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Shhh... Let's Talk About Video Game Secrets | Windbreaker Podcast
7.5k Plays6 months ago
On this week’s episode of Windbreaker, Yahtzee, Frost, and Marty discuss the past, present, and future of secrets in video games.
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Transcript
Introduction to Winter Survival Game
00:00:00
Speaker
This video is sponsored by Winter Survival, available now on Steam via Early Access. What starts as a nice little hike with friends quickly turns into a fight for your life. If you want to live, you'll have to be mindful of the freezing temps, thirst, and hunger, as well as the surrounding wildlife, but try to keep a clear head as the game's unique sanity system takes survival to the next level.
00:00:18
Speaker
Travel through snow-covered forests, dangerous mountains, and frozen lakes as you grapple with treacherous terrain, deadly animals, and harsh winter conditions. Find shelter, cook meals, and rest up, ready for the next day, which hopefully won't be your last. Survival is dependent on the choices you make in the game. Uncover the mysteries of the land in Story Mode, risk your life in the ultimate survival experience of Cold Wave, or conquer the world around you in Endless Mode. Winter Survival is out now in Early Access, so head on over to the game's Steam page to start your survival story today.
Whidbreak Podcast with Yahtzee, Frost, and Marty
00:00:52
Speaker
Hello, welcome to the Whidbreak Podcast. I'm Yahtzee Closher, as always. I mean, I haven't changed my identity lately. And I'm joined by Frost. There's also always, no, I've not always been Frost, funny enough. For now, Frost for now.
00:01:12
Speaker
And also Marty. I've been Marty. Well, I guess my birth name was Martin, but Marty mostly. Didn't you ever like use like an internet sub bouquet? That's how I became Yahtzee.
00:01:25
Speaker
My initial internet name was HBK-182 after the Heartbreak Kid, Shawn Michaels, and Blink-182, the hip band. That just gets me like one of them personalized number plates where you look at it and it's just like three random letters and numbers and you're like, well, what's the point of a fucking personalized number plate if it isn't immediately obvious what it means? I'm sorry, we all don't keep our names as such great secrets as you do yet. It's a form of thieves can't.
00:01:56
Speaker
Only Heartbreak Kid and Blink-182 lovers will understand. Yeah, and never the twain shall meet. Well, that's one way of looking
The Role of Secrets in Video Games
00:02:03
Speaker
at it. But speaking of arcane knowledge, this week we're talking about secrets in video games. Possibly because we've all been playing quite a bit of Animal Well lately. Which is very secret focused, as all the best Metroidvanias are. But secrets, of course, go way back in video games.
00:02:20
Speaker
wasn't the very first one that in the old Atari game Adventure where the designer snuck their name into it to do a secret room because it was literally the only way he could get accredited. Yeah and it took like months or years for someone to find it and I think Atari was so like tickled pink by it that I think Warren Robin it was the name of the designer that they ended up adding secrets and easter eggs to the rest of their games because they thought it was such a neat little thing.
00:02:45
Speaker
It really does seem to have become an almost essential part of video games. I'm thinking of the 90s shooters, of course, that would always have a number of secrets found as a percentage at the end of each level, as in like Doom and Wolfenstein 3D and Doom Nukem 3D. So why do you think it became such an endemic and almost essential part of video game design?
00:03:09
Speaker
See, two reasons. One, I guess the cynical one is it feels a little bit like free marketing. It feels a little bit like it's providing topics for kids to talk about on the playground. And you start whispering secrets that might not even exist in a game because also I feel like video game secrets are also linked to at least when I was growing up, playground lies.
00:03:32
Speaker
of things that can't happen in the game of saying, oh yeah, you can unlock Luigi in Mario 64, or oh yeah, Mew is just under that truck. You can get him. So it feels like a way to sort of spark conversation about the game, but also it feels like a way for people who are in the know to, I mean, Frost, you mentioned Thieves can't almost feel like there's a community or like a secret club of like, I've played the game, but have you played the game?
00:03:58
Speaker
Oh no. Now it turns into gatekeeping. But do you really know how to do the Mario World skips? That's at 1, 2, and 6, 5. Yeah. Yeah, it used to be a way to sell magazines as well, wasn't it? Like, be able to publish the cheat codes, because they weren't going to tell you what they were in the game.
00:04:18
Speaker
Yeah. I think part of it for me is that one of the most essential elements of game design is exploration and discovery. And obviously, the best way to get exploration and discovery to work is to have things to discover. And one of those things is secrets, and that's why we all spend all that time in Doom and Doom Nukem 3D, just running along walls, spamming the use button, whereas the character went, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh. That's it, yeah.
00:04:47
Speaker
That's what we went for. What was the, yeah, we weren't just listening to that sound help. No. What was the Doom 1 or Doom 2 where you could find John Romero's like head on a pike?
00:04:58
Speaker
That was the end boss in Doom 2, where you couldn't actually find it if you were playing the game legit, but if you no-clipped through the wall to the centre of the big boss, you would find that in the centre of his head was, as you say, John Romero's head on a spike, which was actually the thing you needed to damage to in order to kill the boss. It was like his glowing weak spot.
00:05:20
Speaker
happens to the best of us. Yeah, the shooters of the 90s and fighting games always seem to have like a big, oh, this character could be unlocked. Like, oh, you can unlock Ryu and Ken's master in Street Fighter II. And then that almost got a life of its own to where like Akuma became a character in the games. The same thing with like the Mortal Kombat ninjas. Oh, there's these secret ninjas at the bottom of the pits.
00:05:44
Speaker
Yeah, well, the olden times, they didn't tell you what all the moves were in fighting games. You just had to figure them out. There was this whole arcane language. The game just didn't tell you, and you had to learn through word of mouth. These days, of course, most of them will have practice modes where they'll just flat out tell you what the fatalities are, or you'll have to go through, or you'll have to spend fucking
00:06:07
Speaker
Mortal Kombat fun bugs to unlock them. An arcane arcade language, you say. Now, they're fun for us, but what do the developers get off on? I think, if anything, the existence of secrets, it just really drives the point through that I think developers are gremlins. Have you left any naughty code in yours that no one will find in any of your games, Yahti? Maybe. And no one's ever going to see it, but it's there for you?
00:06:37
Speaker
I guess you could say that. Like, I've got a couple of routines in Starship Vagabond where it, like, creates a text string for a character to say. And there's a bit of, and we have to initially declare the string before you can assign what the text to it. So in declaring the string, you usually hear something like, you shouldn't be seeing this, you big wanker. Ah, groof. You've got moments like that. It almost goes back to, like, when we were in school and
00:07:01
Speaker
You're flipping through a textbook and it says go to page 69 and there's something crude and crass drawn on there. The first kids you might have seen might have been on page 69. You are brushing against the surface of an entire subculture of programmer notation. It used to be a big thing back in the 90s hacker scene where programmers would leave secret messages in the code for hackers, usually stuff like, please don't steal this, you bastard, we're trying to make a living.
00:07:30
Speaker
There you go. You had, what was it, Uncle Sonic? What was it? Some developer left the ability to gain the source code for an old Sega game because they knew you wouldn't be able to in the future, so they just left it there for you. Beautiful. It's a little time capsule, a gift for the future.
00:07:48
Speaker
I don't know. I think as much as it is fun to uncover them, it's fun to leave them. It's almost like a relationship where we've built in this way. Yeah. Well, of course, a lot of cheat codes start out as just dev codes that the devs use to help test the game.
00:08:04
Speaker
There was like a small trend back in like Commodore 64 and Amiga days of the cheat codes for like nice family friendly games to be obscene so that magazines wouldn't be able to print them. There was a game called CJ's Elephant Antics and the cheat code for that was hairy arseholes just written out. So the cheat code was vulgar but the
00:08:30
Speaker
what it did wasn't vulgar. Was it like, did it like give everyone a hairy asshole or was it just like unlimited lives? It was just infinite lives, literally. In one of those lives, your asshole is so hairy as well.
Impact of the Internet on Game Secrets
00:08:43
Speaker
I do feel like talking about kind of secrets and stuff on games feels like there's a line of demarcation of before the internet and after the internet, right?
00:08:53
Speaker
It feels like the proliferation of secrets before the internet was, we talked about magazine strategy guys, kind of schoolyard rumors and myths and urban legends and whatnot. Whereas after the internet, it just felt like
00:09:09
Speaker
you know, the second a game comes out, it feels like everything's been torn apart, which makes the kinds of games where secrets are still left to be found that much more enticing, which is kind of why we got to Animal Well, because the way Animal Well was designed was that these three layers of, first layer is you could see credits, second layer is like, you know, ostensibly 100%ing the game, and then the third layer is I have put some shit in here that you are all going to have to work together to figure out, and it might take you a very long time to do that.
00:09:39
Speaker
Yeah, they really have to go all out for that sort of thing these days, because as you say, people will just figure it out with giving enough time and hacking. I mean, the fucking way to beat PT was like online on the same day it came out, even though it's the most ridiculously obscure sequence of actions you could possibly imagine.
00:09:59
Speaker
I remember being, so that was revealed and released at, in Germany, at Gamescom. And I was in Germany covering the show. And I remember it was like an evening, an evening showcase. They showed the game and I was like, oh, that's pretty cool. They didn't say Kojima or anything like that. I went to bed and then when I woke up, I remember checking my phone and being like, this is a Kojima project that is also a Silent Hill thing with the help of Guillermo del Toro and Norman Reedus, like fucking what happened while I slept?
00:10:29
Speaker
So yeah, people tore that apart in 12 hours, like you said. I assume someone got into the code to figure it all out, because then you got cases like Arkham Asylum, where the devs included a secret room that was hinting at the sequel, Arkham City, but no one ever found it. They had to tell everyone where it was after Arkham City had already come out.
00:10:49
Speaker
You had to use the explosive gel on a specific wall like 50 times. Like several times, also. So it had to be one of those things. There was an invisible wall, I think, in Volcano Manor, in Elden Ring, that you have to fucking hit like a hundred times or something. So it's something that I don't know how anyone would figure that out, but... You lied. I just assume people will hack it these days, and I guess not everyone's got the time to do that. Yeah. You lied. He said there would be no invisible wall.
00:11:18
Speaker
But the secrets, they were everywhere. But we were getting a bit sidetracked here because we're talking about secrets hidden in the game by the devs as like a private thing. Whereas what we really mean in the context of Out of All Well is secrets as a game mechanic. Secrets concealed about the world for the canny player to find as part of standard gameplay. Much like the Junico 3D stuff as well.
00:11:46
Speaker
The interesting thing about the ones in Doom and Duke 3D is that they'd always have special bonuses in them, like extra ammo and extra weapons. And when you think about it, that's kind of bad design, isn't it? Because it means people who are the best at playing the game get more advantages and just find the game even easier. Whereas people who aren't so good at exploring and finding things don't find all the extra ammo and stuff and are more likely to have a harder time.
00:12:14
Speaker
I didn't get that. It was an old video. This was back when Total Biscuit was ranting about the modern military shooter compared to his dear and beloved boomer shooters. And he was showing some gameplay of someone where it's like a ninja or something. And he was talking about the secrets. It's like you go up in here and here's the other weapon. And then you go over here. I'm like, if you didn't know that was there, you essentially don't get to play the game. So
00:12:39
Speaker
That to me, that's where the line is, as you said, the advantages that you're given, whether you know that it's there or not, like the original Mario. You can get some extra lives, some extra power-ups just because you know there are invisible squares. How's the average person find those?
