Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Episode 57 - Old Skies
1.3k Plays2 days ago
Matt’s been digging into some old RPGs on his Retroid Pocket, but this pales in comparison to PushingUpRoses’ excitement for a CHICAGO POPE!
Also, we do a deep dive into Wadjet Eye’s new epic point-and-click adventure OLD SKIES, which somehow devolves into a long discussion of cake.
Email us! mattandroses@gmail.com
Games Mentioned:
- Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
- Chrono Trigger
- X-Men: Legends
- Old Skies
- Wanderstop
Recommended
Transcript
Becoming Pope in Chicago
00:00:00
Speaker
Hey, Matt. Matt, Matt, Matt. Oh, did you hear the news? Oh, my God. You're upset. I know. and never got the call.
00:00:12
Speaker
I know. I know. But you know who did get the call? Was it you? Almost. You're close. It's Leo. Pope from Chicago.
00:00:24
Speaker
a Pope from Chicago.
00:00:28
Speaker
If I knew that's what it took to be Pope, that all I had to do is move to Chicago. I told you to I would have done it. But I told you to move to Chicago. And you're like, no, I don't have any friends there. and I'm like, overrated.
00:00:43
Speaker
Well, again, i didn't know I'd be able to become Pope if I did it Yeah, they clearly they were looking for like, you know, somebody knowledgeable about dibs chairs and and malort and Italian beef.
00:00:59
Speaker
So this guy he's he's young ish. For the Pope. Young for the Pope. So he's going to be around for a while. So I have time to build up my campaign.
00:01:12
Speaker
You got to move to Chicago. You know, they already did a Chicago Pope. So next they're going to want a Philadelphia Pope. I don't think so. Yeah, pretty sure. So I think, I got to start my campaign now, right?
00:01:28
Speaker
It's like starting today, I'm at all camp. I'm running for next Pope. I don't think that's how that works. And I just, if you guys want to make t-shirts, Matt for Pope.
00:01:40
Speaker
If you guys want to put up signs, Matt for Pope. but If you guys want to
00:01:46
Speaker
Whatever. it's If somebody – I don't have the money to make even a website. Listen, I'll do a campaign for you. Okay. I'm going to do something for you because you said something really nice to me the other day. And this is going to get people on your side.
00:01:59
Speaker
What did I say I was really nice to you? So ah Matt told me that if i was just a blob of slop, he would still be my friend.
00:02:12
Speaker
He said that. And then, yeah, and then we both spent a while talking about what it would be like to be friends with a bag of slop. And we actually decided it'd be pretty cool.
00:02:23
Speaker
Yeah.
00:02:25
Speaker
So that's your whole campaign. We need a pope who it wants to be friends with degenerate trash like myself.
00:02:36
Speaker
just Trash pope is our next pope. Trash pope. I like it.
Matt's Sore Throat Episode
00:03:01
Speaker
yeah Everyone, welcome back to Save Your Game. i am one of your hosts, Pushing Up Roses. Not a pile of slop, but not against it. Seems pretty cool. With me, as always, my co-host, Matt Aukamp. Hi, Matt.
00:03:14
Speaker
Hey, how's it going? Good. How are you? bummed. Yeah, I'm bummed. The other thing, ah it played into the bit, but The truth is my throat hurts.
00:03:27
Speaker
So I am, I'm gonna be, my my voice might be a little gentler this episode. Weird. Yeah, cause I'm just trying to, I'm trying to take it easy. I'm trying not to shout. This isn't, so I'm not actually, if even if I sound really depressed right now, I'm not actually depressed. I'm just trying to talk a little, a little gentler.
00:03:49
Speaker
That's fair. i'm I'm actually coming off a cold myself because we were supposed to record the other day and I'm like, no way. like My throat is out of control. and then so Somehow across across what? 700 miles, oops you gave me your cold. mother like When I speak, I project and that those particles somehow got to your house. I don't know how, but they did.
00:04:15
Speaker
I have to start with an apology today. okay Last episode, I said that the person who voiced Indiana Jones and did an amazing job of it was Nolan North.
00:04:34
Speaker
It's Troy Baker, the ah the other guy, the other the other video game voice actor who everybody knows the name of. There's two of them. I had a 50-50 shot. I got it wrong. they Thanks to Colin Oscar P for letting me know that on Blue Sky.
00:04:54
Speaker
and thank you for Thank you for that. ah We sometimes get it wrong because we don't
Correction on Indiana Jones Voice Actor
00:05:00
Speaker
like to research. no I'm kidding. We do often, but when we're talking off the top of our head sometimes, yeah.
00:05:06
Speaker
Yeah, i mean I mean, just to reiterate, Troy Baker is doing a fantastic job as Indiana Jones. And fuck Nolan North. Oh, okay.
00:05:17
Speaker
No, I'm just kidding. They're both very talented. I don't know them as humans, but they're both very talented ah voice actors. Okay, great. I mean, I called Medley Melody, although I think that's pretty understandable. But nobody called me out for it, so there you go.
Retroid Pocket & RPG Gaming
00:05:36
Speaker
speaking of that ah do you want to do you want to hear uh what i've been playing this yes this past week yes so i recently did i i don't know if i talked about this on the show but i recently acquired retroid pocket do you know what one of these is i only know what it is because you told me what it is okay did i tell you on the show or off the show you told me on this on the show Okay, yeah, so I got my Retroid Pocket. I would highly suggest if anybody is interested in them, buy them now before the tariffs go crazy because it is from China.
00:06:12
Speaker
um But I got it i got my Retroid Pocket and I've put a bunch of emulators on it. Obviously, that's what it's for. And Well, one of those emulators...
00:06:28
Speaker
is a Nintendo GameCube emulator. Are you playing Wind Waker? oh no. You're excited about the wrong one. I am? I'm playing Twilight Princess.
00:06:40
Speaker
Oh. Oh, man. I'm getting excited about the wrong one. That's awesome, though. No, I think you'll like Twilight Princess. Yeah, I'm really digging it so far. i'm not I'm not in love with the wolf thing. I feel like I've been a wolf for too long.
00:06:55
Speaker
i'm I'm still at the... It's a long intro. Yeah. But so I've just met, I've met Midna. ah i i I met, I went into Twilight. I met Zelda.
00:07:07
Speaker
I went back to my town, fought some guys, and i'm now I'm collecting light orbs. um Sounds like a Zelda game. Or I was.
00:07:20
Speaker
I accidentally closed the emulator. No. And so all of that progress, I'm all the way back at meeting Princess Zelda. Oh, I didn't know that that happened with that. That's something. Yeah. i've never It's never happened to me before. Now I'm bummed out. But hey, I'm but i'm enjoying it. I think it's it's going to be a really cool game.
00:07:39
Speaker
um i just I hope I turn back into Boy Zelda soon. Boy Zelda as opposed to Wolf. yeah You got me to say it. I hate you so much. I can't believe this.
00:07:54
Speaker
So in addition to that, you'll also be excited about this, I think. and So I've decided this is like my RPG machine. and I'm using this thing to play a lot of RPGs that I missed over time.
00:08:09
Speaker
um so I'm going to be playing... I'm playing the Final Fantasies elsewhere. i would have loved to play them on this thing, but maybe i when I replay them. But I'll probably play the Dragon's Quests on this.
00:08:23
Speaker
and Oh. But right now... Old school. I am quite a... i I'm... I know this is a long game, so when I say quite a ways, I mean a couple hours and probably still have nine-tenths of the game to go.
00:08:40
Speaker
But I'm playing k Chrono Trigger. Oh, yay! I love that game. oh it's one of my favorites. i I like it. It seems like...
00:08:52
Speaker
For a game released back on the SNES, it seems to have a lot of quality of life RPG stuff that it like it seems like they played the Final Fantasies and the Dragon's Quests and they were like,
00:09:06
Speaker
some of the stuff sucks. like Found ways to make it all a ah little easier to play. yeah Not easier as in difficulty, but in frustration of like like tedium.
00:09:20
Speaker
And also it just moves, man. It just goes. Like yeah every moment is building on the story and RPGs of this era, like JRPGs,
00:09:34
Speaker
You kind of have to extract the good story out of a lot of annoying, boring stuff. Yeah. But with Chrono Trigger, i I'm loving every moment of it. Like, the characters are interesting. The dialogue is legitimately pretty good. And the game just kind of moves, and it's very inventive.
00:09:55
Speaker
Yeah. I am coming towards the end of my first trip into the future. Okay. Okay. So went to the past ah this is actually a shorter game compared to oh other RPGs, just so you know.
00:10:11
Speaker
okay. So like compared to, i mean, they're all, they're all square and all square soft games, but compared to like final fantasy seven, final fantasy eight, I've put in so many hours into those games. I think, I think Chrono Trigger is a shorter game.
00:10:26
Speaker
Oh, okay. Then you'll, then you'll expect. Maybe like 30 hours instead of 90 hours. Correct. Yes. Correct. I, I, I'm, yeah, I, I really like it. I liked the frog night scene.
00:10:38
Speaker
In the past. hug I liked the... I ah kind of like the robot knight in the future. Or the robot man. Yeah. Robo? I don't know. I named them all absurd things. You renamed them?
00:10:53
Speaker
I rename everybody.
00:10:57
Speaker
Everybody's like... This upsets me so much. Everybody's like nuts and butt and anus. Deez nuts.
00:11:09
Speaker
That's like, i it's just, i I revert to a little child when I play a game where they let you name the characters. oh So even in Zelda, ah my Zelda character's name is Anus Boy.
00:11:24
Speaker
hey Why do you do this? It's just, it never, so it's so juvenile, but it never stops being funny when somebody says, hey, anus boy over here.
00:11:36
Speaker
I just can't do it. i can't, I've never done it. I've never renamed my RPG characters because it like it feels like I'm doing something wrong. I'll say this, sometimes in games with like Final Fantasy VI, right?
00:11:49
Speaker
Mm-hmm. There's a lot of people who will reference that game culturally, and I don't really know what they're talking about because they're saying um the names of the actual characters yeah rather than Ballsack and... And Anus Boy. And Mud Fat and like like whatever bullshit. ah just like whatever Whatever absurd yeah yucky word that pops into my head just goes in.
