Episode 309: "F*** You, Dave"

This one's for you, buddy!

‘Absolute Batman’ to Become Animated Series from Warner Bros. Animation, DC Studios

An Update from PlayStation Studios

PlayStation Is Deleting 551 Movies From Customers’ Accounts, Reminding Us Nothing Digital Is Ever Truly Ours

Physical disc production ending in January 2028 for new games releasing on PlayStation consoles

Nolan North’s Deadpool completes full Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls roster

Variety: Persona live-action series in development at Netflix

Xbox set to close Dishonored and Blade studio Arkane in cuts, it’s claimed

“We’re going to regret that decision”: Dbrand cancels its Companion Cube Steam Machine case after Valve demands it

Krafton Agrees to Pay ‘Subnautica 2’ Bonuses as Developer’s CEO Resigns

Transcript

SPEAKER_10 0:20

This is The Gorge. It's a podcast where my friends and I gorge ourselves on what's happening in the world of video games and entertainment.

SPEAKER_04 0:26

The Gorge is brought to you by Patreon. That's patreon.com slash the Gorge, where for just three dollars a month, you gain access to all of our bonus content. Everything from that's hell you're walking into, a thing we haven't done in a while, but it's still quite good. Um, and early access to our TTRPG series, the reboot. Um, all of it.

SPEAKER_03 0:45

We're getting back to that soon. Yes. Finally uh am ready to start our spin-off game, which will be a blast, I'm sure.

SPEAKER_00 0:54

I'm really looking forward to it.

SPEAKER_03 0:55

And if it's not, um you're all allowed to ritually uh kill me with pitchforks or whatever.

SPEAKER_04 1:00

I would literally never do that because I think it's gonna be fun.

SPEAKER_02 1:04

Why not? Fuck. What's a planet gotta do to get killed with pitchforks for everyone? Honestly.

SPEAKER_04 1:10

That's fair. You know what, Saturn? Just for you, just this one time, pitchfork death.

SPEAKER_03 1:15

Oh, thank God.

SPEAKER_04 1:16

Yeah. Oh, that's it.

SPEAKER_03 1:17

It's been a long time coming.

SPEAKER_04 1:18

Yeah, truly.

SPEAKER_03 1:19

I know. I've been trying my best to earn it.

SPEAKER_04 1:21

Well, don't worry. This I'll I'll give you this one. It's fair. It's only fair. You're running it. So uh, anyways, patreon.com slash the gorge, get all our bonus content. Um, and if you're a member of the Discord, you get exclusive pictures of podcast mascot, uh, Peanut the Dog.

SPEAKER_03 1:38

The Loved Peanut. Who is here for this one, right?

SPEAKER_04 1:41

Yeah, oh yeah, he's laying literally right next to me right now, so there's a non-zero chance we will get some peanut action.

SPEAKER_03 1:48

I remember last time he had made a tactical retreat.

SPEAKER_04 1:51

Yes, he had uh he was staying at my mother's apartment for the night because my mom likes to babysit. But nope, tonight, uh non-zero chance of hearing peanut sounds, so please look forward to it. It's the best part of the podcast.

SPEAKER_03 2:03

Excellent. If I'm lucky, I'll get to hear it before I'm killed by pitchforks.

SPEAKER_04 2:07

Yeah, exactly. Uh it's a roundup, right? Yeah. Just like a regular old roundup.

SPEAKER_06 2:14

Yep.

SPEAKER_04 2:14

Um I guess I can finally talk about because like I mentioned it briefly in streaming, but the big thing is that I kind of crushed out all three Arkham games.

SPEAKER_10 2:29

Yeah, let's talk about Arkham Knight.

SPEAKER_04 2:35

Let's talk about Arkham Knight. Arkham, having now finished Arkham Knight, having done all three of them, Arkham City is the best one. We've talked about that already. We've kind of discussed and hashed that out. I'm more certain than ever that Arkham City is the best one. Arkham City is kind of like a perfect little video game in so many ways.

SPEAKER_10 2:55

Yeah, it does everything it intended to build off of Asylum without going too far in places and not falling apart at the end.

SPEAKER_04 3:07

And not falling apart at the end and having good boss fights. Imagine that. Arkham Knight. Arkham Knight. Oh my god. Arkham Knight is such an interesting video game because it is it is tremendously beautiful. I just really like looking at that video game. Um and there's like a lot of stuff I like in it. I actually kind of like the crazy depressing tone it has. Like, that is a like stone cold bummer of a video game, as it turns out. Um and I kind of fuck with it, actually. I don't I don't mind that it's like it kind of ends on like, I mean, I had to watch the fucking ending on YouTube because the people who made the game are psychopaths. Um but like it ends on kind of a downer note, and you're like, oh shit. Uh, but I kind of like it, because like the whole game is building toward that. And if Rocksteady were even half as smart as they were when they made Arkham City, um they would have been able to ride that high, right? Because like the big problem with Arkham Knight, okay, there's actually a lot of problems with Arkham Knight. It's a weird video game that I like a lot, but also um But the weird problem with Arkham Knight is like a structural thing, right? Like it's a it's all it's all structure problems, and the biggest one of them all is that Arkham Knight actually has a really great finale with the whole like crazy first-person shooter sequence in Batman's mind where you're playing as a Joker. It actually kind of whips because it's so different. Um and is like intentionally kind of calling back to like because again, this is a this is a post, this is a this is an eighth gen game I came out on PlayStation 4, right? So it's doing a lot of aesthetic callbacks to seventh gen shooters that are intentional, right? Like there's a certain degree of kind of like because you're playing as a joker, so there's a sort of goofy intentionality toward like being like, oh, this looks and feels like years of war, right? Um, and I like that a lot. And it actually genuinely like I got jump scared by fucking Batman himself at one point, which was great. Um so it's like, oh, that suit does work. Okay, dressing up like a bat actually would terrify criminals. I get it now. Um and all of that.

SPEAKER_10 5:38

It turns out you're the superstitious and cowardly line.

SPEAKER_04 5:41

That's right, exactly.

SPEAKER_03 5:42

Um Batman kind of has a thing where it's like it's like the Darth Vader costume, but with devil horns. Yeah. You never want to run into that in a dark alley.

SPEAKER_04 5:50

No, absolutely. That's the thing, is you you see it and you're like, that wouldn't scare anybody. And then like he's like 6'2, like 270 pounds, and like a fucking bat costume looping over you in the dark. No, that would scare you.

SPEAKER_03 6:05

Um if like a six if a six plus foot guy with like full like football player muscles and a black outfit just showed up when I wasn't expecting to, I'd at least go, ah, yeah, silent is the grave, too.

SPEAKER_04 6:19

One minute he's not there and the next minute he is, that would scare you. Um, so it rocks actually, it worked really well. And all that shit's really good, right? Like all of the the build-up and and kind of you know scaring you, all that stuff is great. And it ends in a very cathartic way with like a you know, like reveal of like a secret identity and stuff right there like that on national TV. Um and if the game had continued that momentum from C like identity reveal right into the actual final ending, the true actual ending of Arkham Knight, no interruptions, no fucking horseshit, right? Then I think that game would raise probably an entire letter grade, in my estimation. Um, even with all of its like flaws, I would still think it like ends on such a high note, well not high note, because it's stone cold bummer, but it ends on such a like like cathartic note, right? That it would carry it despite like the the multiple issues I have with it. But they did the absolutely deranged fucking thing of saying no, if you want the true ending of this video game, you have to 100% it and not just like go out and catch all the different bad guys, right? Like no, catching all the different bad guys involves collecting 234 fucking Riddler trophies. Right, which stops the momentum dead, like completely stops it dead in its tracks, right?

SPEAKER_10 7:59

Um so you don't even get anything worthwhile out of it.

SPEAKER_04 8:03

You really don't.

SPEAKER_10 8:04

You get an epilogue, which I think doesn't make things worse, but it makes things stupider.

SPEAKER_04 8:12

That part I don't care about. That part I actually thought it was good. I mean, I don't like the fact that they had Barbara and Tim hook up. That's fucking derange. But like everything else is perfectly fine. I actually don't mind the apotheosis of Bruce Wayne into like an like a fucking evil hunting monster that lives in the shadows of Gotham. That's kind of fun and cool.

SPEAKER_03 8:38

That honestly, like, and my my experience is only secondhand. That sounds like a comic book law line.

SPEAKER_04 8:43

Yeah, like I actually think that part is perfectly fine. Um, it's the fact that it should have j that should just be the ending of the game. Like that should just you should just get that and then bam, cut to credits, right?

SPEAKER_03 8:56

Yeah, like the the Riddler trophies presumably don't have any like ludo narrative resonance with that, do they?

SPEAKER_10 9:02

No, it's it's just how you defeat Riddler. Like every villain in the game has a side quest that you have to accomplish in order to finally capture them for good.

SPEAKER_01 9:12

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_10 9:13

And it most of them are just like you do some missions, like go to this area and track this person down and beat them up and take them down. For Riddler, it's you have to get all the Riddler trophies.

SPEAKER_04 9:25

Yeah, in order to do the Riddler boss fight, right? Because that's that's how you take you, that's how you bring him in. Like, because the whole the the the way Arkham Knight exists now, like the trapping is that before Batman retires, you know, forever or becomes whatever the fuck he is at the end of that game, um he's trying to like tie off any loose ends, and that means catching every single of the major criminals, you know, all of the the rogues gallery, catch all of them, put them in jail, and then you can actually like call it a knight, right? Um, and that's and and if it wasn't so contrived, if it wasn't like you have to do every single fucking Riddler trophy, I think even still it wouldn't be as bad. Because at least then it's like, okay, well that means you've just gotta do a little cleanup. You've gotta go do some, like, you've gotta go track down Firefly, you've gotta hunt down um the um like Riddler, you've gotta do all the like the little things with Catwoman, stuff like that. They clean all up all your loose ends. But the fact is that they want you to do literally every single Riddler trophy in order to get and I would like to point out that the final cutscene that you unlock from doing all that shit is only five minutes long.

SPEAKER_08 10:41

Right.

SPEAKER_04 10:41

So you liter I know, right?

SPEAKER_03 10:44

What what if they had made it like you get 50 or 60% of them and you have to do the boss fight, and if you got all 100, he would just turn himself in Will and I think that would be hilarious, honestly. He's like, I don't know, man, I got nothing left. I'm I'm I'm done. You put me away. I need time to think of more.

SPEAKER_04 11:04

Yeah, I uh my genuine thought is that because like this this all hinges on the idea of you know, he know like Batman knows that at the end of all of this, he's gotta stop being what he is because having like partners and all this stuff is getting them like hurt or killed or traumatized, right? And it's kind of a bummer, it is like a stone bummer ending, and I like it, honestly. Um I so like he he like realizes that so he's trying to do, he's trying to tie off everything. Um so frankly, it should have just been one cut out having to do all of the Red Lord trophies. It's fucking stupid. Two, before you go do all the final stuff, like go talk to Scarecrow, the game should just tell you no, you actually have to do all the side quests. I'm sorry. Like they should just be like, no, you you can't do it until you've caught Two Face and the Penguin and uh Firefly, like on all them motherfuckers, right? They just say, like, no, sorry, you can't do endgame until you square this circle. And it's like, okay, that's fine. I mean, it would still kind of stop things dead, but at least you're not robbing your ending of all of its kind of like narrative momentum, right?

SPEAKER_08 12:25

Right.

SPEAKER_04 12:25

Which is the biggest my biggest problem with Arkham Knight. It's a it's a structural problem. Yeah. Um because I actually don't mind the writing of Arkham Knight. I mean, it's it's a little undercooked.

SPEAKER_00 12:37

Um, but it's what they do with Jason Todd is better than what they do in Under the Red Hood, so it's fine.

SPEAKER_10 12:46

Okay, so the thing the thing is, Sarah, no one on the planet knows what to do with Jason Todd. It's an impossible riddle that no one can solve.

SPEAKER_03 12:53

Because you're like, what if my understanding is it's what if you had Batman but he shoots guys? You know, the thing that Batman doesn't do that makes him really interesting. Correct.

SPEAKER_10 13:02

And the the answer to that is nothing, because I think we've talked about it before, but like, okay, you can't have you can't have one of Bruce's like notable sidekicks kill people. Because if he kills people, Bruce won't associate with him.

SPEAKER_04 13:18

Right, because like he would not, he would just simply not condone. It simply would not happen.

SPEAKER_10 13:23

Yeah, right. And if he has nothing to do with it with Jason, then there's no point. Jason is just another vigilante floating around the DC universe. Right.

SPEAKER_03 13:36

Honestly, Red Hood seems like conceptually he'd be more interesting if he was also one of Batman's Rogues Gallery instead of a Ross Girls. Yeah, you could do that.

SPEAKER_04 13:44

But in a lot of people nobody wants to do that because every because DC is kind of married to this frankly obnoxious idea of the Bat family these days. Don't get me started. Um they're very kind of married to this idea that everybody gets along. It's fucking lame. Um, I think you Yeah, it sounds like it. Yeah, it is.

SPEAKER_03 14:03

I think I think most good stories are about how people just don't get along, actually. You never want people to get along.

SPEAKER_04 14:09

Yeah, that's the actual tension there. Which like in a perfect world, Jason Todd would be another Cowwoman, right? Which is because Catwoman is a thief who steals but doesn't kill. Jason Todd should be a guy who doesn't steal but does kill, right?

SPEAKER_03 14:25

Like then you can tell interesting stories about how it's like, oh, everybody loves this new, this new alternative Batman who's way harder on crime.

SPEAKER_05 14:33

Right.

SPEAKER_03 14:33

And like they have to like have fisticuffs about it. That would be.

SPEAKER_10 14:38

Like, honestly, if you don't want to do the thing where it's like you don't want to have Batman fight one of his former Robins, well then have it so that Bruce completely disowns Jason, right? Like he's just not gonna deal with that. Make him Dick's rival.

SPEAKER_04 14:54

Yeah, send him to Bloodhaven. I think that would be a good one.

SPEAKER_10 14:56

Well, yeah, send send Red Hood to Bloodhaven, and now Night now he's Nightwing's problem.

SPEAKER_04 15:01

Because then you're lit you're also doing a red Oni Blue Oni thing. Yeah. Which is Nightwing, which everybody loves, and it's always cool.

SPEAKER_03 15:08

And then also they can have like Toxic Yowie.

SPEAKER_04 15:11

Correct! Thank you, Christ! Yeah, God almighty.

SPEAKER_03 15:15

You can't do that with with Bruce and Jason because you can't do that with Bruce and any of his robins because that's like extremely weird, but you can definitely have that with two robins that have uh differing feelings about being replacements of each other.

SPEAKER_04 15:27

Yeah, I think that sounds great. Actually, that sounds six fuck, actually.

SPEAKER_03 15:31

You know DC. DC I'm just I'm just saying, like, I'm I'm available. I ain't doing nothing right now. I'm work I'm working on horse game, it's going real slow, and also I'm not making any money off that. So like if you wanna if you wanna pay me a couple bucks to write you some like Batman story about like Nightwing and and and fucking Red Hood having like adopted sibling Toxic Yowie, uh, I'll do that for you.

SPEAKER_00 15:56

Yeah, no, I would eat that shit up.

SPEAKER_03 15:58

Yeah, like buy me a sandwich or something. I'm good, I don't need that much.

SPEAKER_00 16:01

$40 in a sandwich like Ron Pearlman.

SPEAKER_03 16:04

Exactly. If it's good enough for Ron Pearlman, it's good enough for me.

SPEAKER_00 16:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_10 16:06

Look, it has never, ever, ever worked out to have any of Bruce's sidekicks date above their weight class.

SPEAKER_05 16:16

Right.

SPEAKER_10 16:17

Because not only does Bruce and uh Barbara fucking suck, but there was also that brief moment where they tried to do Nightwing and Catwoman.

SPEAKER_03 16:26

I think I I don't think that one works, Chief.

SPEAKER_04 16:34

No, I think now in a perfect world, I think Dick Grayson could, but he shouldn't. I think Dick Grayson is so high that I think he could pull a woman that much older than.

