bridge to reflect in like a different direction.
00:44:15
Speaker
But you can still run on it. um And then those are updating in real time. So the coolest section, the coolest part of this was when we like we raised up to the top of a tower.
00:44:28
Speaker
And there was a bunch of pillars with open spaces. And the light shone through all of the open spaces to the outside of the tower. and created platforms basically because the light's shining out and you can just jump from platform to platform and it's just the open spaces on the outside of the tower coolest thing coolest thing there's also a section in that level where ah your light that you were generating instead of it being a hard plane was shooting at a laser, which was like a little narrow walkway. Or if it was vertical, something could climb up.
00:45:05
Speaker
Yeah. and we shot it off of mirrors. We were like, Oh shit. Yeah. It was mind bending. Yeah. They do a really good job of that. I think they're also, and the last level, but Yeah, that was kind of... This was one of the ones where was crap, this could have been an entire game.
00:45:25
Speaker
Like, this could have been a developed idea. Like, again, basically back to Talos Principle. But, like, this one idea is so cool that with some elaboration, It could be an entire game, but this is just one of the levels.
00:45:38
Speaker
so What about you? Is there any standout levels or mechanics you want gab out? Yeah, I really liked um six.
00:45:49
Speaker
So in that one, it's one of the ah sci-fi levels. um For Mio, it's her trauma level. um And the gimmick for this is we each get a...
00:46:02
Speaker
um play as I guess a ball for different sections of it. And then eventually we kind of like get powers from the balls. It becomes like a power suit, essentially, ah that gives us some abilities.
00:46:14
Speaker
But while you're playing as the balls, while you're controlling the balls, um Mine, I'll let you describe yours, but like mine was ah basically just a swarm of drones, like spider drones.
00:46:27
Speaker
um And every time you jump, there's this kind of like displaced leaping animation ah where they like reform into a ball in the air, ah which is very cool.
00:46:38
Speaker
But it could like hover, it could reconfigure, it could hack things. um They could go into like spider form to like crawl through areas that the ball couldn't fit through. And I just loved it.
00:46:50
Speaker
It was just, it was incredibly cool. um What about yours? and We can talk about one of the sequences when they give, give your powers. I was a magnet ball.
00:47:02
Speaker
There you So anyways, there was the sequence, uh, but you could jump, you could jump onto things and, uh, later you have the power of magnetism. A lot more of, I could go on different surfaces.
00:47:17
Speaker
Right. So it wasn't just, oh, here's your flat plane that you're running across. It's, you might need to go up and across things on the side. um
00:47:28
Speaker
There was a when you were in human form, though, with that, there were some cool sequences where like you would have ah planes on either side of you that you could like repel from. So you literally just fly through the air like Magneto. Yeah, i just as I was repulsing out against that surface, it just suspended me like a little bridge.
00:47:49
Speaker
That was no bottom. That was really cool to do. ah you are also spot yeah You created bridges. You unroll those furling bridges. um And they were just so easy to die on for me.
00:48:03
Speaker
At any point, if I don't have any magnetism powers. If it retracts, it just kills me. If I touch the top, it kills me. ah but We didn't mention that, but death is like not a factor at all in this game. You most of the time respawn exactly where you were at in like two seconds.
00:48:21
Speaker
Sometimes you respawn ahead where you were at. um I think that's normally for some like those ah action chase sequences. Yes. So you don't have one person who's like two minutes ahead, and the other person's like, I keep dying at this one point.
00:48:35
Speaker
Yeah, you're behind the boss at that point. that Yeah, they don't want to penalize you for... not understanding a puzzle or for falling off of something because it happens. But in this particular level, one of the sequences that stood out for me, um Mio with the spider bots hacks a turret that's on like a rail.
00:48:57
Speaker
And you have to escort ah Ella's um ah ball through the sequence of like, it's kind of like a prison break, basically. you're like You have to disable guards and shoot turrets and stuff like that.
00:49:12
Speaker
um And it was just it was really cool. It reminded me of kind of like a budget version of the Modern Warfare 130 co-op mission. Which ah which was neat.
