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Lies of P
81 Plays2 years ago
MINOR SPOILERS: Lies of P (until the disclaimer near the end, and then MAJOR SPOILERS)
“This blue flower has many ways to take root, but only on man does it ever bear fruit.”
Intro:
- Lies of P OST - Krat Hotel
Outro:
- Lies of P OST - Feel
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Transcript
Introductions and Quest Hint
00:00:01
Speaker
I'm so happy to see you. I am Sophia. I've been waiting for you. Searched all over the city of Krop to find you. You must have questions. Geppetto will have answers, but we have to find him first.
00:00:23
Speaker
He was last seen on Elysian Boulevard. Olive Crot is dangerous for humans, and that neighborhood is one of the scariest. Please find Geppetto on Elysian Boulevard. I'll explain more once you find him.
Hosts' Banter
00:00:57
Speaker
how's it going everyone welcome to another episode of soapstone my name is jake and i am joined by my co-host is always dave how's it going tonight dave it's going tonight dave boy howdy that that is fair with a boy howdy on the end too
00:01:11
Speaker
And how else are you going to greet the boys? You have to greet the boys before you kiss the boys. Right. Common courtesy. Yeah. Yeah, I think so. I heard I've heard the song before, but it came up on some compilation. It was a TF2 compilation thing I saw.
00:01:27
Speaker
That's just like it's the song that's like just my fellas or something like that. Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's like I can't remember. There's another word. And then my fellas. I don't remember it. I think it's all my fellas. All my fellas. That's where my fellas or something. Yeah, I've seen it with short videos for a lot of lethal company edits. Mm hmm. That's usually with a gang of loot bugs. Yeah, I think that's fair.
00:01:54
Speaker
Yeah, no, it's, you know, you do what you got to, you know, you can do what you got to. It's true. And sometimes that is even play a video game. We don't do that much anymore. We're both, you know, grown adults. I'm spending a lot of time in the office playing poker. Well, you're grown. I'm still 5'5".
00:02:16
Speaker
Between the two of us were one grown adult. No. But yeah, I guess we've had a little bit of a resurgence recently and actually playing and covering games. And I thought, what better game to actually catch up on?
00:02:39
Speaker
than one that came out a while ago, I think.
Game Release and Reviews
00:02:44
Speaker
I don't know if I remember, do you know when Liza P. actually came out? Because you played it like at once. Was that the last year? It happened. I imagine. Yeah. I'm looking this up in real time. September, September of last year. That's pretty recent, I think.
00:03:05
Speaker
Yeah, it's a little bit easier. We've covered games later, for sure, or older, for sure. Here's the question. And this is the sort of thing that we usually cover beforehand. Given that it came out in September, do you think there's anyone listening to this who has not played Liza P that will play Liza P and thus may be disinterested in hearing spoilers?
00:03:34
Speaker
Fuck them. That's our usual stance, yeah. Always assume there's going to be like a bit of spoilers for talking about something because we can't talk about everything in pure vagudies. We actually have to get into some of the meat. That's fair, yeah. I'd be good going full spoilers on this. Maybe have like a cut off towards the end where we talk about in-game things. Yeah, we don't need to go into deep lore stuff.
00:04:00
Speaker
If we make that jump, we'll notify people before we make the jump for the deep lore. But you had the honor of playing Liza P. first, I think. Not just between us, like in general, first person to play the game. So going into it, if I can talk about your credentials for a second, I know you play a lot more Souls-like games than I do, and you also follow them.
00:04:27
Speaker
Nobody plays as many as Iron Pineapple, I'm not stating that, but it comes out, it has that soul's glamour, and you're at least aware of it a lot more than I am. Do you think that's fair to say? Yeah, it's because I watch Iron Pineapple videos typically. That's fair. Also, some of them just get
00:04:49
Speaker
They kind of get into the ecosystem a little bit of YouTube where I will watch some Souls related videos, some Smash related videos, other things will come up with video
Game Demos and Game Pass Benefits
00:05:00
Speaker
games. And also everyone kept memeing on it saying, oh, it's Pinocchio Souls or Pinocchio Bloodborne. Everyone's like, okay, that's what it is in our heads. Same thing as like Dark Souls with guns for Remnant. So yeah, I was definitely aware of it for a time.
00:05:16
Speaker
And I was kind of waiting initially for reviews to come in, for hopping on. Do you know how this game reviewed as a follow-up question? I assume pretty well. If you had to give it, if you had to use the curse scale of 1 to 10, what do you think its average reviews were, roughly? Because I have those numbers right in front of me.
00:05:38
Speaker
I'm leaning eight and a half. That's incredibly close. That's very, very close. So PC was 83 on Metacritic, which is basically eight and a half. And if you were guessing for Xbox, it's even closer to 84.
00:05:53
Speaker
Um, and a lot of places, yeah, just gave it eights, you know, a couple higher scores, uh, Eurogamer gave it like three out of five stars, but it's impossible to appease Europeans. They don't like anything. All they do is make fun of other people's food. So like, um, so very close. Uh, now is that how you felt about the game going into it? You're like, this is going to be an 8.5 experience, I think.
00:06:21
Speaker
I didn't know what it was going to be. Um, but just hearing some of the reviews about things and like, I mean, it seems to be pretty well received. Whereas stuff like there was one about like a French revolution that also had automata. Um, I want to say it's like steel rising or something. I forget what it's called. Um, but that was just a blip because I saw like a single video on it and then nobody ever talked about it again. So I was a little more.
00:06:51
Speaker
thinking it would be a promising endeavor since it did have a lifespan.
In-depth 'Lies of P' Mechanics
00:06:57
Speaker
And also it was free on Game Pass. I'm like, yo. That does help. That does help. Let me hit that up. I'm not sure if it was a day one or not for Game Pass, but it was definitely very early. It probably was.
00:07:07
Speaker
Um, day one. Um, so that does help, you know, you get to try something out and kind of the old, uh, if you go back long enough and this is probably going to alienate part of our audience. Um, people used to have like demos for games and, and if you go back a little bit longer, you're like, some of those demo discs might've been in cereal boxes, right? I think we talked about that at one point. Um,
00:07:30
Speaker
In some ways, Game Pass lets you demo a game that is just the full game, right? Like you have the option to just drop it if it's not engaging for you, but you don't have any sunk cost that you need to keep playing it if it's bad because you just downloaded it. That was the cost you paid, right?
00:07:50
Speaker
Plus I'm in the subscription, but. Yeah, but it's, it's nominal in the case of, let's say you only played one game a month, one full price game. You're saving 50 bucks a month then. Yeah. Effectively. Um, which is nice, but I will say, um, just from like watching some of the videos, the, the art style and the aesthetic really got me. Let's go. This looks good. Um, whereas some of the other things like still rising or.
