Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
S3 Ep233: Talkcast - Disney, Dreams, and Animemes
75 Plays3 years ago
Join Dave and Jake as they talk about dreams, old school Disney, VHS, cassettes, anime, some current games, and hot cause in this week's episode!!
Intro:
SoapstonePodcast@gmail.com
Like our podcast? Like our podcast! We'll post when new episodes are uploaded!
https://www.facebook.com/SoapstonePodcast/
Intro:
- Majora's Mask - Happy Mask
- Majora's Mask - Song of Healing
SoapstonePodcast@gmail.com
Like our podcast? Like our podcast! We'll post when new episodes are uploaded!
https://www.facebook.com/SoapstonePodcast/
Recommended
Transcript
The Struggle with Sleep
00:00:22
Speaker
How's it going, everyone? Welcome to another episode of Soapstone. My name is Jake, and I'm joined by my co-host, as always, Dave. How's it going tonight, Dave? It's going good. Feeling all right. How about you? Nice. I'm doing all right. A little bit tired.
00:00:38
Speaker
I had like there was one night this week where I struggled to sleep and although I've like I should have theoretically made up the sleep by now as I get older that becomes increasingly impossible. It's just like failed to sleep one one night. That's it. Doesn't matter. It doesn't matter how much sleep you get the rest of the week. It's like that fatigue is just going to start hitting you anyways. And that's that's the life I'm living.
00:01:00
Speaker
Yeah, I don't think you can catch up on sleep. I feel like you can take naps and that helps a little bit. Yes. In the short term, helps get through the day. Which is why I nap every day.
The Nature of Dreams
00:01:18
Speaker
Yeah, I used to for a while have pretty consistent naps, but then tried to stabilize a little bit. And as it turns out, not taking naps
00:01:29
Speaker
in the middle of the day or even in the evening.
00:01:32
Speaker
Um, helps your sleep schedule. That's why I still fucking hate naps. Like when my body's super tired and I'm like sick, like I was past two weeks ish, like naps were good. Cause I could just be like, I would eat food and be like, I'm a little bit tired and I would just go to sleep for like an hour and a half, two hours. And that part was nice. But even so waking up, I'm like, what fucking day is it? It's so disorienting to me. And I'm not a fan of that part of it.
00:02:02
Speaker
You have to take like a very brief nap or else you'll get that sleep inertia push. Like I did take a nap and started to like get into REM sleep a little bit, like a little bit of dreams. And then it's like, bam, alarm. I'm like, all right, that's it. That's the end of my coherence today.
00:02:20
Speaker
I wish dreams had more conclusions, good or bad. I feel like there's like a series of like random events, not necessarily related.
Dream Control and Influence
00:02:30
Speaker
Sometimes they are. And I'm like, where's that going? And then like your alarm goes off, you're like, what's going on? Yeah, that's the only time I remember my dreams is if I wake up in the middle of it. Um, otherwise it's just gone.
00:02:45
Speaker
I know some people have a lot of dream control or remember their dreams in general, but I do not. In one ear, out the other. That is how dreams are fed to you normally. A very long piece of string.
00:03:01
Speaker
I think I've had dream control exactly once, where I was like, oh, I'm in a dream. And then you like turn on your flying powers. You're like, you are finally able to run versus low motion. You get the school on time. Where the fuck it is. Wear pants.
00:03:20
Speaker
Oh, I'm always thinking of my dreams consistently. Actually remember to attend that college class. Dude, I don't know what part of the subconscious is so like anxiety while you're sleeping to like have those. I don't want to miss or rather you're already late or you've missed a class or an meeting or an appointment. Like why does that even exist?
00:03:46
Speaker
I'm not sure. We should have an expert on the podcast one of these days
Nostalgic and Video Game Dreams
00:03:51
Speaker
to talk about it. Just complete the transition completely away from video games. We have a dream psychologist here today. I heard somewhere that they've looked into it, but they haven't really found anything conclusive. Basically, it's just scattered information in your brain.
00:04:11
Speaker
Certain things are definitely based off of things you've watched, people you've met to a degree. It's information that you have in your brain. I don't think you can theory craft something entirely new in your dreams outside of something experienced in waking life. I guess unless it's a recurring nightmare, maybe psychology has something to say on it. You have unresolved issues with your parents.
00:04:38
Speaker
that could potentially be explained by trauma or something like that. Um, I have, I remember, I've remembered a couple dreams that I kind of remember the gist of throughout my life. Um, one of them, I'll start with a non-video game related one was there was a friend that I used to have when I was younger and I hadn't talked to him for like literally years. He was hyper religious. I'm sure we'd still be on friendly terms, but disagree with how
00:05:07
Speaker
certain things should be handled at this point. Probably. I don't know. And I like out of nowhere, I had a dream and it was just like we were just like hanging out on an island. I don't know if we were like stranded or like what the crap. But I was just like, that's actually really cool. Like I basically got the experience of kind of like hanging out with him and I woke up and I was like, oh, I haven't talked to that guy in like literally years, which is kind of a weird sensation.
00:05:36
Speaker
Yeah, it's it feels like you're subconscious saying like hey reach out reconnect this person. Uh-huh You're like I met that person in second grade once. I don't know what the fuck that is Yeah, like different people now The other one which was video game related is there is a Godzilla for the game boy not color just literally the game boy And I played it a ton
00:06:02
Speaker
like, just a ridiculous amount for the time. Now it would probably be like, looking back on it, I probably played it for like three hours. And that was all it took. But it was apparently enough that it influenced my dreams. And I remember the, I can't remember the name of the big three headed dragon. I think it's Rhododendron or something like that. King Ghidorah? That one. Motherfucker, get out of here with your Godzilla lore. Very close.