SPEAKER_03 16:43

The thing is, I feel like it's crucial for Catwoman that there is some component of like Catwoman and Batman being kind of both that they take a bit of an L in so doing. There's a there's some mutual L-ness going on. I think if you let Selena Kyle pull like some young, some like Hottie who's younger than her and is also like way more easy to push around, that's giving her too much of an unambiguous W. It'll go straight to her head.

SPEAKER_10 17:12

She'll start doing like worse crimes. The point the point the the thing about Bruce and Selena is that they fumble each other constantly. Yeah. And you can't give them the victory.

SPEAKER_05 17:23

Right. No, exactly.

SPEAKER_10 17:24

That's you can't actually you can't actually have either of them move on from each other. They just have to keep falling down the same flight of stairs over and over and over again.

SPEAKER_03 17:35

Selena Selena is Selena and Bruce's head gem in as far as the ideal permutation of that relationship is one where they never actually figure out how to date each other and they sort of awkwardly orbit around each other for their entire career.

SPEAKER_10 17:49

Yeah, like like a cat and a bat would.

SPEAKER_01 17:52

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_10 17:53

I don't know any cats and bats who are friends. No, I mean it doesn't it doesn't work, but if you had a bat in your attic and you have a you live with a cat. They're gonna fucking go at each other whenever they have the opportunity.

SPEAKER_05 18:04

Correct.

SPEAKER_03 18:05

Or the bat's gonna flap around and in and in modern times your cat's just gonna look at it and going, I don't know what the fuck that is. I don't care. It's gonna start licking its hole. Oh, bats flapping around in your attic, and then you've got two pests.

SPEAKER_00 18:19

That's that's really Gotham's problem, is it's just have two pests. Yeah.

SPEAKER_10 18:24

Yeah. Um fucking guess what? You hear some rumbling on your rooftop, you go up to the roof of your apartment, fucking Batman and Catwoman are fucking going at it on your roof again. You have to chase him with the broom.

SPEAKER_00 18:36

Shoo him off with the broom.

SPEAKER_03 18:38

Yo, Christ, can't you just get a room? And he's like, no, I wouldn't, I would never. She's a criminal. Like, no, I'd never. He's a stick in the mud.

SPEAKER_06 18:45

Exactly. It's perfect.

SPEAKER_03 18:47

I hate him, I hate him. Well, you're literally pawing at him right now. I can't help but notice that you're grabbing his boobs like early and what's going on with that.

SPEAKER_05 18:55

So weird.

SPEAKER_03 18:57

I just need, I just need, I just need leverage, okay? I just need leverage.

SPEAKER_00 19:01

How many wedding dresses have you bought, Selena? I don't want to talk about it.

SPEAKER_03 19:04

Well, none. She's stolen them all. Yeah, oh yeah, there you go. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:08

Good point, good point. Fair, fair, fair.

SPEAKER_04 19:11

Uh, but no, no. I think I think Arkham Knight handles what's going on with Jason more interestingly than Under the Red Hood did. Yes. Like, as a as a pseudo-adaptation of Under the Hood, right?

SPEAKER_10 19:25

Like, I do think they handle him better in this game than they do in a lot of other things, which again, not very hard to do.

SPEAKER_04 19:38

Not hard to do. And because, like, it hinges mostly on the fact that we don't, like, okay, well, we, the player, know exactly who the fuck this is. The biggest problem is that Arkham Knight as a game, like, takes way too long to tell you it's Jason Todd. And if you have even the slightest knowledge of like Batman, if you're like a like a hundred percent normie, you don't even know that Robin has a real name, right? Like, just like it's just a Robin, there's only the one, right? But like, if your knowledge of Batman is even a step above that, then in the first 15 minutes of Arkham Knight, you're like, oh, that's Jason Todd.

SPEAKER_03 20:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 20:17

Right?

SPEAKER_03 20:17

I I think the thing is, like, even though this is an eighth gen game, they're still holding on to the seventh gen principles that made them put Vega in Mass Effect 3. Yeah. Right. Where it's like, I don't know, the average guy like eats lead paint uh like for breakfast every morning and doesn't know about our lore. So we need to we need to like uh throw throw we need we need to throw like cookies out for the people who aren't engaged at all but do want to buy the new shit, which was like in retrospect, maybe like 200 people ever. Yeah.

SPEAKER_10 20:51

Look, everyone, a lot of people like most people think that there is just one guy named Robin and that he's Burt Ward and he doesn't wear pants. Yeah. Right? Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_03 21:01

That's what he sell and he sells dog food that has uh lies about his 30-year-old dog on it.

SPEAKER_10 21:07

Yeah, that's that's what your grandma thinks Batman is, right? Comic book fans know that there's been multiple Robins and the Joker killed one with a crowbat with a crowbar.

SPEAKER_05 21:19

Right.

SPEAKER_10 21:20

Real Batman fans know that he didn't kill him with a crowbar, he knocked him unconscious with a crowbar and blew him up, and then became an ambassador to Iran to get away with it.

SPEAKER_01 21:31

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 21:32

Now, okay, I do live I I do live in the Trump administration the Joker becoming the ambassador to Iran is not inconceivable.

SPEAKER_00 21:41

That's funny.

SPEAKER_03 21:42

That uh Death and Family literally happens.

SPEAKER_00 21:46

That's what literally happens in Death and Family.

SPEAKER_03 21:49

We we have the opposite problem though nowadays with game dev, where if you made an Arkham game today, they would commit like a solid fifty million dollars of development budget to the can't to the Calendar man bit from Arkham City, and then just play it completely straight and not explain it at all, and it only matters to people who give a fuck about Calendar Man.

SPEAKER_01 22:09

Right.

SPEAKER_03 22:10

And then everyone would be like, all of the DC heads would be like, oh fuck, it's Calendar Man. This is so sick for extended continuity reasons. Everyone else would be like, who the fuck is this loser?

SPEAKER_04 22:19

Fuck his calendar man. No.

SPEAKER_03 22:21

Everyone else would just call him the Riddler.

SPEAKER_04 22:23

That's correct, actually. No, fucking Arkham Knight just loves to be like, we have no idea who this guy is. And I mean, they do it literally until the end of the game almost.

SPEAKER_10 22:34

It's it's so funny.

SPEAKER_04 22:36

It's so it's so funny.

SPEAKER_10 22:39

Like the minute, like, okay, so like I I when I when the game was like in production and coming out, and I was like, like, who's the Arkham Knight? It's not gonna be someone you know, it's not gonna be someone you know. I'm like, all right, all right, Roxetti, I'm gonna believe you. I'm gonna believe you that it's gonna be a new character, right?

SPEAKER_04 22:52

It's so funny. Were they really were they really like trying to sell this?

SPEAKER_03 22:55

They were like, it's a brand new character, you've never seen this before. And then I I'm willing to bet 100% the thing is like the writer is like, oh, it'll be cool to have the Arkham Knight be Red Hood or or like you know the the Robin Who sucks. Uh and then marketing was like, we can't lead with that though. We have to like pretend it's something new or interesting, or we'll say, or we'll people will catch the red hood hints in the marketing, and then they'll just assume the game is for old heads.

SPEAKER_10 23:22

Yeah. And then like within five minutes of the Arkham Knight first appearing, he calls Bruce Old Man, and I went, Oh, it's Jason.

SPEAKER_00 23:29

Yeah, it's Jason Todd.

SPEAKER_10 23:30

And so it's it's just Jason. It's just Jason Todd.

SPEAKER_04 23:32

Oh, it's Jason Todd, oh, it's Jason Todd. That's it. Okay. Jason. Jason. Uh, but no, I uh it it should have they should have just revealed it but more, but you I know why they didn't reveal it more. It's because as soon as they reveal it, they don't know what to do with that character anymore, and he literally stopped being in the video game. It's actually really funny. Uh Stone Cold, what happens is you do a pretty dope little like I wouldn't say sniper duel, but like you are trying to avoid being shot with a sniper rifle while also doing like stealth challenges, which was pretty sweet. It's the closest thing this video game has to like a real melee boss fight. It's not, but you know, um, that otherwise this game doesn't have boss fights, so you take what you can get. It's a neat concept. Um and so you do this boss fight, you literally have the confrontation where you learn that Arkham Knight is Jason Todd, and it's a pretty good cutscene because, like, unlike in say, I don't know, under the Red Hood, um, Batman doesn't want to hit his traumatized kid. Imagine that. Um wow, I know. Like crazy. The Arkham Games, Batman is kind of a like kind of an asshole, but he's also always having a bad night in those games, so you kind of understand it. Um so like, but he still doesn't want to like hit Jason, even after like Jason has done some pretty despicable things to him all game. He's still like, no, I want to help you. And it's like, oh, okay. Um, and that was nice. I liked all I liked all that stuff, and they do the reveal, and then um literally after that, Jason just like manages to escape, and swear to god, hand god just stops being in the video game.

SPEAKER_10 25:29

Yeah. Like he vanishes until the very end where he's like, I'm cool now.

SPEAKER_04 25:35

I'm cool now, I'm gonna help Bruce not get killed, right? And it's like it's one little horseshit sequence in a cutscene where he shoots something, and that's that's literally it.

SPEAKER_10 25:47

And and he's seen wearing a modified version of his armor that's the coolest it's ever looked, and then he just doesn't wear it ever again. Yeah, and then because he's only in that one scene, and then you don't even get that in the DLC, he doesn't wear that.

SPEAKER_03 26:00

No, you don't get Does he wear it in that that that dead life service game? No, no, because it's a different continuity.

SPEAKER_01 26:09

Yeah, sorry.

SPEAKER_03 26:09

What the fuck is the point of any of it?

SPEAKER_01 26:13

I don't know. Fuck. I mean I know they didn't they didn't develop that one, right?

SPEAKER_03 26:16

They were too busy, they were too busy making fucking. No, that's a different company made up. Yeah, they're too sure. Yeah, they're they're too busy making suicide. God, what a what a duke catastrophe.

SPEAKER_04 26:25

I know. It's uh it's really tragic to play, even like with all my my quibbles about Arkham Knight. You play those three games and they're all really good, right? And you're just like, oh, and then they immediately got fucked by corporate mandates to make them make a terrible like live service game.

SPEAKER_03 26:47

How do you how is it that you take Batman away from the studio that made a bunch of Batman games that people really liked? Give actual Batman to some other fucking losers, and then make the people who were making the good Batman games make some shit that nobody thought was cool.

SPEAKER_04 27:04

Yeah, it was like dirt like garbage from day one. It was just a death, like a Batman.

SPEAKER_03 27:09

What if Captain Boomerang or whatever his fucking name is had an assault rifle?

SPEAKER_04 27:13

Fuck me.

SPEAKER_03 27:14

You know, his sign Captain Boomerang's signature assault rifle.

SPEAKER_04 27:18

Yeah, for sure. Um yeah, no, so it it's it's all very tragic. They there's just a lot. That's a weird game. It's a weird game. There's no boss fights, there's way too many all of the boss fights are tank sequences in the Batmobile, because the Batmobile is again the you know, fucking the the Nolan movies that just happened. So the Batmobile is more of a tank than like a car, right? Um and they're all they're all just awful. Every boss fight is a is a car thing, and they're they're all terrible.

SPEAKER_10 27:57

The fucking the fucking Riddler thing is he builds racetracks now.

SPEAKER_04 28:03

Yeah, you're doing car, you're just doing car shit with the Riddler.

SPEAKER_10 28:07

What the fuck are they doing? Just get a different guy. Arkham Arkham City had saw traps that Batman had to navigate through, and it was actually really fun. Yeah. Like it was Batman and they like you had to like navigate through like a fucking obstacle course and it kicked ass.

SPEAKER_04 28:25

Yeah. And now they're like, no, we're doing that, but with we're doing a car instead. Yeah. And it's just, and I don't dislike the Batmobile. It's actually really fun to drive. We should get the hang of it. Yeah. Um, but like, there's way too much car shit that they're like, no, we made this Batmobile, we're gonna use it, and it's awful. It's it's all just terrible. There was literally a there was literally, hold on. There was literally a boss fight that is so bad. It's the it's the uh the drill, the the the drilling boss fight, or boss fight, finger quotes, where you're having to like run that that fucking tunnel driller through the difference. It was so bad, it was almost a hard stop for me. Like I this close to just be like, well, I guess I'm watching the rest of this game on YouTube. Um like that's how bad it was. Uh and it was only because Oates is more patient than me that she was willing to do it for me because I was like, I'm gonna give up. I'm done. I'm not doing this shit. Um and uh fortunately Oates was was very patient. But even still, it took Oates like 10 tries as well because it fucking sucks, okay?

SPEAKER_10 29:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 29:31

Um yeah, no. Sorry, what were you gonna say?

SPEAKER_10 29:34

I gotta know. I gotta know what you think of uh the uh the Batmobile uh taser to prevent you from running people over with the car.

SPEAKER_04 29:45

It's really funny. I love it. So dumb, I love it. So stupid. I love it.

SPEAKER_10 29:50

You have so Saturn, Batman doesn't kill people, right? Oh yeah, sure. Definitely not.

SPEAKER_03 29:56

I definitely haven't seen him like launching people off the side of buildings in Arkham City or anything like that.

SPEAKER_00 30:02

You should see some of the environmental takedowns in this game. You're just like, yeah, Batman doesn't kill anybody. Okay, Cosmic Kiryu.

SPEAKER_10 30:08

So, how do you get around Batman, you know, having a Batmobile that you can take anywhere all over the city uh without killing people? And the answer is that the Batmobile has an electric taser force field around it. Yeah, when you drive close to a group of thugs, they just bounce off of it and go flying, which definitely doesn't break any of their necks. Yeah, no, I I I I don't I don't think I'm gonna be real.

SPEAKER_03 30:37

I I like physics still exists. I think if you drive into a guy at 80 miles an hour and the electric force field hits him before your car does, uh he's still having every single bone in his body turned to dust at the same time.

SPEAKER_10 30:53

Yeah. Yeah.

unknown 30:55

It's so funny.

SPEAKER_10 30:56

And then don't forget that like you have you have the the you know the mounted turrets on the Batmobile for the tank sections, which uh shoot bean non-lethal bean bags. Okay.

SPEAKER_03 31:06

Yeah, that that guy, that that guy uh I mean I know I mentioned last episode about my distaste of the Batmobile in general, but Batman famously looking for like you know uh workarounds to the whole gun thing and still just using guns.

SPEAKER_04 31:23

So it's so funny.

SPEAKER_03 31:24

It's funny. I think my quick fix would literally just be no, the Batmobile is a tank is wrong. It should just be a motorcycle. Yeah, if he had the Batcycle driving around.

SPEAKER_04 31:34

It should have just been a motorcycle, but then you can't have your terrible fucking tank sequences in this video.

SPEAKER_00 31:39

And I mean I mean that maybe you're suggesting a version of Arkham Knight that's like way better, and I respect that.

SPEAKER_03 31:46

I'm suggesting something controversial. Maybe Batman doesn't need a tank sequence because he's Batman. It sounds kind of like maybe they wanted to make an Ironman video game, but they were started making this in Sens Gen, and nobody knew how to do that yet without texture streaming being a problem.

SPEAKER_00 32:12

Oh, it's so bad.

SPEAKER_03 32:13

It's so I love it.

SPEAKER_10 32:15

It's hilarious.

SPEAKER_03 32:16

My little dog is mad that I've raised my voice in Angaro.

SPEAKER_10 32:20

I wanna I wanna say one more thing about the ending, Satter, and I want to see if you can agree with me on this. Because I'm gonna scroll the end the the true ending of Arkham Knight for the case. Well, I don't give a fuck.

SPEAKER_00 32:30

Oh, yeah, no.

SPEAKER_10 32:31

Okay, so the game ends with uh Scarecrow pulling off Bruce's mask, like, in a public like broadcast. Sure.

SPEAKER_03 32:39

Everyone knows the Batman is Bruce Wayne. The great fear of all of all Cape Crusaders. Yeah.

