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S3 Ep276: Journeyman No Longer
75 Plays2 years ago
Join Dave, Jake and special guest Nate as they check in on Nate's gaming portfolio, chat about Overwatch and microtransaction pricing, peer toward the uncertain future of Rocket League without player trading, discuss the merits of using the PRIMA STRATEGY GUIDE for Elden Ring, divine the meaning behind Dave's tattoos and more!
Intro:
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Intro:
- Gundam Battle Assault 2 - Music 7
- Dragon Ball Z Kakarot - Official Opening Cinematic (Cha La Head Cha La)
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Transcript
Introduction and Nate's Gaming Journey
00:00:34
Speaker
How's it going, everyone? Welcome to another episode of Soapstone. My name is Jake, and I'm joined by my co-host, as always, Dave. How's it going tonight, Dave? Always going. Yeah. It's going so well that I picked up a third person. Oh. Y'all remember Nate? I finally forgiven him for last time. What did I do last time? I'm trying to remember. I don't even remember what we talked about last time. I know she's been a little bit since we've had you on.
00:01:02
Speaker
Well actually last time I think I talked mostly about how I was a baby gamer and so very much not the case anymore but yeah back then I was in my first like six months of full-time gaming. Yeah it's crazy like I'm sure if I asked you about some things and I'm not going to because that's not what this podcast is about. Yeah we don't do that here.
00:01:21
Speaker
But like last time I heard, I saw you playing Elden Ring. I was like, how's that going? You're like, oh, I'm on my 15th playthrough and I'm doing boss and friends. And I'm like, what? What? I just played the game Witcher twice and thought it was good. I thought you were going to bring up, I remember maybe like two hours into my playing Elden Ring, Dave was like, oh, why don't you stream for a sec? Let me see what you're doing. I thought he was going to bring this up because he watched and I was pretty much playing the Witcher 3, but in Elden Ring, just spamming quick attack and just getting rolled by limb grave enemies.
00:01:48
Speaker
I don't care how you approach it. You're holding a shield. Let's hold the shield up. I just like living vicariously, seeing other people who I enjoy play games that I enjoy and just getting to relive that fresh experience. And I don't like the backseat. I just want to observe flying the world.
Nate's Gaming Style and Challenges
00:02:12
Speaker
I will say from what I've heard, because you might have been, you know, baby for video games back then, but like every time we've talked, you've been on an accelerated curriculum to like catch up, like Danger becoming a hard G-Gamer. Obviously, you know, the crazy amount of time in Elden Ring and checking out mods and stuff like that. But also just the variety of games.
00:02:36
Speaker
that you were playing at once. I think I told Dave about this at some point, but I was like you need to play in like five games right now. Like he's legitimately just hot swapping between games every evening. That kind of becomes an issue though. I like tend not to finish nearly as many as I start and I kind of regret that a lot of the time. Yeah. It's definitely really risky if you're playing like a JRPG or some game that's super long like that. Oh my god.
00:03:03
Speaker
Yeah, I can escape. The cat is gone. Okay. The cat has figured out how to operate doors. They're not blocked. We're doomed. Cat is smart. So what are you playing these days? And would you consider yourself a non-baby gamer? Where would you put yourself now?
Overwatch and Microtransaction Economics
00:03:22
Speaker
Uh, yeah. I mean, just in terms of raw hours, I'm not a baby, but in terms of, uh, critical thinking and not making stupid mistakes, I am still a baby. Just, I don't know. Let me know. Um, but yeah, I have a lot of fun. I play a lot of games all over the place. I'm still playing Elden Ring pretty often. We do all the randomizer mods and co-op stuff, and it's just so fun playing it over and over again with different kinds of twists. Um, otherwise just a lot of multiplayer overwatch rocket league stuff. Yeah.
00:04:06
Speaker
they're just launching their new season but I heard that like Overwatch had some sort of Diablo inspired season as well and some cool game modes and I was actually more kind of interested in going back to Overwatch to check out the Diablo content than continuing Diablo and maybe that's evil, maybe that's a terrible place to be but that's where I'm at.
00:04:13
Speaker
I've heard of those.
00:04:28
Speaker
I am mad at Overwatch for how they did. I don't know if you saw there's a sweet Moira skin where she is Lilith for this whole lab they're doing right now and it's awesome. We all wanted it. You can only get it in a $40 bundle with a bunch of other junk that you don't want. So it's just a $40 skin. I'm looking this up in real time. It's a sweet skin. We'll get Jimison to put the picture of Lilith up on the screen for our listeners.
00:04:55
Speaker
And then they showed off like a butcher hog, which looks really cool, but I don't know how you get that one yet. I mean, of course they do that one. That seems like an obvious play. I thought that one already existed.
00:05:08
Speaker
I thought that's what Roadhog was based on. Okay, these skins actually look really cool. But again, it's kind of like the Hotz effect where it's, hey, I know this character from this dark fantasy type thing, and here's the kind of cuter, more polished play on it.
00:05:28
Speaker
But like, I don't know, it still plays. Oh, that's great. They have ball as an asthma dam. That one's good. He's got, he's got Pierce nips. I don't know if the ball has nipples in this at least. It's Hammond himself. Hammond himself. Oh, okay. Yeah, it's something. No, we're talking about Discord. But cool. Like that's, again, an example of a fun crossover, I think. Yeah.
00:05:58
Speaker
But yeah, and then they're just like hard pay gating it and like, hey, here's your incentive like to come play and check out the event. And then you can win these. Okay. Incentive to get you on board versus Hey, PS of money.
00:06:17
Speaker
I just don't, I don't understand like how Blizzard, they must have the numbers, right? I'm not going to pretend that it's just like they would make so much more money if they sold things for less, right? But they're definitely aiming at a price point that I don't want to engage when it comes to microtransactions, right? Like in my head, I can get multiple indie games or like a full priced double A game for like 40 bucks. I don't want to spend that much on a skin.
00:06:47
Speaker
If it was something that was like you get this maybe this is the last unlock if you finish the battle pass or something like that You're already encouraging a lot of people to get the battle pass. What's wrong with that, right? so The problem is that there are people that do just spend the money and Blizzard will take that all day I get that I'm I guess I don't know. I don't know if we've talked about the idea of having an approachable market pricing
00:07:16
Speaker
for like game content and then you just have some stuff that you know whales are basically going to buy. I kind of just like that being a skin though. I guess it can't be anything else in Overwatch but that sucks because it seems inaccessible unless you're like I'll drop the credit card.
00:07:34
Speaker
Yeah. Or at least maybe have cheaper options. And again, Path of Exile, select here to a degree. I get the urge every once in a while. And they have so many cool fucking cosmetics. But any cosmetic thing you want to get is at least $10, it feels like. Yeah. Like there's not a, oh, I'm going to grab like the $1 thing that just, you know, makes it blue. No, it has to be like all these crazy particle effects, et cetera, et cetera.
