Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
S1 Ep33: Transistor
75 Plays7 years ago
Join Dave and Jake as they take a casual stroll around Cloudbank to enjoy the sights and sounds in this week's episode!
Thoughts? Comments? Requests for new episodes? Feel free to email them in!
SoapstonePodcast@gmail.com
Like our podcast? Like our podcast! We'll post when new episodes are uploaded!
https://www.facebook.com/SoapstonePodcast/
Recommended
Transcript
Unexpected detour and ominous warning
00:00:00
Speaker
Thanks for the lift. Hi. You turned left. Thought we were gonna skip down. We're going back there. You met these things. They do not have a sense of humor.
00:00:27
Speaker
track you down, wipe you out, and take whatever's left of me back to those two-bit camera on a piece of trash.
Introduction to Soapstone podcast and 'Transistor'
00:00:57
Speaker
How's it going, everyone? Welcome to another episode of Soapstone. My name is Jake. I'm joined by my co-host, as always, Dave. How's it going tonight, Dave?
00:01:05
Speaker
It is going great. That's pretty good. That's actually significantly better than our average. Oh shit. My bad. I don't want to throw, throw off the audience. My life is terrible as always. Thank you. As you know. Thank you. Good to balance everything out. What do you feel like talking about tonight? I feel like, you know, I guess we got some games planned up. Just pick one of them. All right. Let me pick a randomly from the how about transistor off the cuff.
Overview of 'Transistor' and game mechanics
00:01:40
Speaker
We're not gonna get away with this, are we?
00:01:47
Speaker
I guess that means that yeah, we're going with transistors. So we played through this probably closer when it came out. Did you play it when it came out? It was back in like 2014. I beat every other Supergiant game before I beat Transistor. Okay. Interesting. Like I played Bastion a little bit late and then I started Transistor and I was like, I stopped. I said, fuck it. I wasn't feeling the game. And then I went and did Pyre and I was like,
00:02:16
Speaker
We got to complete the trifecta. We actually went back and finally got around to beating Transistor. Interesting. I did play Transistor when it came out because I was already on the Supergiant hype train at this point. But that was a while back. It was 2014. It's been a while, but they have a relatively steady clip of releases. They came out with Bastion as their very first game.
00:02:41
Speaker
And then a few years later Transistor and a few years later Pyre so reliable Better than Call of Duty for iteration on that We don't have to talk about Bastion at some point because we've mentioned Supergiant games and like Let's say a third of our episodes. Yeah, and now we've covered Pyre our transistor
00:03:08
Speaker
And there's one person who gives a fuck if we cover Bastion. Well, Bastion reviewed the best, but this one's not about Bastion. This one's about Transistor, which is an isometric action strategy game.
00:03:24
Speaker
But with one character, you know. To contrast a little bit, Bastion was also isometric. But you kind of go around and you have some melee combat or you have some ranged combat and you're interacting with the world. But this is the first time you actually have time to plan actions.
00:03:44
Speaker
Because you can actually pause. Yeah. One of the core features is you're going through fighting these enemies with ranged attacks, melee attacks, things like that. Robits. Yeah, mostly robots. And you can use an ability called turn. Take a turn, time freezes, and you plan out all of your actions using this action economy bar at the top. Then you just hit execute, and you move at matrix speed.
00:04:11
Speaker
execute pretty much everything close to instantly, not completely instantly, but very close. And it's kind of part of the key loop of the game as you go from area to area, encountering more enemies and using your abilities to break through them.
00:04:30
Speaker
But
Narrative style and Red's character exploration
00:04:31
Speaker
Transistor starts off a lot more slowly than that. It starts off with the main protagonist of the series, Red. The series, the one game, Red. Series of one. Who knows, there might be a sequel. That would be weird, but I hope so.
00:04:50
Speaker
yeah it would be a little bit of a twist um but uh yeah well we're gonna i love this game and i love the story more than dave does spoilers but also spoilers uh i know that we don't give spoiler warnings for games but i still want to mission it for this one because i want to analyze it entirely so that means going through all of it so
00:05:12
Speaker
heads up and if we're we follow any of our historical data we're gonna say hey spoiler warning we're gonna talk about everything and then we're gonna talk about like 25 percent of it yep uh but that would be unfortunate because i plan more than that
00:05:27
Speaker
Yeah, but it starts off and Red is standing over the the body of a stranger. He was like slumped up against the wall and he's got this Circuit board looking fluorescent blade thing. Yeah sticking out of them. You just like oh, that's odd kind of weird and then you hear a voice and Kind of a recurring theme here is throughout the game whenever you hear this voice the transistor lights up and
00:05:54
Speaker
It indicates that you're hearing the voice from the blade itself, which I think is it's pretty cool And it's cool that they got that that sinking down For all of the voice lines. I appreciate that as somebody who tried to put audio over video content for something That was recorded separately. Yeah, it's It's fun. But yeah, the transistor kind of acts as your narration and kind of
00:06:23
Speaker
not your conscience but kind of like your over-the-shoulder thoughts because you as a main character protagonist don't speak right yeah but there's there's there's a plot contrivance for that you've lost your voice it's been stolen from you and so yeah it's kind of your conscience you control your actions and it tells you what you should do
00:06:48
Speaker
whether you do that or not but yeah you withdraw the blade and she kind of just drags it around behind her in this awesome kind of style oh yeah or it's like digging into the ground and like burning off transistor but it's clearly you know it's it's a weight she's carrying through this through the game a dull blade but heavy
00:07:11
Speaker
Yeah, it's just this big hungry thing and she's like an average sized lady, but as you were saying with the dragging, it kind of like has these little sparks of light which kind of go out through a grid or circuit board pattern before fading off on the ground. But like as you drag it, there's like eight that go off constantly.
Red's mission and combat strategies
00:07:31
Speaker
Yeah. So it's just a really cool trailing effect as you're moving throughout the game.
00:07:35
Speaker
Yeah, it's pretty awesome. And it's worth noting kind of the setting at this point. This game takes place in the world of Cloudbank, which is this digital landscape. They don't really explain exactly how, like, in what universe it exists, but they don't need to.
00:07:52
Speaker
Yeah, it's a very beautiful, bright cityscape. It's very constrained and you're always very high up. Right. Like, you know, right now. When you're living in the city. Oh, you have to survive.