00:12:56
Speaker
Well, the Mario squares are kind of insidious. I think you have to walk a fine line. It has to be fun to hunt these things, but there has to be something leading you towards it. Like we were talking about this when we were playing Peppergrinder. And we started looking for crunchy walls because the crunchy walls was always the indicator of a secret. Like there'd be like a little bit of texturing that you could, that the eye would gloss over, but if you looked for it, you'd see it.
00:13:22
Speaker
Yeah, so Animal World does a really good job of small things on this, almost every room. The second I walk in, I clock all the walls, and I'm like, somewhere's gonna have a little path for me to hop into and get a little secret nook.
00:13:37
Speaker
It's like a little shadowy kind of area and whatnot. But let me tell you, because I don't think either of you have gotten this far. Again, there's items after the first credits roll. You keep finding these items that make you, you're going to go back through every, I'm telling you, you're going to lapse on this map and go, fuck, now I know for a new thing to keep my eye out for. Oh, my God, I didn't know that was a thing. Well, that's the that feels like the difference. There's like games with secrets and then there's games where secrets are like
00:14:04
Speaker
one of the, you know, core tenants, right? You have your stuff like Tunic, Outer Wilds, Fez, Braid the Witness, LOL, Void Stranger, Braid the Witness. You know, games where it feels like they were designed specifically to encourage communal discussion and like communal
00:14:28
Speaker
archaeology, I guess. I don't know what you would call it. Dark Souls was absolutely a game with like community archaeology in mind. I mean, that's the whole point of the leaving messages for other players thing, isn't it? Absolutely. He had trauma as a kid, sort of. We've talked about this. Miyazaki designed that game because of an event that happened in his life where he was trying to get home like from college or something. It was snowing. And this hill, it was impossible to get over alone. So what the cards would have to do is line up and push each other forward and go over. And he's like,
00:14:57
Speaker
I think about the last guy that would have had to go over that hill. I wonder how he's doing. He's dead. Well, it's just like, can you, to me, this is almost, I don't know, maybe I'm getting ahead of myself into the like pros cons of secrets and the red flags or flag on the play. Yellow flag for me, if essentially, yeah, the last person that has to go through this can't do it because there's no one else around. There's a few things in Dark Souls that go, I could not have done this without a wiki, without a guide.
00:15:28
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. Finding boss weapons brings to mind. Constructing boss weapons. Hell of a bloody DLC. Yeah. The steps required to access the DLC in Dark Souls. We're even thinking about that in terms of next month when Shadow of the Urgentree, we're like, all right, we got to go to Mykola's fucking egg behind Moog. And like, what's going on down there? Is that going to be easy? Or we're going to have to do a bunch of weird arcane shit in order to enter the egg.
00:15:55
Speaker
But I do like, I do like those triple A games, which I don't know. Part of me with secrets is kind of weird because I feel like secrets are much more woven into the DNA of a game. The smaller the team, specifically a lot of those games I mentioned were solo developer, if not close to solo developers, um, you know, with, with the, something like animal well or, um, uh, undertale or fans or something. And it just feels like you do something.
00:16:25
Speaker
It's much easier to do something cheeky like that if there's less people you have to run it by, I suppose. Yeah, same thing with like a frog fractions or something. Whereas when you, uh, if you're on a team of a hundred, you know, you can hide something cute in a wall, but, um, if you're going to really ingrain something in the game itself, you're going to ultimately need approval from people who probably aren't going to approve something like that.
00:16:46
Speaker
I tell you what I fucking hate in modern game design is where the secrets are treated like a collectible side quest and especially in something like a Ghost Train ride style game like an Uncharted or Guardians of the Galaxy or whatever. You'll be going down the linear path of the game and the path splits and one way leads to progress and one way leads to a secret and it's always that. Yeah.
00:17:09
Speaker
every single time. Sometimes you guess wrong and you go down one way and you realise you've gone down the way that leads to progress. So you have to go, oh shit, now I got to go back and take the other fork to see what the secret was. And it turns out you were wrong all along and you were actually on your way to the secret. Now you are making progress.
Secrets Enhancing Gameplay
00:17:28
Speaker
And oh, it pisses me off.
00:17:30
Speaker
People bemoan at yellow paint, but when I'm in a restaurant, if I get up from my table and I'm walking to the back of the restaurant and there's two paths, I want one to just say the bathroom's that way and not I have walked into the kitchen wherever. The secrets in the kitchen. Honestly, I do think like, hey, this way lies progress.
00:17:50
Speaker
Who knows what lies that way? I am much more likely to go, well, I'll check out the other way first before I loop back, because the worst thing is when I was playing, I remember this one playing Plague Tale, the second one Requiem or whatever, where there would be like two paths and I'm like, ooh, right definitely seems like the way you're supposed to go for the story, so I'll go left, and then it will trigger a cutscene and I'm in the next level. And I'm like, well, shit, I'll never know what was on that other path, because I'm in the next level now.
00:18:18
Speaker
Yeah, it's something that the Metroidvanias have overcome. They will have moments where they're like, if you go beyond this point, you don't get to come back. I'm like, you know what? Oh, I like the description of that. Cry about the immersion breaking, but I kind of like that. Yeah, give me a little warning.
00:18:35
Speaker
For me a secret should be something like unexpected you do that the program was allowed for. Like this was always what secrets in Junique from 3D were about. Like there's no particular reason why in your pursuit to shoot all the aliens and find the keys you would say press the use key on a poster of a bikini girl. But if you do that it would open up and there'd be like a secret health behind it or maybe the bikini girl would take her bikini off and jiggle her titties around for you.
00:19:02
Speaker
That's what I want. Pervert. That's what I want from secrets. No, no, G-Link 3D was designed by perverts, so they would never call you out for being a pervert in that game. You could have perverts. You know who's great at designing those kinds of secrets? Kojima. Oh, I thought we were going to bring up Resident Evil 4 if you try to look up Ashley's skirt. Oh, yeah. Should I get you? I was thinking of the inscription guy.
00:19:28
Speaker
Daniel Mullins? Yeah, Daniel Mullins, him and his secrets because, again, flag on the plate here. I don't like these communal secrets that go super above and beyond. I like solving my puzzle out of the box. I don't want a little piece of paper that's like, all right, now go to this website, go to this location. I'm not going to do that. You don't want your ARGs?
00:19:51
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, those are starting to trend, aren't they? What's the... Well, as you say, they can't just put secrets in a video game because the internet will have them all within seconds. So now it's got to be this huge worldwide thing. They don't take that on me. Go to this parking lot out of Wendy's in the dark. My thing is I like...
00:20:11
Speaker
I'm kind of with you on that for us, where I like solving the secrets that make sense within the game, and I'm fascinated about the stuff that kind of transcends the game. I don't participate in it, but I like following it afterwards. Like this Animal Well stuff, I'm not gonna be one of the 50 people trying to figure out how all of us work together on this puzzle. Once you have it solved, show me a video and I'll watch it.
00:20:32
Speaker
And that'll be great. Like the same thing with there were hunts for what they thought was going to be like a deleted colossi in the Shadow of Colossus remake. There were hunts in the Demon's Souls remake that, oh, maybe they got the sixth arch stone in there. And then it turned out it was kind of just a secret to get in to get the, what's his name, the pervert's armor? No, the Predator.
00:20:56
Speaker
The pervert or the predator? There's an enemy's armor, you can get demon souls. Probably not the perpetrator. That sounds pretty pervy to me. A pervert and a predator. Yeah, that kind of stuff. I'm fascinated to find out about it afterwards. I don't want to partake in the scavenger hunt, but tell me all about it and I will be amused.
00:21:17
Speaker
Yeah, part of the larger lore of video games. Mm-hmm. Uh-huh. Those secrets that make you want to go back and play the game. Like, as Marty said, I heard about that 50 pieces in animal wealthy. That did make me boot the game back up. But I saw someone else find different tech with one of the items and I went, oh my God, I have to go back in right now.
00:21:39
Speaker
That's the kind of chase that I want. Very national treasure, very Nicolas Cage. That's how I want to feel instead of like, well, I'm an observer now because I have no understanding of barometric pressure, so you have to find a meteorologist to help you now. Like, okay, I'm bowing out. Let me know how it goes. You know a game that's pretty much all secret? The Stanley Parable. The entire game is based around finding secrets in that game.
00:22:04
Speaker
weren't there like specific either endings or achievements you had to get by playing the game like X amount of years waiting and loading a save five years later or something like that yeah don't play for five years I think yeah yeah don't play five years uh if you like go through a window that you ostensibly aren't supposed to there's a whole like scene
00:22:27
Speaker
that unfolds from that. If you try to cheat, it'll teleport you to a police cell and give you a very solid talking to. That's become a thing where it feels like secrets a lot of times feel like the game is haunted. Like the developer thought of
00:22:44
Speaker
the developer was like, you are going to try this and I'm going to have an answer to it. And you get that in games like that. You get that in games like when we mentioned an inscription or frog factions. I guess that's more of like the kind of the fourth wall breaking. Yeah. I don't know. Goof game. I don't know. I don't know what that job is called.
00:23:01
Speaker
better games. Oh, there was a, there was a like an arty concept text adventure I played once. Okay. It was simply called Isle. A-I-S-L-E. And it was a simple text adventure. You were in like in a supermarket and you were next to the past, the chilled pasta section. And there was a bag of naki.
00:23:20
Speaker
And the point was that you could only type in one command and the game would end, but the game allowed for literally anything. You could, like, sing, you could whistle, you could try to hump the fridge, you could get inside the fridge, you could steal the knockie, you could just try to pay for the knockie like a normal day, and there'd be, like, hundreds of different things you could do just with this single text prompt. And it was all accounted for, and some of them would actually... And as you did this, you unlocked this weird...
00:23:49
Speaker
I guess background story of like this doomed relationship you had and that the knockie reminded you of somehow and it became this sort of melancholy introspection on like, uh, uh, returning to normal life after some kind of tragedy and interesting stuff. Wow. I like that.
00:24:09
Speaker
I swear, especially things that if anything, the secret just hides that like the identity of the game. Oh my God. Yeah. Yeah. Was it Jack was mentioning this morning how it feels like there's no purpose in Animal Well, but that is like one of the later things that you find in the same way that when I went through Dark Souls, I didn't really note that there was much of a story to begin with until like, oh, look at all this lore. Look at these sad people.
00:24:35
Speaker
Give me someone smart like Vaati to tell me what the lore is and then I would be like, ah yes, good lore. Yeah, that's something I wanted to say to the larger like souls like community is that they would try to emulate that Dark Souls lore style of play where they don't tell you everything and you almost need a Vaati. I'm like, you're not gonna get a Vaati, I'm sorry. Not to say you're not gonna be popular, maybe you will be, but you might not get a professor of your own lore. Just go ahead and...
00:25:01
Speaker
Keep the standard secrets. You know, hey, you found a weird-looking hole, have a costume type of thing. Super Land does that. Where the secrets are just cosmetics that you can have. Yeah. There's also the... Yeah, I guess these day's secrets are more likely to be like non-gameplay affecting stuff.
