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S1 Ep17: Pyre
76 Plays7 years ago
Join us for a light spoiler (read: you can listen and then play) episode of Pyre, the latest of Supergiant's superb...giant games!
Like the Pyre music samples in this episode? Check out the awesome OST on Supergiant Games bandcamp! (but keep in mind - playing the game and experiencing the tracks is a lot of the experience)
https://supergiantgames.bandcamp.com/album/pyre-original-soundtrack
Thoughts? Comments? Requests for new episodes? Feel free to email them in!
SoapstonePodcast@gmail.com
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Transcript
Exile and Redemption through Forbidden Knowledge
00:00:01
Speaker
Freedom! Dare you tamper with forbidden knowledge? So soon after your sentence into exile, it is true what the book says. You can be free again. Perhaps not you yourself, but someone worthy of the privilege. You witness now the path toward salvation.
00:00:29
Speaker
You witness the rights, the one way to return to glory. Though in your case, I hardly think it possible. Yet by the grace of the scribes, it is my duty to inform you anyhow.
Introduction to Soapstone and Pyre
00:01:26
Speaker
How's it going, everybody? Welcome to yet another episode of Soapstone. My name is Jake. I'm joined by my co-host, as always, Dave. How's it going tonight, Dave? Going all right, Jake. Feeling pretty caffeinated? Yeah, I'm really enjoying this cold brew. It is quite tasty. Yeah. They've gotten me cold brew in the past, so I'm trying to return the favor. It also lends a certain edge to the podcast.
00:01:47
Speaker
How do you think it's going? Good, good, good, good. Yeah, it's great. Yeah, it's good game, good game. So what is the good game that we're talking about today? Today is one of my favorites, the long awaited Pyre by Supergiant. Oh, yes. I've been trying to get some Supergiant games in here for a while. Not like actively pushing for it, but casually suggesting it. We knew it was on the list.
00:02:09
Speaker
Yeah, it's it's hard to avoid them because I feel in the gaming community. There's such big impacts. Yeah, like with Bastion Transistor and Alpire.
00:02:18
Speaker
Yeah, they've really earned their keep, so to speak. And they're one of those studios that don't really ship misses for me. There's a couple companies like that that are out there developing games that I've always enjoyed and I get hyped about. Not always perfect, but this one's pretty good. Pyre, as you said, is a game only on Steam and consoles. It came out in 2017.
00:02:48
Speaker
I wasn't sure exactly what to expect when I first saw it. Yeah, the trailer itself was kind of vague. You knew that there was music like any other Supergiant game. Like, this sounds cool, but I don't know what's going on. Like, I'm glad there's still music.
Pyre's Unique Gameplay Mechanics
00:03:03
Speaker
That's good. That's on the right.
00:03:06
Speaker
But once we actually saw some of the gameplay it got even like a little more weird for me because Supergiant does like you know kind of top-down combat games things like that and this is like
00:03:19
Speaker
Basketball or something. Yeah, it became like a weird Sports RPG. Mm-hmm because typically like in Bastion you play as one character Yeah in transition you play as one character and then in the trailer for this you're controlling three characters Yeah, what what happened here?
00:03:39
Speaker
And yeah, the gist of the game is mechanically it's you versus another team for most of it. And it's basically a sports game. You're trying to dunk an orb that spawns in the center and the enemy pyre, which will do damage to it. And if you deplete its health, then you win. And if the opponent does the same to you, then you lose. That's the top level gist of it.
00:04:05
Speaker
Yeah, the three-on-three basketball. Yes, yeah. It's a pickup game. But that's just the top level. Obviously, this is an RPG, too, and they add a lot to it.
Characters and the Downside in Pyre
00:04:18
Speaker
Starting out, the world is very bright and like Supergiant's previous games, hand-drawn, aesthetic, like a lot of bright colors, right?
00:04:29
Speaker
Oh, yeah. They drop you right into it. And it has a lot of dialogue, too, like right from the get go. Try to pick you up to pace.
00:04:41
Speaker
Um, so you, when you start out, you play as an exile and, uh, your character is, um, capable of reading, which is a bad thing, uh, for the, the people in universe. Yeah. Um, so since you're literate, you were cast out, you were exiled from what was called the Commonwealth, which is kind of this, uh, city and kingdom above where you end up, which is called the downside rate. Um, there are downsides. Like being in the downside. Yeah.
00:05:11
Speaker
And it's separation between the two it almost they make it sound like heaven and earth. Yes Yeah, where you can't really ascend back to heaven through normal means. Mm-hmm. It's not like oh, I'll just go back to that country Yeah, you're technically in a separate domain and you can't get back up through the sky. Yeah, so the downside has its own inhabitants It's like got all of these
00:05:35
Speaker
it's got the native race of the the pack imps which one of them joins your party later we'll get to him but in general it's just it has different properties to it than the commonwealth above now usually you'd be fine in this situation but you're crippled so you're like all right i guess i need a little bit of help and it's not long before you run across your first set of help right
The Book of Rights and Strategic Gameplay
00:06:00
Speaker
Yeah. You have a wagon come along and with it, you kind of meet your first three companions. You don't really know their names yet. They're kind of masked figures who kind of pick you up. Yeah. And since you're just kind of there in the desert, you don't really have access to any water or anything. You've been there for a little bit and they pick you up and help you out and you meet Joe Dario. Yep.