00:08:06
Speaker
I'm curious like what your guys's price point would be for what you would actually spend money on because like I think like $10 I would I would spend $10 on a skin if it's great I'm sure I've spent that much on like destiny silver on cool-looking armor at some point but like and I know I've spent more than that in like dota because at like $20 I'm looking for effects plus the skin right like your moves look different or something like that like a dota arcana
00:08:35
Speaker
I'm curious what your guys' price is. For me, I feel like it really depends on how much I'm going to be seeing it. In the Overwatch example, I'm not going to buy a Moira Skin if I'm going to play her one every 30 games or something for five minutes. In first person, no less. Even if it's $5 maybe, but still, I'm not going to see it that much. It's not all that worth it.
00:08:53
Speaker
I will say in Rocket League, I mean you are your car every game and so I've spent some money on like the coolest car designs just so I can like enjoy my car at all times. I have like 1600 hours in Rocket League or something and I don't feel bad about enjoying how my car looks.
00:09:11
Speaker
it makes a lot more sense and something you're playing frequently especially with other people there's no single player game where I want a cosmetic cuz I don't give a shit like in Lies of P you technically can unlock some costume things but I'm not trying to style on the NPCs right so it's just whatever thing looks cool for me but again it's just me selecting for my options versus trying to go outside and style on somebody
Player-driven Economies and Game Mods
00:09:40
Speaker
Do you think there's any value in like a YouTuber posting a playthrough if they want to look as cool as possible in a single player game or is that still just like, eh? Oh, do you mean like, you know that your audience is going to be like, wow, cool skin in the comments.
00:09:56
Speaker
I think there is like a little bit of something, like if you are a gaming entity in that space who does like YouTube content, if you do some maybe pre-order stuff to get like an extra skin or two, because it shows, hey, you're invested in this. And also you get like the cool look about it and be like, oh, okay, maybe I want that as well. And you can use that to boost either pre-orders of the game or something else. So I think there's some merit to it. I don't know if it's a one to one, but.
00:10:27
Speaker
I can think of it as a very specific example that like confirms that there is value there, where there was somebody, they were a streamer, I can't recall exactly who they were, but they had a knife in like CSGO and the skin was super rare with some like emerald crazy skin and the video was just people like
00:10:44
Speaker
Asking the streamer about it because the skin was worth like ten thousand dollars like they could sell it for like ten thousand US dollars and Yes, that's correct response So in that case yeah, they were generating content from it now. I don't think they got 10k and ad revenue, but Yeah, I don't know it's It's where we're at in gaming. I don't think there's an escape from it really but
00:11:13
Speaker
It was actually huge, kind of related Rocket League news yesterday that everyone got super upset about. Epic bought Psyonix a few years ago who runs Rocket League. A huge part of the Rocket League community is all about trading skins and there's a whole marketplace and all this style contest and stuff. They just announced that they are ending the entire shareable trading system for any cosmetic or anything in December. And moving forward with a, you own it, you can't get rid of it kind of system, which everyone's very upset about.
00:11:41
Speaker
Hey everybody, I want you to buy these things individually. No trading them.
00:11:47
Speaker
Well, a lot of it is like you can't find many things. You can open infinite drops and whatever. You can hope to get cool things in your item shop. But if you want this specific item, you can go online, find someone to trade, give them five bucks or whatever. And you can have the cool item that you wish you found in the item shop for three months. It just kind of takes away the freedom to build a cool look. So everything is RNG. There's no way to get a fixed cosmetic in the game.
00:12:17
Speaker
They have what's called blueprints, but then you need to trade in like a bunch of other cosmetics in order to like build the one you want. So, I mean, I guess they're kind of is, but it's a convoluted system that's not really easy to work with. That would be like the Team Fortress 2 metal system, right? Where you could like break your pieces of random trash you got down to get metal and then craft it into something, right? Interesting.
00:12:42
Speaker
I'm surprised not more people, I guess maybe it's an infrastructure problem, but not more people have taken like Valve's approach because it was probably like a decade ago that Valve launched their community marketplace where they're like, hey, like you can trade whatever you want. That's fine. But we're also just going to have a marketplace where you can sell stuff and we're going to take a percentage of every single sale. Right.
00:13:07
Speaker
And a lot of games don't go that far. They pick one or the other. They're like, you can't trade at all or you can trade and we're not gonna interfere with that at all. And that seems less ideal if you're gonna deprive people of that.
00:13:22
Speaker
I like that system that Valve has, because like with Dota 2, the people that I play with will talk about occasionally prices of an item going up and then they can sell it. I know CSGO has that as well and now I guess CS2.
00:13:38
Speaker
So it keeps your investment in the game of you've been playing for a while. You've accrued cosmetics passively. Maybe you spent money on battle passes to get more things. And now you have this pile of stuff that isn't really useful outside of it. Oh, I can now actually translate that into real world value. Even if it is just currency within that universe, in this case, Steam. Right. Because you just want to trade that in for something.
00:14:05
Speaker
Because you described for Rocket League that that's actually what the community was doing, right? There were like third party sites where you could pay money for a trade pretty much. Yeah. So it was technically against their terms to have like a third party paid platform, but they always allowed player to player trading like within the game. And so the system that developed was like these bot accounts that would
00:14:25
Speaker
You know, you'd go into an online forum or something, say you want these things and then an automated thing would put the player into your party and trade with you, which kind of against terms, but you could always trade with other players. So it's kind of hard to catch. Yeah.
00:14:39
Speaker
I mean it seems like a lack of initiative that they wouldn't kind of want to just assume first party support of a system like that, right? I can think of other examples like in gaming where the company has decided to step in the middle there, Eve Online did it with Plex, their pilot license extension.
00:14:58
Speaker
which was literally just here's a item that you can buy with real dollars and then sell it in-game and if someone else buys it in-game they can redeem it and it's like they have a game time card right just more time on their account and it massively impacted uh like the illegal against terms of service redistribution of wealth within eve because you can legitimately just like
00:15:27
Speaker
use real life money, buy game time, sell it in game on the market, get tons of money in game that way. You don't have to go to like a third party site and they kind of cut out real money trading, right? It's really smart and I think more people should consider that in their business models for these live service games. Yeah, I'll blow three.
00:15:49
Speaker
I mean Diablo 3 kind of tried and then wasn't that good at it in the game. Surprise. But I think it's interesting because any time you say trading, my brain goes back to Pokemon, which of course was the TCG for anybody who doesn't know, it's a trading card game with physical pieces of cardboard.