00:25:22
Speaker
Because I was talking about how back in the day you'd get extra weapons and ammo stuff, which was a little bit unfair on people who didn't know how to play, but these days... Secrets just go towards 100% completion or whatever. If I get Animal Well, it's just the eggs.
00:25:44
Speaker
But the eggs in and of themselves don't really have a purpose, except they unlock, like, extra. They give me purpose.
00:25:58
Speaker
I liked you mentioned the the Arkham one and I like a cheeky little easter egg that hints at what a developer will do in the future like that we had a plan we knew that after Arkham Asylum we were gonna make an Arkham City like that's where the next game was gonna be I remember
00:26:15
Speaker
Uncharted 3 in one of the levels had a newspaper on a counter. And if you looked at the headline, it was talking about how there's fear because of the spread of a fungal epidemic throughout the world. And that was before The Last of Us had been revealed, I believe. So that's one of those things. That's a cheeky little thing that almost in the moment doesn't mean anything. And then in hindsight, you're like, oh, OK, you kind of knew what you were doing. That's pretty clever.
00:26:45
Speaker
So did Nathan Drake die in the last of his apocalypse? Because all the games tied together. Uh, no, it turns out you were immune to it if you had part of your shirt untucked and he always kept a little bit of his shirt tucked and the rest of it untucked. So, um, he was able to, he was able to sound a bit superstitious to me.
00:27:05
Speaker
He just has OCD, it's fine. There's also, I like the mysteries that took a life of their own and weren't real, but then got sort of community around them, which I know is like kind of veering into the creepypasta territory, but I feel like reviving Aerith in Final Fantasy 7 was one of those, and then you got sort of the
00:27:26
Speaker
creepypasta surrounding like the lavender town thing and Pokemon driving kids insane or that drowned the haunted cartridge. Like, that stuff's goofy, but I always really liked it. I thought it was like well-made goofs. Yeah, we were always convinced there was a nude code for the original Tomb Raider for a while. Yeah, only in our dreams. She could get node, Malon Manson did that thing, you know, that thing. Yeah. Is there a point?
00:27:52
Speaker
Well, there is too much secret because this was a big outcry for Hello Neighbor 2. The developer was intent on cramming it full of lore, finding secret-seeker stuff for the game theorist community with the good old MatPat. And he was hounding him on Twitter, don't you want to dissect our game? Don't you want to find all the lore? And MatPat was like, no, not really. No, I say they were trying to. Yeah, you can't just put it putting the cart before the horse, right?
00:28:20
Speaker
Yeah, you can't try to coerce people into that. You have to let it happen naturally. Very natural and organic. But then it also brings up the point of like The Witness. I almost get a little secret overload in there. The Witness. Again, that's sort of like the whole point of that game. It's in the sort of same sort of Stanley Parable sort of mode.
00:28:39
Speaker
Yeah, there's that like probably the biggest holy shit moment I've ever had in a game which I guess slight spoilers for like the opening 20 minutes of The Witness is when obviously what is about solving just a billion of these fucking little line puzzles But the first time you solve a puzzle that exists in the environment
00:28:57
Speaker
And you're like, wait a minute, the sun looks like it might be the beginning of one of these lines. And then if I draw a line from the sun to this column, and when you realize that there's puzzles everywhere, you start feeling like fucking Charlie. And it's always sunny where you're like, Oh my God, there's puzzles everywhere. I gotta go back. And like you said, Frost, that's kind of the animal well thing. Once you get a new tool, you're like, Oh, I have to go back to every single room and use this black light to see if there's any weird. The Hanes. Billy Basso. How do you feel fucking for this bug?
00:29:27
Speaker
There's signs in there. But to the point, so I've got those two. My third one here, I don't know if you guys have played Crow Country yet.
00:29:35
Speaker
I have started on that, yes. Yeah, it's starting to be almost like a daunting task of secrets. And I don't think it says much about the flow so much as I am starting to appreciate the kind of secrets that I enjoy more. And that'd be, I like secrets in dynamic games, be it platformers, be it shooters, because it goes for a moment. My caveman brain, I have to put it aside and I have to pick up this scholarly brain of like, oh, ho, ho. Now let's inspect the walls, shall we? You know, it's a nice
00:30:01
Speaker
Nice change of pace here and there. So almost to the point where me, who loves escape room games, I kind of like it when they have some tension in them. A little like a little action moment in it. So it's so so you like what you're saying. What you're saying very long-windedly is that you like survival horror as a concept. No, that's awful. No. Well, I don't know what to think. Here have a bit of Tetris and this zombie is just gnawing at your ass. No, that's awful.
00:30:30
Speaker
They both have to be good in their own right. Okay. Well, I do like a detective game, as you know. You made one. I'm excited for you guys to play Lorelei and the Laser Eyes. I have been looking forward to trying that. Yes, we have a code for that. It comes out on Thursday. And that is a you need a notebook next to you. And Yahtzee, if you want a game that
00:30:55
Speaker
that tells you you are very smart because you know things. This is a game that if you know things and you bring that knowledge to the table, it will be like you are very smart and you solved this puzzle. It is like incredibly rewarding for anyone who wants to feel smug with their puzzle solving and that is me.
00:31:10
Speaker
Well, that definitely sounds like a game for me. Yeah. And I certainly know a lot of random things that apparently you don't, Marty. No, I had to start writing down, like, I had to start deciphering Roman numerals because I don't know when you get the M's and C's. Oh my God, the fuck is happening down here. Oh, crikey. That's back to Alone in the Dark, isn't it? I only know Roman numerals up to whatever the Super Bowl is. And we're not past there, so I don't know.
00:31:37
Speaker
Thank you for reminding me. Matty, do you remember what no true Scotsman means? Oh my god. No, it's no true Scotsman would do blank. It's like a it's like a way for for them to like a nationalized way of saying like, oh, well, no true Scotsman would do this. And it's a goof.
00:31:57
Speaker
No true weeb. Is that a good definition? It's kind of vague. It's a logical fallacy. It's getting better at it. I don't know. It's a moving of the goalposts. It's like saying, if we present something that disproves your claim, you then sort of shift your claim in some.
00:32:22
Speaker
Sort of nebulous way. No, it's not the same thing as a straw man. Okay. A straw man is where you present a version of the opponent's argument that is clearly absurd so you can tear it apart like a straw man. Yeah, it's just like every weeb loves Sword Art Online and then one goes, I don't, I'm a weeb and I don't like Sword Art Online. No true weeb would say such a thing. Gotcha. So you are essentially just getting, they are not real. Gotcha. It's like, it's implying
00:32:48
Speaker
Yeah. It's goalpost moving gatekeeping, implying some kind of commonly understood facts about something that, uh, uh, that you aren't really supplying. Yeah. It's because you're a fake. We'll see if I remember this next week. Okay. Superchats time. We'll, we'll try again next week and we'll see if my internalize a new fact speaks.
00:33:17
Speaker
Du-du-du-du-du-du. Jomo Slowmo gives 20 Norwegian krona and says, RIP to Samstream. 7th November 2023 to 12th May 2024. Yes, the escapist finally shut that thing down. Whatever, but what a six months it was.
00:33:33
Speaker
Yes. What a roller coaster of a running gag. And speaking of six months, we are doing our big six month celebration bash on Thursday, the 30th, the end of this month. Thursday, we're starting at 10 a.m central. A big ol' all day stream. We'll be cycling folks in and out. We'll be showing off new shows, new teasers, maybe some new merch.
00:33:56
Speaker
Yeah, tell all your friends, especially your rich ones, to get subscribed to the Patreon and really like online content. Yeah, the pores can come too. We love the pores, but man, the Ritchie's. We like pores if they can act as a bridge to some Ritchie's, possibly in the pores circle of acquaintances. There you go.
00:34:20
Speaker
Anyway, Dr. Theogosidolus has thoughts on games whose entire hook are secrets, most notably ARGs like Shipwreck 64, where it encourages community discovery. I don't know. I'm introverted, you know, if I need someone else, you know, I'm, this is the hyper cynical, but it's almost like you're trying to sell me more copies because I'd sooner buy 50 copies of Animal Well than actually converse with 50 other people and find their pieces. It's like the old Pokemon, where if you want these other ones, you have to buy the other version.
00:34:50
Speaker
You know, community discovery is what killed adventure games. People, he says, ruined this. Yeah, yes. I mean, before the temptation of going on the internet and looking up the walkthrough existed, an adventure game could last me for years.
00:35:08
Speaker
Like it took me years to get through Zach McCracken and the Alien Mindbenders on the Amiga when I was a kid. But it was all the more satisfying when I did get to the end. Yeah, good old Zach McCrack. What if he didn't care about the ending? Because there's some indies, no one's played them, but I'm like, what was that story about? I wish I could just Wikipedia you.
00:35:29
Speaker
Well, as probably a long play online. Laugh at that sack. I'm still laughing at sack but crack it. I like that sort of communal excitement when a game launches with a smaller group. Like when Elden Ring launched, when Tears of the Kingdom launched, I had little text threads with folks that we're all playing in. We knew sort of like spoiler etiquette and things like that, like what would be a cool discovery to show people, what would be a thing to hint at, what would be like
00:35:56
Speaker
Hey, has anyone tried going down here yet? Um, and that, that is exciting. Cause that was one of those things where I'd be like, I am doing this. And then someone would be like, did anyone find this fucking village on the right-hand side of the map with all the jars? And I was like, I want to know about these jars. Where are these jars? Let me find them. Do you guys hear, apparently speaking of, there's a secret couple of, uh, games journals that were discussing animal well secrets and really getting into it.
00:36:20
Speaker
during the embargo. And I was like, how come I didn't get invited to that? I could have needed, I needed a friend. I think it might've been in the, might've been in the initial email with the code. So only Nick was invited to the club. Could've made friends.
00:36:39
Speaker
Uh, Frog42 gives $10, and as I have been enjoying Animal Well's secrets, it reminds me of Tunic, which I loved for its detailed hidden secrets. If there's a secret inside of a secret, I get excited. I love rooms hidden in rooms. I do. Yeah, Tunic, that's a good one.
00:36:55
Speaker
I like how you would have like secret routes to get back to a prettier place, but it wouldn't be like closed off on that end. So if you already knew it when you started the game, you could just use it and get to a secret place in the game really early. Yeah, just abusing that isometric view of like, Oh, look, it's obscured by this one block that you could have just walked past.
00:37:17
Speaker
Yeah, Outer Wilds has the same thing. Animal Well has something similar, like going through a new playthrough of Animal Well. I'm like, ooh, I know things I can do right from the start that you can do at any fresh playthrough, but you just don't know it yet because you haven't discovered the thing yet.
00:37:32
Speaker
Both of them are exceedingly clever given the genre is already known for being clever, having extra endings, having secrets like that. And I think it is people who I would, I know Andrew Scholdeis, the tunic developers of this, and I would imagine Billy Bass was in a similar boat, but it is people who grew up in an era where they were like consuming not only games, but the conversation surrounding games via
00:37:58
Speaker
guides and online forums and things like that. So it seems like we are now making games that were about the experience of talking about games in the 90s, which is now kind of, it feels like why we're getting kind of to that meta level and stuff like this and inscription and Voyager and everything. We were there with like Neon White. I was like, this is a meta game about speed running.
