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S2 Ep68: Remnant: From the Ashes
74 Plays6 years ago
[Minor Spoilers Only]
Join Dave and Jake as they jump into the fray together once more to figure out what this co-operative apocalypse simulator is about!
Thoughts? Comments? Requests for new episodes? Feel free to email them in!
SoapstonePodcast@gmail.com
Like our podcast? Like our podcast! We'll post when new episodes are uploaded!
https://www.facebook.com/SoapstonePodcast/
Join Dave and Jake as they jump into the fray together once more to figure out what this co-operative apocalypse simulator is about!
Thoughts? Comments? Requests for new episodes? Feel free to email them in!
SoapstonePodcast@gmail.com
Like our podcast? Like our podcast! We'll post when new episodes are uploaded!
https://www.facebook.com/SoapstonePodcast/
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Icebreaker
00:00:26
Speaker
How's it going, everyone? Welcome to another episode of Soapstone. My name is Jake. I'm joined by my co-host as always, Dave. How's it going tonight, Dave? Eh, not ideal. No? What's wrong?
00:00:36
Speaker
I'm hungry. Yeah. That's fair. I mean, you did just buy food for me and then watch me eat the food. I smelled it. It's part of a new thing. I'm trying where I just live vicariously through other people. Hmm. That works until death. That's the problem. If you don't actually eat, you know, I'm going to be a super feeder. I'm going to starve out in a week. You know, you're just, you're playing hard support.
00:01:01
Speaker
Oh, no, no, you you hate the food I'm trying to be like my grandma but uh more intense. Hmm. That's fair. Manja
First Impressions of Remnant from the Ashes
00:01:09
Speaker
manja. Yeah Yeah, that's fair uh the game that we would like to talk about uh this week is a relatively recent release uh called remnant from the ashes Which um, there's like a what would you say like 30 chance that our listenership is played with us?
00:01:30
Speaker
With the one guy we played with. There's definitely one person who we know we played with who's listening to it. Um, I might listen to part of the episode for the edits. Yeah, but so there's a 50% chance. I don't know how percentages work. Um, this is, I shouldn't say first, but it's uncommon for us to cover something that came out this recently. Normally. I think the last was Sekiro.
00:01:54
Speaker
Yeah, yeah certain things like we Playing we pick up like, okay, we can actually drop so on this like it's yeah if there's enough content There's nothing we want to talk about But I feel like this one kind of came out of Left field a little bit cuz I didn't really hear too much about it No, and then I think Steve mentioned it I saw something on YouTube and then Ian started talking about it. Yeah, I'm like, all right What's what's this hubbub?
00:02:19
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, and sometimes it's like ian does the same thing I do to a certain extent where it's like initial burst of hype And then you see if it like settles, you know, just take a moment be like is this guy? You know doing drugs and playing games and he's going to calm down and realize always it's not game of the year, you know, um, but uh, and this and this one the the hype kind of continued and you know, let's uh, let's check it out
00:02:44
Speaker
So let's buy in on that.
Game Overview and Developer Background
00:02:46
Speaker
Um, and part of the, part of the reason is, uh, it's a co-op game, right? So it's a third person shooter, action, adventure, RPG, optionally co-op. These are all words that are technically true. Yeah. I mean, it is.
00:03:04
Speaker
I would say it's best described as a third person shooter. You can still like go into sighted stuff. You can play with other people, which I highly recommend. It's more than just a shooter. Right. It's not like Gears of War, right? Gears of War is also a third person shooter.
00:03:26
Speaker
I was gonna make a joke about which game has a worse plot or story line. I don't actually know what the plot for Gears is. I wasn't really a Gears fanboy so much. That was Microsoft's thing, right? Yeah.
00:03:41
Speaker
But yeah, it was developed by a developer called Gunfire Games. They made Darksiders 2 and 3. I think I played some of 2. I might have even beat 2. Didn't play 3. That's the one with the other horsemen of the apocalypse.
00:03:59
Speaker
The lady yeah, the lady I can't remember which one she was but Not war not war and not death. Yeah, I think it's wrath or something. I don't know. Well, it's war death famine. Mm-hmm I'm pretty sure she wasn't famine Can't remember who the other horseman of the apocalypse pestilence. Oh
00:04:20
Speaker
I feel like both of those are wrong, though. Yeah, I don't know exactly what she was, but probably pestilence. This is guessing from Binding of Isaac. I know I have somebody listening who's just shouting like what it is. Right. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, coming off of those games into Remnant, it's a pretty big genre shift. Those are kind of like action sort of Devil May Cry style.
00:04:43
Speaker
Hack and slash games with like a mix of zelda and um, this is very much not like that It's not at all. They wanted to be a little more true to the roots of like oh gunfire games We should have a game that's more focused around guns. Yeah, we should have guns And it's published by perfect world who until i've played like a lot of their mmo's champions online resented it because it wasn't city of heroes, but
00:05:08
Speaker
Went back and played city of heroes didn't stand up as much. So maybe I resent them less now Star Trek, which I also played a bit and Neverwinter which Jenny and I played actually a fair amount until we got tired of the dailies Yeah, exactly But coming off of all those MMOs, they're like one other single-player game With a developer and then it's like remnant from the ashes. So this is kind of Sort of spontaneous
Unique Features and Inspirations
00:05:36
Speaker
A little bit. It's almost out of nowhere. Um, I don't know what I would necessarily correlate it to. There've been other games like that. Like, um, I think rock steady made the Batman series and people were like, what did you do before this? And it was like nothing. And they were like, Oh, okay. Well, this game's great. Thanks for this. Um, but, uh, we'll, we'll get into our thoughts about remnant and whether it's one of those or not.
00:06:05
Speaker
One of those what? One of those, uh, kind of miracles from nothing sort of games, or if it's something, something more in between. I would say it's unique enough that I, I like a lot of aspects of it and I would like to see where it goes after this. So if they have like a remnant from the ashes too, and they fix some things or make certain things a little more detailed, more advanced, I could see following it as a series.