SPEAKER_10 32:44

He's like, ah, you're it's Bruce Wayne. It was Bruce Wayne the whole time, so that's why it's like this is Bruce's last night. Like he has one more shot to go clean up everything before he has to retire. And at the end of the game, you capture all the bad guys, or however many bad guys you want to capture, you go to uh you go to the manor, and there's like cam- there's news broadcasters and cameras everywhere trying to get pictures of you as you pull up your Batmobile through the gate. You go inside the mansion, and then you initiate the nightfall protocol, and the mansion explodes. Okay. That's the like that's the thing, is like no more Batman. Bruce can't be Batman anymore, right?

SPEAKER_03 33:25

Like So you also commit you also commit suicide as Bruce Wayne in this. Well, so presumably.

SPEAKER_10 33:31

So that's how the normal ending goes. And then the the once you capture all the bad guys, the epilogue kicks in where it's like, well, it's Tim and Barb's Barbara's wedding. Uh and like you know, they're talking about how like things have the Gotham is finally cleaned up and the legacy of Bruce is over and we're all moving on.

SPEAKER_03 33:51

I don't believe that.

SPEAKER_10 33:52

A bunch of thugs are like in crime in Crime Alley, like they're robbing, they're mugging someone, and then up on the rooftop, you see a figure surrounded by like smoke and like bats, and they're like, whatever, man, we know Batman's dead, and then the cape opens up, and it's like this demonic bat figure pounces on the criminals. Okay. So if you were a citizen in Gotham, and you saw Bruce Wayne drive up to his mansion, and the mansion explodes in a way that doesn't leave behind a body. Aww. And then like six months later, a new Batman emerges. That's Bruce Wayne. Yeah, your first thought is, oh, Bruce Wayne didn't kill himself. Well, no.

SPEAKER_03 34:41

Yeah, no, obviously he didn't kill himself. What what billionaire would ever do that? But not it not even Weinstein killed himself.

SPEAKER_04 34:48

No, but what I'm saying is that that doesn't matter. Because like, I like that I actually don't hate that ending. Because, like, yeah, so Bruce Wayne kills himself on national TV, basically, and what replaces him is like a literal fucking Bat monster.

SPEAKER_03 35:07

Like Yeah, the Batman Devil.

SPEAKER_04 35:10

Yeah, the Batman Devil Batman Devil like replaces it's like, okay, sure, that might be Bruce Wayne. It might be Bruce Wayne crawled back from fucking hell, right?

SPEAKER_03 35:22

Because like not impossible. Yeah, but it's my suggestion for Batman Devil specifically is because okay, I'm going to explain I'm going to explain something from Chainsaw Man real quick.

SPEAKER_02 35:35

That's really important.

SPEAKER_03 35:37

The reason why Batman Devil could be a thing is because any devil in Chainsaw Man scales in power proportionally to the amount of fear that the collective unconscious has of that thing.

unknown 35:48

Right.

SPEAKER_03 35:49

And so Batman Devil would just be the collected fears that Gotham City's criminals have of Batman, the guy who's gonna drop from the darkness and punch their heads in.

SPEAKER_05 36:00

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_03 36:01

Like And also has precedent in Chainsaw Man when there is at one point a Chainsaw Man Devil.

SPEAKER_04 36:07

Oh, wait, that rocks. Okay. Yeah, exactly. That's why I'm saying that. Yeah, that rocks. That's actually pretty cool. Like, I I don't mind it. I don't think it's dumb. I don't actually think I don't think it doesn't work. I think it actually. I mean, because like it's kind of weird because it's a bit more uh, what's the word, metaphysical than like what the rest of this like Arkham series has been operating on. But I also just got done reading a shit ton of Grant Morris and Batman. That might make a difference. Yeah. I've made peace with that maybe there's something fucking weird going on in Gotham. And if Bruce Wayne kills himself in a fiery explosion, then yeah, maybe the Batman devil just crawl back out of hell instead to take his pants.

SPEAKER_03 36:47

I'm also gonna be real. Like, when I say like I I agree when Ben describes this ending and you go, so it's Bruce Wayne, right? I go, yeah, that's probably at least in some capacity, Bruce Wayne. I don't have any negative opinions about that ending. I think it's I think it's great when someone's like, Finally I have to put this away, and and you know, all I can do with that is to also like commit suicide in a really uh extreme way. And but the fact that they can't stop being it like brings them back as a devil from hell. I think that rules.

SPEAKER_10 37:17

Yeah, no, that rocks. I don't okay, I don't think the ending is bad. I think it's stupid, and there's a difference.

SPEAKER_03 37:27

I I I uh like maybe in the context of like the material of the other Arkham games vis-a-vis, like to the degree they normally engage with, like, kind of poetic shit. Yeah, like the like I was saying earlier about whatever other thing it was you described that that I can't even remember now because I've I've pre-gamed a little bit too much drinking-wise. Um the idea of Batman committing suicide and then coming back as a sort of Batman devil uh does also just sound like a comic book storyline to me, so I can't hate it. Like there would be a run where Batman dies and comes back as the Batman devil.

SPEAKER_10 38:09

Yeah, that was uh um more or less what happened during uh the um the Bane incident.

SPEAKER_04 38:18

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_10 38:20

So it's it's just true to form. Yeah, like I don't I forgot Azreel's in the Arkham games.

SPEAKER_04 38:25

Yeah, Azreel is in the Arkham games. It's a different Azreel though. So it's not the same guy. Um but no, like I don't I don't even think it's stupid. I actually kind of love it, mostly because like again, these games have been like stone cold bummers, right? Like especially, especially Arkham Knight, which is just like it's just it's depressing. It is kind of a depressing game. One of like my favorite. I don't watch it on YouTube because again, I'm not fucking doing all of those Riddler trophies, Rock Studdy. Um but like his last conversation with Selena is really good. And by good, and by good I mean extremely sad because he's just like, no, this actually is. She's like, I'll see you again though, right? And he's like, no, you won't. And she's like, no.

SPEAKER_11 39:13

No, you'll you won't see me again until I become some sort of like extremely sexy evil demon. And she's like, keep talking, keep talking.

SPEAKER_03 39:21

I'll tell I'll tell you, I'll tell you when you say something disqualify.

SPEAKER_04 39:24

It sounds kind of sounds kind of hot.

SPEAKER_03 39:26

Um would the would this evil demon be like more cool stealing things? I don't know. Maybe demons are kind of like that. Okay, great. Oh, he's eight feet tall now.

SPEAKER_04 39:34

Oh, with the whole okay. Uh but yeah, no, that's like I don't know.

SPEAKER_03 39:38

It just And he's animated by all sorts of supernatural animal appetites. Alright, yeah, yeah, yeah. That works.

SPEAKER_00 39:45

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That sounds great, actually. Sounds good.

SPEAKER_03 39:47

Well, I'll see you soon, Bruce, or whatever your name will be when you're an evil demon.

SPEAKER_01 39:52

Yeah, no, it rocks.

SPEAKER_10 39:53

There is there is a great bit. So, like, if you if you do like because it's all it's the the cool thing is that like what I think is really neat is that like you have to do all your cleanup after the scarecrow reveals your identity. Like the game doesn't kick you back to before that moment.

SPEAKER_05 40:08

Right.

SPEAKER_10 40:09

And like you do the cleanup, like it's no, it the consequences have happened, right?

SPEAKER_05 40:13

Right.

SPEAKER_10 40:13

If you do like uh like fight a bunch of generic thugs, they will very quickly realize that it doesn't matter if they know that it's Bruce Wayne.

SPEAKER_04 40:21

Yeah, no.

SPEAKER_09 40:23

Like they have a lot of incidental dialogue where, like, oh, here comes Bruce Wayne in his high-tech batsuit and his grappling gun and oh no. Oh right.

SPEAKER_04 40:34

One of my favorite, like, after I after I did like the the reveal, and again, I still think they should just it should just you shouldn't have to do all this horse shit. Right. But I appreciate I appreciate the effort afterwards to change pretty much every line of dialogue in the game now that everybody knows this Bruce Wayne, right? Like that's cool. Um I don't think it was implemented correctly, but I think it's cool, so it's fine.

SPEAKER_03 40:56

That's a that's a red dead redemption shit.

SPEAKER_04 40:58

Yeah, exactly. It's very like it wasn't implemented right, but it's cool to like have like everybody knows, and so like all of the rogues have like because like you know, famously in Batman game, in like these Arkham games, when you die, you get a death screen that's whoever you've been fighting taunting you, right? Um and all of those death screens change now that everybody knows your birthway, right? That's a ton of work for like a stuff that a lot of people might not see, right? Yeah, because like if you if you do the thing where you clear all of the side quests before you do the end game of Arkham Knight, you will literally never see any of that content, right? Um so like that's respectable in a way. I mean it's kind of misguided still, but that's cool. Um I like it, you know, one of my favorite lines ever, because I love the goon. I love all the goon chatter in Arkham Knight and in Arkham City. It's my favorite part. Um at one point when I was just kind of tooling around after after Endgame, um, you pick up one of the radio signals, it's like, Batman is Bruce Wayne. Man, I gotta get a real job.

SPEAKER_11 42:15

God, it's really good.

SPEAKER_00 42:17

I was just like, yeah, man, you should just get a real job. Uh, it rocks. So, you know.

SPEAKER_03 42:23

I feel like Red Dead Redemption is still the most like, why did you spend all the effort doing this of all these? But I do think we need to have that happen in video games again because it's so much work, but it's also so cool.

SPEAKER_06 42:39

It's so cool.

SPEAKER_03 42:40

Ben, are Ben, are you familiar with what I'm talking about? Yeah, I know what the ending is of Red Dead Redemption is like. Yeah. Okay, yeah. Uh, for the audience at home, I guess, if you never played Red Dead Redemption, uh, the first one. Oh, the thing with that is that, like, you know, it's a it's a Grand Theft Auto game, and you play as John Marsden at the end of the game, uh, he gets gunned down, super extreme style, uh, and there's nothing you can do about it, and the uh big stinger at the end of the thing is that uh there's a time skip, and you play as his adult son, uh, who has been a character in the game, as he goes to exact his revenge upon the man who had his father killed. Um, but then the post-game is that you just play as the grown-up version of his son, and not only do all the side quests have different dialogue as you play with as if you play as him, but also they have different dialogue for picking it up where you left off, depending on what stage of the quest you left off on as well. That's so cool. And it's just so insane that anyone would spend the effort doing that, but I do think that more games need to have the No, we're not going to Like Like Tears of the Kingdom should have that.

unknown 43:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 43:44

Tears of the Kingdom should have, okay, well, I I we beat Ganon and like Zelda's around now or whatever, but I I haven't done the side quest yet. And now it has different dialogue because like everything's fine.

SPEAKER_10 43:54

It's why like I have a I I actually do have a kind of a huge pet peeve of When games are like, now do all of the post-game. We're gonna kick you back to before the final boss.

SPEAKER_04 44:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_10 44:06

That's not post-game.

SPEAKER_04 44:08

It I have I'm kind of like of two minds about it because if you can't have a good punchy ending if you do that, right? Like the finality is the point. That's why I think it's why I think the ending of Arkham Knight is weak, is because you don't really get to enjoy that finality without doing like way too much fucking legwork. Because if it had just been like if the game had just been, you know, you reveal that you're Bruce Wayne, and he's like, okay, well, we have to do the nightfall protocol now, which ends in me, you know, fucking dying and becoming the the Batman devil, right? Um, that would be like that's a huge oh shit moment that you're being robbed of, right? Like being able to do the main quest and then keep playing afterwards is not always like the answer. Right. Um you wouldn't get Fallout New Vegas, right? Right. Like Fallout New Vegas is what it is because like it's it has an ending.

SPEAKER_10 45:10

Yeah, but it's it's a thing where it's like it's like the the framework of it, you know?

SPEAKER_03 45:14

Like I think it's I think it's literally only the specific way that Red Dead Redemption 1 ends where it works completely. And you can't do that without someone going, Oh, I see, you really like Red Dead Redemption 1 and stole that ending forever wholesale. It's like, well, yeah, but like, come on, man, what else do you want me to do?

SPEAKER_10 45:34

Well, I think I think Arkham Knight does it really well where it's like the oh shit thing happens. Like the big thing, like, happens that changes everything, and now you you feel compelled to finish all of your work before you make like the villain has been defeated. The main threat has been defeated already. But this is not the climax of the story. There's still one final thing you gotta do to end it all, right? I think that works, like, well for Arkham Knight. What I don't really like is say, like, the way that like um like the Horizon games do it. Where they they just kick you back to the right before the final boss. Because like there's there's like a lot of the side quests in like the Horizon games, you can do post-game.

SPEAKER_04 46:27

Yeah, but I don't know.

SPEAKER_03 46:30

Well well then to be to be correct, how the horizon games did it Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 46:35

Yeah they don't make those but like they don't make those anymore. They're not gonna make those anymore. Right. Um but like I I I I I disagree. I think it's because like otherwise you have to do like you have to take into it, because those games have like endings, right? Like they have like ending endings. Um and you do have to do the Red Dead Redemption thing of taking what the world state would look like after the ending into account, and that's a lot of work. I mean, I would you know that's a shit ton of work. Like, Red Dead Redemption did it because Rockstar are psychopaths, right? And that's just how they make their video games. But like, for everyone else, you know, it's it's kind of a tall ask, you know?

SPEAKER_10 47:22

Yeah, I guess like I guess my overall problem is not so much that like I guess like it's not so much like go back and finish all the side quests. I I don't like it when it's like you unlock new side quests after you beat the game and then it kicks you back to before the final boss. Because it's like that's not like that's not like oh now's my time to go and clean everything up. It's oh, I already like rolled credits and cried, and now you're like, now go do this.

SPEAKER_04 47:52

Right. That's fair. I don't like that. Absolutely. I'll give you that one. That's a momentum killer. That's a momentum killer. That's that's that's the Arkham Knight problem again. Um but yeah, no, um Arkham Knight, weird game. I like it a lot. It's it is stone cold. I I can't overstate this enough. It is the most beautiful video game I've ever played in my entire life. I can't explain why. Um, but it's so like its aesthetics are so my shit, where it is like it's doing like a height, that heightened reality thing. I was actually talking to um Stan of the Stan server of fame about like how people were saying that like Cyberpunk 2077 is hyper-realistic, and like no, actually, it's doing like a weird, like like heightened realism, where it is its own form of stylization where it's so over the top that you loop back around to not being realistic, right? Um and that's what Arkham Knight is doing uh extremely well with just like its world design and it's it's it's absolutely phenomenal map design. It's one of my favorites, probably might actually be one of like my top five favorite maps in any video game I've ever played. Like I was so immediately in love with it. It is so moody and atmospheric, and it is so perfectly designed, so you always know where you are without ever having to consult a map, right? Yeah, um like with enough play, you can play Arkham Knight, and if somebody tells you to go to the movie studios, you can do that without ever having to look at the HUD because of how well designed. And it's really playing with like these, like kind of these very crazy visions of like a comic book Gotham where like everything is so over the top. It's shoe, it's like Joel Schumacher, but with way better production values, yeah, right? Yeah, um, and I I gen, I love it. I love how crazy the Gotham metro station looks. There's nothing in the world that looks anything like that fucking thing. Um but they built the they designed it so well it fits perfectly into the map, and you just kind of nod and smile and go, yeah, sure, absolutely. This could this could exist.

SPEAKER_10 50:18

It looks it it it looks fucked up, but in a way that you're like, oh yeah, Gotham would be like that.

SPEAKER_04 50:24

Yeah, absolutely. It is it is tremendous. I can't, I don't know, it just has such a cool atmosphere. It had it really hardcore in Arkham City, and they took a lot of the stuff they learned from Arkham City and they applied it to a way bigger map, and it works so well. Unfortunately, it does mean that the part of Batman, those Batman games that I really like um suffers bigly because the thing I like about those Batman games is like the chat, like the stealth rooms, the big part of the gameplay of the game. Yeah, there's like four in all of Arkham Pipe.

SPEAKER_10 51:02

Oops.

SPEAKER_04 51:03

Oops.

SPEAKER_10 51:03

Yeah, you don't die. I know. It's really bad.