00:38:24
Speaker
Pretty much. Yeah, how do you make a game about speedrunning, which I think that's cool. Frog42 gives another 10 dollars and says have a bonus donor too. I love the work you guys do. I don't get to catch these live, but I listen to work at night while I drive. Can't wait to see what you say about your favorite video game secrets. Oh, well, if you're listening to this while driving, then look out. Look out. There's a truck.
00:38:46
Speaker
Oh no. It's parked. Now you're in a forest. Roll for possession. Now you're at the Noki crate. What do you do with all this Noki? Yes. Adam Parker goes for 99 and says, at what point should a dev reveal any remaining secrets? One year, five years, never. How long was it after Arkham Asylum came out that they finally had to tell everyone where the secret was? Was it by the time Arkham City came out? I think so.
00:39:16
Speaker
It's got to be pretty humiliating for a dev to do that. Is it? Like, well, I guess none of you guys were as into the game as we hoped. Oh, that is sad, isn't it? It's like finding a really good spot and hide and seek and then you have to oust yourself because no one cares. I mean, it'd be sad if it was a game that just no one fucking played, but like Arkham Island was loved, right? Yeah, it was a huge hit. Yeah, so that's more of like...
00:39:43
Speaker
I guess we just didn't think it would be the kind of game that would pull that kind of shit. I guess maybe it was also just early enough to where obviously the internet and YouTube and stuff were around, but it didn't feel like it was... When I started playing Arkham Asylum, I wasn't like, let's see what Twitter has to say about this. I just fucking played the game and talked about it with my friends. Yeah, it wasn't really the big old age of speedrunning that would come later. Everyone's picking apart every little secret in every game.
00:40:09
Speaker
Yeah. It is crazy how quick those speed running things pop up. I think I, speaking of Crow Country, I think I saw like the speed run this weekend. Someone hit like 25 minutes. I'm like, Jesus, how did you do that? This game has been out for like five days. Well, it's just about wasting any time really. Yeah. I challenged the internet collectively to a starstruck back up on speed run contest.
00:40:32
Speaker
Okay, saying with no further details, here's the speedrun challenge. Reboot the universe twice. Oh, Jesus. We talking about Starfield? What's going on here? Starstruck, Vagabond, my game. Reboot the universe twice. What's on the line, eh? There's a Chivo for rebooting the universe and another Chivo for rebooting it again after you've rebooted it once. So that's the challenge. Who can do that the quickest? If you reboot something twice, does it revert back to its original state?
00:41:03
Speaker
Yeah. I think it's like a USB. You have to go once more and then it actually works. Oh, like you did it right. You did it wrong. And then you did it right again. Yeah. Pretty much. There we go. Yeah. I guess speaking of achievements, you mentioned achievements that felt like a way that developers could kind of guide the player to secrets.
00:41:28
Speaker
Well, Stanley Parable very overtly did so. I had one achievement that was just press use on the door for office number 471. And if you did that, the game would take the piss out of you. It's like, oh, noticed the achievement, did we? I mean, I did that for Animal Well, yeah. As I was getting more secrets uncovered, I'd look in the Steam achievements and go, oh, OK. That kind of gives you a bit of a hint of what's going on there. We got going on in here, yeah. Yeah.
00:41:57
Speaker
Brian J. Lancaster gives $2 and says, where is Frost from? I heard him say maths once. I think he's from Mexico, but he's watched an awful lot of British television. Yeah, Virginia. And also may call me a traitor. It is the short form of the word is mathematics. So it would be maths.
00:42:15
Speaker
Yeah. Yes. The British way of saying it, maths. It's the maths. It's, it's plural. But I forgot which comedian said it. Who said maybe it's because Americans only know one. So yeah, it's, it's maths. Yes. That's so weird sounding. Although I noticed that when all the team, all the Adventures Night Team were together in Milwaukee for filming, we were playing like a couple of card games and, uh,
00:42:45
Speaker
came to the point where we had to like add up the points for the two teams. And, uh, I was just adding only one, five, seven, nine, 12, 14. And Amy was doing the same thing. And all the Americans were just looking at her like we were from space. Like, how are you counting those numbers so fast? It's almost like you, you're the country you came from had a decent education system. Public schools are underfunded. Yeah.
00:43:32
Speaker
I guess I don't want a gatekeeper. I don't want a one true Scotsman, this thing, but I feel like data mining shouldn't be allowed for the first month of the game. I didn't use that right, did I? I didn't even say it right. No. That was, I don't even know what you were trying to get across there.
00:43:44
Speaker
B-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b.
00:43:51
Speaker
Let's do it right. Data Mining just seems, that is, you've cheated yourself. That is that you cheated yourself. Yeah. But you've got to be the first, you got to be the first person on the internet to find it and post about it. That's how you get the likes. I don't mean anything. It's interesting though, cause what is it? Billy was saying you can't data mine his game, which I haven't seen anything data mined. Maybe he's onto something. I mean, when you make a game 32 megabytes, it's impossible that data mine.
00:44:22
Speaker
How big is your game bigger than 30? My game. Uh, yeah, because mainly because of the soundtrack. Oh.
00:44:35
Speaker
It's a lot of Metallica. He licensed Enter Sandman. It's so good. I love the music. I had an original soundtrack made by the guys who did the soundtrack to BPM Bullets for a Minute, who got in touch because I liked that game so much. It's great sounding. It's so good.
00:44:57
Speaker
Nick, the OG, member for Five Months in Tip Jar, thank you very much. And then Alex Armstrong gives $2 and says, would cheat codes made by Dave's count as secrets? Well, as I say, we sort of had to, we were working with two different definitions of secrets here. The things you're supposed to be looking for and the things you want. I mean, if they give it to you in the game, yeah. If it's something that you absolutely, there's no way you could have found this in the box. I don't count that as a secret.
00:45:24
Speaker
I mean, that's just an Easter egg. I think of things like you could easily overlook, like the Far Cry 4 ending, where if you just sit there, that's something that 99% of people are just going to
00:45:41
Speaker
stand and run away and continue. You'll overlook, but you can, you can still manage it. Like, Oh, I went to do my laundry real quick and then it ended on accident. Someone actually said that that happened to them once. Yeah, that's funny. Yeah. Yeah. But the point is you wouldn't like, they counted on most people not doing it because then you wouldn't get to play the fucking game. Yeah. Yeah. And there's like a lot of work to do.
00:46:04
Speaker
even like the secret characters in Resi 2, like unlocking Hunk and Tofu, like that's stuff that the, you know, the guide and magazines and stuff made very apparent, but felt cool because it was one of those like, ooh, like only the hardest of hardcore people are going to play the game enough and to whatever you needed to do in order to unlock those two characters.
00:46:22
Speaker
That's interesting, yeah, because the Binding of Isaac, you can find them naturally, but it would be really difficult. Because for some of them, it's like, beat this same boss seven times in a row. And it's like, yeah, that's natural, but a lot of people would assume maybe around three. It's like, oh, that's just the game.
00:46:37
Speaker
You know, actually, no, it was, I believe it was the dev saying, I had to add achievements and instructions because people thought after they just beat mom's foot, the game was over. Yeah. So I don't know. I mean, it can be something for just your hardcore crowd, but if you're going to put that much of the game behind it, maybe, maybe some signage will be all right.
00:46:57
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, not even that much, but like the Silent Hill goof endings, like you gotta be pretty hardcore to want to get to the dog endings and alien endings and stuff for the game. Well, rewarding for the hardcore fans. Yeah. It was harder to find in some games than in others. I mean, yeah. And like the original Japanese ones, uh, there was, you could only get the joke endings on like a second playthrough. Yeah. But Silent Hill Homecoming didn't get that memo. You could get the joke ending on your first run through and get very, very confused.
00:47:24
Speaker
Are you telling me that some of those Western-developed ones didn't understand Silent Hill? Is that what you're telling me? Controversially, yes. I am making that accusation. No. Longshanks gives two pounds and says, how much will Starstruck Vagabond be? I'm glad you asked, Longshanks. It will retail on Steam for $24.99. But if you get it in the first week, we're doing a 20% off-sale launch sale. So you can get it for $20. When is Starstruck Vagabond coming out on Steam?
00:47:54
Speaker
why it's coming out on May 24th in a bare two weeks. What happens on that day also? Is it your birthday? Yes, it's also my birthday and I'll be guesting on the new DevHeads podcast with Jamase and the other two to talk about the game. Incredible. And we're going to hold a sweepstakes and give out a free copy. Is it legal to have four devs on a single podcast? That sounds wild.
00:48:16
Speaker
Well, uh, we're going to find out we might form our own nation. I don't know. Yeah. One true Scotsman. Am I right? Oh my God, indivisible justice. Just keep saying it, buddy. Eventually you'll get the right context.
00:48:38
Speaker
Brian J. Lancaster gives $2 and says, if you suck at combat, secrets can balance it out. But what if you suck at finding secrets as well, Brian J. Lancaster? That was my point. I mean, what game can secrets help you if you're bad at the game? Well, as I say, in Duke Nukem 3D, you can get the rocket launcher really early if you find it in the secret.
00:48:57
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Uh, yeah, there's like a country too. I got to a spot just following normal play through and it's like, you don't have the flamethrower yet. Either it's lying to me or I just haven't found it yet. Oh, the little mushroom guy who wants you to upgrade it. Yeah. Yeah. I found him. Yeah. Did you guys get the little mushroom in? Yeah. It's a, it's a required item for a puzzle. So I mean, there's a flamethrower. I found like a mounted flamethrower that like the mine entrance, but I didn't think you could take it off.
00:49:27
Speaker
No, I guess so. It's not necessary because that's a puzzle where you just need gasoline. Wait, is this game still embargoed? No, it isn't. No, no, no. It came out a few days ago. People have been raving about it. Just checking. What was it? The old Call of Duty games. Black Ops, the zombies. You kind of needed to know the secrets to do so. Sometimes you needed a pack of punching or others. Those were really interesting little puzzle boxes.
00:49:53
Speaker
Yeah, I remember transit and I put the hell out of that and black ops 2 all sorts of cool secrets there I was it was it I was top five for like a month damn Yeah, I don't think I was my claim to fame
00:50:08
Speaker
Eric Wykart doing his thing again where he does a super chat instead of just talking to us. Gives 50 arses and says my favorite game secrets are those that I find by accident. Also the fun value in Undertale. I got the wrong number song on both Switch and the PS4. I don't actually know what he's talking about. You didn't play it on console, I wouldn't know.
00:50:34
Speaker
Then we get followed up by another different account called Probably Eric, the producer of this podcast, who also gives shifty arses, to say, does scrapped or unused content count as a video game secret? If no, what about secret comments, code, or files for anyone looking at the game's files? That is interesting, because I was thinking about Zooli the Witch. What they do is that they go and sell the old Dark Souls games, they go like under, look under the mesh, look under the coding, and they're like, hey, look at this unused dragon.
00:51:02
Speaker
You know? And then, oh, it got brought out in Dark Souls 3 or something like that. Are those secrets? It's like archaeology. I don't know. There was a bunch of unused monster models in, like, Half-Life, and if you play, like, a few fan-made Total Conversions, some of them will find a place to just put them in there, just like hanging out, like in a glass tank or something. Because there's no, like, attack animations or any, like, actual code attached to it. Yeah, Dark Souls. I don't know.