00:08:09
Speaker
All right, well, another episode. Yeah. But yeah, CloudBank has some problems. And you learn early that this group, the Camerata, basically attempted to assimilate you into the transistor. But an unnamed individual, the bodyguard, who Red has feelings for and has feelings for Red,
00:08:33
Speaker
steps in the way and Basically blocks the blade and is assimilated instead. Yeah, it's a full mr. President now. Yeah, exactly So that's the voice that's guiding you through the world here And his advice is get out of town. Like let's just go we'll split who cares what happens to the city I'll be here in the sword you know, let's let's head out and I
00:08:59
Speaker
And it's the safer option, right? Yeah. Non-confrontational, just get out of dodge. Which like any sane person would say like, shit's going down here, let's get the fuck out of here. And Red doesn't do that. You guys heard the motorcycle sequence from the beginning. She
00:09:20
Speaker
obviously doesn't say anything to countermand, you know, his advice to get out of dodge, but just goes further into dodge, right? Yeah. But your goldie gun becomes tracking down the members of the Camerata who did this to you and see if you can retrieve your lover from the transistor, basically.
00:09:44
Speaker
And that is kind of the crux of the game. That's the driving motivation. Everything goes to crap around you because this entity known as the Process is essentially reformatting the world. Yeah, and the rogue parts of the Process are pretty much what you combat throughout the game.
00:10:03
Speaker
And the enemy types range from like a dog that'll, a robot dog will come bite you, or something that'll shoot lasers, or little cameras that will blind you, or other things that involve more and more involved mechanics. And they have a bunch of like cute names like, um, and- Clockers? Yeah, Clockers, which are like these artillery chicken egg things, like what in the world?
00:10:27
Speaker
The first time you encounter one of the big, beefy, bouncer-type robots, you kill him the first time, and then the transistor's just like, jerk. And then that's his name. It's just jerk. There's these little radar-dish guys that provide an invulnerability shield. And those are called cheerleaders. What are the little snakes called again?
00:10:52
Speaker
uh weeds yeah yeah um they like create a healing or aoe and uh if enemies get close it turns into a damaging organ we'll burn them down um and that comes in play a little bit because um mechanically uh you have access to uh
00:11:09
Speaker
a large set of functions. It starts off kind of basic, but they're basically the key, like, here's a reason to play the game for Transistor is you can customize your build, like, very dramatically. You have four slots. You start out with just the two abilities, Crash and Breach. Crash is kind of a quicker animation. It's fairly close range, but it will also stun enemies versus Breach, which is higher damage.
00:11:39
Speaker
goes a lot further and can actually pierce through multiple enemies. But it has a much longer cast time or turn cost. You have to raise the transistor up and drop it in real time. And really, the cool thing here is they have that primary function, but you can slot them as a secondary. So if you slot Crash into...
00:12:03
Speaker
It doesn't, at the beginning of the game, I don't believe you have any secondary slots at the very, very start, but they open up relatively soon, you get the first one. But you can take Crash and put it into a secondary slot on Breach. And now your Breach stuns for a short period of time and then opens them up to further damage.
00:12:25
Speaker
which is really cool. Yeah, because you not sure the full number throughout the game, but it's a decent
Game modifiers and narrative analysis
00:12:32
Speaker
number. So you have quite the options as far as variety of combinations based on your play style. Like I was talking with Jake earlier in the week and he's like, Oh, I did this. And I was like, I know you could fucking do that.
00:12:45
Speaker
Because usually my approach is always, let's go direct damage, let's hit them in the face until they're dead. And if that doesn't work, try again. Do the same thing, head against wall strategy. This game really, it rewards you for going for the not face or the back.
00:13:01
Speaker
and then you stab that, or what some people call a backstab, and you get a multiplier for hitting enemies from the back. So it's pretty much untenable if you're playing the game in real time, you're just using your abilities, but if you're using the turns, the way that works is plan all your actions, execute them, and then there's a cooldown period before you can take your next turn.
00:13:24
Speaker
And most of your abilities will be disabled while you're in this cooldown, unless you slot Jaunt, in which case it's like, now this ability is usable while it turns on cooldown.
00:13:37
Speaker
So you can have a lot of this customization. And the backstab is awesome. So an early game strategy might be you hit them with a crash. You start your turn. Start them up. Yeah. Start your turn. Hit them with a crash. They're stunned. They're susceptible to more damage. Circle around and then just spam three breaches on their back. And it'll just do crazy amounts of early game damage. Just tears into pieces.
00:14:05
Speaker
But yeah, other functions kind of allow you to split that up a little bit more. Spark literally splits things up. Gets you some AOE. I think one of the better ones to either have is like a main or just put it as a secondary into something else. Yeah. Because it shoots out this ball, which then it explodes into like 10 other balls and AOE around it. Yeah. So if there's initial impact damage and then there's secondary explosion damage. Oh, yeah. So you can chain that with something.
00:14:35
Speaker
If you like some of these abilities like a whole lot, you can keep them as your primary pretty safely for like the entire game. But a lot of them have a lot of potential for secondaries as well. So Spark, you mentioned it splits out. If you get an early function, help, which lets you summon like a dog, someone that will run up and bark at them and do damage. And you slot that with Spark. It summons two dogs instead.
00:15:03
Speaker
And normally, you can't control them in turns, where it just runs up and does everything at like instant speed. But with that modification, you can. And now your damage output in turn is like crazy. Do the dogs actually count against your turn, or do they have their own turn bar? They have their own bar. Oh, that's nice. Yeah. It's pretty legit. And there's some modifiers you can slot so that you have more energy in turn. And then maybe you have more attacks for the dogs. There's a lot of synergy.
00:15:35
Speaker
And some of them have pretty big differences. So we've mostly mentioned like a couple modifiers, some attacks. Another big one is mask, which is just like you're invisible. If that's your primary slotted thing, you're just invisible. So an early game turn strategy might be keep mask on your bar so you can execute a turn. Turn invisible immediately after that in your vulnerable period.
00:16:00
Speaker
If it's like slotted with Actually, I don't even know if that needs John. You might always be able to use that What else have turn I'm not sure But turn invisible and then let your turn cool down and do it again
00:16:13
Speaker
Yeah. Just for invisible, you can't really draw aggro from enemies. You're not going to be attacked by anything unless you're doing static AoE attacks. Yeah. So it really helps you set up, especially if you have your other abilities disabled while your turn bar is recharging. Exactly. Because I would usually do a turn and then start being hit by things, and I can't use abilities to get out of the way, or I can't kill them. So I'm just walking behind cover, hoping for the best. Yeah. And that's a...
00:16:42
Speaker
Pretty good strategy in the early game, honestly. The trick being, once you've done your invisibility, your turn may have cooled down, but you execute that turn and your invisibility won't have cooled down, because your turn happens instantly, right? How are things going to cool down?
00:17:00
Speaker
So there's give and take, but people play this game very differently, is the short of it. Another kind of modifier you can throw on this is as you progress through the game, you unlock limiters. If you played Bastion, these are like the gods. If you played Pyre, it's like... The constellations. Exactly, yeah.