00:08:21
Speaker
I really wish I had watched Iron Pineapple recently to be like, oh, here are the other Souls Lake games. But Souls Lake just felt kind of, I don't know, not as polished. Kind of like, hey, here's our idea for a game or a small studio. And it comes closer to like,
00:08:38
Speaker
PS3 right It doesn't feel as modern or as smooth as it could be I think it's very much felt like a modern experience. Oh, yeah, it's very put together I will spoil a little bit of my impressions Coming to this game so late. I actually I had a good time with the game. I was like, this is a good time and then I
00:09:01
Speaker
In retrospect, a lot of times, once I finish a game, I think about it a little bit, and I was like, I don't know if that game was really as good as I thought at the moment, but I was caught up in it. With Liza P, I've actually kind of had an opposite reaction, where I appreciate the game more, as I've learned more about it, now that it's done.
00:09:22
Speaker
which is really interesting, because that's not the way it usually goes. But I would like if, as we're talking about the game, maybe we can interweave some of our takes on how this is done, how some of these elements might be done in Souls' likes in general, and maybe at the end we can answer the question everyone's been asking, like, should you make your game a Souls-like, or is that even something you should pursue? Because they definitely did here, as I'm sure we'll get to.
00:09:55
Speaker
I'm doing my best not to answer the question and leave it sit for 40 minutes. If you have an initial impression, that could be good because I can ping off of that probably as we go through some of the elements in LizaP.
00:10:08
Speaker
We should probably just go into the elements. Let's do it. Yeah, go straight into the elements. So as you mentioned, it is a Souls-like, which has a lot of baggage attached to it. And some games are called Souls-like, and they're like, eh, sort of, right? Like, remnant from the ashes a lot of time gets, like, lumped in with Souls-likes. But you're like, is it just the bonfires? Like, it's using random tiles and stuff. So it's like, what's the, is it currency? Like, what's the Souls-like part of it? There's a roll button. Uh-huh.
00:10:38
Speaker
But Lies of P is very heavily in the camp of we are not pretending to be anything but this, I think. No. I don't think that's a bad thing if you're following a model of like, hey, this works because it's very distinct. Like I wouldn't say this is like I wouldn't confuse this with Dark Souls at any point. I wouldn't be like, oh, this is a FromSoft IP.
00:11:02
Speaker
It is an entirely separate thing, but you do see a lot of the Dark Souls identity as far as anything you're familiar with, health, stamina, bonfires, Estus Flasks, dodge rolls, parrying, that thing that wasn't around before Dark Souls. Having big bosses that you kind of have to learn their moveset for, I think a lot of those things do still carry over.
00:11:32
Speaker
Um, but one of the ways that really sets itself apart is it is a lot more linear and a lot more story driven. That is entirely true. I would agree on both counts.
00:11:46
Speaker
Because if you go back and play Dark Souls 1, you'd be like, man, it's cool. Some of these areas are connected. I don't know what the fuck's going on. Right. My wife actually, she stopped playing Dark Souls 1 because right from the get go when she got out of the asylum, she went to the catacombs and made progress in the catacombs, I think, until she got to the checkpoint.
00:12:11
Speaker
I was just like, I didn't know about this at the time, but you could say it's a legitimate criticism against Dark Souls 1. Some people call it a pro. I would say all of the people who are really enthusiastic about it would call it a pro, but you could just get yourself lost in a place you do not belong in Dark Souls 1. You can't do that in light of me. It's not necessarily friendly for a newer gamer experience.
00:12:39
Speaker
Because I've played games where I'm like, oh, this is intuitive to a degree because I've played enough games. Whereas somebody else who's less familiar with that genre or gaming in general would just hit a roadblock and they're like, oh, fuck, what now?
00:12:52
Speaker
Oh, just press E on everything. Look around, explore, talk to an NPC. Just ways to approach the thing. But is it better to do things like Liza P does where you have this forward path? If there's a side path, it's just to go grab an item or something like that, right? It's a very brief side path, generally.
00:13:15
Speaker
There's not really these branching decisions to be made where the game could get more difficult rapidly because you picked the hard path. That's not even an option. Is that better for gaming or is it worse? I think that's too broad of a question to say it's better for gaming as a whole. I'm trying to be controversial. I know. You're trying to trick me up like my goddamn politician. You're just like, what would my third state be? Is it better or worse? Is this the two?
00:13:46
Speaker
It's the same. It's a, it's equal. Everything's fine. Everything's equal. But I'd say it's better for going back to like something that's more story driven because stories typically are told from beginning to end. When you have a more linear game, they can't jump to chapter seven unless they've hit chapter six, you know? So you can really set the order of things. If that's the experience you want the player to have. Now, Dark Souls obviously still has a story.
00:14:15
Speaker
But a lot of that is from other descriptions. You go back and figure it out later. And then you have more of like a deeper meaning because you're so starved for information that when you get it, you're like, okay, this must be a thing I have to remember for later.
00:14:30
Speaker
There are many people, and I would probably count myself amongst them for the first playthrough, that when you go to fight Gwen at the end of the game, it's like, oh yeah, the guy from the intro. And that's your context for what's going on right now. And LizaP definitely doesn't fall into that. They have a much...
00:14:52
Speaker
Stronger. I will say much stronger narrative than what's going on in Dark Souls, but Dark Souls kind of has this embedded loneliness to it that Liza Liza P doesn't have. Yes. Where it's like even in the universe, you're probably not the only chosen undead making this progress track. Right. Like they conceptualize multiplayer to the point that you are not really the hero. Mm hmm.
00:15:21
Speaker
and obviously taking that all the way through to Dark Souls 3 in ways that I'm not gonna mention, but it's really cool. And in Lies of P, they keep you from having that sort of like isolated experience by surrounding you with these characters you're gonna engage with a lot.
00:15:37
Speaker
Yeah, so like you will still kind of build up your hub world in the same way you would with like Dark Souls 1. But Dark Souls 1, very notably at Firelink Shrine, has a very somber tone, again with that theme of isolation. Whereas in Lies of P,
00:15:53
Speaker
You're in a fancy hotel. It's very pretty inside. All the NPCs will kind of be around the same thing, couple of different stuff. There's like a little training area. You can listen to music while you're there, which fits again with the theme of the game. And yeah, everything's always so interconnected as far as when you leave the hotel or you're going into a town.
00:16:17
Speaker
You're going to a different part of the town. You're going into like a factory nearby. Um, everything feels contiguous enough as part of like the same world. Um, but we'll have its own kind of spin on it. And none of the levels are like huge. Yeah.
00:16:35
Speaker
Yeah, I was thinking of that when I was playing through it. I think Dark Souls and Sekiro, they're both games that oftentimes throw significant challenges. I mean, obviously the boss fights are always going to be the most significant challenges as they should be. But those games could give you a pretty significant challenge on the way to the boss fight. Sometimes there would be something you had to figure out some way you could get ambushed, something like that. There's not much of that in lies of peace.