00:51:29
Speaker
Dark Souls is an interesting example because there are so clearly areas where things were cut. Like you go down to Ashley and you're like, this, why did you guys even leave this here? You just need to be like, oh, why does this exist? But I kind of like it. Like I never, I've never actually been there. I've seen the videos and whatnot, but.
00:51:48
Speaker
Um, yeah, it didn't affect everything else. There's some secrets that it's like, Hey, I like, Oh, symphony of the night. How many people didn't know about the upside down bit? Oh God, that would have given me so much anxiety. You would just get, you'd get a really bad ending. You'd be like, well that that's not good. A little too much secret there. Well, it's also funny cause games then, uh,
00:52:11
Speaker
I don't know if this is the case in the, uh, in Symphony of the Night, but I know games like Castlevania II, because of its translation and localization, certain hints that made more sense in Japanese were fucking archaic in English. And so it would be like, what does this even mean? I think you'll find the inverted castle if you just explore every part of the map in Symphony of the Night. And that's the point. You can go to, you can go and get the bad ending like,
00:52:37
Speaker
fairly early on in the game before you've explored like half the map. But if you take the time to explore everywhere, then you find the two things that lead towards the thing you have to do. Glasses are something to see the evil orb above his head.
00:52:53
Speaker
Well, what it is is you find two rings. And one ring says where clock, and the other one says in tower. And you put them together and it says where in clock tower. So you put the two rings on you go into the clock tower and opens up an extra area where you find a secret pair of glasses, and you put the glasses on. And yeah, actually talking about it, there's quite a lot of hoops you have to jump through to get to the inverted castle. But it's possible. Yeah.
00:53:19
Speaker
Yeah, but I think it's possible to intuit. I was talking about in like my video about adventure game puzzles, I was saying that it should be possible to intuit the solution. And I think that's possible here. Yeah, those are my favorite. It's a certain point, it goes you had to have gone out of the box, fiddled with the code, or it's just the equivalent of moon logic, you know, like who would have thought of that? No one would intuit how to how to solve PT. No.
00:53:49
Speaker
Did you, did you ever have like players guys or strategy guides as a kid Yahtzee? Did you ever like use those or were you like, you mentioned adventure? No. Pashing your head against them for months or whatever. No, what I would do is I'd read a lot of different video game magazines and every now and again in like the help section, there'd be just someone asking a question pertaining to the specific part of the game I was stuck on. Yeah. And they would, and they would solve that for them. Hmm. I distinctly remember like the only games my dad ever played were, um,
00:54:19
Speaker
some adventure games for, for PC. I would play the like mist and ribbon and shit like that. And I remember we didn't have a guide and we would get stuck and stop playing for the night. And then I'd wait until the next time we'd go to like a borders bookstore and that sneak over to the section and I had to read how to solve it. And then I feel like I impressed him. And I think he knew that I was a child and didn't actually intuit this. And then I just cheated and it's fine. Oh, what a little tissue of lies your childhood must've been branded for being a cheater.
00:54:51
Speaker
Man, no true Scotsman cheats on adventure games. That's not true. I feel like the Scottish are renowned for cheating in adventure games. Haggis and cheating at adventure games. The two biggies. That's my Tinder profile. And uh, insisting on wearing kilts at weddings. I'm entitled to wear a kilt at weddings. My grandfather was Scottish. He was going to stop you. Exactly. Quite. My own sense of modesty perhaps.
00:55:23
Speaker
Because of course, the traditional kilt you're not supposed to wear underpants under. That seems dangerous. No, men should be with the kilts and the ladies can keep the pants. There you go. Because you know, if every man was freeballing, we'd all have a good time. We'd be in a utopia, you know, there would be no, like, no things to bang against. It'd be a much smoother, softer world if we were freeballing. Might be painful to have... Maybe little pisses everywhere!
00:55:52
Speaker
I don't trust that. People will be doing little pissies under their kilts. I don't trust that at all. Different gated community. What the hell are you doing? We'll always do little drippies. Just little drippies and pre-comes everywhere and I don't want to exist in that world. Whoa. Keep in your fucking pants. What's happening? That's what I have to deal with. Onwards. The sky's moving upward. We gotta keep going.
00:56:14
Speaker
Moving hastily on. Whitticism gives five dollars. It says, playing through DK Tropical Freeze. And I feel like there's always one secret without any kind of tell. You just have to jump off screen. I hate it.
00:56:25
Speaker
Yeah, I always hate it in, I think it was the original Yoshi's Island. Half the game was based around finding all the secrets in every level and they just didn't signpost them at all. They just like pound this very random spot. Yeah. Collect these five specific coins that look exactly the same as all the other coins. I think they fixed it in like future editions to make the secrets more obvious. But the original release was a pain in the ass for that.
00:56:49
Speaker
You gotta play a little fair in that way. Blasphemous 2, you do have to find Weeping Angels, but if you go into a room with a Weeping Angel in it, you'll hear a little crying as you go through. Very creepy, but also, you know not to bother with all the other ones, you know? So you can't even focus on that. Yeah, you sound, like, use the other elements of the game to really be like, are you listening? Like, you can solve this if you're listening. If you're watching a podcast, you're not gonna be able to solve this. No, because any of these subtitles...
00:57:14
Speaker
I want to listen to a podcast. Don't oppress my podcast listening to habits. No, don't hide things behind sound. Just for the sake of it. Yeah, because, you know, hard of hearing people.
00:57:29
Speaker
Name's not Fitz. Welcome to sponsor free videos. Name's not Fitz. And the Merchant of Life gives five pounds and says, I personally love how New Vegas did. It's more silly secrets tying them to the wild wasteland perk at level one. So you can opt into them if you like. That was a typing disaster. The Merchant of Life. Well, it's going to read it like that. Yeah, you didn't even give it a fair shot at the beginning. You started doing your Yahtzee voice right away. Doing old Shakespeare. I am with Pentam.
00:57:58
Speaker
adds additional wacky content and modifies existing content in random encounters. Oh, it's a perk. Is it like that zany serial killer perk in Baldur's Gate 3? Is that a secret? That just sounds like a different playthrough. Oh yeah. The thing where you have like a evil conscious or whatever. Yeah. Like Disco Elysium. You know, sometimes I play them with like encyclopedia or maxed out on Inland Empire. So you get new content, so to speak.
00:58:29
Speaker
Yeah. Uh, yeah. Wild wasteland was sort of like new Vegas is equivalent of the bloody mess perk that had been like a staple of the series up to that point. That's fun. Where it just made things a little bit wackier. I like that.
00:58:45
Speaker
Uh, FoxD, you saw dollars and says, do cheese strats in sports games count? No. Discovering the play, the AI can't stop and running up the score shares that feeling of discovery. Okay. I don't think any of us play sports games. It was, um, at a hockey game, Nick was loving. It was a roguelike, but I found that they had, yeah, tapes, tapes.
00:59:08
Speaker
There was a little spot in the corner where if you always got there and shot it, they couldn't stop it no matter how strong they were. So while it was cool to find, it did ruin the game for me. Yeah, I mean, it's like a cheese strat and I don't know. I got through some Souls bosses by being like, here's my cheese strat and this is what I'm going to do. And it's fine because we're all cheating at this game. Where's the line between normal game and sports game, incidentally? Do you think Neon White's a sports game?
00:59:33
Speaker
Uh, no, what? Oh, that's a kind of worms. I just opened, isn't it? Yeah. That's interesting. It is running. This is a well-sealed can. No, yeah. Is it is, is running is like running through an obstacle course of sport is rocket league sports game. That's a driving game. Yeah, but driving the sport.
01:00:02
Speaker
Well, to me, sports, it's more defined by the inherent balance of turns, so to speak. So you've got like Rocket League. Yeah, you can take your turns and whatnot. Whereas like a MOBA, you're going to be winning and keep that momentum going the entire time or anything asymmetrical. I don't liken them to the sports formula. I think more of the rule set than the actual thing they're doing. Okay. Like Pong. So it's x, comma, sports game?
01:00:28
Speaker
No. Do you take turns like that? No. Oh, wait. Ah, you do take turns in that sense, but are they sort of like equal turns? Like when you're, you're playing, um, football, you know, the other guy scores. Now it's your turn with the ball. How about it? But it's not turn. That's just like playing in real, you're playing it to read that like rocket league. Absolutely. It's a sports game, right? Yeah. Yeah. You know, football games. Um,
01:00:54
Speaker
I think you can turn them into sports like League of Legends once you do like a best of five, you know? Is duck hunter sports game? See, I hunt for survival, so... If I played Half-Life and the game had a big score at the top of the screen and I got points for everything I shot, would that become a sports game? I saw arcade game in it.
01:01:17
Speaker
Is Mario a support game? It's got points. There are a lot of Mario sports games. Well, let's get back on topic, shall we? We've got a bunch of Super Chats to get through before I can have my lunch. You're the one! You asked me. Alex Armstrong gives $5 and says, a secret I like is Yuji Naka leaving his and other programmers credits in Sonic 1, but it's in white and Japanese, so no one knows but him and his co-workers. And everyone who speaks Japanese, presumably, Alex Armstrong. And all the cellmates.
01:01:46
Speaker
Yeah, I was thinking, you know he's leaving secrets in that cell. I'm just leaving cheat codes on the wall in his own shit. Pennyponyclips gives $2 and says, should there be audio cues for path splits to secrets? No. I want to listen to podcasts. Piss off.
01:02:15
Speaker
I like certain puzzles that use sound. There's a whole area of The Witness where you need to use sound, which I will say I was playing through The Witness absolutely as a podcast game. And so when I got to the area where you need to use sound, I was like, I just don't understand what this game wants from me. Well, you gotta play The Witness as a podcast game, because there's no soundtrack. It's just very impressive. There's one area of all the puzzles you sound. It's a liminal space, that. I was watching Scarface while I played that. That's how they get you.
01:02:46
Speaker
Magimix2000 gives £10 and says, not on topic, just wanted to say congratulations on your first six months, you'll rule. We sure do, Magimix2000, I agree. Thank you so much. NamesNotFits gives 20 Swedish krona and says, does Starstruck Vagabond have any juicy secrets?
01:03:02
Speaker
Well, might you ask? There are 15 hidden wonders throughout the galaxy in South Chicago. Oh, that's cool. And one of the things you can do for New Game Plus is you have to find a souvenir postcard for every single one of them. Oh, that's nice. You'll have to keep them and just find them.
01:03:23
Speaker
You have to keep them and get them to a specific place in order to unlock all of the game's secrets. See, I'm so happy I'm on order. I was like, I'm going to take this with me. Are there any audio based secrets? Nope. Unless you count Mega Banda Sport. No, it's a work sim. Professional. It's a job. It's a job. Amazon delivery boy.
01:03:47
Speaker
Yes, Frost, I've been handing out Steam keys like there's no tomorrow and Frost's been having a go at it. It's fun. Do you think it's a good game, Frost?
01:03:56
Speaker
I like it, yeah. But people think I like weird games, so I don't know what that says. No, no, you don't need to qualify it. You said it like it. You said you like it, that's all we need. I guess. The creator of the hit series, Cold Take. This just in. Yes. Put me on the same page. Yes, well-known internet personality, Frost, heartily recommends Starstruck Vagabond to everyone. That is true, sports can be jobs. If Patrick Rong's sport is his job.