00:17:21
Speaker
And those had great names, those constellations, pretty awesome. Astralborn. But the limiters basically, just like those other games, make the enemies more difficult. There's a mechanic where when you kill an enemy, it drops an egg. And if you don't collect that egg, it'll respawn. So that forces you to kind of close the distance, which some builds don't really want to do.
00:17:48
Speaker
And some of these modifiers make it so like, there's more eggs, or now they have shields you have to break, or they respond really quickly. And you're like, the payoff for turning these limiters on is you get more experience throughout the game. And as you get experience for clearing these combat encounters, you level up and you have some choices. You can pick like, I want to have more secondary slots or more passive slots.
00:18:16
Speaker
Also memory. Memory is a big one. Memory, I assume, is how much you actually are limited to have things equipped, whether they be primary, secondary, etc. Exactly. Everything has a cost. Anything can be bought and sold for the right oil! To have it on your bar. So higher base memory is just more active effects, more passive effects, all of it.
00:18:42
Speaker
So at the end of the first area, you go back to the empty set, which is basically where the attack happened, which you were kind of like warned against,
Boss battles and combat challenges
00:18:52
Speaker
like, let's not go back there. But you go back there, you actually get to hear your characters.
00:18:57
Speaker
Sound for the first time. Yeah, not exactly voice But you can go back to the mic your character is this really famous and very popular singer, right? And you actually get to hum for a little bit. Yeah, which is a big thing throughout the game as far as the musical pacing and I think all of the songs on the soundtrack have
00:19:22
Speaker
like oh hear the vocals or hey here's just the hum version yeah no it's it's legit um that they have that kind of layering in it um and it's kind of like a this is a form of resistance really right they've taken my voice but i can still hum so sucks to be you
00:19:41
Speaker
And then you encounter your first boss battle of civil rise. Yeah, one of the members of the Kamarata member was actually obsessed with your Ability to sing and wanted you for the transistor. Yep. So she's like we should gank this bitch
00:20:01
Speaker
Just like it carries alone in top lane. Smoke up. Obviously it doesn't pan out though because you were alive and not in the transistor. But your cute bodyguard is.
00:20:18
Speaker
Honestly, just, just the hotness. He is, you know, you never really, you never see his face. I like mysterious men. Um, but as you are fighting her, she's not a person per se. No, she's kind of been corrupted by the process. It's like a, a process construct of her. Yeah, exactly. I think it's better way to say it. Um, but it's like this big three tiered stage or three staged fight. Yeah. Where she's kind of like this larger in life.
00:20:48
Speaker
I want to say like 1800s lady who has like a very poofed out dress. She has the parasol. Yeah. Parasol spear. Yeah. Yeah. And the fight has a lot of cheerleaders and weeds. Yep. High school. Am I right?
00:21:03
Speaker
I just want to make that down, Joe. With the cheerleaders, but yeah. So you have to kind of work around getting all these different ads before you can really get rid of her. Yeah. But each time she gets more and more fanatical. Yeah. Like boss and rage meter. Dang right I'm going to hit that.
00:21:22
Speaker
zing But then when you actually beat her There's like a normal sized version of her. It's just kind of like crawling on the ground struggling Oh, yeah, and you actually kind of have to cut a graph Yeah, yeah, it's it's pretty sad
00:21:39
Speaker
but I don't care about finishing her off at the end because this fight is like one of the first really obnoxious ones like up until this you can kind of like do whatever but this one she will kill you like when you are cooling down on your turn like she she does a lot of damage yeah and this is actually the first time too where
00:22:00
Speaker
I learned about emergency turns. So you have a health bar like in most games where there's combat. And once that goes away, you get hit to the point where it's going to hit you for lethal. You have an emergency turn. We have one more turn to kind of do things. If you get hit again after that,
00:22:18
Speaker
You lose one of your processes. Yeah. Which is, yeah, I just, I was saying restart. Actually, when I lose processes, um, yeah, the emergency turn, I think, I think it only happens if your turn is off of cool down, which makes it painful sometimes. If you're like relying a lot on turn, then you get hit out of order.
00:22:40
Speaker
But it's your final chance. It's like, all right, go for it. So if you know that you're going to be playing close to the edge, you can purposely hold your turn just to ensure that if you do take that lethal hit, you can run away or something. We were talking about the ads. That's that was my main way for like dealing with this fight because she's so obnoxious.
00:22:59
Speaker
There's weeds in the fight which will heal her. The AI is not amazing for this game, but it will either zerg rush you or run back and heal. And she will run back and heal. So you can hit them with another function we haven't really talked about called switch.
00:23:17
Speaker
and switch when in a primary slot has kind of like a charge time but it allows you to convert an enemy onto your side for six seconds which is amazing in this fight because her ads either make her invulnerable or heal her both of which are much better when put to use on the protagonist. But what if I didn't die?
00:23:37
Speaker
And yeah, there's a pretty great combo where you can hit that with the spread shot and make a switch shotgun, which is also good. Please do not use your Nintendo Switch to make a shotgun at all.
00:23:54
Speaker
I was trying to think of how to make a joke about that. I was like, that seems like a waste of money. You can 3D print a Switch shotgun. It may be less expensive to just buy an actual shotgun than to buy a Switch. I'm not sure.
00:24:09
Speaker
I'm thinking about it now. Yeah, I don't know the street price for a shotgun, unfortunately. I'll talk to my guy. We'll figure it out. We'll put that in the edit. But that makes the fight a lot more tenable because she can be charging at you trying to do tons of damage and you're immune for six seconds, something like that. It gives you some recovery time.
00:24:31
Speaker
But she's a pain. Deal with her. I don't care. Finish her off. You know, you can have your dramatic moment if you want, but I just wanted to kill her at that point. And then claim her function, which was help. I mentioned it earlier, but the ability to summon adds, which would have been really great for her fight, actually. Yeah, if only I had this power before fighting this person. Yeah. And that was every Mega Man game.
00:24:59
Speaker
But that's exactly how that fight goes. So she's the first main character of the Camerata and she gives you some leads to follow up on the rest of them. So you can figure out exactly what they were trying to do with the transistor here. And the voice in the transistor isn't terribly
00:25:16
Speaker
please with a camarada as another recall back to our the intro yeah the two-bit camarada pieces of trash trash trash I'm trash man
00:25:31
Speaker
But it's it's a trek and that this is mostly core gameplay is moving area from area encountering enemies encountering upgraded versions of enemies Yeah, a lot of friends come back and then they'll add in some new things as you progress through jerk 2.0. Yeah
00:25:50
Speaker
It's usually like you're going through, and then you're like, I sure we hope you don't run into the process. Oh my god, the process. As if summoned, the process shows up. But one thing that's cool about the combat is it kind of sequesters off an area. It's not always an isometric rectangle. It's kind of based around
00:26:11
Speaker
what's nearby you. So sometimes like you'll have areas which you can access, or sometimes they'll have these walls, right, which you can actually break down and go through sometimes you need to to get to certain areas. Yeah.