00:16:12
Speaker
But a lot of this only exists in the digital space because that's where it lives. You don't really have permanent ownership of things in the same way because it's impossible to stop me from physically trading or giving something to a friend. But if it's done through this online system, which is controlled by some other entity, then they can intervene and say, hey, we don't want any of that.
00:16:39
Speaker
It'd be like the same as if you're trying to do a yard sale versus sell something on Facebook Marketplace. Because now there's an arbitrator who's going to have some rules and boundaries to say, this is kosher, this is not kosher. Whereas if Dave was having a yard sale, you'd have to separate his things into kosher, not kosher right there on the lawn. I'm not going to sell my kosher salt, Jacob. That's staying up in the cabinets.
00:17:12
Speaker
That is interesting though. I'm kind of surprised to hear that of Rocket League because I mean, I know that it's still a very active community and honestly terrifying. I have seen people play that have been playing that game since near launch and it is incomprehensible to me what people can pull off. I'm like, there is no button combination that should allow you to do this.
00:17:37
Speaker
This trick shot nonsense from across the field, like in the air, multiple flips for a specific angle. It's insane. None
Elden Ring and FromSoft Game Design
00:17:44
Speaker
of it makes any sense. It's made up. But it's been around for many years. I'm curious why they're changing the monetization scheme now as opposed to being like, okay, we're going to work on the next thing.
00:17:58
Speaker
Well, it's been around for a while, but like it was paid on Steam and then Epic bought it and made it free to play like COVID-ish. And so it might just be kind of not doing what they want. And they're kind of talking about Rocket League too. I don't know what Epic's plan is. Oh God, let's do more sequels, but they can't actually do anything else with it. It's just an overhaul of the game. You don't have the option to play the old one anymore kind of system. Yeah. I'm also wary of things that are free to play.
00:18:29
Speaker
Because obviously the way they're going to monetize is from microtransactions. I'm sure it's like a gacha game to a degree. Not to say I haven't had fun with free to play games.
00:18:43
Speaker
Yeah, well, that was something my naive gamer brain didn't really realize until playing Elden Ring was that there's no microtransactions. There's no like blinking go here now beacons, you know, it was just so do what you feel should be done right now. And you just go down this weird alley and figure something out. It was just so minimal in like their hand holding and their interface and all that. I loved it.
00:19:05
Speaker
So you are on board with the FromSoft approach of design? I will say I have tried since playing Elden Ring to go back and play like Sekiro. Dark Souls 3, I touched one for a bit.
00:19:19
Speaker
The open world part of Elden Ring made it a lot more bearable, at least for me. Just being able to not tackle something that I kind of felt like I wasn't good enough for yet. Whereas Sekiro, like I got to a hard boss and I'm just like, ah, I just have to like sit here and keep trying this till I figure it out. There's not really a way to go do something else for an hour and then come back. They force get good a lot. And I'm not good.
00:19:44
Speaker
Yeah, you say that but it's the second coming through a second time with Sekiro like there's they was talking about this recently But like so many of those instincts and timing and stuff. It's just it's just acquired Yeah, like I could if we were to pause the recording right now and I were to go spin it up. I Think I could do several bosses without really running into issue But I could burn through some early parts of the game just because it became muscle memory
00:20:15
Speaker
But I also like when those games kind of open up a little bit, so if you are like, fuck, I can't do the water temple boss, you can go off and do a different temple that you feel you can't approach.
00:20:29
Speaker
And that's something I feel that lies of P is missing slightly because it is kind of, here's where you have to go next. And there's not like a side path. Dark Souls 3 was much more open in comparison. Obviously, Elden rang. They were like, so I can go there. We don't give a shit. Here's a world. Have fun. Yeah.
00:20:49
Speaker
and it feels nice to more so have the agency as a player to explore and make those decisions for yourself of yes I feel ready for this or I know I'm definitely not ready for this I just want to explore and see how crazy it is and you're screaming fuck fuck fuck while you're just like dashing through everything trying to find a checkpoint
00:21:08
Speaker
versus, well, I'm going to have to come back for this. Again, Armored Core 6 is much more linear in its approach because you can't, oh, I'm going to go do, I mean, they do sometimes have multiple missions at a time, but when you're hard gated, you're hard gated. You can go back and grind stuff, but you don't have options for, I'll come back to this and do some other content, really.
00:21:34
Speaker
There's no next level till you complete this level more traditional game design
00:21:41
Speaker
What's interesting now is like I don't, I actually, I read about this at one point, but like that was probably the number one piece of advice going into people playing Elden Ring. It was just like, hey, if you're struggling with a boss, stop trying. And it's actually really hard to teach people that. They kind of failed with the, uh, the shield tonight. I can't remember the tree spirit at the beginning. Tree sense at all. Yeah.
00:22:05
Speaker
Because it was so early, it was just like, oh, this is just because it's a Souls game or whatever. But then you got to, who's the first, is it Morgoth? Marget? Marget? Marget, thank you. At the castle there. And it's like, okay, well, this is really hard. I'm losing a lot. And a lot of people just kept, they threw themselves at it over and over and over and over again. And I think in Elden Ring in particular, FromSoft was like,
00:22:35
Speaker
We are going to throw gatekeeping bosses at you and we expect you to do something else. Like, unless you're a speedrunner or like zero-linny, you're probably going to need to do something else. And it's hard to stop, right? It feels like losing to step away from a boss fight that you've engaged with.
00:22:57
Speaker
I will say, I like the minimalist hand holding that Elden Ring gives for the most part, but I did have to look things up to do all the questlines after a single run. It feels like it could be a little easier maybe to follow along with questlines and not have to figure out what side of the map you need to teleport to and talk to this person again. It's kind of just a Google Fest at that point if you really want to do everything the game has to offer.
00:23:24
Speaker
Yeah. And the hard part then is like, what's the next step in this questline? Don't tell me anything else. Don't spoil me. I just want to know where I need to go next. But yeah, even if they drop the hint of like, oh, after the smoke break, I was thinking about going down to the Denny's, you're like, Denny's, I'll remember that. Cool. Right. And the next time you warp, you go to the Denny's versus just exploring randomly. And they don't even do that.
00:23:50
Speaker
Elgin mean pretty much requires you to explore randomly for a lot of those side quests There's just like where's the I don't know Maybe I'll run across the NPC if I happen to see them on the world map And they'll all spawn in one specific location, right? So you miss it and it's just like all right guess I'm not doing that side quests this playthrough. I Had wanted the bull goat armor the big poisiest armor in the game. I
00:24:14
Speaker
And I had already gotten past the point where I could get it in my first playthrough, so I played another, and you have to go through this whole Patches questline to get it. And I was like, yeah, I really want this. And it turns out there's like five ways Patches can die before you get the armor. And I didn't realize that, failed the first playthrough, brought that character to New Game Plus, speed ran to try to get to Patches again and get the Bullgood armor, and he died again a different way. And I had to get like NG plus four, just to get this freaking poise armor. I was just running through the game over and over again, just to be my big tank boy build.
