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2023 in Review
88 Plays2 years ago
Join Dave and Jake as they reflect on this year in gaming for the last episode of 2023!
Intro:
- Baldur's Gate 3 - Nine Blades
Outro:
- Ghostrunner 2 - We Are Magonia - Dive Into The Void
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Transcript
Friendly Banter and Dark Humor
00:00:37
Speaker
How's it going, everyone? Welcome to another episode of Soapstone. My name is Jake, and I'm joined by my co-host as always, Dave. How's it going tonight, Dave? It's going adorable. Adorable? I got a new door today, so... Ah, okay. That's my joke. And it is able, hopefully.
00:00:56
Speaker
I haven't tried it yet. It might just be a wall they put up. That might have the cask of a Monte out with me. I didn't realize. It's just like they're just pouring like wet cement outside the other exit. Weird amount of brick work. The heavy door guys. That would be pretty funny. I mean, it'd be, it would be ironic. I don't know if it would be funny. Um,
00:01:21
Speaker
being in an apartment, you would think they would optimize for like not killing their tenants. But I know that sometimes they try to like renovate and then get new tenants in. So maybe this would be at odds. I would hope my money's still good. And it wouldn't be like, eh, let's get rid of them. Right. It does feel like if the landlord is making the jump from like, we should just like raise rent and see if they keep paying it too. Let's kill them. Like it's a little bit, it's a little bit extreme.
00:01:50
Speaker
Brand-new apartment opening. Um, no credit check required Uh-huh And a discount if you take care of the corpse The disclaimer like hey somebody did die in this apartment it's like you've been saying that for all the units you've shown me What's up with that? That would be very funny. It's like no everyone in the apartment actually died at once there was a
00:02:19
Speaker
Gas leak. Gas leak. Oh, no. As somebody who already like will be like, send me a sleep in bed. All lights are out and you just hear noises and you're waiting for your brain to just be unconscious. And sometimes you will hear like some clicking of something in a vent very far away. Right. But it echoes and bounces around. And now we're thinking, oh, are they trying to poison?
00:02:46
Speaker
They're just like a 007 crawling through the vents. Yeah, I don't think I don't think it's super likely No, I I Still think they want my money for now. That's usually that's usually what people do what people want But you know who really really wants your money? Oh
00:03:07
Speaker
Who?
The Rising Cost of Video Games
00:03:08
Speaker
It's all of these video game publishers. These people trying to get you to download the bits. Um, maybe get a CD, but mostly download the bits. I say CD and never CDs anymore. You know what I'm saying? The, the games. Yes. Video games. Yeah, exactly. Someone charging $70. $70 for a video game. Can you believe that?
00:03:32
Speaker
I can't mainly because the ones I've seen are not I would not value at 70. Yeah. I actually wonder what the list is because I think Square Enix was doing that a bunch. Seventy dollar video games.
00:03:46
Speaker
We want to think Tekken 8 is listed at 70. Yeah. Oh, this is funny. I just did a really quick search for this just to see like what was included in the list of games that were like $70 because I'm pretty sure that started this year, right? We're talking about the year in review. Obviously we can talk about the price.
00:04:05
Speaker
And this is taken from the website, vintagesthenewold.com. But their list was Jedi Survivor, Dead Island 2, and then Redfall, and then Cough, like SIC. Like they just broke Cough in there, which is very funny. Mortal Kombat, Call of Duty, For Spoken, which also kind of deserves a cough. Final Fantasy 7 and 16, Madden, some racing game, F1 something. Diablo IV, Legend of Zelda. I guess Diablo IV is the...
00:04:36
Speaker
That'd be the touch point for me, which I didn't want to spend 70. Like I said, I got overwhelmed by the hype of friends. I'm like, I'll play with friends. And then like two weeks later, we never spoke of it again. Yeah. Yeah. I think talking about Diablo should definitely take some of our time here. Tears of the Kingdom was 70 bucks. Did I pay 70 dollars for this game? I own it. Hmm. Probably. It might have been interesting.
00:05:05
Speaker
It was good. It was probably worth 70 bucks, but I don't, I don't want people to charge $70 per game. Yeah. There is a part of me that kind of wants to just not buy any video games for like two years and then start getting like the, Oh, it's a 50% off. Cause it came out years ago. I'm like, Oh, that's cool. And it'll finally play out like two. I'll finally play these games. Yeah.
00:05:29
Speaker
I mean, I know it gets brought up sometimes, but I feel I should advocate for the sub community patient gabers. I think it's a subreddit where they will post deals for games that are significantly discounted off of whatever their retail prices.
Gaming Deals and Procrastination
00:05:47
Speaker
I think we'll probably talk about it a little bit within the context of the games that came out this year, but I'm not really clearing games at the velocity I once did.
00:05:57
Speaker
I'll admit some of that fault. So I could afford to wait in a lot of cases, right? I think it's hard to know at the time unless you have like, this is my backlog and nothing can kind of jump in line. That's an interesting idea.
00:06:24
Speaker
Um, I like organization, like I like spreadsheets and things like that. I wonder if there would be value to creating an actual backlog, like a priority ordered backlog, probably I think from like an organ self-organization and discipline standpoint.
00:06:42
Speaker
Well, mainly that, but also having it on paper and having like, oh, maybe you put dates with it as far as I would like to complete this game by this date and move on to the next one. But yeah, having a tangible thing makes it more likely versus, I should really do X. And I'm like, OK. I do that for myself, and then I rarely enforce it. I've had a reminder at 11.30 AM for,
00:07:09
Speaker
probably two years. I got a little armbar thing to do chin-ups and pull-ups. 11.30am every day. It's like, hey, do pull-ups. And I'm like, oh, it's 11.30. That's the only thing I use it for. I'm like, I should start getting lunch ready. So it is nice to have something else, like some other outside factor to assist
00:07:32
Speaker
Yeah, there is a certain amount of it seems silly to track it like a video game, right? Like it's recreation time who organizes the recreation time, but maybe, maybe it's not crazy, right? Like there might be some value there.
00:07:50
Speaker
I think, I think it could get turned into that, like a little bit of the guilting process. If I added a column that was like, I count the number of times that this thing was shifted down. A Passover rule, if you will. Uh-huh. Exactly.
00:08:10
Speaker
But I was going to say, just to make you feel a little bit better, I have an item in my to do list. Admittedly, it's in the inbox, so it's not scheduled for a particular day.