00:12:20
Speaker
Okay, well, the robot's name is Robo. Okay. And Frog Knight's name is Frog. so The robot's name is, I think, just nuts. I think I wasn't thinking. i think i I was sick when I was playing that, so they didn't get really... These ones didn't get... These names were even less clever than usual.
00:12:41
Speaker
but Less clever than Anus Boy? Wow. I think a Anus Boy is pretty funny. Ugh. But like nuts is just first thought, you know, first first thought, worst thought, but I still did it.
Jessica Fletcher Action Figure
00:12:54
Speaker
You know, you could just like save time and just press enter and keep their name. Who? with like i I'm so short on time. i don't have the time to type out a little five character name.
00:13:10
Speaker
um so, I'm too busy for this. Well, excuse me. I'm busy to write nuts on my...
00:13:21
Speaker
Well, anyway, I'm really glad you're you're playing it it. It really is one of my favorite games of all time, as is a lot of people, I think, ah because of all the reasons you're saying. It's very well-paced.
00:13:34
Speaker
Yes. um It's less infuriating. It's not turn-based, so it's less because it's combat-based. um Right. So it's less infuriating. It's real-time combat. you Is that what you mean?
00:13:46
Speaker
Yeah. it's You can make it turn-based. You can make the other characters. You can make it so the enemies have to wait for you to make your move um so that it becomes a turn-based game. But I left it on real-time.
00:14:01
Speaker
Yeah, I left. leave it. It's more interesting. And yeah I am really bad at timing the critical hits. Okay. Because it is it is a game where when you press attack, if you hit A again at the exact right moment, yeah they do a critical hit.
00:14:16
Speaker
So you can do a – like, technically, you can do a critical hit every hit. Yeah. Yeah. I got pretty good with that in FF8, like with a the main character Squall has a gun blade, which we're not going to talk about the logistics of that.
00:14:32
Speaker
But yeah, if you press a button when he's striking, you get that extra boost. And I got pretty okay at it. got good at my gun blade.
00:14:44
Speaker
The third game i I was playing a little bit on my ah on my retroid pocket was X-Men Legends. But it's you know, it's kind of boring. Like I'm playing it because it's X-Men, but it's kind of boring.
00:14:55
Speaker
It's it falls behind any other game that I've been playing. Sure. but I feel like when you love a franchise, you're going to play everything. i mean, the Murder, She Wrote hidden object games aren't like fantastic.
00:15:09
Speaker
But am I going to play them? Yeah. Yeah.
00:15:13
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Hey, guess what? I'm not going to play like those X-Men fighting games or whatever. But. There's X-Men fighting games? Yeah.
00:15:24
Speaker
Oh. Let's not talk about them. What? What's up? What what have you what have you been doing? Well, speaking of X-Men's, sort of. Uh-oh. Because there's a lot of X-Men's action figures. I bought i bought myself an action figure.
00:15:39
Speaker
Can you guess, which it's not an X-Men, can you guess in three guesses which action figure Pushing Up Roses has bought? The crow. Nope, I already own it.
00:15:51
Speaker
You didn't see that at my house? I mean, it probably there's a lot of stuff at your house. I probably saw it and forgot it. um Okay. what But that's a very good that's a very good guess, but I do already own it.
00:16:02
Speaker
What would Pushing Up Roses purchase?
00:16:08
Speaker
There's not a Grim Fandango action figure, I don't think. There is not, unfortunately. but yeah There are Sam and Max action figures. Nope, not those. that's guess number two.
00:16:19
Speaker
Okay. Guess number three. And just so you know, they're more in line with what we saw at Quake Collectibles. You know, they're not little short statues. They're like, it's meant to be an action figure. Yeah. For anybody who doesn't know, Quake Collectibles, we talked about it on a previous episode, it's like it's like a It's a collectible store in Chicago that has, it's just packed with wall piles and piles. And literally, I mean, in some places, piles piles of action figures. The piles are making up the pathways. yeah
00:16:56
Speaker
Yeah. Mm-hmm. and And some statuettes and a few ends and some boxes of comics. It was a really cool place. Okay. So in line with that, what would Pushing Up Roses buy? She already owns the crow. It's not Sam and Max. So i am going to guess Johnny the Homicidal Maniac.
00:17:17
Speaker
I really thought you were going to get it. No, not all. But you did not, even though as a goth, it is mandatory for me to like Johnny the Homicidal Maniac. No, um a couple years ago, or maybe like a year ago, I pre-ordered a Jessica Fletcher like Murder, She Wrote action figure.
00:17:35
Speaker
Oh my god, I didn't even know. and it's on its way. god.
00:17:43
Speaker
I didn't even know that was... It's a thing. A thing that existed. Okay. Well, are you going to play with it? Yes.
Old Skies Game Introduction
00:17:52
Speaker
you going sit on the floor and like have her solve mysteries around your house?
00:17:56
Speaker
Dude, I can do like stop motion, like little stop motion skits for my videos of J.B. Fletcher like reenacting something. I love it. know. I can't wait to see those. I'm so i'm so excited. ah Okay. Anyway, that had nothing to do with X-Men. I'm sorry.
00:18:14
Speaker
What are we talking about today, Matt? So today we are talking about a video game that we have mentioned before and is a point and click game by Wadget i that came out just this year from former guest of the show, Dave Gilbert.
00:18:35
Speaker
It's Old Skies. Yeah. Oh, man. I just love Wadged um They really know how to make an adventure game. And yeah, we are going to be dedicating this episode ah to that game.
00:18:49
Speaker
So why don't we throw on Shrinky Duckarino?
00:18:55
Speaker
yeah and we will ah And we'll be back to talk Old Skies.
00:19:19
Speaker
Hey
00:19:26
Speaker
everyone, welcome back to Save Your Game. I'm your host, Pushing Up Roses, but not just me. I have another host, Matt Aukamp. Matt, how was your break? Good. I'm worried.
00:19:38
Speaker
Okay. What if we get all sorts of emails that are like, hey, I prefer Matt's mellow voice.
00:19:48
Speaker
there's I can't... Can't deal with that, huh? I can't be that. i can't I can't be this way all the time. Oh, no. i really you He really can't. Oh, I've got to go back to my excited half-shouting-all-the-time voice in in the very next day. I mean, I'll go back to it in...
00:20:07
Speaker
a day when my voice in my throat feels better there's i think we all appreciate a excitable sweet summer child mad on camp and i i will say this because we we've met in person we know each other in person you are even more excitable in person i don't even know how it's possible
00:20:29
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know and don't know either. well yeah i think I think I'm more mellow in person. I think I'm more performative online and more mellow face-to-face. I don't know how you feel. I'm a bit much.
00:20:43
Speaker
i I didn't notice... I didn't notice a huge difference, to be honest. Oh, great. guys if if you like if you hate this voice, don't worry. It'll be gone next episode. If you like this voice, don't get used to it.
00:21:00
Speaker
Oh, no.
00:21:03
Speaker
but I do like the mellow voice. It's kind of like, I don't know. i feel like i'm I'm in some kind of cozy, like, I feel like somebody is greeting me into a cozy house. Like, hi.
00:21:14
Speaker
Thank you for you so much for being here with us. Right. i think you feel Like it. would put I feel like if I was this way all the time, though, we just we'd put people to sleep.
00:21:31
Speaker
Did you just fall asleep? yeah Sorry, I was having a stroke for a second. You nodded off? Yeah, I just nodded off for a second. Sorry, were you saying something? So, Roses.
00:21:45
Speaker
Yes. How did you feel? High-level thoughts about Old Skies by Wadget Eye Games. Right. So I just giving an overall statement.
00:22:00
Speaker
Sure. I really like it. It's so good. It's so good. It's very well written. The voice acting is fantastic, especially the lead characters um and especially the character that you play for the majority of the game, which is great because you're spending the most time with that character.
00:22:19
Speaker
It has really interesting premises. And I will say that this is about time travel. And i struggle with the concept of time travel. I always have, even though I'm a big, you know, i like comic book fantasy. i like adventure game, like high fantasy. i like low fantasy.
00:22:42
Speaker
um But for, and and like extreme murder mystery, but sometimes I can't suspend my disbelief enough when it comes to time travel.
ChronoZen Agency & Time Travel
00:22:51
Speaker
And I felt myself nitpicking a lot. And that's not really, would say that's not really the game's fault or the writing's fault. I think they did the best they could in terms of trying to explain how time travel might work in this world.
00:23:05
Speaker
I just still nitpicked it. I just still did you know? Yeah, I'll be interested to hear some of that stuff because I think that i think they did really, really well. like I think the idea of people who are... So one of the concepts in this game is the idea that they have the technology to chrono lock certain people and certain things.
00:23:30
Speaker
So as you... you You know, there's this there's this idea, ah like the multiverse idea, right? Where every decision we make spawns two universes, one where we made that decision and one where we didn't. And then that spawns universes that lead to that, like, at the next decision.
00:23:54
Speaker
So yeah there is an infinitely branching number of universes. What this game supposes is that there is, that that might be true or it may not,
00:24:05
Speaker
But you are on one path. And if something changes, your entire timeline changes. Right. So if you go back in time and kill your grandfather, you were never born.
00:24:19
Speaker
Right. But they have these characters that are chrono locked. That work for a company called ChronoZen, which we'll get i we'll get into, and I'm not going to describe the whole thing here. I just yeah want to talk about premise.
00:24:35
Speaker
um And all employees of ChronoZen are ChronoLocked. meaning as everything around them changes, they stay the same. So it's even true that the paths that led them to become employees of Chronozen have changed, and now there are two versions of themselves in that world.
00:24:57
Speaker
But those versions, yeah this is where I get confused. hu So yeah there's only two versions of themselves, one that's chronologed and one that is in and another universe.
00:25:09
Speaker
Yeah. Which who may exist or may not like there was a point in time where Fia, her double, I guess I think that's what she calls it in this timeline doesn't exist anymore.
00:25:20
Speaker
Something, yeah some ah event caused by time travel
00:25:27
Speaker
played out, you know, like a butterfly flapping its wings, causing a storm in a different continent. Yeah. and
00:25:35
Speaker
and made it so that Fia never existed. I guess I find that- But chrono-locked Thea is obviously still there. so Yeah.
00:25:46
Speaker
I understand the chrono-locked character. What I don't understand in terms of time travel anything is why is her double changing constantly and who is changing it? Is it because of her time travel or is it because of other time travelers that are constantly causing ripples of the universe?