01:04:26
Speaker
Fuck off. Eric Wycard comes back with a hundred arses and says, you can go beyond Dark Souls like lore. Have you tried Five Nights at 3D theories? I heard a guy made a fortune on YouTube with that stuff, but that is just a theory. Yeah, like the tweens are apparently really into the extended universe of Five Nights at 3D.
01:04:46
Speaker
I think they just like, they like a sense of purpose in their media. They like being like, oh, there's something deeper here because the teens are going to realize when you grow up, there's nothing deeper to life. We're here for a short amount of time and then we die and that's all. It's just their creepypasta. It's just that age.
01:05:05
Speaker
Yeah. I wonder if kids these days in this age of squeamish, won't somebody think of the children media scrutiny that the kids these days are starved for like children's horror like we used to get when we were kids. Like fucking the Dark Crystal, fucking never ending story. So that that was some horrific shit. The secrets of that.
01:05:35
Speaker
Yeah. Lots of traumatizing shit, like fucking, um, water shipped down. Oh, Christ. Yeah. They don't do that. Do they? They don't have like, Hey, this is dark as hell, but it's a cartoon. So you might actually, they just have traumatized the kids. All media, not like the news is way more traumatizing than it was when we were entertaining.
01:05:57
Speaker
No, it's not. It's love. Kids love horror. I like was fascinated by like torture devices as a kid. I think that's why I am ultimately very pro Five Nights at Freddy's and the Five Nights at Freddy's movie doing well, because I think this is just going to be a gateway and kids are going to get interested in this and then be like, oh, what other horror things should I check out? The Shining. And then it's like, great. If this gets a kid to read The Shining or watch The Shining, get on them. I know. Five Nights at Freddy's to The Shining. That's a bit of a jump. I mean, when the old lady comes out of the bath,
01:06:27
Speaker
That's gonna scar a lot of people. Are you thinking like my my niece is of that age They're into some freaky shit way creepier than the stuff we were on
01:06:38
Speaker
And it's just, it's just on the internet. We had movies, you know, we had books, we had comics that were like mass produced for us like that. Those are just free roaming. It's everywhere. They have subreddits. Creepy shit. Sub reddits. They're a source of all the world's evil.
01:06:58
Speaker
Uh, Dale Mallows. I was busy last week, but it's important for you all to know the best villain is the great mighty Pooh. Happy anniversary, gents. I show you love with cash. Thank you, Dale Mallows. We need more musical games. You just played Stray Gods, didn't you? Yeah, I was. That was great. We just need more. I see we don't mean rhythm games because there's plenty of those. I mean like musicals.
01:07:22
Speaker
Singing. What about a rhythm game that was presented as a musical, so you had to do the rhythm gameplay during the big numbers? Is that not a high-fi rush? Not quite like that. Like, in a musical, everyone's, all the characters are singing, and that's how the plot is delivered. They're all singing, like, the plot to each other. But in, like, the standard rhythm game, the music, we're just, like, doing stuff in time with the background music, and it's not technically diegetic.
01:07:50
Speaker
Did you play Puppeteer back on the PS3? Yeah, I'd say I did. 12? That was an interesting game. The whole thing was presented in the guise of you are watching a theatrical puppet production. But everything was like the whole Mario 3 as a production kind of thing, but baked into every single moment and mechanic of the game.
01:08:14
Speaker
Good stuff. Was it a musical? It was not a musical, no, but it was very theatrical. Well, I think we found a niche for someone to fill. Hey, listen, you need to make another game after this game. There you go. Yeah. Unfortunately, I can't make music. I don't know anything about making music. I get someone else to do it. I know a musical game.
01:08:37
Speaker
Oh shit. Songs of a hero. Literally the main character sees what you are doing in the game. It's a platform game. Oh, I like that. That seems clever. Songs of a hero. See the struggle with designing a musical game is that doing anything in like rhythm when the player is doing their own thing. That's geometry dash, isn't it? Yeah.
01:09:05
Speaker
Yeah, rhythm's a hard thing. I mean, from even like, streaming a rhythm game is hard enough. So like being able to like, it's like rubbing your stomach and patting your head kind of thing. He sings the players' actions in response to what's happening during the adventure. That's funny. So it just goes, they jumped across the hole, they jumped across the other hole. Oh, look, he's jumping across another hole. He seems to do that a lot.
Humor and Anecdotes in Gaming
01:09:32
Speaker
Yeah. I like that.
01:09:37
Speaker
That's my version of Les Miserables. Pam Anarchy gives us 66.6 Norwegian Crowders and says, in Skyrim, dropping a valuable onto the ground in a city can cause citizens to argue, and in rare cases, fight each other to the death over it. That's clever. That's cool. Alex, I need all of that to buy swords with.
01:10:07
Speaker
Alex Armstrong gives side dollars and says, thoughts on inside joke secrets for the devs to put in and are fun for gamers to theorize till a documentary debunks it, like Ramiro's head in Doom 2. Good marketing. Yeah. If I had a bunch of games that I'm making 10 years later, oh, by the way, this is one thing you didn't find. Boom. I am now relevant again for 15 minutes.
01:10:33
Speaker
Well, that's the fucking J.K. Rowling strategy, isn't it? Yeah, by the way, that's her secret. Hermione was actually olive skin. This character is gay. Secret Mexican character. I know there's one passage in the books where Hermione is specifically described as having white skin, but never mind. Retcon. Headlines.
01:10:59
Speaker
Fox D gives side dollars and says, you like the pause for getting you to the Richie's so you're a F2P game where the non-payers are content for the whales. Content for the whales. That sentence was fine. You read it that way. No, I didn't. I was trying to read it normally and his typing threw me off. You're possessed by the ghost of an illiterate. As a card carrying member of the pores. I love the pores. Card carrying? Yeah.
01:11:29
Speaker
I'm poor by California standards. My house is probably the most inexpensive one on my street. Do they look down on you in your gated community with the golden bricks? It's not a gated community. It's just like a street that doesn't go anywhere. Wow, you really are poor. There would need to be a gate for it to be a gated community.
01:11:59
Speaker
We didn't want to deal with an HOA. I didn't know I had one. He stuck up on me, left a note in my mailbox, says welcome to the HOA, and I've been here for three years. Did you forget to mow the lawn? No, he does. I have the nicest HOA guy, because if you don't keep up appearances on the outside, he just comes by and does it for you. He's been doing it for three years. Oh, that's great. What if you stop doing everything?
01:12:27
Speaker
What if you don't want him to? Test the limits. What if he wants to paint your house green? I can have it. If it brings the rent down, sure, he can do it. Anyway. Mr. Emerald D gives $10 and says, wanted to leave a little thank you tip to the three best podcast hosts in the biz, the King Weeb himself, Marty, the coolest Mexican treat since the Paleta, Frost, and of course, Toffee's dad. Thank you, Mr. Emerald D.
01:12:57
Speaker
Yeah. He learned everything from me. How to fall asleep. How to lick a hand. And his own bollocks. Or lack of say. Tree, remember for five months in the green gang says press X to Yahtzee. Okay. He did it. Press X. You're a quick time event. If you like.
01:13:27
Speaker
if you like. Zarathir, remember for four months in Tip Jar? Thanks, Zarathir. Alex Armstrong comes back with $5 and says Undertale's full of secrets, like going way back to the start after beating the final boss to see Azrael, or finding Toby Fox's room
Undertale's Hidden Depths
01:13:43
Speaker
after the credits. What's he doing in his room? I like a dev room. I like a little fourth wall breaking room where things are happening in there. Chrono Trigger had a great one, a little room where all the devs were hanging out.
01:13:55
Speaker
Ooh, we're talking Undertale secrets. Here's one I like. The character Asriel is the child of two characters called Asgore and Toriel. So the name is a combination of those two characters' names. But it's also an anagram of the word Serial. And Asriel's surname is Dreamer, which is an anagram of Murderer. So her full name is an anagram of Serial Murderer. Whoa. Are they... Are they evil? Yeah, they're the main baddie.
01:14:25
Speaker
I don't know. I still haven't played it. I'm gonna play it this summer. This summer. Big Summer of Undertale. Big Summer of Undertale, same. That's all we'll talk about, yeah. We'll just get annoyed because every podcast will come out and be like, did you know this? And be like, yes. I found the bed. I found the bed where you can sleep and it's just a lump. It's still you. The mirror said it's still me. Yes. Let's see who in the chat didn't know the serial murderer thing. Maybe we can still surprise a few people. Spoilers.
01:14:53
Speaker
I won't remember by the time I play it, so it's fine.
Haunted Game Legends and More
01:14:58
Speaker
Zaratha gives two R dollars and says, another tip for the jar. That's good. That was very good. Dr. Theo gives five dollars and says, to clarify, you need to find secrets to beat Shipwreck 64 and they get pretty cryptic. The game opens up YouTube to give you hints on how to progress. I, uh, I, I,
01:15:21
Speaker
Looked at this game, I didn't know this existed and this looks great. I like a game that's like, oh, it's a, it's a N64 game that never existed and may or may not be haunted. I like a nice haunt them up. Pussest game. Old Jumanji. Uh, fucking, fucking 3D pasta games.
01:15:41
Speaker
Uh, Mr. McKeown gives five CA dollars and says, finished. We'll leave the galaxy for good a few weeks back. Now, considering changing my username. Why, Mr. McKeown, did you not like the book? Oh, no.
01:15:58
Speaker
There's a lot of people like the book. It's got an average rating of 4.8 stars on Audible last I checked. And everyone should buy it. Look at that. You round up, that's five stars. That's a perfect book. I know. Yes. Get fucked James Joyce. Stalling. Yeah. Who fucking reading James Joyce now?
01:16:21
Speaker
Nerds. Uh, Josh Knowles gives $5 and says restarted Fallout 4 nine times. No patience for part of grind. Glad material, deep glitch not patched. How do helpful glitches fit in the secret spectrum? Ooh. Our glitches secrets. I feel guilty about that. They're exploits? You feel guilty about glitches?
01:16:45
Speaker
I feel guilty about using a glitch to progress instead of the way I'm supposed to, because I worry that I'll miss a load of things that the designers wanted me to see. Yeah, depends on the glitch. Currency, soul, stuff I can control, fine. Something like, oh, I've clipped into a new zone. I was like, nah, Karma's going to get me. It's going to have stopped some sequencing and I'll be stuck here forever. Don't do it, you
Glitches and Unintended Gameplay
01:17:08
Speaker
know?
01:17:08
Speaker
I'm playing Animal Well, and I've played through the first few bits of it a few times. I had to restart it a few times. And, like, I'll start in a different area than I did last time and get, like, a different tool. And I'll go to the next area and, like, wait, I can use my tool to do this area more efficiently. But I won't want to do that because I didn't do it last time and I know I could do it without it. And I'm afraid I'd miss something if I didn't go the intended route.
01:17:37
Speaker
Fair? I mean, I think the goal on the first playthrough is just get to the credits and then pick the meat off the bone. Fair enough. And then realize there is no bone. You are the bone. Pick your own meat off. No true Scotsman picks their own meat off. Did you do it right? He might have.
01:18:00
Speaker
Alex Armstrong gives $2 and says, any DLC or OST purchased for Starstruck Vagabond? I'm glad you asked, Alex Armstrong. Yes, we were planning to make the soundtrack available to buy separately on launch or with the game. No, see the game's not even out yet. You're asking for more of it. OST I get because that's already been a part of it. Yeah. You add more wonders. That's a selling point. Fuck it. If you want to make your own.