00:17:02
Speaker
There's like, there are definitely situations you can die outside of a boss fight. I don't think I'm like a pro gamer or anything like this. It's just, it's not as difficult until you get to the boss fight, especially since the areas are shorter and they are, if anything, even more generous with their, their save points, their bonfires and the star gazers.
00:17:26
Speaker
I'd say it's 100% an easy game in comparison. This is just shade against all of the difficulties I had on boss fights. I believe I had more difficulties than you as far as attempts for boss fights because I was stupid and went with strength build.
00:17:44
Speaker
versus what I saw you doing with Dex. I'm like, Jesus Christ, I really fucked up. That's generalized gameplay advice for
Combat Mechanics Exploration
00:17:52
Speaker
our listeners. You guys, we are the strategy kind, I understand that. Just play a Dex build the first time you play any game. It's always gonna be easier. It's a pretty safe bet. But yeah, I do think it was relatively easy.
00:18:10
Speaker
in comparison to some other souls like I've played. It didn't feel like that in the moment. Yeah, even the first boss, I don't want to tell you how many times it took. But I got there, maybe the whole game eventually. I just needed to find really the rhythm. Yes. And this is one of those things like with Sekiro where you do have to learn the boss fights to be like, Oh, this is my damage window. This is my
00:18:40
Speaker
block or parry window. I guess that's true of other Souls like titles like Dark Souls as well, but it feels less obvious. In Dark Souls, there's very telegraphed things for when you can block and parry to the point that they really strongly encourage it for a lot of your boss and enemy encounters, whereas you really don't have to do that in Dark Souls. You can use magic, you can use
00:19:10
Speaker
just wait and you swing your big ass weapon. Because you know how long it takes you to swing it, you're like, this is probably a good time at this distance, right? It's kind of interesting where it lands as far as like that tempo that you mentioned, right? Because like Sekiro, Bloodborne, Dark Souls 3 to an extent, they're all games where you can like very much be
00:19:33
Speaker
aggressive or you're actually rewarded for being hyper aggressive. As long as you don't overextend, you're rewarded for that. Obviously, Bloodborne with the rally mechanic. Dark Souls 2 is kind of the standout one for me. And this is one of the criticisms some people have of the game is that it's like relatively turn based or it's like you're going to make your attack, but it's going to be a big swing and it's going to have a long animation. I will now make my attack back to defensive, back to offensive, back to defensive. Right.
00:20:04
Speaker
And I think lies of P threads the needle pretty well with their system. I wasn't sure if thread is meant to be a pun. Oh yeah, puppets. But they use a defensive balance, right? It is a combination. It's definitely inspired by Bloodborne. I think it would be crazy to claim anything, but it's like a defensive option. So in Bloodborne, if you took damage,
00:20:34
Speaker
you could attack the enemy to get your health back. In Lies of P, if you block damage, you still take the damage, but as long as you don't take unblocked damage, so you're just holding your weapon up, you tank it a little bit, now you can counter attack and get your health back. Yeah, the rally still does exist in that case. Guard regain is what they call it in this one. Yes.
00:21:03
Speaker
It's good though. I think it's, I actually, the more I thought about it, the more I actually enjoyed that mechanic because it's really boring to just hold a 100% resistant shield and Dark Souls, right? Like it's not always an answer to every problem, but it's the most passive answer.
00:21:22
Speaker
that exists. And this one, it doesn't even like pretend that it's the best way to do it. There's still perfect pairing, but guard regain, it gives you that little timer. Your health bar is still being chunked away as you're blocking these attacks. You have to find an opportunity to counter attack and get that health back.
00:21:42
Speaker
Yes. And I think encouraging people to attack is always good. Um, cause like, yeah, people could, you know, spend five minutes just being like, Oh, what, what are the move sets? Where are the, uh, openings for me to attack? Yeah. Those people are boring and I hate them. I throw myself at the wall, like some, uh, al dente spaghetti, you know, I want to get in there. Uh, I want to get my ass beat a couple of times. Like, okay. I gotta be less aggressive here where I can maybe punish here. Right. Um,
00:22:11
Speaker
Dave and I have different approaches when it comes to bosses. Dave can attest this because he almost he saw most of my lives of P playthrough. I was like streaming it for him. And it's like, all right, new boss. And I just start circling it and not attacking at all and just dodging attacks and things to try to learn them, like not even. This is the throwaway attempt. We're not even trying to kill the boss right now. Oh, my God. This guy is probably using phantoms. You heard me. I did for Alden Ring, but
00:22:43
Speaker
Yeah, I don't think either of us used any type of assistance mechanic in this. Not for a successful run. I used the Spectre for one attempt on a boss. But yeah, I tried it out too, just to be like, what is this? But it did not help me clear the boss at all. And I also played through the game twice, so back off, everybody. All right. Twice as an expert as I am at this.
00:23:07
Speaker
But I was going to say towards the aggressive thing. You obviously need to be pretty close to be able to get your attacks in. So while you're up close, at some point you're going to lose your window of opportunity to hit them for free. They're going to start an animation going to try and hit you. Do you want to dodge away? You could. Or you can perfect parry their attacks.
00:23:30
Speaker
So both you hitting them and doing perfect parry is going to work towards breaking that poise. So like in Sekiro with an enemy, you could see that a meter built up and you're like, oh, now they're broken and I can just hit them for free, right? They've used all their stamina blocking, now they're fucked. Whereas this, for every enemy, it has basically an invisible meter, but when it's
00:23:57
Speaker
They're about to be able to be broken. It will kind of highlight their health bar in white. And then if you use a strong attack, it will break them. They can go in for your critical attack. Right. It's a little bit feels, it feels good. Yes. It's, it's a little bit more depth than just Dark Souls because Dark Souls had the same point, like poise or posture mechanic. Um, but without the requirement to follow up with a heavy attack.
00:24:23
Speaker
And that can lend some intricacy to the actual fight, because when their health bar is white, that doesn't mean that they're in like a downed susceptible state. That just means you have to find an opportunity to land that heavy attack. And I was using a weapon that couldn't do it. You're missing a decent chunk of damage because critical attacks can do a lot, a lot of damage. Yes. And there's ways that you can like customize it to make it even, even stronger.
00:24:53
Speaker
as far as like the skill tree is concerned. So there are a lot of mechanics in Lies of P. I think in your drive by there at the beginning, you mentioned a lot of the ones that were very Dark Souls-esque or things listed straight from Dark Souls. It does a lot that's unique as well. Some of it lands better than others, I think. What were your impressions of the hilt and haft
00:25:21
Speaker
a system for weapon usage. And how would you describe it also? I'm going to do a little bit of Dunkey's take on this, because I wasn't thinking about it until I was like, oh, yeah, yeah, he actually brings up a good point. So basically what it is, is you have, from the beginning of the game, three starter weapons you can pick from. And if you didn't like the one you had, like the first shot person would be like, do you want to buy the other starter weapons? You're like, maybe.
