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S3 Ep270: Remnant 2
164 Plays2 years ago
FULL SPOILERS: Remnant 2
MINOR SPOILERS: Remnant: From the Ashes
Join Dave, Jake, and special guest Ian as they talk about ASMR, gay chicken, and finally Remnant 2. Find out their thoughts on the acclaimed follow-up to 2019's Remnant: From the Ashes in this week's episode!
Intro:
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MINOR SPOILERS: Remnant: From the Ashes
Join Dave, Jake, and special guest Ian as they talk about ASMR, gay chicken, and finally Remnant 2. Find out their thoughts on the acclaimed follow-up to 2019's Remnant: From the Ashes in this week's episode!
Intro:
- Remnant 2 - Main Menu Theme
- Remnant 2 - Sha'hala: Guardian of N'erud
SoapstonePodcast@gmail.com
Like our podcast? Like our podcast! We'll post when new episodes are uploaded!
https://www.facebook.com/SoapstonePodcast/
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Light-hearted Banter
00:00:09
Speaker
you
00:00:50
Speaker
How's it going, everyone?
ASMR Preferences and Anecdotes
00:00:51
Speaker
Welcome to another episode of Soapstone. My name is Jake, and I'm joined by my co-host, as always, Dave. How's it going tonight, Dave? I'm doing pretty Jake. How are you doing, Ian? I'm doing pretty Dave. It's a good day for a podcast. This was all a ploy just to get you to say pretty Dave, just so you know. You just stepped right into it. Clipped it. Clipped it. Used to get in every fucking intro now. He doesn't have to do anything special for that. I don't need to be tricked. He's perfectly attractive on his own.
00:01:19
Speaker
This is what I like about having... That's the outro name. Like, good guy friends. There's like, dude, you look good. I'm like, thanks, dude, you look good too. And it's just like this. Just perfect. You can't see the hand gestures I'm doing, but it was an interlocking of fingers. Nothing too forward. Too promiscuous. Too sultry.
00:01:44
Speaker
I mean, unless... I mean, have you heard that voice? I mean, hello? Is this the ASMR podcast? No, I would never even attempt to do that. Yeah. There's a very specific audience. I mean, like I appreciate ASMR. It's been a long time since I listened to it. But like for specific things, you got to also be careful because like
00:02:10
Speaker
I guess probably like 80% of that community now is like fetish stuff. Yes. I was like, I mean, like a haircut or like shaving sounds or something. I like that. I don't know. You said that because I sent something to our friend Dan a while ago and it was a dumb meme and it was a
00:02:32
Speaker
Kid was deep in what they're calling ASMR starts out listening to a pretty girl help him sleep three months later He's got a Russian vampire twins doing his makeup just to get a tingle. That's really funny
00:02:45
Speaker
Yeah, it gets crazy deep into like the role play stuff. For me though, twice with the haircut, like last time I was there, I've now opted in for like the, hey, wash my hair. So I'm not walking around with like loose hair as I'm trying to drive home. And I really like that sensation of like getting your scalp massage. Yeah. And it kind of gives me some of like those neck and like your tingles a little bit. Like this is just cathartic and nice. Yeah.
00:03:12
Speaker
All of my hairdresser, super attractive. I mean, guys can be hot and it's fine. I was looking for the joke in my head. Oh.
00:03:24
Speaker
No, I would never, I would never subject probably anyone, let alone like esteemed podcast listeners to like unprompted ASMR. And this isn't a bit, it's not leading to an edit or anything like that. That's what you think. Cause there's, well, I mean, for some people it's actually basically a trigger as much, not in like a good way. It's like a revulsion way, which is like, I'll like throw my headset across the room. So I'm like, I'm not going to put people through
Gaming Memories and Team Fortress 2
00:03:53
Speaker
that.
00:03:53
Speaker
Yeah, the phrase unprompted ASMR almost made me burst into giggles.
00:03:59
Speaker
I just like the idea of like you're gaming with your homies, then one person starts whispering like, what? I think I mean, it really throws people at you. Actually, in Team Fortress, when I had I had a clan back then, we I had one friend in particular. I know he doesn't go by this name anymore, so I can I can dox him. It was he went by Freshly Snipes back then. You know, great first person shooter name.
00:04:27
Speaker
And he was very confident in his sexuality, which I'm pretty sure he was straight, but it was hard to tell. Because he definitely escalated everything to as much as it could be. He's just like, oh, how does he reach out to you on Steam if he wants to send you a message? He's like, nice penis or whatever, right? The reigning champ of gay chicken.
00:04:55
Speaker
Uh-huh, yes, that's exactly what he played. Um, but it was really funny. Uh, cause I remember like one time we had an in-depth talk about like philosophy and like the effect of like religion and politics and stuff like that. And he just like wrapped it all up. He's like, he's just like, we should totally have sex or something like that. I was just like, there it is. There it is. Yeah. Jake, I don't know how to tell you this, but your friend Freshly Snipes might just be a little bit gay. Uh-huh. Yeah.
00:05:23
Speaker
I mean like it really kind of seemed like it, but I'm pretty sure he actually had a girlfriend, so I don't know what was going on. I guess he could be both, but you know. It was Team Fortress 2. Team Fortress 2 is a very fluid experience for everyone involved. With the eight male characters and the ambiguous character.
00:05:47
Speaker
Mm hmm. Yeah. And then a spy that lets you assume a different role. Right.
Exploring Remnant 2 - Initial Impressions
00:05:52
Speaker
A different position on the team. Mm hmm.
00:05:56
Speaker
People talk about it in Overwatch. Overwatch 2 came to Steam and they were talking about... Oh, we were going to talk about a video game, right? Anyways, it came to Steam and all the reviews. It's the worst reviewed game on Steam, total. Really? Ever. Which is very impressive, but that's how much it got review-bombed. And a lot of it are just like, oh, the Rule 34 of this game is so much better than the actual game itself.
00:06:20
Speaker
If you make Rule 34 for Team Fortress 2, it's very specific just by character. There's only so many niches you can kind of fit into that. Engineering keeps the boots on. Yeah, I get it. I get it.
00:06:39
Speaker
But speaking about class-based games, now maybe not competitive, what if we had like a cooperative class-based game where you got to do things? Gotcha. You're talking about invasion mode for Overwatch 2. No, I'm just kidding. This is a remnant joke. Yeah. So what's that game that we got here to talk about today?
00:06:56
Speaker
Remnant too. Oh, throws away Baldur's Gate three notes. Damn it. I think if we, if we spoiled Baldur's Gate, like off the jump, then I think more people would be upset because of the ASMR. Yeah. Let's, let's kill every community at once. To make Baldur's Gate, to hate ASMR. This is the stream for you. Oh my gosh.
