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S3 Ep213: VGBD - Death
91 Plays3 years ago
MAJOR SPOILERS: Bioshock Infinite, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Final Fantasy 7 (the original), The Last of Us Part I and II
MINOR SPOILERS: Planescape: Torment
Join Dave and Jake as they cover an aspect familiar to many at our skill level in video games - death! I'm surprised they didn't cover this already, but that's Video Game Break Down. Who knows what will be next?
Intro:
SoapstonePodcast@gmail.com
Like our podcast? Like our podcast! We'll post when new episodes are uploaded!
https://www.facebook.com/SoapstonePodcast/
MINOR SPOILERS: Planescape: Torment
Join Dave and Jake as they cover an aspect familiar to many at our skill level in video games - death! I'm surprised they didn't cover this already, but that's Video Game Break Down. Who knows what will be next?
Intro:
- hephestos- Super Mario World Game Over LoFi Hip Hop Remix
- FFXIII OST: Yaschas Massif
SoapstonePodcast@gmail.com
Like our podcast? Like our podcast! We'll post when new episodes are uploaded!
https://www.facebook.com/SoapstonePodcast/
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Casual Chatter
00:00:50
Speaker
How's it going, everyone? Welcome to another episode of Soapstone. My name is Jake. I'm joined by my co-host, as always, Dave. How's it going tonight, Dave? I was going to say, how's it going today, Dave? I was like, nope, just, just to throw it off. It's going okay. It's been a pretty laid back and chill Thursday.
The Doctor's Appointment Fiasco
00:01:09
Speaker
Nothing too crazy going on. Weather's kind of overcast.
00:01:15
Speaker
I had a Sorry, let me ask how you are first. How you doing? I'm good. Cool. All right. Anyway back to me. So I had a doctor's appointment today and I found that out like right before the doctor's appointment I had I set a reminder with a
00:01:34
Speaker
And the A word, it said like, Oh, Hey, like go to the doctor. And I was like, was that it? Like what, what doctor, like what's going on? Um, so I just went to my insurance site and I'm like looking for that specific type of provider. And I just called the first one like, Hey.
00:01:50
Speaker
I don't have anything in my calendar, my notes, but do I have an appointment with you guys? They're like, oh, yeah, like 4 p.m. Like, all right, I'll be there. And this was in person. This wasn't telemedical. Yes, this was this was today, this afternoon. And I literally just like stop what I was doing and I drove over to it.
Balancing Social Life and Podcasting
00:02:09
Speaker
Yeah. I was like, man, I'm glad that I followed up on that thing instead of thinking that I made a made up reminder.
00:02:15
Speaker
Yeah. Reminders. I'm on top of stuff for sure. That's fair. Reminders are lifesavers. Like I didn't. So I was just like, yeah, podcast Thursday, podcast Thursday. And like we had a social engagement I might talk about a little bit later, but like.
00:02:31
Speaker
completely overlaps the standard podcast. I'm like one for one. There's literally no way to get here and it's like two hours away. Um, so I saw this on todoist this morning. It's like, you have some tasks and I was like, okay, I'm like moving some things that are work related. Cause I've, I took the day off and like, um, in advance, it's not like I called in sick or anything. Don't judge me. And, uh, I had like take out the trash and record the podcast. I was like that second one.
00:03:01
Speaker
Right. Okay. Yeah. Let's, let's, let's reach out to Dave and see if we can fix that. Um, and we fixed it ultimately. It's still Thursday. It has been decided. Yeah.
Weekend Vacation Dilemma
00:03:16
Speaker
It was either this or really late, uh, Sunday was the, was the plan, depending on whether I made it back tonight or not.
00:03:24
Speaker
And I didn't know if I would want to possibly early truncate my weekend vacation, if I'm like sick of family, or if I'd be like, but I'm having so much fun here. That's not true. I could probably leave at any point. I could, I could be down there with anybody. I could be down there for a day, be like, that was nice. I'd be like, I want to sleep on my own bed.
The Joy of Beds and Mattresses
00:03:44
Speaker
That is, man, self bed ownership and this life or in Minecraft. Great. It's just great. There's nothing like
The Toast Buttering Comedy
00:03:56
Speaker
it. Yeah. At some point I'm going to change my bed, get a new mattress entirely. And I'll be talking to everybody be like, so I got a new mattress. I'm like, Oh, what'd you get? I don't know what it's called, but it's very, it's very comfortable.
00:04:08
Speaker
Everyone puts down their newspapers, sets their cup of coffee down, lowers their spectacles to look at you, and they're like, a new mattress, you say. Meanwhile, I'm aggressively buttering the toast. Yeah. It's the tenth swipe at the toast. You're just wearing the toast to crumbs on the table in front of you.
00:04:32
Speaker
But of course, you know, still putting the knife back into the butter. So which is the drums in the butter and like an asshole. Also, I'm just I'm still on the skit. Like mid mid sentence, as you're talking about the new mattress, you actually just like scoop up like the tub of butter and if it's a tub, I guess that would be like margarine or something. I don't know. And like the toast and you're just throwing it in the trash while you continue to talk about the mattress.
00:05:02
Speaker
I do like the idea of someone just like idly doing something and just continue to the point of like absurdity. Oh, yeah. Like the barkeep who is, you know, drying the glass. Yeah. So like his hands are bloody or something. But pro tip for buttering toast and really anytime you put a knife to bread, use the backside, the one that's flat. That way you're not pushing into the fucking bread.
00:05:30
Speaker
That's the that's why it's there. I didn't know until somebody told me, huh? I actually didn't know that either. That's the thing like they don't know but they don't nobody tells you this somebody's figured out like wait a second
00:05:44
Speaker
But it makes sense. I just I even knowing that I don't do it very often. Yeah.
Canned Bread and Video Game Deaths
00:05:50
Speaker
I went down an alternate life path where as soon as I realized that like I'm just like ripping the bread up with a butter knife, I was like, this is dumb. So what I started doing is I microwave like a small cup of the butter and then I pour it over the toast as a liquid spread distributed with a knife if you have to. But usually pouring it's pretty good.
00:06:13
Speaker
Usually for sourdough. I would do this for sourdough. You said you do this as a youth or you do this today? If I had sourdough and butter right now, I would leave the podcast and do it in real time.
00:06:26
Speaker
Jason something like what do we had sourdough you think? I think I told you already on the podcast or off but um as a youth I used to take two of like the onion bagels that would come in like a sleeve of six I put it on a plate Upside down and then I'd put like a teaspoon or two of like hard butter Just in the middle of the plate and then I microwaved for 30 seconds. I'm like, oh
00:06:50
Speaker
Oh, look, it's a little butter sponge. And then I would just eat it. I have to spread shit. It was just a plate of deliciousness. Yeah. Butter can't stand up to superior microwaves. It's just like it doesn't have the structural integrity. No, it's a liquid. It's a week. I've been saying this for years. You leave it. It will not last. Get out of here. You're weak. Your butter is weak and it will not last.