00:25:47
Speaker
So I bought all of them, my first playthrough, because I'm like, which one feels good? What do I like to do? But the weapons are essentially broken into two pieces. One is the blade, which is going to be your stat scaling, as far as like, oh, this one is better with strength. This one's better with technique. And then your handle or hilt, which is going to be for the move set. So you can take a rapier move set, but put on a strength thing.
00:26:16
Speaker
Now, unfortunately, the blade will also deal with like the quickness of the attacks. So you can't take, oh, rape your hilt, giant fucking sword and go like, I tried it really quickly. It was everyone's hope. But it is kind of cool to be able to mix and match your options to see, hey, I wonder what this would be like. Maybe I can find a cool thing.
00:26:40
Speaker
Dunkey's point on this was, it is a cool system, but you find so many weapons and things throughout the game that like, honestly, after like the first two hours, you probably have a custom weapon you like, or a specific weapon type as far as dagger, medium sword, or like big ass weapon, where you're like, this is kind of where I feel comfortable for my build and my playthrough, right? Yeah. So at a point, you kind of just stop experimenting.
00:27:11
Speaker
Because at that point, like you haven't upgraded those weapons as much. So even if the moveset is all right, you're like, I'm going to stick with the thing I know and stealing the most damage right now, instead of spending a lot of money trying to invest in another weapon. I do think there is one mitigating fact to that. And that is Liza P is very generous with like the crafting ingredients. Just like in Dark Souls, you'll reach a point where you can farm most of them, I think.
00:27:38
Speaker
But you don't really have to. They give you a lot. Lives of Pete progression is very fast compared to Dark Souls. And that's honestly, you can tell that just by play time. I think the average play time to beat the game, even doing some side stuff is around 30 hours, give or take, it sounds about right. And for Dark Souls, if you're going through a little bit slowly, it can take 100 hours.
00:28:04
Speaker
to go through. So this is a much faster game. Part of it is because it is mostly linear. But I didn't feel like if there was a weapon that I wanted to start upgrading, I didn't feel there was a massive gap to upgrading it. And they do the thing where once you progress enough with a vendor, they'll have infinite amounts of whatever lower tier upgrade materials exist. But there was the issue of I found something I liked, and I was happy with it,
00:28:33
Speaker
And then nothing else that I was getting was so cool. Yeah, I really wanted to swap until I just found some boss weapons, which completely sidestep the system. They're not craftable. They just function exactly like they do in Dark Souls. And then I was like, ah.
00:28:50
Speaker
I'm going to talk about this on the episode. Yeah. Because I initially, you know, started with like a strength, the default weapon. I might've changed around a little bit, but once I found a cool boss weapon that I liked, maybe like four or five bosses in, I'm like, Oh, this is my thing. Like I'm not going to really change it up at this point. And they have cooler move sets. They can do cooler things. Yeah. I also forgot to mention that.
00:29:15
Speaker
Another part of weapons is you have your light attack, you have your heavy attack, surprise, surprise. You also have something called a fable meter, which is a little blue thing that charges under your stamina, and you will essentially have two uses for it. One will be your block and why, another one will just be why, and it will vary per the weapon. So one might be, hey, this will be like an extra little counter attack bonus. Maybe it will want to be a huge honking attack, right?
00:29:46
Speaker
but they do different things and it feels good to also play around with those.
00:29:52
Speaker
But also if you find one you like, you're like, I kind of want to keep doing this. Yeah. A lot of them do have very cool animations. Oh yeah. The comparison for people who play Dark Souls is they are pretty much weapon arts, but they're more dramatic, I think, on average than weapon arts, discounting the whole flurry dance with the scythe from Ashes of Aurirandel. But in general, they look pretty cool.
00:30:21
Speaker
you should be using them. And unlike in Dark Souls, you build back this energy that you're using for these style attacks by just dealing damage, by making normal attacks. So Dave called me on a couple of times in the playthrough where it's like, sure is just like a full bar of resources, isn't it? How many more times do you just hit them when you could be generating resources? Like fine.
00:30:49
Speaker
use a special attack, and they're always super effective, it's the right idea, but I like Liza P. Take on it. And I like that they come from the hilt of your weapon, both. Each piece contributes one of the attacks. Because that allowed, that fed into the mix and match back when I was using a custom weapon. I had this Glaive handle, which gave me this cool charge ability
00:31:15
Speaker
And I'm sure Dave got tired of seeing it, because I used it for every single attack. I'm like, oh, I'm going to step a couple feet away, charge this up, and I'll move in as part of the special attack. I guess that was just the heavy moveset, actually, now that I'm thinking about it. But the specials were big, too. There were some weapons I didn't even really want to try, because I was like, I'm never going to use any of these specials. Yeah.
00:31:38
Speaker
The special weapon arts also, I don't think all of them, or at least the ones I was using will give you some armor as well. So you can still do most of the attack, if not the entire thing, and still be attacked in the middle and not really get interrupted, which is pretty cool. Yeah.
00:31:57
Speaker
I know like how I've said all of this and I forgot to mention, oh, there's also another arm that could do attacks. Yes. We haven't gotten to the, uh, the prosthesis, the God hands. Um, I would like to move past that though. Cause I feel like we're going very hard on mechanics. That's sure. That's that that's fair. Um, I would just mention as a, as a skipping in passing. Oh, look at that thing out the window. Yeah. Um,
00:32:26
Speaker
It's very similar to Sekiro's prosthesis in a lot of ways, but generally more offensive. And it's not a bad thing. I don't hate that they included it. There's some cool stuff you can do with it.
Music and Atmospheric Elements
00:32:40
Speaker
But outside of mechanics, what really caught your eye or is notable about the game Lies of P? I'll be honest, the first record I got
00:32:51
Speaker
feel just made me feel so it made me feel yeah I felt somber but not like sad it's like a like a happy beauty that kind of makes you tear up a little bit yeah it's a banger song I'm putting in the edit for sure
00:33:11
Speaker
Do you even have the edit? Didn't you get the edit last week? Dave is going to put it in the edit, motherfucker. While I'm working on it. You're going to send it to me to post. I'm going to do my own edit. Be like, Jake, send it back to you and check this out. But no, like as you're going back to the hub to maybe upgrade a weapon, maybe switch out some weapon parts, maybe do your upgrades to enhance your abilities.
00:33:38
Speaker
And I like that the upgrade tree only makes you better at certain things, but does not flat out make you better.