00:24:45
Speaker
I think there's something to be said for a mystique or like a sense of unpredictability in a game that pretty much requires you to use the walkthrough from game facts or whatever the crap.
Game Design Evolution and Guidance Systems
00:25:00
Speaker
But like, I don't know. As I get older, I feel like the people who are trying to like defend games before quest markers are just like on their porch yelling at kids, their curmudgeons or something.
00:25:15
Speaker
A good quest marker, even though it takes a lot of the critical thought out of whatever I'm doing.
00:25:22
Speaker
improves the pace of the game a lot and it's definitely a great alternative to like thankfully i have a laptop on the side here so i can follow along on what i'm supposed to do right so i don't know yeah i think about how people are actually going to play it i want to bring up a very old example because like i very much like the discovery i like the the fresh organic portions of that of like it's fresh it just happened um
00:25:49
Speaker
But not giving any type of indication of progress on a quest line reminds me of... This is going back to DBZ Budokai 3, or Tenkaichi 1. But basically when you're going through the story mode, you have to at some point collect Dragon Balls. And the way you did that is you flew around on the map, like the actual globe.
00:26:13
Speaker
So you take your analog stick, hold it in one direction, and tilt it ever so slightly. So you would, through very slow diagonals as you wrapped around, cover every single square inch because there was no fucking indication unless you were directly on top of it. And it was such a waste of time. And I didn't feel good for finding it. I was like, you just made this convoluted for the sake of it being convoluted. And I watched one of the progress for the next part of the gameplay.
00:26:41
Speaker
So even if they were like, Hey, this general region or give me an arrow or something, it would be so much nicer because then I can still explore around and find something, but I'm not just fucking out here in the middle of nowhere. And then no NPC obviously knows where another NPC is either. I'm just like, where do I go into the void? Yeah.
00:27:10
Speaker
Pretty much. I am old as well now and I don't have time for that shit. I don't know. There can be a happy middle ground. I'm fine figuring some stuff out but I very much don't like when games are like, yes. You'll run across this by chance or something like that. That's not particularly engaging for me either.
00:27:33
Speaker
That's honestly like one of the only real gripes I have with Elden Ring is how it treats side quests and stuff like that Because and it's more susceptible to it because it's an open world Right like in Dark Souls you can say like we're just gonna put this NPC further ahead of you on the critical path There
Elden Ring vs. Dark Souls
00:27:54
Speaker
you go. You're gonna encounter them In Elden Ring they're like we hit them in a cave somewhere I guess or something like
00:28:02
Speaker
Right, and I think there's a few where, like, if you want to interact with someone for the first time, you have to have read some, like, item description that says, like, this guy tends to hang out around here, and this cloth used to belong to him, and then you have to, like, read that, find the spot that it's talking about. Like, it's just a whole task to find some things. The game is just, like, consult and body video if you want to complete this and figure out what it means. Yeah.
00:28:28
Speaker
Yeah. Speaking of Elden Ring mode, did you guys hear the leaked DLC date? I am getting very excited. No, I didn't hear anything about that. I have not actual date. If you've got the information, we can let the world know today. This is what I'm talking about today. A hard G-Gamer and just a casual level. Just about Elden Ring. That's it. No, leaked by a guy who got some leaks right around the original launch. And they're saying February 5th, which I am already putting in PTO for.
00:28:59
Speaker
Yeah, no, I'm crazy excited. I mean I've never had a from soft DLC, you know, I didn't really play any of the souls before so Some more and to have new content
00:29:12
Speaker
like now that I know what I'm doing I will say my first couple playthroughs of Elden Ring like I had already seen a lot of the gameplay and like knew what to expect just because I was getting hammered and I was like you know what I just want to see what this game has to offer before I like put it down and it looked really cool and I was like cool now that I see what's up there I'm gonna keep trying but this DLC will be like the freshest content that I am actually ready for skill wise and whatever
00:29:34
Speaker
We're very much looking forward to going in blind, or as blind as possible. This can be the equivalent for you of what the Dark Souls 3 DLC was for us. Because that was the culmination of the Dark Souls series we put all this time into. And not only that, it was the actual end plot. The game wraps up.
00:30:00
Speaker
pretty well in like the main quest pre-DLC and stuff, but then the DLC is like, we're going to wrap the series, right? Rather than just the game, we're going to wrap the entire series. And it felt so good for that that like, I think our personal reviews are significantly more favorable than the actual critical reviews are of those DLC. Not that it was bad, but
00:30:25
Speaker
How much if you had to do a rough estimate of Dark Souls 1, 2, and 3 gameplay time and content compared to the size of Elden Ring? How long would it take you to get through the trilogy? At normal pace or trying to...
00:30:45
Speaker
Cause like I do want to play them and I feel like put it down. Oh, is it say on average 40 to 60 depending what you're doing. Dark Souls one does have some DLC. It's not crazy long. Um, also, I don't think you need to do once the fight, um, by any means.
00:31:10
Speaker
I feel like I need to go back and play them with how much I enjoyed Elden Ring. I feel like I will say I should get into them. It's just what I've played feels a little older and a little jankier and I mess up one fight and I'm like, eh, it's not as fun as Elden Ring. I could just do a new run of that and it'd be more fun. But I will say even with the remastered is clunky as fuck.
00:31:33
Speaker
Like it is very much, it has a weight and certain thing to it for like when it came out. Dark Souls 2 is definitely improved as far as that clunkiness, but to me it still feels very weird. Dark Souls 3 will feel the fastest because you can roll like crazy. But I think that's the most, it's held up the test of time the most. It also is the most recent of the three.
00:32:02
Speaker
but I'd say that one holds up really well. I'd say go back and do three, one and two are, if you really are curious.
00:32:11
Speaker
The other thing I didn't realize I used and loved so much in Elden Ring was the jump button and going back and playing the other Dark Souls games, I was like, oh, I can't jump anything or over anyone. You get a little, you have to be running and then you do a little hop. And it's meant that that only exists just so they could justify holes in the game that you will fall into. That's all it is. It's useless otherwise.
00:32:34
Speaker
Also, I think in Dark Souls 1, the jump was like you, while running, you had to press the run button again. Yeah, you had to like double press it. I was like, okay. Yeah. Yeah. Quick press it. Is that something people like wanted? A different button. Or that was like ever thought about or was that just like, oh, this game doesn't have jumping and we all knew that.