00:07:24
Speaker
Um, so we played remnant one back in the day. I forget if we had an episode on that altogether, then we had an episode on it. I think we did. I just remember if we had esteemed Ian with us for that, we should have if we didn't. I'm going to look it up pretty fuzzy because we have excellent search engine optimization. So there's really no way. Okay. We're not on the first page. Um,
00:07:52
Speaker
That's all right, we'll throw a podcast in here. But at least we played it together, right? Oh, definitely. I played with somebody, I'm pretty sure it was you guys. Somebody. So just Dave and I did the record, but I believe we played it all three of us together. Although Dave reminded me very recently that we didn't actually beat it together. We never beat the last boss. I remember I beat the last boss.
00:08:22
Speaker
Separately.
00:08:25
Speaker
But we, I remember us being there at the end, um, just fighting the boss and getting frustrated with the mechanics or something else. And after several times really, Hey, let's call it here. Like we weren't having fun. We weren't really progressing. And then I think Ian went back later and he's like, well, I'm going to wrap it up. And I just never got to that point. Just first tried it. If I remember correctly, the reason we stopped just cause in remnant one, all of the bosses were.
00:08:55
Speaker
Basically Dark Souls bosses, like they run at you, they have big health bars, big dodge windows, you know, Dark Souls stuff. But the final boss was a mechanic boss, like from Destiny, or WoW, or something else, like it actually had mechanics to do, and after an entire game of not preparing us for that, we kind of didn't realize it.
00:09:20
Speaker
Yeah. I gotta interrupt you with one thing. We gotta make a decision now. Is this gonna be a partial spoiler or a full spoiler episode? Full. Full. Alright. Alright. Gloves are off. Just like the ending for this boss. Alright, the boss ending for Remnant 2. I don't know. I think the boss for Remnant 2. I mean, there's previous bosses that had gimmicks like the cube.
00:09:44
Speaker
Yes. But I think the difficulty spike on the final boss for Remnant 2 was astounding. We threw that game until that point and then just stopped in our tracks. Yeah, I feel like it's...
00:10:00
Speaker
Let me do the high level for anybody who's less familiar with this. Remnant 2 is Dark Souls with guns. That's the easiest comparison we can make. Third person shooter, you can do aim down sights. You have different options for melee weapons, ranged weapons. You can get different jewelry to kind of hone a build.
00:10:21
Speaker
But the game is very punishing with certain things. Like the bosses do not hold back and if you're not finding a way to kind of cheese or get around that, it's brutal. And the last boss is super indicative of that because even with us, I think we had to abuse chain healing. Because I remember for like the one phase of that boss fight, it was constantly me just
00:10:45
Speaker
not shooting anything and just, you know, getting hit constantly and then just watching my health go back and forth. Yeah, I think both Ian and I had, like, feedback heals, basically, in effect. When we healed ourselves, everyone else got healed. Yeah, that last boss fight, I had the item that was like, hey, feedback heal and your healing resource, your Estus Flask.
00:11:11
Speaker
It cuts in half, but it drops four of them on the ground. So I would do it and then just run in little circles for the constant AOE healing for everybody.
00:11:23
Speaker
No, it's it's pretty crazy. I do think talking a little bit between Remnant 1 and 2, the build variety is a lot more pronounced into my recollection. Now it's been a long time since Remnant 1 came out, but mostly I remember just like you pick a gun and you pick a mod and you're pretty well set to go.
Gameplay Mechanics and Customization in Remnant 2
00:11:45
Speaker
Like I don't remember the classes mattering as much, but this one you could actually do melee and it was fun.
00:11:53
Speaker
Yeah. I definitely would switch into melee builds for sections where I kind of rearrange my gear for just almost unlock an enemy or a stronger enemy like a boss or just kind of go through chaff by just smashing left click or eating spears at people.
00:12:12
Speaker
Yeah, I've got to say, the moment that game really went downhill for me wasn't the boss fight, it was when you two unlocked the giant spears that returned you when you threw them and could do friendly fire because I ate more spears in the back which knocked me down more times than I can count. Yeah.
00:12:30
Speaker
No, that's fair. It was a very fun weapon, though. And that's the other thing. A lot of the weapons felt good here. I can't remember. In Remnant 1, I felt like I mostly stuck with the same weapons throughout. And there was a bit of variety here. I think I kept that same offhand, but there were several. The game actually tempted me to switch weapons up, which is great. Dark Souls does that, and I don't think Remnant 1 accomplished that as much for me. Yeah, I can't remember any of the weapons from Remnant 1.
00:12:58
Speaker
And which is, you know, as this is a game does the Dark Souls things where they have boss weapons like, hey, you killed a boss, you can make a weapon out of it. So there were interesting guns in Remnant 1, but I can't remember any of them. Yeah.
00:13:13
Speaker
Yeah, it's all lost at time. But no, it was always fun, like after we completed a section or did a new boss to then be able to go back to town and be like, what is it? What does it do? And you either get like a cool shiny new mod, which you could equip really to any of your weapons, or you got a new gun to try out. And it's fun to always theorize and build craft.
00:13:35
Speaker
There's so many times we go back to town after we had done, let's say like a half hour dungeon and then you guys would both pop off about theory crafting for 10 minutes because we got one new item. And I was just like, yes. Is this is this the one? Does this make the bleed build possible? Let's find out. I had never fully completed this.
00:13:58
Speaker
But no, it's really crazy. I know you guys both played more than me. I joined Ian in some time after we had completed the game. And he was showing me all this cool stuff that he had found. And I was like, oh my god, how'd you find all this stuff? And then I looked at his hours played. And I was like, OK, that's fair.
00:14:20
Speaker
Because another big part of this game is RNG as far as if I'm starting a new game, Ian starting a new game, Jake starting a new game, we're not guaranteed to find the same stuff in our respective playthroughs. So you can definitely find different things. So in one case, it offers replayability, question mark. On the other hand, I think it's a huge pain in the ass. But I wanted to see where you guys landed on that because I know it can be pretty divisive.
00:14:50
Speaker
I'm fielding it to Ian first. Ian, jump in with opinions. I liked some of it, and I just liked some of it. We're going to play both sides of the field here. Coach liked that.
00:15:04
Speaker
Sorry, coach, I'm on my side of the field, the ball's over there now, you're gonna have to just figure something out. Uh, no, I liked, uh, the game has something called Adventure Mode, which is basically once you've cleared a particular area for the first time, it unlocks it so that you could open up an instance of that world as if in your campaign you had gone there for the first time.