00:26:26
Speaker
but I just like how it's dynamic per the area. Like each encounter is technically different. Yeah, like those walls give you some temp cover, but if they take enough fire, they're gonna fall down. Yeah, it's got that tactical bent to it that a lot of games
00:26:45
Speaker
Do And usually you're managing it with like a squad or something like this, but this is single single powerful unit red is But it is fun and it's Got a really good feel when you have your kit you're like, I know how to use my abilities I know how to plan my turns let's do this and you could just barrel through some of these encounters when you have your your standard approach down and
00:27:12
Speaker
So another big encounter where you have in this game post-sybil is boss battle with the spine, which is kind of like this construct of the world which gets corrupted by the process, of course. And I appreciate it because I kind of have my own daily battles with my spine. Hashtag scoliosis. Hashtag it's not an S, it's a symbol of hope. But this is actually one of the most pain in the ass fights because
00:27:41
Speaker
You're just shooting out lasers, spitting out damage. You kind of have to dodge between cover. But then he puts out all these eggs, as you were calling them, to spawn enemies. And you're trying to rush through and like, oh, let me make sure these don't spawn enemies. Right, Eggman. Yeah.
Exploring optional challenges and plot unraveling
00:27:59
Speaker
Dr. Eggman.
00:28:01
Speaker
And then also a tail of the spine will come out and just attack you from above, which I don't think you even have a tail for. It's kind of... It's periodic, yeah. And it just phases through reality. It attacks you a couple times as you're making your way up to him.
00:28:15
Speaker
Uh, he also makes this transistor drunk or like something. Yeah. It turns red. There's some weird interaction there. Um, but yeah, this guy's, this guy's a pain. I, uh, I pretty much always struggle with this guy and some abilities that just straight up are garbage against him. Like, um, I use help like in that combo I described earlier, the two summons and they will not automatically attack the spine because he's a little bit like off of the ground. He's like back.
00:28:47
Speaker
So that's a waste of a slot for the most part. Yeah, and you can't really change slots mid-combat you have to do about these save or checkpoints. Yeah.
00:28:58
Speaker
with these little terminals. Yeah, it's really obnoxious. And this is one of the first fights, simple to a lesser extent, but the spine goes on for a while. So you have to run back and forth. It's like a huge thing of health. Yeah. This guy's got the screen health bar. He's also just kind of part of the screen. Yeah. Like certain things are enemies which move around within the area. And this is just like, I'm going to be here. You can come and attack me if you feel you're up to it. Right.
00:29:27
Speaker
He's got this, like, Gatling laser that just tears through you if you get in the melee range, or he breaks through the terrain. It's an obnoxious fight, and... Is it an obnoxious fight? It is an obnoxious fight. Okay, I just want to make sure... I think actually... Yeah, it's an obnoxious fight. I'm glad we cleared that up. And this is just a gripe I have with the game, is it doesn't really lead into this fight difficulty-wise. But more on that later.
00:29:58
Speaker
Not a moron. Fuck you. Moron. That. Yeah. Typically games should have nice progressions into things. So you feel challenged, but you can meet the challenge mentally or otherwise. But in a way that you feel you are progressing. Yeah. But when you hit like these huge difficulty spikes in any game, but also in here, you're kind of like, Oh, and maybe that's something you're trying to convey as far as.
00:30:28
Speaker
Hey, this is something that's supposed to be way above where you're at. Yeah. But it feels bad to go up against it. It does feel bad. But you kill that off. Climb inside of the thing because it's this huge organic worm slimy thing. You climb inside of it and it turns into like a 2D left to right platformer without platforms, I guess. Side scroller. Side scroller is correct.
00:30:57
Speaker
Typically throughout the world, like there is background, there's dimension, but they do have these two dimensional cut scenes kind of. Like if you're on a bike between areas where you have some exposition, but it's a very flat 2D and it's a very tonal shift, very
00:31:19
Speaker
Yet again, words have failed me. You have a very good profile of everything. So it has this nice cinematic effect. Yeah. Yeah. They definitely, they didn't need this section, but they put it in and artistically it looks cool. But Red goes in, takes the transistor and just carves up a heart that's inside of this thing. Cali mom. At which point the transistor is freed from his drunkenness spell and is more sober.
00:31:50
Speaker
We want to elaborate on that at all. So it's kind of like a jamming effect that this vine seems to have on the transistor. It glows red, his speech becomes really slurred, and the only reprieve from that is entering these, there's just kind of this backdoor escape hidden area that you periodically can go back to through the game using Sybil's access key. That's more of like
00:32:15
Speaker
I mean, it's a cool spot obviously, but I remember there were doors you can like do these challenges. Yeah. For like extra experience points pretty much. Yeah. There's a couple of different types of challenges. One of them is you get random or I think they're, I think they're random abilities and functions and you can outfit them using very limited amounts of memory. And then you have to defeat a next wave of enemies and then get some more upgrades, have more memory, keep doing that and try to clear all of it.
00:32:45
Speaker
You can use that with your limiters, which makes it really hard later. And I wasted a lot of time trying to clear it with a lot of limiters. Other ones are like just survive for X amount of time. They're all optional challenges, right? The very first one you have to clear and then after that, then you're good. But they provide you more XP.
00:33:05
Speaker
Which, if you're like us, you're typically doing, oh, is there side content? I'll be back. Yeah, exactly, right. See you in a moment, reality. And the one I like the most, though, is single turn challenges, where they give you, they set up a bunch of enemies, maybe some terrain, whatever. They give you a hot bar of abilities, and they're like, solve the puzzle.
00:33:30
Speaker
Yeah, so it's like it's like Faria. They're puzzles. I didn't say Faria or what else did that? I can't tell you. Oh, Magic the Gathering. Ah, like second place. Like MTG 2015 had some like, hey, she's going down this turn. What do you do? Yeah.
00:33:54
Speaker
Yeah, how do you get out of this teaching mechanics, which is a really nice way to do it. And I think that's the main advantage to this kind of puzzle area and those other doors is it forces you away from your standard kit of abilities. So you can like be forced to improvise and find some combinations you wouldn't have even tried in the base game because you felt you were doing good enough. And this comes up later is how I end up finding my in-game builds because the game forces me to use them in the hardest challenges.