00:33:47
Speaker
It's like, hey, if you're good at attacks and good at counter-attacks, this will be better for you, right? But it doesn't just flat out give you a damage boost or make you stronger by default. But as you're going through and maybe catching the NPCs for recent events, you can have this music playing on in the background, and you can listen to a bunch of different tracks. And I don't think you can get all of them in one playthrough. No. But I think there's one side quest that's literally an either-or. Yeah.
00:34:16
Speaker
The game has a new game plus. There you go. That's not really a spoiler. Every game has a new game. That's right. My second game. It just really helps build out the world. And some characters are definitely more interesting than others. But that is something that definitely got me immersed. The music, yeah. Yeah, I would second that. The music's quite good.
00:34:41
Speaker
Um, I think some games, they get a little bit of a rap for putting the player in a position where they need to stand still while something happens. You don't strictly just have to stand in front of the, uh, the phonograph here and like listen to it. But, um, is that what those are called? The old name for it? Phonograph, right? Yeah. Um, but you could, and I didn't hate that. There's a little bit of, uh, uh,
00:35:09
Speaker
not OCD, what's the attention deficit disorder ADHD sort of stimulus and that you see like the record playing. If you have the UI open, it just spins there in place, which is nice. And they have some art for each of the records, which is cool. Um, but they're also just very pretty songs and you can walk around, you can do training, you can talk to people as you mentioned, but I didn't hate just sitting there listening to it either. Um,
00:35:36
Speaker
which almost got to the point where I actually considered it a point against the game that so much of these records and like really stand out pieces were not things you encountered through standard gameplay. But there is some juxtaposition, Jacob. It's fair. I mean, the outside is chaos. The hotel is your sanctuary. I think that's fair. And there is a section toward the end of the game where they do have a track that is reminiscing of what you would hear on the on the record player.
00:36:06
Speaker
But if you want like that kind of soul music or really like a heartfelt instrumental, um, that just could not possibly be a background track, they put it on the record player. Yeah, it's VV good. I liked it. I will also say, uh, Liza P has definitely had, um, very unique bosses. So there's basically like some humanoid people you encounter who are kind of like you.
00:36:36
Speaker
And then there is a bunch of random shit. A lot of which are still puppets because part of the plot of the game is puppets have gone crazy. Oh, we got to figure out what's happening and try and help people out, right? Yeah. So like your very first boss, the tutorial boss is a parade clown that's bad and it's attacking you.
00:37:05
Speaker
Try to remember what's after that as a policeman. Yeah. So it's a policeman. He's like a constable, I think. Yeah. Yeah. But instead of like, you know, walking around like humanoid, he's on all fours and charging at you. Um, it's worth mentioning since you're talking about the puppets here, they do kind of remind me a little bit of, I mean, obviously there's a lot of, a lot of ways puppets can be depicted, but I kind of thought of the automatons from like Bioshock infinite.
00:37:33
Speaker
a little bit while I was playing through, they have some of that like janky movement and stuff. And there's a lot of variety in the puppets you face, but that's definitely a segment of them. Yeah, it feels like not first iteration of Tom Tom, but like third or fourth generation. It's the one before Detroit become human, basically. They're well, they're well far away from that. But yeah, we've covered a lot without talking about the story at all.
00:38:03
Speaker
And so before we talk about the story at all, the other thing I wanted to call out were the locales. So the game is very pretty. It looks really good. And that was the one point you said, like, you weren't going to confuse this game with Dark Souls. And I was like, I actually I kind of agree as long as any of the characters are on screen. But otherwise, there are some locales here that like they look really good.
00:38:31
Speaker
and I could see them in a Dark Souls game. They probably look better than Dark Souls does, though. That's kind of the term. Oh, infinitely. Dark Souls and shit. Yeah, like, there are some kind of... It's a little bit marshy. There's some trees. There's some destroyed buildings. And, like, yeah, Dark Souls. Yeah, there's a poison spot. There were some of those, for sure. You know, it's a Miyazaki game. But then, like, the clock tower and the stuff in the church was like... I thought it was really cool, stylistically, at least.
00:39:01
Speaker
Yeah, the city is Crot, and it just has this really cool, oh man, I don't know anything about actual culture. Like post-Victorian steampunk is what I'm gonna say. That's probably wrong, that's what I'm gonna say. It's just excellent. There's a lot of times where if a game has like good outdoor areas, you're like, ah, this kind of sucks going back inside.
00:39:28
Speaker
But then they have places like the Grand Exhibition Hall and all of these like fully realized locales. And it's like there's a big contrast. There was a contrast for me when I was playing the game. I was like, all of these locations feel like really cool and well designed and world building and all of this. And I was like.
00:39:46
Speaker
Why did they just take all the mechanics from Dark Souls? Like it felt like they had the ingenuity to do what they wanted to do and they could have done something separate, but they pulled a lot of that in. I don't want that to detract. The locales are like they did their own homework for that. Yes. I very much like towards the end of the game.
00:40:11
Speaker
You're very much still kind of in one area, but as you keep progressing, it keeps kind of evolving in a way, which I really liked.
00:40:22
Speaker
Now, Hori, I just thought it was very pretty. Oh, yeah. Well-designed. You know what we should do? We should have like a home stretch, like the last 10 minutes of the episode or something and be like, all right, now we're going to talk about what it all means.
Lying Mechanics and Story Impact
00:40:32
Speaker
Here's all the spoilers. Here's the in-game stuff. That'll be the home stretch cut off because there is some there is some cool stuff there I want to get to. But who do you play as in this game? You play as you are Japetto's puppet.
00:40:49
Speaker
Basically, some lady wakes you up. You're just kind of like asleep in a chair. You find your little helper, Gemini, who's really just there to narrate some pieces because you don't talk. You occasionally do like a nod. I accept your side quests, yes. Yes. You have those strong neck muscles of someone who's been doing side quests for their entire life.
00:41:13
Speaker
But basically she's like, Hey, uh, come to the hotel. I can explain more as you have to fight your way through the parade master to get there. Uh, but a key part is as we know with all mechanics, since I robots and the theory of robotics and all that, uh, basically you need to have certain laws for robots to follow. Uh, one of them in this game is that robots cannot lie. So the, the robot door at the beginning asks you, Hey, like.
00:41:40
Speaker
only humans are allowed into this building. Are you a human or a robot? And you're like, I'm a human. Right. So immediately now you're lying, which is something that in general robots cannot do. Yeah. I really essentially have some extra. Your robot plus, right. You have the ability to do more. And as you progress through the game, you get more opportunities to.
00:42:06
Speaker
lie or basically make choices. Some of those will be sidequest related, whether or not you want that record or something else. Um, but some of it is also just, I'd say kind of a feeler for who you want to be, who you are peeing as. Yeah. Cause somebody might ask you like an innocuous question of like, Hey, I'm kind of a shady character. Uh, do you want to tell me where a safe Haven is? And you're like,
00:42:33
Speaker
I don't know if I want to do that. I just met you and I was told before I should not be bringing people here and other situations like that.