00:15:24
Speaker
And because of that, it re-rolls everything. So you could adventure mode, go in, keeping your campaign progress, but keeping your character, or moving your character progress to the new campaign, or the new adventure. And you go in and you find things, you level up, you do all the normal stuff as you play, and then you can bring it back into your campaign. And maybe if you're looking for something specific that your friend told you about,
00:15:50
Speaker
you could just wipe that adventure again and reroll it as many times as you need to get to it. So there's some RNG protection, but it could also be like a real pain in the ass of, you know, oh, my buddy's got this really good weapon and I'd like that weapon. It would go great with my build. Oh, how do you get it? Oh, it's, you know, one in 50 shot of this event happening time. So one in 10 chance of this room spawning. Uh, you know, and I just happened to be in the right place at the right time.
00:16:19
Speaker
Yeah. And that's not fun. I think there was, Dave and I talked about this a little bit a while ago. And I think like my comparison here is I recall when we were going through, I don't know if we were all playing Dark Souls 2 around the same time or Dark Souls around the same time, but Dark Souls is really early. So I feel like maybe we jumped on that train at different times. I think Dark Souls 3. I know for three.
00:16:45
Speaker
We kind of had this thing of like, oh, are we roughly at the same place in the game? If so, like let's talk about this cool stuff that exists in all of our worlds, right? Like maybe there's a quest or an NPC or a secret or something like that. And it was just, they had big like game facts or cheat code central energy in like the early 2000s where you're just like, all right, go to the library and print this out and bring it home. Because how else are you going to figure it out?
00:17:13
Speaker
and I appreciated that experience and I will say that's Difficult kind of to replicate with remnant because each person's world could have different Events going on. I specifically found some stuff in my world. I really enjoyed and I basically just forced through rerolling the situation where I could bring you guys into it, but I
00:17:37
Speaker
It's not going to be the same. One, I've already experienced it versus us playing together. And two, like, you guys know artificially like, oh, we're being loaded into the world right outside the boss room or something like that, right? So it's a different experience. It loses a lot of organic stuff in that way.
00:17:55
Speaker
Which for me, I think is a huge driver for what I like in video games. It's that sense of exploration and discovery. Cause like when we were playing through, like we found some cool shit was like, Oh, Dan, like that's really exciting. Like, or that's a really cool mechanic for a boss, like, uh, fight facing the cubes. Um, cause one I didn't know was a fog wall until I just accidentally bumped through it. And then I was like, Oh buddy. Um, and it was unique if nothing else.
00:18:26
Speaker
Yeah. I think we could describe that encounter too. I think it would be worthwhile to maybe pick out a couple here that were impactful. We've mentioned the cubes twice, so who wants to take a whack at the cubes? I can give a primer and you guys can fill in anything I miss.
00:18:44
Speaker
the cubes fight is basically you walk through the fog door and a bunch of Cubes large ones fall from the sky into the arena you're in and As it pans down into the arena you realize you're in a sort of labyrinth of tight corridors and sharp turns and Cubes are large enough that they take up the whole corridor and as you watch it they start rolling towards you Or the first one you see
00:19:13
Speaker
And your job is to shoot the faces of each cube, but they all rotate and spin and try to crush you as they go about their loops. And it's a lot more difficult than it both looks and sounds.
00:19:35
Speaker
Yeah, it's like dungeon dice monsters if you remember. There was a labyrinth and they placed the die and then it would kind of unfold. But yeah, the cubes would essentially roll down, but if you destroyed one of the faces, it would kind of make a divot in the cube. So as that divot came down on top of you, it actually created like a little safe space.
00:19:55
Speaker
Oh, I'm safe here. And then you try and see what other cubes are doing and where you could take a pop shot on one of the exposed sides.
Boss Fights and Puzzles in Remnant 2
00:20:04
Speaker
And then occasionally some of them would change their pattern or orientation. So it becomes a game of managing like, will I die instantly here versus like, where can I kind of get some damage in?
00:20:18
Speaker
Because there are, I think, four or five cubes on the ground. And there's some also, they're just floating above. And they're also shooting, the ones above are shooting projectiles as well. Yeah, just to keep you from standing in one space too long. It'll hit you like a laser wall, which you can heal through if you've got a heal on the bar. But yeah, it's inconvenient.
00:20:41
Speaker
I mean, probably one of the standout fights in the whole game, though. Like, I can't think of any fight that was as unique as that fight. Yeah. It literally was a puzzle fight. And we were all cheering, too. Like, we were miserable because we kept dying. But I don't think any of us were sick of it by the end. It was an exciting battle. Back right, I think, was the most misery-inducing.
00:21:06
Speaker
Literally the back right one, which is exposed for like two rotations of the cube. Oh, I fucking hated that one guy. Yeah.
00:21:13
Speaker
Yeah, Dave got it. And I was like, what's what's the problem back here? And then I realized it's like the last phase is almost entirely obscured for like 90 percent of the cubes rotation pattern. It's you, you will miss the shot. It's obnoxious in single player, too, because I went back to that one. I did that one in solo and there's fewer faces to break. That's how they kind of scaled it. But that is one of them. So no mercy.
00:21:43
Speaker
Um, I didn't want to circle back to, uh, more encounters and stuff, but do you think the game would benefit from, so like, let's take one of the worlds, like the fae world where it's dealing with, um, elves and drow and has a lot of cool stuff going on in it, but it's, it's kind of broken up. So like you can essentially have a couple of different world bosses per world. Uh, do you think it'd be, it would benefit it to kind of have those together in some way?
00:22:14
Speaker
So the world itself is essentially bigger because it's including everything. I kind of like how they do it now, actually. It's a design choice. It's definitely both their strength and their weakness, because the weakness is obviously you're not going to see everything the first time through. But when we played through the Fey world together, we got the Two Kings storyline.
00:22:44
Speaker
And the first time I rolled out in adventure mode, it dropped me somewhere completely different. And it's like, yeah, you got to kill this person called the Nightweaver. I'm like, who the? Who's the Nightweaver? What is going on? And it dropped me in an asylum with mental patience and screaming. And it was a completely different vibe than this royal palace we were dropped into the first time. And it got a lot of goodwill out of me. I really, really enjoyed it.
00:23:11
Speaker
But I could have missed it. If I didn't reroll that world, I could have just missed the best part of it in my opinion.
00:23:19
Speaker
It really is. They put a lot of faith in the fact that people are going to continue to play the game or they're going to reroll. Because if you play a game, if you're the type of person to play a game through once and then once you see credits, you're done. Like you experience 25 percent of the game or less. Story wise, you probably experienced most of it, but like you don't play this game for the story. I don't remember anything from the story of the first one. I remember next to nothing from the story of this one.