00:08:22
Speaker
that has largely been around since I started using Todoist, which was October 12th, 2018, to check out Landon's small form factor PC build, which was completed in 2018. So I have a couple things that I've stuck around to.
00:08:50
Speaker
So Google calendars anytime I go and like, Oh, I need to add an appointment here or something, which I still don't do enough as much as I should. Um, it will always have like some random, like the third Thursday of every month is like, Hey, uh, you can put a thing to have remind Jake to tell me to do a thing. I'm like, what?
00:09:11
Speaker
Uh-huh. And it's been there forever and it keeps showing up. I'm just like, not, uh, not my problem. Not getting in the way of anything. That's fair. That is fair. Um, as long as the important stuff gets done, that's what, that's what really matters. I think.
00:09:29
Speaker
Yeah, I wait for them to put stuff in red ink and then I'm like, oh, you're being taken to collections. You're like, good luck. I've been putting on the pounds, taking me nowhere.
00:09:46
Speaker
I would just declare bankruptcy. I hear that works for people. It can. It depends on whether you're going to have unsecured or secured debt, more or less, not financial advice.
Humor in Podcast Timing and Legal Missteps
00:10:01
Speaker
But we've reached the end of the year.
00:10:03
Speaker
As alluded to in the previous episode, congratulations, you've made it. If you're listening to this the day it came out, it is like straight up the end of the year, right? I assume that this is, I think the most likely case for people listening to this podcast is it is a New Year's Eve party.
00:10:22
Speaker
And they've just like put on our podcast to like keep people entertained. God, I hope so. I hope they put this on at exactly 11 p.m. We just have it exactly at the hour. Yeah, we'll have to we'll have to do a countdown at the end. Therefore, people want to sync it up. They can. What we've got to do is we've got to we've got to end the episode before the hour mark and then like adjust the speed of the intro and the outro.
00:10:50
Speaker
so that the podcast is literally just an hour long. Even if the intro is unlistenable and the outro is unlistenable, it's doable. We have the technology. We're looking around the speed of Sonic, a place to go to follow my rainbow. Uh-huh, exactly, exactly. The Sonic episode.
00:11:10
Speaker
I was reminded that one of the things that happened this year, from someone else's recap actually, was that the creator of Sonic was prosecuted for insider trading.
00:11:24
Speaker
Huh. Yeah. So he also made ballon under a ballon wonder world was the Oh, he deserves to die. But yeah, I think it was Japan prosecution. So he's probably going to prison for a while. They have like a 99 percent conviction rate for cases that actually get taken up in Japan. Like people do not go to court and then be found innocent. It's it's not a thing.
00:11:51
Speaker
I'll stay here in the US then. Avoid any foreign travel for a little bit. If you have to travel, do not break local laws. That's good advice in general, but there are some places you definitely should not do it.
00:12:05
Speaker
I feel like if they don't have signage, I wouldn't know. I really wouldn't know. That's right. Murder is wrong here. What? Well, there was no sign. So it was very global. But like I think in Thailand, like you're not allowed to chew gum. Uh huh. That's like a really random thing that I would not know of that. But it's not like I'm necessarily like, oh, I got to bring my travel gum. Mm hmm.
00:12:29
Speaker
But like, maybe I just have some on me. I'm like, Oh, I'm eating in two hours. We'll just have some gum for the time being. Boom. We're asked to. Yeah. Right on the spot. Straight to prison.
00:12:39
Speaker
Um, drag you out of the, the, the airport, just like any international section. You're just, you're gone. It was a layover. It was just the layover. Um, jokes on them. I blow up the bubble. And for some reason, uh, the, the air that was in there, I guess the CO2 from my lungs has now become helium and I float away. There you go. That's the advanced trap. Um, speaking of video game logic, so
00:13:06
Speaker
We have a lot, we covered a lot of episodes. We went through a lot of logic for video games. There you go. That's the end of the segue. Also got some questions together here we can go over. How do you want to format this? Do you want to talk about things that we talked about this year, kind of in retrospective, or do you want to start with the questions and explore as we, as we wish? Probably questions and then derail as needed. Sure.
00:13:36
Speaker
going, we can go off the rails. It is the, uh, that's, that's our prerogative at the end of the year. No rails. Um, so the first one I have here, I'll ask you, Dave, um, what was your personal game of the year and why we're doing this at the opposite of the game show where they build up hype and stuff. We crushed that right out the jump, like.
00:13:56
Speaker
So, get that out there. I'm a little bit torn because there are two major games that I've loved that came out this year. Yeah. In Armored Core 6, Fires of Rubicon and Baldur's Gate 3. Now, I have done 98% of the content as far as achievements in Armored Core 6.
00:14:21
Speaker
Baldur's Gate three is not as close by a long shot. Baldur's Gate three, I think, is still game of the year, like the level of immersion as far as an RPG is concerned and the attention to detail and so many things that you can make decisions on that you probably didn't even know about. It is amazing and it's so good for that.
Game of the Year and 2023's Hits
00:14:48
Speaker
I'm always going to have a place in my heart for armor core six, though. I just wanted to give it a mention because. Super enjoyed everything about it, and I hope they do more stuff like that in the future. I mean, same for Baldur's Gate three and RPGs. It's nice to finally has been again since divinity original sin two, which is the closest I got. Yeah, I'd still have to give it to Baldur's Gate three. It's just too good to not.
00:15:18
Speaker
Yeah, I can kind of, I can almost copy paste, um, your response, but I do want to throw in some extra context for me. Like there have been a lot of good games that came out that were playable on PC this year. And I didn't finish that many of, uh, similar, similar situation. Obviously you're playing Baldur's gate three together. Um, but.