00:06:34
Speaker
Yeah, I would agree 100% with that like this is the type of game where So it's basically it takes a lot of inspiration from Dark Souls Dark Souls with guns exactly I had to say the line at some point. Yeah, it does share a lot of similarities. It's heavily inspired but just like Dark Souls one had some good ideas and
00:06:57
Speaker
But the gameplay kind of got cleaned up a lot in two and in three. My hope would be for Remnant that the gameplay is actually fairly solid. Hopefully it's elaborated on, but they actually fix up the storytelling.
Gameplay Mechanics and Systems
00:07:13
Speaker
Which I'm sure we will get into in some degree as we continue to break down the game But it's not just a third-person shooter kind of jumping in the mechanics There's also a melee as a slot you have a weapon slot specifically dedicated to your melee, right?
00:07:29
Speaker
I think I started with a um, it was like a hacksaw on like It was like almost a dead rising ish duct taped like hacksaw to a baseball bat essentially. Yeah But I didn't use that all that much because I didn't focus on melee. I mean it's The shittiest of the option. Yeah Because the the breakdown is you have your melee weapon you have a secondary gun, which is like your lighter pistol SMG
00:07:58
Speaker
Rudy Tutti, repeaty shooty. And then you have your long gun, which could either be a rifle. The shotgun actually also goes in that slot, right? It is. It is long. I went shotgun most of the time because it's just.
00:08:14
Speaker
Stupid good damage. Yeah, and then you also have your gear which it breaks down to a headpiece a chest piece and A foot piece right so you're counting. That's three guns you have on you already And then there's also space for a trinket which is kind of like a passive and then two rings which are also our passes hmm
00:08:38
Speaker
But each there's technically three different classes you can start as right? Mm-hmm. They do nothing except to modify what your starting gear is. Yeah, I think you guys get a treat Yeah, you're some of your trait points which are like, um passive skill points and things might be Initially shifted one way like I was more of a bruisey boy so I had more points in health and melee damage and
00:09:04
Speaker
I didn't really put more points into it as I went forward, but just starting out, that's who I was. Yeah. And I think I could be wrong, but I think each class gets one specific trait. The other classes don't have because mine was mod power or mod generation speed. Um, and I dumped a bunch of points in that. I max that out real quick.
00:09:23
Speaker
I don't know what mine would be though. Yeah, I'm not sure we never really compared because it didn't strike me until a bit later that Nobody else really had that one and I don't think I did anything unique to get it. So Treats are actually one of the cool systems in remnant and I actually really I
00:09:42
Speaker
I don't think it was implemented
00:09:54
Speaker
Like a tech tree skill tree. Well, they had like the skill trees, but then they also had like reload speed, improvement, gun damage. Um, and you just get those points like over time for like completing achievements or whatever killing things. And then you could just assign them like infinitely. They were just like, um, the, you would fall, the bonuses would fall off kind of as you continue to point points in them. Um, but they were minor things like that for the most part. They're also relatively minor and remnant.
00:10:24
Speaker
But there are exceptions it I would say on the whole It feels really minor. Yeah, cuz starting off might be like, oh you have a 1% reduction in elemental damage. You're like Thanks Right. Yeah, and it doesn't really feel that impactful
00:10:41
Speaker
I'd say even throughout the whole game. So you might cap out at like level 20 for a given trait. And my go-to example is I was trying a regen build. Because I saw, oh, if I have this armor set, depending on the pieces, each armor set has its own bonus. And the more pieces you have within that set, the stronger the bonus is.
00:11:03
Speaker
So I went with this uh wooden stuff for regen and then also tried to optimize my other gear around region, but even at full regen We test this out by like even would shoot me and i'd be like standing to be like watch they'll come back Um, it was noticeable. It was noticeable, but like in an engagement or a boss fight. Yeah, it's not going to be a maker break Yeah, so it felt kind of weird in that regard i'm, not sure how other builds would feel as well if you're going
00:11:33
Speaker
Um, I have possible bullet refunding. Yeah. Yeah. There were, there was, uh, the, the, the build I went for. So like the trait I had was faster mod power generation. And then my starter gear also was just, um, mod power generation. So the, the set bonus was things. So what is monster power? So mods were, um, or mods are the actives basically associated to your weapons. Like we talked about path of exile.
00:12:01
Speaker
You guys all listen to that episode obviously And how you can slot a gym into your gear and or a lot of gyms in the case of Path of Exile support everything like that this is kind of boiled down system where it's just a special and as you're using the weapon it charges the special and then you can use it and Weapons if they're if they're like boss weapons, they may have a special attached that you can't remove Otherwise you can kind of slot the specials however you want
00:12:30
Speaker
Yeah, it's not a nice option to kind of feed into your builds like
00:12:37
Speaker
even I were fighting singe, which is like a big wooden fire dragon dude. It was really cool. Actually, that's probably like that boss fight. One of my favorite fights. But I was fucking up Ian's attempts because I would keep getting these bad situations and dying. So I ended up going, all right, fuck it. So I took the pistol. I put some skull on it, which if I shoot enough people over time, build up a thing, I can summon a skull to shoot projectiles.
00:13:06
Speaker
Yeah. And I did the same thing with a shotgun where I put on, oh, I'll summon a turret. They last for like a fixed duration. But any ads that would spawn during the fight, they would start to be targeted. I'm like, oh, thank God. That gives me a little bit of breathing room. I also know there's an ad that's going to be up behind me. And I can deal with that and kind of like mitigate situation.