00:49:24
Speaker
I like that. Another thing I actually really liked from level six, which we're talking about, was when we got to play pinball. Yeah. Basically, I was the ball and Jake was the machine. Yeah, I had the bumpers.
00:49:40
Speaker
um I had the the two the mechanics I had were... either trigger on a controller would be like the, uh, green bumpers or red bumpers left and right.
00:49:51
Speaker
Um, and then I also had an input for the, uh, pole springs, like that would launch the ball. Um, and then Dave, so you still had control as the ball, right? Like you had some amount of control, especially after the shot was fired. I still need to use my magnet powers ah here and there for either moving around or for nudging certain things in the machine.
00:50:11
Speaker
Mm-hmm. But there were like a couple, um, There was an extended like boss fight sequence in that mode, ah which I really enjoyed. I thought that was really cool. It reminded me of the old bonus levels for Sonic the Hedgehog, um where you're in a pinball machine.
00:50:30
Speaker
um And some of the, i I would also say, some of the timings and interactions and things in this game were a little bit spicier, like a little bit harder than in It Takes Two.
Creative Side Stories
00:50:44
Speaker
um I still would recommend it to people even if they're like a little bit less familiar with games but I hope that there are some sort of mercy mechanic if you fail five times or whatever where it'll make it like a little bit easier because some of those would require a little bit more coordination oh yeah for sure i mean even us as experienced gamers definitely had some what do I need to do for a couple of deaths and then okay we know what we need to do Can we do it?
00:51:14
Speaker
Yeah. I remember on the pinball level, it was you needed to move some portals to have me jump to essentially move through the section. And then you'd move me through and then you move the thing and I would die. and i'm like,
00:51:29
Speaker
Why do you think that keeps happening? Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's because... And vice versa, too. It was because the thing that I had access to was, like, I needed to shuffle something on the bottom to, like, move the portals over.
00:51:43
Speaker
But it required a certain amount of controller input. I think it was on the left and right triggers or something to actually, like, move the thing. Oh, no, no, It was the left stick to move the portal...
00:51:56
Speaker
enough but not too far because if you move it too far then you die if i don't move it enough then you die um and it was just like it it was a precision problem for me um with the controller um and there's a couple examples like that they're they're pretty uncommon though um overall uh once you figure it out like implementation is is is fairly simple um But yeah, it's it's not enough to take away from it at all.
00:52:26
Speaker
There was very few sequences we were really stuck on for a bit. um Yeah, it's not typically so mechanically punishing where you can't figure it out or even stumble through it in a couple of tries in some cases.
00:52:43
Speaker
Yeah. Definitely not like a stuck on this level. It's been 20 minutes type thing where you would get frustrated. Yeah. um Overall, did you like the ah did you like the science fiction worlds or the fantasy worlds more?
00:53:01
Speaker
You mentioned that fantasy is your your ultimate pick for the Dark Souls one. I really do like the Dark Souls one. I mean, thematically, for the most part, I do think I like the science fiction levels more.
00:53:15
Speaker
There are also a lot of fun mechanics in those levels as well. Right. I think the weakest one for me, which is going to give points of science fiction take away from fantasy.
00:53:27
Speaker
i don't have great memories with the third level. Sure. We're basically as Ella, you'd either transform into a tree or a fairy and have some, as you, as you know, um and Mia would transform between human monkey and fish.
00:53:44
Speaker
Right. ah To be fair, everybody has the human form. They each can be themselves. yeah I would be so fish and monkey were the standards. um The fish was pretty boring. ah I would agree for that level for me. So the fish, the only thing I ever could do with the fish was swim in areas that we otherwise couldn't swim and then like pull you like a tugboat, essentially, um which was like fine, I guess.
00:54:12
Speaker
But it wasn't super engaging. It wasn't the standout. Yeah. Monkey mode, I basically stayed in all the time. I think it's literally faster. You, like, run faster than other modes.