00:15:46
Speaker
some of the games so the games I did play I kind of like want to knock out of the running sometimes like an example this is Diablo 4 right like I actually think Diablo 4 is a really good game but I don't want to play it and so nothing else matters right like like I actually
00:16:08
Speaker
We could go into like probably a lengthy discussion about Diablo 4, maybe we should, but like that was the other game I put a lot of time into. It wasn't like Destiny, right? Which I'm not counting for anything. It didn't come out this year and even if it did, there's a lot of problems with it. But like,
00:16:25
Speaker
Yeah, I didn't play a lot of these other games that came out, or if I did, and they would have been a potential game of the year contender, they actually weren't that good, like Starfield, which I'm calling Midfield. No, it's just my pet name for it. I like that you're dunking on it versus me, because I'm very much being fed by YouTube reviews and other stuff, and I've had no actual hands-on experience with the game. Granted, the YouTube gameplay is one to one, so it's not like I'm
00:16:54
Speaker
completely unfairly judging it. Right. But they're giving examples and things like that. Yeah, it's it's the game I wanted to be game of the year, I think. Not counting Baldur's Gate three, but until I had played it right, like in as far as hype, as far as anticipation, I put a lot of time into Bethesda RPGs. And this is the one that's, you know, despite everything that happened in 76, I was like, I still believe that they can do some good things
00:17:24
Speaker
And I'm like, I still believe they can do things. Like that's basically where it's where it's it's put me where, you know, despite putting over 100 hours into the game, I put a lot of time into that game. I came out the other end of it and I was like, how many of those hours were actually meaningful gameplay? Is this game actually worse than Skyrim as far as fun is concerned? And the answer is yes.
00:17:50
Speaker
I, my measure of that is always going to be, uh, did like a specific moment or situation stand out. So in the case of lethal company, uh, brief mention of that, a lot of that is just experience based who you're playing with, what you run into and you'll have a story of like, Oh my God, last time we played this happened. It was fucking crazy. Right. Um, for single player games, it's like, Oh my God. Um,
00:18:18
Speaker
Let's say when Alfira sings in Baldur's Gate three, it's within act one. It's not a spoiler, but like there's a lot of production put into it. And for me, at least I was slightly moved, slightly more immersed. I'm like, that's really fucking cool that they did that. It wasn't like, Oh, here's like a two line song. Like it goes for like three minutes. Yeah. And I was like, are we still playing this game? People are like, yeah, it's just, this is a very long cut scene. I was like, okay. Um,
00:18:46
Speaker
But yeah, like, how is it going to stand out for you? What will you remember after the fact? So like for Diablo four, for me, nothing, nothing's going to be like, oh, my God, that's so cool. So crazy. And I'll remember it forever. Whereas armor court six, I can't do it because I'd be spoiling things. There are a lot. There are a lot of cool things. Yeah, I think that's that's a very that's a very fair
00:19:12
Speaker
Take away, right? Cause then it's regardless of how many hours the game is. Like people can talk about the value proposition. Um, and a lot of the games that came out that are top contenders this year actually have a lot of hours of content, Baldur's gate, armored core, um, great examples there.
00:19:28
Speaker
Um, and other games, like we haven't played, I don't know how long Alan Wake is, but like, there was a lot of obviously really good games, but the ones I played generally and completed were not the, not very good. Right. So starfield, which I'm going to not talk about a ton about right now, cause I want to mention it later. Um, and then payday three was the other one. Right. Like payday three literally got me to play payday two a ton this year. People who saw my steam retrospective can see that. Right. Like.
00:19:57
Speaker
But it's because payday three was so disappointing. So I put the time into new releases sometimes where I shouldn't have this year. And so I'm going to be super able to critique things, but maybe a little bit less able to say what went well. So true. But I think you need a little bit of both because if if all you have is just good things, you won't know necessarily how bad it can be and why it's that good.
00:20:27
Speaker
Yeah. I do think to answer the question because I've waffled enough on it. I think it's Baldur's Gate 3 also. I do believe it's Baldur's Gate 3. It would feel literally wrong to just try to
00:20:43
Speaker
Equivocate, like I played Dave, the diver, also an excellent game. I actually finished that one, but I haven't, but I didn't buy him the game. It's just my name's in it. So yes, you're right. See, he gets rights. Dave is actually very rich now. Nexon is just shoveling him money over on the side. Um, but I do have some gripes with it and I think there's some things where like other games within the management space have done things better and there's lessons they could have learned. Um,
00:21:12
Speaker
Baldur's Gate three freaking Larian, right? Like, how can you, how can you take from them what they've done? Uh, you can't, um, like they treat their people. Well, their voice actors are amazing members of the community. Um, it's basically, I have no idea why, well, actually I do know Wizards of the coast is like laying off a lot of their D and D team. Um, and.
00:21:41
Speaker
It has, I assume nothing to do with this. It's just because Hasbro is an evil corporation and they're like, Hey, if you can't make a hundred million dollars, you're like basically tiered within our corporate structure lower. Um, so they're literally just trying to pump money out of people. It's a game company. It's what they do.
00:22:02
Speaker
And like Baldur's Great Theory was the glimmering like hope of D&D in all of this, right? A lot of people are going to try D&D that never did because this game is just so good. And I think they'll be kind of disappointed in some ways because this game is so good. But it's also like for nerds.
00:22:21
Speaker
Um, it's so freaking good, right? It's like the first time a good movie comes out for an IP that you're interested in, right? Maybe like really like a series of books and they just never, they never do it right. Like I assume the new dune is something like this, right? Yeah.
00:22:39
Speaker
You hope that when somebody kind of takes over that IP or they're doing a spin off or some type of media with it, you want it to match your expectation of it.
Gaming Disappointments and Critiques
00:22:49
Speaker
Yeah. So like when Game of Thrones was coming out, people were like, hey, this is like a really important book series for a lot of people is really good. And then like as far as the production and the acting and everything like rave reviews.
00:23:03
Speaker
A lot of the people who were watching, myself included, had never fucking heard of the books or read them. And they're just like, this is a really good show. What is this based on? Oh, there's a book series. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, it's really good. And honestly, I want Larry to just keep making games because
00:23:23
Speaker
I think it's natural when you have developers that are disappointing you to cling to what you have. And in this case, I'm like, I'm clinging to Larian because they're what we have still. And the people that I've spent hundreds or across their games, probably thousands of hours playing, haven't been holding up nearly as well, which is
00:23:50
Speaker
Unfortunate. Armored Core 6 does seem good though. If I had more time in Armored Core 6, I think it could potentially be a rounder up, but it would be disingenuous of me to be like, yeah, I'm stuck at this boss and it's game of the year, right? So.
00:24:05
Speaker
Yeah, not to like take away from other games that weren't game of the year, but just as far as, I mean, we kind of explained our reasoning, but yeah, it's just, it does not take away from other good titles that came out this year, but it really does stand out in multiple facets and should be recognized as such.