00:34:25
Speaker
But yeah, the transistor is fine there, but as soon as you walk back out, it's like, ah, and we're groggy again, has been jammed in reality or wherever the spine is. Once you beat the spine, that goes away. Yeah, it's like this kind of unrelated mid-boss to the game, because it's not involved with the Camerata at all. Yeah, it's kind of like close to your destination.
00:34:51
Speaker
but it lore thematically would have no reason to guard them. It's just a challenge that's in the way. But once that spine is dead you can start working your way up the Camerata Tower. There's a couple interesting screen transitions where it's like you walk through a door on the right and you come out like two floors up.
00:35:13
Speaker
On a door on the left and then you walk around a walkway go through the door on the right again and then you're a floor below Like in the middle and then you walked that or then it takes you to the top or something like that kind of like non Euclidean geometry behind the scenes Yeah, yeah, I can never usually find the Euclidean, but Is that a PC joke I Mean people could listen to this on their pieces if they want it's it's fine. They'll get the joke
00:35:41
Speaker
I'm not mad. Hey, you work way up to the top and one of the other members of the Camerata starts dropping these terminal messages on you, Asher. And Asher's kind of, he's like a tanned, white haired, I'm gonna say like, intellectual, kind of hipsterish sounding guy. He's clearly very, very smooth and accepted, like accepted in his ways.
00:36:13
Speaker
But he basically invites you to continue up, try to find him. He thinks you're looking for Grant, who is the head Camerata member.
Character motivations and strategic depth
00:36:23
Speaker
And periodically, through these terminals, you learn more and more about his mindset. And really, he takes responsibility for everything that the Camerata has done and how they've caused the process to escape.
00:36:40
Speaker
to the people of Cloudbank. We did this. We, the Camerata, are responsible for inexcusable crimes committed against this city and her citizens. This is a formal admission of guilt. I solemnly swear everything written here is true. Know that I am responsible for these heinous acts perpetrated against the city of Cloudbank. My accomplices are Civil Rise, Royce Braggart, and Grant Kendrew. We alone are to blame. Perhaps our worst sin, as you will get no justice for now.
00:37:09
Speaker
We all share the same sentence. And this is kind of a turning point for the voice in the transistor. The stranger, because he was like so angry with the camera to rightly so. You know, if you were trapped in the transistor, you're like, I want my body back. Who did this? Right. But he realizes their motives here were just to keep the world as it was. And it was a huge mistake on their part. But they're taking responsibility for it. And it's harder to hate them for that.
00:37:39
Speaker
Yeah. And in person too. Yeah, exactly. When they're first introduced or set up as these big, bad silhouettes. Yeah. This is team rocket. Yeah. They tried to kill you. But when you see them in person, they're like,
00:37:53
Speaker
Yeah, I fucked up. Yeah. Shit. Yeah. Like the the empathy comes in to a degree. Yeah. And a lot of that, like even Red, she has some responses on some of these terminals because whenever you encounter one of these terminals in the game, you'll sometimes have some choices or you'll have just a button like post a comment. And Red will type out a lot of times like a message like, hey, everybody needs to evacuate them backspace and just be like, there's
00:38:21
Speaker
like this this district's like done for or something like that um and when she's ascending this tower what the messages she's sending in response to asher's terminal messages are always like why did you do this though or like what was the point yeah try to get understanding rather than accusatory right because this is presumably a world where
00:38:46
Speaker
people in these programs were living in, there's no mention of war or anything like that. They've kind of got a utopia going on. So true malicious intent is foreign, it seems like, to CloudBank.
00:39:03
Speaker
It's interesting. It's an interesting angle on it. Which topia? Dystopia. Though once you make it to the top of the tower, the utopia falls apart. And Asher has very recently killed himself in response to Grant having killed himself. And his final line was, I'll see you in the country, to red as a final voice log.
00:39:30
Speaker
which is their kind of afterlife type area, I guess. It's not really defined.
00:39:38
Speaker
I think it's like in the same way, um, Oh, you're what happened to my dog spot. Oh, he went to go live out on the farm in the farm. Yeah, exactly. It's like this idealistic place kind of taken away from all the toils of like everyday life and sadness, just a happy place with sunshine. It's what you imagine heaven to be like the old country. Wait, that's not right.
00:40:05
Speaker
Wait, if grandma's from the old country, oh god, grandma's an angel. But with how she begs for me, how could she not be? Yeah, true, true, true. But you get to absorb both of their remaining process traces into the transistor. And this is something you've been doing for various characters up to this point to get functions and after you beat Sipple.
00:40:29
Speaker
You don't really leave people behind whenever you encounter the remnants of someone who's just dissipating and being absorbed by the process into the transistor they go. It's a collect-a-thon of faces and names. It's interesting and it expands your arsenal too.
00:40:52
Speaker
At this point, you are basically given a choice of which of their functions you want, and they're both like good endgame options. I think one of them was, I believe one of them was coal and the other one was purge.
00:41:08
Speaker
Yeah, a lot of birdies. Hey, a lot of birdies. Yeah, if you pick Purge, it just like opens a YouTube video and it goes into a nine hour patch. But could you remind the audience what Purge actually does? So Purge is described as a ranged parasite. You basically fire it, it's a projectile, and it will home in on a nearby enemy. I think if you're mousing over an enemy, if you're using PC. You don't have priority.
00:41:37
Speaker
It'll have priority for that target, yeah. But it slows them pretty considerably and then does damage over time, non-stacking. So a lot of the attacks in the game you're just gonna like hit them repeatedly. This one you can only refresh the duration, not the effect.
00:41:53
Speaker
So yeah, so if you go into like turn and you're like, I'm gonna hit this guy with 10 purges. 17 dots. It counts as one. Yeah, I think this is the one I picked because as soon as I see dot, I'm like, yes. Yeah. I just love damage over time effects. I like the war of attrition type mechanic and any type of game where you can kind of bleed somebody dry. Maybe that says something about me. But I like that more so than just the nuke damage. Yeah.
00:42:22
Speaker
Which is the other one. That is a beautiful segue that I'll rub by calling it out. Cole is the highest damage melee ability in the game. It's like a huge overhanded smash basically. And it takes an absurd amount of turn energy. The more powerful abilities take more turn.
00:42:41
Speaker
space. It just takes one turn. You literally, one ability, a function is ping. If you slot it in something, it makes it cheaper in turn or cast faster in real time. And that's the only way you can use two of these in a turn. But there's this nice little mechanic where you have any turn space left. You can slot anything into that remnant space.