00:42:42
Speaker
Yeah, I want to mention specifically for that first encounter with the lie door. I love it for world building because this is a city where the puppets are, it's called the puppet frenzy where they're killing everyone, right? Like as soon as you get off of the train, you start on, you see all these corpses. And there were points in the game that are like the terrain is just so covered in blood. Like I thought of Diablo and doom and I'm like,
00:43:10
Speaker
This is, this is a puppet game. Why is this so freaking violent? Um, but the thing I love about the door is it just, it's so, it's so like weird, right? It's so incongruous is the word I'm looking for because this isn't like a traditional security system. It's just like, well, if you were a puppet, you'd have to tell us, right?
00:43:30
Speaker
That's it. I'm a cop. All right. I'm sorry. Let me in. Yeah. Um, and so it does so much for world building that first lie. And then it is, I think the only mandatory lie in the game. Yes. You have to lie to proceed. Um,
00:43:48
Speaker
but it was, it is cool. And I will say this is a little behind the peak behind the curtain. The whole lie process is called the lie system. Um, cause it is a mechanic within the game as well, which we'll probably talk about in the last 10 minutes.
00:44:05
Speaker
that you're basically tasked with kind of, you know, going out and dealing with the puppet frenzy because. I mean, granted, if you put a human version of Tomatone, you've seen what's happened to the humans. They're kind of getting fucked up a lot, a lot. And you have some combat capabilities, right? And you're smarter than a standard puppet. So you go and find Geppetto to see if he can help. And he's just like, hey, shit's fucked.
00:44:34
Speaker
We got to, you know, go try and deal with these certain puppets. Can you help me out? And you just nod.
Narrative Themes and Character Role
00:44:41
Speaker
And then you're kind of going through and taking out these bosses as you progress through the game and try and find out more information about what's going on. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I think it's also worth noting that like you're pretty much always a sympathetic character.
00:45:00
Speaker
Like we've talked about lying and things like that. And you can choose to be like a little bit more roguish or not, but like you're definitely playing as a hero. And when you're sent off on these quests, it's like, Hey, there's the critical path. Go deal with that guy or this gang or whatever. Right. It's always to like save somebody or avoid some catastrophe or they had it coming to them or something like that. And, um, and so it's not like the game is giving you the mass effects.
00:45:30
Speaker
Oh, this is a good decision. Here's like the evil decision. Pinocchio's face is going to crack if you make these decisions. Nothing like that.
00:45:42
Speaker
But I do agree that it does help with the role playing a bit when you're going through the game and you're given some of these decisions about who to trust, who to take along and bring back to camp and things like that. Camp in this case is a hotel. It's not a camp. It's as far away from a camp as possible. I'll meet you back at camp. All right, cool.
00:46:05
Speaker
But it is good and the boss fights, I know we had a little break from talking about mechanics, so I'm not going to jump back in too much. But they do force you to learn the way that the game would like you to play and heavily encourages that you play.
00:46:25
Speaker
Dave saw plenty of instances of me resisting that with everything in my being. I was just, Dodge is a perfectly acceptable lifestyle, Dave. Just because you don't accept me doesn't mean they won't. Now you should be, you should be blocking and ideally perfect blocking a lot of things, but yeah.
00:46:47
Speaker
Yeah, but it feels good though. Just kind of like I think we mentioned this before to each other off podcast But the meekery counter in Sekiro is so Hmm. Yeah, it's so rewarding cuz like somebody's coming at you with a spear front on Oh, I have to dodge it didn't know I'm gonna go into it and step on his spear into the ground Fuck up his poise and then kick him in the ass
00:47:11
Speaker
And it feels really good because it's just like, uh, I know what you're going to do. Yeah. And you just kind of hand deflect. So in the same way, when you're landing these perfect parries, you're like, Oh, I know the move set. And then you're of course rewarded by getting more of that poise block into being able to help you do a critical attack.
00:47:29
Speaker
Yeah, and it's really cool. It drains none of your stamina. You take no health damage. It is full mitigation. If you time these parries, right? You just can't be holding the block button, which is a lot easier to do in a lot of circumstances. But I have a curiosity. I don't think it's a spoiler if we tell any of these names, just the names alone, which was the hardest boss for you to get into the groove of
00:47:58
Speaker
Ooh, that's a good question. So the big green monster is very high up on the list for me.
00:48:08
Speaker
And based off the number of comments I saw in the Wiki, a lot of other people as well. And then there was a couple of people that were like, this boss was no problem. Or they just gave some really straightforward blurb about how they beat it. And these comments are just downvoted massively by the people who just cannot beat these bosses. I love that, by the way. That's the kind of community you want to foster.
00:48:37
Speaker
I think that's the answer for me. Do you recall a boss that was particularly difficult for you? Or did it all just mash together? I definitely spent a decent number of retries on Big Green Monster. But the one I have the most memories of just like doing that same run back to the boss door every single time is the king of puppets fight. Jesus fucking Christ. Again, I should not have picked a heavy weapon that was on me.
00:49:08
Speaker
But I got to a point where I learned how to parry everything. I just felt like I wasn't dealing damage. But one of my favorite fights still, very cool. But not as cool as Latraxia. Yeah, oh my gosh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Which we are almost there. Before we spoil that boss, everyone's been through spoiled territory, how many main bosses do you think
00:49:38
Speaker
are in the game. And I will say to qualify main bosses, it's pretty much none of the people are bosses. Like the, they would be hunters in Bloodborne. They're called like, what was the word here? There's a bunch of words for it, but survivors and people out there. 11? That's pretty close, I think. So we've got three, but one, two, three.
00:50:06
Speaker
15, 15 total. Okay. Yeah. Including the, uh, the boss that you don't have to fight if you choose a different ending at the end of the game. Um, but they are really good. I do think that, um, they have some good variety to them. The one thing I would say is not the best about some of the bosses that they share a moveset, but I also didn't hate that because the part of my brain that was like, you know, this moveset already.
00:50:33
Speaker
just take the win, like you can deal with this, you know how to dodge it or parry it or whatever, was like, excellent. I'm glad they're reusing movesets. I liked when they did it because at least with the big green monster fight, like it, there was a reason why the moveset was the same, right? Yeah. I thought that was cool. A cool time. That was cool. And if you're going to use, reuse content in your game, like make an in-universe justification for why things are operating the same way.
00:51:03
Speaker
If you do that, that's all it takes for me. But we're engaging Go mode. Release me. Release me. Yeah, if you're not sold on the game now, I mean, I guess you could stick around and hear spoilers. But we're going full spoilers. If not, check it out. It's on Game Pass. And we will see you in the next episode. But for the people who stick around, what's the thing you most want to spoil, Dave? We're talking about the spoilerific.