00:54:23
Speaker
You had more abilities. You can climb on things. You can ground pound. um I can understand why you play Donkey Kong is basically what I'm saying. So how do you feel about your transformations, though, for this weaker level?
00:54:36
Speaker
Yeah. The tree was very much you kind of lock into something and then be able to control it, basically helping move some of the terrain so the monkey could get around and um repel across certain services.
00:54:53
Speaker
And the ferry was either me jumping into some light wind and spores ah to connect to the next spot I needed to go.
00:55:04
Speaker
Uh, they also had like a million jumps as the fairy. You didn't have infinite height with it, but it just, as far as movement was concerned, it felt fun to be like this tiny thing that was just kind of going.
00:55:17
Speaker
huh. Yeah. I, ah seeing that and seeing like the mobility, um There's a frame in Warframe that's literally that. It's just the Fairy Queen.
00:55:28
Speaker
And I was like, Dave's getting ah a bit of that experience. It's a little bit less hectic. You don't go a million miles an hour in this game, thankfully. But it was kind of funny to see that.
00:55:39
Speaker
If I could actually interrupt you for a moment. Sure. Just because I'm looking at the time. something we forgot to mention entirely. the side stories. Yeah. They're good. They're really good.
00:55:51
Speaker
ah Just kind of like I actually don't remember if this is in It Takes Two or not. Maybe not. ah But basically, you could have these little one-off adventures within a
In-Depth Mechanics and Execution
00:56:04
Speaker
given level, but it would be entirely unrelated to the area you were in. Yeah.
00:56:11
Speaker
Yeah. Like Candyland, basically. it's It's pretty much Candyland. Candyland, I think, was my favorite. Yeah. Yeah. It's definitely my favorite. i don't I don't know if I remember all of them, but... It was very cute, very whimsical. There was the drawn story.
00:56:32
Speaker
oh you're right. oh that was really good, too. i really... Mainly the horse and the goats I found way too amusing. Yeah. Because for Candyland, it was very whimsical. It's a lot of like platforming, bouncing. It's a very bouncy level.
00:56:48
Speaker
You play as like sweet teeth or whatever, sweet tooth. I think i like a tooth with some sugar or something on top. Toothpaste? Yeah, like toothpaste or something. um But then it all ah culminates in like a horror boss in the form of a dentist ah because this is a memory from five-year-old Ella Mia Mia sorry at Mia um and yeah Mia was having a bad time clearly by the boss but it was a cool boss actually like amongst the last fights in the game there are a couple standouts and that one was pretty enjoyable
00:57:27
Speaker
um But yeah, you mentioned the other side story as well. The drawn. What was the setup for that? What was your takeaway? What was what was cool about that one?
00:57:39
Speaker
ah So basically you go in as like these two dimensional drawings. It's kind of like low poly animations of your characters as you're kind of doing some side scroll platforming. Um, but Ella, as the person writing the story, you're kind of getting her inner monologue of what happens next in this fantasy story. Right.
00:58:01
Speaker
Oh, there's a night we have to save. Oh, we need to give the heroes weapons. Um, what do they fight next? And we kind of got to choose some of that as players. Um,
00:58:13
Speaker
And a lot of it just felt like silly, but like fun silly. Like once we saw we had a chance to fight a crab, Jake just walked over to crap. Didn't say anything to He's just like, we're doing crab. I'm like, yep, yep, yep.
00:58:26
Speaker
Got fight crab. But yeah, it's just, it's it was very lighthearted and wholesome and just like a very cool... the way to bring a player in i don't know yeah it was neat it was like it wasn't very mechanics heavy it was a lot it was closer to narratively driven uh mio actually doesn't speak at all during that section either it's just ella narrating it and there's a term for this i can't remember what it is but when there are visual words being said that like
00:59:00
Speaker
sorry, visual words being written at the same time that they're said. Um, and that is present throughout the entire side story as well. You're seeing like the words that she's writing in quotes, um, like up there at the top. Uh, and that's very cool. i don't know. It's just, it's so different than the rest of it. And the art style is so different.