00:24:25
Speaker
And it was. Suck it, AlanWig2. Uh-huh. I mean, I'll play it eventually. I actually do. I'm very interested in AlanWig2, but oh, yeah. I'm hoping it comes to Game Pass. That would be perfect for me. I'm sending you a link right now because it's just absurd here. So I'm just going to TLDR for you guys. We can get back to the questions here, obviously.
00:24:45
Speaker
But there are an absurd number of literally PC games that came out this year, right? Like the thing that people have been throwing around, and I think we mentioned it a little bit on the, on a previous episode is the question, is this like one of the best years for video games ever? And.
00:25:06
Speaker
Some people are like, nah, not really. Look at all these bad examples, Starfield, stuff like that. But it's such a consistent year, right? Like there were so many games that came out and so many of them were good, usually on the case of like multiple really good games per month. It's just, there were also some disappointments that dragged it down and make it seem worse than it was, right?
00:25:34
Speaker
Yeah, like in general, I don't need too much to eat and be happy. So the fact that there are some good ones, awesome. I'm not really going to seek out the bad ones because I typically won't be interested in them. And if there's a major flop of something, I will help on the dog pile as far as we should not be doing this. This should not be something that we strive for, but
00:25:59
Speaker
A lot for me will also kind of go by the way because I'm not actively following them. Yeah, I think that's that's entirely fair. And a lot of these games, I didn't even necessarily. See much mention of until, you know, later when they were doing the game awards and things like that. But yeah, if you were if you're the type of person who is playing games every month, there was definitely something to do every month of the year.
00:26:28
Speaker
Very rarely would you need to fall back on like the previous month's game. It's pretty crazy. Yeah, there are definitely like some heavy hitter games throughout. But outside of the heavy hitters, we also mentioned there are some less satisfying games that came out this year. Now, I know that I was reverse navigating the minefield and trying to hit all of the mines.
00:26:57
Speaker
But do you have any game a game or games that stood out as a disappointment this year? So I might need to rephrase this a little bit because I don't have as much experience with some of these games that kind of flopped. You can you can do it like a politician. You're like, I don't like that question. Here's a better question. Let me phrase it into a different thing entirely. I love my family.
00:27:23
Speaker
So for me, for as far as like direct experience Diablo Four, I honestly had a lot of fun with it. I'm playing with people and checking out some stuff. At a point, it did kind of feel empty to me. Like I didn't have more interest to keep playing. Right. Whereas if it's like Path of Exile, I would still be playing it. It just has a way of getting its claws in me.
00:27:49
Speaker
So that was a minor disappointment for me. Not a huge thing. But again, I want to dig on that one. Yeah. For a second, though, because I feel like we both played Diablo. We can we can relate to this a little bit. Do you know what it was in Diablo four that like was a disappointment compared to Path of Exile? Because I believe you. I know. I know you've put a crazy amount of time into Path of Exile. You have the credentials to back up this statement. But like, what did Diablo four lack?
00:28:18
Speaker
So for me, like I like that you can manipulate the skill trees and just having skill trees in general. I didn't like how it's like, hey, you can do like one of these three play styles, which looking back, I'm sure Diablo two pretty much did that already anyway.
00:28:38
Speaker
But I wasn't super infested in the story at all. Mm-hmm. Like Diablo 2's cutscenes. I was like, yo, what the fuck's going on? I'm excited. I'm stoked. And then Diablo 4 is kind of like, there's a wolf telling you to do stuff. This lady seems bad. Or is she?
00:28:58
Speaker
I just didn't get roped into it. That's fair. I do think and you can disagree with me on this. I think that Diablo four was better in gameplay and in story than Diablo three. Yes, because I don't remember anything about the other three, which is a lot. But I do think that Diablo is kind of just like as a series, it's gotten to the point of the maturity where it was like.
00:29:23
Speaker
Remember our golden years? Diablo 4 really had a lot of... You guys played Diablo 2, right? You know this guy, right? Callbacks and things like that. And I'm sure for a lot of people, they really enjoyed it. But it does emphasize that it couldn't stand on its own. They didn't have more ideas than the prime evils keep coming back and we keep having to kill them. Somebody guard the spawn at this point, right?
00:29:51
Speaker
Yeah, it's just, it's hard to explain unless you grew up playing Diablo 2 and then you have Diablo 4 as a comparison. But yeah, I did appreciate one or two of the nods early and I'm like, they sure are nodding a bunch. Yeah. Okay.
00:30:09
Speaker
Yeah, it just it feels lacking kind of like a soulless AAA kind of way. Like there's not anything that's like immediately like, oh, this is terrible. It just feels wrong to me. That makes sense. That's fair. I think I think if I were to take a guess here, like Path of Exile has like pushed the formula because I actually think in a lot of ways Diablo four mechanically is a better game than Diablo two.
00:30:36
Speaker
I know I'll be killed for this. My time is limited. I see him grabbing his keys in the back. But Diablo II had a bunch of excellent things that were absolutely revolutionary for when it came out. But going back and playing resurrected, you can see I could see how this could have been developed on more. Or even this is maybe where Path of Exile did develop on this.
00:31:00
Speaker
But Diablo 4 doesn't do as much. It's trying to be very safe and very consumable. And even when it's like, oh, the game is hard, it's possible to make a game that's hard and still very accessible.
00:31:17
Speaker
And that's really what they really tried to focus on instead of trying to take a bunch of risks. And then obviously, live service model nonsense, season pass, all that stuff. Those are all cons. I don't like any of that. No. It's pretty bad in that regard. I think just for comparison of why I appreciate Path of Exile so much in comparison is really the amount of a rabbit hole you can go down as far as builds.
00:31:46
Speaker
Yeah, what type of build do you want to do?
00:31:48
Speaker
Oh, it doesn't matter what you're starting classes, by the way. Yes. The only thing you're starting class matters for is when you get your ascension points and then you're like subclassing. That's the only time it really comes in because beyond that, it's just where you start on the giant grid tree. But there's so many decisions that you can make and so many interesting builds. It's just so much more going on with it. And for me, I like that part.
00:32:17
Speaker
I like not necessarily always knowing and trying things out. And each season, they'll add like a new actual content thing. And then the other four is like, I'm Diablo. I'm like, OK. Right. Yeah, it just feels like you're scaling up some numbers for things. And that's it. They're even like the unique abilities feel very, hey, every three seconds you can attack twice. I'm like.