00:32:55
Speaker
I think for a while, I'm sure like the very first time they're like, Oh, mechanically, it's either difficult to program or we're going to have to worry about all these extra out of balance situations or whatever the fuck it was. And they're like, Oh, well it's also easier to not just give them a jump. Yeah. Okay. Well, it's not. And then for like three games, you're like, you can't really jump. You can occasionally do it, but I think part of it is based around, you're very stuck to the ground in the terrain.
00:33:26
Speaker
It's easier from a game design perspective too, right? It's easier to design a game that you expect people to be fluent like stay on the ground and then just give them ladders if you want like vertical levels or something like Blighttown as opposed to Elden Ring which is like We're gonna incorporate all of these like jump attacks and things like that, right? Like I mean even just the parkour to get places there's so much of that and I mean it led to a lot of exploits too which goes back to the whole out of bounds and
00:33:55
Speaker
You know limiting players problems, but yeah, I like jumping I will say and going back and playing Dark Souls 1m3 for the 10 hours or whatever I have in them I definitely miss it. Yeah, it's always gonna be harder to go back to games that are that dated in comparison I can't think of a specific example, but I know I've tried that for some games where I
00:34:18
Speaker
Like, oh, let me check out this series and like, guys, this is trash. But again, I didn't grow up with it. So I missed it when it was fresh and new. And now my brain's very wired for like, I need to do the more modern, current and approachable thing versus something that's comparatively very clunky.
00:34:37
Speaker
And we've, we've talked about it before, but like, there were game design decisions that were being made through the Soulslike series, Soulslike, uh, the, uh, Soulsborne, there you go, Soulsborne series, um, that culminated in Elden Ring, right? Like that is the, the synthesis of all the ideas behind it. So if you go back in the series, you are not.
00:35:01
Speaker
seeing the finished synthesis. Dark Souls 1 is very clunky, very deliberate, they're not big on animation cancelling anything. Dark Souls 2 was like, okay, let's play around with making everything viable and like slow stamina and stuff like that. And Dark Souls 3 was like, man, we learned from Bloodborne.
00:35:22
Speaker
people just want to go fast they want to roll as much as possible and the stamina bar should fill up one second after it's exhausted right like that's basically the baseline we're dealing with they just took all of that and and incorporated it into elven ring and it's kind of the most arcady in that sense it's a little bit less like you're a very slow knight swinging a sword committing to every attack but like
00:35:48
Speaker
It's more fun. So, it's tough. And also, there's no reason to really go back to the old games to experience the lore. Because Dark Souls is not the type of game that you actually learn the lore by playing. Right? You gotta watch YouTube videos while you fall asleep or something.
00:36:09
Speaker
I will say that there is still very much an experience of playing through Dark Souls 1 because of how clunky it is. It is a very brutal game. Part of that is with how the mechanics are designed. The game is meant to fuck you over to a degree, like Sen's fortress.
00:36:31
Speaker
Has a lot of traps and places where it can knock you down or poison you or shoot you with lightning. There's all the stuff you have to deal with or when you're in Anor Londo and you're like walking up these high precipice things and there's enemies up there and they're like, I'm going to stab you. You're like, I don't want to fall to my death. And it's just navigating situations like that where.
00:36:52
Speaker
I don't think there's anything in 3, at least to my knowledge, where you're actively worried about platforming. There are some bullshit angels here and there, but that's not the same type of thing. But also, I don't think you need to experience that. It's just something I remember fondly struggling through.
00:37:19
Speaker
Yeah. Actually, here's a question for you, Nate. Because you've been binging games like a motherfucker ever since we spoke to you last. What's something that was like very hyped to you that you checked out and you're like, I don't I don't get it. It's not my vibe. Let me pull up. Well, he has a list.
Gaming Preferences and Personal Impact
00:37:37
Speaker
No, I just need to look at what I've played. OK. And they're just like editors. Never play another game that Jake suggests.
00:37:49
Speaker
And I play a lot of games looking through everything not finished a lot of games but played a lot of games While while you yeah, yeah
00:38:00
Speaker
While you're looking that up, I was just reminiscing with Dave in real time about all of these obnoxious encounters that Dark Souls loves to throw at you, and it's just like, oh, first time you died to curse, right? Or swarmed by rats or something like that. The first time you thought that you could run past all the enemies to get to the boss instead of fighting them slowly.
00:38:25
Speaker
It's like, there's all this nonsense. Like the first time thinking that you could actually fight Cecil's discharge is a reasonable boss fight instead of just cheesing at every single playthrough as God intended, right? It's all that stuff, but I don't think you need to do that instead of having fun, right? Did I buy you enough time?
00:38:51
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, there's a few I'm looking at that a lot of people recommended to me. One, Horizon Zero Dawn. I tried. Couldn't really get past the first couple hours. That's a little surprising, kind of. Yeah, I don't know. There was just too many systems and mechanics for me to feel like learning.
00:39:12
Speaker
I'm lazy. I like when I can just roll and attack. I have to learn like a million different traps and whatever else, you know? Like a control I loved. It could be a lot sometimes to like manage everything. There's people at every angle and I'm floating and I'm throwing rocks. Like they were just a bit of a lot sometimes.
00:39:33
Speaker
Gotcha. But I did enjoy control just as far as like theming and a couple of the conditions were the coolest things I've ever done in gaming. Once a game expects me to craft something versus crafting just existing, I'm like, buddy. Yeah, that's kind of what it was. Give me broad head arrows. I'll see you in 20 hours.
00:39:54
Speaker
I can second this, I can attest to this. Dave and I are still doing our Baldur's Gate 3 playthrough, and he's going through, he's checking all the chests and stuff. They show up as having been explored once, and I'm used to just clicking them at this point. I'm like, okay, I'll grab the crafting ingredients, the alchemy ingredients out of each of these that he specifically left. Dave takes gold and things he can maybe sell. There's potions, scrolls, and these literally minor magic items and stuff. That's very funny.
00:40:24
Speaker
I could see that. I could see that for Horizon. The other game I really wanted to like, and I played, I don't know, a couple hours, it was The Outer Worlds and I just never got far enough into it, I guess, to really be brought in. That's fair. But it seemed fun and, you know, any kind of like five minute playthrough, I've seen a clip up or something looks cool. I just never got far enough, I guess, to get to the cool parts. I was just kind of doing like little boring quests for a couple hours and I was like,
00:40:53
Speaker
I have an in-progress playthrough I was doing a couple months back that I didn't finish, and I can empathize with that. I think it's very Fallout-esque, but it's also kind of sanitized, and it's very much they limited the scope of everything to make sure they could get it done, which is great from a game design standpoint, but it's not particularly adventurous. I think that's fair.