01:18:30
Speaker
Brian J. Lancaster gives $5 and says finding secrets and rubbing yourself against walls is a different skill than combat. Also, I thought I beat Symphony on DS turns out I did not. Oh, here we go. Symphony's not even on DS.
01:18:46
Speaker
Maybe they don't mean Symphony of the Night. Maybe they mean something else. Maybe they mean, um, Eternal Sonata. I don't know. Right. Awesome. Yeah. That was a hot shop on like. That's why I like it. Cause it is a different skill from combat, but not so much in the survival horror ones like Neon White. You could either actually beat the game or to find the secret, you'd have to give yourself a bad run. So it's like your brain now shifts to just this alternate mode. Yeah. Yeah. It's like sports.
01:19:17
Speaker
but it all works still within the standard mechanics of the game, which is what I like about it. SVS Guru 2000 gives 5 euros and says, the best thing to pair with a kilt are knee-high socks and cat ears. Maybe a tight-fitting crop top, a bell necklace. Well then you're just dressing like a lady. And me pipes. No, you could be a berserk in Nian, you know? It's true. I've seen a lot of Scottish people in kilts with knee-high socks though.
01:19:43
Speaker
Yeah, with the little balls, like the decorative ones, fuzzy ones. You mean the sporadon? Sure, the word that you know. Is that a military getup or can anyone dress that way? Is it stolen valor? No, the whole getup, like with the fancy socks. It's sort of more in the area of traditional countries dress, you know, like
01:20:12
Speaker
like Spanish people dressing up in one of those hats with the white prims and the castanets on their fingers or Australians dressing in hats with corks around the brim. Oh, man. This keeps the flies out, you know. National dress, I think, is the phrase I'm looking for. We should bring it back. I like it.
01:20:35
Speaker
Dr. Theo gives $5 and says Payday 2 had a cool secret ending where after decrypting and solving the randomised puzzle the game crashes and installs an update holding the reward. Woah. That would scare me. I would just assume everything broke. I got a virus. We gotta get McAfee on the phone.
01:20:56
Speaker
Yeah, I think Undertale was the last game that in which I tolerate the pretend the game has crashed there thing. Cause by the time super hot was doing it, I was just rolling my eyes. It was like, yeah, we know you can do this. And now I'll restart the game and it will be different. Blah, blah, blah, blah. I'm familiar of a magic trick. Yeah. Seeing the genie will not go back into the bottle.
01:21:24
Speaker
Uh, Yeller gives two pounds and says, Kilt's okay. No true Scotsman suffers Marty Dribble. Oh, you guys don't get, you guys don't get like drippy Willie syndrome as you age in Scotland. Well, I don't know if it matters, but I'm uncircumcised. What are your circumstances have to do with this? Well, I presume you'd be more likely to have a drippy problem if you were circumcised.
01:21:54
Speaker
Maybe, I'll ask. I'm excited for chat to hit the point. Chat's just about to hit the circumcision point, so I'm excited for those messages to roll on through. The dogmatic director gives $2 and says, Sans and Flowey remember when you reset. Yeah, we know the dogmatic director. It's great. I didn't know that. I don't even know what these men are. Sans is... It's Sans Serif without Serif.
01:22:21
Speaker
Yeah, there you go. You internalized one fact. Well, you don't have to say it like that. You also skipped the pattern bikes. Wonderful. Yes, I know. I was about to get to it. It was bangin' a shitty. Fat and Pike gives $5 and says, in Steamboat Chronicles, there's stray cats around to feed and a hidden chest surrounded by cats and how much money in it depends on how many you feed. Oh, that's nice. It's like the BattleShark sisters. Yeah, that's cute.
01:22:47
Speaker
Oh, like that, the Sorrow fight in Metal Gear Solid 3, where you have to deal with all the people you killed in the course of the game. Joul Ro gives five euros and says, my favourite secret was that everyone played the console version of Spider-Man 2 while I played the Pooh and thought it was the
Game Versions and Preferences
01:23:06
Speaker
same. Shout out to Eric.
01:23:09
Speaker
I think what they mean is that they played the PC version of Spider-Man 2, the movie tie-in, which was famously not the same game as the console version and a hell of a lot worse. Oh, is that a secret? Like back in my day, yeah, we grew up with different versions of games for some reason. I think the publishers wanted to keep it secret because it had the exact same bug, sir. Awkward. Is it a secret in like Dark Souls where if you progress, I guess, in NPC enough, they fight with you? Because you can do that without them.
01:23:40
Speaker
I think that's one of many things you're supposed to find out through, you know, community knowledge building. Interesting. Urban M gives 25 PLNs and says, you say streaming rhythm games is hard, but I remember Jesse Galina playing the rhythm game for hidden games while talking to Marty and watching chat. That's because everything Jesse does on rhythm. Maybe he's just a giant ass. I'm relatively sure during that stream we talked about how streaming rhythm games is hard.
01:24:10
Speaker
If you watch someone stream a game, immediately they're playing 20% worse than they would be when they're normal. If they're entertaining you in chat, another 20%. Yup. Yup. I forget how to function. Yeah. People who are good while they stream games just mean they're not entertaining. There you go. There you go. Hot take. Brian J. Lancaster, your site analyst, and says, oops, no symphony on DS. Must have played it elsewhere, totally legally. Also, play Brigando a Hacker, shameless plug.
01:24:41
Speaker
If you want to plug your game, Brian, there are probably better venues to do it than here. Then a super chat where you say that you stole, that you stole Symphony of the Night. You stole the hard earned money from Igarashi-san. You naughty, naughty thief. I keep thinking of the cheese. Oaxaca cheese is so good. It is good cheese. It's a little crumbly white. I prefer a sharp cheddar.
01:25:11
Speaker
Which in England we just call cheddar. Cheddar. Why, nothing sharp there? Like I have to buy like what's sold as extra sharp, ooh, crazy, really only for the purists. Don't give this to your weakling children cheese in this country because that's the closest thing to what actual cheddar is like. Yeah, it's a soft nation. This cheese will stab you, it's that sharp.
01:25:41
Speaker
Yeah, that's what I have to buy to relive my memories of eating cheddar in my childhood home. What do you think of our soft cheddar? Our softer ones are plastic. Well, it works on a, it works on a burger cause it melts without splitting. There you go. I'll give it that. Uh, incidentally, really incredibly sharp cheddar on a burger. Really good. Oh yeah. Cuts right through the mess.
01:26:11
Speaker
Also, blue cheese on a burger, I'm a fan of as well. Oh, that's more of an acquired taste. Yeah, for mold, you kind of have to micro dose it, build it up. Maki gives five pounds and says, thanks for all the podcasts, which I listened to on my commute. Marta, you said you'd like to Lefroyg. I would recommend two others, Pete Bomb and Mortlach. Ooh, doggy, those are real, uh, real pee-dee, real smoky scotches. Well, at least we're for Lefroyas, so I imagine Pete Bomb and Mortlach are.
01:26:42
Speaker
You like a smoky scotch? I do like a smoky scotch. I'm more of a rum man myself, a spiced rum for reference. I like a, I know I can use a spiced rum. Not true. And if I'm making a whiskey sour, I'll usually use Jim Bean. Yeah. I like a Jimmy. Or some similar bourbon.
01:27:03
Speaker
I put both of these in my queue, my booze queue. Just whatever's open, whatever's cheap, how about it? Is your booze queue related to an amused boot? That was good.
01:27:24
Speaker
Uh, Jules Rowe gave us two euros and says, I loved how you could get killed by Meryl in Metal Gear Solid. Oh yeah. Hideo was always a fan of the weird secret stuff that you wouldn't think to do. Oh yeah. Or doing things and then being like, oh, time paradox is going to thrown on the screen or wait two weeks and the end will die of old age.
Metal Gear Solid 2 Easter Eggs
01:27:45
Speaker
Yeah. MGS2 was full of that sort of thing as well. Like, did you know that in the bit where you were escorting Emma, Emma Rick and sort of watching for her through a sniper scope,
01:27:54
Speaker
You can point the directional mic at her and hear her muttering to herself. Oh, that's clever. And wondering aloud if your character has real hair or if it's a wig. What the hell? And if you codec call her right after you hear that, Raiden gets all stroppy at her about it. That's good. I like that. I was expecting more of that in that seasons game. The one with the biking and the picture taking and the recording. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I was expecting it to get creepy.
01:28:24
Speaker
I'm just a sicko. Zaratha gives two R dollars and goes TMI alert. I guess we've gotten to the circumcision chat. And then Alex Armstrong saves it all with two dollars to say hope Marty and Frost's beards are well and Yachts is too. Well, as you can see, mine's getting increasingly silver as my children stress me to an early grave.
01:28:51
Speaker
But you know, the wife likes the salt and pepper look, you know? She thinks it's distinguished. She wants to be dead sooner. Yeah. I just, I just go for the little, little gaudy out here. Somebody's got to be the bad guy. Evil Frost. What have you done? What have you done with Good Frost? Yeah, I used to rock the door knocker where you just shave your sides. A door knocker. So you just have a circle beard around your mouth, but then you, you kind of look like a vagina.
01:29:18
Speaker
I was about to say something like wipe your mouth boy. Oh no. Also, according to Ko-Fi bot, we have a new subscription on Ko-Fi from Rio. I don't know, I'm not a hundred percent sure what that means, but thank you, Rio. Crazy.
01:29:37
Speaker
Uh, Jacob Lester gives $1.99 and says, release Starstruck vagabond the Yahtzee uncut. Well, that's what you're getting Jacob Lester. I ain't cutting anything out. It's all there. It's neither cut for your game. I'm ready. We said that, uh, the outfits were too sexy. So he had, uh, he had to tone down the sexiness of the outfits in the game. You just, but, uh,
01:30:02
Speaker
Well, I haven't seen that, Eric. That's a nice Photoshop you got there. Oh, look at that. On Disney Channel. I'm going to be honest, that is a Disney Plus reference that I do not understand. You know, when I came up with the name Starstruck Vagabond, I remember searching on Steam for similar titles and there was like one tiny indie game called Starstruck.
01:30:24
Speaker
But I checked again recently and there's quite a few games of Starstruck in the title now and I think that's because people are trying to leech off my fame. And I'm... That's how you know you made it. Yeah, I'm slightly flattered by that fact. There you go. Someone like on Twitter sent me a link to a game that looked like it's been thrown together in like a week that was just called the Vagabond Starship. Oh my god. I was like, is this you?
01:30:54
Speaker
I gotta say this. Oh my goodness. Have you found it? Yeah. This is scary. I mean, well, who's to say though? It's like, you know, calculus was found in two different parts of the world at the same time. Who's to say that it's just not time for all you, you writing weirdos with your sci-fi asphyxiation asphyxiation?
01:31:18
Speaker
That's not the word. Fixation? Was that the word you were after? Yeah, just fixation, not as fixation. Maybe you like being choked in space, who knows? Well, getting back to Drippy Willy syndrome. Fog Stig is $5 and says Drippy Willy syndrome is only funny until you hit your late 40s. And peeing takes longer than pooping if you want to get every dropout. Hashtag TMI. So you gotta, you gotta wring it out, bud. Don't wring it out. That's your peepee. You can't do that. You can't do that.