00:23:47
Speaker
I only remember one thing from this game's story and it's because Dave clipped an audio clip and sent it to me afterwards because some of the...
Character Writing and Storytelling in Remnant 2
00:23:58
Speaker
I don't want to say worst voice acting because, you know, that's rude. But one of the moments where I'm like, I can't believe that made it through the studio and somebody okayed it.
00:24:09
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, when it comes to voice acting, it's like it's the director as well, right? Yes. I think the character direction for everything is poor. Like there are some games, I mean, obviously also playing Baldur's Gate 3 kind of alongside this. So I have some very high regard for NPC design and how interesting they can be. And this feels like the complete opposite because the NPCs, at least for me,
00:24:39
Speaker
We're not interesting and I actively disliked so many of them Like there's a mechanic who's actively I feel like her personality type is like hey We need you to play a bitch be a bitch the whole time with no redeeming qualities. We won't give you a backstory You're just and you're just a bitch and I was like, oh cool. I'm really looking forward to upgrading this thing Because they're like, what do you want? I'm like, all right, dude
00:25:03
Speaker
Like you don't have to be like a super bubbly character, but like if your personality is just being an asshole the whole time, it doesn't do it for me, right? I almost feel that one's worse. I want to jump in because I actually think it's worse than what you're saying. Because if you go through her dialogue,
00:25:19
Speaker
You do learn that she's basically putting on a facade to be an a-hole. She doesn't actually consistently want to treat you that way. She doesn't think it's necessary to always be a jerk to you. But she does it anyways because she's just trying to put up this facade. But the problem is that only matters if there's some payoff.
00:25:42
Speaker
character-wise for the facade. Otherwise, there's no difference between the character you portray yourself as and your character, right? There's no depth to it. Like, oh, you learned that she's playing an A-hole. It doesn't matter. She never stops playing an A-hole, right? Yeah, it's funny you mention it because I think you've got it on the nose that all the human character writing is pretty piss poor.
00:26:10
Speaker
Like, because the pan in Yaysha, which is like a jungle-type planet or plane, and they're all, you know, like satyrs, they're written very interesting. Like, I like listening to their stories. I like that they did accents for them and, you know, spiritual ritualistic and all kinds of stuff. And I enjoyed it. Like, I liked listening to it. I didn't skip through dialogue. I enjoyed it. And then I'd come home and someone's like,
00:26:38
Speaker
Yeah, everything's been changed since the event happened, but we can't talk about that today. This brings me back to my theory of maybe they just don't know how to do it, but I have this crazy theory that they specifically do that as a juxtaposition because the basic world you're in is so fucking bland, washed out, and boring. Like, it's just post-apocalyptic. There's rust and stuff and there's rocks everywhere.
00:27:06
Speaker
but you get to go to these fantastical worlds which are so unique in comparison and so stylized like when we went to the fairy castle it was really fucking cool to explore around you're like I love the theming here very cool you go to yesha they had this cool jungle vibe like I dig it hell yeah
00:27:24
Speaker
You go to Nerud and you're like, I should watch The Matrix again. It was good. Like they do such a good job at some of that theming. And then you come back and you're like, I'm back on Earth again. At least there's a firing range. But other than that, there's not much of a reason to be to visit Earth. I mean, like part of the reason I think I think we spent a lot more time, if I recall correctly. And again, it's been a while since Remnant one.
00:27:51
Speaker
But you spend so much more time in post-apocalyptic Earth in that game. I think they kind of wanted it to be the grounding central hub in this one, but I agree. It's just not nearly as interesting as the other settings. There are other settings that were 10 out of 10. The only one that I eventually got sick of was Ne-Rude, which is kind of this future techno-matrix-y
00:28:22
Speaker
grimdark future which is really cool in the specific level areas but in the open world it's a fucking desert and it sucks it's a desert literally surrounded by obscuring death smoke which hey should we put it in a visible wall or should we make you vomit randomly yeah oh yeah put up the vomit wall they'll love that it's like you see
00:28:52
Speaker
I'm about to get pissied on a tangent. So Remnant has some cool stuff in the game for sure.
Critiques and Frustrations with Remnant 2
00:29:00
Speaker
There's some things I like about it and we'll probably talk more about those as far as like here's an archetype you can get or class you can play as or here's some cool gear, right? And some of it feels rewarding to find. You're like, oh, I explored here and I found something. Oh, cool. That's really nice. And it's not necessarily RNG based. Awesome.
00:29:19
Speaker
There's specifically something in Beirut, which we just talked about the vomit wall, right? There's a specific part in the vomit wall, which you wouldn't know from looking on the outside at all, outside of hours of trial and error, where you can run through and find an item. But it disincentivizes you from finding it. What the actual fuck? I think that is shitty game design. Yeah, there's a...
00:29:46
Speaker
Uh, this was, I showed Dave this because someone showed this to me. Um, and I mean, that's, that aspect's cool. This whole word of mouth view is under the truck thing going on where, oh, someone found this for once and now everyone can chain it to someone else. But this was a case of either A, you stumbled on this on your first time you walked outside.
00:30:09
Speaker
and oh man look at this this is so cool and now I have to spend the rest of the game trudging through the vomit wall to see if anything else is hidden out there the pro tip there's not uh-huh or b you'll never find it because you've already spent an hour checking one particular corner of the vomit wall and you're like well they're never gonna put anything out here so you'll never go out and check that area either yeah
00:30:33
Speaker
I mean, I'm conflicted on this because I hate it for a game that I'm kind of playing through, but I will be honest, it's hard to criticize this without also criticizing Dark Souls for doing the exact same thing. With invisible walls. Yeah, with either illusory walls that have no tell. Like some of them have tells, other ones really just don't. Or just other things that that game hides as secrets to the extent that it's obscure enough
00:31:01
Speaker
that you're only really finding it with a strategy guide. And for Elden Ring, I even put completing a side quest under this. You're going to use a strategy guide, because otherwise you can't find the character. So I feel like it's not really clear where the line should be on obscurity. And if you like to play games more rapidly or get through things in one pass through, then there is definitely some stuff in this game that's going to piss you off.
00:31:32
Speaker
But like we were mentioning the RNG aspect and like before I go too far away from that, I think now that I've had some time away from it, I think I appreciate it more for the decision to show you 25% of each world for every run because other games just aren't doing that. And from the from the outside perspective, it's.