00:32:44
Speaker
Cool. Like it doesn't have that level of customization intricacy. It just feels very. Yeah, I think I think that's very I think that's very to an extent like.
00:32:58
Speaker
I, unfortunately, I think my biggest gripe is I just don't want to play an action RPG. That's honestly the biggest thing I have against Diablo. Because a lot of the things I do really appreciate from like being able to like steal the affixes off legendaries and stuff like that. And then kind of like just have a bunch equipped at a time. I think that's, I think that's cool. But yeah, I don't know.
00:33:22
Speaker
I'm sure they made a lot of money off of it. Hopefully enough that people don't get fired, but that doesn't seem to be the case anymore. A lot of people got fired this year. I don't want to harp on Diablo 4 too much because we already had an episode on it. That's true, yeah.
00:33:39
Speaker
I feel like we do need to harken back to shitting on Redfall. Oh yeah. We didn't even play that game. We watched a friend of the show and special guest Ian play on Discord and we saw a lot of the issues of people posting on YouTube and other mediums that are just
00:34:03
Speaker
It wasn't a complete game. It wasn't a fun game. It wasn't QA'd, I don't think. Yeah, it was just very much a disappointment when a lot of people are still kind of thirsting, pun intended, for the new truly spiritual successor for something like Left 4 Dead 2.
00:34:25
Speaker
Cause a lot of people were not crazy about back for blood. I thought it did enough, hit enough of the boxes. Um, but yeah, not to say it can't be outdone. I think there's still room to evolve on that. Yeah, it's their, their, their graph on Wikipedia is kind of useless. So arcane Austin as the office specifically that was working on redfall, but I don't know if other teams contributed.
00:34:54
Speaker
Um, it's such a disappointment because, I mean, it was terrible. Everyone knew it was terrible. It wasn't the only game on launch that launched into just instant mediocrity. Um, starfield actually took longer for people to kind of realize that it was relatively mediocre.
00:35:12
Speaker
Redfall was just bad. But this is the same, according to Wikipedia, the same team that made Prey. And that is insanity to me. Prey is like in the running. Prey is really good. Prey is potentially my favorite game. Full stop. Like I just I really, really like Prey.
00:35:34
Speaker
And this was so bad that people were leaving development. They were leaving the company while it was being made. This is literally a studio ender. That's the type of tier of mistake that this was. Yeah, I'm sure there are other factors at play. As it usually is, there's usually some upper degree of management that just makes a shitty call or doesn't understand the workflow. It could be any number of things. But yeah, it was a major flop.
00:36:02
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. To say, to say the least, right? Like, um, this is actually basically my answer. I think now that you've elucidated that, because just because of the, I didn't even play Redfall. I was hoping it was good, but I'm just concerned it destroyed the studio. And I love the studio.
00:36:25
Speaker
The other thing I'm kind of curious about is I've seen Oni Plays does a Let's Play of First Spoken, or at least they have a couple of episodes, and they're constantly shitting on it for a lot of the writing and how things don't make sense. But at a glance, the gameplay seems fine enough.
00:36:44
Speaker
Um, the open world thing might be maybe not the best, but it just seems like a very AAA. So here's this thing. And if you like completely close your eyes, yeah, you could probably have fun with it. Um, if you're somebody who's more critical, I could easily see, I wouldn't say showstoppers, but
00:37:07
Speaker
It's just like, why would why is my character an asshole? Why would somebody do this? Like, it doesn't make sense. Just things like that that really would take you out of it. But I'm actually curious how it was received. First spoken, I mean, I'm looking it up in real time here, but I think you touched on something that was interesting. And we see it a lot in some of the games that came out this year. So Metacritic, this is PS5. It got a 64, 63 on PC. So.
00:37:36
Speaker
very, very, very poor. But something that the interesting thing you called out here is it seems like for a lot of games that came out that had some disappointing aspects, like as a gamer,
00:37:50
Speaker
soft G gamer as a gamer playing for the first time, you can immediately identify that is a super cringy thing. That person just said like, or this game does not play well on this console or like in case of Redfall, what are we doing? Right. Like is everything just a pointless fetch quest? Why is the game in this world? Like it's very, very obviously, if you had played a good game, this is not that right. Hmm.
00:38:19
Speaker
Um, it's, it seems like a lot of those got through the cracks this year. Well, it felt like people had to ship it. Again, I think it comes down to like management and company stuff itself. Because again, while we are soft G gamers, I mean, we definitely have a wealth of experience playing different games and we enjoy it as a past time. But I think for the larger demographic, they're not us.
00:38:46
Speaker
Like, I think sometimes it's like, grandma wants to buy you a game. Oh, Johnny likes video games. Here's a video game. Or some people who are just like, hey, I want to unwind with a video game. What's new? Oh, let me try this thing out, right? They're not looking for necessarily a specific experience or a certain genre of game. They're like, hey, this looks cool and fun. And for them, it might be awesome. But
00:39:12
Speaker
Just like if you somebody who's watched like a whole bunch of movies, you start to look for certain things like, oh, I really like this as far as character development and an arc, right? Other stuff. And that's how I feel video games. So Baldur's Gate three knocked out of the fucking park, making characters interesting, having legitimately applicable dialogue to the situation.
00:39:31
Speaker
Um, and then you look at something like star field and I'm like triple A not even interested. Um, and that's how I felt for a while with Bethesda and been more than just Bethesda, but for spoken another good example of not having good character driven stuff. Yeah.
Industry Reflections: Successes and Failures
00:39:48
Speaker
It seems like it had poor direction, right? Someone behind the scenes making decisions here was making the wrong decisions and the studio.
00:39:58
Speaker
ultimately gets punished for it. Maybe the person who's responsible was among the casualties, but like the Square Enix studio that was working on For Spoken literally was dissolved and the people were moved to other teams. I don't know if everyone was replaced, um, like to a different place in the company, hopefully. Um, but that team does not exist. They were straight up like, no, that was it. This, this was too far of a mess. Um,
00:40:25
Speaker
Uh, I would say, uh, uh, I don't know if this is a Razzie's award or whatever, but a runner up position for disappointment this year is definitely Gollum. Uh, but that one was too entertaining. So I don't think it even counts. Right. Like the knowledge that it came out and the videos around it and stuff was so entertaining. And I was like, I'm glad this was released. Um, the publisher, the, the, the publisher that published the game was trying to do their own development thing with Gollum. And after it came out, they were like.