00:07:18
Speaker
I will say though, I do judge people. I don't know why. It's just, I think the concept is just that foreign to me. I understand. I did appreciate the reference. Um, but I haven't like those little butter tubs out. Oh, and they just take the cover off. Like, Oh, butter is soft and easy to go. I'm like, why, why? I don't, I get it. It's the spread it, but it's just, I don't like the idea of dairy not being in the fridge.
00:07:47
Speaker
Oh, yeah. No. Yeah. Like room temperature butter. It's freaking weird. You got to put it back in the fridge to better like revolt against that. If you are at a friend's house and they have like a butter tub out, microwave it. And we have already proven that it's going to nothing. Just microwave their butter when they're not looking. And then put it back in. One, one weird, weird, weird tip. But the next time they take off the lid and just like, it just oozes out.
00:08:20
Speaker
Oh, that would be so weird, actually, if it wasn't like a plastic tub, because you basically have oil that at some point I guess would like maybe recongeal. I don't really know what happens. But I mean, what would you think of the temp?
Monopoly House Rules and Roguelikes
00:08:34
Speaker
It's going to recongeal for sure. What would you think had happened, though, if you went to open your butter and it was like oil?
00:08:44
Speaker
I don't know. Especially if it wasn't physically warm to the touch, I'd be very confused. I'd probably throw it out. I'm like, I don't know what's happening here, but some science says this is bad to eat now. You're like, dang it, God. I'm going to buy more butter. It's the same thing. If you see certain specs on your bread, you're like, I don't remember that being there. If it looks soft, just don't eat it. Don't eat it.
00:09:10
Speaker
But do you know what you could eat? What's that? I was actually I can't actually segue to death. So I'm just going to say Guinevere's can bread. There you go. You thought it was done. We're back. No, I guess the episode is about death. Death of that topic. There's
00:09:37
Speaker
So yeah, where would you like to go with this? Talk about lives to begin with? Yeah, it's probably a good baseline. So we're a video game podcast. We mostly talk about video games. One of the things that video games does a lot is it kills people.
00:09:59
Speaker
Like freaking often, be you Sonic on spikes or Sonic in water or Sonic and Dr. Robotnik. Like there's so many ways you can die in video games. Um, or Tails. He goes, Ooh, puts his arms up and it falls on the screen. Yeah. Oh, time runs out. Yeah. Um, or Tails in any situation, Tails always dies. Player two is for the younger brother. We all understand this. Uh, but.
00:10:28
Speaker
Dave actually pointed this out last time to give him some of the credit here that apparently we've never talked about the video game concept of death or how it's been implemented in across our three years of podcasting.
00:10:47
Speaker
14 years of podcasting. You know what's funny is I said three and I was like, I almost said two, but Dave said it was one more than what I expected. So three is the correct answer. Four years though, Jesus, long time. We'll talk about the death of the podcast last. No. So starting off, I figured we could talk about some
00:11:16
Speaker
more classical implementations of death in video games. What do you expect when someone says, I died in the game I was playing? What do you think happens?
00:11:28
Speaker
I mean, modern day stuff, they're playing their game. They were maybe doing a run and then they died or maybe they're playing like Elden Ring and it's just, oh, it's like a boss attempt or a level attempt.
Setbacks in Classic and Modern Games
00:11:44
Speaker
Then you go back to that previous checkpoint you were at.
00:11:50
Speaker
It's, it's gone much further away from like the old arcade ways where it's like, you have to put in more quarters because we made a game bullshit. And that's how we'd stop your time playing. You can't have fun forever. It's, it's going to cost you money. That's important to learn that lesson. What about you? What is your nitric reaction? If I was, if I said like, I just died in this game.
00:12:16
Speaker
Well, if it was you, there's a good chance it actually would be a Souls title and go into one of the later ones. Um, but, uh, it could also be that, that middle group. Um, but for the sake of, uh, types of games we've been playing kind of recently, um, I think, you know, there'd be a good chance. It could be that first legacy approach. You have a number of lives when you die, the game over screen comes up.
00:12:44
Speaker
and you've got to start over. Or if it's an arcade and it's like the original pay to win. Pay to not lose. I think we should coin that. Pay to not lose is what arcades did. Get your continues that way. Which I don't think really, well, obviously it didn't exist as a model outside of games, but like, or arcades, I should say. But,
00:13:14
Speaker
I'm trying to think of older games that let you continue from the midpoint instead of sending you back. I think the oldest ones pretty much were You're Outta Lives, Sorry, Sucko, or whatever they called people back then. And then kick you back to the title screen, right? Suck on a lemon, you mook.
00:13:38
Speaker
I mean, I think the old model was always just as we were saying, trying to like extract money. But at a point when I got to like home consoles, at least for like I'm thinking of like older Mega Man's like, oh, we're going to have like a save state. Hey, did you beat this many bosses? Here's this really long and lengthy passcode that you can input to essentially get you back to that point of the game. Right. So that might not be the same as a. I continue, but it is a form of continuation, right?
00:14:09
Speaker
Yeah, the passcode actually, I'm glad you mentioned that because I didn't have much in the way of details for it, but that really was your first implementation of you screwed up. We get that you screwed up. We're not making you start out at Emerald Hill zone again. You know, like now Sonic didn't do that. You know, I'm going to keep going back to Sonic for some reason. I don't know why. If you ran out of lives, it actually was a game over or I think.
00:14:41
Speaker
Um, I believe so. Yeah. But it might in those games, like they always had mechanics to, oh, you can get an extra life. Yeah. Like Mario's platform was like, Hey, you can, if you know the tricks or you get enough coins or rings or whatever it is, they would reward the player for that experience or skill or knowledge to allow them to keep playing longer by giving them more chances to continue. Right.
00:15:07
Speaker
If you died in a Mario or Sonic, you'd go back to the last checkpoint and try again, but your lives would obviously decrease. Right. Yeah. So that you get like a partial checkpoint and that system. And if you completely ran out of lives, you had a more significant progress drop. I'm thinking of like Mario 64, where I think if your life ran out, you get kicked out of the painting.