00:06:31
Speaker
But it was basically like a two-dimensional, not really a platformer, like a puzzle game, almost more like a bomber man or something like that. Like Godzilla could punch in a direction and things. But if he ran out of time on a stage,
Bedtime Thoughts and Childhood Dreams
00:06:46
Speaker
it didn't just instantly go to game over. It didn't kill you like it was Sonic. King Ghidorah would appear on one of the sides of the screen and start flying at you. So I think there's another game that did this.
00:07:01
Speaker
Spelunky, I think has like the Reaper show up or something like that if you timeout. That game gets credit for it, but it should receive zero credit. This is already done for Game Boy Godzilla. But I had a dream literally about the game. It wasn't even like I was in the universe. I think I had a dream I was playing the game, which was not super exciting. Very surreal.
00:07:27
Speaker
I mean, I guess if you could actually schedule it that way, you could get a lot of game time in just while dreaming. That's true. Oh, I was just playing old games. I'm sure it's helped people with deposit games. Oh, yeah. Because that's a legitimate thing people will do for work and stuff like that. It's like if you're stuck on a programming problem, yeah, stepping away from it can allow you to think about it in a different way, but also like literally going to sleep and then waking up.
00:07:56
Speaker
sometimes leads to a breakthrough because your brain doesn't turn off. You don't die. It's a brain power cycle pretty much, I feel. Yeah. It'll keep working on problems even if you're not cognizant.
00:08:10
Speaker
or at least people say that that's possible. My brain's never been that productive. That's why the 20 minutes before I go to bed, I like to front load a lot of depressing news and just other struggles in my life, just run through the list. And then I read the last one. I'm like, all right, good night. I say good night out loud. And then I turn out the lights and go to bed immediately. No trouble falling asleep whatsoever. And then by the morning, I'm depressed.
00:08:38
Speaker
Yeah, no, I mean, that would work too. That would definitely work. Have you had, do you recall any interesting dreams? Video gaming or not video gaming related?
00:08:50
Speaker
So weirdly, there's only one. OK. Like, I'm sure I could have like a scattered recollection of something like a week down the line, big. Oh, I didn't have a dream about that once. Or you'll have something like, oh, it's a deja vu moment from the dream. I like the cannon that you've only ever had one dream instead. That's how I interpret this. It's like some some prophecy.
00:09:12
Speaker
I only have one that I've consistently remembered and I've never forgotten about it. I don't remember all of the details but I remember one thing that stood out, one scene if you will. It was me and Aladdin on a magic carpet. I don't remember if the monkey was there as well. Let's say yes because it's a cuter idea and we were flying around in this
00:09:37
Speaker
Lava universe, where if you just kind of look at like an open video game map, it's like, what do we want to have like the background be in every direction? I was like, oh, it's lava. Right. And it's just kind of like falling down. Not like dangerous, just that was the background. And amidst the void of lava, there were these lava cubes.
00:10:00
Speaker
where like they had the same lava texture on them coming in, kind of like imagine like Minecraft level graphics. Yeah. And when we would like fly into them, it would take us to a different dimension. I don't remember anything else beyond that, but it was just flying around with Aladdin in this lava dimension to these cubes, to other dimensions. And for some reason,
Media Evolution and Nostalgia
00:10:24
Speaker
that has always stuck. And that happened when I was like 16.
00:10:30
Speaker
or younger. When did Aladdin come out? When was my first experience with lava? Lava's been around for a while. Aladdin's probably also been around for a while. I wanted to say Rafiki, but that's the name of a different monkey. Rafiki from Lion King. Yeah. Is it Apu?
00:10:52
Speaker
That sounds right. No, that's the, um, no, I think it literally, I think it is a poo. I can visualize Aladdin saying a poo while you look this up. My favorite story. Okay. Let's go.
00:11:17
Speaker
My favorite Abu story is the internet gif where they're like sharing bread. He would give bread to kids is what it was. But they just reverse the gif because in the original scene he like starts out smiling because he had just stolen this bread then he sees these kids that are hungry and so his smile kind of fades and then he like slowly gives them the bread.
00:11:42
Speaker
So if you reverse that, these kids that are happy, he takes the bread from them, they become sad and hungry. And then his somber face goes happy. And it's just like, it's great. Yeah, I like a good reverse give. I also miss that movie as a whole. I think it's still my favorite Disney movie from that era. Um, need to go back and rewatch it.
00:12:11
Speaker
had like a, just a series of bangers back then. Like a lot of people like Hercules. I feel like Hercules is overrated for how much people love it. It was good, but it wasn't like, it wasn't a Latin good is what I'm saying. It was a Hades and Danny DeVito were basically, basically Hercules. They were the character actors pretty much. Yeah.
00:12:38
Speaker
I can't remember. I should know who played Hades. I don't think he's like a super common person. I feel like he is. I feel his voice sounds like he's a Hollywood actor. James Woods. OK, that does sound like a popular name, but I don't know. Like when I realized that was actually Kingdom Hearts because Kingdom Hearts has this
00:13:08
Speaker
It has this motif of like you go to a, you go to a world and the world is just that IP. And I didn't really, I should have realized this more, but when I was a kid or a young teenager, um, a lot of the novelty in Kingdom Hearts was literally just visiting worlds that you already had nostalgia for. And then like not sticking around so long that it wore itself out.
00:13:33
Speaker
You're just like, Oh my gosh, it's cool. And they've got like the freaking voice actors. And sometimes they absolutely didn't. They either didn't have a person voicing it or they had a sound alike, but, um, so freaking cool. But then I remember Olympus was Hades and the person helping you out was like Hercules and like nothing interesting happened. Like there was nothing there. Um, the only, the only cool voice actor was Hades. And I think, I don't think they actually got Danny DeVito, I think.
00:14:02
Speaker
They had the character, but no voice if I remember correctly. So yeah, I think like a text box. All right. Uh huh. Yeah. Some of them were clearly like, sometimes you get characters in that series that like kind of just run around in the background, but don't really do anything.