00:26:06
Speaker
Yeah, I think it is, you know, butterfly flapping its wings sort of thing. So it could be anything, right? ah Chrono Zen, I think now it's maybe it's time we get into the premise here um so that we can I can
00:26:19
Speaker
do month tell you what my interpretation of that the answer to that question is.
00:26:26
Speaker
ah In this world, time travel was invented and it was used chaotically like any other technology. You know, you can draw parallels with um I think the most recent parallel is AI and a more...
00:26:47
Speaker
a slightly older parallel is like the internet, right? People invent a new technology, everybody goes absolutely nuts with it, and then it needs to be regulated.
00:26:59
Speaker
So in this instance, that happened with time travel. People went back, they fucked a lot of stuff up, and then a sort of like a... ah They don't... I don't know if they name it.
00:27:12
Speaker
They might. I didn't record it, but some sort of time variance authority if if you will that's a marvel that's a marvel concept um but some sort of time variance authority has has put you know uh laws and restrictions on what you can do and they've ranked people and things and events with low medium and high levels of timeline importance
00:27:43
Speaker
I do like that. I do like the concept of, hey, if this person didn't exist, this is a high priority person. We might not have this invention in the future.
00:27:55
Speaker
Or if they're like a kind of a lower level, maybe they're like a criminal or something. Yeah. Then it doesn't cause those ripples. I like that concept a lot. Right. Like this person, if this person dies, it'll cause a paradox or it will complete, it will change things about our world so deeply that we won't recognize it.
00:28:13
Speaker
um but So like if Albert Einstein died or George Washington died or, um you know, if World War II never happened in this game, they really directly address if what if 9-11 never happened.
00:28:27
Speaker
Yeah. um And the idea that they they can't save anybody who died in the World Trade Center attacks. so Right.
00:28:37
Speaker
um there There is a little bit of of um an idea of some things are meant to be, no matter how many times you change them, that the outcome is going to be the same. Right, right. Almost this idea of like, well, that's just the fate of it, and we shouldn't try to play God with every single thing, you know? Right. Right.
00:28:58
Speaker
So things are ranked medium, high, medium, and low. And if it's ranked low, you can pay a certain amount of money to these companies like ChronoZen to have an experienced time traveler bring you back in time, or do they do it themselves if it's too dangerous for you to go yeah and change something or just visit somewhere.
00:29:27
Speaker
Yeah. if if If I may, can I read what ah day ah Dave Gilbert said about this, how he describes it? yeah So he describes this as time travel is real and history is up for grabs.
00:29:40
Speaker
In this point and click, you play Fia Quinn, a time agent for the Kronozen agency. Your job is to keep close watch on seven travelers who have the desire and the bank accounts to sightsee in the past.
00:29:51
Speaker
Some are simply curious. Others have unfinished business to resolve. They've all put down a lot of money for the trip. So it's vital you keep them happy while ensuring they follow the rules. But what could go wrong? It's only time travel after all.
00:30:04
Speaker
And I think that's a really so succinct way to put it. You are a time traveler working for a company that if you have enough money, you can go back in the past and either do something kind of marginal or you could just, you know, check it out.
00:30:20
Speaker
Right. So I think on that, on that front,
00:30:27
Speaker
Because you are chrono locked, you are probably a low priority person because they already have you.
Timeline Shifts & Memory
00:30:36
Speaker
yeah Everything you've done is set in stone and your existence is set in stone and as your chrono locked self.
00:30:44
Speaker
But that doesn't mean they're going to protect a version of you. So one thing that happens in this game, ah which we'll be talking about a lot, I'm sure,
00:30:56
Speaker
is that things shift. And because Kronos and employees are time-locked, they can watch it shift. They'll just be sitting in a bar And this this is the first thing that happens in the game. Fia's sitting in a bar where there's this really obnoxious voice actor playing the ah bartender.
00:31:14
Speaker
Wow. Wow. I'm just going to turn this recording right around. Rose ah roses plays the bartender Mix Mix, and it's and she's she does a really good job.
00:31:29
Speaker
Mix Mix. um um And she's sitting in a bar just chatting with a dude. and a purple wave comes across the bar and the dude just blinks out of existence.
00:31:41
Speaker
He might not exist or he might just never have ended up in that bar that day. Right? we don't know. this is, okay okay, this is where I'm going start to nitpick immediately. So because Fia and the other time agents, because they're chrono locked, they can see this happening in real time. Does that mean that if other people were in the bar, would they not, they wouldn't notice it then?
00:32:05
Speaker
Correct. For them, it never happened. There was never that guy was never there. But if there's that many, i don't know. of So I don't know how many time agents there are in this game. I don't know how many people are going back in time and trying to rewrite things. Seems about three or four part agency. And it seems like there's like maybe it it seems as if maybe there's like a dozen or two agencies around the world. It just feels like, OK, well, wouldn't that be happening all the time then?
00:32:32
Speaker
Wouldn't they be seeing shifts like all the time? Yes, and they they are, right? like Like every time you check the news in your room, it's different. That's true. Every time you check your social media profile, you're at the person that you were becomes a completely different person.
00:32:51
Speaker
confuses me. So it's basically like whatever led, again, whatever led Thea to become, to be chosen by Kronosen to be one of their agents somehow changed maybe it was her 11th grade teachers great great grandfather's farm um went bankrupt in 1850 yeah and then the grandfather moved to a different country so married a different person sofia was never born
00:33:24
Speaker
Or maybe fia maybe her Fia's parents did meet, but they met in a different city. So she ah had different cultural surroundings and just became a different person than she was in her own her original timeline.
00:33:41
Speaker
like That's the thing about this game that's so interesting. This is happening all the time. And what what the game is implying is that this is happening to me and you. constantly and we just don't know it but how would you not know it because the concept of of the past even exist if you wouldn't know it well because everything that happened again think about think about it like multiple timelines so everything you remember right now this is this is going to be tough to explain everything that
00:34:19
Speaker
you remember right now is true. If it changes tomorrow, then imagine it's just on a different timeline and now you are in a timeline where none of it happened and the thing that you remember tomorrow is what it has always happened. but where does that timeline exist?
00:34:36
Speaker
Well, so it's hard. they They don't go into that in this game. Yeah. um Which makes me upset. So I'm i'm the type of person who... I have a million questions and I want to deeply understand something. Right. Like deeply understand. I want to know how it works.
00:34:54
Speaker
ah When I was studying, you know, wheel throwing, I was asking, and they like it when you ask questions. Teachers do at least. i don't know how Dave would feel if I just bombarded him with questions. But, you know, I'd be like, okay, that step.
00:35:07
Speaker
What does that do? Why am I doing that step? right And once I know why I'm doing it, got it. I will repeat it over and over again. So I, you know, for games like this, not not just games, anything time travel related, I need to know why something's happening and how it works.
00:35:25
Speaker
ah So as a tangent, I almost went into computer programming and couldn't do it because I couldn't wrap my brain around abstract concepts. okay And I'm an abstract artist.
00:35:37
Speaker
There's something wrong with me. I don't know.
00:35:41
Speaker
But yeah, you're right. The game doesn't – that's where you suspend your disbelief. It doesn't explain every aspect of the timelines. I don't even think you have to suspend your disbelief. I think you just have to submit to not knowing because Fia herself doesn't know.
00:35:54
Speaker
Okay. You know, they don't – to Fia, that other timeline just never – I mean – It happened in her memory because she knows it.
00:36:09
Speaker
And they also make a point that even when you're chrono locked, the things that change do fade from your memory after a while too.
00:36:20
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, that's true. They did mention that. But so, you know, you remember, i will, you know, she'll remember talking to that guy in the bar for a couple of days and then she might forget.
00:36:31
Speaker
And it's interesting because in another timeline, you She gets a call from him. This is the only thing that I think maybe is a little bit of a inconsistency. um She gets a call from him and they're married.
00:36:45
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I remember that. But why wouldn't he have married the other Fia in that timeline? Why would he have married this one? yeah that Yeah, that is a little bit of a... Or maybe he did marry the other Fia and the call went to her somehow? I'm not sure.
00:37:03
Speaker
That was another thought I had. Maybe it's just like sometimes they get quantumly entangled. And if somebody's yeah trying to reach your alternate self, they reach you instead.
00:37:15
Speaker
yeah but But that's speculation. and you know Absolutely. Yeah. so that was the only thing That was the only moment in the game where I felt like that could have been an inconsistency in its logic. The rest of the logic I felt held up really, really well.
00:37:33
Speaker
There's just unknowns that ah aren't filled in. Like, again, do other timelines spawn other universes? Or is the theory here that there is one universe...
00:37:47
Speaker
And it can be changed in a way that things never happened on reality. Mm-hmm.
00:37:56
Speaker
Yeah, and that's that's where I fumble a little bit because I want to know. I don't like these unknowns. I want to know. You're presenting me with an amazing concept. It's just this amazing idea of time travel, and I want to know every thought about how you think it
Dave Gilbert's Game Settings
00:38:14
Speaker
works.
00:38:14
Speaker
And that's asking a lot. I get that. That brings me to a thought that I – which is like – I don't often think this when I get to the end of any piece of media, when I get to the end of a TV show or a movie or a game or whatever.
00:38:28
Speaker
But I got to the end of this and I was like, I kind of want a sequel. I kind of like this world. i do too. And I mean, Fia's story completely wraps up.
00:38:40
Speaker
Yes. So does the three main characters, Duffy, Fia, and Nazo. Yeah. Their stories completely wrap up. But so i don't need a I don't need another game with any of them.
00:38:53
Speaker
Yeah. But I kind would like another game in this universe with more, you know, yeah. Like what's what's going on in Kronozen London? What's going on in Kronozen Boston?
00:39:04
Speaker
You know, like, and I know Dave is particularly tied to New York, right? Yes, he is. I was going to say a lot, but do all of his games take place in New York?
00:39:16
Speaker
I don't know if all of them do, but I would say majority. Yeah, hold on. Let me let me pull up his resume for second. would love to see a Chicago-based one.
00:39:27
Speaker
think that'd be sick. Of course you would. How dare you? ah Blackwell takes place in New York. Yeah. ah The Shiva takes place in New York.