00:51:30
Speaker
So I really thematically, truly the coolest boss fight is definitely the last one, which is optional, which is, I guess, the empty puppet, or where you're by is supposed to go into. It's also fucking teased at the King of Puppets fight. You see the awkward stage play, you're like, what's that about? I completely missed it. And I was watching you watch it, I was just like dead silent. You're like, that's weird.
00:51:58
Speaker
vibrating my seat because it's because of the tone as it's portrayed in that fight is they think that you're you think that they're just mocking you or Taunting you or something like that, right? Mm-hmm. You don't make it like you're not attributing other characters to the roles of You know Geppetto taking out your heart and putting it over here or something. It's just a taunt But that was brilliant. I do think that was one of the things in the game was brilliant
00:52:23
Speaker
Also, I probably should have I wasn't super surprised that like Geppetto turned out to be like a dick and evil, but I was not expecting him to, you know, bring a puppet out of the box and then have it fight you with fucking scissors. Uh huh. Which is that was actually just super funny. The whole thing is really cool. His weapon, also the weapon you can get from it. I'm going to I'm going to look it up real quick, but it has some metal name.
00:52:52
Speaker
uh, proof of humanity is the scissors. It's like a big old weapon, which is like, it's all just allegorical stuff. You're like giant scissors, cut the strings proof of, yeah, exactly. Um, but.
00:53:08
Speaker
It was a cool fight. I would say the one thing I was a little less of a fan of was the final phase for like nameless puppet. It's very like anime and there's so many bright red lights all over the place. The only reason that like I could I could get so many parries off and blocks and stuff like that was because it just attacked so fast. You can just mash the button pretty much very close to it. And that's about how fast they're attacking.
00:53:38
Speaker
I really like Victor too, but I don't want to go through all of the bosses. Romeo was very cool. I thought Victor was all right. Yeah. He was fun. He was a fun mechanics fight. And we mentioned this, but it's the first time like when you parry and when you hit an enemy with a strong attack and they're being like guard or staggered. Sometimes towards the end of the game, they'll like counter attack you and then go into a position where you can actually do the critical hit.
00:54:06
Speaker
And Victor, I think is the first character that does that. Where he's just like, Oh, are you just, you hurt me? Well, I mean, I'm gonna like crush you first and then stagger on the ground. Yeah. You're so like your instinct is, Oh, I broke that. Let me go for the critical. Uh-huh. And he's like, I'm not done yet. Yeah. And the name, I'm going to say the full name for the thing. There was literally green monster. So we did name drop it, but the phase two, that's actually difficult. It's called puppet devouring green monster, which is.
00:54:35
Speaker
I'm just a fan of edge in general. So I'm there for that. Um, you mentioned Geppetto though, and like, uh, he, he was the character. I honestly, I honestly, like, I, he has a little bit of the, had to become a cartoon villain at the end, but I was suspicious of him from the beginning because he was soft-spoken protagonist. Like he's a soft-spoken sympathetic character. You're like, Oh yeah.
00:55:04
Speaker
That guy, I know what you're doing. Right. And then at the end of the game, they actually have the voice actors speak a little differently, a bit more maniacally, a little bit more villainous. Um, and you can just tell, you can just tell it. You're like, right. This is the kick the dog moment. That's to make him real evil. Did you see an NPC that you particularly were a fan of?
00:55:30
Speaker
whether it was theming or just your interactions with them or maybe a side quest. So I think the answer I gave when I was playing through was Aladoro and also Red Fox. I think Red Fox is my answer.
00:55:49
Speaker
I don't think so. That was applause. I'm going to edit it to be a longer pause. We're going to have competing edits here where I'm just going to be like, I've already published the episode. You send me over some file. But yeah, I like that character because the Red Fox and her brother Black Cat are like from opposing factions, basically. They're kind of like fighting each other, just basically gangs.
00:56:18
Speaker
but they're working together now. And she's just, he's the douchebag that's obviously the douchebag, and she's the manipulative one that's nice to you. And apparently that's what gets me, I guess. It's just the manipulative one that's nice to you. But I also like that they spend the game not really ever helping you out, although they kind of like pretend to or pretend they're on your side and stuff.
00:56:47
Speaker
If you were only ever nice to them anyways, like if you were still in their corner, you didn't like turn on them or do anything like that. Then at the end of the game, you can be rewarded by like them choosing not to fight you. You can also fight them and just kick their ass through really weak. It's, it's fair, but I mean, like from, from a character perspective, these are the, these are people who are literally paid to stop you from challenging the big, big, bad boss.
00:57:16
Speaker
And it's just like, no, no, you've been building rapport with them the whole time. That's a cool interaction. I like that. You just walk by and fist bump each other. Going out the big man's upstairs. Pretty much. They're just like two coins. You're like, this is, this is a third of a harvest. Should I tell them about the tree? Yeah, right. But the, uh, the, the, one of the things I didn't think
Multiple Endings and Thematic Impact
00:57:47
Speaker
I didn't give the game a lot of credit for, and I specifically said like, I don't know why this is a Pinocchio game, right? I alluded to that earlier with something I said on the podcast with like, it could have been its own thing. They have the world building chops was because I didn't know how many adventures of Pinocchio references were in the game. Apparently if you actually know the book, it's like everything. It's a lot.
00:58:14
Speaker
And I didn't realize that, like all of the gangs and everybody who's got an animal mask and you know, so many of these characters, they're all just there. So. Yeah. Like at the very beginning of the game, they're like, Hey, uh, shout out to the work of, I forget the name of the guy who did it. Carlo something. Carlo Cannini.
00:58:40
Speaker
Carlo, welcome to the House of Panini. Uh-huh. I'll find it somewhere. While Jake's doing that, I will say my favorite NPC was the Riddle Master.
00:58:56
Speaker
Oh, yeah. Because he's kind of weird and out there, but he's kind of like. This voice of mystery as you progress through the game colloquially, like he's annoying and you obviously know that he knows something he's just not letting on right about what's going on or how the the world is working and. Then later, like you actually find him in air quotes here in person.
00:59:27
Speaker
And he's like, yo, I'm out. I just wanted to like, let you on this information before I peace and just, you know, turn myself off. Yeah. I want to let you know, I murdered this guy's parents. I love doing it. Um, if you, if you do what you love, you never work a day in your life. No, he's also kind of like challenging you throughout as far as like, what does it mean to be human? Are you human or a puppet? Yeah. Mm-hmm.
00:59:56
Speaker
Were you killing those people back there? Or are those not even people, right? That was one of the interesting options because the game, the lie system, the thing we didn't say is the more you lie, the more human-like you become. But one of the questions he asks you is, are you a murderer? And at this point in the game, the objective truth is yes. It absolutely is yes.