00:15:30
Speaker
For whatever world you're in, but if you ran out of lives I think you got like kicked out of the castle or you had to hit a continue screen You didn't lose all your progress, but I'm pretty sure you had to start from like the front of the castle again Yeah And usually wasn't too too bad to get back to where you needed to go in Mario 64 But it definitely was more permanent but that is kind of interesting that
00:15:57
Speaker
I try to think another game that I have the model of if you lose lives, you get out of that versus then you also have like a total number of lives to lose. Yeah. Mm hmm. Yeah, I'm not sure, actually, because this is the hybrid model, right, where it's not putting you back to the very, very beginning of the game and racing all of your progress, but you've taken a penalty for it.
00:16:24
Speaker
Um, I guess legend of Zelda to a certain extent. No, I don't consider heart containers lives because they don't work that way. It's your health bar. Um, but if those ever depleted, you would have like a game over screen, you'd hit continue and it would put you back at like the last significant save area. Um,
00:16:47
Speaker
And I think if you were in a dungeon, it did kick you back to the front. So something similar in that way, but again, their hearts are more like health bars than lives. If you get hit with an attack and it takes three lives, like no one's gonna understand what you're talking about.
00:17:02
Speaker
Yeah, I would say that almost falls under more of the standard, like if you die in game, you go back to the last checkpoint.
Evolving Game Design Philosophies
00:17:09
Speaker
So like Mario Sonic. So in the case of Zelda, if you're in a dungeon, it'd be at the beginning of the dungeon. If you die in the open world, it's, oh, where's the last town you were visiting from? Right. Something like that. So like, I guess some of the topics we've been
00:17:23
Speaker
talking about really touch on like the video game concept of setbacks, right? Like that's what I think of when I think of death in a video game. There will be some setback and like super meat boy, it's basically nothing because you probably died a bunch of times trying to complete the level quickly or complete the level at all. And in fact, the game is straight up like we're gonna show you all of your attempts alongside your winning run.
00:17:50
Speaker
with these duplicate meat boys jumping to their desks like over and over again. But you'll see that winning path just to really like hammer home your accomplishment versus your failures, which I kind of love. Like that's a, that's a great design. It also makes me feel like I designed my own genetic algorithm with my own brain and hands. If you think about it, we're all genetic algorithms in the end. So you're not wrong. Um,
00:18:17
Speaker
But I think the idea of how much of a setback death should be in a game has really changed over the years. And it changes for genres, too. If you're playing something like Civilization, for instance, and you're running a really long-running campaign, it's taking weeks to go through it, and then you fail, you lose at the end,
00:18:47
Speaker
That's going to suck because like, what's your recourse? Do you like save come? Do you go back? Xcom would be the same, right? Like there's an actual like Iron Man mode where, um, you only get like one save file ever. And you could put yourself in a situation where there's no way to recover because you've just lost too many people. It's no longer feasible to beat the game and you only have one save. So you have to start over from scratch.
00:19:13
Speaker
Like those are extreme cases where like the punishment for dying in quotes, losing is much more extreme. You can't like go back four seconds, get a motivational quote and keep going. Yeah, that's...
00:19:30
Speaker
That's one of the reasons I avoid stuff like that. I don't like the idea of, hey, you have stage four cancer and things are just going to progress poorly. You can keep going, but it's going to become progressively shittier. And you're like, I really don't like that versus, oh, like I've been playing some hot lava again recently.
00:19:50
Speaker
And I just platform me and jumpy and shit. And if I die and I need to do a no death run, I restart the level. Or if I'm just going for time, I'm like, Oh, I'm still good on time. And I just go back from like the very last checkpoint, which is usually not too far back. And having those minor setbacks.
00:20:08
Speaker
encourage me to keep playing and pushing forward versus having what you're describing with the campaign of civilization and then investing all the time and energy and then you lose and then you get nothing. It's like playing Monopoly, you know, with your family. You get to the end of it and someone's just like, you landed on boardwalk and there's 100 hotels. You're like,
00:20:34
Speaker
I don't think you're playing legitimate Monopoly right now. I can't have more than four hours, five hours, or four hours before it comes out. Yeah. You also can't buy anything once you're out. I think once the actual pool of tokens for hotels and houses and things, once those are out, you're not supposed to be able to buy any more houses. You have to trade people that already have houses for the houses. I think that was the original. And no one played that way. I don't think anybody's ever played Monopoly legitimately. I feel like it's always house rules.
00:21:04
Speaker
Yeah. Um, but yeah, I mean, I'm, I'm also not a fan of long-term loss. You get to the end and you're in a no wind condition state. The only time I've ever actually beaten XCOM two, I cheated. Cause I just wanted to like go through the game and see what happened and see the enemies and things like that. But the sheer stress of knowing, not even on Iron Man mode, like
00:21:31
Speaker
Probability wise, I'm going to lose people. I'm going to lose resources and it might be harder for me to finish the game. It's too much for my monkey brain and it stresses me out. And so when games like reduce the impact of losing or dying, I'm kind of correlating the two at this point. Um, I'm actually more, more likely to play those games like, um,
00:21:58
Speaker
One example of a game that went super casual with this is Modern Warfare, Call of Duty Modern Warfare. I think it was the first one they started it with. But if you're playing through the campaign and you get shot, or there was a grenade nearby or something like that, you run out of health because you can actually get shot a fair number of times. It is a modern shooter. And you didn't take cover and let your Wolverine X Factor recover your health for you.
00:22:28
Speaker
Um, the screen goes black and you see like a quote from a war general or something like that. And then you're put back like probably two steps, like right before,
Checkpoint Systems in Shooters
00:22:40
Speaker
right. As soon as you entered the combat arena or whatever the hallway. Oh, I can be behind cover. General patent. Yeah. He's like, Oh yeah. If you see the grenade indicator, uh, throw that hit, hit the G key to throw that back. And people were like, Churchill, what do you,
00:22:57
Speaker
What are you talking about? He's having one of his episodes. But I know you've played shooters like that. Did you play the campaigns for Modern Warfare? And how did that impact?
00:23:12
Speaker
Fuck no. You didn't actually play the campaigns at all. Fuck no. It's boring shit. I actually kind of good. I mean, at least when I was playing in college, it was everybody did multiplayer campaign was, Oh, they had a campaign. I didn't even know. Um, I will say at least for when Halo was coming out, um, before we had a lot of friends or people over to play multiplayer, you do a lot of the single player campaign and.
00:23:40
Speaker
I mean, it still had like decently spaced out checkpoints, usually between combat encounters. Never felt too bad, though, from what I recall, unless it was the library. The library can suck a dick. Yeah, no, they should.