00:06:24
Speaker
who is this massive lady who has horns and she has a very deep, calming, gravelly voice. You meet Hedwyn. He's a dude. He's a dude. He's just a dude. That's pretty much true. He's a guy. His voice is more
00:06:43
Speaker
I want to say, like, Italian. Yeah. It's very silky in the way he speaks. It's very calming as well. Yeah. And then you meet Ruki, who is a dog. He's a dog. And his voice is much more grating. A talking dog? A talking dog, yeah. But there's a little derivative. Let's pass over the lady with horns. Yeah. But the talking dog, yes. So they basically reluctantly take you in a bit, and they're like, all right.
00:07:13
Speaker
Come along with us And they realize you can read and they have a book which turns out to be pretty important the book of rights the book of rights Yeah, there's a whole thing with Just quickly for a jodariel Part of being in the downside one of the effects is humans can slowly turn into Demons and that's what's happening to her. That's why she's growing the horns. It doesn't make her evil per se But it makes her cooler
00:07:39
Speaker
Yeah, it is super badass, actually. But the book of rights details the process by which what are, they're called triumvirates. They're basically these sports teams, right? Groups of three can battle out in these arenas, destroy the opponent's pyre, extinguish it, and press forward kind of like in these matches.
00:08:07
Speaker
towards a final right. What do you get from the final right? Why would people participate in these matches? So the the goal of this is to succeed in the final right and achieve ascension basically back from the downside to the commonwealth above because there's this just a sea of stars
00:08:31
Speaker
uh between you and the um commonwealth property exactly yeah it's literally through space yeah like when i saw this i was like i'm gonna need a space helmet i'm gonna need some like an oxygen tank um but no that is the the legend that if you succeed in these rights then you'll be proven worthy by the the scribes which are basically the gods
00:08:54
Speaker
of the downside and ascended above, out of exile. And then the trick is, if you get back up there, all of your crimes are forgiven. So it's kind of like, it's a full pardon, basically.
00:09:10
Speaker
Yeah, if you burned your wood back, it's like, okay, well, that's pretty impressive. You're good. Yeah. You get a pass. Yeah. But there's more content to the game than just going fight to fight to fight to fight. It's not just a bunch of loading screens and then writes and you fighting these other triumvirates, right?
00:09:27
Speaker
Yeah, as you're going through with your team on the wagon, you essentially have to go across these hand drawn maps to get from point A to point B, but you have options of different routes to go along the way. Right. Where they'll kind of say, hey, if you go this way, you can maybe go fishing and get a possible bonus.
Character Abilities and Gameplay Strategies
00:09:44
Speaker
Right. Or you can go somewhere else and get maybe a possible negative effect.
00:09:49
Speaker
But all these bonuses or anti bonuses because I'm forgetting words will actually interfere with your next fight. Yeah. Yeah. So maybe you can increase your aura for the next fight or your overall stamina.
00:10:05
Speaker
Yeah, so that's one of the mechanics in the actual fight. Since you're trying to run to the opponent's pyre and lock that in, each character has different special abilities and one of these choices might improve that in some way. Yeah. So to explain some of the mechanics a little bit, you have your three characters. Each character has their own aura around them based on how much influence they have.
00:10:33
Speaker
And if an enemy walks into that aura, they will die, essentially. Yeah. And they'll have some amount of time before they respawn at their home pyre. Yes. They're out of the game till then. Yeah.
00:10:46
Speaker
But thankfully, if your character is out of the game, you can switch to other characters, which you can do throughout the match entirely. Whenever you want, you can jump from one character to another. The one downside though is if you pick up the basketball in the middle, your aura disappears. So that'll make you vulnerable to other people's auras.
00:11:06
Speaker
Because they can walk closer to you, but you can't walk as close to them. Right. Because you step in their aura, you're going to die. You'll drop the orb. They'll probably pick it up and start moving to your pyre. Exactly. It's kind of like if you're on the offensive, you can't be... If you're trying to score, you're not going to be taking their characters out at the same time. With the same hero, at least.
00:11:24
Speaker
Unless you're really good unless you're really good. So two things kind of around that is Let's say you're going to the enemy pyre. You have the ball your ore is gone. Yeah, a lot of characters can jump over To kind of clear that gap and you won't take or damage while you're in the air. Yeah
00:11:43
Speaker
You also have the option to try and throw the basketball into the pyre. Yes. It's like a little bit less damage, I think, than a straight up dunk, but it's still the right call, like if you inline it. It is harder to do, though, and the enemies have the option to jump and either intercept you while you're in the air or the ball itself. Exactly. So it's pretty risky if they've got somebody sitting on their pyre, which they usually will. Like, you know, other sports, you'll have a goalie type defender.
00:12:10
Speaker
Also, if you're not holding the ball, you have the option to consume your aura and kind of shoot it out as a projectile. Right. Different characters might have different speeds or widths to their aura shot, but then once that resolves, you will get your aura back. It's a good way to get people out of the fight who are further away or possibly running towards your pyre to score.