00:31:54
Speaker
like looking back on it. You kind of have to be brave in order to be like, hey, we're going to create a lot of content for our games. Are all the players going to see it? No. What percentage of players are going to see it? We're not sure, right? Yeah. That's tough. There's a reason all of the endings kind of converge or all the content converges in Mass Effect 3 into like console messages you get on your computer. It's because you don't want to put a lot of content into stuff people aren't going to see.
00:32:26
Speaker
You reminded me, actually. The best comparison is, I can't think of the name of the area, Dave. Dark Souls 1, the lake that you can miss.
00:32:37
Speaker
that's under behind two separate invisible walls. Yeah, under Blighttown. Yeah, it's Ash Lake. I think it's Ash Lake. Yeah, that sounds right. Oh, they kept on saying ashen, but that's because of the ashen one, but not the lake. Like you said, it takes a lot of bravery for some some dev or some team lead to say, Okay, guys, our zone that we've been given is the Ash Lake.
00:33:00
Speaker
And this is what our vision is, and this is what we're going to put in here. One of the major characters, his quest ends down here, so we really got to pull it together and get this well. Alright, so we're going to be front and center. Nah, you're going to be behind not one, but two separate invisible walls. Right, no one expects number two.
00:33:19
Speaker
So if they managed to get to the, you know, we didn't make the cut for the first invisible wall area, that's easier to find. You got to go beyond that to get to us and then down a trench. I think Dark Souls 2 literally has a door that you can only conventionally open if you hit the door with a weapon, which causes the enemy to aggro on you and open it from the other side. Like, there are silly exceptions, like, and examples of this in Dark Souls.
00:33:49
Speaker
Okay, I see what you guys are saying. And I agree with that part of it in that I can't blanket say this is bad. But I think, I mean, obviously my biases, I really like Dark Souls, because it has so many other good aspects. So when they do something like that, I'm like, Oh, you guys are cheeky. And that was creative versus if I'm already frustrated with other parts, I'm like, why are you making me do this? It's like, um,
00:34:17
Speaker
If there's somebody who you don't like in like an associated friend group and you're like, I really like hanging out with trying to think of no overlapping names, Billy Bob, I feel like that's a safe one. Yeah, no one has that name. Nobody has Billy Bob. If you're hanging out with Billy Bob and you don't like something about his personality, you tend to not like other things about them as well to the point of like you just hear them breathe, which is normal, but you're like, oh, fuck him, he's breathing weird, you know?
00:34:45
Speaker
mouth breather. The Southern American demographic we have is just going down. That one dude Billy Bob in Missouri is so upset with you. We only use that as an example because we know you can take it. It's because of your strength of character in Fortitude.
00:35:05
Speaker
I think it's fun to have some secrets. I don't want to rule that out entirely. It's just like the example I was talking about on a rude was a whole character class. Yeah, a whole character class. And a lot of the ones like by default, like you get three and it tends to be like eight.
00:35:24
Speaker
And some of them are like, okay, you have to play to find them, that's fair. And it might not matter where you don't need to find them to really progress and beat the game. More like some of the gear, you don't necessarily need to find everything.
00:35:40
Speaker
But my other point about it, and this is kind of diverting a little bit, is there's too much stuff in the game that I don't give a shit about. That I feel like it kind of pads out in a weird way. Like, let's give you jewelry for less spread on your ranged weapons. I don't know anybody who's ever given a shit about that, because if you play a game with guns, you're like, I typically don't want to shoot stuff.
00:36:08
Speaker
Yeah. You say that, but there's that one guy with an LMG and he fires it like a laser. And if you ever run across him, you're going to be very impressed. Cut trees in half with it.
00:36:20
Speaker
They really did have some cool stuff in it and it was fun to find like a new item and then theory crafts. Hey, what can I use this in? How are they gonna synergize together? Yeah, but then you'd get like hey Do you want a whole trait about moving faster while you're ADS or you can climb ladders faster? I'm like, who is this for? Who is it for even ready to throw down? Oh
00:36:44
Speaker
I'm not going to have you disparage the aim down sight one because actually I started spec'ing into that. It turns out with a few points in that trait, it's kind of useful to be able to aim down sights and get in your DPS while you're actively dodging things because you're just about as fast aimed down as you were standing. That kind of came in handy. The one that makes you faster when you're going up and down ladders, yeah that one's nutty. No defense for that.
00:37:11
Speaker
it's actually this is a critique I'm going to carry over because I remember this from from it from the ashes as well. And this is something that like they don't have if you rip off Dark Souls, you have to do the things Dark Souls did well, to a certain extent, at least hit like 80 80%. And like I just think about how
00:37:32
Speaker
There are a lot of rings in Dark Souls, especially as you go to like two, which I think gave you four ring slots and then they carried that two for three, if I remember correctly. There's a lot of rings, but I remember like.
00:37:45
Speaker
rings having massive effects. And most of the time it wasn't like just a numerical nothingness, right? Like if I have a ring that gives me reload speed, I want like 20%, like 20% reload speed. I do not want 3% per stack decaying every five seconds. Like that doesn't mean anything to me, right? It's like Dark Souls 3 had the clutch rings where it's like, hey, this is almost like a 40% increase in holy damage or whatever.
00:38:14
Speaker
But you're gonna like take 30% extra damage. And so like it had these just massive differences. They were impossible Yeah, they were impactful it mattered to equip it right and there are some Some gear there are some pieces of gear like this I think some of the necklaces stand out and there's a couple rings We mentioned the healing feedback ring where it's like this is pretty much build defining keep that do not remove that one from the game But there's a lot that you could
00:38:41
Speaker
And especially because it's just, it's also kind of a pain to deal with the inventory and, you know, lack of a build system. But once you have like 30 plus rings to sort through, give me builds. To the listeners who have not played Run 2, you might think that it's like nitpicky to talk about, oh, there's too many rings and they don't have enough impact and build quality.
00:39:06
Speaker
But you don't understand quite the magnitude of the number of rings are in the game. By the time we stopped playing, I think I had about 70 different rings. And I know for a fact I didn't find all of them, so I know there's more than that. And it's worth noting, there is no way to search through the rings, and they're not visually distinct enough to be able to pick them out at a glance. So every time it was time to look for a specific ring, it was read the description of every ring,
00:39:37
Speaker
and go down the list. Now, there was a favorites feature, but when we first started playing, it wasn't functioning properly. So maybe they patched that up, and I haven't tried it since then, I don't know. But at the time, it was a big frustration point, and the vast majority of rings did not have an impact on whatever you were trying to do.
00:40:01
Speaker
Yeah, that's pretty much it. They could have cut 75% of them out and it would be fine. I would rather have upsides and downsides attached to rings and then just make them a lot more powerful.