00:39:39
Speaker
I think Unavowed takes place in New York. Unavowed, Old Skies, Emerald City Confidential. Does that take place in New York? No, I think that takes place in a that's That's also the one I've never played.
00:39:51
Speaker
okay Yeah, I haven't either.
00:39:55
Speaker
But it makes sense. I mean, you write what you know and what you love. And the more you do that, the more the better quality it'll be, right? So when I play these games, I'm like, I trust that Dave knows what neighborhood he's talking about and what things look like, you know.
00:40:11
Speaker
Even though gave Dave now ah lives near me. So maybe his next game and will be based on southeastern Pennsylvania. Yeah, I don't think so. Maybe. Who knows? Or like, i mean, i mean you're the biggest city sort of by you, I guess, is Philadelphia.
Old Skies Gameplay & Themes
00:40:28
Speaker
Philadelphia, yeah.
00:40:29
Speaker
So maybe it'll be about Philly. Who knows? I have a feeling it'll be about New York again. I have feeling it'll be about Chicago. he And it's not because I'm going to message him about it.
00:40:41
Speaker
Definitely not. So, yeah, I would love to see... more of this world, which again, is not it's not a feeling I generally have.
00:40:52
Speaker
yeah Most of the time when I finish a work, I want to move on to a different work with different characters and a different setting. But I really liked this premise. I think this take on time travel is really interesting.
00:41:06
Speaker
um And I guess we should talk about the chapters because he approaches, he he handles many different aspects of it.
00:41:17
Speaker
Yes. Throughout this And I got to say, I love how this game is set up. um If you've never, I don't think you've specifically played Callahan's Crosstime Saloon, but it's very much in line with that kind of storytelling and that you kind of start your day. and In Callahan's, you would start your day at the bar, right? and Or the saloon, whatever.
00:41:40
Speaker
And then somebody would come to you with like a thing, a problem, an adventure, and then you would go do that adventure. Sure. And maybe they're all connected at the end.
00:41:50
Speaker
But um actually, one of those after one of those chapters is a time travel chapter where we go with a time agent ah named Josie to go back and fix, like, the invention of the chocolate bar. Okay.
00:42:06
Speaker
Or, like, save, not just fix the invention, but, like, save a rainforest that that that has all these, like, special chocolates, cacao buds. So, yeah um so the old skies is kind of like that in which you are a time agent.
00:42:21
Speaker
Each chapter, you're going to have a different client that you help and thus you're going to see a different story, but they are nicely woven together by the end.
00:42:33
Speaker
Yes. Like there are little connections you can make, you know, throughout. And and sometimes huge connections you can make. Some of those connections are really subtle. there's yeah I don't think we're going to spoil the ending. The ending has a big twist. i think that's I think we will have to spoil some of the stuff in chapters to talk about some of the more affecting and emotional moments of the game. Yeah.
00:42:54
Speaker
No, we don't have to spoil But I don't we'll big... twist at the end and i think but it but i'll point one thing out that i don't know if you were if you noticed duffy was asking people for books that were chrono locked i don't know if i clocked that or not or maybe i did or maybe i just didn't think much of it at the time yeah Yeah, me neither. until ah and Until I was showering today.
00:43:27
Speaker
wait! ah Yeah, I think... Okay, why don't we talk about the chapters? Because there's a there's one overall theme to this game.
00:43:41
Speaker
i Maybe we'll talk about overall themes at the end. Sure. there's There's one overall theme to this game, which is like time is more complicated than you think. but Yeah. Sorry. The past is more complicated than you think.
00:43:54
Speaker
Yeah. um But yeah. do you want to do you want to give like a a brief. Not no spoiler, but low spoiler summary of chapter one.
00:44:06
Speaker
Yeah, I'll try to keep it. I'll try to keep it low. Yeah. So I actually think the the first chapter is probably the shortest chapter because I think it's trying to get you used to what you're going to be doing.
00:44:19
Speaker
um It's got a little bit of a tutorial vibe to it, but um I like this chapter because we go back to the year 2024, which is start?
00:44:31
Speaker
and we start it's like twenty sixty two or twenty eighty four twenty eight even okay even more than i thought so yeah the current day is twenty eighty four we are taking a client back to twenty twenty four so present day essentially and ah we're taking our another client back to his college years and he particularly he's not giving us all the details of what he wants to go back. He says he wants to go back and have a meal at one of his favorite diners, which is the silver flare.
00:45:05
Speaker
um Right. But he actually has a more secret reason for going back. That has to do with rewriting history a little bit. And yes, we will have to spoil this.
00:45:15
Speaker
Yeah. He, he runs, he runs away. Yeah. He's a runner. There's another concept that, that, Introduces itself here that I think is very cool. And it's the idea of sub vocalization. Right.
00:45:30
Speaker
ah The characters. When they are in the past. Because they can't talk about what's happening. Without. You know. Making others.
00:45:40
Speaker
Yeah. yeah yeah or Or tipping other people off to things that they shouldn't know. ah they They communicate. Not through telepathy. Which.
00:45:52
Speaker
is a concept that's very important to the X-Men, but also a concept that regardless of that, I kind of hate. Because like talking to people through telepathy, don't you...
00:46:05
Speaker
that's what That's a thing that kind of doesn't make sense. No, it does it does not. I was going to bring that up. You don't have a ah you don't have a ah direct dream right of like of thought in telepathy like you couldn't If you were to read my thoughts, it wouldn't just be a sentence that you could understand. it would be a collage of images. And even if I was trying to think a specific sentence, other thoughts would pop in and they'd just be they'd just be random shit. i'd be absolutely
00:46:39
Speaker
I'd be like, hey, roses, i my laundry's almost done. Half, two, bunnies. What? Hold on. And then I'd have to restart, right? Like, Yeah. ah I mean, they do they do say that you it is something you have to learn and like we'll get good at. so this is what This is what I think is interesting. He doesn't use telepathy in his game.
00:47:01
Speaker
he use They use sub-vocalization, which is a thing that happens in our reality. It's a real thing um when you are reading oftentimes you will be silently articulating the words in your mind. You'll be thinking about, and maybe even your muscles will be moving slightly.
00:47:24
Speaker
Yeah. um but you're Basically your vocal cords will be shaping the words as if you're speaking, though your mouth and your tongue and your lungs are not doing the things necessary to speak.
00:47:38
Speaker
So in this game, you have You have to do that. your Your characters all do that consciously. Right.
00:47:49
Speaker
So like you're thinking basically you're
00:47:54
Speaker
um at all times preparing to speak these words without letting them escape your mouth.
00:48:03
Speaker
I think that's really clever and that's a really good good that's a really smart fix to the telepathy problem. right Because that would, if you had something that was capable of reading your vocal cords and turning them into turning and into speech, that would work.
00:48:25
Speaker
I still think it's tough to believe But they do a good job making it believable, at least in this universe. You know what I mean? Right. i think Like you don't always have to have a realistic idea for a story. It just needs to be believable in the story that you're writing.
00:48:42
Speaker
And I think they do a good job of that. to me, I think this is as believable as as other things that exist, like a um cybernetic arm, right? Like, you can, we have the technology to get, for you to get a robot arm, but and when you think, when you try to close your fist, it closes its fist.
00:49:04
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. So I don't, I don't think it's actually out of the realm of possibility to get something that does that on your vocal cords. Yeah, No, it is a good idea for sure.
00:49:17
Speaker
Anyway, I thought that was cool. and was So sorry. That's okay. We got it. Yeah, no, it's a good thing to explain because it's it's ah a big part of ah this universe's how it works, you know, how the – how Kronozen works.
00:49:30
Speaker
How did you feel about this first chapter? I actually thought this was a great opener as a first chapter. It was immediately hard hitting.
00:49:41
Speaker
um You're basically, your client ah basically wants to go back to college in hopes of saving his girlfriend from a fatal accident in a science lab. He doesn't tell us this.
00:49:57
Speaker
i He plans to, makeak it because if he does this, that's kind of a high priority change. yeah So you need to be approved. And they, they actually joke about this in the game. It's like, who's vetting these people, you know, like why are these clients not getting vetted?
00:50:12
Speaker
um And so, you know, he doesn't tell us right away. He makes a run for it, you know, while after he's done eating, you know, at the silver flare and then, then just try, I don't know what he was, i don't know what his plan was there, but, you know, trying to save his girlfriend from this accident.
00:50:29
Speaker
It explains a lot of concepts really well, like the high, medium, and low priority. Yeah. Because in in this scenario, and I don't think all of the priority levels are related to time travel, but in this scenario, it is that if he stops this explosion, like he's he's petitioned to save his girlfriend before.
00:50:53
Speaker
But he is high priority. His girlfriend from college was not. And his petition was turned down because if he saves his low priority girlfriend, it might change his high priority life and time travel might never be invented it could cause a paradox.
00:51:14
Speaker
Yeah. So very interesting. There's a choice you make at the end of this chapter where he has desynced himself time-wise, in a way he didn't fully understand.
00:51:30
Speaker
He knew he was breaking the law. He knew he'd get arrested. But he didn't understand that by taking off his, like, time sink bracelet that it would be impossible for him to come back. Right.
00:51:43
Speaker
So at the end, you can... You have to kill him, right? Yeah, yeah. Vaporize him out of existence, yeah. And he thinks he saved his ex.
00:51:54
Speaker
Right. You know he didn't. Yeah. So you can tell him that yeah ah there's another thing in this game.
00:52:08
Speaker
Fia's not good at lying. So it gives you a bunch of options. But if you lie, he kind of knows you're lying. And then it gives you another chance, to be honest. um So your two options are you can tell her tell him failed.
00:52:22
Speaker
he failed Or you can kill him before you answer. Yeah. What did you do? I told him the truth. Whoa. Okay. How did that pan out? He was pretty angry. Wow.
00:52:37
Speaker
But like in my brain, I'm like, this guy's going to die in two seconds. It's not like he's going to remember it.
00:52:47
Speaker
Well, it's true. My interpretation was this guy's going to die in two seconds. So i would rather he goes out feeling happy than sad.
00:52:58
Speaker
Not me. He broke the rules. He could have caused horrible things to happen had we not intervened. He doesn't deserve. He doesn't deserve that. He deserves the truth.