00:12:31
Speaker
Exactly. So it's kind of this trade-off, right? You're always evaluating whether you should be more offensive now, whether that's going to put you in a position where you lose. Or if you need to switch to another character, have them defend. You can pass the ball off from one person to another, but as soon as the other person catches it, they're going to lose their aura because they're not carrying it.
00:12:51
Speaker
which all just feeds into the mechanics on the heroes themselves, the actual participants, and the right. So to start off here, we've got the people you encountered at the start of the game, Jodariel, Hedwyn, and Ruki. And I'd say I probably used the second two a lot less, but Jodariel is a boss.
00:13:14
Speaker
Yeah, I'd like her mainly because she has this, compared to other characters, this giant aura. So you can kind of just position her near the enemies and kind of use her as a buffer and kind of like block off a path because most characters won't be able to walk that close without taking aura damage and dying.
00:13:32
Speaker
Exactly. And different characters will have different attacks with their aura. So Jadariel has a line attack that goes a distance away from her. And it's really wide. So you can use this to intercept somebody who's coming up to trying to run into your pyre. And it's pretty slow, too. Yeah. Because she is a larger character. So thematically, all of her abilities are a little bit slower. She's very slow. She has a jump that's just like, ah.
00:14:01
Speaker
Very slow, very short distance. Yeah, she's trying her best. But to trade that off, if you get her all the way to the enemy pyre and she has the ball, when she dunks, it'll do a tremendous amount of damage to their pyre, extinguishing their flame. Characters that are really fast, like Ruki, who's a dog who has these like dash abilities and is very fast,
00:14:21
Speaker
Um, he does a lot less damage if he successfully gets the, uh, the orb in. Yeah. But conversely, it's that much easier to get him in because you can kind of have him skirt around projectiles or auras. So there's the trade off. Yeah. Ruki also does have a line shot, but going with his speed, it's much narrower and quicker. Yeah.
00:14:45
Speaker
What's kind of nice, though, is you can shoot off a projectile and then switch to another character. Right. And as soon as you throw the orb, your aura comes back. So there's actually a strategy where if you're coming up close to an opponent and they're going to try to finish you with their aura. This is kind of advanced strats. But you can throw the orb at them, forcing them to catch it, which removes their aura. Your character now has an aura because they no longer have the orb. And then you just take them out of the game immediately.
00:15:15
Speaker
And there's just a bunch of interactions like that where it's actually pretty intense. Yeah, it's really fun to learn the mechanics. Sadly, I never mastered the mechanics. Yeah, I didn't either. Because there were a lot of these things that were happening in real time. And I'm like, oh, man, that's cool. I'm losing. I am losing that. Yeah, time to fall back to the basic strats.
00:15:37
Speaker
And then one last mechanic here is if you manage to dunk in the enemy's pyre, that character is out until the next score. So there's some exceptions to this. Different characters have different abilities and they'll kind of like level up as you go through the game. And you can pick more abilities and perks and things like that.
00:16:00
Speaker
But in general if you dunk your characters out until the next score be that on your pyre or you Successfully dunk with the two people you have left
00:16:10
Speaker
Yeah, so it's a nice way of balancing so that let's say you are taking the lead. You don't have to play down for a point exactly where it's two on three. But if you know what you're doing, it's not that much of an issue. It's just if you're going with one character as this is my main strat, I walk up to Dario and just dunk for massive points.
00:16:31
Speaker
You can't have her next time. Exactly. You won't have that on defense. So it's all this balancing act and trying to manage your resources and what the opponent can do. And it starts off with fast characters, slow characters with a lot of defense, and rapidly has a lot more complexity than that because there's a lot of interesting characters.
00:16:50
Speaker
Yeah, but we don't want to make it sound like it is hard to jump into. No. They do walk you up through it and teach you how to do all this. And it seems like a lot at first, but you do pick it up really quick. Yeah. And on normal difficulty, like as soon as you start picking up some of the mechanics, the first, you know, couple of rights, they're not going to do anything absolutely crazy. And you will have the same resources at your disposal that the opponents have.
00:17:17
Speaker
But you can invest it in your character's abilities, like I said, level him up. The first one here, Hedwyn, he's a general, basically, before he was exiled for reasons. And he has support-type abilities, kind of make your team a little bit better. But I didn't really use him that much when I played. I thought he was a guy. Yeah, I felt similarly. I do like Judario's abilities a lot.
00:17:44
Speaker
She has a great opportunity to be very aggressive. Mm-hmm depending which tree you put points into When she lands a jump she can actually stun nearby enemies and make them lose their aura for two seconds, which is kind of nuts You can also like use the orb to chuck at enemies instead of them catching it.
Skill Tree System and Character Development
00:18:02
Speaker
They just get banished projectile weapon Yeah on top of her other projectile weapon. Yes, you could technically
00:18:08
Speaker
do your jump into position, shoot off the aura, and then pick up the ball and throw it at somebody and take out two or three people. Yeah. Yeah, they've got this skill tree system where some of your choices will probably lock other choices out for you. You just won't have enough points to get everything. So you've got choices to make how you develop these characters, and that helps develop them to your play style a little bit more. Yeah.