00:14:19
Speaker
And you could kind of tell that like they were working on the game and they're like, maybe we'll get someone to voice this and then we'll do like, redo some of these scenes or something. And they never did. So characters just back there. The NPCs in the background, like trying to talk to each other, but they can't because they have no voice or soul. But yeah, otherwise a lot of good stuff back then.
00:14:40
Speaker
Yeah. Lion King was a big one. Toy Story was huge. This was also the time where they had VHSs in like the thicker plastic case. You cracked it open and it had like this layer of plastic insulation.
00:14:57
Speaker
Yeah, I remember the, they're not cardboard, but they're basic, not cardboard, but the paper slide out cases where the VHS would just slide in the side of the case. You just like shake it or whatever to get the VHS out. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. It was like a, I'd say it's like a very thin type of cardboard. Yeah. This is like the least comprehensible thing in a podcast to try to describe.
00:15:27
Speaker
Um, but I know, I remember what you're talking about too. They had like two plastic halves that just like completely encased the VHS or just like almost like vacuum sealed it as you closed it. Um, and now they only exist really in yard sales, I feel. Yeah. Or your grandmother's house. Cause she probably still has a VHS player and a CRT. I mean, there's no, no real reason for the most recent generation to have any idea what a VHS is. Right. Like,
00:15:57
Speaker
That technology died when we were teenagers, basically, with the creation of DVDs. I feel like our parish generation never really, I mean, they definitely talked about cassette tapes a little bit more than I would have liked, but that was still technically in use to a degree in my childhood. Yeah. Do you remember taking like a pencil to rewind a cassette tape?
00:16:26
Speaker
Especially like when I'd like eight part of the tape and you'd like pull it out slowly from whatever rewind the whole thing very carefully. Oh, my God. He's accepted some part of that tapes going to have a skip. Uh huh. No, it was it was the most analog thing you could imagine, basically, outside of like banging rocks against other rocks to make music. That's that's pretty much what cassette tapes were as far as a
00:16:53
Speaker
a medium. I was going to say, I want to say a digital medium, but it's literally not that. So. Yeah.
00:17:00
Speaker
I often forget how much we've progressed even in my short lifespan. And I definitely take it for granted because it's just whatever your day to day is, that's what it is what you're used to. So like I have access to so many things through like Spotify or other media players or YouTube. So much content exists digitally that I can just access at the snap of my fingers. Oh my gosh. Yeah.
Anime and Character Development
00:17:24
Speaker
It's
00:17:26
Speaker
I was going to say it's almost too much, but it's, it's definitely too much. Right. Like, um, I was watching a documentary. Um, it was a philosophy tube video on YouTube and it was like an hour and a half long and I got like a half hour into it and I was like, I basically have the gist and they're talking about important things and it was interesting, but my attention span was just like, I could just watch a short or something like that and was just freaking gone. Right. Um, and.
00:17:55
Speaker
It's it's pretty much constant that I have YouTube up if I'm doing something else. Like the only time I'm not is like if I'm literally working on something or in a meeting or maybe I'm in the meeting and I don't need to be right. That might be the other case. But like once it's not once you pass like the workday, you're no longer like trying to be productive. It's like YouTube is in a corner and it's doing something. I
00:18:24
Speaker
I can't do that. Like if it's something that I want to watch, I need to absorb it and like specifically watch it. I mean, that's healthier.
00:18:37
Speaker
Thank you. I try. But let's say I'm catching up on a comedian's podcast on YouTube. And it's just pretty much an audio medium. They do have a visual component. But I don't need to be actively engaged in watching that. I can just listen to it. So I might do something like Magic the Gathering Arena. So on this monitor, I can actively engage with something
00:19:01
Speaker
But like, I'm not I'm not paying attention. It's just like, what are my three options? I picked this one, and I'm still getting all of the audio and tracking that. But like, even like a Chef John video I put on earlier.
00:19:17
Speaker
And then I walked away. And then I came back. And I immediately closed down. I got the first 10 seconds of it. I went to go get food. And I didn't catch any of it. And the interest is gone. If I'm not there absorbing and being a part of it, I can't have background always, unless it's just music at that point. That's fair. I have recently, on the note of music, I've been listening to more YouTube novelty music channels.
00:19:46
Speaker
I'm going to let you explain that before I call you a hipster. Go ahead. Sure. I mean, I'm not going to, I'm not going to be providing any evidence to the contrary, but like jazz emu is one of them. So style. Uh, no, it's like, um, he does like, he, he does old style music. So like some, sometimes some of the songs are a little bit more like funk or I don't know how to describe it.
00:20:13
Speaker
It's definitely indie something, but it's not like indie rock or whatever. It's like meant to be novel and evocative of what people imagine older music is like. OK, so it probably like samples some older clips. Yeah, he's got some stuff like that. Modifies his voice. Stuff like that. But the the the they're more like. You know how like a music video is completely optional to like
00:20:43
Speaker
actual music. Most people listen to the music. They don't see the music video. This is more in the nature of it's almost like a skit or there's a lot visually going on that supports the story that's being told or whatever. So not watching it actually kind of like takes something from the experience. And I know this because like I had him on Spotify. I was like, I can't actually like follow along with what he's saying as much if it's not in video form. Um,
00:21:12
Speaker
And then it struck me that this is the thing that I'm like watching as a secondary thing. Well, I'm like playing a game or something like that. I'm listening to the music ish and watching ish the like not appreciating it at all. Right. It's like it's like having a comedy special on in the background. It doesn't really make any sense.
00:21:30
Speaker
Cause you're not getting the jokes. It's just one piecemeal kind of randomly, but if it's context based, yeah, all of that gets lost. Exactly. And that's definitely what I, this is exactly why when like people are watching movies or like TV at home with like their family and somebody gets up to pee, they say, pause it. So you don't miss anything. Yeah.
00:21:58
Speaker
Otherwise it's a movie you don't give a shit about. You, you take a longer than the actual shit. You check your phone and you're like, come back here. Oh, it's still going. Okay. Speaking of, this is tangentially related to that, but it's a good segue and I had nothing else for that topic. Um, if you were watching, say like an anime with friends, uh, talk or no talk.