00:53:11
Speaker
Yeah, that's right. I'm tough. Whoa. Yeah. Whoa. Yeah, no, i should I shot him before answered. Okay. That's fair. So then ah I think let's keep going through the chapters because there's some really interesting – because, like, that one is interesting because it just – it talks about how, you know – There are things you wish were different, but if you – in your life, right? There are things in your past you wish were different.
00:53:45
Speaker
Yeah. But if you changed them, you would be a different person. Yeah. Or be – yeah, there'd be something – even depending on what you've done in life, what kind of accomplishments had you done, you could cause – yeah, could just be a disaster.
00:54:01
Speaker
We think about like the suffering that we've been through as like... some Sometimes we think of like, i would do anything not to feel that. But if you... In some... I mean, anything you change about your your life...
00:54:23
Speaker
Yeah. right like if you didn't get bullied in school you wouldn't be the you you are now if you're you know if you didn't ah go through whatever trauma you went through in life you wouldn't be the you you are now and i think that is an interesting interesting way to open the game yeah It's also just an interesting thought because that could either be good or bad.
Chapter 2: Boxer Family Dynamics
00:54:46
Speaker
you know Had I not gone through the trauma of my my dad's death, for example, when I was a teenager, yeah I don't know that maybe that would have had a better consequence for me. Maybe I wouldn't have had an eating disorder. Maybe you know x Y, and Z. ah Maybe I would be a better person.
00:55:05
Speaker
Or maybe I would be a worse person. Maybe I'm stronger because of it. I yeah i think that's an interesting thing to to ponder. Yeah, we wouldn't know. yeah it's It's interesting to think about, but it's also it's impossible to come to conclusions about. so
00:55:22
Speaker
Yeah, again, the game is lighthearted. but it's It's got a good sense of humor about it. But it deviates into these really heavy topics if you stop to think about them.
00:55:37
Speaker
Yes. um So what happens in the next chapter? I love the next chapter. think the next chapter is one of my favorites in terms of atmosphere.
00:55:48
Speaker
ah So in the next chapter, we have a client who wants to ask a boxer a question. That's her reasoning. I think and I think she stands by that. Yeah, she's she's being honest. Yeah, I think she's being honest. And that's her true reasoning. She wants to ask why a boxer from like the why retired.
00:56:10
Speaker
why he retired um what in like what happened in this particular time of his life. And so we go back to the, i think it's the eighteen ninety s and you know we're all dressed up in our cute little dresses, and um everyone has like a handlebar mustache. and it's I love the atmosphere of this of this setting. Settings are huge to me in adventure games. I can get swept away the setting is right.
00:56:39
Speaker
um And this is one of those settings that I'm just like, oh yeah, I am digging this a lot. So we kind of this this gets way more complex, by the way, than the first chapter, because we are dealing with we are dealing with a boxer.
00:56:56
Speaker
who is being sabotaged, sabotaged essentially by other people. One of those people might be his family members. One of those people might be another boxer, you know, who is told to take a fall. um And it doesn't become about the question anymore, you know, that our client has.
00:57:15
Speaker
um It now turns kind of into this journey of trying to trying to fix a situation because murders start to happen. ah Child death might happen. Like it's it's really complex.
00:57:29
Speaker
And it also introduces a new mechanic. It's recurring, but it's not in every chapter, but it introduces a mechanic where you have a little time tunnel. um Your coordinator like hooks you up with a ah small time tunnel that allows you to go back like the like the previous morning.
00:57:49
Speaker
Or like six, or maybe not even that soon, like six months ago or something like that. It's a very small tunnel that you can go. So it's kind of like Fran Bow. When you take a pill, you get like an alternate version of the setting you're in.
00:58:02
Speaker
If you use the time tunnel in this setting, you'll go back to an earlier state. It's the same setting, just earlier. And so you're kind of playing with people's minds and trying to influence people. And I really, there's a lot of dark parts here.
00:58:18
Speaker
In this chapter. And what did you think. Here's a question. What did you think about the rewind mechanic? Because that happens a lot in this one. Yeah. So when you get killed.
00:58:31
Speaker
If you die in in this game. They can rewind you. Not very far. Yeah. Not very far. couple minutes. So that you can retry a scenario.
00:58:45
Speaker
I died so many times. I did too. I could not like the, the solutions were tough. They are tough. And that's, that's definitely a critique I have is I was, I found myself rewinding a lot and not just on accident either there. This is part of the mechanic is you might have to rewind yeah whether you like it or not. And you might have to do it several times to get because you need You need information that you can use.
00:59:15
Speaker
Correct. Yeah. um I actually, I do like the mechanic. I feel like maybe it was overused towards the end. du and and you, and you'll, you probably know what I'm referring to, right?
00:59:26
Speaker
Yes. Well, towards the, yeah. Cause towards the end, you are given a specific... There's basically a timer. And you have to do a series of... You have to figure out see the things that you need to do and then do that series of things within the timer. And you can't possibly do it in your first countdown. Right. You can't.
00:59:48
Speaker
It's like trial by but trial by fire. Yeah. yeah um I think I did it about after like four or five. But it was still... Yeah, i I could see that being very frustrating, especially because I'm sure there are people who it took them 10 or 20.
01:00:05
Speaker
um Absolutely. Which it did for me in this first chapter. And ah what I think was frustrating ah about it was that the solutions
01:00:17
Speaker
didn't necessarily follow from... You wouldn't necessarily assume the solution from the chain of events. Mm-hmm.
01:00:29
Speaker
right like There's a time where you have to basically stay silent while an argument is happening and let it play out for a second. And if if you haven't done that, you might have tried 17 conversation trees before you try stay silent and then stay silent again. That's true.
01:00:50
Speaker
Because you don't know what anybody's going to do. So since there's three... three to four dialogue options at each step along this way, you might... i mean i mean, what? That's...
01:01:09
Speaker
Dozens of combinations yeah that you have to try if you haven't picked... Because, again, it's not obvious. You could be the smartest person in the world and it wouldn't be obvious to you.
01:01:20
Speaker
Yeah. Which is... Which... dialogue options will lead to the actions that need to happen in order for you to... So, like, again, in this scenario, you're trying to get a guy to slip on a pool ball.
01:01:38
Speaker
Mm-hmm. I screwed that up so many times. So many times. By doing it, you have to let the argument play out and then encourage somebody to
01:01:53
Speaker
To like, what? Taunt him. It's like bluff. Yeah. Taunt him. Yeah. And then he takes a step forward. Yeah. But that's on the third dialogue option. Yeah.
01:02:04
Speaker
So I'm like, how would I possibly? Because, yeah okay. There's a spot on the floor where you can put the pool ball. And that's the spot where he's supposed to stand.
01:02:16
Speaker
Yeah. Or you know that he stands. And the pool ball rolls off of that spot. So I just kept rewinding and he would come in and I'd be like, I don't know how to get the pool ball to stay where it is. Right. And that's not what you have to do.
01:02:32
Speaker
Exactly. You have to get him to step forward. But I never saw him step forward in any of the dialogues. Right. So I had no idea. that Yeah. So it was, again, it does it just doesn't follow logically that this step would lead to this outcome.
01:02:50
Speaker
You just have to try everything. And if you don't get lucky, you might be trying 40 different combinations. Yeah, the the dialogue tree puzzles are certainly deduction based, like um basically process of elimination trial by fire. And that can be very frustrating. And I did find it frustrating.
01:03:12
Speaker
I don't dislike the mechanic. I just wish I had a sense of I knew what I was doing ah little bit more because it felt like it just felt so chaotic, dude. I'm like, oh, my God, I died again.
01:03:25
Speaker
Yeah. yeah What am I doing wrong here? Right. Yeah. You can't you say they're deduction based, but i I want to say you can't deduce it based on the information you have at the beginning.
01:03:36
Speaker
You have to see everything. Yes. You have to see. You deduce it by what you've already used, which, again, is just more process of elimination, which is annoying. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Because there's a lot of options. Yeah.
01:03:48
Speaker
Yeah. I wish that there were some logical thread. you could follow that it would be like, oh yeah, if I, if I have her say this, that might lead him to do this. It yeah it just, it's just, it feels random, but you're right.
01:04:05
Speaker
You're right. Anyway. um Yeah. I think the, it turns out like the, the person that she was admiring is not who she thought she, what he was, but yeah that guy's friend,
01:04:23
Speaker
but ah what changed that guy was that his father wasn't who he thought he was. i like her His uncle wasn't who he thought he was. Like, yes, there's this series of everybody is different than you think they were. And that's like where this theme of the past is more complicated than you think starts to come in.
01:04:42
Speaker
Yeah. And that that just these these themes of like the past might be wrong. It might be documented wrong. Even um we don't know because we weren't there, you know? I mean, and in this instance,
01:04:57
Speaker
ah you could you could make the argument that the past was documented correctly, yeah but missing so much context, it would lead you to believe something that something about it that's not true.
Chapter 3: Painting's Authenticity
01:05:14
Speaker
um Which is, again, why it's like, oh, a it probably everything history, and I think about this a lot as I, you know, ah as an anthropology major, right? Like that when we draw conclusions about stuff, it is almost certainly when we draw conclusions about history is almost certainly more complicated than we think it is.
01:05:38
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. um And I think that was, you can also, ah is this the chapter where you can change somebody's name? No, it's the next chapter.
01:05:51
Speaker
I can't. Yes, you can. Yep, you can in the next chapter. You can change someone's name. Yeah. ah Do you have any other more observations about this chapter? Do you want to move on? No, we can move on.
01:06:03
Speaker
All right. I'm going to have you, if you don't mind, explain the next chapter also. Yeah. You're taking on the heavy lifting for my throat. It's all So in this chapter, our client is a ah art curator.
01:06:17
Speaker
ah She works for um a fine arts museum. And when we go to meet her, she has all these paintings in her museum. ah The museum will become a point of interest ah for a very particular reason, by the way.
01:06:32
Speaker
And like, I like the client. I like what she wants to do She like, she loves this artist named Pie Sycamore. And I, for I kind of forgot, maybe you can like direct me a little bit. I forgot what her exact want was, but it, it to me, it seemed like she just wanted to find other Pie Sycamore paintings that have been lost to time.
01:06:55
Speaker
She had a painting yeah that she suspected was by Pye Sycamore. Oh, that's right. And it wasn't signed. It wasn't signed. So she needed to authenticate it. That's right.