00:41:22
Speaker
I think I'm a big fan of like really engaging music and sound design and like ambient all that stuff so Elden Ring I mean even the open world music is sweet going down that well in here and everything I don't know it's also good and then the other game I've been playing a good bit recently because of the new patching DLC is Cyberpunk and man the music and sounds in that game just keep me coming back I could just drive around listening to the radio all night it's so good
00:41:47
Speaker
I haven't played the new content or even the patch. So it is on my radar, but I'll let Jake speak to it. So he's actively been playing it. Yeah, I'm gonna not speak a lot about it, but it's very good. I liked the game at launch and now it's even better. I mean, I finished a whole playthrough then and plan to finish another one now. Yeah.
00:42:12
Speaker
I legitimately ran around and did like everything I could before I progressed to the main quest. I put like 60 hours in and I was like, alright, we can do main quest step two. Pretty much. That's crazy. Yeah. But I really love cyberpunk. It's really freaking good. Did you watch the anime? No, I need to. I watched like a couple minutes and fell asleep at some point. Yeah, I do need to go back and watch it.
00:42:34
Speaker
It's also short, right? Like it's something you can just bench in like a day. Yeah Which is ideal. That's my favorite kind of anime one where you're just like there's a termination state for this relationship It also will work trying to be 10 gigs of patch what if you
00:42:57
Speaker
That is a lot. I heard they nerfed some stuff, which scares me for the upcoming boss I'm still stuck on. But I will say, if you do take the time to watch the anime, we're supposed to recommend games and things like that. But if you really like Cyberpunk, the anime is just joined at the rib, basically, to the game. And you'll legitimately just pick things out of the anime like crazy. You're like, this is all just right here in the game. Wow.
00:43:26
Speaker
and there's a certain song that once you finish the anime, you're never going to be able to hear it in the game and not think about the anime. So I'll just say that. Just got to watch it now. Yeah, you have to. It's also excellent. Because trigger. Because trigger. I don't show for things that I want to actually truly believe in.
00:43:55
Speaker
So anyway, the Republican Party, I just want to take a look for you. I mean, Jacob and I have obviously been enjoying Baldur's Gate 3 over the course of two years now. It's just not quite correct. It's just been really good. I'm sure I talked to you at some point made about Divinity Original Sin 2.
00:44:15
Speaker
Just being a very deeply immersive and well-scripted RPG and this very much feels like the same thing So I like stuff like that. I couldn't do it all the time Like if they had a ballersgate 3 DLC, I'd be like, you know, fuck off I don't have the time or brain space for it for a little bit, but I really enjoyed that and and still am enjoying it
00:44:38
Speaker
Lies of P is I think the best Souls like to come out of a non from soft studio As far as how it is and how it's paced etc and theming very nice I'd like to see what they do in the future and of course armored course six If you like from soft and you like robots I've never played armored core before this but I had a really good time and Can't can't recommend it enough very fun for me
00:45:07
Speaker
Okay, well I was thinking about playing it but that'll do it I think.
00:45:11
Speaker
I'm stuck on a boss. I will say, if you come into it from the Soulsborne games, you have a very, very fast dodge. You don't get iframes during the dodge. So that could make or break the game for you, right? Maybe you get it on discount or something if you need iframes in your dodge. It is incredible, though. It's really good. I'll finish it one of these days.
00:45:41
Speaker
Probably. Also for anything I say, and this goes for you and for people listening, always watch some YouTube video or some content thing first, because again, I'm just a guy with an opinion, but that might not match your opinion. So watch some actual gameplay, get an actual feel for what you're going to be purchasing before purchasing. Financial advice for Dave.
00:46:04
Speaker
I was thinking about that. This has the tone of the outro for the episode. We still have time. We don't have to wrap it up yet. Buy this game. Buy this game now. Copy, paste that for the outro. Well, you said something, Dave, that you couldn't play. I forget what game you said. You can't do all the time, or at least genre. But we have this hypothetical question among my friend group. And we go back to it every month or two and try to see if it's changed. If you guys could only play one video game for the rest of your life, what would it be?
00:46:34
Speaker
It's a hard question, in my opinion. It's very easy for Dave, though. I don't want it to be Dota 2. But it has to be. What else could it be? I mean, it is the game that you have played for 75% of your adult life. But if you couldn't switch off in the most infuriating moments and you had to just keep playing it, would you actually stay enjoying it?
00:46:59
Speaker
That's really tough. I would die by my own hands. Mine quickly became Elden Ring, I will say. I think it just has enough things to do. It's so big. You can do so many different things with it. I don't know. I think it's just good enough for me.
00:47:18
Speaker
It can't be PPP in my opinion. I will just rage sometime and want to play something else and I can't fathom playing one CDP like so many games feel different spaces it's nice to be able to switch in between them like Dota 2 is my typical multiplayer game with one server and But what I'm not feeling that all you know fuck off and then do something else because I want to break from that specifically With one thing I had to play over and over again
00:47:47
Speaker
It's actually really difficult. It's really hard. I mean, it's kind of like impossible when it comes down to it. That's the reason. Yeah. There are more than one game. Like I could think of contenders for me, but it would be very hard to actually elect one to that top spot. Right. It would be easy if we said like three games forever and then you can just kind of like fill the tick each box you need. The funny thing. So Honey Pop made it, thank God, if we're doing commentary. There you go.
00:48:14
Speaker
It's content. It's full of content. I'm just playing this game for the content. Content, the plot. I will say, like, as a game that I always enjoy going back to Hollow Knight, I don't know if I want to grind it forever, but it's interesting enough for me and like a Souls-like type of space for how it does its theming and art direction. And I just, I love how the game plays.
00:48:44
Speaker
And I'll go back to it every so often and I'll be like, Oh yeah, I forgot about this. And then I'll remember how much I enjoy it. That's also when I got in like a humble bundle or something and haven't gotten around to playing. But yeah, let's go. It'll be on the list to forget everything else is about games. Seriously, Hollow Knight. I would say you would you would put it ahead of armored core. Yeah.
00:49:10
Speaker
Yeah. Armored Core is a solid game. Really enjoyed it. But I don't think it's something that everyone should play. Whereas, do I need to bring out my tattoo again? Like, I liked Hollow Knight. It was really good. Do you have a Hollow Knight tattoo? All right, I'm going to show Nate the Hollow Knight tattoo. This is going to suck for audio. You'll have to unfreeze your camera first. Is it actually still frozen for you? Yeah, yeah. It's been frozen since we started. Oh, let me unshare and share it again.