00:22:23
Speaker
Ooh, this is hard because everybody I know doesn't shut the fuck up. So you're just like no talk, full stop. Well, I understand like the joy of if it's something that we've all already seen to a degree, it's fun to be like some banter about it.
00:22:42
Speaker
Like, if you're going specifically to have banter at it, like a B-rated movie, love it. Everybody jump in type thing. But if it's, let's say, a new episode of something and I'm very focused on it, I want to know what's happening. I don't want to be distracted by somebody like having commentary for 30 seconds unless it's like a, oh, shit. Oh, something really exciting happened. Yes. Okay. You laugh or make fun of something.
00:23:11
Speaker
Say that's hilarious, you know, but if it's brief quips, I feel like it can be fine before it gets distracting, you know. Gotcha. Because the next phase in this question, I was going to open it up to I was going to change the prompt slightly to make it more specific. So like if it was spy family and you were watching it with friends. Does that change your answer at all? I mean, I'm I'm still engaged in spy family.
00:23:42
Speaker
But it's not like a deep plot with character development. That's not the show. But it's very fun and lighthearted. So I feel like you could definitely get away with that more with Spy Family.
00:23:56
Speaker
what I'm waiting for is like the buildup between like, I've watched the spy family, Jenny, she won't shut the fuck up. No, I think I probably talk more than others, but we both think it's absolutely adorable. I'm glad you guys are finally checking that out. Jenny said you guys were, you're, you're catching up slowly. Yeah. We're, we're watching a couple of episodes. Whenever we watch, whenever we catch up on something else, we'll like watch the one episode and every other series and then two or three and spy family. But like, um,
00:24:25
Speaker
No, it's ridiculously good. So I did confirmation from Jenny that I'm not spoiling now, but you guys got to the castle episode.
00:24:33
Speaker
Uh, yes. We're not going to spoil anything for listeners though, right? Um, but I thought that was like a really good episode to make the character of Anya, not that she wasn't already more endearing. Oh my gosh. And then yours character gets flushed out a bit more. She's basically the embodiment of endearing. Like it's that on overload. Her character is just optimized for like,
00:25:02
Speaker
Just the it's too adorable. It's too absolutely adorable. Like she's just incompetent and it's freaking great. Well, yeah, she's she was manufactured in a lab. This is like the Disney the Disney stars of the 90s and early 2000s. Like that's basically a similar process we used to create Anya. Like there's one stupid example. She like climbs into a bus
00:25:29
Speaker
And like, she just has to like hoist her leg up there at this like super weird angle, like rather than just step on like a normal person. And it's just like, it's like 30 frames or something. It's not long. Um, but just like the absolute absurdity in this moment of her doing this is just enough to make us laugh. We're watching that in mob and chainsaw man. And those are wildly different channels. They are, but legitimately like,
00:25:59
Speaker
spy family is the most gratifying of them. Like they're all really good, but as far as like I got something out of watching it, usually I'm getting more out of spy family actually. Spy family for me is actually
Storytelling in Video Games
00:26:16
Speaker
a
00:26:18
Speaker
I don't want to say a harder watch, but I'm less actively excited for it because it doesn't have a story progression, really, in the same way. Yeah, kind of. It sort of does. It has a lot, but it's not like it doesn't matter. Whereas the mob stuff, I'm very engaged in what's happening. Not the most recent episode, but the one before that, I was like,
00:26:45
Speaker
Holy shit. Because that show is always going the ups and downs of, hey, things are laid back and cool and no worries, easy peasy laid back to over the top, stakes your dire, animation's insane. It does a great job of riding that roller coaster. I love it. And then Chainsaw Man, I'm completely blind going in. It's just a fun and interesting universe and
00:27:14
Speaker
Again, it's fun to like follow a character that has one brain cell. It's weird to say, but like Mob might be the one that I'm.
00:27:28
Speaker
least invested in right now. And part of it I think is because of the natural pacing of it. Like, just like in the earlier season, there's episodes of nothing, basically, basically nothing. And then it like builds, starts to climb up into like another climax or like fight or whatever. There will be a resolution and then you go back to the episodes of like basically nothing.
00:27:54
Speaker
And it just doesn't do basically nothing nearly as interestingly as the other two do for me at this point. Yeah. And maybe that's just because of the amount of time I've spent with the previous season. And I don't have a lot of tolerance for this episode. I could have skipped. It doesn't lead much. So filler episodes are not
00:28:21
Speaker
That's not exactly what I'm talking about, but I almost lump them together. I get what you're saying. If you're talking about like the most recent sort of mob. Mm hmm. Yeah. Where. Like. Effectively, I don't think it did anything. Yeah. But for other things that have happened in the season and for what's yet to happen, I feel like it's it's connecting some pieces for later on is my house. Yeah. I think that's probably the case. It's like.
00:28:50
Speaker
This is the Catch-22 in character development is people want flashy explosive action scenes, but unless you actually build some sort of attachment to those characters, then it's going to feel really shallow or kind of pointless. But the first step is you introduce characters that at the moment, people don't care about.
00:29:13
Speaker
Yes. Cause cause they're new and they don't have like a cool flash, exciting thing. Um, how did you feel again, without spoiling for change? The character development they gave Aki. I like, I think that's really good. That was the way it was set up. I was like, Oh, this is, you know,
00:29:38
Speaker
current day stuff and you think it's just like switching between like a build up based on some people they're talking about or like monsters they're talking about.
00:29:47
Speaker
And then they do that scene transition and immediately you're like, Oh, and they just do it really well. And it becomes obvious. Like, Hey, this is the character's backstory. Yeah. Yeah. I think like it is, I don't want to say it's an overused trope, but it's, it's definitely a trophy trope, but the flashback exposition.