01:07:06
Speaker
That's right. That is correct. um So we go into the past. We go into the roaring 20s for this one. Always a fun time. um And yeah, this chapter I think is the most comical of the chapters because we are we have to deal with a very um gratuitous couple.
01:07:28
Speaker
who are just constantly getting drunk and like stealing cop cars. And we, we have to talk to them because they're like related to the case. And they just crack me up, to be honest. um Terrible people, but they crack me up.
01:07:42
Speaker
um Unfortunately, we found out really quickly um the the that our client can't go with us. She keeps feeling sick. And we don't know why.
01:07:53
Speaker
And that's because turns out she's related to somebody in this case, which makes it very interesting. so This is where we learn about precursor syndrome.
01:08:04
Speaker
Yeah. So that when you'rela when you're close to something, or when you're particularly when you're related to someone in the past, you get this nauseous feeling and you just get completely ill.
01:08:17
Speaker
um So our client sits that out and we do, we basically figure out who they're related to, if the painting is a pie sycamore.
01:08:28
Speaker
um And that starts to weave together ah this string of characters who are connected now. Like for some reason, we keep finding these little connections in this game. Should I do a quick spoil?
01:08:43
Speaker
quick spoil? ah Yeah, sure. it's just an important It's just so important. It's just an part an important part where they do weave things together. So in the gallery where there are these pie sycamore paintings, there is a specific painting of an angelic figure ah saving somebody from yeah a certain death.
01:09:05
Speaker
And we learn that... we are meant to be that angelic figure and that we had actually met the artist in the past in the boxer in the boxer chapter and we saved her from certain death. And that caused a ripple where this person became an artist and she painted us.
01:09:25
Speaker
She painted that very instance. Right. So the person who saved...
01:09:33
Speaker
Yeah. Okay. Yes. So Pye Sycamore ended up being... the girl that we saved in chapter two, the boxer chapter, then further spoiler, turns out, like you were saying, the client who hired us is related to, oh boy.
01:09:55
Speaker
but she's related to the artist. This gets complicated. She's related to the artist, which means she's also related to the boxer. which Yeah, that would get complicated. That means she's also related to the like leader of a the the biggest crime gang in New York. Correct, yeah. yeah So she's related to every important person in history.
01:10:17
Speaker
No, it's a little confusing at times. uh but think that's what you don't need to get every detail right i think if you know that obviously there is connections being woven throughout this story i think that's that's good enough uh so don't like bash your head in if you're not clocking every single detail yeah at first um because it is a lot i mean i only just now put together that that means that uh that what, what's, what's her name too? im
01:10:50
Speaker
Imani. where Yeah. That Imani is related to the crime Lord yeah New York and the, the most famous boxer of all time. Like that's so funny. Yeah. It's insane.
01:11:03
Speaker
um But it's like a distant relation, but it is. Yeah. It is there. So um I, I thought this, this chapter was really fun. Cause again, it's also leaning into this idea of like, you know,
01:11:16
Speaker
Your past, your family history is more complicated than you realize. Yeah. But it also is just really fun romp. You're just chasing around this drunk couple who's doing things like stealing cop cars and holding up bars and holding them holding up a bar with a Tommy gun so that they can sing karaoke. Yeah.
01:11:35
Speaker
Yeah, it's it's funny the way it's described, too. It's like there seems to be a hostage situation going on here.
01:11:43
Speaker
I really did like that chapter. And I know the 20s are used a lot, particularly in adventure games, because it's such a fun setting to to explore and decorate.
01:11:54
Speaker
And it's easy to get ah weary of that setting. But I thought this was really fun. I thought everything looked amazing and ah the characters were very funny. Absolutely. There is, however,
01:12:10
Speaker
a puzzle in this chapter that I i actually absolutely hated. Sure. Which one? The puzzle where you have to open the safe. Okay.
01:12:21
Speaker
So it involves rewinding. One character knows the first, well based on, one character knows the entire combination of the safe. One character knows the first digit. Right.
01:12:33
Speaker
Right. of the safe combination so you can watch one of them open the safe and then write down like okay i know that now i know the first digit because i she left it in after whatever um and then another situation where after the guy fully opens it you can look at the safe and know what the last digit is but you don't know what the middle digit is
01:13:01
Speaker
So you have to intuit that the middle digit, okay, even though the first digit is not an important date and the last or important number or whatever, the last digit is not an important number. You have to know that just the middle digit is an important date in somebody's life.
01:13:22
Speaker
Right. Which is... Crazy. Why would you just like randomly pick one number, then pick the last two digits of ah the most important event in my life.
01:13:34
Speaker
Yeah. And then another random number. You wouldn't do that. Like, it doesn't make any sense. It would have made more sense if all three digits added up or like not added up, but all three digits put together were the full date of that moment.
01:13:51
Speaker
Yeah. But they're not. It's just two random numbers. And then the middle one happens to be a really crucially important number. Yeah. I definitely struggled ah with that with that puzzle. I think I did look up a walkthrough get through it. Yeah.
01:14:10
Speaker
Me too. And i to the point where i had I was trying to make connections from the other numbers to different things in that person's life to make this puzzle make sense.
01:14:23
Speaker
Yeah. and Dave Gilbert was in the comments of his steam page, his steam discussion. He's saying, oh, I guess. Oh, I didn't even notice that was a connection. i should have made those random.
01:14:37
Speaker
Then that is even more infuriating because, again, why would you go? It's like. so I wouldn't say, okay, I have to do a safe combination. I'll pick, I don't know, seven.
01:14:51
Speaker
and then And then the date of my child's birth. And then, oh the little little little I don't know, 45. You wouldn't do that. No person on earth would ever do that.
01:15:04
Speaker
yeah You would either use three important numbers or three random numbers. And there's no indication anywhere. Nobody hints in dialogue or in text.
01:15:16
Speaker
That, oh, the middle number of this safe combination is an important date. Nobody does. It's hard. It made me so mad. There's a lot of number puzzles in this game.
01:15:27
Speaker
That was the only... Well, almost all the puzzles in this game are about opening doors. But there... um but there That is the, that's the only puzzle in this game that made me legitimately mad. to Everything else, all the other puzzles, even if they were like slightly frustrating, was like, oh, okay, I get it or what, like but this puzzle, I was like, why, why did you do this? What could possibly be the thought process here?
01:15:56
Speaker
That's fair. That's
Chapter 4: Time Travel Challenges
01:15:57
Speaker
fair. So, um, so um we're getting ah We're getting far into this podcast. ah I still want to talk about the chapters, but li I'm going to try to concise it and it up for you guys.
01:16:11
Speaker
I think we need to. Yeah, I think we would have needed to anyway stop before chapter five, because chapter five, I think, is when the big spoilers start happening. Yeah, and and I think we're explaining this that people get what the game is about. They get how it's going to go. I will say, um' not we're going to talk about Chapter 4 and probably not go into Chapter 5 or 6 because that's kind of like that's going into Endgame.
01:16:38
Speaker
Exactly. I did not like Chapter 4. Okay. Okay. It seemed and they are all connected, but it seemed unrelated to everything else I was doing.
01:16:51
Speaker
um I didn't like the characters as much in this chapter. I did like there's a couple drones flying around. and like those drones. They were real cute. hmm. But I think I just didn't like, I don't know if I, I just didn't like the mission I was on, I think for that one. and And this is pretty common with these kind of structured games. Like in Callahan's, there are chapters I like more than other chapters. Yeah.
01:17:16
Speaker
Sanitarium is a good example, too. There are chapters I like in Sanitarium way more than I like. And this is one of the chapters that I didn't like as much as the others. um But I guess what you're doing is your client works or worked for this place called Leaves.
01:17:35
Speaker
I don't know how to describe this place. They're like a salad making dispensary. I think it's, yeah, I think it's it's kind of like a joke. it's They're like a salad dispensary, but also like a tech startup.
01:17:47
Speaker
It's very silly and also something you could totally see existing and making you mad in the modern world. Yeah. And something I guess what we're trying to do is like we're trying to there's like a big like speech that's going to happen. And there's a very important person attending this speech that's going to happen.
01:18:09
Speaker
And we have to basically determine who is going to make that speech. So it's it's funny because you finish this. This chapter happens in three episodes.
01:18:21
Speaker
phases and i don't know about I don't know if this was your experience but you finish the first phase and you're like that was a very easy one right right that was so much easier than the other chapters and then it's like then you get another client that's also related to this and you're like oh uh okay this is getting more complex and then yeah and then you're like okay well that was interesting and then you go back to the present and get another client that's related to this. And then just gets more and more complex.
01:18:53
Speaker
It's like every time we change something, somebody else from the company is unhappy. And then we have to go back and make that right. And then someone else is unhappy. it's It's a comical notion. i do like that.
01:19:05
Speaker
I'll say I like this setting the least, but I did like, I did like the idea. Yeah. I did. I did. I did like this chapter overall.
01:19:16
Speaker
Um, Basically what happens is you are now... Fia ends up having to revisit the same scenario three times. So there's three Fias.
01:19:27
Speaker
And each of them has to avoid the other one. Right. And are unaware of the one that's coming. Right. um So like first Fia has no idea there's any other Fias around. Second Fia knows that she was there in the first place and has to avoid her...
01:19:46
Speaker
past self, but has no idea that a third Fia is coming. And the third Fia knows about the other previous two and so has to move in a way that she avoids both of them. I thought that was kind of fun.
01:19:58
Speaker
It is kind of fun. And it's, I do have an, maybe you can explain this. I don't know if it's an inconsistency or not, but in a lot of time travel stories, you were not supposed to see your, but like another version of you.
01:20:11
Speaker
It causes a reaction where y'all are both going to melt and that sucks. Yeah. And we see that a lot in in these kind of time travel ah stories. You're not supposed to see yourself again.
01:20:23
Speaker
But there is a point where another character who isn't a time agent, they do see themselves and nothing happens. So why don't they get that same reaction that we do if we see ourselves again?
01:20:38
Speaker
There's a character. Can you explain who this character is? i I should have wrote it down. I'm sorry that I did not write it down. It might have been Imani, maybe. But there is a character that sees one of their... They they see themselves.
01:20:54
Speaker
And they make a choice. Oh, no, no. It was... um I'm so sorry. It's... this a Chapter 5 thing? It might be. It's it's in the 9-11 type of storyline Yes.