00:23:56
Speaker
They should remove it from the game now. That's how bad they kept it for the Master Chief collection. At least there's a button you can flash between old and new graphics while you're being swarmed by flood. I think Halo's a similar example. Those checkpoints were stretched a little bit further out than Cod because Cod had like
00:24:21
Speaker
pretty quick paced action, whereas Halo has more like open areas. Also, I can't speak to Khan as much, but I know Halo had a decent amount of vehicles. So you usually get some of the vehicle to traverse terrain or go to the next checkpoint or have a vehicle battle or spend more large scale versus I assume Call of Duty is typically more, not corridors, but smaller areas, firefights. Yeah, I think
00:24:48
Speaker
I think if you called it a corridor shooter, some people might hum and ha, but ultimately you can still basically be right. So. Yeah, I mean, my personal take is that I actually really appreciated that because I don't like the idea of restarting a level like. I played some old Sega's and Genesis games that made me like restart a level or.
00:25:14
Speaker
Oh, I thought of one. You lose your life, restart at the beginning of the level, lose all your lives, restart at the beginning of the game, comic soon. Oh, dude, great music, but the game was so fucking frustrating for that reason. Yes. And it was made to eat quarters. Like some of those later levels were straight up like the first time you enter this room, you will die because things are just going to be like hitting you from different sides or the screen will start scrolling. There's a death wall, something like that. Um,
00:25:43
Speaker
Or just like a jump. That's like a pixel perfect jump and you're very likely to miss it. It was. Yeah. The snow's almost bullshit, dude. Hey, how do I get hit this guy? Who's on top of this single thing I need to jump on? Oh, let me sacrifice a good portion of my health to make a paper airplane, hit him across the screen, hope it kills him. Fuck that game. First, it was very nice. Yeah, it got really bad. I never beat it. And cause I got to the level you mentioned, I think, or the level right past it. And that was it. But.
00:26:14
Speaker
Um, I'm just not as much a fan of that. Like traditional death and games has you replay content, which I'm like what? 46 years old now. I don't know. Um, but that number's wrong, but, uh, like, is it enjoyable?
00:26:33
Speaker
to replay content anymore no not if you're forced to like if you enjoy doing something it's nice to go back and re-experience it um but if the game is like hey you fucked up do it again hey you fucked do it again unless you're looking for abuse like the later parts of celeste um it it really sucks because you just
Platformers and Checkpoints
00:27:00
Speaker
You know, you're not doing it right. You're not necessarily doing it correctly. I'm now just using Celeste as an example, where like for me, I'm okay at platformers. Not amazing. I didn't do all the challenge stuff with Celeste. And it felt like if I did pass some of that, some of it was like sheer luck.
00:27:21
Speaker
Oh, I hit the buttons in the correct order at the right time. Thank God. It's like, okay, you've made it to the next one. I'm like, thank God. Cause I don't want to do that again. Cause I don't know if I could cause it felt like it was luck was heavily a factor. Yeah. If you're forced to do the content again and you're not enjoying it, it's, it always heavier.
00:27:41
Speaker
I agree. I think the points I would give Celeste is if I recall correctly, you can correct me if I'm wrong, but if you do a puzzle right, you can move through it pretty quick and then you're probably getting to a checkpoint or something like that.
00:27:58
Speaker
really make you replay content, but I could be wrong. Maybe if you run out of lives, it actually does make you start at the beginning of the level. It doesn't have any concept of lives, but the game is pretty quick. So if you do die, boom, you kind of phase out and get back to the start of that room or whatever the checkpoint is that you can do again.
00:28:20
Speaker
Yeah, my brain was like confusing the strawberries with like lives. I was like, it's a fruit. Obviously it's a life. I've played Yoshi's story. Um,
Dark Souls and the Art of Setbacks
00:28:31
Speaker
yeah. And that one, I don't mind as much, but like, if you've overcome where I would put my line in the sand is don't make me re overcome an obstacle I've already overcome. So like an inevitable thing that we were going to get to on the list is like dark souls. Right. Um,
00:28:48
Speaker
knowledge is way better than skill in Dark Souls. Like, if you're trying to clear the game, we're trying to beat PvP, you kind of need both skills kind of nice. But like, you can get by, you can avoid so many deaths in Dark Souls if you're just like, I know where the enemies are, right? And because of that, it doesn't feel like you're overcoming the same obstacles over and over again, unless you're choosing to
00:29:18
Speaker
you know, fight all of the enemies, even the ones you don't have to. So if the game kills you, it might make you rerun a section, but you're not, very rarely is it anywhere near the same level of obstacle it was the first time. No, and usually like you've killed enemies along the way in the previous run, so you're still making a net gain. You're not losing all of your progress. You've gotten up into this point. It doesn't boot you back to,
00:29:47
Speaker
the undead asylum. Yeah, right. It doesn't. Hey, all your weapons are gone. Yeah, you keep everything you pick up. And maybe if you were exploring a side path and you got the drops and then you died, there's no reason for you to go back there anyways, right? Like there's a whole bunch of mitigating factors that allow you to approach the situation in a different way than just like, I'm going to continue to rerun content. Because
00:30:15
Speaker
rerunning content is just miserable. It's the same concept as like an unskippable cutscene to me. And an unskippable cutscene that you'll see again if you die to a boss. Never do this, right?
00:30:33
Speaker
No. Yeah. Like I understand if I fucked up a thing, but like, let me skip things that I don't necessarily need. Just assume that like everybody's busy and they maybe want the option to skip and leave it at that. Exactly. There's a lot of fun things to do and continuing to see more of your game is what I'm probably invested in. Not revisiting the parts that I've already defeated or vanquished or overcame.
00:31:02
Speaker
Unless I'm talking about farming, I do that way more than any reasonable human should, but that's completely separate.
00:31:08
Speaker
Well, something similar to that is like roguelikes. I was thinking of Hades. You obviously have one life overall. I know you can technically have extra lives, but it just technically chips into your overall health pool before you get booted out of the run, so to speak. But whenever you die, it's because of your lack of skill or maybe you discovered something new you didn't know how to deal with yet.
00:31:36
Speaker
Yeah. Could be knowledge. Still translates to possibly lack of skill or lack of knowledge. And then you're still making progress overall. It's going to be different next time.
Roguelikes and Meta Progression
00:31:44
Speaker
You're not necessarily going back to replay the exact same content. You're just like, hey, you did OK. Let's do better next time. And you keep pushing yourself forward to get past a block to see if you can make more progress in the game. But you're still unlocking more things, making more progress, always moving forward, never losing everything.