00:43:05
Speaker
So you can max out a bunch of little things, and then one huge goal at the end. And it's amazing. In the same way I like to, before using turn, cast an ability. And then while that ability is casting, I'd be like, and turn. Right.
00:43:22
Speaker
with bullets in the air you pause time yeah because your first action will still resolve you can be like and these other things exactly yeah that's it's like a canceling your animation for doing something the recoil no recoil jump in and yeah this yeah it's nice it is pretty legit and it's a it's a good way to go through here
00:43:45
Speaker
Another ability that you'll get pretty early here in the leveling up is Void, which, although it's basically an AoE kind of like pulse effect, and it doesn't have too much of a cast time, it casts pretty fast. It does almost no damage, but it gives them a weakened debuff.
00:44:06
Speaker
that makes their character model smaller and also stacks three times. Amplified image. Exactly. And this becomes your ultimate alpha strike ability in turn, where you hit them with three voids, follow up with one of your most powerful attacks, and just watch their health bar vanish.
00:44:28
Speaker
The old coalback style. Yeah. Yeah. Coal's amazing. Also, um, each of these names, if you notice, have very powerful connotations, like to void something. Yes. To complete movement from existence, to purge, to get rid of, to cull, to cut out. Yeah. A lot of computer science stuff too. Yeah. It's just very cathartic in nature for like how
00:44:58
Speaker
Powerful these terms are yeah It's like I used to like the word decimate as a kid and so like oh, that's one tenth. Would you say your dragons would decimate? Yeah And a lot of that is because they use their functions right so they are computer science terms and they're aggressive ones So they're gonna they're gonna be destruction. So the ones like ping mm-hmm help Yeah, exactly
00:45:27
Speaker
And everything actually has a, like the function brackets after it in its name. So it's not like it was done. Incidentally. Yeah. Yeah. They kept it with the theming of computer science terminology, which is nice.
00:45:40
Speaker
Yeah, something we'd seen during our review for this is a lot of times they'll give you meaningless statistics on the screen. This is the number of times the spine has tried to attack you. And it's just like a little text box next to the spine every time it attacks. Or examples of things would be like that number of, oh, when you get the transistor. That's the first one that pops up.
00:46:08
Speaker
Kills today. One. Yeah. It's like a shitty Google Glass in a way, but it, it just adds like a little bit of world building. It's the slightest fucking bit. Yeah. Kind of rounds the edges, which is nice. That's super giant thing. Like it's all about the world building and the theming.
00:46:28
Speaker
So a lot of witches through music. Yes. Oh, yeah for theming that world builder Although sometimes sometimes that'll be the we'll save that for Bastion. Yeah Like I said that made eye contact. I'm like not now Jake. I know what you mean
00:46:47
Speaker
But at this point, you're in the late game and you have an optimized build. Probably you know how you're going to go through and play the game. And there's only one remaining member of the Camerata, and that's Royce. And Royce is like on the opposite. You have to go all the way back to the beginning and build a bridge next to where you extracted the transistor.
00:47:12
Speaker
But he talks to you through a CRT proxy that's just floating in the air. Somebody's face on it, like his face. Someone's face.
00:47:22
Speaker
And he follows you for an irrational amount of time. He's basically leading you to where he actually is. What's the whole time you're going back, right? Yeah, into his area on his side. And at this point, the process has reformatted the world even more. It's all just sheer white. And you're starting to see actual
00:47:47
Speaker
uh structures popping up that are completely unrelated to what your world was like before like it's advanced and it's advanced um it's not stupid and the supergiant does a couple
00:48:03
Speaker
Couple cool twists here. One of them is your introduction to Jerk 3.0, the latest upgraded version, is there's a gap you can't move across and there's no jump pad, there's nothing like that. You walk up to the edge and it like unmasks from the opposite side, then pulls you across the ledge and starts smashing into you.
00:48:24
Speaker
Which I love that's that's a really cool touch. Hey combat bitch, what up? It's like they get you across the ledge and they introduce the mechanic like in one fell swoop Another cool thing is in this area. There's a part where you walk through a door and You're like on this this causeway and you can like look around it a little bit, but there's no other exit and transistors like
00:48:50
Speaker
I'm not really sure what we should, and then if you walk back through the door, it takes you forward. So you backtrack, but again, non-Euclidean takes you forward on the path. And it's like, uh-oh. Yeah, I think part of that is just
00:49:12
Speaker
I'm sure at a point in time previously in the world, um, things were keeping the word Euclidean. Yeah. And it made sense. But in the same way you have access to these back doors, I feel like certain things are being remapped by the process. Yeah. As far as this door leads here. It's like this door is, oh, oh, we're actually back there. We're back at the Apple base. Right. Yeah. Fix it.
00:49:36
Speaker
See, that's the thing. I don't know. I don't know if you can go back through that door afterwards to try to actually backtrack what would happen. Our listeners could tell us what happened. Get to this point in the game specifically and let me know. There's another part. This is the last kind of a side for this area I have, but you can walk through a door and you end up on the ceiling.
00:49:56
Speaker
And the controls are now relative to you on the ceiling. And thank God they don't make you actually fight anything like that because it's super disconcerted. But I like that. It's just a little side thing.
00:50:15
Speaker
and then they have a tongue-in-cheek moment when you enter a back door and You can do your training whatever leave back out and CRT guys right there Royce is there and he's like and that's the purpose of the transistor and The transistor is like wait. What can you say that again? Royce doesn't respond
Approach to Royce and final confrontation
00:50:36
Speaker
Yeah, a lot of this game's plot, I guess we said there's kind of like some exposition between transitionary areas, but
00:50:46
Speaker
You're not really told all that much up until this point. I've seen the jigs kind of like when you start off in a movie and there's like six people in a van and like they have like their guns loaded, they have like their masks, like, okay, we're gonna rob this bank. You guys know what to do. And it's established in the world, like, okay, everybody knows what's going on. These are the stakes, these are all the characters, and you just kind of go from there. And you're like, yes, I am along for the ride. And you're looking around,
00:51:14
Speaker
Trying to I guess uncover more details throughout the world, right and you get bits and pieces But you don't get a lot of it until the Royce exposition on the CRT. Mm-hmm where it's kind of just this wall of
00:51:29
Speaker
things. Yeah he's just talking about all the Camerata's motivations and how he loaned the transistor to Grant and how he was using the transistor to like adapt the city to the people's whims but the Camerata didn't want him to do that so they tried to make things the same and somehow cause the process to be released. It's uh it's this whole I actually kind of have a gripe with the game that they give you this wall of exposition
00:51:56
Speaker
um at the end when they could have tried to fit it elsewhere and it's a little it's a I don't think you can be more ham-fisted than the earpiece uh in like modern games yeah like batman bends over and like touches his ear and oracle's like
00:52:16
Speaker
The info down for you. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I get that, like I understand why they did it where they did, but I still sympathize with what you're saying. Yeah. Because I think it's better from like a pacing a world building standpoint, if you can have a kind of space throughout. Right. And it's weird if you go to like, let's say the final boss.