00:30:11
Speaker
where it's like, hey, we're gonna just go into this person's past and literally just show you why you should care about them. I think that...
00:30:21
Speaker
You kind of have to earn it, and there's a lot of ways to screw it up. I think you should do more with the character initially before you give them exposition. Yes, that is true. You need to form an opinion of who they are on screen to say, oh, I like this person, or they're an asshole. Why are they such an asshole? OK, now you're invested, and later on we'll tell you why they're an asshole. This is pretty much the only way you could learn.
00:30:49
Speaker
about like a character that is really the quiet loner subtype is if you show it in like a fourth wall breaking, not fourth wall breaking, but narrative voice or omniscient view to the audience of like, we're literally just going to show you their past because they're never going to just talk about it, right? Well, I mean, sometimes they do in shows where it's just like
00:31:11
Speaker
There's there with the cigarette and it's like, yo, man, why'd you yell at Brittany? Blows out cigarette smoke. Well, back when I and then they essentially still do a flashback. Yeah, that coincides with someone opening up, though, which is the death of the loner archetype, which is fine. That's just character arc. But if you wanted to keep them being this kind of like mysterious stranger, then you can let the audience know without letting the rest of the cast know.
00:31:39
Speaker
Yeah. One thing I like about, I'm currently playing God of War Ragnarok. Full spoilers, let's go. He didn't say that. He didn't mean it. So one of the things I like about this type of game and then this game obviously exemplifies it is you're going through and doing
00:32:03
Speaker
Stuff for the story obviously you have story be happens you have some character progression based on events and interactions cool. But in like the down time between like I'm running between point in point be the kind of have like these small discussions and little interactions that kind of color their relationship in the world a little bit.
00:32:24
Speaker
And they happen passively. And if you go into something where it's like, hey, this is a mission-based or story-based, they're like, hey, let's catch up on that thing later. Yes. Cool. It doesn't get cut off and erupted. It's in a slow enough fashion where you have a character like Kratos, who's known for being Kratos. You don't really need to say more than that.
00:32:47
Speaker
Yeah. And he's not a man of many words, but occasionally some things you find little chips in the armor like, oh, here is some personality. And it feels more rewarding because of how much it's withheld. You know he cares about his son. That's the whole dynamic of the game.
00:33:13
Speaker
But the other things about how he interacts with people, you're like, OK, and that's who this character is. Yeah.
00:33:20
Speaker
I saw a couple of clips. I'm not going to, again, not spoiling anything, but, um, and some, I inadvertently saw a couple of clips of dialogue of just people traveling back and forth because they do the exact same thing in one, right? It's like you're on a boat, doing something else. Um, even with the interrupts, right? Like we'll get back to this. Um, you know, uh, but legitimately it's interesting enough and Mimir's interesting enough that like,
00:33:47
Speaker
I find myself just not continuing to the destination. I'm just like, oh, yeah, we'll just listen to the story for a bit because it's just like, it's just like, you know, sit down in front of the fireplace. It's like you got a bowl of soup and it's like pep, pep telling you a story and stuff. And you're like, it's freaking great. The fact that they pull off that vibe alone is really awesome. Can I ever tell you, brother, how Odin's a cunt? Yeah.
00:34:14
Speaker
But some of the YouTube comments, because I didn't play a bunch of the old God of War games, but I've seen most of the gameplay over the years on YouTube. Just playthroughs and stuff like that. Have you seen the button mashing sequences where you beat the fuck out of somebody? There you go. That's most of the game. It's all different sizes of enemies. But Kratos is not like an interesting character in early God of War.
00:34:40
Speaker
Um, not really like even if you kind of sort of
00:34:46
Speaker
empathize with the fact that Aries betrayed him and made him kill his family and stuff like this. It's like, he's still not interesting for the most part. And he basically makes mistakes every single step of the way. If the alternative to making the mistake was to let someone go. I mean, the entire series pre, not reboot, but the fresh entries was like,
00:35:13
Speaker
him slaying all of the gods of the olympic pantheon right or olympus i guess greek pantheon there you go um and not all of them are bad people so you take all of that and you're just like kratos is not meant to be a hero he's kind of like an anti-hero and all of that is his past that we like the players are vaguely aware of or like definitely aware of but like
00:35:40
Speaker
They've done such a good job of taking gameplay that was literally like press button to execute people, break through a wall so that there's a mini game where you like bang these ladies. Like this was literally the gameplay of God of War and turned it around to like
00:35:57
Speaker
storytelling between encounters and things like that. And you're like, it's a pretty big accomplishment. Yeah, it's definitely shifted. And I feel like in general for again, it was an action based game. That was really the selling point of like, hey,
00:36:15
Speaker
We gave this guy two chain stores. He's looking to fuck people up. People are like, yes, action. But that was like early PS2 and Xbox, God of War, Blood Rain, other stuff. It was very early 2000s action. I'm going to guess I'm right at the time. Early 2000s action focused. You don't need a character who's
00:36:36
Speaker
diverse and has depth. You just need like somebody who's a badass. You're like, yeah, I'm just badass and I'm killing people. And that was the whole thing. Yeah. He was basically so good. Totally. I would say they technically could have still gone in that direction. But I think from some major titles where they've had a lot of character exposition, I'm going to give a lot of credit probably to Last of Us where they went hard.
00:37:04
Speaker
I'm not sure if they're the only ones or the progenitors, but games have definitely had a shift to have more depth or the capacity for more depth. So they're like,
Action Games and Narrative Evolution
00:37:14
Speaker
okay, it's in the future. Who is Kratos now?
00:37:19
Speaker
Yeah. So I like that direction personally. I think most people do. I think it's got a much, it's so much better received than like, um, could you imagine that this was closer to a reboot and it's like, Oh no, he's still super angry and he hates everybody and he's killing everybody. And he's still like just banging chicks in mini games. Like.