00:40:17
Speaker
You don't have to balance for PvP, right? So why you make a number small? Make numbers big. It's just more fun. I also think that the numbers should actually be big. Yes. Because I don't want to divulge into this whole other point. But as I was saying before, the game is difficult as far as bosses. But the best form of damage mitigation is a dodge roll.
00:40:45
Speaker
If you miss one of your dodges in a key moment in a boss fight, you're fucked. And you can invest in damage mitigation and get bulwark stacks or something, and it doesn't matter as much. I think you would need a whole build dedicated to that for it to be impactful at all.
00:41:05
Speaker
Correct me if I'm wrong because I know you guys have tinkered around a lot as well, but to me it really seemed like you really just needed to time your dodge as well and then have an actually good persistent heal. Yeah. There's a ring that's like similar to the wood grain ring from Dark Souls, right? It increases your dodge distance or something? Yeah. Longer eye frames.
00:41:28
Speaker
I played around with it's funny We're kind of dovetailing on different topics here because that same class that we had to dig through the vomit ball for Was the engineer and it's straight that it unlocks for you to spec into is For armor to be better like more effective right and
00:41:52
Speaker
By the end of the game, I had put together a build that gave me 75% damage reduction, like, just really, really big damage reduction, at the cost of, like, two or three of my jewelry slots worth of, you know, utility. And I still noticed half my health, or a quarter of my health, disappearing with every time I got hit, so I'm sitting here saying, why, why am I doing this when I could just devote myself entirely to damage glass cannon and just dodge better?
00:42:22
Speaker
and get more out of it. Yeah, I mean, to the game's credit, they let you make some of those decisions. And I don't know how all the math works out. Like there's probably some broken builds with bulwark to what Dave was saying, where you just have like a crazy amount of damage resistance. I know they nerf something at some point, actually, because it was like,
00:42:45
Speaker
providing a lot more survivability than was intended at like the highest difficulty. And people were like, why did you do this? This is how we play the highest difficulty. But, you know, I mean, fair, whatever they can manage their difficulty.
00:43:00
Speaker
We've kind of been shitting on the equipment here, and for as little impact as the rings and amulets gave you, the actual, like, the weapons and the weapon mods were pretty cool. Yeah, oh my god. Did you guys have, like, a particular favorite or something that jumped out at you as like, oh, you picked up this weapon, you fired it once, and you're like, yep, I'm sticking with this.
Favorite Weapons and Final Thoughts
00:43:21
Speaker
I mean, I'm such a basic bitch when it comes to these games. As you guys know, I will typically find a weapon I can get decently early that's viable and run with it as long as fucking possible. So for me, I got... Yeah, it's like in Bloodborne, I'm like, this hatchet seems to have like a decent animation.
00:43:42
Speaker
All the way. And then so in here, I got like a long gun that I think Ian turned me on to. He was actually getting some pop shots with it. I was like, OK, let me do that. And then I really just stuck with it. It had decent ammo capacity. I put extender on it for more ammo capacity for the actual rounds it would carry before I had to reload. And I just got better at clicking heads and it did consistent damage.
00:44:10
Speaker
Yeah, I got distracted. I had to clip. Ian turned me on there. So I only caught half of what you said. But my answer is going to be the bow. I really appreciated the bow. A lot of fun. Really good solo when you can kind of maintain the pace you're approaching enemies at. And then it had like a tempo feature which I think
00:44:31
Speaker
was really good game design, where it's like if you release an arrow when you perfect draw it basically, like as soon as you've drawn the bowstring back, it had increased damage and crit chance or something like that. And so you were incentivized to just be
00:44:51
Speaker
accurate with the weapon, obviously, but also timing the attacks with the weapon, which is like a really cool meta, metagame or like mechanic built on top of it that I was terrible at, but I appreciated that it existed. And it also had it didn't have a boss weapon slot, which is like a blessing and a curse because the boss mods can be really cool. But I like the versatility to be able to pick whatever I wanted to put in there.
00:45:23
Speaker
Yeah, I know some of the more fun weapon mods we found were a giant fire tornado that murders everything and sucks things into the center. I think it's broken. I ran with it for a while. It's very broken. It does a lot of damage. And it was probably the primary source of team killing for the first half of our playtime. It doesn't help that it's also CC and it pulls you in, so you can't really escape as a player.
00:45:50
Speaker
Yeah, but it was really fun to use that on bosses, especially if you put points into AOE, which is a trait you can invest in. Because I would throw it on a boss. I'd have the Sun God talisman for extra burn and fire damage. I have other things for mod generation. So as it's dealing elemental damage, it's recharging me to use that ability again. And then I'd be like, surprise motherfucker, and throw in another fire tornado. It was really fun.
00:46:18
Speaker
I specifically specced out of AOE range because of that ability. I don't know if it's visually bugged or what, but the burn range is definitely more than the tornado itself. And I was like, this is a death sentence for me. If the enemy manages the close distance on me, I will die. Yeah, it's worth noting. If you directly tagged someone with this bullet, because you do have to shoot it out.
00:46:46
Speaker
If you hit the ground, it's fine. Enemies can wander into it. Maybe they wander out. Maybe they don't. Usually they burn to death. But if you tag someone directly with it, it will proceed to chase them with a will. And if they manage to start running towards you, that's a problem because, again, death sentence.
00:47:06
Speaker
Yeah, it really reminds me of the old army axiom, friendly fire isn't. That's definitely what it was. But it's a great ability. And I think Ian and I mentioned when we were playing through the strat for single player, it was like, ignore enemies, treat it like a speed run till you get to the end of the area, turn around, find a little corner, like a little corridor or something if you can, drop your tornado there,
00:47:36
Speaker
kill everything, right? Because it's all chasing you through the level. Very effective. You just wait for the bottleneck. But that was fun, right? Like the reason I love that one is because it's so impactful. You just reminded me of probably one of my favorite things regarding our time together. And it wasn't until someone else corroborated your story that I believed you.
00:48:05
Speaker
We were going through an area that was very reminiscent of like, uh, Yharnam from Bloodborne, old London. And we're going through like a sewersy area where there's water on the ground, like a low-lying trench. And there's these semicircle grates in the walls with bars on them. And we've seen them. We see them everywhere. They pop up every five minutes. Well, all we see
00:48:31
Speaker
Dave and I is Jake's life bar goes to zero and Jake screams which is not a typical reaction this game and I'm like what what happened we didn't even get a chance to pick you up he goes I went to grab an item in front of one of the greats something grabbed me I go what
00:48:50
Speaker
and the thing was we would keep finding rates with items in front of it and we were afraid of them and eventually one of us was brave enough to like run out and grab it but nothing grabbed us ever again for half of our playthrough and it wasn't until I can't remember if it was I looked it up or if it was our buddy Dan is like something just grabbed me out of a crate I'm like oh I guess Jake wasn't a liar
00:49:15
Speaker
I mean, this is actually this is the second example of a class technically being hidden behind this, right? Because that's how you get alchemist. Yeah. So which is also impossible. Another kind of point against the game. It's impossible in multiplayer because when you get grabbed in single player, I had this happen in the world later. If you get grabbed, you get the little pop up like your checkpoint is saved. And that's concerning when you die. But it's because you get abducted. Also, something that happens in bloodborne, actually. Oh, yeah, good point.