Multiplayer Experience
00:13:29
Speaker
And also I had like an army of like five things while I was also shooting the guy Yeah, and it was just you just saw like the health just go down at like a fixed rate. It's beautiful Yeah, no, it's there. It's really adaptive and I think that being able to pick and choose mods like that is One of the the strengths of the game that I wish that it kind of played into a little bit more because we mentioned the boss weapons Yeah, and now they most of the time have mods that can't be replaced so
00:13:56
Speaker
The things that actually can use mods are your basic weapons things like the smg the repeater pistol the long gun I think there's a sniper the shotgun yeah, and you really can't you get most of those very early on in the game and There are very few basic options later. I actually can't think of any yeah on the top of my head and
00:14:22
Speaker
So you're locked into whatever the special is for this cool gun you got off a boss. And sometimes the effect is actually really cool and awesome. But it's always without the flexibility of being able to swap it out for a utility kind of ability.
00:14:38
Speaker
Like there was the I'm gonna summon a lightning storm was like on my shotgun though. Mm-hmm. They're like, sorry. Yeah, so like that kind of Hurts it. Yeah kind of to what you're saying. I wish they would add more complexity for how you can customize. Mm-hmm
00:14:56
Speaker
Cause I feel like I've said in previous things, I really like the option of being like, I'm going to go fucking, uh, train fish to have sex and that's going to be my job. And people are like, what? I'm like, no, that's my thing. But then it works out and it's a lucrative business that I've started. And to see that come into effect. Whereas this, like I said, even with everything focused towards one build idea, it didn't feel hugely impactful. Yeah.
00:15:26
Speaker
And for contrast, my build was just focused around the mod speed, getting those mods up as quickly as possible. I started off more supporty. I was like, I'll just use the healing field, which you can start with. I don't know if everyone, did you start with that as well, the healing field? I'm trying to remember if I started with a mod. Yeah.
00:15:45
Speaker
I probably we got a pretty early on pretty early on but It actually it actually I felt like it worked pretty well, but I never tested the The contra positive or whatever I never tested You know take off all of the mod power generation things and see how quickly I'm building charge the set was supposed to be like 30% and then I had another like 30% off of my traits and
00:16:10
Speaker
But the shoe one bullets like we're done. Yeah, and some the different mods charge at different speeds so without explaining specifically what it was I Would argue that's not actually the case. Really? I think it's actually tied to the amount of damage that you're doing I think there's one exception at least most of them seem pretty close, but okay Yeah, what example do you have in mind?
00:16:33
Speaker
So there's one that provides a very useful, very powerful effect that could occur on death. And it takes forever to charge. We were in this desert canyon area, the one with all the buildings on both sides and bridges between. Do you remember that? Kind of like hovels on the left and the right side. I think we went through that together.
World Design and Environmental Critique
00:17:02
Speaker
Ian and I were running through that and it took him like the entire area basically to charge the mod it was crazy But it's an incredibly powerful mod and it looks really cool. It's very unique in the game I've seen this I don't actually know we should talk about it maybe After this because I want to avoid I'm gonna mention this in the description too, but I want to avoid really
00:17:27
Speaker
Hard spoilers. Yeah, because The game just came out, you know, so people should be able to listen to this and determine whether they're interested in the game Hopefully more than oh, I know now know I now don't need to play the game. Yeah, hopefully since the game came out you will still Respect and love the game as if you didn't know that the game came out You just really need to be supportive for the game is what I'm saying. Right? Yeah, exactly exactly
00:17:56
Speaker
Exactly But it was it was kind of a cool build and the the trade-off was your starter gear has lower armor values You can upgrade it at Ward 13, which is like the main hub of the game You revisit there every time you need to unlock a new boss weapon There's a lot of revisiting Ward 13 and
00:18:17
Speaker
And the starter gala, you might really like the special effect on it, but each armor set will have different resistances to different damage types, base armor value, and maybe it's substantial to swap that out. I literally never tried.
00:18:33
Speaker
Think I did wonder twice because when you and I were going to fight singes the other night I was like, oh I'm literally covered in flammable shit. Yeah, so I had a surprising buko amount of Negative armor sorry negative fire resistance. Mm-hmm, which translates to flammability. Yeah, so I was like, maybe not not so much. Oh
00:18:54
Speaker
It's probably a good call in that case. I know we also were in a fight where there was a lot of corrosive damage. And in that case, the wooden set actually resisted corrosive heavily, heavily, heavily. It's like each armor says like, I'm good at this thing. So what else you get out of it? And it just laughs like nothing. Yeah.
00:19:12
Speaker
And there's also like some neutral sets, which are like, they kind of have middle lean resistances and everything, but then they would have really high resistances like the, um, the, uh, the wooden mask we were talking about that had like 36 corrosive resist. Whereas most things may only have like two to four resists for a particular thing.
00:19:33
Speaker
It's, um, it allows for mixing up. Um, and this is almost always in response to a boss fight. Like, uh, the boss fights in the game are interesting. I think I like them. I think I like them. Yeah. Um, they're randomized, which is weird.
00:19:53
Speaker
Yeah. I'm going to elaborate that on that slightly. Yeah. So a lot of this game does have a good amount of RNG. So if I'm starting up a game file, it's not going to be identical to what Jake would have. Yeah. Like might start in.