00:37:41
Speaker
It would be so bad. It would be so bad in this like day and age, right? It's just like, because I don't think that the early games were necessarily bad, right? But like, he's not an interesting character. It's okay. It's okay to make a game where it's just basically violence and sex.
00:38:04
Speaker
That's not like, I mean, don't let your kids play it, but it's not like intrinsically evil. Listen, we all agree Witcher 3 is a great game. There was a little bit of sex in the Witcher 3, but there is across like 200 hours of gameplay or whatever it takes to make it through the DLC. There's a lot more other things. But yes, that is still there and probably more visually depicted than any other game you talked about. But. Yeah, no, I'm.
00:38:33
Speaker
I'm really glad that they took it in a more interesting direction. I'm sure they are too, because it reviews really well.
00:38:44
Speaker
Now, I'd be really impressed if they take this type of direction of more character exposition and getting to know the character and who they are today after years of just so much violence to the Doom Slayer. If they ever pull that off in Doom, I would be very impressed. It's a turn-based RPG at this point.
00:39:06
Speaker
I really hope they don't do that though. No, no. Because the game is so good at what it is. Don't change that.
00:39:15
Speaker
In the same way, I'm not a huge Devil May Cry fan, but what the gameplay is, is pretty much peak what they want that game to be. Yeah. And it's style and how the characters are and whether or not things are a little bit hokey or over the top. Keep doing that. It's working. And it's its own unique niche thing. It's just characters with a Devil May Cry attitude. That's all it is.
00:39:40
Speaker
Oh, this makes sense. Did you check out, um, I don't think it's out yet, but gun grave.
00:39:49
Speaker
It sounds familiar. I think I'd like to a trailer for it. Basically, the initial teaser trailer was like a guy being launched out of a helicopter. He like throws a coffin out of the helicopter and it obliterates a guy. And then he lands and he has all these guns and he just fucking murders everybody. And he has like a trench coat, long hair. Oh, yeah. I saw it. I saw something about this a while back. Like not recent at all.
00:40:20
Speaker
But yeah, it's kind of got this arcadey action style game. It does look interesting. The title is just Peak Edge Lord, though. It's Gungrave Gore. But Gore is like an acronym. There's a period between each letter. Oh, cool. And I'm sure that it doesn't actually stand for anything. Probably not. So.
00:40:49
Speaker
Sometimes I still see this where it's just like it was a naming scheme and like the 2000s and then some games just never got over it, right? I mean, I like action games like that and things like that. How much do you like killing hordes of enemies versus let's say a couple more elites, like smaller encounters, more challenging?
00:41:17
Speaker
in like the general sense. I mean, I don't know, it depends on the game, I guess. Right? Like...
00:41:23
Speaker
One extreme example of that would be Fury. Those are a couple of, it's literally just boss fight, right? Like just boss fights. Very much a boss fight. And those are really cool. But if it's a type of game where you're supposed to be, it's a power fantasy. This is, what's wrong with video games is the male fantasy. Then yeah, I mean, you want to be able to mow through grunts or whatever. Yeah. I think any,
00:41:53
Speaker
A lot of good FPSs. I'm going back to Halo 2. It's nice to have a diversity because it feels cool to like, oh, let's just fall in mid camp. I took it out all the grunts and they don't know how to fight back because they're grunts. You find some elites and then, oh shit, there's a hunter and they're huge and you have to play a little more strategically. It kind of mixes it up.
00:42:15
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it's part of the schematic or blueprint to in-depth gameplay is to vary up the difficulty of enemies so that people have the opportunity to flex, to breathe, and then they're challenged by something else that's more challenging. I think that's pretty core to a lot of games.
00:42:40
Speaker
There was, like, Left 4 Dead, another great example that I'm definitely thinking of because you literally mentioned Hunter as one of the more difficult enemies, but the specials, for instance. The other alternative is, again, I haven't played, but I've seen some videos on, and it's old, and it's not new, it's not worth talking about, but God Hand has, like, escalating difficulty, right? Where there are the boss fights,
00:43:09
Speaker
But then everybody else is kind of like just mooks and grunts and things like that. But if you're kicking butt, the game gets more difficult over time until you literally like use an emote or something to beg to lower the difficulty and then it makes it easy again. I've had some curiosity to check out that game after Seth's review of it, because that was really my only exposure to it.
00:43:32
Speaker
I don't think it's my type of game for how tight and hard the combat probably is because I'm playing God of War on not crazy standard difficulty and I get mass beat fairly decently because I'm like, why isn't this like Elden Ring? Where's my natural?
00:43:54
Speaker
But it just it seems very interesting because it's like, again, like an over the top story. Just crazy shit happening. Oh, yeah. Looks it looks fun. Mm hmm. Maybe I could watch somebody play and live vicariously through them. So if you want to pick it up and stream it, that'd be cool. Which one? Gun grave. Also also gun grave. Yeah.
00:44:22
Speaker
Or wait, which one, which one did you say? I spoke over you. God hand. God hand. Yeah. The other one, gun bound. Fuck it. Korean bound. Korean. I'm sure there's been a lot that's been added to gun bound, but I think God hand was, I'm pretty sure God hand was like a PS2 game.
00:44:41
Speaker
I have a PS2. You can share it at my house. First step to streaming it is you plug in the RCA cables. I'll just get a really long one to get over to your place. Yeah, that might be a little bit much. That's going to be a lot of daisy chaining.
00:45:03
Speaker
Now there was a man, I'm introducing a segue that I'm not going to be able to fulfill on. I was looking at Steam and there are some games upcoming this month that were relatively interesting, but I can't remember them, which was the reason this is a bad segue. Hey guys, I'll just keep you informed. Games are still coming out.
00:45:25
Speaker
Uh-huh. And I know that we have a separate episode format, so I don't want to step on the shoes of that too much for games in the month. But I kind of was submerged in the games I was playing at the time. Ridiculous
Influences on Food Cravings
00:45:44
Speaker
amounts of Middle Earth, Shadow of War.