00:18:34
Speaker
Another character who's really nuts is that we have at this point in the game. Ruki. Yeah, dog boy. Yeah. He's very maneuverable and a lot of his one tree is being able to get extra jumps, which we kind of mentioned before. You can jump in the air over somebody's aura, but he can also get a second jump and a third jump and overall become faster. Yeah. So he still won't score a lot of points when he goes in
00:19:00
Speaker
But if you have him for a round, you can have him just fly over to the pyre and kind of dunk it in, which is nice. Yeah. This is airbud, basically. It's very apt. How did I not make that joke already? That's very apt. But it's not just your starter squad you're stuck with, like I said. You'll start to pick up some other characters, and one that I really
00:19:24
Speaker
Uh, enjoyed, um, comes in as this kind of, she's like a young teen girl. She's got like pale skin. I think she has red eyes. Yeah. If I remember correctly. And, uh, she can't remember her past. She's crazy. Loves the scribes, loves the scribes. Um, and can't remember her name. She just knows it. And it's like AA right. Yeah. So this is one of the unique interactions in the game where you actually get to pick your name for the character. And you have like a list of.
00:19:53
Speaker
Think 30 or 40 options that I'll end in AE. Yeah, so there's like fae There's cray. There's may yeah, I Specifically went with Bay because of means. Yes. Oh, what did you pick though? I think I called her tae actually. There's a tae in there. Oh
00:20:09
Speaker
Oh, kind of like Taeya from Yu-Gi-Oh? Yeah, something like that. There's also Gae, which I thought was hilarious. Gae. What do you want to call me? I'm going to call you Gae. If I'm correct, it doesn't actually impact anything else in the game. It's just something you get to pick for the rest of the game.
00:20:28
Speaker
Yeah, like a lot of RPGs will have you completely, you can change the default name for a character. She does not have a default name. It's just name who sounds like A, you know. So people just call it the moon touch girl.
Rites, Nightwings, and Ceremonial Aspects
00:20:41
Speaker
So at this point, you have four party members in tow, and as you go to participate in the right, you still, as a triumvirate, only have three participants to choose from. Exactly. Got to narrow down the squad, right? Yeah. So at this point, I'd probably take out Hedwyn, or myself, the Moon Touch girl. Yeah. I know. Different play styles for the last.
00:21:02
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, my moon touch girl wasn't literally bae, like she was in your game. Yeah. But she was bae. She was your bae. Yeah. So this first, this first rite, you've been guided here by a voice that you hear as you began like reading this book, the Book of Rites. And it's telling you to follow these stars that takes you up to where this first rite happens. And there you meet this opposing team.
00:21:32
Speaker
who are called the adversaries. And they are your adversaries. They are, in fact, yeah, it's kind of it's a little on the nose. And your team is the night wings. And basically, there's a ceremony that has to be prepared where each of you don your ceremonial garb, which are basically your team uniforms. You create your symbol on the ground, and you pray to the scribes, like
00:22:02
Speaker
starfall will happen in the background in the night sky and the camera will pan up and you'll see the screen will pan up there's no camera and you'll see the stars with a symbol through them which is the pyre symbol yeah which you'll see on the cover of the game or the soundtrack itself exactly and i just get the tingles kind of like every time i see it because it's this this really cool setup
00:22:26
Speaker
Another nice effect is when you go and look up at the sky and you see that it's kind of like the loading screen, technically. And then the screen kind of collapses in from top and bottom, like you're closing your eyes as the ceremony is beginning. Yeah. So you act as the, uh, the reader and you have control over the members of your team. They kind of say like, Hey, you know, we trust you. We'll do what you say. And you kind of.
00:22:53
Speaker
In universe you're essentially playing this game with them basically the idea is Everybody else is doing what they want to do. You are Determining the actions of the people on your team for the night wings So each of the teams that you go up against basically has one kind of leader and The adversaries have a leader who's just some guy. He's a jerk. There's a
00:23:18
Speaker
Yeah, typically the people you meet are not going to be friendly. But it's necessary to strive against them, right? You gotta constantly be proving yourself against these other teams. And there's a lot of other adversaries, they have different compositions. This first one's mainly just some folks. I think that they'll start to introduce more varied cast as you go on.
00:23:41
Speaker
But all of your enemies cast are still comprised of characters you can play as throughout the game. Yeah. So there's never going to be an enemy type that you do not get to use on your own. And I do believe that in some of the later fights, you don't get the type until after you've completed one fight against them. But that makes it that much sweeter when you unlock that move set.
00:24:06
Speaker
Yeah. Cause you first go up against some people you're like, I've never seen that. I don't know how to play against it. Yeah. But then you get to play as a similar style of character. You're like, aha, I'm better than you. I will use this better than you did. And that's, that's always a rewarding feeling.
00:24:22
Speaker
So one thing I want to touch up on is we've always been kind of playing this off as a basketball game, which is still kind of is. But this basketball game also has an announcer. Yes. The same voice that was leading you to the right itself is also essentially dictating the right and overseeing how it goes.