00:49:42
Speaker
Now we've lost them entirely. There is, okay. Dave, is the color blue now? Well, what you got to do is if the camera shows up for you, take a screenshot of the window and then just post that into Discord and then you can see it that way. All right, we'll do this. Please continue on while I... Yeah. Make myself a fool. Jake, have you played Hollow Knight? I have played Hollow Knight. I've completed Hollow Knight. It's actually... It pretty much is.
00:50:09
Speaker
Dark Souls ish in many ways, but it's also entirely its own thing. I don't like 2D platformer. It is. Yeah. Yeah. It's a 2D platformer with like sword swings and stuff like that, but a lot more speed than a lot of souls like platformers. And it's just, you also don't have weapon variety. Yeah. Just just the sword or in this case, it's called a nail because you're a bug.
00:50:41
Speaker
So there's the picture in this board. Wow, very cool. It is actually cool.
00:50:48
Speaker
We'll get Jameson to put a picture up for the listeners. So did you get that because it's like that good of a game? Did it like do something special for you? Or like, why not other games that you've played a ton of? It is crazy. I've known Jake for 10 years. He didn't even ask me that. So I think for me, it's a couple of things. One, I liked having tattoos. I think this is now my fifth one. I like cool art on my body. I get to look at it and go,
00:51:15
Speaker
Yeah, and I think it makes me look better. I can't imagine myself without the extra things of facial hair and tattoos at this point. It's part of the look I'm, I guess, going for. Two, very much to enjoy Hollow Knight. As far as the story, the art direction, how I felt while playing it, it's just a really nice piece of media.
00:51:39
Speaker
And
Social Gaming Experiences and MMOs
00:51:40
Speaker
I have a fucking Bioshock tattoo, and I don't feel as strongly about it, but it was also one of those games where, for me, I was like, oh, I didn't realize this was possible in video games. So it was a really cool entry for me into that space, and it kind of fit a, this is what games should aspire to be. I want to play more games like this, as I now flaunt my Undertale tattoo on my other arm.
00:52:04
Speaker
They meant enough for me to want to do it. Then also a friend of the show and guest of the show, Mango, helped me make that design and I took it to a local tattoo artist. But yeah, it meant enough for me to do that. I think in general I want my future tattoos to be more video game or anime related of something that stuck with me.
00:52:34
Speaker
So you have to wait a few years until you're confident in your favorite game and then it goes on your forehead. That's what I'm supposed to say. It's just due and it's just like the mark of the beast. Lock it down. It's the, what was it, I can't remember the name of the final boss or whatever, but it's fine. Icon of soon. Icon of saying thank you. Oh my gosh. All right. I didn't expect you to pull that item down. Dab it on him.
00:53:01
Speaker
Yeah, it's impossible for me to answer because a lot of times the games that I play a lot are not games that I'm currently playing, right? Like I'm playing Cyberpunk, but like I don't want to play Cyberpunk for the rest of my life, right? I've put more hours into certain games than others like by a lot. You know what? It's kind of sort of maybe a little easy. I guess I'd pick an MMO.
00:53:25
Speaker
Right. I picked Final Fantasy 14. I'm not even playing it now. I haven't played it for years, but it is a very diverse way. You could pretty much live in the game if you wanted. Is there constant new content in that game?
00:53:40
Speaker
Yeah, they do like chapter updates and then expansions. The next expansions, I don't know what's going to be called, but it's the beach expansion. Like for how long? Like I don't get those kind of games, not that I've played many, but it just baffles me that you can keep pumping content into a game without overhauling like the engine and stuff. Like 10 years later, you're going to be.
00:53:58
Speaker
Just adding areas to the same game. Well, I mean, if it's maybe 10 years, they might do something more drastic. But if you're already enjoying how the game plays and looks for the most part, if you're somebody who's been playing the game, doing your dailies, weeklies, stuff with your raid group,
00:54:13
Speaker
You're like, okay, we're kind of grinding out things we've already done. What do we want? New content. So maybe they put in a new raid, a new area. There's now new parts of the story and it kind of builds on that way. But you don't really have to overhaul the whole thing necessarily, but you might introduce with like a new patch like that, Hey, here's a new subclass for people to check out or something else. So there's always like that, just on the horizon of what new stuff there will be.
00:54:44
Speaker
Yeah, it's pretty cool. And they update things as they go. Yes. That's the one thing that's very much missing from my game rotation is like MMOs and constant. You can wait. I feel like if you have a good group that's willing to play, like it sounds fun to have some like regularity. Like all I do is, you know, one off, we're going to play comp Overwatch or we're going to play Rocket League. And it's just like very short term, you know, the same kind of game every time. It's not really fun content to go through with friends.
00:55:14
Speaker
So I will say, I want Jake to speak to this specifically too. When we were doing Destiny 2, we had a pretty active group and we kind of go through seasonal content, which is just, hey, here's the new gameplay gimmick.
00:55:31
Speaker
yada yada maybe they'll add a new raid or a dungeon with it and we usually kind of play through some of that content together and then in the in-between times maybe you're working on leveling up a gun try and get a specific piece of gear go for a certain challenge or whatever what have you
00:55:48
Speaker
The cat's back entails in front of the camera. So I think for me, when I was into that, I did like that MMO aspect of it of, oh, who's on tonight? Let's all work on something together. And it felt very collaborative. It was good group content.
00:56:07
Speaker
That sounds fun. There's something to be said and I think you've experienced this in the games you've played with friends too, Nate. I'm going to sign on and I know that there are going to be some other people that I enjoy interacting with or playing with that are going to be on. I never actually had an Xbox at all.
00:56:26
Speaker
and pretty much didn't participate in the online multiplayer years of Call of Duty or something like that. But that vibe of, I jumped on, I see my friends are online, they're playing games, like let's jump into their lobby or something.
00:56:40
Speaker
Um, that exists entirely in MMOs, right? Like that's, that is the concept. Right. Um, so there is something to say for that. And the consistency is nice. If you're, you've got other things going on in your life where you don't want more variety in your games, right? Like you had a tiring game or tiring game.
00:57:04
Speaker
Tiring day at work or something like that, maybe you're like doing yard work or something else, whatever. You've been extra social, something like that. You want to come home and play a game that you already understand, and you're comfortable with that. That's where animals land, but the cost is variety.
00:57:24
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know what I'm kind of starting to realize is that maybe I'm just getting old and I like playing with friends, multiplayer stuff, but I'm realizing that skill ceilings and 13 year olds that play 40 hours a day, I can't keep up and I want to play again so fast computers and so things where it's, you know, like that's why Elden Ring Co-op is so fun for us because we can do things together and we can work together on things, but we're not battling some
00:57:49
Speaker
kid on Rocket League and getting absolutely torched, we can just have fun and kill Margit together with some meme weapons and it's way more fun. And so any co-op, multiplayer, PvE content I can find these days is kind of what I'm looking for. I have to ask, because I'm coming here with good multiplayer content, I have to ask, have you played It Takes Two? Oh yeah.