SPEAKER_04 51:07

They actually reuse two maps, even, which is crazy. I know it's I was so I was so depressed when I realized that we were going back to the fucking there's this awesome early on, there's this great, like, there's this great stealth sequence where you're going through two uh zeppelins because it's Gotham. Of course it's got Zeppelins in the air, right? So you're having to traverse two different Zeppelins and like solving puzzles and doing stealth sequences and stuff, and it ends in one really big room that you have to do a stealth sequence in, right? And it's awesome. And I was like, sweet, this is great. And then you go back to it, it's so depressing. You have to go back to it. Um, and I just I and then they do it again outside the clock tower. They literally use that same fucking uh map even outside the clock tower, and I was just like, man, okay. Alright, guys, did you really have to do it twice? Um because otherwise, like that's the problem. There's so much neat stuff in Arkham Knight, and it's such it just kind of suffers because like I don't know, it's a weird game. It feels like it has it's suffering from too many ideas, maybe. It just feels kind of dis it feels very disjointed, I think is the best way to describe Arkham Knight. Um because it's a game that has a lot of stuff going on and it's interesting, but none of it coheres the way that Arkham City kind of coalesces perfectly, right?

SPEAKER_08 52:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 52:46

Arkham City, like I said at the beginning, is is kind of a perfect little game. Like I wouldn't say, you know, it's not like spectacularly written or anything like that, but for what it's trying to be, Arkham City is is so focused on what it wants to be and what it wants to do, how it wants to look, how it wants to play. It has everything down to like a mirror sheen. They learned all of their lessons from Arkham Asylum and they apply them perfectly to Arkham City, and what you get is a video game that is just tremendous, right? Arkham City just kicks so much ass.

SPEAKER_08 53:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 53:22

Um, and then they added they were like, well, how do we follow up Arkham City? And what you get is a bunch of cool ideas, but none of them feel like they slot together, right?

unknown 53:32

Right.

SPEAKER_03 53:32

It's a true 7th gen trilogy. Yeah, true. Yeah. The first game's kind of like a little bit crusty, but like pretty good. Kind of groundbreaking and in the game. The second game is basically perfect, and the third game is fucked up and like weird, but still ambitious, but broken in ways it didn't need to be.

SPEAKER_04 53:50

Exactly. That's completely it. And and you know, at the end of the day, I still really like Arkham Knight, like a lot. Um, I just wish I just wish it had more interior sequences, is basically what it boils down to. Um and less fucking Batmobile, goddamn. There's too much fucking Batmobile in that game. Um, stop making me solve problems with the car. Let me solve problems as Batman. That's the fun part of those games. There's not nearly as many. The most important thing of any given Arkham game is how many moments you get where you go, heh, I'm Batman. Right?

SPEAKER_10 54:29

It's so important. The best part about the stealth. Yeah, it's what makes the stealth so great, which is that like everyone knows you're there.

SPEAKER_06 54:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_10 54:39

Everyone in the room knows that Batman is also in this room with them. And then as you start picking off guys one by one, you can feel the the other thugs getting more and more nervous. Yeah, it rocked. To the point where like they stop doing the hey, what was that sound? They'll just start opening fire on any sound they hear.

SPEAKER_04 55:01

It's so good. Rules. It's like they took that idea from Arkham Asylum and they they put it in City, and it's so much better in City, right? Yeah. Where where as they start to panic more, they they start just like their their uh their patrols change, they start shooting wildly into the air, they start like, I know you're there, you know, like that kind of thing. It rocks. It rules, it's so much fun. You just feel like you're like, I'm fucking Batman. There's not enough sequences in Arkham Knight that make you feel like I'm fucking Batman. However, I will say, every single time I got to use the that fucking fear multi-takedown thing.

SPEAKER_10 55:43

Yeah, it's so sick.

SPEAKER_04 55:45

There are multiple like I the the combat in that game feels really good, I'll I'll tell you. There is uh, which is crazy. The combat feels that good, but there's no there are no real boss fights. Whatever, I guess it's fine.

SPEAKER_03 55:59

Which way Western Man Arkham Knight or Arkham Knight boss fights versus Arkham Asylum boss fights, and you go, what about city? And I go, what about city? I did I didn't present that as an option. You have to pick.

SPEAKER_04 56:11

You have to choose. I guess I'm still picking Arkham Knight because at least then like it's at least you're not having your score lowered by bad boss fights. Right. It's just they're just they just aren't there. You know, the boss fights aren't bad, they just don't exist, is the problem. Um so I guess that's better in the long run. And the and like the actual combat system in night is so much better, and it's so goddamn cool. That's the part that was pissing me off the most. There are times where I was like, paw did something in the game, because like all of the animations and stuff are very reactive to where you are in the map, right? And there are points where you do so I did something in the game and I'd have to pause it, and Oates would just hear me go the next time. Oh my god, he's so goddamn cool.

SPEAKER_10 57:01

I I had a segment in night where um because you get you can get the uh uh the like the little electric rifle thing where you can make guns explode.

SPEAKER_05 57:13

Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_10 57:13

And they pull the trigger. There was like a like a brief like area I remember doing this specifically because I was like, ooh, hee hee, I'm gonna be really, really cool when I do this. Um I had it, I upgraded that enough so that I had like four uh charges of that, and there were four guys like in the area, and I was at the perfect angle, so that I could just shoot all four of their guns with that, and then I just swooped down and blatantly walked towards them. And then they all pulled the trigger at the same time and knocked themselves out. I was like, I'm Batman. It rocks.

SPEAKER_03 57:50

Uh we we we're so due for another real Batman game.

SPEAKER_00 57:55

We're so due for another real Batman game because it's I mean, when it hits, it hits, right?

SPEAKER_04 58:00

You're just like, oh shit, it's so fucking cool. Um, and yeah, I guess that's the thing. Despite all of its problems, Arkham Knight is a really cool video game, and that carries it crazy far. Um, it's like a 7 out of 10, but it's that kind of 7 out of 10 that'll make you crazy for the rest of your life.

SPEAKER_08 58:19

Right?

SPEAKER_04 58:20

Um, I didn't mean to talk about Arkham Knight for a fucking hour, but here we are, I guess.

SPEAKER_10 58:25

It's okay. The news is depressing, so get it out.

SPEAKER_04 58:28

Oh no.

SPEAKER_10 58:30

Oh yeah, the news the news is real bad.

SPEAKER_04 58:32

Can we just keep talking about Batman?

SPEAKER_10 58:35

We can do Yeah, do you have more to talk about?

SPEAKER_04 58:39

Um only a little. The only other thing that's really worth talking about, just because it's in my notes, is I read Batman the Cult from 1988, and um when I told the the Western Comics board chat on the Discord that I that my the next thing on my list was Batman the Cult. Um, our dear friend, Friend of the Pod, Red Red Lantern Reviews, responded to me with, oh yeah, the cult was made in a lab for you.

SPEAKER_10 59:08

And was it?

SPEAKER_04 59:09

Yeah, yeah, it was. Yeah, it rocked. Um it's really good. It's from it's it's I mean, god, comics in the 80s, man. They they are all scream, it's the 80s, do a lot of coke and vote for Ronald Reagan.

SPEAKER_03 59:27

Like, it's do a lot of coke and then write a comic book.

SPEAKER_04 59:30

Literally, uh, it it's really good. Uh, I was uh devastated to learn that the guy who wrote the cult is now like an AI sicko, but I know.

SPEAKER_03 59:41

I mean, if you're if you're old enough to have been writing and drawing comics during the 80s, odds are good that you are too physically unwell from all that to be able to make things anymore. So like I believe it.

SPEAKER_04 59:54

Yeah, it's uh it's really good. It is about uh it's a it's written by Jim Starlin, who Ben knows who that is. He literally did all of the Thanos shit. Yeah, yeah, it's written by Jim Starlin. Uh so he's more of a Marvel guy, but he did he did some pretty like he also wrote Death and the Family, right? He's the guy who who killed Jason Todd. Um and he wrote the cult, and it's really good. It is unsurprisingly about a cult leader who comes to Gotham and is like taking he's he's allegedly immortal, is he? Who knows? Um, like convincing all of the like poor and downtrodden of Gotham to like take control of the city, and that's fine, except they're also killing like people who don't deserve it. Oops, because you know it it's a like it's religion, right? Um and it it's it's extremely 1980s, but in a way that kicks ass. Um it's got the most gorgeous fucking art I've ever seen for like of that era, right? That kind of because like you read it and it's it's great and it's beautiful, and most importantly, it all had to be done just with like pencil and ink. Like there's no you're not you're not photoshopping nothing to make your life easier back then, right? Right? And it's it's it's extremely beautiful. Uh it's really fucked up. I love a good fucked up Batman comic. It's like my favorite thing. Um, and this one it's winning all kinds of points for being fucked up. Um I actually it was really funny to play Arkham Knight, and like Deacon Blackfire is the guy, right? He has like one side quest in Arkham Knight. It's over in two seconds. Um, but he's introduced in the cult a very different type of guy in that, mind you. Um, but that's where he comes from. And it's great. It was, I mean, it's awesome. It's it's hard to even, I don't want to like go into detail because it wouldn't mean anything to anybody. Um, but it does have it's one of the it's actually probably the only Batman story I've read so far with Jason Todd as as Robin before he, before, you know, all that other shit.

SPEAKER_07 1:02:10

Right.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:11

Um and it's really funny because he's the second one, and like Dick Grayson, when he was Robin, is just like this little bundle of joy, and we love him to death. And the funniest part in Batman the cult is at one point, because Batman's just been tortured by this fucking cult for two and a half weeks, right? They stagger into like an abandoned bar, and there's some there's some of Deacon Blackfire's goons in there, and they see that it's Batman looking like shit and Robin, and they're like, Oh yeah, let's fuck him up. And what happens is that Jason Todd whips a chair across the room into one guy's head and then just jumps and kicks another guy in the mouth, and you're like, That's my boy. Uh and it rules, it rocks. It's uh it's it's that's awesome. I I thoroughly enjoyed it. I gotta read more old comics because old comics are fun in a different way compared to new comics. Um and I think that's it. That's kind of it. You know, nothing else of like of note. Of note, you know. I mean, like we've been on kind of just like a you know, like a Batman train because why not? There's so much.

SPEAKER_08 1:03:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:24

Um but nothing like super worth talking about. We watched Batman versus Dracula. That's actually a better movie than you'd expect.

SPEAKER_10 1:03:32

Um, people say that's good.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:34

That movie's fun. It's funny because there's so like the Batman, the 2004 cartoon, is so hindered by the Bat Embargo, is what it's called, apparently. I'm learning all kinds of new terminology. And it's because during the Nolan era of Batman movies, DC just wouldn't let those poor bastards use anything, right?

SPEAKER_08 1:03:57

Right.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:58

They're like, no, like you can't use Ray Shao Ghoul because he's in the the Batman, he's in Batman Begins, right? And you're like, oh okay. So like you can't use half of the Rogues gallery because they're in these these Christopher Nolan movies. So we're watching this bat, we're watching this this fucking Dracula movie, which seems like a strange breach, right?

SPEAKER_08 1:04:24

Right.

SPEAKER_04 1:04:25

And I was like, that's strange. Because I mean at this point I think Dracula's in the public domain, so you can just get away with it. Um, but I'm like, that seems like kind of a weird pull, right? And then I'm watching this movie and I'm watching it, and I'm looking at their design for Dracula, and I went, hey, wait a second, this is just their Ray Chal Ghoul movie.

SPEAKER_06 1:04:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:04:45

They're literally this is their way of getting around it because the designs are extremely similar with like the crazy hair and the widow's peak and the and the sideburns that kind of flare out. I went, wait a minute. I see what you guys are doing here. Um that movie's fun. That's all I got. I I yeah. The big thing is the Arkham games. Those games are good. Yeah. I've I need to play Origins. That's the last one on my list. Um I'm looking forward to it, even though I know it's kind of different. It doesn't have the, it does not have like um, it doesn't have Mark Camill, it doesn't have Kevin Conroy, right? Right. Stone Cold Bummer. Um, especially because like they're both so good in those games. Um oh wait, can I talk about one other thing that it's like really short and it's just funny to me?

SPEAKER_10 1:05:33

Yeah, of course.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:34

So the Arkham Knight slash Jason Todd is voiced by Troy Baker, right? Tim Drake slash Robin is voiced by Matt Mercer.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:46

Alright, is uh Nolan North in that game too?

SPEAKER_04 1:05:48

No, no, but well he actually might be No, he actually might be like an incidental character.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:55

But he is he? Yeah. You've got the royal flush of generic dude voice actors.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:05

But specifically, Matt Mercer, for years and years, I mean literally he replaces Troy Baker and Persona 4 the Golden, right?

SPEAKER_08 1:06:13

Right.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:13

Because like they are a sound alike. For years and years the joke was that Matt Mercer was a backup Troy Baker. Right? It's a very funny and I think intentional casting decision. Because one of Jason's hangups in that game, that's kind of a dumb hang-up, but whatever. That game is not written perfectly again. Is that Bruce replaced him, right? After he after he quote unquote died, is that Bruce replaced him like so soon.

SPEAKER_08 1:06:46

Right.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:46

Right? And he's he's very bitter about that. So it's really funny that these two guys basically sound identical. There was a point where like they sounded so like I knew that the Ark of Knight was fucking Jason Todd. But every time he got on the radio and I could hear that voice, I was like, is this gonna be some twist that like it's actually Tim Drake, even though he's literally Robin? Like, what's going on here? And I realized, no, they just did that intentionally. They just got these two guys who sound similar to voice these two characters who are like both robins. Um, and I just thought that was very funny and interesting. So um, strange. Funny, very funny casting decision. I I feel confident that that was intentional. That was like an artistic decision, not just let's cast the new hotness, aka Matt Mercer, and Troy Baker, right?

SPEAKER_03 1:07:45

Not just having half of your random NCR troopers voiced by Liam O'Brien cheese around.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:51

Yeah, yeah, exactly. This is not a budget thing, this was intentional. It feels like there was a degree of intentionality behind it. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe it's just that Matt Mercer and Troy Baker were both really hot at the time. I mean, they they both still are, but in a different way. Um, but I think I think that was the intent. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:09

So you think Matt Mercer and Troy Baker have ever explored each other's bodies?

SPEAKER_04 1:08:16

Ah, god, I hope. God, I hope. God, I hope so. That's a weird experience. I I wonder if they've ever even like how much they've ever interacted. Anyways. Um I think that's it. I think I got as much out of my system about Arkham Knight as I can. I'm glad they didn't kill Barbara. I'm glad that Barbara didn't actually die. I was really worried. That game's really good at making you doubt yourself, I will say. Because the back and forth on that is crazy. Because they do kill poison ivy, right? And I was like, oh shit, maybe it's just one of those games. Because like at the very beginning-ish of the game, they they show Barbara Gordon shoot herself in the head, right? And you're just like, oh no, that's not quite and um you spend a lot of the game. Batman obviously spends a lot of the game in the form of Joker in his brain beating himself up thinking he got Barbara killed, right? And there's so much like back and forth, there's so many times where I'm like, they wouldn't do that, they wouldn't do that, right? Yeah, but then like they really start the game itself is gaslighting you, saying, like, no, that really happened, like constantly telling you that really happened. There's a there's a thing where Barbara shoots herself, you can go back to the room, and the body is still there. So I thought, oh shit, like they really just killed this character just like that. But then, like, there's other little things that make you go, no, they wouldn't do that, there's no way. Um, and of course it ends up they didn't do it, but they did a really good job of making you doubt your sanity, so that's you're literally putting yourself in the character's head. That's fun. That's good. That's actually really that's smart. There's there's meat. There's meat on this bone. You see, I talked about it for an hour, and I think it's a seven out of ten.

SPEAKER_10 1:10:07

Mm-hmm. Many such cases on the Gorge podcast. Many, many, many such cases.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:14

The Fallout 4 of Batman games. Yeah, game out.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:19

It doesn't even be a seven. We could do it with uh with a four. Look at our uh our our the one time we streamed our discussion of quote unquote Starfield.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:28

True.