01:21:10
Speaker
ah Do you remember the character um to not to not Hannah?
01:21:16
Speaker
The least weathered cop? When does she see herself? At the end. Doesn't young self see her older self? Oh, you're right. Okay. Yay!
01:21:27
Speaker
i think she I mean, she does stop existing at that point, right? But they should have both melted upon seeing each other. they actually Younger Hannah and older Hannah talk to each other.
01:21:40
Speaker
They're on the same screen for minutes at a time. Yeah, I know. I think I maybe... I don't remember how quickly Thea melts when she sees Thea. Quickly.
01:21:51
Speaker
Okay. Immediately. but Yeah. I don't know. I don't know if there's something about being chrono locked makes you, or it's it could be just be an inconsistency. I'm not sure. yeah But like I just had that question, man. Like, how does that work? Like, why? You know, why?
01:22:06
Speaker
There's a puzzle here that I do really like where you set up basically a trap that In order to activate the trap, one nonsense word and two just completely random words have to be said. Yeah. So you have to sort of like monitor the language that is used in a conversation. Yeah.
01:22:29
Speaker
And ah conversation that you know will be repeating. Mm-hmm. And find soundalikes so that like the word couple would set off the word cup. Yeah. Yeah.
01:22:40
Speaker
I thought that puzzle and you do you have to do this puzzle in twice in two different contexts. And I think I liked that puzzle a lot. How did did you like that? Yeah, I did like it. I thought it was clever and just an interesting like brain teaser, you know? Yeah, exactly.
01:22:57
Speaker
And this chapter is sort of what starts bringing in another big theme of this game, which is the idea of like, what what mark do you leave on the world and how important is that?
01:23:09
Speaker
Yeah. Right? Do
Themes of Life & Legacy
01:23:11
Speaker
you, if everything you do is completely unknown and potentially changes, does your life even matter?
01:23:22
Speaker
What gives your life purpose knowing that that You will leave no permanent trace of your existence. I think that's always been an issue with time travel and kind of sci-fi in general. is There is a nihilistic undertone of none of this matters.
01:23:43
Speaker
It does not matter. Why are we even doing this? If it's going to change or if we're not going to leave a legacy behind. I do struggle with that. um I'm a goth, but I am not a nihilistic person.
01:23:56
Speaker
Even though Nine Inch Nails is one of my favorite bands and I'm here for a bad time, I'm still not a nihilistic person. So I do struggle with that, with that question of does any of this matter? Yeah, I think, I mean, people have been struggling with that for all time. The oldest written story we have is the Epic of Gilgamesh, which directly addresses this exact thing.
01:24:22
Speaker
ah Gilgamesh is trying to become, it's like, his whole quest. Once he sees ah his friend die, he begins thinking about how pointless life is because of the existence of death, and he goes on a massive quest to try and gain immortality.
01:24:39
Speaker
And he fails, because you can't do that. But when he... returns from his quest he looks ah ah at the things that he's created in life yeah the walls of the city that he built or had built and he realizes that he will live forever in the walls of ur and that that gives his life meaning the things that he's made on earth will give his life meaning and
01:25:12
Speaker
What he doesn't know, and what is, to me, the most poignant part of reading the Epic of Gilgamesh, what he doesn't know is that this story that is told about him for well bad past the fall of the city of Ur gives him immortality.
01:25:33
Speaker
yeah right We still know Gilgamesh's name. So...
01:25:40
Speaker
The thing that makes this more difficult is Fia knows that there's nothing she can do in the world that will last.
01:25:52
Speaker
Right. She doesn't have that option of finding comfort in, oh, I can create something important. Yeah. she yes even Even in relationships, even in meeting people in this world as a time agent, the very first one of the very first things that happens is somebody she's flirting with gets, you know, bunted out of existence, you know? Yeah. Or bunted into a different, you know, timeline.
01:26:19
Speaker
there there's even at the very end like post credits of this game we're not going to say anything that happens here but even the ending of the game and this almost seems like why should I just say fuck you um the very ending of this game uh gets erased yeah post post credits so it's like they really are leaning into this idea of like, how do you find meaning in something that doesn't last in a world that doesn't remember you or doesn't in in this case even exist?
01:27:01
Speaker
Yeah. um Which I think is an important question that we do all have to ask ourselves, right? um I obviously lean into creating things, right? And so do you.
01:27:17
Speaker
but there are
01:27:23
Speaker
other aspects to life than creating that don't leave marks, right? And they must still be valuable because we still find value in them, right? So that's that's what I mean. That's the question we have to ask ourselves.
01:27:38
Speaker
Is it okay? Is a walk, taking a walk in the woods, is that a waste of time or is that a valuable part of life? I think I don't really question – um i don't i don't really ask myself, like, does this mean anything? And that that might be because I've been in therapy all my life, and now I've become this self-aware ah walking disaster that wants to do everything all the time.
01:28:05
Speaker
And so i find value in everything, like all the time. Knowing that I will die and knowing that I probably won't have a legacy, ah knowing that I'll be forgotten because I care more about the present time. i care more about what I'm doing right now, how I'm helping other people right now.
01:28:28
Speaker
And if that leaves a mark, it doesn't. If it doesn't, that's that's fine. um That's fine, too. I can't think about it too hard because that's how you depress yourself.
01:28:39
Speaker
Right. I mean, I think that's why this is something that needs to be discussed in yeah the world and in our art. It's because, um but you know, we do live in this culture that is so focused on productivity.
01:28:56
Speaker
It's part of a symptom of capitalism, right? But it's also part it's also partly a symptom of, ah again, this... um ah And this has been happening since Babylonia, as I just said. So I don't know that we'll ever fix this as a culture, but this yeah disordered relationship we have with death.
01:29:21
Speaker
yeah So society does tell us, right? Like we need to leave a legacy. we And society tells us we need to be being productive at all times. and and And when we say productive, that...
01:29:32
Speaker
That means a certain thing because we as a society tend to vote on what actually is productive and what actually is a waste of time. So me taking a walk and looking at every flower and being like, wow, what a pretty flower.
01:29:48
Speaker
By society, they don't deem that as any kind of productivity because what am I putting into the world? Society really grills us. to to put something into the world and make it important and don't waste your time and burn the midnight oil and work really hard.
01:30:03
Speaker
When really I think product, and we talked about this in Wanderstock a lot. Yeah, exactly. That's what was just thinking about. I think productivity should be anything that is helping you in the present. I do feel productive when I take a walk.
01:30:17
Speaker
That is productivity. And why is it? Because it's going to help me to keep surviving, to keep, to keep living. um Right. i I think this was, this is, I think wander stop is a great parallel to this game in a lot of ways in, in ways that you you wouldn't, you wouldn't think about, think of like, it's not immediately apparent that wander stop and old skies have themes in common, like strong themes in common, but yeah, they do.
01:30:50
Speaker
Fia begins asking herself basically the questions from Wanderlust. keep trying to say Wanderlust. I know. It makes sense. It's easy to slip into that.
01:31:01
Speaker
um But Fia starts asking her of the questions herself the questions from Wanderstop. Yeah. ah About three quarters of the way through this game. And the last two chapters are basically entirely about that.
01:31:15
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And I think yeah when you're doing anything time travel and sci-fi, just due to the nature of the genre, there is going to be kind of this morality. There's going to be these these questions, right? These big questions of what does it matter if we can't change anything, you know, for example.
01:31:34
Speaker
And I like that because it reminds me that it's not that deep, bro. Like not like overall, but like, no, I shouldn't shouldn't try to change what's happened.
01:31:47
Speaker
I shouldn't drill myself into a hole. Yeah. You know, being, quote, productive. um and But yeah. It's sort of, i mean, it's sort of the lesson of time travel too is you you can't make everything perfect.
01:32:05
Speaker
Right. You know, beating yourself up about things going wrong or being imperfect is a poor use of your time. It's a poor use of your mental energy because, you know, again, a lot of this game, you are working to try and make something perfect and it's impossible.
01:32:28
Speaker
Yeah. When you could have been putting that energy um somewhere else, you know. Making a better future, for example. Helping somebody. Making art.
01:32:38
Speaker
You know, bettering the world in small ways. Or like, you know, sort of this game posits towards the end. Just enjoying your life.
01:32:49
Speaker
enjoying your life Yeah. Yeah. um I do think it is a a nihilistic ending to think like, ah but but does it matter if it's just going to change? But I do also think that sparks the notion of like, you should just enjoy your life then.
01:33:04
Speaker
yeah Whatever you think is going to happen. i I can see what you're saying. I don't think this game is is is nihilistic. I think yeah in i think it is it is saying the latter a lot more than it's saying the former. It is saying, hey, things could change and you could have a nihilistic viewpoint about that. So why don't you fucking kill everybody? Why don't you fucking destroy everything? Why don't you just kill yourself?
01:33:28
Speaker
Yeah, like that's some some Rick and Morty shit right there. Exactly. Yeah. But this game, so you know, does the opposite and says, hey, even if you, uh, even if you and your, the person you love are going to disappear tomorrow.
01:33:46
Speaker
Yeah. You still love them today. And you still are enjoying holding them in your arms today. yes Or again, like we were saying, taking a walk in the woods, watching your favorite TV show, uh,
01:34:00
Speaker
making a ah dinner that you love and eating it, right? Like these are still valuable even if they even if they're temporary.
01:34:11
Speaker
Yeah. i don't I don't know how much you were able to observe or ah or clock about me ah when we hang out in real life. But because i you know I lost my dad at a young age, I had several overdoses where I nearly died. Yeah.
01:34:29
Speaker
and you know, had an eating disorder and addiction for a very long time. I am a person that takes absolutely nothing for granted. Everything has value to me. If we're up walking and I see a pretty flower, I will stop to look at the flower.
01:34:43
Speaker
i will stop to smell the flower. will probably take a picture of it and wonder what kind of flower it is. ah Because i I, don't want to take what I have for granted knowing that I was in such a bad way before.
01:34:59
Speaker
And I don't want to change those
Crime Scene Kitchen & Vertical Cakes
01:35:00
Speaker
things. You know, like the game is positing. I i wouldn't want to go back and try to fix my dad's cancer or try to fix ah my overdoses and save myself some grief.