00:49:46
Speaker
really wearing their influence on their sleeve there, huh? I don't think the monster had a bag in this case. So that's, that's where they're innovating. I forgot about that. Yeah, I love the kinder catch. Oh, I mean, that's what it is. I don't have an argument.
00:50:05
Speaker
Man, if you want to make a monster though, that is a monster. Yeah. Do you think they improved in Dark Souls 3 when instead of a man just snatching you in a bag, you have to voluntarily climb into a cage on a man's back as he leaves? That's the Dark Souls thing though. They're like, hey, do you want to be like in one of the weird covenants? Like, do this weird thing.
00:50:27
Speaker
take a nap in a tomb or a tomb yeah join the covenant it'll be neato but do you guys remember any other fun instances of whether it was a major boss or an area or somebody being marked off the map
00:50:50
Speaker
I mean, for me, we touched on it at the beginning, and I think it's kind of poetic to touch on it near the end. The final boss was really, really difficult, but also really, really cool. It was a difficult fight, and once you beat it, it has a phase change.
00:51:17
Speaker
And the new phase is radically different stylistically than the first one, both in attack styles and arena design. Yeah. And then 10, 15 seconds into the new phase, it cuts back to the old style in almost like a glitchy transition. Like it's, you know, a glitch in the matrix. It literally does glitch your screen. Yeah. Yeah. You fight the old version of the boss.
00:51:45
Speaker
and then you glitch every 20 seconds you glitch back and forth between the two versions of the fight but the state of the world is persistent between glitches so the boss was in the middle of a wind-up for an attack and then it teleports out to the different version when you go back that wind-up is still happening and he's about to lay the smack down and it made for some really cool moments of like he's about to dive bomb and
00:52:15
Speaker
Jekyll, you'll watch out and we'll cut out and Jake's like, okay, everyone remember in 15 seconds, we're gonna have to roll like hell. Yeah. That's such a it was such a cool mechanic. I almost get goosebumps like it's such a cool mechanic. And the thing I noticed later on when I was thinking about it, is it's thematically cool too, because the more hurt the boss gets, like the lower it's health,
00:52:38
Speaker
the faster the glitches happen. Like it literally seems like we are degrading something. We are killing it. It is breaking down and it's flipping between these two static states faster and faster as it panics. And that was cool to me. Very obnoxious when I tried to pick up Dave when he was dead on the ground and it kept flipping me to the different world. Point against it. I'm over here.
00:53:00
Speaker
Yeah, you would still be you would be on the ground in both states because your your player character didn't like revive Yeah, carried over but you guys might be in completely different locations on each thing, right? So I spent all this time running next to you swap I am now all the way over here spend all this time running next to you It was not conducive to getting people back up, but no
00:53:25
Speaker
Thematically Easily the coolest fucking boss like that was such a hype moment and it became a moment where we'd actually need to plan out like our builds and then the call-outs that Jake was doing for like Hey heads up and then it was cool to see us like synchronize a bit. Okay, we got a role now I can simply fuck up the role, but It was very exciting and fun to do. I was really cool when we all made it though. I
00:53:49
Speaker
Because I distinctly remember us all getting one of those split second dodges after a transition, a scene transition. I was like, I was ready for it to like pop a heel and I like looked at the health bar like completely unnecessary. We're all good. Yeah, we're good at this. We've been at it for an hour now.
00:54:05
Speaker
Yeah, the only point I would say against it is Maybe it's because I have older eyes now But it was so visually fucking busy on that second phase that I had again I was just constantly being healed by other people and panicking I don't think I contributed during those sections at all
00:54:26
Speaker
I don't think it was you. I definitely agree. It was chaotic. It was very busy. A visual overload. It didn't hurt that the boss was red and so was the area he was in. I think at that, when we transitioned, I had to pick Hunter because Hunters can highlight enemies. It was so much easier to hit the boss during those segments when you can actually tell him apart from the background.
00:54:54
Speaker
I agree with that entirely. Like it was second phase in particular was absolute mess because first phase was mostly the backdrop was largely abyss and just riding a large dragon like creature. So you could lose him sometimes, but it felt like that was kind of intentional for the fight where he's like flying around and stuff.
00:55:15
Speaker
Phase two is like a readability problem, right? Yeah, if I don't know what kind of color blindness settings they have for the game But they better have some good ones or else that might would be the worst. It's just a solid red screen What's happening miles going down? I think And it really like it's a shame because
00:55:37
Speaker
aesthetically and thematically, like I would love to see that from third person view with like the ability to rotate and stuff like that. Like over the shoulder, like aiming down sites or something like that, it's just it's too much information. They could have made the area larger or maybe redesigned it, but that core mechanic of jumping back and forth is the thing that's just at the point like the music kicks in to know it's just it's so good.
00:56:06
Speaker
Yeah, it's I'm surprised there haven't been more games that are like, hey, we're going to interrupt your boss fight with a boss fight. Yeah, but that's pretty much what this is. I do. I do like that they because Dark Souls at a point became known for like how many phases this boss.
00:56:26
Speaker
Cause you're like, I beat the first phase and they're like, that's cute. Like, uh, sister Frida is like, Oh, Oh, Oh. So it was nice to see them do that. I don't know if it's just homage or just a very cool thing for them to do, but I don't remember. They might've done it for the last boss in remnant one, but I don't think it's ever done for any of the other bosses.
00:56:49
Speaker
Yeah, I don't remember much from the ending of Remnant 1. I almost... I don't think this is correct. I almost have an impression that there were, like, quick time events or something, but it... I don't know. It was different than this. Yeah, I don't remember much of Remnant 1's last boss. I can remember it visually, what it was, but I can't remember how the fight progressed beyond, like, one of the core mechanics that involved dragging you into, like, a dream world and then having to kill as many things as possible with declining health before you left.