SPEAKER_04 1:10:29

It's so true. Bad game is more and then I don't think I don't think Arkham Knight is a bad game, but a game that is flawed in an interesting way is always better to talk about, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:10:40

That's right.

SPEAKER_04 1:10:41

And Arkham Knight is that in spades. There's a non-zero chance I come back the next time we record and go, wait, I had a few more thoughts. So I'm trying to I'm trying to purge these demons now, and I I appreciate everybody's patience with me as I try to get all of this out of my system. Um, but I like that it boils down to I like that um I even came around on how ugly Bruce Wayne is in that game because I just like I there's so much going on with him that he just kind of turned into my ugly boyfriend after a while.

SPEAKER_10 1:11:13

We all have to make compromises for love. Yeah, you all get eventually you get used to it, it doesn't bother you anymore.

SPEAKER_04 1:11:19

Yeah, you're just like you're just like, oh, this is this is my ugly boyfriend. If you don't applaud when he enters the room, I'm gonna blow this entire building up, okay?

SPEAKER_03 1:11:28

What, like Wayne Manor?

SPEAKER_04 1:11:29

Yeah, yes, like there's an inexplicable hush side quest, and by side quest I mean a single what do you even call it? It's a quick time event.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:46

Incident.

SPEAKER_04 1:11:47

There's a hush incident.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:50

A hush episode.

SPEAKER_04 1:11:51

There's a yeah, and Hush is just a villain that Jeff Loeb wrote, like semi-like recently-ish. Um and it's kind of stupid, but I haven't even had I haven't gotten around to reading Hush yet. I just know that there's like mixed feelings about it. Um but I do think it's funny. I swear to god, I'm almost done. It is really funny to include like this Hush incident and this and this equally short side quest. I mean, really just one thing, but it's just it's a combat room, really, where you go and you deal with Deacon Blackpire. I swear to god, when they do stuff like that, it just feels like somebody at Rocksteady is like grabbing the player by the shirt and going, read some goddamn comic books. You know what I mean? Because if you when you do the thing, you meet the character, you get a little you get a little character bio, and Rocksteady is cool, they go like first appearance, you know, uh Batman the Cult 1988, right? Yeah, it when they include these very incidental characters like this, it makes me think somebody at Rocksteady just really needs you to go read some fucking Batman comics, right? Yeah, um, and I respect that a lot. So yeah, I think that's it. I think I'm good. I think I'm done. I don't know. I don't know. I think I'm done. Weird video game.

SPEAKER_10 1:13:16

For now.

SPEAKER_04 1:13:17

For for now. Weird video game that I like a lot. I didn't even do any of the DLC. Um, so maybe I'll be back in a week after I did it.

SPEAKER_10 1:13:24

You should, it's fun.

SPEAKER_04 1:13:25

I will, yeah.

SPEAKER_10 1:13:26

You get to like a lot of the characters have like very different playstyles, and it is very fun.

SPEAKER_04 1:13:29

Sure, cool.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:30

Uh I'm currently drunk enough that I could be persuaded to buy that one game if you want the redesign.

SPEAKER_04 1:13:41

I'm not making you buy Gotham Knights, I swear to God. I haven't even installed it yet because I want to play Arcum Origins first, so don't spend $12 on that bad video game, please.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:52

Okay, yay.

SPEAKER_04 1:13:54

If it goes on sale for eight, then I will be like, okay, well, you don't have a choice. You have to buy the bad game.

SPEAKER_10 1:13:58

Well, it it can't go on sale much more than it already is.

SPEAKER_04 1:14:01

Hey, it sometimes goes on sale for $8.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:04

So uh well, I'll probably be waiting until Christmas, but it's not too bad. It's not inconceivable that you could be distracted long enough for that to be relevant or decision making.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:16

It is not it is not inconceivable, I will tell you. This is this this feels like one that's we're here for the long haul.

SPEAKER_04 1:14:22

Uh, all of my various and sundry derangements. This one feels like it might stick around for a long time, which is a problem. Which is a problem. But I'll never run out of Batman content, so that's cool. Um, that's it. That's all I got. I'm sorry that it took an hour and 15 minutes, but thank you for your patience. This has been your mini Arkham Knight spoiler cast, I guess.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:45

Uh I'll I'll jump into my week since the last uh check-in.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:50

Um my dinner to tonight was was was uh it was Smash Burger and it wasn't very good, unfortunately. Oh, I'm sorry. I I've had it was a it was my favorite burger from that place, but just it was not good anymore. I don't know why. Um I don't know. I've been playing Warframe. Uh I I'm not participating in Toxic Ari VN Jam, but I did do uh proofreading. Or not proofreading, but like like I did a a early reading of someone's VN script uh and offered some feedback on that, which uh some of some amount of that has been incorporated, which always uh it always feels fulfilling when you give someone like writing feedback that is like like not just like you know like like proofreading checks, but like stuff you would have liked to see in the script vis-a-vis like formally or whatever, and then go, you know what, that's right, I should put that in the script. And then they do it, it feels really good.

SPEAKER_04 1:15:56

That does feel good, nice, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:58

Oh, that's that's been me. I don't know. Oh, that's easy.

SPEAKER_04 1:16:00

Thank god it wasn't an hour and 15 minutes. Thanks Saturday.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:03

No, I I haven't uh I haven't started anything new lately and I haven't like become obsessed with any like you know specific guys. I don't know. Like I I I I've I'm kind of liking this new OC I made for a T T RPG may or may not actually get to play.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:17

Uh many such cases.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:19

I I've been commissioning some art of her because I just sort of figure worst case scenario, if it doesn't track out, I'll just turn her into a normal OC and just use her however the fuck I want. Yeah, that's correct. There you go.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:30

That's valid, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:31

So that's been fun. I got uh I finally got a commission from an artist I who has been kind of like out of my price range for a while, but I finally like mustered up the willpower just to be like, no, I can spend some good money on a on a commission from a good artist. And so that's that's going. Makes me happy. Nice.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:51

That's pretty good.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:51

Uh also a commission I ordered like literally uh a year and a half ago. Uh finally came through. Uh I got uh one of my favorite artists to do some samurai remnant art. Uh and that and that is being the physical copy of that, the original is being uh shipped to me at some point in the next uh month or so, which is exciting.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:15

Uh I'll show you a picture of that just for the group chat. I want to find the uh blue sky post. Uh but yeah, that's that's been it for me. Um I don't have anything interesting to talk about.

SPEAKER_04 1:17:31

Oh, I love this. That's very cool. Yeah, yeah, this shit rocks.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:36

This is the artist from uh who's been who does like all the key art for uh Dread Delusion, which he played on the stream once, and then the upcoming uh Entropy from that same studio, which is instead of being a Mara wind like is a JRPG.

SPEAKER_04 1:17:51

Oh right! That's right, I saw that trailer. Damn, ah fuck. I I need to give that a shot.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:57

I might have to give that a give that a peek. Yeah, that one's that one it's interesting. I'm more like I didn't end up really gelling with uh their first game that much just because I like it was a little a little boring for Morrowind like, I think, but I'm very uh I'm very keen on the idea of them doing a JRPG. It seems suited to the excessive amount of writing that they like to do over there.

SPEAKER_04 1:18:25

Uh well, Ben, what you got?

SPEAKER_10 1:18:27

I did a bunch, I finished and started a bunch of stuff.

SPEAKER_04 1:18:31

Oh.

SPEAKER_10 1:18:32

I finished Pragmata.

SPEAKER_04 1:18:34

Did you like it?

SPEAKER_10 1:18:36

One of the few games that made me cry. So yes.

SPEAKER_04 1:18:39

Oh, that's nice. Good for you.

SPEAKER_10 1:18:42

Damn, that that father-daughter relationship is good and not bad.

SPEAKER_05 1:18:47

That's nice, good.

SPEAKER_10 1:18:49

It's kinda it kind of makes sense that like when you build a father-daughter thing that's not uh the foundation isn't misery. Um it has like a certain appeal to it.

SPEAKER_05 1:18:59

Sure, absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:01

Oh, and it's not like a repurposed script that's basically about all women on the planet Earth turning into evil zombies. Yeah, no, it's not like that. I'm sorry, I literally can never I can literally never stop thinking about it. It's like one of the it's like tri it's like the thing with with the boss and the snake scar she was supposed to have on her boob, where it just sort of made like completely ruins a person's creative output for you forever.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:33

Yeah. Oh my god, that's so funny. Fuck.

SPEAKER_10 1:19:39

Um, but no, I would recommend anyone on this podcast to play Pragmata because it's not only is it a fantastic, like like a fun high octane game, um the dynamic between Hugh and Diana is absolutely beautiful. Sure. Well worth your time just to have them chit-chat about various things on Earth that she's excited to go do.

SPEAKER_04 1:20:03

Sure, that sounds cute.

SPEAKER_10 1:20:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:20:05

It's uh Capcom's attempt at uh at Donkey Kong Bonanza.

SPEAKER_10 1:20:10

Yeah, glad dad being the new the new hotness is a I think is a lot more appealing than sad dad.

SPEAKER_05 1:20:16

Sure, sure, sure. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:17

Um I think those God of War games would have been better if if Crane was like, this is my son. I fucking love my son.

SPEAKER_11 1:20:25

Yeah. Look at him. Look at my boy. Good job, boy.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:29

But still, I'm so proud of you, boy. So keep calling him boy.

SPEAKER_11 1:20:33

You are very important to me, and I I I it's been difficult for me since your mother died, but so long as you're here, boy, I I know that things will be okay.

SPEAKER_04 1:20:43

And that mom is still just doing double jumps and uh and juggling for the book.

SPEAKER_11 1:20:48

Boy, do you want to play catch?

SPEAKER_03 1:20:50

Dad, mom's still right over there.

SPEAKER_11 1:20:52

Oh right, sorry, I was I briefly forgot myself in my age, and I was thinking about the last time I had a wife and child.

SPEAKER_10 1:20:59

Like every every thing, like whenever Diana asks him about something, you like Hugh also has a thing where like he doesn't have any tragedy in his life.

unknown 1:21:08

Sure.

SPEAKER_10 1:21:08

And it's kind of refreshing to play a video game where that's not a thing.

unknown 1:21:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_10 1:21:12

Because he's like, he's like, oh yeah, my uh, you know, because Diana will be like, well, what you know, what's life like on earth? Like, what's a family? What you know, what is a parent dynamic like? And he's like, oh yeah, you know, I was adopted and uh my foster parents loved me and gave me everything I would want and supported me to explore the explore and broaden my horizons and do whatever made me feel happy, and I always had love and encouragement and a safe place at home.

SPEAKER_04 1:21:39

Escapist fantasy escapist fantasy from separate millennial.

SPEAKER_10 1:21:44

Right. Um He's like, Yeah, I've been all over the planet. I I've been to Alaska and I've been to like uh the tropics, I've been to, you know, all over the place. I can take you take you anywhere you want to go, Diana.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:58

Cute.

SPEAKER_10 1:21:58

And it's like, wow, you can just have a character like this.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:02

Yeah, sure.

SPEAKER_10 1:22:04

That's insane.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:22:06

Sometimes sometimes a video game. And I say this with a combination of like ribbing, but also like respect for something that knows as much as it is interested in being. Uh sometimes a video game doesn't really need to have a personal conflict in it, and it can just be about a guy and his robot daughter uh like fighting evil monsters.

SPEAKER_10 1:22:31

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Um no, it's it's great. I I love it. I would recommend it because uh I want anyone else on this podcast to play it so that I can do game of the year discussion with it.

SPEAKER_05 1:22:42

Sure, absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 1:22:43

Um, don't worry, now I don't think I'm liable to get around to it just because I it I'm just not really liable to get around to it um realistically. But we can still do game like I'll I I've been listening to lots of I've been learning lots of things about Batman lately. I'll learn about Pregma.

SPEAKER_10 1:23:01

Um because like it's gonna be on my list for sure. Like somewhere in that top five, it's gonna be on that list.

SPEAKER_03 1:23:06

I've actually I was I was looking at the 2026 list and I had a moment where I was gonna nominate things and I'm like, wait a minute. I nominated this and it placed last year because at that point I had played episode two, but y'all haven't yet, and now there's other episode two things that are there again because y'all went through it the first time.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:25

True. And I'm like, fuck.

SPEAKER_03 1:23:28

I I I feel like I have to leave. I I can't add anything for episode two, and I can just contribute if you put something there. Please please add things for episode two because Ipisode three is ostensibly coming out this year as well.

SPEAKER_04 1:23:40

I know, I'm excited.

SPEAKER_10 1:23:41

Yeah. Um, I played a little more Star Fox because of course I did.

SPEAKER_04 1:23:46

Sure.

SPEAKER_10 1:23:47

Um I I uh joined the Star Fox speedrun Discord.

SPEAKER_04 1:23:53

Oh, fun!

SPEAKER_10 1:23:54

So, cause I'm like, you know, because I I like playing Cold Shadow. Don't get me wrong. I really like playing that game a lot, but it's also like a game that like there are parts of it that I'm not enthusiastic about playing.

SPEAKER_05 1:24:07

Sure.

SPEAKER_10 1:24:07

And I'm and I'm like, I want to keep, you know, casually speedrunning stuff. And playing Star Fox 64 on stream, I was like, wait a minute. There isn't a bad level in this mix. These are all fun.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_10 1:24:24

Why don't I just do that? Because like the the current world record is like half an hour. If I could cut my time down to like 45 minutes, I'd be happy with that.

SPEAKER_05 1:24:33

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_10 1:24:34

So like fucking sure, why not? I'll practice that.

SPEAKER_05 1:24:38

That's totally doable.

SPEAKER_04 1:24:39

Absolutely. That game is very that game is very breezy. We did two runs of it on stream while fucking around and yapping.

SPEAKER_10 1:24:46

It gives me a purpose for replaying Star Fox.

SPEAKER_04 1:24:49

Sure, absolutely.

SPEAKER_10 1:24:51

Like it's not just me doing it for no reason. It's like I have a goal of getting better at it and getting faster. Um I've also been grinding away at FF14 PvP. I'm glad none of us has been remembering to do that. I know.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:06

My poor, my poor, my poor dude. You are in hell. What are we at? I'm at rank 18 right now. Oh shit, dude. Great.

SPEAKER_10 1:25:15

Um I have come to the conclusion that my opinion on PvP has changed. Oh for the worst. That's correct. At first I was like, eh, PvP's not very fun, but you know what? I'll tolerate it. It's a good way to kill time.

SPEAKER_06 1:25:31

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_10 1:25:33

I fucking hate Final Fantasy XIV PvP. It's bad. I don't like doing it. It's 20 minutes long.

SPEAKER_04 1:25:40

You're okay, so you're only doing front lines.

SPEAKER_10 1:25:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:25:43

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:44

Now, what I'll say for frontlines at the very least, if you do like, and again, this is sadly, and the reason I've been dragging my feet is because guidance is no longer relevant to me. It's a great way to level classes you don't actually want to play.

SPEAKER_10 1:25:57

I am class switch. I am almost I have gotten almost 10 levels of Sage just by doing frontlines almost every day.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:05

That's smart.

SPEAKER_03 1:26:06

That's smart. Um that's not a class I don't like that. Like, I like Sage. I don't like to take Sage in the dungeons, so that's the best way to level Sage.

SPEAKER_10 1:26:13

My plan was that my goal was that like, well, I'm not gonna play Sage until the rework because I'm like, why would I learn this class in the next six months and then it's gonna be completely overhauled? So like but but when that overhaul kicks in, I'll be at a level 100.

SPEAKER_04 1:26:26

Right. You know, just like immediately jump into it. Absolutely. Yeah, I get that.

SPEAKER_10 1:26:30

Um I don't like PvP. I don't like playing it. It's 20 minutes that I wish I didn't have to do every day.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:37

I know, I'm so sorry, dude.

SPEAKER_10 1:26:38

And it sucks that it requires more and more exp to rank up so that it just feels like the finish line is just you know, ever have a dream where there's a door you're trying to run to, but you can never get to that door. That's what it feels like, where I'm like, what do you mean I need more? I'm like, I'm at rank 18 and I'm now halfway to 25.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:04

Oh yeah, that's right.