00:32:05
Speaker
I would agree with both of those points. One of them is make a new path. You're not set in stone with the old RNG. You can try something. Something else will be the challenge this time. Maybe you encounter the same enemy that killed you the first time. Maybe you don't. Maybe it's something else. You don't know. That novelty is enough to kind of
00:32:29
Speaker
put you back into it. And then the meta progression, which I think is like essential for any roguelike that I'm actually going to care about. Um, because I want my failures to also improve my chances of success and making it really far in Hades and then dying still improves your chances of success. You still got resources. Um, so if you make it all the way, I'm not going to talk about anything. If you make it all the way in Hades, but, um, like,
00:32:59
Speaker
I'm a big fan of you changed the state of the board. Like I failed. Okay. Let's change the state of the board and try again. And I think Hades even has like, if you disagree with everything I said and you're like, I want to face the exact same challenge. I think if you like reset your run, you get the same seat. So if you're like about to die, you could be like, oh, no, I want to do exactly this again. You can. Um, which I feel is.
00:33:30
Speaker
Not necessarily cheating, but I would definitely gamify it like, oh, I don't want that. Power up. I want this one instead. And change your path until you find. Again, doing a genetic algorithm like, this is the perfect run, and I'd still fuck it up somewhere. Right. But I think like rogue likes and rogue likes and rogue lights. Well, let's say that 10 times fast. They kind of get a pass on this.
00:33:58
Speaker
I have a completely separate concept of death. They're like, you this is within the concept of one run was the term used earlier. And so because they're operating in that space, they kind of sidestep the entire issue of how should we deal with death? You're like, well, it's the game like we expect you to die like tens or hundreds of times before you actually complete it. So good on them, you know,
The Hardcore Mode Challenge
00:34:29
Speaker
There's a lot of good games in that space. FTL also. Single Life. Retry. Games sounds familiar. Yeah.
00:34:40
Speaker
Yeah, actually, it does sound like. How do you feel about hardcore games? Oh, I was going to say, we were saving this for the next episode, too. My go-to example is going to be Diablo II is when I first learned about that because they had ladder. I'm like, what is this? Oh, it's a mode where you can't play with any of your friends for whatever reason. You won't understand until years later. I'm like, OK, cool.
00:35:06
Speaker
And there's hardcore for, if you died at any point, you could never play that character again. People would later use this as a badge of honor. I mean, obviously this is an impressive feat to do, but a lot of ARPGs tend to do this. Like Path of Exile has a hardcore mode or a hardcore league.
00:35:28
Speaker
I'm scared because I lose stuff in Minecraft and then I panic cry as I'm sprinting back to take up stuff from my body. I wouldn't want to lose something forever when I've spent however many hours. Yeah. This is kind of like it's like that Iron Man mode I was talking about in XCOM 2, but even more advanced. You can't retry that one save. Your save is white if you die, right?
00:35:54
Speaker
And you mentioned Minecraft. Actually, that reminds me. Did you see the recent news article? I didn't, actually. I have an old piece of news article. Maybe it'll be similar. You should describe the new one first. So the one I heard about by just scrolling through Reddit, apparently it's somebody who is prolific for playing a lot. Minecraft and hardcore
00:36:14
Speaker
Apparently, they finally lost their save after like 10 years almost. Oh, dang. It's like at least 3600 days. It was very close to 10 years. I don't know. I don't know what I'd do at that point. Play a different game. I'd start a new family at that point. I'd change my whole life. I'd be like, never again. Will you hurt me this way?
00:36:39
Speaker
Yeah. The story I heard, I knew about was a couple of years old and it was similar to that, but it was nowhere near the scale of like 10 years. It was like five years or three years or something like that. 10 years is actually kind of crazy because like there's literally a saying like spent, if you'd spend 10 years, you can master something and then do something else. You should take that advice. If you spend 10 years and then your save gets wiped in Minecraft. Um, cause my goodness.
00:37:07
Speaker
Um, to the concept of hardcore though, I agree with you. I'm a filthy coward. Um, I will run from that situation. Uh, but I also concede that I have played games that were kind of like a mandatory hardcore mode where it's like, Hey, if you, if you die, there's going to be major loss. Um, and it does raise the stakes, right? Like.
00:37:36
Speaker
You continue to use Minecraft as an example because you brought it up. This is on you. And I've been playing it recently. Like I have a full enchanted set of armor. I have an enchanted bow. I have an enchanted sword. When I say enchanted, I mean like perfect enchantments almost. It depends on whether you consider thorns worth it or not. But other than thorns, everything, right? If I just fell into lava, I didn't have like fire resist and I died, my stuff would all be instantly destroyed.
00:38:06
Speaker
This this is a deep psychological fear that I have if I'm running around fully kitted out. Because you can lose it all instantly, right? Like all of it. Yeah, it's spooky. I've had it happen many times.
00:38:26
Speaker
I mean, sometimes you've been playing enough where you have like, Oh, well I have enough funds or resources to, you know, remake that not, not a huge deal. Um, but I mean, like that first time for sure. You're just like, I got all the diamond. Oh fuck. I am burning. And it's just the worst feeling. Cause you're like, I'm losing, I'm losing everything. And then it's, uh-huh.
00:38:50
Speaker
It's literally why I bring a bucket of water with you. I'm like, no matter what now, if you can't like block the lava, you can put yourself out, you know, with a bucket of water, unless you're in the nether, you're screwed.
Horror Games and Death Penalties
00:39:00
Speaker
If you're in the nether, you make one mistake. Put bucket on head. I don't have to see myself die. Yeah. Um, but yeah, I mean the psychological aspect of that, it raises the stakes if you know that failure is, uh, approaching.
00:39:17
Speaker
Or if you know that a misstep will cost you significantly. And that forces you to be more invested. What kind of game? Horror games. Usually the penalty is death. Usually you know what the penalty is. Usually you know it's going to be some horror, horrific, spooky, scary way. And it's always like that threat that's looming and chasing you. Not for all horror games, but for evade the monster type.
00:39:47
Speaker
Yeah, I would argue like if you're one of the newer Resident Evils and you're playing as like Chris or Jake or somebody like that, um, it's not really a horror game anymore. If you're super powerful and you're fighting back with equal or greater strength than the things that are chasing you. Um, sorry to agree with you in the general case, like actual horror games, pretty much always have you be weaker than the monsters. Cause if not.
00:40:14
Speaker
What are you doing? They're probably running from you or something, right? You play as God versus tarantulas. He doesn't like them, but he can destroy everything. Yeah, exactly.
00:40:29
Speaker
So hardcore is I appreciate the people that are in it. You also, as a really inconsequential, almost side note, if you put hardcore in your game, make sure your game doesn't have bugs. Because if I fall through the world in hardcore, or there's like a network blip or something like that, and three arcane elite packs all laser me at the same time, we're going to have words.
00:40:55
Speaker
F. But it's definitely an interesting approach. I think some people were either more sadistic or just more brave than I, but I'm not a risk taker. I'm not a gambler. I think that's fair.