01:00:23
Speaker
but you could lie to him and say no to get more points on this lie system. But you also are rewarded for picking the correct answers to his questions. Another part of the lie system is basically you can find a painting of young you
01:00:47
Speaker
and its nose will grow into a weapon. It's so dumb. It's dumb, but it's kind of cool. Also, you pointed this out, and I forgot about it. But there is a cat in the hub area next to one of the shop people. And initially, it's not keen on you. You try and go and pet it, it'll hiss and swat at you. But as you gain more humanity throughout the game, it starts to let you be affectionate with you. You can pet it, and at a point, you can pick it up.
01:01:14
Speaker
Because it doesn't see you as a puppet or some weird robot thing. It sees you as a person. Right. Apparently this has OK with people. Not all are, but yeah. The other thing we didn't mention was listening to the records also gives you humanity. Any time that you complete listening to one of those tracks, which is pretty cool. And the game does tell you whenever there's this shift, it's like the ergo is whispering
01:01:44
Speaker
into like the air grow feels warm, into like eventually a heartbeat. If you make a decision at the end of the game, which leads into the endings. And this was the other place where it's like, they really had Geppetto have his kick the dog moment. Are you familiar with what happens in the bad ending for Liza P? Are you familiar with the post game?
01:02:13
Speaker
for LizaP if you haven't done New Game Plus and the bad ending. I'm going to let you say it. I'll just say it, yeah. It's more fun if we just go back and forth and we never actually tell people. So in the post game, this is like your heart, your mechanical clockwork heart that has all this air go and all the components to revive Geppetto's son, in quotes, basically. There's his name, Carlo. Let's see what they did.
01:02:43
Speaker
that the nameless puppet will then become Carlo, essentially, who has no compunctions about killing people whatsoever. And Geppetto has Carlo kill everyone at the hotel, because they're the ones who have some idea of what was going on. And he doesn't want anyone to have any idea of what was going on. And in the post game,
01:03:06
Speaker
Uh, all of the people you talk to in the hotel, all these nice characters who maybe had side quests or interactions with showed vulnerability to you at some point in the game. They are all replaced by puppets and they all say something to the effect of like, how can I serve you whenever you go to interact with them? Oh, okay. So I didn't do that part. I just saw the, uh,
01:03:28
Speaker
that he killed everybody thing yeah no it's it's dark and it's messed up and it's like mustache twirlingly evil for Geppetto but that's that's fine it's not the ending I got I actually got the true ending on my first playthrough which is not the hardest thing to do if you're just like I like lying
01:03:52
Speaker
I don't want to be a douchebag. But you let Sophia die. Well, she wanted to. She's like, please, please, I beg you. But basically, you can save her, and she's not in that same state anymore. Yes. That is the true ending, is finding her another puppet body. And OK, here's your spiritual essence back. Now hold me here while I pass out.
01:04:19
Speaker
Listen, uh, I have a thing for, uh, blue hair puppets, apparently between
Overall Impressions and Developer Hopes
01:04:24
Speaker
this and Ronnie. Yeah. That's fair. That's fair. Um, so overall, I really liked the game. Uh, I'm not a fan of the post game sequence, the, uh, the very last cut scene with, uh, the teaser for wizard of Oz. What was your impression on that? Because.
01:04:47
Speaker
They basically are like, our next game is going to have Dorothy at least as a character. And it's going to be very weird. Because like after you do everything, it's like, and the credits roll. You're like, okay, that's cool. That's cool. That's cool. And then like, it's somebody talking to somebody else on a train and they're obscured. Um, they shared their name, but of course it's nobody you've ever met in game. You don't know anybody in universe. Um, so it's like, Oh, it's some other character, right?
01:05:13
Speaker
They're like, oh, yeah, we'll do this plan for this next thing. We'll need to get the armor of God back. And they're like, oh, don't worry. I already have somebody on it. And then you see these Ruby slippers kind of go and then like stop and then click their heels, which is 100% like, oh, Wizard of Oz reference. It's the thing. They say Dorothy too. Yes. So it then becomes, are they just going to make other games like this?
01:05:43
Speaker
kind of off of, you know, very old, but well-known stories that became like a movie classics in like the 50s, 60s type thing. And if so, like, is it going to play the same? Is it going to play different? Yeah. I don't know. And this is where, like, I think
01:06:04
Speaker
reality in the fiction inside my head kind of clash because the romantic in me is like I want them they they clearly can have to be really good at storytelling telling their own stories not just remixing characters like they show that they're capable of that in lies of p i was convinced of that by the end um
01:06:23
Speaker
but they're making these decisions to use these things where the copyright or whatever has lapsed, and it's just whatever the term is, we're in the common amongst the people. And they specifically said that the reason that they picked the game to be around Pinocchio was because they knew it would help with adoption in the Western audience, right?
01:06:50
Speaker
and I want to be cynical and I want to be like, you guys could have made your own thing and it would have been even better. Here's the thing though, right? Could have been so cool. This is like a Korean studio? Yes, South Korean. Well, obviously. If it was a North Korean studio, it would have been a different game.
01:07:12
Speaker
But yeah, it's not like they just said, like they slapped on the face of Pinocchio, like, you know, this fucker and went on. As you said before, like it really is off of the the original story. Yes. They kept like everything. Where was Monster of the Whale? That was from the movie. But it was just really cool. Yeah, it was way more than I expected going in.
01:07:39
Speaker
Cause anytime you're like, Oh, it's a new souls. Like you're like, all right, where did they cop out? Which parts really suck? Um, but now, um, this was as far as a non-front non, I can tell we're at the end of the podcast. As far as a non from soft, uh, souls, like, I think this has been the closest and best one that I've seen to date.
01:08:06
Speaker
I mean, I haven't really played any other one, so I agree. For sure. I do want them to do their own thing, though. I don't want them to remix all these old stories forever. It's fine. I would play Lies of D when it comes out, but I just, I think they have the capability and the storytelling to be able to do it themselves, so.
01:08:30
Speaker
They had that first. They had the breakout. They were attached to the Pinocchio thing. You guys like Pinocchio, right? That was a freaking Disney show. You see Disney movie as a kid and it's animated and stuff. Yeah, everybody loves that. Violence. So we'll see where it goes.
01:08:47
Speaker
I'm gonna keep an eye on it. The developer is NeoWiz, is the name. So if you see anything by them, you know, maybe see where it goes. And we will see, you know. Just release it on Game Pass, it's all I ask. But if you guys have your favorite Souls-like, you should tell us what it is. There's an entire Wikipedia article, apparently. Some people can test if the genre even exists. Some people are dumb.
01:09:15
Speaker
Uh, send us in your favorites soapstone podcast at gmail.com or join the discussion on facebook full of real boys and only boys it's very weird facebook.com slash soapstone podcast and as always we'll see in the next one make sure to upgrade your p organ
01:10:06
Speaker
Just won't you step on me