SPEAKER_03 1:27:07

Because it goes from being like what, like like 1500 in the very earliest levels to being like a full 10,000 year as you get to the end. I don't think it's the Fallout 76 Battle Pass model. It sucks.

SPEAKER_10 1:27:22

But at least 76 I can do other things to get that. Like I have I have a smorgasboard of options in 76 to rank up.

SPEAKER_03 1:27:31

My my problem is that like I don't wanna do it. Like, I just straight up like I'm not playing FF14 really right now. Like, I have my sub active, but I'm just not really playing. And re and I don't have any other combat classes at the level, I just don't want to do it. But if I don't get that outfit, I'm I'm gonna be doing it.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:51

You're gonna be Yeah, you're gonna be able to do it.

SPEAKER_03 1:27:53

They're gonna be writing news articles about that.

SPEAKER_10 1:27:56

The thing is that like if I could just take a day and just do six hours of PvP and be done with it. You know? I would be fine. Like I would do that.

SPEAKER_04 1:28:16

No, see, I have been, because I have also been doing the grind, not nearly as hard as you, and I respect it, and I need to, I need to be doing it more. But I hit rank 12 the other day. I've just been kind of pussing. Because what I do to keep the keep me from going insane, and because I like crystalline conflict, what I do is I do one round of frontline, and then I'll do two to four, depending on if I'm on a roll, I'll do two to five rounds of crystalline conflict. Because crystalline conflict, those rounds are way, way shorter.

SPEAKER_10 1:28:48

That's true.

SPEAKER_04 1:28:51

The longest match of crystalline conflict I've ever been in was like eight minutes long, right? That's it. Um but usually they're over much faster than that if you're just playing casual. Like if you're not fucking with ranked, which you never should. Um if you're just goofing off in casual, like those things can be over very, very quickly, and you'll get you don't get as much like PvP series reward experience. But it adds up. Yeah, and it and it it kind of breaks up the monotony just by being so much faster and a lot more focused than the front lines, which can feel very meandering, right?

SPEAKER_05 1:29:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:29:29

Um, so yeah, like CC is is I mean it's super standard, you know, push the payload gameplay, right? Um honestly. The only thing is you can't level classes with crystalline conflict. Whatever class you take in is a class you have to play, which I which I don't really care that much. Right, yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_03 1:29:47

Yeah, it's not relevant to me either anymore.

SPEAKER_04 1:29:49

Right. And crystalline, and like, so I'm always advocating for at least a little bit of crystalline conflict because it helps speed the process up, at least for me. Right? Yeah, because then you're not having to just do because front lines can fucking suck, man. Like they are so long, and everybody thinks they're a comedian in fucking frontlines, right? No, nobody is funny in front lines. Nobody wants to be here, nobody's having a good time. Either you're trying to get your PvP series rewards, or you're trying to get a win in Seal Rock so you can get your fucking coat that you'll wear once.

SPEAKER_02 1:30:26

Oh, don't remind me.

SPEAKER_04 1:30:28

I know. I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_02 1:30:29

I still need that coat, and I'm still like 60 wins away.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:33

I'm so far away from that coat. It's never gonna happen.

SPEAKER_03 1:30:36

I'm so sad because it's so sexy. Like, you say I'd only wear it once. I would literally wear it all the time. It's so good. Like the thing is, like, that is that may as well be canonical ulterior motives clothing.

SPEAKER_05 1:30:47

Sure, sure.

SPEAKER_03 1:30:49

But I know you wouldn't, because it's not really Retica clothes, but it is like it is ulterior clothes.

SPEAKER_04 1:30:55

I guess because it is kind of imperious looking, yeah. Yeah and they recently gave it die channels, two dye channels.

SPEAKER_02 1:31:01

I so no, it's even better.

SPEAKER_04 1:31:04

It's even better. Yeah, now that it has two dye channels, yeah. It used to be un they went from undyable to two dye channels, which is wild. Um so now it's like good instead of bad. I'm sorry for it.

SPEAKER_03 1:31:17

Since like Stormblood or whatever.

SPEAKER_04 1:31:19

Yeah, yeah, no. It's it's been undyable for like ever. They're like, no, we're gonna we're gonna finally give it a two die channels. So now you'll be even angrier that you don't have it.

unknown 1:31:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:31:32

Like, you're right, I am. Thanks.

SPEAKER_02 1:31:34

Fuck. I have to do some seal rock.

SPEAKER_03 1:31:38

And the thing is, you can't there's nothing you can do to make that go faster. You have a one-three chance of winning, and whether you play well or not, it won't make a difference. Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:49

That's correct. It's it's a literal, it's it's just a roll of the dice. It sucks.

SPEAKER_03 1:31:55

Because there's simply so many players that it literally doesn't matter if you try your best.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:59

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_10 1:32:00

I've I've done so much PvP, and like my biggest takeaway from it is that like it's random. It doesn't matter. Like, I'm not doing anything, I'm not contributing. No, like I'm contributing, but I'm not really.

SPEAKER_04 1:32:12

You could conceivably turn the tide of like a seal rock match if you win into front lines with the pre-formed eight-man team, right?

SPEAKER_08 1:32:24

Right.

SPEAKER_04 1:32:24

Like, if you had a pre-formed eight-man team of people who know how to play front, like who know how to play PvP and know what they're doing, you could conceivably grind that out. But that is still one, good luck assembling an eight-man team of people who will go do Steel Rock with you, right? And two, that still means that you've got 16 other play. Am I doing that math right? No, I'm not.

SPEAKER_02 1:32:53

No, 16 other players.

SPEAKER_04 1:32:54

Okay. You've got you've got 16 other players to take into account on your team. And those 16 could be fucking morons, you know what I mean? And you're still screwed, you still won't get that seal rock win. So, I mean it's just so disheartening. It's brutal.

SPEAKER_03 1:33:14

It's because who wants to play that much Seal Rock ever?

SPEAKER_04 1:33:18

Nobody.

SPEAKER_03 1:33:19

It's like I want that fashion, but it's also like you can't target farm that without being driven clinically insane.

SPEAKER_04 1:33:27

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 1:33:28

I mean, I guess I'm I you know, I guess I'm kinda at the point though. This would be the time to do it because I can't level classes anyway, so the fact that I only get the daily bonus once a day doesn't really matter to me literally at all.

SPEAKER_04 1:33:43

I mean, it would you could conceivably just play only do only do PvP on Seal Rock Day, and that way you would not only be working toward your sick ass coat, but you would also be working toward your rank 25 PvP outfit as well. So you're getting two to the price of one. You know?

SPEAKER_03 1:34:05

But the thing is, I do think the daily bonus applies to that though. Doesn't it?

SPEAKER_04 1:34:11

No, I mean it does. Like you you you only still like your PvP series reward is less after the s like after the first match, but you're still earning more than like you would in front, like in Crystalline Conflict, right?

SPEAKER_03 1:34:26

I guess that's true. It's just like if I did that where like I'm replacing playing thing, I have to do like five matches in a seal rock day. Yeah, but that's kind of like the thought of doing the thought of sitting down for like two hours of seal rock is making me think about buying a gun.

SPEAKER_04 1:34:45

But also that's the only way you can farm out in like a timely manner.

SPEAKER_03 1:34:52

And you know, you know that you're gonna do those five those five matches.

SPEAKER_04 1:34:56

If you lose all five of them, you are going you you would be on the news, right?

SPEAKER_03 1:35:01

Yeah, like on a good day, you're winning two of those. However, if you do five matches of Seal Rock in a row and win none of them, you've spent two hours of your life making no progress. Yeah, yeah. They're calling it the FF14 problem. Which is like all the all the pursuit stuff is like it's so cool once you've finally done it and you can finally show off, but also the entire process of doing it is just abject misery.

SPEAKER_01 1:35:32

It's aggregate, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:35:34

There is no joy to to sequentially because the thing is like I'm still like 15 to 20 seal rock wins away from getting the fourth armor piece, and at that point I'm only halfway to the coat, which is the one piece that I actually want. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh and I've played I've played FF14 for like definitely 3,000 hours. Uh-huh. Uh I just can't do it. I don't know. I give up. I need to like get a Twitch career where I need to be like Shenpai or whoever, where I literally just stream FF 14 for 12 hours a day and that's my job. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:36:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:36:16

That's the only way you're gonna do it.

SPEAKER_04 1:36:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:36:18

It's the only way.

SPEAKER_04 1:36:19

I would play tw- I would play FF14 as a job. I could do that.

SPEAKER_03 1:36:23

I would I would find a way to put up with like actually doing at-level savages and extremes or whatever if like it was the thing I did for my literal job. Yeah, because it would at least reflect an unpleasant thing I was doing to get paid.

SPEAKER_04 1:36:38

Yeah. I could I could find it in my soul. I think I could play FF-14 like a job. You know what I mean? Just eight hours a day, and then clock out of Final Fantasy 14.

SPEAKER_10 1:36:50

Yeah, and then play Final Fantasy 14.

SPEAKER_00 1:36:52

And then play uh something else. Play Fallout 76. No, none of us are playing Fallout 76 right now, which is I I'm I'm done with Fallout 6.

SPEAKER_03 1:37:00

I I I think I'm fully I'm finally done with Fallout 76 forever.

SPEAKER_04 1:37:04

Are you finally free?

SPEAKER_03 1:37:05

I I think literally missing the one item I have been waiting for a way to legitimately get forever since I started playing.

SPEAKER_00 1:37:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:37:16

Uh, because it was only actually available for about 16 hours.

SPEAKER_07 1:37:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:37:22

Um, and they like just no promotion, no recompense at all. Yeah. Um, I'm done. I think I'm done.

SPEAKER_05 1:37:30

No, that's completely fair. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 1:37:32

Because I saw they they were showing off some stuff like, oh, do this thing for like uh this, that, or whatever, and it was like something that I would have marked out over, and I'm just like, why do I care?

SPEAKER_04 1:37:40

Yep.

SPEAKER_03 1:37:41

I just don't care anymore.

SPEAKER_04 1:37:42

You got hit, you got hit with the most with the with the mind virus that will always stop you from playing a live service game, which is Which is the FOMO breaking. Yeah, if your FOMO breaks and you go, Why am I doing this? It don't matter anymore. You're free.

SPEAKER_03 1:37:57

I I'm kind of at a funny point where that has kind of happened to me with FGO a little bit, where it's like, I want to know what's happening with FGO, but I have my NP5 Draco, and funnily enough, that is the thing that made me go, Well, that was my big pursuit, and now I no longer care.

SPEAKER_00 1:38:15

Yeah, that's fair.

SPEAKER_03 1:38:16

I no longer have anything I'm actually chasing, and I don't I definitely don't need any units.

SPEAKER_00 1:38:20

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:38:21

Like, I would love to, I would like, there's part of me where it's like, oh, grand girlfriend's so fun. I'd love to have grand girlfriend, but I'm like, but I'm not rolling grand girlfriend to NP5, so it's not like I'm ever going to use her.

SPEAKER_05 1:38:31

Right.

SPEAKER_03 1:38:32

Right, yeah. And now I'm just like, oh, I'm I'm I'm I'm done.

SPEAKER_05 1:38:36

I'm done.

SPEAKER_03 1:38:36

You're free.

SPEAKER_05 1:38:37

You're free.

SPEAKER_03 1:38:38

I'm not I'm not entirely free because I do want to find out what's going on with the story, uh, because I am as yet still largely unspoiled for the events of things that have happened in JP besides having a vague awareness of like the post Lost Belt arc vague things going on. Sure, you know, yeah. But like besides that, like I don't know, I still care what's what's happening. It's just like I also don't care about playing the game.

SPEAKER_04 1:39:05

Yeah, exactly. I I just need to sit down and actually do the work of reading the plot, you know what I mean? So and I'd like to do that before summer happens, and I'm running out of time. So am I.

SPEAKER_03 1:39:15

I'm I'm kind of in that same boat where it's like I like to do it before summer happens because I want to be able to do LB3 or to be able to comfortably do LB3, I mean, or not LB3, but you know, OC3, yeah. OC3. But I'm also sort of like I have so many things to do that demand more of my time and that I am more interested in doing.

SPEAKER_00 1:39:33

Exactly.

SPEAKER_03 1:39:34

That I I just can't be fucked. Like I have so much stuff I need to read even before I I really care about making time to read OC2.

SPEAKER_02 1:39:41

And I'm kind of just like, I don't know, like maybe I'll just watch OC3 on YouTube and just let that be uh because realistically I don't like I don't know.

SPEAKER_04 1:39:49

I still I still have to do it because I have to have Hakuno as a unit. It's just part of my soul. I have to. Um I understand.

SPEAKER_03 1:39:58

I I personally don't have the relationship with extra, you know, so it's like I don't know.

SPEAKER_04 1:40:02

Yeah, you don't, it's not your thing. But I do, I do need to make the time to do it. But I mean it's not also this is not like Hakuno's going anywhere, right? Like it's the welfare unit you get for doing a main quest chapter, right?

SPEAKER_03 1:40:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:40:16

At least I think so.

SPEAKER_03 1:40:17

So presumably, unless unless it stops being available.

SPEAKER_04 1:40:20

No, and I'm not gonna do that. So, I mean, if they are, somebody will tell me in the Discord after they hear this episode. Right.

SPEAKER_03 1:40:26

Um Yeah, uh Shia or Magus or whoever uh Phillips in, because like I kinda I'm kind of at the point where I just wanna wait and do it all in a big swath, but also like I don't know, if I if I have to do it when it comes out to get a welfare who's good and cool, like I guess I'll make time.

SPEAKER_04 1:40:46

I don't wanna. I don't wanna. Um yeah. Anything else? Sorry, we got off on a tangent. Yeah, it's okay.

SPEAKER_10 1:40:53

Um I started two games. I started replaced.

SPEAKER_04 1:40:59

Oh, you started that.

SPEAKER_10 1:41:01

That's that box game?

SPEAKER_04 1:41:03

Yeah, that came out finally.

SPEAKER_10 1:41:05

Uh the the go-write game?

SPEAKER_04 1:41:06

Yeah, it's a go-write game.

SPEAKER_10 1:41:08

Yeah. Um so far I dig it.

SPEAKER_05 1:41:12

Okay.

SPEAKER_10 1:41:13

I I am really enjoying I I it's rock solid aesthetic. Um it's got combat that I didn't expect, and it's pretty fun.

SPEAKER_06 1:41:24

Cool.

SPEAKER_10 1:41:25

Um It's also got way more because I've played a lot of the go right style games before. And they tend to be very um like aesthetic for word, telling the narrative, right? Like what do you mean by go right games? Uh limbo, um games where you the primary thing is you are just going right.

unknown 1:41:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_10 1:41:50

Narrative text box.

SPEAKER_03 1:41:52

Saturn's brain immediately began to shut down.

SPEAKER_10 1:41:54

Like there's not there, there's not it's not really like a platformer, as it were, like a Mario or Sonic, but like you are just going to the right it's platformer shaped. Yeah, you're you you might push a box to climb a ledge, or guys might be chasing you.

SPEAKER_04 1:42:12

I think that's a I think it's also called a cinematic platformer, I think is another good good. That's a genre name for it, I think.

SPEAKER_03 1:42:19

Yeah, it it it's a thing you make when you don't want to be accused of making a quote unquote walking simulator so you make it look like a Mario game so people think it's a real video game instead of like a narrative experience.

SPEAKER_10 1:42:33

You put some you put some jumps in it every so often, you know.

SPEAKER_04 1:42:37

But I mean this game has this game has combat though, like a real combat system, so it's not entirely a go-right.

SPEAKER_10 1:42:43

It's kind of a katana uh like a katana zero like I mean I mean you're still you're still primarily going right, but every so often you'll get a break where you do combat.

SPEAKER_04 1:42:51

Um I mean technically Katana Zero is a go-right game, but that's not its hook.

SPEAKER_10 1:42:56

Yeah, you know what I mean? But then I got to a hub area.

unknown 1:42:59

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_10 1:43:01

And like it's like, okay, well, you're here now. Go like wander around and talk to other people and do little side quests.