01:31:46
Speaker
Also, Eric has informed me that that Ko-Fi donation was a monthly donation from Rio. So, Rio, appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you, Rio. We're sorry we're talking about Drippy Willys. Well, whatever works. The brain sturgeon gives two euros. I'm more of a lack of wool in 18 years guy myself.
01:32:06
Speaker
That's a, that's a fancy one. I believe that's the one. Uh, uh, uh, what's his name? What's, what's, uh, the, the, the guy in parks and rec, Ron Swanson, the whole episode where for his birthday, he goes like a Lagavulin. Uh, he goes to Scotland. I'm a, I'm a gray goose bought yesterday. Didn't put it in the fridge. Well,
01:32:33
Speaker
NamesNotFits gives 100 Swedish krona. It says, I found something really cool at a used game store. 100 classic books for the original DS. Everything from Moby Dick to Jane Austen and Sherlock Holmes. A bit like finding a real life video game secret. That's cool. The DS had all those weird like non-games games. I assume all the books on it were in the public domain.
01:32:53
Speaker
I would imagine. There are apps, there are apps like that. Like they tend to be a Kindle or something. And if you download it, it's just, they just put in like a hundred public domain books in there. I should do that. Shoot. When the, uh, I remember when the DS was huge, they had, uh, like a game or like an app that you could only get at the Louvre and it was like a tour guide of the Louvre that you would do on your, on your DS. Weird shit. Nintendo, bring it back.
01:33:21
Speaker
Bring back more Louvlikes. Uh, Alex Armstrong comes back again with another $5 and says, last one yards. You still hold the fact that Sonic's big ring secrets in 2 and 3 are bad to explore find when one's 50 rings and reaching the end is better? Yes, Alex Armstrong, I will die on that hill. You think? I think it was a...
01:33:43
Speaker
Well, I always felt that, you know how in the early Sonic games, you have to get all the Chaos Emeralds to win for Proppers?
Critiques and Ethics in Gaming
01:33:50
Speaker
Right. And in the first Sonic game, you got them by getting 50 rings at a single level, a minigame at the end of the level, and getting them ruled from that. And in Sonic 2 and 3, the minigames where you find the Chaos Emeralds are locked behind secrets that are hidden in the level. Yeah, like a big ring you jump into.
01:34:07
Speaker
So and I thought that was detrimental because in Sonic I want to be speeding through the level doing all the stunts, not like r-sakingly backtracking and stopping and checking every nook and corner looking for the secret portals. I think the gameplay style is was served a lot better by the just find 50 rings wherever you like model.
01:34:28
Speaker
Interesting, yeah. I definitely agree with that in terms of, yeah, Sonic levels aren't about like poking around every nook and cranny and finding everything. It's about feeling the nook and going fast.
01:34:39
Speaker
It was never about precision. Precision jumping in Sonic is kind of a pain in the arse, which is why that one underground ruin level in Sonic 1 is like the worst level in any Sonic game. They hadn't quite fully polished the Sonic level designs title. So there you go. There's my hot take. You are free to disagree, but you are wrong if you do. I'll take it.
01:35:07
Speaker
No true Sonic game, uh, has gameplay based around precision platforming. Also, if you're going to Sonic explain us, uh, you got to do it in a super jet. You can't do it in a free message. You're not allowed to. You got to pay money to talk to Sonic. That was a $5 one. No, no, no. That one was great. People are coming in because we clearly, I have no doubt Yasi and I got Sonic stuff wrong in that basket. You're fine. You're fine for us. You, um, you abstain from the Sonic talk. So you're fine. The rest of us are not.
01:35:44
Speaker
Anyway, nearly finished now. Brian, Brian J. Lancaster gives another $2 and says piracy is wrong. But then he would say that because he's also a game developer apparently who pirated Symphony of the Night from poor Igarashi son. Yes, if you pirate Starstruck vagabond, then
01:36:06
Speaker
Never watch any of my stuff again, you bastard, I hate you. The true Scotsman would never pirate Starstruck vagabond. No, no true fan of second wind would pirate Starstruck vagabond. Good. You did the thing and then you made it another thing. There you go. Fox D gives $2 and says no true Scotsman drinks space side, apparently. What is that? That's a Scotch. Oh, okay. Oh, Scotch here. I will say no true Australian drinks fosters.
01:36:37
Speaker
Posters is just like the beer that's sold as the Australian beer outside Australia, but no one in Australia actually drinks it. There's a lot of things like that. There's always that Rice-O-Roni, the San Francisco treat, and I never understood why. I lived there for like 12 years and I was like, there's no rice and anything here. What is going on? I've never eaten Rice-O-Roni and I live in the Bay Area. You're missing out on the San Francisco treat? Apparently.
01:37:01
Speaker
I thought the San Francisco treat was when you go to the pier with all the seals and stop at the Ghirardelli chocolate shop and order one of their... Get a little free chocolate? Order one of their enormous sundaes. I really expected a glory hole joke out of you. I'm proud of you.
01:37:19
Speaker
I just like chocolate. I just reminded myself that I want to go back to the Ghirardelli Cafe and eat the chocolate sundaes. But I mentioned I'm on a diet. I've had to cut back on my sugary treats. That's 500. Are you still at the 500? Yes, I'm still on the 500 calories limit a day for sugary treats. And it's kind of making me very antsy. Not for your birthday and your game launch though. Those don't count. Birthday sundaes don't count. Yeah, I get to have cake on my birthday. I hope. Oh yeah.
01:37:50
Speaker
Okay, uh, Blistered Soul gives $4.99 and says, first, Jack and Daxter, tutorial level, if you tilt the camera right, you can see Precursor Robots, the final boss built into the rock secret in plain view. That's cool. I mean, I just like that, and yeah, and uh, was it Dark Souls? You can always see the bosses coming. There's a few, actually. The enclosed ones, like Pikachu and Snorlax, you can't see them. I don't think so.
01:38:13
Speaker
Yeah, in some Dark Souls boss fights you can like use your bow and arrow to kill them before you even enter the boss fight. If you're a scrub. Fire bridge dragon? Well invested in arrows is what I did. You could do that with man as father of the Abyss. If you were a scrub and couldn't handle beating the boss, fairs and squaresies. It's dark down there. They can clip through the fucking walls. This is how we keep things fair.
01:38:44
Speaker
Anyway, uh, name's not fits comes back with 20 Swedish Corona and says, maybe it was published by Harper Collins. Only one Euro referring to the DS game with a hundred books on it. That's only a Euro nice little cheapie. Well, if it's public domain books, then it's, yeah, you can just go online to find public domain books. If you want to steal these,
01:39:09
Speaker
But you can't read them on two screens that are sort of close to each other, but still have some plastic between them. You can just read it on literally any other device in the world. Well. Anyway, FoxDeag is $2.00. It says mission style burritos, the San Francisco trade. Oh my god, so good. California burrito. Holy Moses. Got to put fries in them? Crazy. Oh, I do. It's a tube full of carbs. It's great. I do like putting fries in a burrito.
01:39:38
Speaker
That's excessive. I just, I just ask you not put cilantro in a burrito. Cause I'm one of those people with the gene that makes cilantro taste weird. Cilantro does nothing to me. I don't taste it one way or another. There's a lot of Mexican cuisine that I don't like for that reason. That's why I tend to get quesadillas a lot when we go to Chipotle. There you go.
01:39:59
Speaker
on top of Chipotle just being gross. Yeah. Fungus Finder gives $2 and says, y'all, I dozed off. Can you do the podcast again? Thanks. No, because we're finished now. We're going to piss off. Wow. We did it. Yay. Another great podcast in the can. Oh, and then Eric comes back with 20 arses and says, congrats. You reached the last dono for now.
01:40:22
Speaker
That's a little easter egg. Thanks for paying to be the producer of this podcast, Eric. You've got some real team spirit there. It's because he's showing off his fifth anniversary. I don't know why. This is broken. I love it. That's how I knew the other Eric was a fake. Didn't have the actual seal of approval.
01:40:44
Speaker
Anyway, thanks for listening to us bang on about something that was originally about secrets but then ended up being about Drippy Willys. I was yet to go. And I'm not a Scotsman, but I'm related to Scotsman. And I have a weekly video that I call fully ramblimatic that comes out on the second wind channel. It's also it's sort of like another series you might know called zero punctuation, but assuredly legally distinct.
01:41:14
Speaker
Anyway, I got one of those coming out this week, which will be on the subject of Stella Blade, a game about a hot girl with her bum out. Is her name Stella Blade? Yes. Great. Stella Bum, they should call it. Oh, I actually don't know. Is her name Stella? No, the main character is called Eve.
01:41:37
Speaker
Yeah, she's a lone lady in a post-apocalyptic world, and her name's Eve. And guess what? She's got a male support character, and you'll never guess what his name is. If it's Adam, I'm fucking never coming back to this podcast. Gary. It is absolutely Adam. I was expecting them to at least go for Seth, but you know, sure. I think otherwise would be to give Stella Blade far too much fucking credit, apparently.
01:42:01
Speaker
Anyway, that's a little taste of this wigsfully rumblin' magic. There'll also be Yahtzee tries, where I stream to new indie games, and Christ, I've got a lot to pick from at the moment. They're just... screaming out onto Steam, those indie games right now. Just save some room in your tummies for pudding when Starstruck Vagabond comes out. Yeah?
01:42:24
Speaker
And all that. Anyway, Frost, plug your stuff. My stuff, we just had a cold take come out today talking about why the bad things happen. We've talked about how the bad things happen and what the bad things are, but this time why. The question everyone asks after a tragedy, why me, dear God? Probably because you touch yourself too much at night. And then what else we got going on, Marty? All sorts of things. Later today, 6 p.m. Central, the hidden gem crew will be back with Witchfire.
01:42:55
Speaker
of firing your witches. I think that's the early access gothic action game by the astronauts, the developers of Bulletstorm and Painkiller. That finally came out, didn't it? It's in early access still. It's not all fully accessed, so they'll be checking that out.
01:43:12
Speaker
Yeah, should have normal-ish streams for the week. Stuff's a little bit in flux. No DMC because we finished LMA Cry and Casey's going to be gone the back half of the week. However, Thursday and Friday, we should have two pretty fun sponsored streams that we will let you know about when we have those locked down. But all three of us will be on those, the Thursday and Friday ones. So check those out. And then we should have more bite size.
01:43:38
Speaker
Check out last week's on Indica and Animal Well and we have more coming up this week including the aforementioned Crow country. Thanks for reminding me I need to install that thing for Thursday's stream that I'm on.
01:43:53
Speaker
Oh, Christ, four more superjets came in. What a cheeky bunch. Pure37 gives 20 Danish krona and says, you are still going at it. Damn, loved cold take. FungusFinder gives $2 and says, Yahtzee, why do you mention sparrows so much? I don't know, because they are common birds. Do you? Not that I recall, but whatever. Common motifs tend to be sweet.
01:44:21
Speaker
All right. He's got to think about them. Let's just go 2000 years to euros and says people who use subtext are all cowards in reference to Garth Beringue. And then Shrokat gives 199 and just gives us a bunch of emojis or something. I don't know. All right. I got to piss it off. Bye, everyone. Have a good rest of your days. Happy Mother's Day. Day after Mother's Day. Bye, everyone.
01:45:02
Speaker
you