00:52:38
Speaker
And they're like, but this was my plan all along. And it's just 10 minutes. You're just like, are we fighting or what's going on? Because at a point it's like, but how was I supposed to know? Yeah. As the player in the same way, if you have like a book or a movie.
00:52:55
Speaker
You want the person to be able to piece together what's going on as they're paying attention. You want it to be like, and surprise, like M Night Shyamalan style. You want to be like, but you never saw this coming, did you? It's like, oh my God, no. You want something that.
00:53:11
Speaker
Like, you've left breadcrumbs for. Right, it's got the crampus. That fits. Yeah. Exactly. You can't just be like, I'm an alien. You're like, okay. Like, I don't know where that came from or why it matters. Yeah. But I guess I'll accept that was your reasoning.
00:53:26
Speaker
And part of it is up until this point, the game has been giving you those breadcrumbs in the form of character bios. Characters are attached to functions where you found their function usually. And you unlock multiple parts of their bios by using that function as like a secondary slot or a passive. But most of that information is all related to the character. So it's more world building than plot.
00:53:49
Speaker
The gist of it is most of these characters started to find out what the Camerata were doing and then vanished. There you go. That's most of them. Like they do other things, but it kind of boils down to that template.
00:54:03
Speaker
So this end part seems like the antithesis of that. It's like, now we're just going to have someone talk at you while you go through the game from area to area, telling you what's going on. And I think my guess is the reason they did this is because they realized that at the end of the game, they hadn't told you what was going on and they needed you to have some context for the final confrontation.
00:54:32
Speaker
Yeah. That sounds negative. It does. It sounds negative. But it didn't hamper my enjoyment of the game when I went through the first time this is on later playthroughs. I was like, I don't really want to hear this guy talk for 15 minutes. Any subsequent playthroughs you're like,
00:54:50
Speaker
and the analysis yeah are you like looking to critique or just notice extra things i guess yeah and we tear games apart like when we were trying to analyze them so um that's not always conducive to just playing through and having fun um
00:55:10
Speaker
But yeah, after you've cleared through the area, you end up in Royce's, like, lab. Yeah, I'd say lab, yeah. And he's basically, he continues to talk to you in this slow, methodical speech.
00:55:25
Speaker
What you have there in your hands, maybe it's a star or a tomb. The end of the world, way to the country, lighter than one might expect to. A priceless artifact, more significant than I don't know. More than the two of us put together, more than anything I can think of, really. And you've been dragging it like that on the ground.
00:55:48
Speaker
But it boils down to, he wants you to return the transistor to the cradle, which is this location. It's like, it would be the scabbard for the transistor. It literally is that it's just gigantic. At which point like it kind of dematerializes in the air, it breaks out into a bunch of pieces and then pulls itself back together and like slams in the cradle. It looks really cool. It's a cool animation. But he's kind of playing you.
00:56:18
Speaker
and what ends up happening is I guess reality collapses or something but you both end up on this inside the transistor because you see these like cells kind of not prison cells but like um like a tube cryotube looking stasis pod stasis pod like that one
00:56:43
Speaker
I'm just watching Jake gesture wildly and look for meaning in my eyes. Yeah. If you had my hand gestures, I think this would be more tenable. But with the identities, people's names that are stored in the transistor. And you have this back and forth where he talks to you and you don't say anything, where Roy is
00:57:06
Speaker
uh basically breaks it down he's like hey we're both stuck in here and only one of us is making it out and you both have transistors he's like should we take turns i'll go first yeah so at this point
00:57:21
Speaker
Let's also hype up. He also has another transistor. Yes. You are inside of your transistor. I glossed over that. But he also made another transistor. So it gets to like some weird inception-y crazy stuff. But this is the only enemy combatant you have in the game who can do the same things you can. Yeah.
00:57:45
Speaker
has access to all the same functions. And even as Jake mentioned, even the turn ability, which he kind of announces in a really cool way, all go first. And then you see like time freeze and he moves and you can't do anything. You're like, ah, shit. And he's also an intelligent AI because if he doesn't have his turn ready to like freeze time and do actions, he will kind of piece off. Exactly. Peace off, man.
00:58:12
Speaker
But he will run away from you, so you'd have to use or expend more of your turn chasing after him. Exactly. There's a lot of trying to play the distances exactly right so that he won't initiate his turn. But your turn may be cooling down, so you want to run away, pull back a little bit, and you want those exchanges to be beneficial to you. He still takes backstab damage. So if you want to commit the resources to running around behind him, you're going to be able to attack fewer times, maybe do more damage.
00:58:41
Speaker
And another mechanic here is the stasis pods here act as cover. So for at least the first phase, he's got this bouncing attack. He uses bounce, I think. I think it's literally bounce. That's a separate function. And if you're behind a stasis pod, he will waste some of his projectiles.
00:59:06
Speaker
Before switching off to the piercing ones that would just go through terrain. Yeah, and you'll take less damage
00:59:12
Speaker
But yeah, I mentioned phases. This guy's like a three-phase fight. And I think the goal of this fight was that he would be, on average, barely ahead of him. So every time he empties your health bar, you're going to lose a function. And his functions are getting stronger for every phase because he uses better ones. Eventually, he actually starts walking up and smacking you in the face with
00:59:41
Speaker
Really powerful functions. Not Cole, thank God. That would kill you. That would actually just kill you. But it's meant to be this sustained combat where you just come out barely ahead. You can use strategies developed up to this point to just alpha strike them out of every phase, though, and that's amazing. That is the goal. Yeah. For sure.
01:00:05
Speaker
By the way, you can't, you can't switch him. Just a heads up. And so, kill yourself.
01:00:15
Speaker
No, he doesn't go for that. So the game does give you a final pop-up, like you were at a prompt or a terminal, where you can change out your abilities. And it's like, prepare yourself. And you're just like, oh, geez. I can finally use the elixirs. I've been saving all game.
01:00:38
Speaker
Yeah, it's a it's a heck
Emotional climax and podcast reflections
01:00:40
Speaker
of a fight. I am Lost multiple times. Oh, yeah with my limiters on I know you I was also in that situation Yeah, and if you if you full-on lose the game gives you a choice It's got a cool cut. It's not a cutscene, but I'm a failure screen with like blue skies in the background and stuff and
01:01:02
Speaker
And Royce actually has a voice line for being like, I guess it's me, I guess I make it up. And it's like, you can retry or you can retry without limiters.