00:20:08
Speaker
I mean like there's still like world areas where it's like i'm starting out here in the abandoned city and i'm going to the desert as far as story progression that's the same but he might start out in a different part of that area and he might have a different first boss or a different world boss he might play somebody who i've never actually encountered in my game so that's kind of cool because like we'd sometimes play at separate times and then we come across the thing and someone else be like
00:20:37
Speaker
Oh, I had no idea about this. Yeah, so it's kind of cool to like un unravel those things. Yeah as it goes Yeah, we actually uh, so ian probably had played in the most games overall because he played in three worlds He played on his own got a lot of progress We played in yours got a lot of progress. No, here's the thing. We actually played a lot on yours We did but it was like I went to play solo like uh two nights ago and it's like hey go do this boss i'm like
00:21:05
Speaker
When did we all yeah, I was like i'm way back I didn't realize we made a lot of progress quickly toward the end, but he was picking up Basically if you pick up drops in anyone's world an item everyone immediately gets that item everyone gets currency Uh, like special resources to like craft things
00:21:24
Speaker
The only thing you don't share was money. And I thought that you did until really late. And then I, or not money, sorry, ammo. Ammo is the one thing you don't share. And yeah, that was like, oh, I'll stop hogging literally all the long gun ammo by mashing pickup button. Like I'm, you know, going crazy. I would sheepishly like see that you guys are going like super long gun stuff. And I was like,
00:21:49
Speaker
Just get the pistol out so I could actually be a part of the ammo economy and contribute instead of just going off my empty shotgun like Grr. Yeah, but everything else is shared. So you since the item drops It's not like Dark Souls where it's like I cover this gold serpent ring right here You learned where it is. Let's go pick it up And only the host could pick it up and this one I
00:22:13
Speaker
You get, you all get the items as though you're basically getting full credit in the host world. Which is really nice if you're going squad deep because you guys can kind of fuck off and go off down like half and I can be going where I am. But if I find something, you guys don't have to go back and get it and vice versa. I don't have to go off that side tangent, but oh, look, I've gotten this rare item or I've gotten a tome to level up a trait.
00:22:39
Speaker
You have to be in the same area, but the areas are quite large, so you can. Yeah, you can't be AFK in the hub world. Yeah. Of them like that. I want to make that perfectly clear.
00:22:48
Speaker
but it was it was interesting because we would be um we'd be playing like in your world or in my world and ian's already seen he's gone through these areas like twice this is his third run through and he's an addict also we would get a ring that uh he he didn't have and so that like helps complete his collection um and if an item you already would have you instead just get some currency uh when like the host picks it up or when you pick it up um
00:23:15
Speaker
And it's it's kind of cool the items themselves I feel like They could have more This is one minor grip I have with the game is we talked about the traits how they kind of have these incremental Bonuses like a little bit of reload speed a little bit of elemental resist There's some impactful ones like crit chance and like crit damage and things like that but for the most part they're these small increments and it
00:23:38
Speaker
Kind of extends to the items There's Few equippable rings where it's like smack. Here's a huge tangible difference and how you're gonna be playing this game It's like ones like oh, I'll boost your credit score is like Okay, but only with experience It's cursed it's it's like they took
00:24:02
Speaker
I mean, obviously a lot of these ideas came from Dark Souls, like for Sam and regeneration and being surrounded by enemies or breaking through defenses. But it just felt like the light version, like MIT of everything. Yeah. That's actually, it's really cool ideas on premise, but then it's like, okay, that's your V1. How are we going to flesh it out to make it cool or unique or specific to this game series versus like.
00:24:31
Speaker
stamina regens 15% better. I'm like, that's a number. Yeah. It's not even a bad number, but just like, there's no, there's no like lightning cluttering or, or something like that. Or it's like, boom, your lightning damage is going to be like through the roof, but your physical defense is going to like take a penalty. They don't make you, they don't give you large bonuses with noticeable downsides. Yeah. It's not a risk reward.
00:24:56
Speaker
So an example, we rolled a ring that gave 20% range resist. And we're just like, okay, boss has some range attacks, we'll leave that on. And then once that's done, we'll switch back to a ring with like 15% bonus experience.
00:25:11
Speaker
game cool now 15 bonus experience i feel like is the most indicative of kind of the issue with like the way these rings were designed because if you're a min maxer or you're trying to like get those traits as quickly as possible like you just want to equip that ring as much as possible yeah that's early economy bonus yeah exactly it's like it's like bonus souls i guess actually it's like covetous silver serpent ring
00:25:39
Speaker
um but without
00:25:43
Speaker
you're always getting experience. So it's not like cover to silver serpent where you're like, I'm in farm mode, so I'm gonna do this and then I'll be down a ring because I'm using all my ring slots for economy. It kind of is something that's a default, but it doesn't make any interesting build decisions for your character. It doesn't open up any paths. It's just, oh yeah, that's good, so I'll use it.
00:26:10
Speaker
I feel like that's not super Inspired and they could have Made it more inspired if they actually had competitive Rings and that slot, but I never felt like oh, I'm not fighting a boss. I'm just going between bosses I should definitely equip something other than the experience ring because all of them are mediocre and
00:26:34
Speaker
yeah i guess i don't want to harp on it too much no i agree with you there there's a lot of points in the game where it it feels like a little bit low impact and it's like okay
00:26:47
Speaker
Yeah, but like so much of the world is beautifully designed. I first got in i'm like, what is this unity shit? Yeah, but then as I went through i'm like, oh, this is actually a lot of it is fleshed out really well And they have good Like good lighting, you know good standard shit But like going through different areas I was always like
00:27:08
Speaker
Like I enjoy the exploration part because I wanted to find Secrets or like different textures like oh, that's a cool thing. They did here We're coming across like the different enemy types as well. Yeah, like they're all The design for the game is pretty remarkable And I actually think that you start off in the least interesting area like post-apocalyptic It sucks has been it's still cool. Yeah, but it sucks. Oh
00:27:34
Speaker
It's like it feels kind of like the division if you're just rolling with a couple people And you're like all these buildings kind of feel really similar. I'm just in a city Yeah, kill some guys whatever and then it just like takes a right turn and goes all over the place
00:27:49
Speaker
Yeah, like when you go into the desert, I was like, okay, so like we're outside desert cool, right? Mm-hmm. Then there's like an enemy That like full-on charged me with its hands. I'm like, I don't like this. Yeah Looks down at my hands. This isn't good No, it's uh
00:28:08
Speaker
It does have a lot of diversity in the enemy types and the and the actual areas once you're making some progress through the game I mean they kind of follow a rough archetype of like Here are the guys who will run at you. Mm-hmm I want to get up and give you the melee slaps right here the guys who will say like, you know what? He's at a good distance. I'll throw some shit at him or shoot him. I
00:28:32
Speaker
Yeah, it's always it always it always kind of boils down to melee threat range threat caster, right? Like that's yeah, that's kind of what it turns into but the a lot of the enemies are designed with really cool Really cool aesthetics that encountering them the first time it's just like oh my
00:28:52
Speaker
Am I playing Halo or am I? Did I come through the star, uh, what was it? Um, Stargate, like actual, I was going to say the Stargate Stargate is what I was saying. That's Stargate from Stargate. Yeah.