SPEAKER_05 1:43:07

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_10 1:43:09

So surprising. I I was like, I like sat up in my chair. I was like, ooh, ooh, it just gives went a different direction. Sure. Literally. Because now I'm going left.

SPEAKER_04 1:43:18

Nice.

SPEAKER_10 1:43:19

Um, but yeah, no, I I I like it.

SPEAKER_04 1:43:21

Um that game was very pretty. I remember the trailer for that one and being very yes.

SPEAKER_10 1:43:25

God, it's fucking gorgeous.

SPEAKER_04 1:43:27

Yeah, yeah. That that alone. Uh I I think it's on sale right now. I might snag it. We'll see. Or I'll wait, might wait.

SPEAKER_10 1:43:34

It's 20% off right now.

SPEAKER_04 1:43:36

Okay.

SPEAKER_10 1:43:36

It's so it's $16.

SPEAKER_04 1:43:39

Okay. Yeah, maybe.

SPEAKER_10 1:43:40

Yeah. Um, yeah, I'm I'm like two hours or two or three hours into it, and uh I'm enjoying it.

SPEAKER_01 1:43:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_10 1:43:47

Um, I also started at the request of a friend of mine, I started Trails in the Sky.

SPEAKER_00 1:43:52

Whoa, that's an investment, dude.

SPEAKER_10 1:43:54

Yeah. Um, Sarah, you need to play Trails in the Sky.

SPEAKER_04 1:43:59

No, don't tell me that, dog. Come on, man. I know, I know I do because they're Tails games functionally.

SPEAKER_10 1:44:05

I got I I booted up, I got like a couple hours in. I went like the first thing is like go to the sewer and like fight things, and I'm like, oh man, this feels like some yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:44:14

Dude, don't tell me.

SPEAKER_03 1:44:15

Is that all it takes going to a sewer? What have we been degraded to?

SPEAKER_01 1:44:19

Oh no, I understand this Italy.

SPEAKER_10 1:44:21

It's specifically that like anime style double A RPG.

SPEAKER_04 1:44:26

Yep.

SPEAKER_10 1:44:27

Where you're just like, it doesn't play like a tales game. Not at all. It doesn't play it's a turn-based game.

SPEAKER_04 1:44:31

It's a turn-based, right?

SPEAKER_10 1:44:32

But like like the character designs, the world building, the menu sounds are fucking like I think they're straight from Vesperia.

SPEAKER_04 1:44:41

Fuck no, you're you're the devil. You've literally come from hell to Do you know how many of those fucking games there are?

SPEAKER_03 1:44:49

So many!

SPEAKER_04 1:44:50

You son of a bitch.

SPEAKER_03 1:44:52

Okay, what if instead of doing that, um, you played the the Xenoblade Remasters when they came out? So that you could so that instead you could have a series of three games that uh literally anybody under the age of 30 gives a fuck about.

SPEAKER_04 1:45:07

No, but I understand that it's it's like functionally a tales game. It's shit fucking tails game. Shit fuck. Don't tell no.

SPEAKER_10 1:45:16

I'm sorry, Sarah. I didn't I did like I I s I've seen screenshots and whatnot, and it's like, okay, this looks like a good like double ARPG, whatever.

SPEAKER_00 1:45:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_10 1:45:25

And then like you played it. And I look at the menus, and I see a costumes tab. Oh no. And I see like an equipment tab. They're talking about here's our system of magic we use. Fuck. I would acquire these kinds of special gems.

SPEAKER_04 1:45:39

And I'm like, Who did this to you?

SPEAKER_10 1:45:41

Who did this? It was Dave. We I hung up with him over the weekend two weeks ago, and he was like, he was like, So what have you been playing, man? He's like, Oh, I played Trails of the Sky. And I'm like, oh yeah, is it good? And he's like, You got you need to fucking play this game and tell me when you're done. And I'm like, Alright, I'll give it a shot. Shit. And then I then I booted it up and I watch I watch the anime intro.

SPEAKER_04 1:46:03

The anime-ass intro. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:46:06

That just used to be how you do it back in the good old days. And I look at but now because of woke, we can't have anime intros.

SPEAKER_05 1:46:12

That's true.

SPEAKER_10 1:46:13

I look at the party members and I'm I go, you're just Tails characters.

SPEAKER_05 1:46:19

This is just a Tails. This is just a Tails game.

SPEAKER_00 1:46:24

Yeah, they haven't made a new one in uh I know.

SPEAKER_03 1:46:28

Now I was going to say ten years, and I realized that by suggesting that, it was suggesting a world in which Tales of Arise never existed. That's a better world than we live in.

SPEAKER_00 1:46:37

That would have been a better world, yeah. No.

SPEAKER_03 1:46:39

I mean, to be fair, either way, they haven't made a new Tales game in what, six, seven years?

SPEAKER_04 1:46:44

It's been like Yeah. Wait, hold on, Tales of Arise.

SPEAKER_03 1:46:49

That's 2020, right? 2021. So five years. September 21. Five years.

SPEAKER_04 1:46:55

That's fucked up. Man, alright, whatever.

SPEAKER_03 1:46:59

Unfortun unfortunately, uh the the loss of Hideo Baba to uh his own male pheasants uh has killed the franchise dead. Because no one else knows how to make them, I guess.

SPEAKER_04 1:47:10

I can't believe the whole the the the keystone holding the Tails franchise together was Hideo Baba. Which is a shit.

SPEAKER_03 1:47:20

A guy who, by all counts, might be one of the worst producers to ever live.

unknown 1:47:25

Fuck.

SPEAKER_10 1:47:26

I'm I'm really sorry, but just like look look at these fucking Tails protagonists.

SPEAKER_06 1:47:34

No, no, no!

SPEAKER_03 1:47:36

I'm not doing it. You can't make me.

SPEAKER_04 1:47:39

No, I want off this ride. You can't do this to me.

SPEAKER_03 1:47:42

I'm so sorry.

SPEAKER_04 1:47:44

You okay. You there's a reason Dave told you to play that game and finish it and come back to him. So when you finish it, if it blows your mind out the back of your head, you come to me and we'll have a we'll have a come to Jesus moment about playing a trails game, okay?

SPEAKER_10 1:48:01

I will talk- I will tell you about it. Now, the good thing is that you don't have to play all of them. You can just play the trails in the sky and then the trails of cold steel, which is what I'm gonna do.

SPEAKER_06 1:48:08

There's so that's so fucking many, dude.

SPEAKER_10 1:48:10

There's three trails, there's three sky games, and I think three cold steel games.

SPEAKER_03 1:48:15

That's that's six falling JRPT. That's like yeah, you just have to play Yakuza 0 through 7. No, relax, you don't have to do any aside content. It's still only like 40 hours per game.

SPEAKER_06 1:48:32

You actually just signed your life away for the next two years.

SPEAKER_10 1:48:37

I mean, that's a stupid. I don't know if you know this, Ben, but we're all old. Look, the thing is, the thing is, hopefully by the end of this game, I will want to keep playing that.

SPEAKER_04 1:48:46

No, I'm sure. That's the problem. It's like you've made a deal with the devil, is what I'm insinuating here.

SPEAKER_03 1:48:52

I'm at a dark stage of my life where, like, you know, I'm still playing my live service games. The thought of playing a video game and it takes me 30 or 40 hours to hit credits makes me feel dread.

SPEAKER_04 1:49:04

It oh god.

SPEAKER_03 1:49:05

I don't want it anymore.

SPEAKER_04 1:49:06

No, if it's good, I'm gonna be so mad because then I'm gonna have to. It's gonna it's gonna be the tales games all over again. This is this sucks. This sucks. I'm good. Fuck you, Dave. I've already got the full of the episode, but I've already got this one unlock. We won't see the end of the episode.

SPEAKER_03 1:49:27

I'll follow you down that dark road if that's what it comes to.

SPEAKER_04 1:49:30

I really, I really this is a dark pact between Ben and myself. Yeah. I also like Tails games. But you listen, you are immune from whatever from from the the fucking.

SPEAKER_03 1:49:47

Look, the thing is, it's good for the next nine months listening to you talk about it for an hour every episode.

SPEAKER_10 1:49:55

The thing is, the thing is, unlike us, unlike you, Saturn, Saturday. Sarah and I, our relationship is forged in Tails games.

SPEAKER_06 1:50:03

It's so true. Oh no.

SPEAKER_10 1:50:06

I was like, play play this Vesperia game, and then that was it.

SPEAKER_00 1:50:10

It was over.

SPEAKER_03 1:50:12

No, I I mean I I understand that Vesperia was well, funnily enough, I say Vesperio is my first Tails game. Um it wasn't. I technically played uh two knockoff Tails games first before I ever played a Tails game.

SPEAKER_05 1:50:27

What'd you play?

SPEAKER_03 1:50:28

Uh Summon Knight Swordcraft Story 1 and 2 on the Game Boy Advance are both A, they're very formative RPGs for me. I don't know if they're actually any good because I haven't replayed them in a very long time, but like they were they did a lot of things for me. Uh they're they're my my niche video game that nobody gives a fuck about, you know? Yeah. Um but more importantly than that, they're just Game Boy Advance knockoffs of the PlayStation 1 Tales games. Like they're they're two D 2D action RPGs that look and feel and play basically the same way, but they're all in Game Boy Advance.

SPEAKER_04 1:51:06

That it is very that is very funny. Uh Vesperia was my first one too. Actually, the funny story with Vesperia was that uh it was uh we did we did Equivalent Exchange and we did the craziest equivalent exchange of all time, which is that Ben made me play Vesperia, and I said, Okay, but you have to play Final Fantasy VII.

SPEAKER_03 1:51:24

Yeah. It sounds like everybody wins. Everyone fucking won that one.

SPEAKER_04 1:51:28

Everybody fucking won that day, uh, which is wild, although in a in a different timeline. The actual the two games there that are actually like literally kind of the same, is that you play Vesperia and you play Final Fantasy IX, or you play Abyss and you play Final Fantasy VII.

SPEAKER_08 1:51:46

Right.

SPEAKER_04 1:51:47

Right? That's neither here nor there, but those the those the themes there match up a little bit better. Um but no, we both ruined each other's lives that day. It's fine.

SPEAKER_03 1:51:56

Um I I think I've told the story on the podcast before, but my introduction to Vesperia was literally like I had no experience with the Tales franchise as a whole. And one of my friends at the time, we were uh uh he was a friend of mine through a website called Backloggery, which was like backlogged a uh and it still exists and is still older than backlogged, albeit less used. I've used backloggery, yeah. Yeah, but it's basically a thing to like mark down your collection of video games and note what you're playing and your thoughts and your progress and whatever, right? And uh this friend of mine, uh his name is Dan, I think. Uh, and he was playing Vesperia at the time, and I was like, I have no idea what that video game is, but he seems to enjoy it, and he's made it his whole backloggery theme, so clearly it's like good. And then one night, and this is like when I was in eighth grade or whatever, uh, eighth or ninth grade, I forgot. But like one night, I had a very vivid dream about a fantasy thing that my brain was like, This is Tales of Vesperia, is what this is. This is a video game, this is a story called Tales of Vesperia, is what this fantasy thing is. And so I knew that if I'm having dreams about it, I have to obey the law of Lynchianism and go get the game. And so I got a 360 in Vesperia for Christmas that year.

SPEAKER_01 1:53:12

Oh, nice.

SPEAKER_03 1:53:12

Um, and I'll tell you what, uh, zero commonality between Tales of Vesperia and the thing that I dreamed about. Like, because and to be fair, I knew literally nothing about Tales of Vesperia, I think, besides the fact that there is a blue-haired elf in it. And like that's it. Yeah, an extremely good blue-haired elf. I think about her more often than considering I don't really remember the plot or events of that game that well, I think about Judith quite a lot.

SPEAKER_00 1:53:42

That's the correct response. Yeah, Judith kicks ass.

SPEAKER_03 1:53:44

Yeah. Yeah. Um, but despite this, uh, I did that. Was the first. It was the it wasn't like like I had played other JRPGs before and before I had like a really a concept of like how a JRPG was meaningfully distinct from other video games, right? That was the first video game I ever played where at the end, after like 40 or 50 hours with it or whatever, I was like, I'm depressed that I finished the game.

SPEAKER_04 1:54:12

That's fair. No, I was. I didn't feel that.

SPEAKER_03 1:54:18

It was the it was the first, it was not the most intense game I had that experience with, but it was the first game I ever played where I was like literally sad to be done. I'm like, oh no, this doesn't spell good things through my high school career that I'm having these sorts of vit feelings about 50-hour-long video games. Yeah. Good thing, good thing for me, I'm not actually particularly interested in dating anyone because I have to I have to spend too much time playing JRPGs.

SPEAKER_00 1:54:43

That's correct.

SPEAKER_10 1:54:46

I'm sorry, Sarah. I'll let you know how I'll keep you informed.

SPEAKER_04 1:54:50

If it like really blows your mind, then I'm fucked.

SPEAKER_10 1:54:53

Much like when a family member is in the hospital, but you can't actually go physically be there. Yeah, you need someone to keep you informed on their on their status. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_03 1:55:02

I will I will say for trails, gun to my head, if you showed me a character or a location or anything, and you go, is this from a trails game or an East game? Question one, I'm dead on the floor.

SPEAKER_10 1:55:14

Well, that's why they cross over all the time. They do? Yeah, same developer. Trails and East are like cross, have like a bit like a couple crossovers.

SPEAKER_00 1:55:22

Yeah, same developer.

SPEAKER_03 1:55:24

In my mind, I just can't distinguish literally any. I I know Reen Schwarzer is from one of those series. I couldn't because they talk about they taught they spent several months on big on Big Think Dimension talking about Reen Schwarzer as as uh Aggro was going through the series.

SPEAKER_00 1:55:41

I see.

SPEAKER_03 1:55:42

Um I couldn't tell you which of the two it was, though. I don't remember.

SPEAKER_10 1:55:46

I think it would probably be uh I don't know. Is it he's a trails character? Okay, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:55:56

Okay.

SPEAKER_10 1:55:56

Because the the East guy is Adol.

SPEAKER_04 1:55:59

Yes.

SPEAKER_10 1:56:00

Yeah, Reen is a Re's a Reen's and Trails of Cold Steel.

SPEAKER_03 1:56:04

I but I I feel like I remember them both being like ludicrous like Jing Freaks level stone cold badasses who still have to do normal JRPG shit.

SPEAKER_10 1:56:14

Yeah, oh yeah, the thing the thing I know about about Yeast is that like Adol Christian is like a a hero of Greek myth and legend.

SPEAKER_03 1:56:23

Which I th I think that's funny for a JRPG to go like here's your JRPG protagonist. No, you don't understand. He's King Big Dick of like the Emperor, Emperor of the Universe, and he just does JRPG combat because you know it's fun.

SPEAKER_10 1:56:36

He is like the strongest, most incredible hero of all time. And uh he still keeps getting getting in shipwrecks and having to do like getting kidnapped and like dragged into various shenanigans.

SPEAKER_03 1:56:52

JRPG about Superman, basically.

SPEAKER_10 1:56:54

Yeah, basically, yeah. Like he's been doing this shit for about 12 games, and he's just like, well, same shit, different soup. Or however that phrase goes, same shit soup, different pot, or whatever.

SPEAKER_03 1:57:08

God, I don't know. I recognize this uh girl with the bow staff.

SPEAKER_10 1:57:13

I think she's the pain protagonist of uh of Tales in the Sky.

SPEAKER_03 1:57:18

I see. Uh I'm I'm I'm oomphs with uh noted drawer of large breasts Zach 3am soda, and I I do see him posting about this girl on on occasions, so I do recognize her.

SPEAKER_01 1:57:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:57:36

That's oomphy from my oomphi. Yeah.

SPEAKER_10 1:57:40

Um but yeah, so besides that, I also read some comics really quickly. Yeah, yeah. Ultimate end game happened, so the new ultimate timeline is done.

SPEAKER_04 1:57:50

Alright. Marvel had that Marvel had their own version of the absolute universe and they squandered it.