00:59:21
Speaker
Um, I really enjoyed that. it kind of like when they flex their creativity, the developers, um that's when the games are really at their best.
00:59:31
Speaker
Yes. Level eight. Yes. The final level. Yes. um I think that's where they flex the most because part of it, which I kind of alluded to earlier, there's definitely a little bit of that.
00:59:49
Speaker
hey, you remember everything, right? And you kind of get to go back and like revisit some of the old classics. um But the biggest thing with level eight is normally throughout the entire game of Split Fiction, the split screen is I'm on the right, Jake's on the left.
01:00:05
Speaker
I'm on the right, Jake's on left. There's this nice little dividing line ah right in the middle. Yeah. um But as we moved on the screen, that line moved. And which it also, we were in different worlds. Exactly. Yeah.
01:00:22
Speaker
So like, so cool. As far as the level is laid out, ah as far as what's ground, what's wall, etc. It was laid out the same, but there are certain interactables in Jake's world on the sci fi side that I couldn't see.
01:00:35
Speaker
And conversely, there's some stuff on my side, the fantasy side that he couldn't see or interact with. Yeah. But also being able to like just switch between them as you needed to to progress in certain things and figuring out that way.
01:00:48
Speaker
It was a bit of a mind fuck. It was. But it was a very fun one. Yeah, because it's just that, oh, wait, what? OK, this brings some things into question. start to have your gears start to turn in your brain.
01:01:01
Speaker
Yeah, like and and I kind of wish they played around with it more. I understood that it's the finale, so it had to be like a little bit short. But I love the idea of hidden or like items that function differently in both of our worlds.
01:01:13
Speaker
Like I had a rail gun in mine that I had to use, or like a cannon in mine that I had to use, but it was unavailable in yours. There's one section where like I had to be on the top of the screen, you had to be on the bottom or else we'd screw each other over in the navigation through the worlds.
01:01:28
Speaker
Like there was a lot of cool ideas like that. um And I could fully understand that if you're less adapted to video games as soon as you got to this sort of world you're like i gotta like pause and recalibrate my brain and yeah i it's definitely a bigger jump um mechanically as far as what they were going to demand of you yeah um i still think it is forgiving enough to where hey if you mess up they'll start you over in that thing and you can pick it up fairly quickly yeah
01:02:04
Speaker
Yeah, my my only... The thing I was trying to say is it could be that for people who don't automatically hit the button, like they look at buttons when they're you know hitting controllers and things like that. This level could be particularly mind-effy, basically, compared to even the rest of the game ah because of the dimensions you're jumping between.
01:02:25
Speaker
um They had like even a moment in the cutscene where the split kind of like... cut through a character and so they're like wearing their sci-fi gear and then like the split moves over and they're instantly in their fantasy gear and it's just seamless it's technically awesome it's technically awesome um Such a cool finale.
01:02:48
Speaker
um The boss ah the bos fight was cool too, I guess. It was okay. It's not actually my favorite boss fight, but the thematics are there for it at least. Well, before we wrap, did you have a ah favorite boss fight that jumps to mind?
01:03:05
Speaker
Ooh. So I really liked i really liked the ah the the stone dragon, although that boss fight kind of more of a series of puzzles than an actual fight. There are some boss fighting sections leading into that.
01:03:19
Speaker
um Crap. I know it's probably basic. I think I'm going to say is it a dark? New dark me. ah Oh, my gosh. What are you talking about? Absolutely. That's by far the best one. Yeah.
01:03:33
Speaker
Yep.
01:03:35
Speaker
Instantly, instantly the best boss fight. ah I knew like the character was edgy um and like it's very over the top evil.
01:03:48
Speaker
And then they get like a glowing scythe. was like, this is Jake.
01:03:55
Speaker
It's such a cool. So this happens. This was in six, right? This was the final boss of six. um The thing that threw me off is we're following like a visual. I have like a visual guide over here with ideas for each level. And there's a different boss in six. That's not like the final boss.