00:24:40
Speaker
So he is this booming voice from the sky called the voice in game. And he will essentially announce the teams that are participating in the right. And also each character that gets selected as a participant. So it might be headwind, Joe Dario or your specific moon touch girl name. Yes. They've actually recorded a voice line for Tay Bay may, et cetera. Yeah. Yeah. Which is kind of nuts that you have all of those variations. Yeah.
00:25:11
Speaker
Yeah, it's it's actually really cool that they put that level of detail into it because it would have been easy to just be like and the moon touch girl But they really really wanted to sell Whatever you choose to name her is what her name is they actually like I believe after you pick the name originally It's just like yeah, that's right. Like she remembers like yeah, that's my name. Oh, yeah, babe Yeah, whatever you name her she remembers. What are you gay? Yeah
00:25:40
Speaker
Oh man, that's actually great. We could even cut us saying that and put in the actual clip. It's an idea. It's an idea. But I probably won't remember. It's not gonna be worth it. After you've finished that right though, whether you win or you lose, the game continues. Yes. And you begin your journey following the constellations as you discover more and more of the world.
00:26:34
Speaker
you
00:26:49
Speaker
God, that song brings me back. Oh, yeah. So as you're going along, you get to pick from extra people along the way. And one of my favorites, absolute favorites, is this cute little drive imp named Tizo, who's probably about like a foot in height, is a very cute little fuzzy bat that has horns and eyes as big as the world itself. And he communicates only through screeches.
00:27:14
Speaker
which the dialogue will show as like, scree, scrawl. But if you mouse over it, you can actually see him, you understand what he's saying as these comprehensive sentences. Exactly. Of his feelings and thoughts on the situation. Which is just as an aside, one of the reader's abilities is you can read the thoughts of characters around you. It might be related to the underside. Yeah. Downside. Downside. Downside. Not under tail. Downside. Yeah. Key difference.
00:27:43
Speaker
But some of his abilities, he can zip and use a little short burst of stamina to make these very quick dashes, which is good for maneuverability. Instead of a projectile, his right click ability is his aura becomes really big, and then he explodes.
00:28:02
Speaker
So obviously he's going to respond back at the pyre itself, but you can kind of like maneuver in and use that ability to kind of take out some enemies. Also, instead of a jump, he has the ability to fly, which he can kind of go over some impassable terrain and again, use it to go over enemy auras to score points.
Musical Themes and Team Building
00:28:24
Speaker
Yeah. He's another really fast, really agile character. Kind of expanding your list of options there, right?
00:28:31
Speaker
He plays a bit different, has some different skills, and obviously he's really cute. Yeah, he's insanely cute. I was actually really hoping for Supergiant to make a plush of him for merchandise so I could purchase that, and they eventually did, and it is not cute at all. It is terrible. Scary, really. But sometimes that art style doesn't transfer over exactly.
00:29:00
Speaker
Usually the way the game kind of develops is as another group of triumvirates comes up and you can fight against them, you'll encounter someone else to add to your team. That's not always the case, but it's usually the case. So by the time you kind of are approaching some of these final rites, your team is decked out. You have so many options to choose from.
00:29:27
Speaker
Yeah, I think you get to a list of about nine that you can choose from. Yeah. So you can pick your favorite three and maybe ones will synergize together or suit your place that more so. Yeah. You're like, all right, let's do this. Let's work together. Let's get out of here.
00:29:41
Speaker
but you continue to round out that roster. And some of these characters you're picking up are very different. Like you've got Tizo, he's small, really fast, like we mentioned. But others are completely different races, such as Pametho, who is a
00:29:57
Speaker
bird person she's a harpy right pretty much just a harpy yeah yeah yeah that's that's kind of just her thing she's really fast she can flag like great distances she's got to move where she dashes forward and
00:30:12
Speaker
Is invulnerable when she does that so she can kind of as long as she makes contact with an enemy who's also not invulnerable She'll take him out and you can kind of like charge through people right also interestingly. She does not have a Circular aura mm-hmm. It's kind of jagged. Oh yeah, I actually forgot about that
00:30:31
Speaker
That's why I'm reminding you. Well, thanks. And yes, she's got just a lot of mobility. As soon as I picked her up, she joined my core frontline team. They're just like, yeah, we're getting through this. Yeah, she's a pretty versatile character. And she, like almost every character in this game, seems to have a very calming, smooth voice. And her music is kind of more Middle Eastern themed.
00:31:02
Speaker
And it's just a really nice vibe. Yeah, we'll just take a listen.
00:31:33
Speaker
But that's the theme that the Harpies have for their right. Oh, hell yeah. And you fight against them. And there's a lot of musical variation in this game. Like, we're just scratching the surface here, really. Yeah. It's really hard to cover everything for this game, because there's so much beautiful diversity in the art styles for the different areas, the characters and their theming, and the musical themes. Darren Korb really covered a lot of ground on this one.
00:32:01
Speaker
Oh yeah, yeah. I think that this is probably his best soundtrack for me so far. Like Bastion is really good. I like Transistor. I like Bastion probably a little bit more. And this one's just top notch.
00:32:17
Speaker
If you could find a way to somehow blend those three soundtracks together, that'd be, oh yes, that'd make all the money. I'd be sued so much. Maybe if we just ask Silver Gunner to do it. He takes a quest, I think.