00:57:20
Speaker
Dang, take me back. This one was better, but it is very, it's very Remnant, I think that they have like such a novel idea or such a great idea. And then they kind of just like muck up part of it. It's just like, it's amazing. And I had trouble keeping track of everything that was happening. Yeah, I would definitely say, I mean, Remnant, because we actually missed this at the beginning of the podcast. Remnant is made by Gunfire Games and published by Gearbox.
00:57:50
Speaker
of other multiplayer looter shooter fame. And it's a $50 video game on release. They looked at people jumping up to $70 and said, well, how about we just do the opposite and go down to $50? And for a $50 game, they're selling it at a discounted price compared to everything else. And it's still, what I would argue, one of the best games I've played in the last six months.
00:58:20
Speaker
Yeah, it's a double A game is how I've heard it described. It's not indie, it's a small team, but it's not one of these massive games. And for that, with that within scope at $50, I think it's very reasonable, especially if you are planning to play through it with friends. Just understand, make sure you have the same rule set for when you're going to play together. And know that if you deviate from that, you will see things other people will not see.
00:58:48
Speaker
Um, unless he spent a lot of time in the game. Um, but yeah, also no relation to, um, uh, gunfire reborn, which is the subsequent developer, um, and to completely separate game. But yeah, this trilogy is getting really weird remnant from the ashes remnant too. And then, uh, gunfire reborn, not big art style change. Not sure. When did I turn into a cat? Mm-hmm.
00:59:16
Speaker
But yeah, I think here they play into their strengths. This is my end of podcast recap on my thoughts. I think they play into their strengths a little bit more here. Unfortunately, they still have some of the weaknesses and their main characters. I actually like the non-main characters a lot more. I've told you guys that, but they need to cultivate that a little bit more. Just be like, hey, we don't even have a main quest. That doesn't even exist. Yes. Just go shoot things. Here's a plan that you've never been before. Go kill.
00:59:46
Speaker
Yeah, I think they would definitely behoove themselves to not focus on like a paper thin plot for the sake of it. Because it just feels dumb. Like if you want it to be hey, it's a fun fantasy explore thing, lean into it, make it fun make it. You could even meme on their eat the audacity of having a main story, right? Like you don't really need a reason to go find these
01:00:15
Speaker
shits and giggles items like just say, oh, you gotta go do the thing. You can say go do the thing, literally verbatim. Okay, good enough reason for me. But it feels weird of the juxtaposition of here's fun gameplay, really cool universes into, man, I sure hope this character I've talked to once is doing okay. What are they up to now? We have to find them. And it because it really just takes you out of that whole experience, I think. Yeah. Yeah, they've got
01:00:44
Speaker
the world.
01:00:58
Speaker
the US government found something and instead of leaving it be something eldritch and instead of leaving it be they were concerned that the Soviets well what if the Soviets have one we gotta figure this out just in case and of course the government mucks it up opens our reality to Cthulhu-esque horrors and this is kind of you know hundreds of years in the future trying to figure out you know what happened why why is the world like this and how do we unscrew the world
01:01:28
Speaker
Is it possible to even unscrew the world? And then there's this underlying theme that maybe all of reality is a simulation. Like, why are all these people in different planes and different positions of authority speaking in almost computer terms? Like, there's, there's weirdness. Like, there's great kind of almost cosmic horror backgrounds to this. And all the main characters are like, what do you want? What can I do for you? Gotta find Clementine. Like,
01:01:58
Speaker
You've got all of this room to play with and you are concerned with the minutia. It really does. The B-plot is much stronger than the A-plot, unfortunately. Exactly. That's the issue. I really thought the whole Asylum thing, which I had to re-roll and play solo to find and get, was so fucking cool. Yeah, compared to everything else. Oh yeah, one of the peaks for me was the Asylum.
01:02:25
Speaker
I think this is all, I would wrap this one up by saying like, this is a lesson they can learn from, they just need to go back to Dark Souls 1, obviously, the roots that they draw from, not their roots, it's someone else's roots, but they do draw from it.
01:02:43
Speaker
What do you got for a main quest? Well, there's two bells. One of them's low, one of them's high. Figure the rest out, that's it. That's what I knew about the main plot through the point that I beat the final boss. I had no idea what was happening in Dark Souls, but I explored a lot because it was fun. Don't get in the way of people exploring a lot because it's fun. Just make a fun game, let the rest fall into place. Yeah, I think my final thoughts, my final critique,
01:03:13
Speaker
As I remember four or five years ago when Remnant 1 came out, my walk away from that was that it's really good and I'm going to watch this developer from here on out and see what they do in the future. And my review of Remnant 2 is just the same. They've improved. This is their next logical point and it's great.
01:03:36
Speaker
And I can't wait to see what they do in the future now. They're only getting better if they keep learning their lessons. They're going to be AAA in no time. Yeah, if this is their Dark Souls 2, just wait for the Dark Souls 3. And then once they release it, I'll be like, Remnant 2 was the best one. I don't know what you guys are talking about.
01:03:57
Speaker
I was leaning in as like, Jake has to do something with this comment, right? Yeah, I definitely think Remnant 2 is an improvement, but I haven't played Remnant 1 in so long, so I feel like I'm just in my mind placing it as it was like Remnant 2, but not as good.
01:04:15
Speaker
I think that's just kind of it. I don't remember being crazily immersed in what was going on, but I remember being excited to find and try new bosses, explore around with builds, and I did like some of these. It's really just a playing with friends game for me, and I think it is solid at that. It's very fun to have people do diverse builds and try things out.
01:04:39
Speaker
But yeah, it feels easy for it to focus on the parts that are good and fun and just kind of drop the things that suck. Because at least on the outside, it feels obvious to me. But again, that's based on my preferences. But yeah, I'd like to see more of what they do in the future if they continue in this path.
01:05:01
Speaker
No reason for them not to really. I believe the game was very successful. So they earned it. All in all, they earned it. But I would like to thank Ian for coming to the podcast once more, being our guest for what might be a combo at this point. As always, I appreciate the invite.
01:05:24
Speaker
for suffering my spears in the back through the preparation for this episode. It was funny the first time I lost 70% of my health out of nowhere. I distinctly remember once throwing a spear into your back and then, like, you went down and we were kind of fighting enemies at the time, so I had some plausible deniability. Like, oh, what is that attack? But I, like, I had started walking over to you already to pick you up. Yeah, it's a good time.
01:05:53
Speaker
But if you guys have any advice for those that might find themselves in a simulation, jumping from world to world with only their firearms and their friends at their side, please send that advice and we apparently need it. Soapstonepodcastgml.com or you can join the discussion on Facebook, which is its own post-apocalyptic society at this point, at Facebook.com slash Soapstone podcast. And as always, we'll see you in the next one. Have a good night. Pretty Dave.