Storytelling and Dialogue Challenges
00:29:05
Speaker
Um, but, uh, like you're fighting the Goa'uld basically at some point in the game. It's pretty accurate though. It's very close. Um, but it's, it is a really cool design and usually they don't stick around too long to make them tiring.
00:29:23
Speaker
Um, until you get to the next area. There's some exceptions where you spend like a little bit too long, but I'd say a lot of it feels good. The gunplay probably carries it a lot there too, because this game feels good to shoot in.
00:29:39
Speaker
Like it could have been, we haven't really talked about like how the gunplay feels. It's not call of duty, sort of like smooth. It's closer and it's not like fallout sort of jank. It's between like, um, I would say it's closer like destiny and how the shooting feels.
00:29:58
Speaker
I would say destiny were just going to the other third person example. I can think of gears. Yeah. Like you're kind of slow. There's a bit of a weight to what you do, but nothing feels bad. But I was initially playing on the 360 controller. Yeah. And they have like a bit of auto aim for any type of time that like an FPS is using a controller. Yeah. Um, and it,
00:30:22
Speaker
It's minor, but like it feels nice. I felt like I knew what I was doing for like strafing and shooting people and I did that for most of the game and then Jake and Ian were like What are you dumb? Just keyboard and mouse fool. So I switched to that and that also feels really good I mainly switched to that for the one boss fight where it summons a bunch of projectiles that then home in on you Yeah, and I was like I need to shoot these so I will use actual aiming
00:30:51
Speaker
Yeah, it's a little it's a little tough. I prefer keyboard mouse for anything shooty, but um almost always yeah, so I gotta What are your major gripes at the game because like my initial thing? Mm-hmm was like when I first was getting into the world Everything felt full tutorial bullshit Yeah, where it's like oh, hey, you're new here, right? Then they just go through the whole cast of people I don't give a fuck about yeah, and then they're not interesting and they're very tropey and
00:31:20
Speaker
I share the same gripes. Uh, the, there's a couple of cool NPCs I'm not going to talk about for spoiler reasons, but they're cool. Um, the rest of the cast is like, I have to interact with you for some tangible mechanical reason. And that's why I interact with them. Yeah. Like, um, and this is always, so like this game's more multiplayer focused as a core pillar.
00:31:45
Speaker
I would say then Dark Souls like you can play Dark Souls single player through the whole thing. There were ways to get people into multiplayer. This is it supports multiplayer. Exactly. You just join on somebody which Dark Souls didn't really do until like three that they made it really easy to get co-op going. Really easy.
00:32:07
Speaker
um and that Correct me if i'm wrong for dark souls 3 you could still not Stay in somebody's world through areas right now. You're still like locked out, but you could uh, like use the same password So you just always find their sign? um, they made it a lot easier, but not like Someone has joined your left or dead party, which is exactly what this one is basically um
00:32:30
Speaker
And I can't remember where exactly I started with NPCs. I was talking about the NPCs. Any game where you have almost mandatory multiplayer, it's very difficult to do storytelling at the same time. Like Borderlands is probably the like classical example of how that can and can't work.
00:32:51
Speaker
Hey, I'm MpC1. I'm here to tell you about this thing. Oh, incoming message. Hi, I'm so excited. Yeah, exactly. Someone's like ran through the area. They triggered like five messages. You're at a shop talking to somebody about a quest. You have some other notification. It's like being on the phone in like the checkout line. It's like, hey, do you have a bonus card? Oh, you're busy. You're like, sorry, I got to take this.
00:33:14
Speaker
Yeah, it's just, it's a weird, a layering of interactions. Also to that note, everybody would sprint to certain shopkeepers because if you were interacting with them.
00:33:25
Speaker
Nobody else could interact with them. Yep. That to me is a huge fuck up. Yeah, and There was one person who sold crafting materials. Mm-hmm And that was a limited resource based on the world. Yeah, that's fine If that is standalone, but if I want to talk to the Smith to upgrade my gear But Jake went to go take a piss after talking to Smith. I had to wait Yeah, there's that was a huge pain point for me. I
00:33:51
Speaker
No interruptions. And it's almost always when people are going to be talking to the same NPCs. You all have to craft a boss weapon or a boss mod. You all want to upgrade your gear. That's like two NPCs in particular, people are always talking to. And it's really obnoxious, kind of expounding upon that. There's interactive
00:34:14
Speaker
I guess interactive cutscenes would be the way to put it cutscenes with dialogue choices is basically like you're locked in in dialogue and everybody will um And and these situations will see the cutscene the host gets to choose which option options to say in dialogue There were times though where I did not see what those options were if I was spectating somebody who was the host Yeah, so I would just hear like one person talking and i'm like
00:34:40
Speaker
Uh-huh. Yeah, because it's the the lines the player characters are saying are not for the most part Voiced right you're just choosing dialogue options and the NPCs respond with voice responses
00:34:56
Speaker
So the issue with this is when you're in multiplayer, you don't actually know what the host is saying to elicit the responses the NPCs are saying. So if you were the opposite side, you got away from that Borderlands party where everyone's just like goofing off and shooting faces and stuff like that. And you were just like, all right, I'm playing with my friends who care about the lore.