00:41:24
Speaker
We talked about one other type when we talked about Dark Souls a little bit, which is like a game where death is a mechanic, but it's also not like the end of your run. It's like the world state continues. You don't reload. You don't see a nice church hell of a quote. You don't have to spin up a new man. You can just, and you automatically, most of the time, just continue from a fixed state.
00:41:54
Speaker
So like I actually hadn't, I think you said like the bonfires or checkpoints. And as soon as you said that, I realized that that's a hundred percent true and I didn't think of them that way. Um, but that is literally the case. Uh,
00:42:17
Speaker
But like Dark Souls is an interesting example of that. You keep all of your advancements, but your penalty are all the souls you're carrying on you.
Risk and Reward in Games and Life
00:42:25
Speaker
So you get to pick your own risk tolerance, I think, which goes back to that question of like, how much should it suck to die? And in Dark Souls, it might not suck at all, right? Like if you don't have any souls on you, you're like fast traveling back to bonfire, you know? It's freaking fine.
00:42:47
Speaker
Uh, but it could be like, it could be devastating if you had just killed like a major boss. You're like, I'll spend these souls at some point to fall off a cliff. Yeah. You go to recover fall once more. It's, it's balancing that risk reward.
00:43:07
Speaker
Even people who play Dark Souls like ourselves, you're like, I have the competence to get to this next point alive and hit the bonfire, cash in or whatever. And then you die to some dumb shit.
00:43:23
Speaker
because you just got cocky or there's one extra enemy you forgot about or something. Something happens and then you lose it all. And then you're like, okay, I'm going to do a death run. I'm going to sprint to where my body is, get my souls, and then cash in immediately. No, no side stops. And you stop the 7-11 on the way. You're like, right. You got to get an energy shrink, right?
00:43:46
Speaker
You're not running the whole way on that stamina bar? No, you're going to grab some green grass. It is nice though when it is opt-in because then you're all like, well, that was my bad. Yes. You're not blaming the game for, I mean, you probably are to a degree.
00:44:02
Speaker
But it's an opt in. I'm willing to risk my death and loss. Yeah. For the chance of these gains. Yeah. And I've had that. Like what you're describing now, I 100% agree. Like there's a moment where that you died came up and you're like,
00:44:21
Speaker
This was 100% avoidable. And why was I risking all of these souls at this point in the game? I could have run backwards 10 feet and spent them all. But my hubris, the hubris of man, the dark soul that permeates us all, it drove me to this.
00:44:43
Speaker
And yeah, I mean, that's a much better outcome, I think. Because even if it does cause emotional damage, you recognize yourself as the ultimate cause and not, you know, something wrong on the game's part, hopefully.
00:44:58
Speaker
I feel like it's instinctual even outside of games to a degree. There are a lot of times I will go to the kitchen, make some food and have like, Oh, I have a plate of food. I'll have a drink and have one other thing. And then I'm like, Hey, how can I awkwardly put something in my mouth to carry and then balances other stuff all on one hand while I'm carrying something else in my other hand and then make this all back to, um, my bedroom where I have my desk versus, you know, taking them one by one.
Immortality and Narrative in Games
00:45:28
Speaker
And it's just no, no, no, I'll just I'll do it all. It's the it's the young boy shopping bag problem. How do we get all these bags in in one trip? Yeah. Now we have scoliosis. Yeah, you pick the risk and the reward, the reward of bringing everything in or the risk of scoliosis. I put all my stats into badassery and I have no no vitality. Yeah.
00:45:55
Speaker
I thought of I know we're going to we're going to talk about some other aspects of death. I thought of one middle. I'm just going to slide this into the middle of this segment for a game I remembered but didn't think about. OK. At all. And I know that you won't be able to be able to talk much about this unless you had a completely different upbringing than I thought you did. But Planescape Torment.
00:46:26
Speaker
Is a game that is entirely based around the fact that your character is immortal. I want to spoil some Planescape torment stuff. It's, it'll be in the description. It sounds like an old EDOS game. Yeah. Planescape torment. Let me look up the release date real quick here. Uh, 1999. Um, now it's towards the end of 1999, but it's pretty old.
00:46:52
Speaker
But it was all like, it's like Baldur's Gate or Neverwinter Nights or like any of that crap. Um, leading up into the Larian's new games, that type of game. And you play as the marked one and you wake up and it's almost like, um, uh, what's the movie where the guy doesn't remember anything. So he puts, uh, he puts a Polaroids all over the place. He's like, Hey, don't trust this person. And do you know what I'm talking about?
00:47:22
Speaker
The Arnold Schwarzenegger movie? I don't think it's Arnold Schwarzenegger. Somebody else. Some other white guy with frosted tips. Crap. Why can I not think of this? Uh, I'm sure I've seen it. It sounds like a nineties movie or yeah. Nineties. Um, I'm blanking on it though. Memento. Okay.
00:47:45
Speaker
Memento, I had to look it up. Google had my back. But anyways, in Planescape Torment, you play as the marked one and like there's literally, you'll find like a strip of your flesh and it'll be like, don't trust this person or here's like a key piece of intel and you're like, that is very weird, right? But it's because your character is immortal.
Impactful Deaths and Emotional Investment
00:48:10
Speaker
Your party members are not actually. So the risk is if you get into a bad fight,
00:48:16
Speaker
you're not going to be sent into a game over situation, but your party members might die. Like your guy will just like time will pass and then he'll just get back up. Like fully healed. And there's parts in the game where it's like beneficial for you to die. But if you're putting other people in that situation, they might lose.
00:48:35
Speaker
So really, like back in 1999, they were playing with this concept of like death and immortality and rebirth. And like you literally would find limbs of your main character throughout the game. Like, here's a dangerous room with spike traps and stuff. And you're like, there's an arm over there. That's my arm, actually. Which I thought was just really, really, really cute and funny. But yeah, that was my that was my honorable mention.
00:49:06
Speaker
Do you have like a particular game that you thought or think dealt with death in an interesting way? But you didn't expect me to turn around with like a surprise question after a monologue. Minesweeper? Yeah, you get that sad face with like the X's for eyes and it's pretty dramatic.
00:49:32
Speaker
So maybe jumping out as much to me regarding that specifically, if not as a mechanic, what about like a meaningful death or something that stood out for you within the story of the game? I mean, I'm still a whore for Bioshock, so I'm always tempted to lean that way. And there's actually two. I'm I'm ignoring Bioshock, too, obviously. Obviously, you're talking about the first guy you hit with a wrench in Bioshock one. Rest in peace.