00:58:15
Speaker
Yeah, I played that on the couch with my old roommates. We were under some influence every time we played, and then I played it again with my girlfriend, which was really fun. That was a good thing. Way more wholesome. I think it's a couple of games. The other thing I played this year was the Hogwarts Legacy open world game, just because I'm a pretty big Potter head.
00:58:35
Speaker
So I played that. It was pretty cool. It didn't take me very long, kind of breezed through it. And then having just come out of Elden Ring, I went to that and I was like, oh, this combat's easy. And just kind of like, it was fun and satisfying. But then I watched my girlfriend do a whole play through and she doesn't really game.
Accessibility and Control Preferences
00:58:50
Speaker
and it was pretty cool to see her like learn the systems and combat ended up getting pretty good where at the beginning she couldn't tell what R2 was to fire like simple cast and then by the end she was putting together combos it was pretty cool to see and she did the whole thing made it through the whole story that's awesome
00:59:07
Speaker
It's difficult to like overstate how important games like that are, right? Like for people who play games all the time sometimes you want to jump into Dark Souls and like smash your face against the wall repeatedly and you're just like I'm having a great time and I hate everything. But like it's easy to forget that there are people who like pick up a controller to play a game and their brain does not map to I move the analog stick and my character moves around, right?
00:59:36
Speaker
It's always the camera. They can walk, they can't turn the camera and walk and so they just walk staring at the corner the whole time. Yeah. I had a, I don't know if I told this story or not, but I got fiber installed here like a month or two back because it just became available. Within an hour and a half of it becoming available, I was already like, I called them and signed up and did all this stuff.
00:59:58
Speaker
Because I was on the waiting list, but the guy that came out to install like he's only played on consoles his entire life He didn't had no comprehension of how you would play a shooter on PC and we were talking about games and stuff was like let me just show you like destiny because he was curious about it and his brain was not like processing that like WASD would move him around and he could move the mouse to like To look in different directions and things. It's an acquired skill. There's nothing wrong with it. I
01:00:27
Speaker
I will say for games that support both, I still, having played console games, all of my upbringing, prefer controller. If it is reasonably supported, games like Valorant and CSGO and stuff, I won't. Just no aim assist is impossible. But for anything that makes sense to play at all on controller, I'm always going to pick it. It's just way more comfortable in my opinion. I think anything third person, I need to do controller. Hands down. And then first person, specifically keyboard and mouse.
01:00:55
Speaker
There are people who are really good at first person with controller though. I'm actually quite bad with the controller. Everything I just described applies to me too for controllers. There's a compilation, there's a YouTube channel that's doing these planned
01:01:13
Speaker
scenes basically in cyberpunk where they go through and they kill a bunch of enemies in a particular order basically an exhibition where they like throw a grenade on the ground bounce it off something you know blow a guy up it looks awesome right it's all set up to look awesome and I had a realization like a couple videos in all of these things that like I could not accomplish but I was like this guy's camera is really smooth and it just hit me he's using a controller I was like dang
01:01:38
Speaker
I was going to ask that. So you play cyberpunk on mouse and keyboard? Yes. Do you drive with mouse and keyboard? That sounds terrible. It is. I do and it is. I think I did play cyberpunk on mouse and keyboard for like 20 minutes and then I hopped in a car and I was like, nope, controller. And ever since I've played on controller. That's fair. It does have very adaptive. I don't think cars are ever meant for mouse and keyboard. It just doesn't translate.
01:02:01
Speaker
The thing is it could, but the games really haven't been released that would support it because of the hardware limitation. It's keyboard actuation, and there are keyboards out there who will give gradient input, but there's no games that would ever support that.
01:02:21
Speaker
No. Also, it's such a minimal range of motion that it's easier for your brain to see on an analog, my thumbs going this far up. This is how much I'm leaning into the pedal. This is how much Superman's leaning forward to go faster, I guess, while he's flying versus, oh, the key is pushed down with this much pressure.
01:02:46
Speaker
If you were to stab a sword into whatever you're driving or whoever you're flying, Superman, and then just move the sword, it one-to-one maps to the analog stick. That's easier for people to intuit, I think. At least that's how I think about it.
01:03:05
Speaker
That's very funny, though. Yeah, well, I mean, we've got a rotation of guests, so I don't know if I can bring you back for just the cyberpunk discussion episode or not. We'll have to see once you get through. Have you started Phantom Liberty? Oh, yeah. Oh, my gosh. It's good. Oh, my gosh. I mean, I have to start. I was literally playing right before, right before coming to this recording thing that we do here.
01:03:34
Speaker
But I
Conclusion and Future Recordings
01:03:35
Speaker
appreciate you coming on. Excellent to have you as a guest. As we were discussing before, one of our top contenders for microphone quality, some of the people that they're not even really trying, we can't speak ill of them because we don't pay anyone. And they're helping generate us content. So I can't really do that. But we appreciate every time you come on to your quality.
01:03:59
Speaker
Yeah, I'm thinking you should just start a program where you keep a spare mic around and you ship it to whoever the guest is, and you say, this is what you're using for the week, ship it back when you're done, and then you just always have good quality.
01:04:12
Speaker
That does require us. This is something that Jake planned to do like two years back. Same plan is maybe giving me more credit, but that is the way that like correspondence for news may often do it. If they're not like a dedicated correspondent, they'll send them a portable recorder. They'll just have like a phone call, record the audio locally, and then send it in. I actually do have a device for that, but that wasn't the intent.
01:04:40
Speaker
That would also require us to know who the guest is going to be all that way in advance. And neither Dave nor I are always the most diligent of giving people a heads up. So sometimes you get an emergency guest.
01:04:54
Speaker
that's always a good time
01:05:13
Speaker
But, we already got the words of wisdom, I believe, earlier. But, any closing thoughts today? Buy Armored Core 6! It is pretty good. But play Hollow Knight first if you haven't played it. Yeah, that's the advice. Buy Armored Core 6. Play Hollow Knight. You figure out the rest.
01:05:35
Speaker
Sounds good. Well, for those out there in the audience, thank you guys for listening to another episode. If you have any ideas for future episodes, or you want to come on as a guest, we're basically only accepting offers from the most prestigious of individuals at this point. But you can send those offers in to soapstonepodcast.gmail.com. Or you could join the discussion on Facebook, which is no longer one of the most prestigious of sites, at facebook.com slash soapstonepodcast. And as always,
01:06:05
Speaker
We'll see you in the next one. Have a good one.
01:07:02
Speaker
Oh, God. And you met you that come and move.