00:35:13
Speaker
You literally won't know what your friend is asking the NPC unless they vocalize it like in discord or something Which I feel like is a pretty like pretty huge miss Yeah, it's a big shortcoming because you went through all this effort of locking people into this cutscene, but you're only telling one person Like only one person's aware of what the player is saying That's unfortunate
00:35:38
Speaker
And I feel for me it kind of if they were trying to put forward this plot It really takes me out of it because If somebody else is talking to the main quest person and I don't have to I'm like And so like we got to the last boss fight. Yeah, which by the way is labeled the last boss fight It is convenient which you know, I feel takes away from it. You should know it shouldn't build up to that point like oh shit We're here. Yeah
00:36:07
Speaker
Um, but when I saw when we were there, I'm like, guys, I think I might've missed something because I still have no idea what's going on. Yeah. To be fair. Um, it wasn't a game that I tried to pay attention to and I'm just running and running and gunning with friends. So a definite part of that is on me.
00:36:25
Speaker
They don't make it easy. Yeah, it's it's not facilitated. Well, I would say they almost like The standout example for me that bothers me probably the most is there are journals all over the game that have like I would say skyrim Almost levels of pages like in each journal where you're just like i'm gonna read this and read this and read this That is the worst thing you can possibly do in a multiplayer experience and people are still doing it like
00:36:53
Speaker
People see it as like uh, hey games do this right and they put it in but sometimes it's not the best yeah Like I think you can get more of having Like going to the portal example of like oh graffiti on the wall. I can infer meaning from that instead of needing to stop Open a book hope it's in like a legible cursive and being like oh, this was a character in the world This builds the world
00:37:19
Speaker
Yeah. And they don't have like, they have cool item descriptions for a lot of things, but they're mostly cool sounding. It's like a whip, like a quote or like a quip or something like that. Nothing to the extent of like a dark souls item description you're going to like pull or from and body will break it down.
00:37:35
Speaker
Yeah, it's not like They mention a new thing Like oh, this was used by like the zaka room and you're like, yeah, who are the zaka room, right? And then later you read another thing. It's like this was the zaka room shit bucket. You're like, oh my god It ties it all together. Yeah, there's there's nothing like that. They do have like it's not all journals there are a few like pages or things you can read but
00:38:00
Speaker
For the most part the lore is harder to get into I think I haven't spent a whole bunch of time on it, but
00:38:12
Speaker
going through the game. I don't actually know what any of it meant, which is kind of an interesting, that doesn't have to be bad. Like Dark Souls, Dark Souls one, first time I beat it, I was like, Oh, I had no idea it was a story outside of like the initial cut scene. Yeah. Like, Oh, that's that person done.
00:38:31
Speaker
But the thing was, I feel like Dark Souls 1, you go back and Foddy breaks it down for you.
Technical Issues and Bugs
00:38:39
Speaker
And then you learn all of this lore. Yeah, you get a deeper appreciation. Exactly. I have a feeling that might not happen for Renmin. So I will say it probably won't. But it would not surprise me if the YouTubers who I follow who do Dark Souls content,
00:38:58
Speaker
Iron Pineapple, Young Maestro, Inferno Plus. I can see them doing content on this within the next week or so. Yeah. It's probably just not going to be like a ton because there's not really PvP. It's all like co-op. Yeah. If it's PvP, it's really janky and gentle. Speaking of some jank, before I want to like hype up some of the cool boss encounters, um,
00:39:25
Speaker
Died more than I should have yeah for falling out of the world. Yeah, which I mean one is more than enough
00:39:32
Speaker
Um, yeah, there was, there was quite a few bugs, uh, in this, it wasn't like a constant stream of bugs we had to overcome, but they were take you out of the experience or, um, diminish your enjoyment type bugs. Yeah. Like, um, if you were, there's a particular area where you can kind of like warp around and, uh, if you're not the host, there's a chance that warping between like two platforms just puts you on the ground.
00:40:02
Speaker
So he has to like run back and pick you up or whatever. That's not ideal. You know, you should be able to move the way the game wants you to without dying. You must go this way. It might cost you your life.
Boss Fights and Replayability
00:40:16
Speaker
Right. Didn't you design this? Yes. Then we had like we had lag and some other kind of kind of kind of minor things for the most part. But they're all things that I wish would have been kind of caught
00:40:32
Speaker
Yeah, some heart crashes just have somebody run through the game and that would come up because I think each of us have Had some issues i'm not sure it's just in the multiplayer context. Yeah, it made it way worse Yeah, i'm the multiplayer for sure. I remember there were some times I would
00:40:47
Speaker
Like there's like a slight ramp or stairway and there's like a solid platform next to it and I would kind of Instead of going fully up the ramp and then onto the platform. I would try and Clip like a last bit of corner. Yeah, you know It's probably smooth enough where it would be like oh he's going this way I'll continue to go that way and I would get stuck in these like falling T poses a little bit like gravity Was in full effect and there's no ground. Yeah, and then I take a step up. I'm like
00:41:16
Speaker
what no it's it's it's got some some weird funkiness to it um i also i didn't really really think about this till like right now but dark soul spoils you with iframes when you get knocked down yeah this game doesn't do that you can just get hit by like two attacks simultaneously and die um in particular some bosses will hit you like that
00:41:42
Speaker
We're just like, oh, yeah, no, I'm going to swing here and projectiles coming from the other side. And you're dead because it's a hundred to zero. Yeah. Yeah. That can be a bit. If you get swarmed by enemies, the same thing will happen where you can't really dodge through enemies.
00:41:57
Speaker
They just kind of take turns slapping you and you're like, that's it. Guess I'll die. I don't really know if there's a counter to that outside of preventing the situation by initial better positioning and like dealing with aggressors as they come. But there's a hype boss fight moment. The first boss fight I encountered, I kind of went into this.
00:42:24
Speaker
I won't say abandoned lab, but there's a lot of like
00:42:31
Speaker
Can you speak with me? As I lightly gesture with my hands, I hope that Jake infers meaning. Yeah. I'm more worried about the listeners' very meaning from the end gestures. Me having long pauses is no surprise than anybody. But like these graded walkways. OK, yeah. And it felt kind of cool, but it's very, very tight quarters. And there's this guy who had like a big ass sword. I'm like, that's the boss. Yeah. Because also I saw him in the health bars like, this is the boss.