00:40:55
Speaker
We're gonna go back to publishing games. They literally just dissolve their development side and they're like, it's only publishing now. Jesus.
00:41:04
Speaker
Yeah, it is, as you said, crazy how many things got through the cracks. As far as I'm concerned, at least. There was a lot. It would be, I think, forgiven to think with all of the negative games that we've mentioned, that it was actually a garbage year for games, because we've given so many negative examples. But there were still a lot that were excellent and a lot that we didn't play.
00:41:30
Speaker
Which kind of goes into my answer for the next one, which was, uh, what's the vibe for this year in gaming for you? I'm going to call it the duality of man. That'll be, that'll be the vibe for me. Um, because man, the highs were so high. Fire rush. The lows were like, I didn't even play high five rush, but I know it's excellent. It's on game pass. I can get, I can play it whenever I want. Uh, the lows were like, why did I take PTO for this game? Yeah. But, uh,
00:42:00
Speaker
I don't know. Overall, I think it was pretty good. What was what was the vibe you got for for this year in gaming? I'll be honest, I was very pleasantly surprised with some of the stuff that came out because like.
00:42:15
Speaker
At all points, I'm still thinking about Eldering from time to time. Friend Tyler has been streaming some on Discord and I'm like, he's playing it. He's like, what do you do with this? I'm like, oh, well, you got to go here. Like, I'm willing to just dump all this information. I want to try to not spoil anything, but for me, I'm still in that space, right? Yeah. To a degree.
00:42:37
Speaker
Now granted, Eldering came out last year. And I'm like, okay, what's going to even compare to Eldering? Baldur's Gate 3. Granted, it's a different type of game, but it's very easy for me to get into it. Lies of P. I was not expecting any other studio besides FromSoft to make
00:42:59
Speaker
a Souls-like and have it be decent. Okay, here we go. Very much enjoyed that. Armored Core 6. Had no idea what to expect. Had an amazing time. And I suck at the game. Lethal Company came out of the blue. I got to interject specifically for Armored Core 6. I was watching a Mandalore video where someone asked him what his impression of Armored Core was.
00:43:23
Speaker
And he was like, I like it, but I think it's like it might be the easiest one in the series so far. And I was still I'm still stuck on this boss. I was like, dang it, man. Like, why do you have to say that? I feel specifically called out. Well, I think some of the older games to defend you, defend you. I think some of the older games are more janky and more difficult and a lot more constricted. Gotcha. OK. I like listening to body video talk about like going back and playing these games on emulators. He's like.
00:43:51
Speaker
Some of these bosses in the arena are just fucking insane. OK, I feel better then. But you were saying Lethal Company for the vibe of the year and all these good games.
00:44:01
Speaker
Yeah, that kind of came out or popped up within like the last month or so, month or two. And it's been like a very positive thing. I knew nothing about it ahead of time. I still don't know too much about it. But like even now, I see some friends on Lethal Company and I'm just smiling, thinking like, how are they going to fuck this up? But yeah, like that just came out of the blue. There wasn't a hey, we're looking forward to this in 2023.
00:44:28
Speaker
And it's nice to see, you know, with some of these major studios failing to have a smaller indie thing, be like, Oh, huge success. Awesome. That's true. Yeah. And I will say, even amongst the major studios, like it's not all bad news we did get, like, and this was the end of the year. Right. But God of War, Ragnarok, Valhalla, free DLC, like literally free. Which is tremendous. But like Santa Monica,
00:44:58
Speaker
Sony Santa Monica, the studio that made the game. I don't understand what they're on. It seems to be like they haven't had their empathy stripped from them and they're working for things other than just capitalism. I don't understand. But the fact that like this AAA developer who made excellent God of War would come out with Valhalla and just be like, hey,
00:45:21
Speaker
This will, you know, wrap up the story of our last game. And if you have the game, you have the DLC, Merry Christmas. Like I don't understand how corporations let them get away with this given everything else they've been doing this year, but I'll take it. Right. So there is good news today. Yeah. It is nice to see something come out for the community, which even feels weird to say out loud. Yeah. Hmm.
00:45:48
Speaker
It's supposed to be really good. I saw a video review of it and it's about like six hours of content. It's got the roguelike sort of meta progressing and stuff like that. It looks good. If I wasn't trying to complete other games, I would very heavily consider going back and playing it.
00:46:09
Speaker
Yeah, I might do that at some I say I might do that at some point. I have no no plans at the moment. It's a go back. It's not placed on the list. It's floating somewhere underneath the list ramp. But like I do enjoy the gameplay. I just don't have anything currently driving me to check out God of War. You know, that's fair. Yeah. Although if people haven't checked out Ragnarok, like if you skip to that and you can do like Ragnarok into Valhalla, I'm like, absolutely freaking do that. Yes, it is. It is a very solid game.
00:46:39
Speaker
Not better than Elden Ring as we all voted and proved, but super good. Elden Ring is pretty hard to beat.
00:46:47
Speaker
And I'm just very glad we don't have to put Elden Ring up against Baldur's Gate 3. I'm glad. We don't even have to consider it. Don't even have to waste the mental energy. I'm now physically stressing. So Jake, for you, of some of these games that have come out this year, what would you say is at the top of your list of a game that you want to beat but have not gotten around to yet?
Future Gaming Plans and Trends
00:47:15
Speaker
So I have started making progress on this, but have not completed ghost runner two. That's the current top of my list. Right. If I was, if I were to get this, start working on the spreadsheet right now. Um, and then armored core six. Uh, those are, those are definitely the top two. I think it gets more nebulous as we work our way down the list. Um, cause there are other games that I've picked up, maybe like I picked a book of hours and some other games, but like.
00:47:44
Speaker
Those are definitely the top two and I want to try to get those done like soon. Uh, but yeah, three is probably Baldur's Gate three actually. I do want to finish that and I recall earlier we were like, Hey, we can find some time to play that this week.
00:48:02
Speaker
I probably should have followed up on that. Yeah, I feel like the ball was in your court for that, not mine. That's fair. That is on me. But what about for you? Baldur's Gate 3. Yeah. Because the other things that I started, I have finished. That's fair.