00:32:32
Speaker
Silva, if you're listening, just drop a line. We'll give you some tracks. Yeah, I don't think we can do that. Anyways, kind of moving along here. You continue to explore the world in your nice wagon, moving from area to area, making your choices, developing your team slowly. They're leveling up over time. You're developing their skills and you're constantly pushing towards this liberation at the end of it. You guys can make it out.
00:33:03
Speaker
Now that you have this advanced squad, you've got all the choices, developed abilities. Who carries it for you? For me, one of the big people was Burtrude. I think we didn't get to mention yet, but she's kind of like this bog witch. My favorite thing about her is her projectile. It doesn't shoot out one thing. It shoots out like five or six lines like a shotgun. Yeah.
00:33:26
Speaker
And you can actually upgrade it to go through impassable terrain. Yeah. So you can just go through and kind of clean up multiple people. She's got like a decent aura size too. Yeah. And she's fast. And her shift, instead of like a job, she can kind of like just slide through. Yeah. There's a little slug thing. Speed slug. Thunder snail. Thunder snail, yeah. Thunder snail confirmed. Yeah. She's also on my list. Who else did you get?
00:33:54
Speaker
Tizo for mobility. Okay, or I'd maybe sub out for rookie as well. Mm-hmm cuz you need with that quick person and just slam those points Yeah, and the ultimate Bay Joe Dario because biggest or in the game and I tried to Upgrade her abilities or get her a trinket. Yeah to also upgrade her aura So it could just be like this walking wall of death. Yeah and play off that and
00:34:20
Speaker
Yeah, you mentioned trinkets. Kind of throughout the game there's a shop you can visit, right? And you get some money and you can use that to buy up these trinkets that improve your characters in some way or another. Yeah, usually it'll enhance a specific character's ability or it might be something non-character specific like you have a bigger aura or you're a little bit faster or your stamina regeneration is a little bit better.
00:34:44
Speaker
And there's another way you can complete a trial for each character to get them this kind of like ultimate trinket.
00:34:52
Speaker
Um, that is usually their top tier one. Like it'll, it'll give them a very significant boost. And it's always character specific. Yeah. So you might do a trial for rookie and you might get a thing where, excuse me. Um, his projectile will actually, if it hits somebody, it will bounce and go somewhere else. Yeah. They're, they're really good upgrades and the trials are always like, you don't know how to play this character. You're going to learn if you're going to pass this because it's going to be tough.
00:35:19
Speaker
It's kind of like a little practice mini, right? And once you've proven yourself and you get that unlock, you're playing top tier with that character, which is a great feeling, honestly. I'd say the other two on my team are the Moon Touch girl, who we already talked about. She carried me a long way through the game.
00:35:37
Speaker
and, uh, pametha. So, you can kind of tell I already, like, favored a very aggressive lineup. Like, those are all people with... Moon Touch Girl was my dunker. She can run in, eventually gets unlimited stamina when she's holding the orb. And, yeah, just exhaust everybody else, run in and dunk. And then everyone else was backup squad and defense.
00:36:01
Speaker
Burtrude's like amazing defense because if they ever start to get on your half of the map You can basically shotgun anywhere and it's like this will
Titans, Lore, and World-Building
00:36:08
Speaker
probably hit them. Yeah So freaking good and if everybody else has failed, she's the only one left. She has enough speed and mobility that If you can run if you can manage to wipe out the enemy team is usually the strategy with her because she's really big she's easy to take out but
00:36:25
Speaker
If all of the enemies are dead, they're all respawning, that's not a problem. Run forward in dunk and it's a pretty high damage dunk. She's one of the larger characters. Yeah. Larger and slower, you're gonna get more points from a dunk versus your quick characters, which I think kind of cap at around 15 typically.
00:36:42
Speaker
Yeah. The quickest ones make a very, very small kind of splash in the flame, but consistency is very important, too. I also like how they call it dousing the flame. Exactly. Yeah. The voice actually will comment on how the match is going, basically. So it's like, if you get wiped out, everyone on your team gets wiped out in quick succession, you're just like, ah, you guys suck. He doesn't say it like that. But paraphrasing, right? Yes. Yeah. In more polite terms, he says you all suck.
00:37:11
Speaker
yon team doth sucketh something like that it'll say similar things if you're uh dominating the enemy team so with the conclusion of the right he'll he'll he'll call out the result right you'll say like ah night wings have emerged victorious once more and i'm upset about this fact uh but he'll say with a resounding victory or if it's really close he'll be like and they almost lost because they suck um so you kind of
00:37:40
Speaker
He acts as the sportscaster, right? Yeah, he's a little bit antagonizing, but That's fun. Yeah and kind of a Another thing kind of coming off this Bertrude is she is one of the more sort of evil seeming characters in the game or at least Definitely not good. Like she has She literally lives in like a poison swamp and it like she's a boggler. Yeah. Mm-hmm
00:38:07
Speaker
I mean, I don't want to come out and just say being a bog witch is bad. Like some of our listeners, you don't, you don't know these people. Right. And I don't know if our listeners are bog witches, you know, I can't say one way or the other, but, uh, she literally worships, uh, kind of an anti God, a slosh and, uh, astral born is it's her name. And she's like trying all of these rituals, things like that. Um.