00:45:47
Speaker
But apparently I thought I had beaten the game in the past and I was going back and beating it a second time I had never completed the epilogue after which there are actual credits Wow post game scene and stuff like that. So I think I played that in 2017 I believe the first time and Apparently didn't beat it Until 2022 so we made it
00:46:14
Speaker
Hey man, I've done that too. There was a Psychonauts for me. It was one that I initially played and I could not get past The one level because of how the controls were I think as I'm or mouse or something and it was like the last section with like the rising water like this is bullshit and then like yeah years later I was like
00:46:35
Speaker
This is a great game. Let me go back to it. Actually beat it. And I was like, wow, we finally got there. Uh-huh. Yeah. It feels good to come back to something that you've been struggling on and then you just kick its ass. Yeah.
00:46:51
Speaker
For sure. Take that. It's also good to feel that you're a better video game player now. I say it that way to avoid accusing you of being a gamer. You're a better video game player now than you were in the past, which is also a nice ego boost.
00:47:08
Speaker
Yeah. Um, it's not like something like a second row. I feel like a perfect example of that. Like the first time you go through the game, you don't know how a lot of things operate, how to do things correctly or efficiently. And you kind of struggle your way through, but you make it to the end, eventually beat the boss. And then you go back through and you're like, let me just try and play for a little bit. And then you get through several bosses in like two hours. You're like, was I always this good?
00:47:33
Speaker
Uh-huh. It's just like the muscle memory comes back and it feels good to do a challenge again. Yeah. I think Sekiro is especially like that. Like you can get a sort of similar experience in some of the other Souls games, but Sekiro was literally like, it's basically a rhythm game. The boss fights are almost basically a rhythm game. Once you've got it, you freaking got it.
00:47:59
Speaker
But also like anybody else has to get it as well. There's no like magical cheese. I mean, there are technically cheese strats for some things, but like how I do it is how you have to do it.
00:48:14
Speaker
It used to be possible to get like, what was it? Two or three, killing blow pips off of the spirit monk on the bridge through various cheese strategies, like jumping up into the branch and like stunning them and doing some stuff. I don't know. There was a speed run strategy. Huh? They patched the monk. Yeah, they patched it eventually. So you can't get every single, you can't get like three health bars off of the boss for free.
00:48:42
Speaker
I just liked that boss because it was challenging. Yeah, it's still challenging. Yeah, especially if you don't take three health bars off. So I love going back to the game being like, Oh, I, you know, got through the first couple of bosses really quickly. Nice. And I get to like an actual boss and it's like, Oh, shit. Yeah. It gets checked a little bit. I forget about Sekiro sometimes and like it's a place in this whole series, but
00:49:09
Speaker
In some ways, it's more replayable to me than like, or I would have more interest in replaying it than even Elden Ring or something like that until more content comes out. Elden Ring is great and there's so much cool stuff you can do with it.
00:49:25
Speaker
I don't know. It's not just like it's not as tight because Sekiro is literally obviously it's not an open world game. It's like, hey, follow this path, kill these guys. Yeah. So it feels like a lot more fluid and cohesive versus Eldering. Maybe you fight a boss and then it'll be a while before you face another boss. You have to explore, do some other stuff.
00:49:52
Speaker
Yeah. If we go back to anything like that, I mean, I know we're talking about middle earth shadow of war, but like, do you have a game? Do you always kind of go back to, to like, do another run in like Hollow Knight Celeste, anything like that? As like a single player game, not as much because we've already talked about like Starcraft or hots or something like that. And those are multiplayer, obviously. If I play against bots, it's single player. Um, but that's not really what you're talking about for
00:50:23
Speaker
A playthrough. It's pretty rare for me to go back to a single player game. Shadow of War was something that had like a lead up because I was literally like I was watching lore videos on Lord of the Rings on YouTube. And I kept thinking about like, man, that game was really cool. And I really liked the Nemesis system and all this stuff. And finally, there was just like a breaking point after a week of watching these videos where I was just like, OK, I'm going to go play it.
00:50:50
Speaker
I love the phenomena where kind of similar to yawning. If enough people yawn around you, you kind of instinctually yawn in the same way. If I talk about pizza enough times to you just throughout the week, you're going to end up getting pizza that week. You're like, I'm kind of feeling pizza because your mind is like, I like that idea. I'm going to hold on to that.
00:51:13
Speaker
ProZD actually had a video recently where he reviewed a bunch of Burger King food. And I watched that video this morning. And then- I don't know what you have for lunch. So I made it through the workday and stuff. And then my wife was finishing up streaming and it was like,
00:51:32
Speaker
Hey, do you want Taco Bell? And she's like, yeah. And then we went and got Taco Bell. But I, I did want to, to go out and get some food at least. I'm not so crazy as to get Burger King, but. Yeah. There's sometimes where like I'll watch a cooking video and think, man, I really hope somebody makes me that. Mm-hmm.
00:51:58
Speaker
Oh my gosh, that's any cooking video for me though. We start with toast. I'm like, I'm out. Too rich for my blood. The YouTube Korean street food hole. Oh my gosh.
00:52:16
Speaker
Like they don't have any audio besides just like them cooking. Um, but like they just show the process of like, Hey, here's a giant walker. Here's a specific thing. Or we're making these buns or, and everything just looks so delightful. You're like, I would definitely love to pay like $2 to eat this fresh.