01:35:10
Speaker
So I just want to lean into what I have now. And I take, again, absolutely nothing for granted. The smallest things make me the happiest person. Because if you did that, then you wouldn't have learned the lesson to appreciate and enjoy life.
01:35:22
Speaker
Right. If you went back and changed those things, you wouldn't. You might have you might have been just de facto and a less happy person because you haven't learned those lessons. Do you want to hear like the fucking dorkiest thing ever?
01:35:37
Speaker
Please. So I always want to hear the dorkiest thing ever. Yeah. This might, this might make some people giggle. I don't know. um I'm a big fan of the show Crime Scene Kitchen, which is a show.
01:35:49
Speaker
Where could this be going? I know, right? Like you don't even know. I'm a very unpredictable but unpredictable person. For everything you can predict, I will just go unhinged.
01:36:01
Speaker
um So it's it's a show. It's a cooking show, actually, a baking show. And basically you have um you have players who they set up this whole crime scene, quote, crime scene in a kitchen for you.
01:36:14
Speaker
And you have to guess what was baked. You get two minutes To look at the clues and the clues can be anything from like, oh, there's a bit of like marzipan on this spatula. There's four cake pans in here. There's a lemon in the compost.
01:36:29
Speaker
And so you look at all the clues and you have to you have to recreate you have to bake um competing against other people what you thought was made. Yesterday, something was made that I had never seen before.
01:36:43
Speaker
And now it's my whole personality and I want it It makes me so happy. It's a vertical cake. Have you heard of this?
01:36:53
Speaker
A vertical cake? No. So like, you know how when you cut into a cake, you have layers that go from top to bottom. Imagine you cut into a cake and you have layers that go horizontally.
01:37:07
Speaker
Oh, like a, um, don't they do that with rainbow cakes or a rainbow cake step or, uh, they even stack them either way. This was not a rainbow cake. I don't know what kind of cake this was, but when they cut into the cake, Matt, when they cut into the cake, it was horizontal.
01:37:25
Speaker
It looks so cool. yeah, yeah. No, ah rainbow cakes are stacked. They're stacked. Yeah. Yeah. If you just look up like vertical cake, if you Google image shirts, vertical cake, they do come up. I didn't know this was a thing.
01:37:37
Speaker
And I am so excited. Yeah. ah You're just like, yeah, Sarah, that's great. No, I guess I also didn't know about this. Isn't it so cool?
01:37:48
Speaker
Do you want to make a vertical cake? um I mean, kind of. i always kind of want I always kind of want to make a cake, but I ah i often don't. I rarely do.
01:38:00
Speaker
Listen, when I'm out there for my tattoo and yeah, I'm going to be in pain. Let's make a vertical cake. What's your favorite flavor of cake?
01:38:11
Speaker
I don't know. No, I like le I like all of them. Vanilla is good. Lemon's good. ah Chocolate's good. You know what I don't like? I don't like cakes that are soaked like a tiramisu, but it's just because I don't. It's not that I don't like the flavor. I just don't like the sogginess.
01:38:28
Speaker
Do you like any like pre-named cakes? So like carrot cake or German chocolate, forest cake, any any of those things? ah I mean, I don't like the combination of fruit and chocolate, so I don't like Black Forest cake.
01:38:42
Speaker
Okay. Because that's cherry, right? Cherry and chocolate. Yeah. Yeah. But what were your other... What were the other ones you suggested? Do you like carrot cake? Carrot cake's fine.
01:38:54
Speaker
Carrot cake can sometimes be so sweet that it like stings your throat. It can be. It can be on the sweeter side, especially with the icing. Maybe we just, okay, are you a chocolate guy or a vanilla guy?
01:39:09
Speaker
Icing, i used to be a vanilla guy when I was a kid, but icing wise, chocolate for sure. We're going to make this cake. That's just that I'm way too excited about it now. Maybe we can just make a vertical rainbow cake. Hey, pushing up roses? Yes.
01:39:23
Speaker
What does this have to do with old skies? what was Listen, I'm so sorry. You were tying this somehow. I'm editing this in. You supposed to be tying this in and then we cut some. The whole point is, is what I'm trying to say. Yeah, that's what I'm doing. Take nothing for granted. Get excited about the small things. You're still productive. Oh, okay.
01:39:44
Speaker
a thing that you got very excited about means that you don't take things for Okay. Now I see i see the connection.
01:39:54
Speaker
and I just have an appreciation for the the small things in life. All right.
Game's Ambiguous Ending & Representation
01:40:00
Speaker
So everybody, Wajidai's Old Skies, it's about vertical cakes and the different ways that you can make them.
01:40:09
Speaker
um there is it So there's an ambiguous ending. to this game and again we're not going to spoil it but I want i wonder what you think do you think Fia was merciful or not
01:40:26
Speaker
there's a choice you don't get to make a lot of times that choice you get to make in this game but in the final scene I think the or the final final choice you don't I think she was merciful yes I think so too especially based on what she does next Yeah, I was getting that vibe. And i think the other character we talked to also knows that we were merciful.
01:40:50
Speaker
Oh, yes. I mean, yeah the other character makes it clear in the very last scene that they know. Yeah, they know what went down. They know what the ending of the game was. But yeah ah for Fia.
01:41:05
Speaker
Yes. um But you're... Your thought is that they also know what the ending of the game was for the other character. Okay. All right. Interesting.
01:41:17
Speaker
Yeah, I think so. Everyone's pretty... These characters are intuitive, you know? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. They are. I mean, that's the thing. That's one of the things I like so much about this game and like about the characters is all the characters in this game are smart.
01:41:30
Speaker
Yes. you never You never get a puzzle that's done by somebody being stupid, which is a thing that happens in a lot of adventure games. It's true. It's like, oh, I don't know how to... yeah I'm trying to think of like a good example, but i don't have one. I'm so bad at Roger Wilco in general.
01:41:48
Speaker
ah Even Guybrush Threepwood. Like that's oftentimes the puzzle. Even characters that aren't stupid. true Canonically. Yeah. Yeah. in order to just include puzzles in the game, the designer has to be like, ah, they forget how an oven works or something like that. Like, which is, which can be really frustrating. I think, yeah
01:42:16
Speaker
Wadged Eye Games does a good job of, and We talked to about about about this with Dave, actually. Watcher.games does a good job of only including puzzles that further the story rather than just impeding your progress for the sake of slowing you down.
01:42:37
Speaker
yeah um I think that's really admirable, and I think it's done really well in this game, and except for that fucking safe puzzle. I guess that furthered the story, but it was...
01:42:48
Speaker
Man, you hate it. Wajidai, I'm so mad at you for that safe puzzle. No human being would ever have done that. Yeah, I remember talking to Dave about that and I i had called it, you know, intentional design. Yes.
01:43:01
Speaker
This is very intentional choice making and design and they're excellent at their craft. I do want to say ah before we end this episode and maybe you have a different opinion.
01:43:12
Speaker
I don't think this game is good for a first time adventure gamer. i I think it's a little moderately harder than that, but you may may disagree. Yeah.
01:43:24
Speaker
Interesting. I didn't think. Yeah, I don't know that. Here's the thing, though, Matt, we're geniuses.
01:43:35
Speaker
I do know that some people on the Internet, I saw some criticism of this game, and that it was too easy. But I think most of the people who are saying that ah that was a smokescreen for their real opinions that this game was to, you know, whatever the fuck it the word woke means anymore. Sure.
01:43:57
Speaker
You know, I think the fact that there are several gay relationships in this game, and the fact that there is a non-binary, yeah even though it's a robot. It's a robot. It's a hologram.
01:44:10
Speaker
The fact that there's a non-binary character in this game, the fact that there's a ah you know, There's a diverse cast. Yeah. I think made people mad. And rather than saying that out loud, they were just like, oh the game was too easy. So it sucked.
01:44:28
Speaker
I'm going to have to disagree with that as an adventure game ah expert. ah Yeah, me too. I don't think this game was too easy. I don't think i mean at all. I think it was infinitely...
01:44:43
Speaker
Yeah. yeah And it's not pushing anything on you. It's not what I would call in quotes woke. It's just normal. It's just normal. Stella storytelling with diverse couples.
01:44:55
Speaker
That's it. Let me just set my credentials here for a second. I beat blue prints before it was out and there was no guides anywhere. And not
Podcast as Art Form
01:45:06
Speaker
just the, and i beat mist.
01:45:09
Speaker
I beat mist. I, I, I beat Mist and Riven with no walkthroughs. I beat The Witness. That's true.
01:45:20
Speaker
That's a genius. With no hints. You can't say that I'm bad at puzzles. Yeah, you're not bad at puzzles. I'm a little bit bad at puzzles. And I... And I... yeah and i
01:45:34
Speaker
Now that my credentials are established, this game is not too easy, motherfuckers. You're lying. You're lying because you're mad that there's black people in the world and that there's gay people in the world. And my credentials are beat King's Quest 3 with no walkthrough and I figured out the cheese in the machine in King's Quest 5.
01:45:53
Speaker
So I know myself some moon logic. So i can I can work any puzzle after doing those puzzles. It's funny that I'm yelling at people who there's a 0% chance would listen to this podcast.
01:46:04
Speaker
We're just yelling at no one. None of those people would listen to this. And yet you're yelling at them. It all ties back to that question. does it Does anything mean anything? Does this podcast mean anything?
01:46:19
Speaker
ah Maybe what will happen is if somebody is in an argument about this gate about that, they'll clip that from this podcast. And send them that piece of audio.
01:46:32
Speaker
Oh, good Lord. So anyway, I think that about wraps it up on Old Skies. I think it's safe to say that we both really enjoyed it. yeah And I think that's evident because of the kind of deep conversation we were able to have after playing this game.
01:46:48
Speaker
ah Let's see. What do I want to plug? oh Go check out Matt's other podcast if you're interested in X-Men. It's called Mutant Menace. You can find that wherever podcasts are found.
01:46:58
Speaker
Thank you. Yeah. um i will have a YouTube video up soon on Columbo, on the worst episode of Columbo. It's going to be it's goingnna be a banger.
01:47:10
Speaker
And you know what? i think things I think all of this does mean something. You want to know why, Matt? ah i' I'm curious. Why? Well, think this podcast matters because podcast is art.
01:47:25
Speaker
And art is suffer. That matters. And it matters. Suffering matters. Suffering matters.