00:38:36
Speaker
And what the Titans do is when you go to begin a rite, you can choose to activate their constellations. And there's a lot of these Titans, there's like 10 of them. Each one that you activate will have a specific negative effect, like maybe the opponent's pyre has more health or something. Or your stamina regenerates slower or something like that. You have smaller auras enemies who have larger auras.
00:38:59
Speaker
The advantage to activating these, as with many of Supergiant's other games, is that the rewards after you complete a given right will be better. Yeah. It usually ends up being you get a higher percentage of character experience from successfully beating a right. Yes. Which will allow you to get those skill tree points faster.
00:39:22
Speaker
Yep, get more skills, max him out. And then you also feel really awesome, because you're beating the game on a harder mode, right? Kind of tying this to the lore for a second. A lot of the Titans that you can activate there, they're constellations. Their corpses are actually present in the world as you're driving your wagon through, like the body of Yislah.
00:39:50
Speaker
is its corpse is present in the world and basically it's like mountain range and there's this dark smoke coming off of it as it like continues to deteriorate even though it was killed by these godlike scribes like 100 years ago or something which is awesome
00:40:09
Speaker
Yeah, it really helps the world building. Also, I would like to mention each of the scribes. There's one for each of the different races you can essentially play as. So you'll have a small bat, kind of like Tezo. Exactly. You'll have a kind of demon like Tridario, etc, etc. Yeah.
00:40:28
Speaker
Yeah, they're really cool. They're basically the paragons of their kind that banded together and forged this way to escape the downside, which is awesome. I love the lore, the fact that it's there. Basically, as you progress through the game, the Book of Rights continues to reveal additional passages, and you can go back and read that to get an idea of why things, how they be the way they be. How they be what they do. Yeah, how they be what they do.
00:40:58
Speaker
Yeah, it's one of those games where I always enjoy how long it takes. Because it's probably not a terribly long game if you're just trying to beat it for the sake of beating it. Oh, yeah. If you skip dialogue real quick. Yeah. Similar to The Witcher 3, as soon as you get journal entries for something and it's world building, it's really rewarding to actually go in and get that little bit of extra detail of like, why is this happening? Or why is this here? Oh, OK. Yeah.
00:41:26
Speaker
And the worldbuilding they do that way, or just interacting with the other characters, it does so much. Yeah. And I'm always going to be a fan of what are basically considered the gods of the current age, being paragons who destroyed these immensely powerful creatures of the previous age.
Comparison with Other Supergiant Games
00:41:47
Speaker
That's just a cool, world-building concept, and that's the case for each of the Sages, or the Scribes. They each felled one of the great titans, sometimes working together. Which is cool. Teamwork. It's important in a sports game. That was a beautiful time.
00:42:10
Speaker
kind of stepping back for a moment and looking at the game as a whole. I mean, we play the other super giant games, right? I know that you beat Transistor. We were talking about that earlier. We both played Bastion. Where do you think that Pyre falls kind of in relation to those games? A little bit of a bias because Pyre I played and beat most recently. But I think for me, it's it has to be the best one. Oh, that's strong. It's
00:42:40
Speaker
Obviously all of the games have great music mechanics and gameplay and story. But for me, I think it did the best marriage of everything together. I still really like Bastion musically, but I think mechanically it's the simplest. Yeah. Because you're either whacking on dudes melee or you're shooting dudes. Yeah. And it still feels great. I like the other challenges you can do with it and specific weapon sets and other things.
00:43:07
Speaker
Yeah, that was kind of their entry to this. And everything since then has been modifying their formula. Yeah. And each of their worlds that they make is distinct. It's different. Transistor all on computers. Bastion in this floating world of tiles that everyone just accepts. And Pyre is a completely unique fantasy setting. And I agree that the world building in Pyre is the best they have.
00:43:36
Speaker
Like, the same way that you can interpret what Tizo's saying by mousing over his words. Every time, like, a proper noun comes up, they don't, like, take an aside and be like, here's a dialogue box that, you know, tells you, you can, like, hit OK and read through all of this. You just mouse over it. It gives you this little short blurb about it, right? Yeah. And that's really useful if you don't want to, like, bog down the pacing of the game, because it's entirely optional. You don't have to look at the glowing text if you don't care and you just want to get back to sportsball.
00:44:05
Speaker
Yeah, I feel opt-in is best because when you have a game for people, certain people really like just going through for the sake of the experience. Other people really like taking their time and getting invested. Yeah. So it's really a nice trade-off for whichever one you want to do.
00:44:21
Speaker
So comparing this to the other games, they expanded the lore, but they didn't make it too oppressive. They didn't make it absolutely mandatory. And they let you play the game like you would play the previous entries. I say entries like it's a series. It's not a series at all. Well, we're expecting them to continue to make more great games going forward. I hope so.
00:44:45
Speaker
I need the music at least. Oh my god. I've bought every single soundtrack so far and it's been so choice. It's great to actually have in my car as a tangible medium. Yeah. Just blast it. I love every single one of their OSTs. I mean you guys have heard a sampling of the tracks up until now from Pyre.