00:48:20
Speaker
allies of p like once once I get started in a souls like that i'm enjoying Going to play that I will take breaks and do social multiplayer games But like i'm grinding that out until I beat it because I want the the satisfaction Armor core six was another situation like that. I just really needed to Get through all the content. I'm like Give me more please um
00:48:46
Speaker
I think that's fair. Well, bonus question for you, then you couldn't have prepared for this because it wasn't on the list of the games that you didn't start this year. Which ones do you want to go back and play? And it's OK if you take a minute. I'll wait to. OK, that's right. It's been on my interest list. Well, like I said in previous episodes, like I feel like I bought three or four games in a row. I'm like, let's chill on that for a little bit.
00:49:14
Speaker
Cause some of them like I bought and then I went through it so fast. I'm like, Oh shit. Um, like, I think we all purchased remnant too. Yeah, we did armor course six. I bought Liza P was thankfully on game pass. Um,
00:49:34
Speaker
I bought it and it just started to add up. I'm like, let's just chill for a little bit. Yeah. So I don't wake up. Push back. How many hundreds of dollars should we spend on video games these next couple of months? I will say as a.
00:49:49
Speaker
Another consideration, um, game. This was the year I picked up game pass specifically around the time that, uh, starfield came out, which was good. Cause that was a $70 game. Right. Like, so even with the several months of game pass, we're only just approaching or just surpassed the point where I would have been reaching what I would have just spent on starfield and I would have bought it otherwise. Right. True. Um, so, uh, that is a big winner.
00:50:18
Speaker
this year is Game Pass. The fact that has Liza P, Hi-Fi Rush, all these games, like there were so many excellent games that came out this year that aren't on Game Pass, but a good number of them are. So just a consideration. We don't get money from it yet. Phil Spencer, reach out, please. What about you? As far as a game, you have not started yet, but I should have been considering that. Uh, geez. I mean, I usually launched the game at least once.
00:50:49
Speaker
Um, I know that there was another Yakuza, but I don't, I can't consider that right. I got to finish like a dragon first.
00:50:58
Speaker
Or the first like a dragon I should say now because I guess it's Yakuza like a dragon and then it was like like a dragon Ishin I think was the next one so originally and the only reason I know this is because of Dice from the show a special guest because I wouldn't know otherwise but apparently in Japan it's always the series has always been called like a dragon. Yes. Mm-hmm
00:51:20
Speaker
And it was the US. It was just the Yakuza. Yeah. So then they're like, hey, and now going forward, they're just doing the same naming scheme in both countries. Yeah. I think that's entirely fair. I should have taken a little bit more time to prep this. This would have been an easy thing. There's some fighting games. Actually, System Shock. Oops. I think I hit my microphone. System Shock, the remaster, came out in May. And I.
00:51:49
Speaker
It's it's going to be 50% off by the time I get to it. I read that that was pretty well received. And I really like System Shock 2. The other one I want to mention is the Dead Space remake. Oh yeah. Game Pass, by the way. That came out the beginning of the year and now it's on Game Pass, like you said. I'm actually stuck at a boss there and then I took a break from it. Dave finishes all his games. It's what he was saying.
00:52:20
Speaker
Well, I didn't pay for this one, so it's different. That's true. You can probably imagine which boss it is. It's a. It's probably a big guy. It's tedious. It's usually a big guy. Oh, the reason I say that is because every boss in these games is a big guy. It's not even not even a thing. Oh, I gave my boss, I think, but I haven't played is Warhammer 40 K bolt gun, which was the game shooter.
00:52:48
Speaker
So that one, that one would definitely count, but hopefully it doesn't take 40 hours to beat when I do. I'd be surprised. Uh huh. Um, but yeah, I think that would be, that would be probably it for, for those top games. Um, I guess this could, this could directly relate to that question, but was there an episode that was kicking around in the noggin or maybe one specifically relating to a game that you wish we would have done this year?
00:53:18
Speaker
looking back with for a look in my eyes and tell me what I'm going to say. I don't even have to look in his eyes. It's just the number of times he said Baldur's Gate Day this episode.
00:53:30
Speaker
Actually, no, I always get three is definitely up there for me as one of them. But my defacto go to would be armor core six. We did an episode on it, actually. Right. But it wasn't a full one. So you want to you want a spoiler episode? I just want you to complete all the stuff so we can talk about it. And I want to have a full full release on it. It doesn't have to be large gate three, since we technically did have an armor core six one. I forgot already, I'll be honest.
00:53:58
Speaker
I actually, when I was looking at the episodes to see what we covered this year, I was like, why is Armored Core 6 on here? But we did do a low spoiler, Armored Core 6. It would be really funny if we were just like at a cafe or something like that talking about Armored Core 6 spoilers and just like recording with like a little handheld recorder on the table in front of us. There's like soup spoon sounds in the background and stuff. That's what the people want, right?
00:54:25
Speaker
Somebody just, Ethel just going, I love soup. God damn right you, Ethel. That chicken noodle is delightful. We get that sound bite. It happens at one point across the entire like episode, but we copy the audio and we just put it at like different volumes and maybe slightly different pitches throughout the entirety of the episode, like 10 times.
Deep Dive into Starfield's Design Flaws
00:54:49
Speaker
I like soup. Just kind of like a couple imperceptible ones there in the background. Like, was that?
00:54:55
Speaker
Is that the same? Is that the same thing? So what about you? Let's say we can't say Baldur's Gate three. OK. Um, man, this is kind of this is kind of a selfish one, I think. But I have two answers. The first one is just Starfield. So I could just go like really in depth and like rip into the things that I think didn't work.
00:55:22
Speaker
Because the way that they don't work is just, it's weird to me from like a game design standpoint. It seems like why, why, why are the call and why does the colony system not mesh together to like make a playable experience? Right. And then they undercut the entire thing by letting you just buy whatever resources you want. So colonies are pointless. Like there's things that were obviously out of place and I don't understand it.
00:55:51
Speaker
Um, so literally just the digging into star filled episode would be one answer. Um, and the other one was Dave, the diver, because I didn't really have any awareness of seriously playing it until near the end of the year. And then I just like, just rushed it, rushed it down over holiday PTO and put a tremendous amount of time into it.