00:50:01
Speaker
For me, it's probably Booker DeWitt from Bioshock Infinite. Because like the whole game you play as him. So like plot wise, like it has a lot more meaning to it at the end. And you got the end of the game. It all ties together nicely. But also you have discovery about who you are as a character, etc. Right.
00:50:28
Speaker
No, it's it's very plot driven, but it's impactful and it's final. Yeah. And you you are dying as the main character, right?
00:50:39
Speaker
Whereas another iconic, but not necessarily as impactful to me, is the death of a character in a game. So Aerith is an easy peasy example for Final Fantasy VII. She's a part of your party. You give her fucking bangles, and then she loses it all when she slips on a knife and dies.
00:51:00
Speaker
Yeah, right. Is that kind of logically how it happened? I thought it was a Sephiroth down here, but you might be right. It's spikes, dude. Just like Sonic. We're right back there to Sonic. You gotta watch out for spikes.
00:51:15
Speaker
Um, but to be fair, like that in a game is a scripted death. Whereas what we were talking about something like with XCOM. I mean, I guess they're more expendable. They're not a part of plot. They're not written into the story in the same way.
00:51:31
Speaker
You say they're expendable, but maybe you literally spent time building like equipment for them or training them. Like you could have a favorite expendable. True. Yeah. But I mean, it's not like everybody's going to know Johnny because not everybody made Johnny as a character. They don't show up in cut scenes. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
00:51:53
Speaker
So I think those are the big ones that like jump out at me for like a knee jerk memory. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I really like the Booker DeWitt one because that was already like the tone of death matters a lot. And they built so much up to this culmination. It's like you're riding the roller coaster up to the drop. You're like you hear the individual clicks as it's going up the.
00:52:21
Speaker
the rail and then it hits. And you might have figured it out beforehand. This actually ties back to the audience should figure it out right before you tell them. Like Bioshock Infinite was basically designed to do that.
00:52:37
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, they did a really good job. Because like, they're goading you the whole time of like, hey, here's this evil guy, Comstock, he's bad, right? Yeah, he's bad. And he should be punished for all these awful things he did. Yeah, 100%. And you're like, no matter what, it's like, yeah, fuck him. It's you're like, oh, you're like atoning for your sins. And you're like, oh, shit. Yeah. But it all happens with like, that kind of
00:53:05
Speaker
You find out and you have like this emotional whiplash and then it's an important impactful death as a part of a story. Yeah. Um, or if like a character dies, who's a part of your party throughout like a major RPG. It's impactful because like you've built a relationship with that character. You know, their personality, their quirks, you know, their move set and where they're useful. And now they're gone. Yeah.
00:53:30
Speaker
I actually, um, yeah, I mean, Aerith could, you literally lost her, um, uh, material or anything else you had on you and the game knew you were making her the main healer. It's like, she's got such great healing skills. Of course you're putting all this great stuff on her so she doesn't die gone.
00:53:46
Speaker
Is there an equipment chest? I can kind of like reclaim the stuff that she had. Nope. Gone. Out of the game. Also, to dick you over, you're like, oh, why don't you just reload the last save? Yeah, that's like 30 minutes back. Yeah. Because the game hates you. And two, they put a couple of long cut scenes in there. Mm hmm. You can pay for save randomly. You had to do save at the checkpoints. Yep.
00:54:12
Speaker
It's probably bad form, but I'm gonna continue on the Bioshock discussion for a second, because I realized that there was actually a couple, in the previous way, the way they dealt with death. Like Bioshock one, I think you just show up at like a Vita chamber. So you're probably short of all of the resources used in the fight that you ultimately lost, which was like ammo, Eve, like med packs, whatever. That was how death cost you.
00:54:38
Speaker
Two was basically the same, but they actually kind of gave a reason for why you were responding at the vital chambers. But three, or Bioshock Infinite, I forgot about this until you were talking about the ending again. But like, Elizabeth's pulling you through interdimensional doors back into the fight, which you don't even think about for like the whole game. You're like, that's cool. Guess I didn't die.
00:55:03
Speaker
But you did. You did every single time. And Booker died every single time anyone else died as him. But Elizabeth is literally pulling Booker from a different reality to continue to try to accomplish what's being done. You did die. The game just keeps going with a different Booker.
00:55:26
Speaker
the prestige it's yeah it's the proceed it's so freaking good like i i guess the pause there and the podcast actually doesn't do anything for the listening so i apologize for that no it it built to the prestige joke so ah yes yeah yeah that was that was the whole point of this episode
00:55:42
Speaker
That is true. The other one I want to spoil with an impactful death is actually, this is basically the only point I'll ever give Call of Duty. But this is the reason I said like the campaign was really good in modern warfare.
00:56:01
Speaker
You have this whole mission to go and disarm a nuke that's in this vaguely Middle Eastern town. And you're like, all right, let's freaking go, because Ramirez, get on that gun. I don't think you play Ramirez in this one.
00:56:16
Speaker
like you're going to succeed. You're Cod God, right? Like you're a teenager, you got your microphone, you got your Xbox controller, you're, you're not going to fail. Um, and then you literally do because it's part of the story that as you guys are evacing, like the nuke goes off and your helicopter goes down and the game doesn't be like, like come in with a screen that's like, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun. It's just like,
00:56:44
Speaker
You open your eyes and you're in this hellscape of this post nuclear explosion. You crawl around for a bit. If you try to like get up, you might climb up and then fall back over and there's like the blood splatter and stuff like that. And then you die.
00:56:59
Speaker
And the camera zooms out and it goes to the tactical map and it shows your character's information and just puts an X through them. They're killed in action. And it goes over to the SAS, I think, perspective. And from that point on, that person never comes back. You die as part of the story. And I actually remember being impacted by this because
00:57:23
Speaker
Where's my reload, right? Like, why did I not get a checkpoint before the nuke went off and I can just go back four seconds? They make you live through it, which is a lot. And it was a lot more tactful than like no Russian or something like that. So anyways, that's the only point I ever get caught.
00:57:51
Speaker
I like that this is the second time you've told a full story at length, but I like how impassioned you get for it. Obviously, it did leave an impact on you if you've shared the story multiple times. Yeah, I mean, like you don't know if you're going to make it like you feel like until the moment you actually die, there's a way out of the situation in the game. I think you can.
00:58:11
Speaker
It's a game, right? So yeah, you always just make certain game assumptions like oh This is this is the part of the cutscene and then you're gonna continue on doing the thing It's just a cutscene where I have to like hold forward the left stick very slowly. Yeah, right and then subversion ban to the detriment of cod I think they use a similar twist and like
00:58:36
Speaker
Continued games they start killing off the main character like more than seems reasonable I don't even remember the occurrences and I'm not gonna tag that as a spoiler for anything Just assume if you're playing cod your main character dies at some point It's like game. It's like Game of Thrones just assume a character you like They can they can never hurt you assume all your favorite characters die
Player vs NPC Deaths
00:59:01
Speaker
But yeah, that was I mean, mine was a full story, so I would leave my point with with Cod there. And they get the they get the impactful death for me.