01:01:13
Speaker
Which is the nicer saying like have you tried lowering the difficulty exactly? Yeah, it seems like you're fucking up And this is see I know this is the final fight of the game. So at this point I'm like Yeah, I'm gonna I'm gonna take the limiters off so I can beat this game
01:01:32
Speaker
um but upon completion of that actually beating him he is trapped in the transistor you return to reality as the one and true highlander
01:01:45
Speaker
And reality is basically entirely formatted by the process at this point. Yeah, it's kind of fully bleached out. I think you are the last person who is just there in Cloudbank. Just everybody, there's no one else. And one of Royce's lines is he refers to the transistor as the brush. He was using this to change the world. This is a fully empowered transistor with all of the consciousnesses of everyone who wasn't just straight up killed by the process.
01:02:15
Speaker
stored in it. And so you just start remaking the world. There's like a bridge and statues and you're just rebuilding it and like making this vibrant world out of nothing on this blank white canvas basically. And you hear the voice of the stranger, the one who originally was stabbed by the transistor.
01:02:35
Speaker
And it's awesome. You can go through, you can create it. You can make the world however you want to. And you go through these prompts. You're building the world. And eventually, Red just stops. Those prompts start popping up where you run forward and rebuild part of the world. Yeah. They want to show you that you have this option.
01:02:57
Speaker
stranger like sees such potential in like the Acts of the pure fucking raw power you have. Yeah
01:03:06
Speaker
But at a point, like I said, Red does this stuff. Yeah. And I mean, she's been like silent protagonist the whole game. So you're like, what could she be thinking? Yeah. But as you kind of have felt throughout the game, her whole motivation was to see if she could save this guy. Yeah. But she realizes that she can't.
01:03:31
Speaker
There's a couple points where, and these actually got to me in both times I played, but she'll talk to the transistor through terminals. She'll type out a message like, I'm gonna get you out of there, backspace it, he'll respond, she'll type something else. And then finally just submit whatever comment, it doesn't matter. But she uses that as a way to actually speak to the transistor and you get like this perception of like how she feels. And yeah.
01:03:59
Speaker
At the end, you're exactly back where the game started. You recreate the section where the corpse of the stranger is, now still slumped against the wall. And she just sits down. Transistor, the stranger, is just saying, please, no. No, Red, don't. And she telekinesis that blade out and into herself.
01:04:26
Speaker
Yep, she puts her body right next to his. And she also puts herself in the transistor so they can actually be together in a virtual sense. It was a very Romeo and Juliet moment. But this is a better love story than Romeo and Juliet. Still a better love story than Romeo and Juliet. And yeah, I love this ending when I played.
01:04:53
Speaker
These super giant games get me emotionally invested. Oh, I I think I've I Don't think I cried for pyre. Uh-huh eyes moistened Armed spaghetti Wait, no the transistor. I did have feels for Bastion as well And it's not something I should go in expecting. Yeah, but like throughout the course of the game you do get invested and I
01:05:18
Speaker
You give a shit. Basically throughout like this theming and the music and these small interactions kind of builds up. Yeah. A lot of it's like, how can, how much, how much information can we convey with a heavy limitation on it? And like.
01:05:36
Speaker
There's a lot of beefy video game protagonists, soldier boy, combat, first person shooter character. I say soldier boy. Am I not singing it or are you singing it? Was that a song? Supergiant has these completely likable protagonists that
01:05:56
Speaker
The way you discover about their character is how they interact with the world. Like, do they take the moment to eat a slice of pizza at their apartment like you can in this one? There are few interactions with other characters because the worlds are almost always depleted. Yes, pretty barren. And yeah, you just, you can get attached to them in a way that you couldn't get attached to a character that talks a lot and says nothing. This is the opposite of that. Yeah, it is.
01:06:25
Speaker
All of their characters have been very, I want to say humanized. Like you get to see, as you're saying, those interactions where you're like, oh, this is an actual person with a personality. Yeah. And you grow to like the good things about them and you, you understand the negative qualities about them and how they came to be that way. Right.
01:06:49
Speaker
Now in Pyre, you obviously didn't have a character you played as. The reader. Your dialogue as. You know what I meant. But you see it plays you. The interactions played yourself. I hate this protagonist. You see all of these interactions between the characters in the game you can't control. And you won't say fall in love with them, but you feel for them. You understand.
01:07:18
Speaker
and Bastion. So the situation and transition just did a great job with you caring about red and her relationship with a stranger. Yeah. Even though she doesn't really say anything towards it. And you find out fucking sweet, like nothing about the stranger. It's just their interactions back and forth. I like mysterious men. But yeah, that, uh,
01:07:47
Speaker
Yeah, just just that the art and the music all combined together make a very emotional encapsulated experience. Yeah, that's definitive of Supergiant games. And it's not a crazy long game. No, it's never a crazy expensive game. And it's always like on sale. I think out of all the games, it's probably my least favorite as far as mechanics. Yeah, Dave's actually leading all this praise is leading up to a two out of 10. It's just
01:08:18
Speaker
For the other games, compared to me, this was not as impactful. Yeah. But it is a still amazingly solid game. Yeah, it's really hard for me to place their games. I feel like I'm going to give this one a two, but then I wouldn't. It's like picking your favorite child. Yeah. No, that's easy. The second one. That would be much, much harder if all of my children were just so terrible.
01:08:46
Speaker
Yeah, but that is transistor. So hopefully you guys enjoyed our trek through this. As always, if you'd like to leave feedback, you can reach out to us at facebook.com slash soapstone podcast, or send it feedback directly to us at soapstonepodcast.gmail.com. We'll have to hear from you guys. Analysis, things like this.
01:09:10
Speaker
It's great to know that we're not just talking into the void and we actually have listeners. I'm listening, Jay. Dave listens to me. Why don't I have other people? I say that and I say this like every time, but we actually do have listeners. We're over like 1,250 listens. Well, listens. Yes. And admittedly, most of those are me, but still.
01:09:34
Speaker
If we had a thousand episodes, that's one listen per episode. We're nowhere near a thousand, so... It's good stuff. There's no reason I needed to append this at the end. No. Nobody's gonna listen this far anyway. That's fine. Alright, well, have a good night and we will see you in the next one. When you speak, I hear silence
01:10:03
Speaker
Every word I defiance I can hear, oh I can hear Think I'll go where it soaks me
01:10:40
Speaker
Tell yourself that you're lucky Lying down never struck me as something fun
01:12:14
Speaker
you become