00:56:15
Speaker
Um, I figured good things about it. I don't know if it's necessarily my cup of tea, but it's not perfect. I have had more time to think about my critique of it. And I think that there are some lessons that could have learned from other sorts of simulation games, particularly Stardew Valley, as far as like respecting the player's time. But, um, it is still, it is still quite good. It deserves. It's overwhelming lead positive review on steam. Um,
00:56:45
Speaker
Those are probably maybe in 2024 for these. Maybe. Yeah, it could be. I could also potentially focus my thoughts enough that I could mention some of my critiques and things I enjoy about the game without it dominating a full episode. All right. My tertiary, tertiary answer would have been payday three, because I think it would have just been really fun to
00:57:11
Speaker
Compare what was happening with that game and how kind of like we just couldn't latch on to it how it was disappointing didn't have content stuff like that all the way back to our first episode of the Podcasts for payday to the fact that like a sequel launched for like our first episode of the podcast and there was no Time travel loop their connective piece. I think that could have been good content. That's true
00:57:38
Speaker
I could maybe suffer through more payday three to make that episode happen. Yeah, we'll we'll see. I don't hate it. I just don't find much cause to play it. So. Yeah, if I'm neutral, that's essentially negative because I don't want to play it. Yeah. Why would you play a neutral game, right? If the game is good, that's usually not really enough to play it these days. It's a strong year. So true.
00:58:06
Speaker
Uh, last one here, here's the big question. If you could entice someone onto the podcast, um, what's the, what's the term through, uh, uh, something or crook hook, hook or crook. But I guess in this case, you're just going to bribe
Guest Wishlist and Industry Insights
00:58:22
Speaker
them. Right. Cause we're not, we're not like physically threatening anyone to get them on the podcast. We've tried it. It didn't work. Um, who would you bring in to be a podcast guest in the new year?
00:58:34
Speaker
So I'm going to think about this for a moment here because I have one answer, but if I say it, you're going to be like, shit, that was my answer. And it's going to put you in a disarray like you wouldn't believe. So I could throw mine out. And then if it's not the same one, you can be like, okay, I'm good. Okay. Yeah.
00:58:54
Speaker
Um, so I thought of two, uh, all right. So the, the first one is Todd Howard, just so I can understand like, what is in his head? I don't know. And also this is our chance. This is our chances as a podcast. Be like, Oh yeah. We're the podcast that had Todd Howard on. Um, although Plattie would never listen to us again. Uh, and the second one that I think would be kind of interesting would be, uh, like body body video. Oh, that's actually pretty good.
00:59:25
Speaker
Shit, yeah, that was pretty good. It wasn't the one you were thinking of, though. It wasn't. I think you accidentally stole mine and I incidentally stole yours. Really? See, I think Vaati video would be of the two, my preferred, because obviously it has an opinion on FromSoft games, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And we just geek out about Armacore 6. The one I was thinking of as far as like I saw this, I'm like, prepare, think of something. Matt Mercer.
00:59:52
Speaker
Ah, because I mean, he obviously has a lot of opinions on DMing story stuff, character progression, um, and just would love to talk with him about games in general, Baldur's Gate three. Um, and I think he would just be a great guest because he has so much experience, you know,
01:00:13
Speaker
presenting himself on being recorded. I was like, I think he'd be a slam dunk. He's not going to show up and be like, I don't really know how microphones were here. Like how to how to act. I think if there was a low in something, he would be like, oh, I will take the torch. Right. Because I think he just has a lot of experience with that. Yeah. Yeah, I think any of those top top DMS like D&D DMS would be
01:00:41
Speaker
Pretty entertaining to have on. Brennan, obviously, would be insane. He would overpower us, I think, with sheer cult of personality. That's true. Mercer is good. Mercer is good because I know that he can also kind of sometimes be a little bit more humble and shy and sort of in the background. So we can beat him down, right? Like, we can get our opinions in there as well. That's the most important thing we want with a guest. And my backups would be...
01:01:09
Speaker
Toby Fox, a.k.a. Toby Fox, because he's not a huge fan. Has he ever done interviews? I don't know. I doubt it. But if I could, Toby Fox. And then. Oh, no, I'm having a brain fart does all the music for
01:01:32
Speaker
Have another brain fart. Supergiant games. Derincorp. Derincorp. Yeah, yeah. Would that be good? I obviously can't talk too much technical music stuff because I don't really make music. But you just ask a cool guest. I don't know. You ask him cool Q&A questions like, why are you so good? What's it like being good? Uh-huh. Yeah. Could you make us a podcast address so I could send you love notes? Uh-huh.
01:02:01
Speaker
No, that would be pretty good. I am curious. It would be, this is purely in fantasy, but it would be nice to have like maybe a series of guests where it's just like for the game industry, here's a representative from each.
01:02:17
Speaker
part of it, right? What's it like as a game developer? What's it like as a game designer? What's it like as a music designer or something like that? That'd be really cool. I do have some contacts here and there, but this is where I learned Dave's been holding out on me. When I asked him initially, like, hey, would you ever be interested in doing something like this?
01:02:36
Speaker
I think they immediately had like NDA concerns of like things leading back to then they don't want to divulge important information or like let's say they're complaining about their job to then have that go back and reach somebody else. You got to reach out to divulge your digital. Devold your digital.
01:02:59
Speaker
Yeah, I guess that's fair. In the same way that I don't talk about work on the podcast for good reason, I could see how people who are in the industry might not want to do that as well. And that's probably why the talking heads that people hire up are the ones that are actually talking about games or the process and stuff like that.
01:03:19
Speaker
Yeah, but let this be our I don't want to say cult arms or but rallying cry maybe. If you are or if you know of somebody who works in the game industry or is tangential to it, you might have some interesting thoughts or insights or that person would please reach out and let us know.
01:03:39
Speaker
I think it would be an interesting episode. Because one, obviously we're going to be learning a lot as far as some of the insights there. And then we also get to share that with the audience because we're essentially acting as the audience. Yes. Hey, what do you do? What all is entailed in your job? Does it suck? Is certain other things better? Is it all management's fault?
01:04:07
Speaker
Yeah, we can, we have, we can get voice disorders and things like that. If you want to be anonymous, it's fine. It's fine. Um, I like that though. That is the, uh, that'll be the, that'll be the takeaway. If you want to respond to that offer, I know this is going to be an extensive vetting process. We're going to need to go through a lot of applications, but, um, if what Dave just said, uh, strikes your fancy, uh, feel free to reach out at soapstone podcast at gmail.com.
01:04:32
Speaker
or you could join the discussion on Facebook. That doesn't make any sense. If you want to be anonymous though, facebook.com slash slope stone podcast, or use a different account, sign in with your significant others at the count. That always, that always works well. And as always, we'll see you in the next one. Have a good end of year.