00:59:13
Speaker
Would you say for all the games you've played and you can think of in like the next 20 seconds, do you think for yourself it's been more impactful or you have a more impactful story of when your character died, like in that example, or when a character in your game died, like an NPC in your party or just. Hmm. I don't want to start like naming examples with more spoiler tags.
00:59:42
Speaker
I know, I know. And like my brain immediately goes to examples. Um, crap. I'm going to spoil one, but we did an episode on it already and it'll be in the disclaimer. I'm going to do the last of us to part two. Okay. Um, cause like, and also actually part one, cause for spoiling part two miles, we'll spoil part one. Um,
01:00:12
Speaker
So Ellie doesn't die at the end of part one, but she almost does, right? Like Joel might not have made it there in time. Maybe there was a reality where he wasn't an absolute psychopath and chose to kill all those people anyways. But you've literally spent the entire game building up a relationship with this other character. Joel, as he's fine,
01:00:42
Speaker
He's okay, right? Like he's supposed to be the guy who has the questionable backstory and it's like, this is his road to redemption, is this little girl and all this
Emotional Stakes in The Last of Us
01:00:50
Speaker
stuff. He does what he needs to to survive. Yes, exactly. Very gruff, gruff old man. But like Ellie is the human character. She's likable and she's capable and she becomes more capable throughout the story and
01:01:07
Speaker
You the game puts you and we talked about this in our discussion and that paternal role almost of like you want to take care of this character. You get to the end of the game and it's like she may die and it's for a completely justifiable cause. And you're like, ah, I understand why he killed so many innocent people just to save her.
01:01:36
Speaker
But imagine if she did die, right? Like, what if the last was part two? I would still be a good game, and I would just be sad. Yeah, well, yeah. Then you're actually just sad. Instead of just like whatever emotion you feel at the end of it when you realize she doesn't trust him anymore, you know? Oh, yeah, you also feel that in a different way. Yeah. It's like things can never be the same again versus like things have changed forever, if that makes sense. Exactly. But like if they had done that,
01:02:07
Speaker
there would have been such a finality to it. To where if they're like, hey, we're doing the last of us too, I'd be like, why? Joel and zombie Ellie, let's go.
01:02:19
Speaker
But I mean, like that's, that's the one that I think of. If you, if you ask the question of your own character versus a secondary character, like there's a lot of protagonists I play where I really don't care about them. If they die, it should be at the end of the game. Cause it makes sense. And maybe you make it good. Like in Bioshock infinite, but like.
01:02:43
Speaker
a good side character who's well-written and supports you, that's potentially a much greater loss, I think.
01:02:54
Speaker
Yeah, it's I think hard to make you as like the single player main character like I'm invested in who my character is because usually just looking at from like this is the lens of I'm playing as me. I am my avatar is this person and let's go into game and play. And so. If you do die in a story game, depending on flesh that your character is, it might just be kind of
01:03:23
Speaker
Not the same. Whereas with Bioshock Infinite, a big part of that was because of the relationship. If you were just Booker and going through, it wouldn't have the same impact, wouldn't have the same meaning. And I don't think you'd care as much. Yeah. And they play on like this and they actually play on similar notes, right? They want you to be attached to Elizabeth.
01:03:48
Speaker
and your efforts are to save her, to prevent her from being captured. I don't think she's at risk of dying, really, but it's literally to remove her from the situation. Flipping it on its head, because it would be really weird if I said I was going to spoil part two and I didn't mention it. I kind of didn't care when Joel died. I was just like, it's Joel.
01:04:16
Speaker
And again, like it was, it was really justified. Oh yeah. It made sense. Um, like you, you felt Ellie's pain still, like when he died. Yeah. Through Ellie though. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And that's, I mean, they did a really good job on that. They allowed you to assume control of a different character.
01:04:41
Speaker
and you're still emotionally attached to that character. You know, if Ellie died, you know, then you're just like, ah, that kind of sucks. Also, that was really gruesome. Do I have to see that particular death sequence? Fucker. Fucker.
Philosophical Musings on Loss
01:04:54
Speaker
Yeah. I just hope somebody has gotten to this part of the episode. They're like, I played that game. I get that joke. Uh-huh. That's what anything passed the hour mark. Those are for the advanced fans. It's all inside.
01:05:09
Speaker
Yeah, I feel like the moral is don't become too attached to anybody because nothing's permanent. The stronger relationship you build and the more well written that character is, it's going to hurt more. Or
01:05:26
Speaker
You just get like, develop your social links with everybody, because it's better to have the experience and care about them and lose it than to have never loved it all.
01:05:41
Speaker
I feel like you just came up with that on the spot. It's not from anything or Shakespeare. Um, I think it literally is better to have loved and lost than never. Was that Shakespeare? Yes, I think so. I probably saw it on my space. But yeah, it is, it is a mentality that I've adopted over time. I don't think it's ever like a full,
01:06:10
Speaker
Oh, just recite my mantra and things will be fine. Type of thing. Fear is the mind killer. Yeah, it's mind flare. But yeah, I mean, you can't change everything. I feel like I should have to explain that to anybody. That's not how we're having the talk. Listen, body, body.
01:06:37
Speaker
But there's always been like certain inevitabilities in games or life. And you got to keep playing. You still got those continues. Actually, you have to continue constantly. Yeah, actually. Never stop mashing the button. Basically, your life is always mashing buttons.
01:07:02
Speaker
It's like the Stanley parable thing where it's like you have to hit a button so the baby doesn't like enter the fire or whatever. We're all just hitting that button all the way through. But me as somebody who doesn't want kids won that game very quickly. Or I guess lost the game very quickly. Burn baby burn disco inferno.
Conclusion and Listener Engagement
01:07:23
Speaker
Yeah. I don't know how you end an episode like this.
01:07:33
Speaker
What if that was it? What if we just did it right then? I was heavily considering it. It also is very late. So my brain's like, eh. Yeah, that's fair. Well, um, if you guys have thoughts on these topics, maybe you have, I reluctantly ask a favorite death in video games or the most impactful. Uh, you can always feel free to send that in to show up some podcast at gmail.com.
01:07:56
Speaker
Or you could join the discussion on Facebook, a dying platform, at facebook.com slash soapstone podcast. And as always, we'll see you in the next one. Have a good morning.
01:08:27
Speaker
you