00:43:01
Speaker
So I was fighting him, I was timing my rolls to like dodge away out of shit, getting those perfect dodges. I'm like, I'm the best. Uh, in the background though, I heard like some buzzing that got a higher pitched of these like little mushroom headed enemies that kind of come at me and then self-destruct and have like a cloud of deals damage and also had some other negative effect. Yeah.
00:43:22
Speaker
And I get pincered a lot by these and like this fucking sucks Yeah, but I kept going back and again and again and I eventually beat him with the help of my friends, right? But it was a really interesting Fight cuz I was like, oh I'm expecting just like
00:43:37
Speaker
Big guy or what's going on? Mm-hmm, but they generally have done a good job of balancing. Here's a big fight Here are some ads here's some other mechanics and I didn't have two boss fights from like oh, this is the same as that one Yeah, some of them are like similar, but they do a good job injecting mechanics to make it Make it really interesting and you may not see like the cool boss fights we saw because I
00:44:05
Speaker
Certain ones are guaranteed. I think um, but other ones are are random for your playthrough. So Uh, it's really recommended to like go through multiple times your play and your friends are there per No idea I would guess two Some of them some of them I feel like are three because ian got one we got one and then
00:44:26
Speaker
The wiki said there's nothing yeah, yeah something like that But yeah, you're you're your drops are completely different depending on what bosses you get so that's kind of cool And they also have like some some interesting mechanics. Here's another thing. I'm not sure about talking about the not sure. Okay, okay at Specific mechanics in boss fights to get weapons Dark Souls obviously inspired by Dark Souls, right like in Dark Souls. It's like cut the tail. Mm-hmm
00:44:56
Speaker
um, but in this one there may be don't allow the boss to kill any of his ads with a special move or um, like weaken the boss and then like pull a weapon out of his body or do something like this and it's almost never obvious Like almost absolutely. I would say actually just never know they don't tell you in any way shape or form but there's
00:45:24
Speaker
I honestly don't know how I feel about it. I don't know if it's a good thing or a bad thing or if I'm indifferent to it, but it's almost like strategy guide fodder where you would never know unless you accidentally did it, your friend accidentally did it, or one of you looked it up. Yeah. So I would say I'm kind of neutral on where my feelings are about this, but
00:45:47
Speaker
It's kind of cool in the way that you might go through and fight the boss a certain way. Maybe I'm going through fighting the boss a separate way. And I just, I only shoot him in the eyes. I really hate his eyes and his eyes pop out. Yeah. Due to the sheer amount of bullets and force. Right. And I was rewarded for that. And I got something cool, but I didn't get what you got and vice versa, but then we can kind of share that experience. Oh, that's cool. I didn't know about that. And then we go back.
00:46:14
Speaker
Or join each other's games or a new play session Or just change the difficulty and keep playing but now you know that yeah, that's kind of how those guides get built up I think uh an example of a way that I would like to see it done though is um, and we're just i'm making so many comparisons to dark souls, but it's freaking dark souls like The podcast and what this game is based off of right? Yeah, but um ornstein and smough
00:46:40
Speaker
Like Ornstein and Smough, the reward you get depends on who the final opponent you beat is. Either Ornstein set or Smough set, that weapon, right? But there's intuition into the fact that you missed something, but it could have gone differently. Because the first boss you kill is the one that gets absorbed by the second boss, and then you get the set from the second boss.
00:47:04
Speaker
So you're like, wait, what if I killed the other boss? And that kind of that intuitively leads you to know, to find out that there's another way to do it. There's also like a visual indicator in that case where it's like you're powered up, get in there. Yeah. They have a cutscene of like the power absorption and.
00:47:23
Speaker
Yeah. And they like grow in size and you're like, Oh shit. And they're all their taxes, stronger. And you as a player, like, Oh, this is the second phase. But also you're like, what would have happened if I would have done the other one?
00:47:35
Speaker
Yeah. And then like, as a, a generalized thing, if the creature has a tail, you can cut the tail almost always in Dark Souls. And so it's less, um, esoteric, I think, than some of the methods to get gear in this one. Um, but again, I'm not sure if it's a good thing or a bad thing. It's just expect that if you're going in without reading the Wiki, you'll probably miss gear off of some of these boss fights and that's fine.
00:48:05
Speaker
But yeah, nothing is like required to get. Mm-hmm Literally at all it just kind of adds variety like a certain shop sellers sells like a Spear melee
Economy, Crafting, and Value Assessment
00:48:18
Speaker
weapon. I've never bought it or used it. Yeah, it's fine
00:48:23
Speaker
It's actually, I saw some criticism of the game because they were like, I keep getting all these items, but I've already upgraded like my gun, my gun's good. Like none of these other things are really competitive. None of them are necessary. Like why would I use these?
00:48:40
Speaker
And the contrary point to that is like, yeah, that's, that's dark souls. Like you could use your long sword and chant it with fire. And you have one of the best weapons in the game overall for the entirety of the game. Like that might not match your play style.