00:45:06
Speaker
And hopefully we get an opportunity to come back, do some talks about some of the other games. We'll see if we get around to the other Supergiant games. Yeah, we'll see if our sponsors will allow us to do that. Yeah. Supergiant, send us whatever your next game is. We'll cover it. We'll do a review for it. We'll do a review for it. Yep. We never even do reviews, but we'll make an exception. Just for you guys.
00:45:30
Speaker
So what about you, would you place Pyre as your top as well, or would you vote more towards Bastion or Transistor? It's really tough. Oh yeah, it's not an easy question. It's actually really tough. I think I already said that I like
00:45:45
Speaker
Pyre is OST the best. I think Darren Korb's just, like, he consistently improves upon his work. He adds greater variety and still has callbacks to previous entries in the series. So he's constantly building off of that. That's amazing. The game, it's really hard for me to say whether Bastion had a larger impact on me than Pyre did or not.
00:46:15
Speaker
But I think I also have to go with Pyre just because they tried something completely different. There's a lot of isometric games. There's a lot of fighting games, shooting games, things like that from an isometric perspective.
Praise for Pyre and Closing Remarks
00:46:29
Speaker
They basically took a step of faith with a basketball type, you know?
00:46:35
Speaker
Sports game. Yeah, I think everyone was really hesitant when it came out for that reason. It's such a shake-up of their meta, which has been isometric single character story. Yeah. Where your protagonist doesn't speak. And then as your protagonist, the character you play as technically doesn't speak. Right. But it's really nice that they expanded the cast of playable characters and they're able to incorporate that much more story.
00:47:04
Speaker
I still hope they do more silent protagonists of just single character games in the future because they've been crushing those. And I honestly think I've probably teared up a little bit for each game. They hit those emotional impact-wise. They do it really well. They really get you invested as a player, which is beautiful.
00:47:26
Speaker
Yeah, there's a lot more to the characters we obviously haven't gone into here. And part of that's purposeful. Like this game, if you haven't played it, I want you to go out and pick it up and play, at least on sale. Because if you have any interest in what we've said thus far,
00:47:41
Speaker
Pyre's pretty good. I say that for everything. It's pretty good, it's pretty good. If it doesn't match at least pretty good, then we don't really talk about it normally. I'd say Pyre's great. We'll review a shitty game one day. Yeah. We've had some criticisms of some games.
00:47:56
Speaker
And I mean, no game is absolutely perfect. There's definitely some points in this where the pacing feels like a little bit like, I kind of need to take a break, come back. But they've addressed it much better in this game, I think, than Transistor. Easily true. And that's the mark of a great developer. If you can make mistakes, fix your mistakes, improve upon it for your next entry.
00:48:21
Speaker
That's what I keep telling my boss. I need to make mistakes first. That's step one. Dude, this is like 50 bucks. I know, and I'm improving. Don't worry about it. Someday you'll rank up as an exterminator. You can be a manager exterminator. But I think this is probably one of the first episodes we've had in a while that's not going to go over an hour. Yeah. We've actually not gone full spoiler territory.
00:48:51
Speaker
Part partially because it's really hard to cover we didn't want to do a talk-through of this game because there's a lot that goes on in the plot Yes, and additional characters and other things that happen and part of it is
00:49:03
Speaker
A lot of it is in the music as well. And it's hard for us to just shorten this down to, Hey, here are a couple of snippets. Cause I would love to just sit with you for the first hour and a half or two hours and just listen to it and then analyze all of the music and then go into the characters. Yeah. There's a lot of content in the game and I think it should be experienced.
00:49:24
Speaker
If you're looking to get a copy, you can get on sale or maybe hit me up and I might hitch in a little bit. It is something I really want you to check out, like all of the other games. But this is great story-wise, music-wise, art-wise. I'm gonna stop because we have to end the episode at some point where it's not just me praising Supergiant and DarianCorp. Yeah, just to touch on your point real quick. This is one of these, the music is amazing, and this is one of those games where I actually don't recommend that you go off and you listen to the OST if you haven't played it.
00:49:53
Speaker
Even though the music's really good, experiencing it in the context of the game is that much better. So if you're not going to play the game, go check out the OSC though. Yes, very good. Well, I'd like to thank everybody for sticking around to the end of another episode of Soapstone. As always, you can like us on Facebook. The information is in the description. You can send us an email. Let us know if there's a podcast idea that you want to hear about in the future at soapstonepodcast.gmail.com.
00:50:23
Speaker
and we'd love to hear from you guys. It's always awesome when we get that feedback and we know that we're not just shouting into the void. Yeah, we'll occasionally get messages on Discord or a text or something like that on Facebook and Jake and I work together so usually as soon as I get him like
00:50:39
Speaker
Jake, look! We got a feedback! Yeah, he filters all of the really negative stuff out, so I don't get it. Jake has a very weak ego, so I don't want to shatter that on him. That would be mean. It's like, you've had some better episodes. I'm just like, I don't know. Emotional damage. But it really does mean a lot to us. Yeah, it's true. So, I wish everyone a good night, and we will see you in the next one. Yup.