Food Memories and Humor
00:52:33
Speaker
Um, but I have to go very far to get it. That is the trick. That is how they get you. Um,
00:52:42
Speaker
No, that looking at food is a precursor to eating food. That's the problem. So gotta be careful with that. As you know, that's why they have, that's why cabinets exist, Jake. Fridge is not for refrigeration. It is to shield your eyes. This actually checks out. This makes a lot of sense. How many see fridges do you have or have you seen? Yeah. I mean, I don't have any friends that, um,
00:53:13
Speaker
have see-through cabinets to really judge it, to be like, okay, these guys BMI is higher or lower than others. I'm just imagining like if we had one see-through cabinet where we kept cereal or something, it's just like a consistently depleting container of cereal throughout the day. But I really feel like certain things you see or hear about
00:53:40
Speaker
does influence you. Like one of the reasons I don't like to keep a lot of snack food in the house is because I'm going to become not sober and eat it. And I don't want that to happen a lot. So I usually just try and avoid it. That is fair. That's very accurate. Um,
00:54:03
Speaker
snack food is particularly a problem when you're a person like me. And it's like, if there's more than one step to the food preparation than the food, it's like, it's impossible. There's like a skill check and it's just, it doesn't even let you click it. Um, cause you just don't have any points in cooking or survival. Um, so you can't make any of that stuff. What are these magical numbers on this microwave? Uh-huh. I think the microwave, I can do what the problem is.
00:54:33
Speaker
There's like, there's not many composite foods that you make in a microwave. No, but it's, I understand the, the ease of access where you're like, I could spend time cooking a thing or hear me out and you just un, unpeel a package and you're done. Yes. Yeah. I like, uh, because of that, I like nachos. Technically that's a two step process. You put chips on a plate and then you put cheese on the plate and he also started.
00:55:01
Speaker
Unless you're doing cold ass cheese. That's it. That's it. That's it. It can only go so far. I have been adding Nashville hot, like just a drizzle across the top and then like a little bit sour cream after. And that's pretty good.
00:55:20
Speaker
It was really funny. I saw Landon yesterday, and we grabbed the wings, me, him, and Jen. And we were talking about the wing night thing we want to try and do every so often. And he was like, does Jake like buffalo wings? And I was like, yeah. Last time we saw him, he literally got buffalo wings. And he was like, oh yeah, we used to get hot wings at work all the time. I'm like, yeah. He just phased that memory out entirely.
00:55:49
Speaker
Pretty much every single time, like where were we going? Jake has always gotten buffalo wings. We were going to the place with the jumbo buffalo wings, that Italian place, that small Italian place. Mamas? It'll just say, it's called Mamas, yeah.
00:56:02
Speaker
And every single time, it was the wings. Sometimes people were getting chicken cheesesteaks and things like that. I was like, nope, just getting an absurd portion of jumbo wings. Just getting a lump of bread with some bones in it, some buffalo sauce, and if I'm lucky, me too.
00:56:21
Speaker
Those are really good though, actually. I realized that like, they're not going to be on a running or in the running for like competitive, good dry rub wings or anything like that. But like they were just really good. I like them more than the place we tried last night. Yeah, that's fair. I think a pizza pub closed down. I thought they were supposed to reopen.
00:56:50
Speaker
I mean, maybe they did, but I think the reason they closed down was because they weren't paying their workers. Which is, you know, not a great reason to close down. No, they should have stayed open. Fuck the workers. Do they really need employees? They can just put the wings out on the table. Just walk up and grab them. That's fine.
00:57:14
Speaker
I'll just let the customers back in the kitchen. Fuck it. Cost savings. Uh-huh. Dude, I'd be so fucking pissed if I did not get paid for my job once. I can't imagine that they were happy about that either. Especially like all jobs are like, oh, I do this for the money. Yeah, it's a need. It's not like that. I'm just doing it for fun. Uh-huh. It's not a hobby.
00:57:43
Speaker
You probably have other hobbies that you would do if you were not being paid. Yeah. No, that's kind of part of the agreement is that you are reimbursed for your time. If you're lucky, you enjoy what you do, but you should still be paid for it. I do enjoy things that I do. I do not get paid to do them. I can tell you that much. Yeah, those are past times. But yeah, I did really like their
00:58:13
Speaker
their hot sauce. Back when I was more of like a hot sauce aficionado, it just hit like a really nice, a nice burn, burning, terrible spot. But talking about dragon fire, dragon fire was nice. Yeah.
00:58:26
Speaker
Mm-hmm. It was really remember remember I'd always get it. They're like what what type of wings you want? I'm like Dracarys Man, they're like, what is that? I'm like, you'll find the game. I throws you figure it out Uh-huh. It's actually a really big popularly sensation. I'm surprised you ever heard anything about it. Yeah HP only anything to you. Anyway, it's uh, no No, I don't do that as much now but like a little bit I
00:58:51
Speaker
A little bit. Buffalo wings now and then and Nashville hot. Not a ton of it. I'm not drowning in it because one of the things that Pizza Pub did have was the we would get the buffalo chicken pizza. Yes. But rather than buffalo sauce, we're like literally put dragon fire sauce on it.
00:59:12
Speaker
Um, and they're like, are you sure? And we're like, we do this every time. Um, it was always a bad decision. Anytime the place makes and like actively promotes their own hot sauce. That means it's good. Even ready to go burrito back in the day had like, uh, during a hot sauce where I was like, holy shit. So maybe at some point I will try and make my own hot sauce. I hit that nice, nice spot.
00:59:41
Speaker
Yeah, I've known a couple friends in our friend group who have like dabble on the edges of it or dove straight into the deep end. Taking this back to the magma dream, I guess. But if you didn't say it, I wouldn't have gotten that call back. I'll be honest. All right. If I make a hot sauce, I will call it magma cube. Magma cube like that.
01:00:10
Speaker
Hmm. It's actually just a Steve block from a ultimate. Oh my gosh. Freaking Steve. All right. We hit time. We're good. Okay. We're good. Okay. The producer says we can call it. All right. Well, um, as we are being ushered off of the set, um, I guess we will wrap this one up.
01:00:35
Speaker
If you guys have ideas for future episodes or favorite hot sauces, you should tell us what type of hot sauces you like. Send those suggestions in for games to play, episodes to make, hot sauces to ingest at soapstonepodcast.gmail.com, or you can join the discussion on Facebook at facebook.com slash soapstone podcast. And as always, we'll see you in the next one. Have a good night.