01:04:13
Speaker
um But. Yeah, dark Mio is all of the repressed i hurt and aggressive feelings and basically the dark side to everything that Mio has gone through in her life.
01:04:27
Speaker
um And so she has to face this. And it's basically a sci-fi. i It could be an enemy in fury again, basically going back to that very easily.
01:04:41
Speaker
Red energy blade scythe. um You had to do more actual fighting of the boss. i Yeah, this is one of the ones where, again, we have different mechanics and Jake was able to hack inside and had to do things literally inside the boss.
01:05:01
Speaker
Yeah. Whereas I was outside having to dodge things from the boss until I could get them to... ah punish thing and then I'd use my grab powers next to him to open up something for Jake to do yeah and I was in the the boss's brain mm-hmm I had to like avoid defense systems and things like that and it's just this like cybernetic brain um it's almost kind of psychonauts ask and like how it's portrayed because there's a lot of empty space up there but I'm ah
01:05:32
Speaker
Once you had that vulnerability, the brain hemispheres like split apart and there would be like, um I could assume direct control like Harbinger and Mass Effect and basically like take control of the boss's motor functions um and then help Dave by attacking Dave in ways that he could reflect those attacks back at the boss.
01:05:56
Speaker
It's such a cool idea.
01:06:00
Speaker
um Yeah, I still think like... Sorry, I'll let you finish. Okay, the highlight though is the last sequence. There's a ah quick time event that Dave and I failed multiple times for a reason...
01:06:19
Speaker
And I don't even know if I want to say what the reason is, but the result is very cool. Like we're all spoilers, but you know what? i don't know if you get this one. If you haven't played the game, gotta go play it anyway.
01:06:29
Speaker
It's not even going to spoil it. Jake being withholding. It's just, this it's such a cool interaction. Man, that is the coolest part of the game. Dang.
01:06:40
Speaker
Glad you remembered that. Because my some of the things that can be most impactful in a game is like when you're like oh, this happened. And you like normally you take things for granted. Like it's a video game. It's just because it's a video game, this thing happens. Right.
01:06:53
Speaker
But then if you look at certain things in context or why, you're like, oh, shit, that's actually really well thought out. Damn. Never would have considered that. That was a great example.
01:07:04
Speaker
It's one of those.
01:07:07
Speaker
Yeah, I think they really excel as far as having this uniquely different co-op asymmetric is the word I wanted to look for um where you do have to do things to kind of complement each other to move forward on some stuff.
01:07:27
Speaker
ah Sometimes it leans more onto one side than the other. Yeah, you take turns. There's... Again, I'm really looking forward to my next playthrough with probably someone else. I don't know if I'd want to bug you again, Jake, to be like, do you want to just play as the other characters?
01:07:42
Speaker
yeah um But yeah, I do want to go through that experience so I can and get a taste of what Jake got to do.
Conclusion and Call to Action
01:07:48
Speaker
Right. No, it's definitely a good game for it.
01:07:53
Speaker
um It is overwhelmingly positive. we already have our We've already given our impressions and gushed about it. um Usually the downside that the game has that we mentioned, we have already elucidated.
01:08:05
Speaker
ah Those would be enough for me to reduce my overall impression for a game. Not for split fiction. It's actually just as a video game, incredibly good.
01:08:16
Speaker
As a movie, it's also incredibly good. If you're going to play this game, watch other people play this game. There you go. ah But I would i would i would advise playing it rather than just watching it.
01:08:30
Speaker
It's a good time. I think too many video games um forget the the first principle of, hey, let's have it be fun. That should be the first thing.
01:08:41
Speaker
Are they going to enjoy doing these things in the game or are we just putting those things into like stall time? Yeah. Fun covers a multitude of sins. And video games and life.
01:08:57
Speaker
All right. Well, thank you guys for sticking around. That's Split Fiction. Go out, buy it, play it, support the developer. Let us know your thoughts on it. um Feel free to reach out to us on our socials in the description.
01:09:10
Speaker
And as always, we'll see you in the next one. Have good night.