00:49:00
Speaker
There is like a bit of a sunk cost fallacy though, where I had already upgraded my pistol a lot. And this new other gun came along and I'm like, but your base damage is shit compared to my plus 20. That's yeah. And I didn't know how much I wanted to invest to see where it's scaled to. It does largely inherit that from Dark Souls 2 though. So it's like,
00:49:21
Speaker
Yeah, if you already had a plus five weapon or something admittedly like the pluses I don't know if it's harder easier to upgrade weapons in this Probably easier. I think the dark souls Yeah, they definitely will throw crafting resources at you. Mm-hmm where it starts out with like you need iron Minecraft yeah, I need a different type of iron but they will give it to you as you progress through the game just from like drops and
00:49:48
Speaker
By the way attack everything in the game you can break boxes chairs earns Mm-hmm vases so many things and then it will drop Resources like scrap which is your currency or crafting resources like variations of iron. Yeah, it's free shit. It's there for you There's also a shop person who will sell you some of those crafting resources every so often
00:50:13
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, it's uh, there's not as much to collect as in in dark souls. It's much more focused Um, it's also shorter The dark souls too at least but everything shorter than dark souls, too So This is a game that's currently a price point of 40 I should look at my steam time for how much i've actually spent on it. Yeah, um, I don't know probably like 20
00:50:43
Speaker
Okay, maybe a little more you're saying for you or for us probably around 20 or a little more I'm guessing actually. Yeah, but like that's still buy me time one second
00:50:53
Speaker
That's still to me, I think would be equivalent for what I expect to get out of it for that price point. I feel like if it were any cheaper, it would be a definite pickup, at least for a first title. I really like what they did overall, but I would still like to see more out of it. So like 40 for like a new game that I have no other basis for is like a little bit of a steep buy-in.
00:51:21
Speaker
Yeah, I could see this being like I could see this 30 Oh, yeah 30 much better matter much better certain games will be like buy it at any price Even if they jack the price to be million dollars. It's worth it under tail and other games I'm like, you can wait till it goes on sale. Yeah, it's not like a must play right now
00:51:38
Speaker
I kind of miss, um, so I did, I did look it up. Main story was estimated at 16 and a half hours. So it was like relatively close, uh, with my guess of 20. Um, but I miss, um, being able to buy, uh, packs of games on steam.
Co-op Experience and Future Potential
00:51:53
Speaker
It was just like, Oh yeah. By four, you know, like liquid left for dad came out. Oh yeah. It's like, Hey, um, for your friends too though. Do you have friends? Yeah.
00:52:03
Speaker
Yeah, it was it was really nice because this is like I mean treat this like a co-op game, right? Like it's hard to recommend that experience necessarily for dark souls You could go through and co-op but you have to like jump over some hurdles Yeah, this game is much better in multiplayer than it is in single player. Yes as somebody who again two nights ago Redid the the bridge fight. Mm-hmm solo
00:52:29
Speaker
Yup. I got on the first pass. Oh, you did. Cause by then I had better traits. I was more experienced at the fight. You had the set. Also a goddamn baller. Also kind of that, but it was a much different experience by myself than being like, Oh, this person will help mitigate this. Yeah. Or you can kind of make call outs from mechanics and stuff. Mm-hmm.
00:52:54
Speaker
versus just like, I'm gonna not die, and then when I get a chance, attack them. Yeah. But I think if you are looking for a co-op shooter kick with a kind of post-apocalyptic fantasy vibe, then you could do a lot worse than rimmed it from the ashes.
00:53:18
Speaker
It's something that I would definitely say Check out the trailer. Maybe check out a bit of like a playthrough and see if it's your type of thing. I Know we definitely had fun with it. Yeah But as we've stated time and time again Certain things did feel a little bit lacking Mm-hmm that I would like to see them improve upon in the future if they continue to make games in this space. I
00:53:41
Speaker
This is a developer I would be much more interested in to see what they come out with next. If they expound upon this, there's a lot of potential here to fill out the universe and the mechanics, fix upon some of the shortcomings of this game and see where they end up.
00:53:58
Speaker
If they followed any of destiny's like hey, here's this cool shit Because I really like when you have something it's like hey, here's this unique ability Yeah, it's not like oh it shoots like a different type of bullet where it's fire versus ice Yeah, it like does something cool and unique
00:54:14
Speaker
That's one of the reasons i really love games like path of exile because you have these unique items that Advert like severely change what your play style is. Yeah, i'm like, oh cool What is that combo with what else can you do? I like the same thing in magic. I like playing like metagame theory crafting
00:54:32
Speaker
Yeah, here's the card or the weapon or the trait or the skill point that just is so warping that it becomes its own build. It's something you want to build around. This game just needs a little bit more of that.
Final Thoughts and Listener Engagement
00:54:49
Speaker
I think I was thinking about this. I'd put the game between like a seven and an eight for me Probably like like seven five where eight is great and seven is just like a good game and maybe leaning a little more toward eight and I realized I almost always put games in that spot because if they're less I
00:55:06
Speaker
Then seven then I probably didn't play it because why would I play a game that's less than good? so I always feel like the Out of 10 scale from experience is not the best because who's gonna say oh, it's a one, right? Who's gonna say it's a three or four? No, you're always like five is my baseline. Oh
00:55:25
Speaker
Yeah, I would like almost never put a game as five because that means I like critically missed on actually determining what game I wanted to play. Right. Yeah. And it's just like, uh, it was a game. It wasn't a negative game. It was just a game.
00:55:41
Speaker
Yeah. Where it's like great, I feel like is, um, very solid game, very few drawbacks, something I really enjoyed in the space. Nine is like excellent. It's outstanding. Very few. And 10 is, it has no misses. Yeah. 10 is like, this is basically representative of what the genre should be for whatever type of games. I would name a podcast series after this. Yeah, exactly.
00:56:08
Speaker
Dark Souls went like an eight, you know, heavy breathing rage intensifies. Yeah. Well, as always, you can send your feedback in via email at soapstone podcast at gmail.com or join the discussion on Facebook at Facebook.com slash soapstone podcast. Always happy to hear from people and robots.
00:56:35
Speaker
Yeah. And if you're feeling creative, uh, smoke signals are also an option. I've been trying to a bit in my free time. I trying to learn how to decipher them a little bit better. Uh, so far I figured out somebody's cooking, like somebody's grilling outside or.
00:56:54
Speaker
They're not cooking and there's actively a fire. Right. Yeah. Those are both good to identify them. It's basically like, does this smell pleasant or not so pleasant? Right. Yeah. It smells good. Someone's house is on fire. All right. Well, until next time, we'll see you in the next one. Have a good one.