SPEAKER_10 1:57:55

But then they the last page is the ultimate universe will return.

SPEAKER_03 1:57:59

So you're telling me that hold on, I'm hearing for the first time that Marvel's just doing it really bad while DC succeeds pretty effortlessly.

SPEAKER_10 1:58:08

Yeah. I don't know what they mean by will return. Does that mean it'll be in an event that no one likes? Or will they actually do the thing they should have done, which is sorry we canceled it, we're gonna give the series back to its writers and let them do the things they wanted to do before we just slashed them all down to 24 issues?

SPEAKER_01 1:58:33

Yeah. Maybe That would be nice.

SPEAKER_10 1:58:36

Maybe give Jonathan Hickman time to pay off all the development he put into Spider-Man.

SPEAKER_03 1:58:46

What's that old uh Cobra bit like ah, the ultimate universe is over? What comes next? Next? Now it's time for the ultimate universe.

SPEAKER_00 1:58:56

Yeah. Like I don't know, man.

SPEAKER_10 1:59:00

Way to just fucking kill all your momentum.

SPEAKER_00 1:59:03

That's correct.

SPEAKER_10 1:59:04

Uh it did have a funny bit though, where uh they're all fighting the maker and they get backup from Ultimate Daredevil, who has been uh who is a cosmic character. Um, and he literally pops in and he's like, It's ult me, Ultimate Daredevil, I'm here to help save the day. Maybe you can reward me with my own comic series. And then the maker disintegrates him and goes, Alright, we've had enough of this cutesy tongue-in-cheek fourth wall bullshit.

SPEAKER_00 1:59:35

Alright, that's kind of good. That's actually pretty good, yeah.

SPEAKER_10 1:59:41

Um it was, I mean, it was it was a fine ending. I just wish it wasn't a fucking ending. Sure. And they had been allowed to keep going. Do their thing.

SPEAKER_00 1:59:53

Yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_10 1:59:56

Um, but then I started reading the uh Cody Zieglar Miles Morales Spider-Man series.

SPEAKER_04 2:00:01

Yeah, you showed some of that. The art of that looks awesome.

SPEAKER_10 2:00:03

Fucking the the art is what do you mean comics are a stationary medium?

SPEAKER_04 2:00:13

Right.

SPEAKER_10 2:00:13

Have you looked at the art in this comic?

SPEAKER_04 2:00:16

It's so good, it's crazy.

SPEAKER_10 2:00:19

It's uh fucking insane.

SPEAKER_04 2:00:22

Yeah, it rocks.

SPEAKER_10 2:00:23

Federico Vincentini is the author.

SPEAKER_00 2:00:26

Okay.

SPEAKER_10 2:00:27

Or the writer. Or the artist fucking oh my god, I'm so tired.

SPEAKER_00 2:00:30

It's okay.

SPEAKER_10 2:00:31

The artist is Federico uh Vincentini. I don't know what else he's done, but like he does does a lot of cover work. I think this might be his first like big ongoing series.

SPEAKER_04 2:00:40

I've heard that name.

SPEAKER_10 2:00:44

Uh yeah, I I looked him up to see like what else he had done, but I couldn't find anything that he had like worked on consistently.

SPEAKER_01 2:00:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_10 2:00:52

Um but it's oh my god, it's just so high energy and fast paced. Like they're just whipping around, there's like dynamic camera angles. It's just astonishing. Um and the comic itself is not not bad. Like the writing is is also really, really good. Um he does a really cool thing where he basically make the hobgoblin into Miles's shonen rival.

SPEAKER_05 2:01:20

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_10 2:01:22

Like, they fight in a couple issues, and Hobgoblin is literally going like this is this is also the series where Miles develops his uh venom sword.

SPEAKER_04 2:01:31

Right.

SPEAKER_10 2:01:31

Because they're like, how do we make Miles Marles cool? Give him an energy sword.

SPEAKER_04 2:01:35

Just give him a lightning sword, because that's just cool, yeah.

SPEAKER_10 2:01:37

He can just make a sword out of his venom powers.

SPEAKER_04 2:01:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_10 2:01:41

Uh so he's sword fighting with the hobgoblin. And the hobgoblin is literally fucking talking about how, like, I can feel your fighting spirit, kid. I can tell you're not giving it the giving it your all. I need you to give me all you've got. They're fucking clashing beams with each other and like doing cross-counters. They do a thing where they both like they they throw a punch and their fists connect, and like they're both lunging at each other and it's angled.

SPEAKER_04 2:02:15

Like, this is just fucking Arto vs.

SPEAKER_10 2:02:18

Sasuke.

SPEAKER_04 2:02:19

Doing Shonen Horse shit. Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_10 2:02:22

It's awesome! What a great development for like develop this kind of character for Miles.

SPEAKER_03 2:02:30

I have been begging Marvel for years to just be like, you guys just need to steal more from Shonen Jump, including your publishing structure. That's correct.

SPEAKER_10 2:02:39

Yeah, no, for sure. Um, no, it's the the this comic is is great, it's super uh energetic, it's dealing with a lot of really cool stuff. Like it's all it's mostly primarily like the the overlying thing is like Miles dealing with PTSD of being a teenage superhero.

unknown 2:02:58

Sure.

SPEAKER_10 2:02:59

Um, and like dealing with like like pretty much jumping into what Peter has been dealing with his whole life, but only getting the tail end of it, you know?

SPEAKER_04 2:03:09

Right, yeah, yeah, yeah. Um who's who's writing who said uh Cody Ziglar. Oh, okay, okay.

SPEAKER_10 2:03:16

Uh so like it's it's got this really cool, like, underlying tone of just like you know, Miles trying to develop like a support group of people who can relate to his issues, right? Of like trying to deal with the fact that yeah, yeah, you know, Carnage uh tried to murder his entire family.

SPEAKER_05 2:03:34

Right.

SPEAKER_10 2:03:35

That's stressful when he has a baby sister that he has to worry about now.

SPEAKER_05 2:03:39

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_10 2:03:41

Um so he's getting therapy from Doc Samson, who is the Hulk's therapist.

SPEAKER_00 2:03:48

Great.

SPEAKER_10 2:03:48

So you know, good good choice in that one.

SPEAKER_00 2:03:51

Sure, sure, sure.

SPEAKER_10 2:03:52

Um and like teaming up with uh Misty Knight, who is like become basically becoming her intern, so like getting that kind of superhero support.

SPEAKER_03 2:04:02

Yeah, it's gotta be so good to be a superhero therapist because you have like professional protections that prevent you from having to legally disclose literally any of that. Yeah, exactly. Like you like you can't testify to Spider-Man's identity in court, right? Yeah. So you can just know you can just know what's going on with him. Like you can you can like like get coffee with him or whatever, uh just mask off and know what the deal is, but you're not all like you cannot be compelled to say any of that.

SPEAKER_10 2:04:32

It's right, and it's it's cool because like they like Miles goes to his first therapy session and like it's it's all hologram projections, and he's like, Hey, can I can I take off my mask? And Doc's like, oh yeah, it's cool. Like there's there's like an automatic filter, like perception filter that shows up on your face. So I don't even know who you really are. Like we can we can just like you can just say you're Spider-Man. I don't I don't really care anything beyond that. Like, this is specifically about you being a superhero. Like, I'm not here, I'm not dealing with your personal life.

unknown 2:04:59

Right.

SPEAKER_10 2:05:00

This is the stress involved with being a superhero.

SPEAKER_05 2:05:02

Yeah, that makes sense.

SPEAKER_10 2:05:05

So it's really cool, and I also really like uh Miles' girlfriend in this, uh Tiana, who is the granddaughter of the vulture.

SPEAKER_05 2:05:14

Oh, great, okay.

SPEAKER_10 2:05:15

Uh and so she's a superhero in her own right.

SPEAKER_05 2:05:19

Right.

SPEAKER_10 2:05:19

Uh named Starling. And it's really cool because she's like constantly calling him out on his bullshit.

SPEAKER_01 2:05:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_10 2:05:25

Because she's like, she's like, I can I understand what being a superhero is like, dude. I know what I know what you're going through. You you can't be like, you can't pull the you could wouldn't understand thing on me. Right. My dad's the my granddad's the vulture.

SPEAKER_00 2:05:38

Yeah, I know exactly what you're going through. Yeah, that's fun. Cool.

SPEAKER_10 2:05:42

Um, yeah, really good. Uh the new series after this ends implies that it might break up. So, you know, Spider-Man comics can't have anything good.

SPEAKER_01 2:05:53

That's correct.

SPEAKER_03 2:05:54

I mean, he already got one W and it's called being fucking Spider-Man. Not to mention he can make an energy sword. Why does he need a girlfriend?

SPEAKER_04 2:06:02

Fuck you. Your life is too good otherwise.

SPEAKER_03 2:06:05

Where's the Spider-Man who's like actually, I don't know, like I guess I can just like jack off on the like pictures online. That's fine. I'm I'm realistically too busy to sustain a romantic relationship, so you know I've got like a healthy uh amount of OnlyFans subscriptions.

SPEAKER_10 2:06:21

I think that might be Miguel. I think it might be 2099. I think he's like, I'm not gonna date anyone or you see.

SPEAKER_03 2:06:32

Love a Spider-Man who's realistic about the burdens of his work-life balance.

SPEAKER_10 2:06:36

Yeah. Um, but no, that's that's going really good. And then, yeah, I've I've I've bought a I'm almost caught up, or almost done, because I guess it ended, but I'm almost done with uh the IDW Star Trek run.

SPEAKER_05 2:06:49

Okay.

SPEAKER_10 2:06:49

I have one more event, and I could go back and read Star Trek Defiant, which is about Wharf and his crew that he develops. Which I might go and do. Um I know there's also uh a lot of the lower deck comics that I need to read, like Shax's best day and Shax's worst day. Um, and I want to read the uh uh I think it's called Star Trek uh it's called Sons of Star Trek, which is an alternate universe where uh Jake and Alexander join Starfleet.

SPEAKER_04 2:07:21

Fun.

SPEAKER_10 2:07:22

Because I know Mariner shows up in it. Oh and I think the idea of Jake, Alexander, and Mariner being a real together each other.

SPEAKER_00 2:07:33

Yeah, yeah, sounds like a nightmare. Yeah. Affectionate.

SPEAKER_10 2:07:36

Um but yeah, that's going really good, and I I highly recommend that as well. Um not to use Saturn because it's it spoils DS9. So when we're done with uh DS9 podcast, then you can read it. Um and then the only other thing I did is I finally I I finished a project that I had started like two years ago, which is watching every Mike era episode of MST3K.

SPEAKER_04 2:08:00

Oh, okay. Oh, I can't honestly I'm actually kind of surprised you've never done that before.

SPEAKER_10 2:08:06

There were a lot of Comedy Central era episodes that I never got to see.

SPEAKER_05 2:08:10

Okay, that's fair.

SPEAKER_10 2:08:12

Because I only I only watched it when it was airing on sci-fi.

SPEAKER_05 2:08:16

Right.

SPEAKER_10 2:08:17

And then the DVDs have always been just like really difficult to track down because of licensing and and whatnot.

SPEAKER_00 2:08:22

Sure, sure, sure.

SPEAKER_10 2:08:23

Um but no, I finally I finally did I finally did all of that. It was it was like a slow burning project, you know?

SPEAKER_00 2:08:29

Yeah, you know, just like a thing you kind of pick at. Yeah, totally.

SPEAKER_10 2:08:32

Um boy, season 10, the final season had probably like the biggest line of bangers ever.

SPEAKER_06 2:08:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_10 2:08:42

God, despite the issues of getting on sci-fi, like those sci-fi seasons are just top-notch.

SPEAKER_00 2:08:48

Yeah, that's good.

SPEAKER_10 2:08:50

Um like the the funniest thing is that like it's very it's between um the actual official YouTube channel just uploading everything that they have available, because the Gizmoplex, which was like their platform to host MST3K, um, is shutting down in September.

SPEAKER_05 2:09:11

Right.

SPEAKER_10 2:09:12

So with that, the YouTube channel is gonna stay online. Um, and I think I'm guessing the uh Foreverthon will also continue to start airing. Um but like the main primary source of that is shutting down, so they're recommending everyone go and download all the videos they have access to.

SPEAKER_05 2:09:28

Sure.

SPEAKER_10 2:09:29

Um but between that, which has uh most of the episodes, there's also uh Project Misty, which is an unofficial fan project to uh uh upscale every available episode to uh uh 1080. Okay and it looks really good and it sounds really good. Like I watched a lot of episodes on that instead of the SD versions on the Gizmoplex.

SPEAKER_00 2:09:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_10 2:09:53

Um but there are still a few episodes that have just slipped through the cracks. We have tracked down there's you can watch every episode, including the KTMA episodes. Everything's available online. It's just that some episodes are not in good quality, we'll say.

SPEAKER_00 2:10:17

Some of those episodes were recorded on a tin can.

SPEAKER_10 2:10:20

Some of those episodes are still only available in VHS rips recorded off of the TV with commercial breaks and uh company logos in the corner.

SPEAKER_00 2:10:35

You know, yeah, for sure, totally.

SPEAKER_10 2:10:37

Yeah. So you take what you can get, including kind of sadly, uh the final episode of season. Really? Yeah, Danger Diabolic is not available in any streaming service officially.

SPEAKER_04 2:10:50

Really? That's crazy to me.

SPEAKER_10 2:10:51

You I had to watch it on archive.org.

SPEAKER_04 2:10:55

Wow.

SPEAKER_10 2:10:56

I mean, if it's good enough for Legend of the Galactic Heroes.

SPEAKER_01 2:10:59

Yeah, that's good enough for MST3K, baby.

SPEAKER_10 2:11:02

But it's still like, wow, the really the last episode has not like been released on anything official. That's crazy.

SPEAKER_00 2:11:09

That's crazy to me.

SPEAKER_03 2:11:11

Um series I would give to just fucking have on Blu-ray. Right.

SPEAKER_04 2:11:15

Uh well, if you had uh approximately $2,000, Saturn. I got the eBay listing for you.

SPEAKER_03 2:11:23

Here's the thing: if I ever have $2,000 that I have to blow on some crap on eBay, I'm not getting the Legend of the Galactic Heroes Blu-rays. Uh, I did find out after having briefly obsessed about them for a while that you can occasionally just find people going, Yeah, I have a busted unusable Japanese Tanegashima rifle if you if you want to buy it for $2,000 as like a display piece. And I'm like, that's a piece of history I would like to own. Those things are cool. Yeah. And also every time I look at them, I think of Metal Gear Solid 4 and that you get one in Metal Gear Solid 4, and its whole gimmick is that it has a 50% chance when you shoot it to just make a tornado appear.

SPEAKER_00 2:11:57

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 2:11:58

Amazing. I think that's I think it's good.

SPEAKER_10 2:12:02

Um yeah, no, but that that was that was that was uh kind of rough to watch actually the final episode because like they're they're they're doing jokes and bits and whatnot, but you can tell that Mary Joe Peel was just fucking devastated to be done with the show. Right. Out of everyone in that cast, like she was just completely heartbroken to not to for it to be over.

SPEAKER_02 2:12:27

Yeah. Look, she gets to play she gets to play the cackling evil villain who's a big who's a badass bitch who's in charge of everything.

SPEAKER_03 2:12:33

Like I would also be like, no, you can't one more season, please!

SPEAKER_06 2:12:38

Take this from me. It's my dream.

SPEAKER_03 2:12:41

I'm a television actor from the Midwest.

SPEAKER_10 2:12:43

This is all I have. I think it's I think it's I've probably mentioned this before on the podcast, but like I think it's very, it's very heartwarming that every member of the main cast, like all the all the transitioning cast members of MST3K, every single one of them in some capacity or another, went back to just riffing movies.

SPEAKER_04 2:13:08

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_10 2:13:09

Like Joel Hodgson did the reboot, obviously.

SPEAKER_05 2:13:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_10 2:13:14

But like he also did Cinematic Titanic, and he invited Trace Boglio and Frank Coniff and uh like like every like all of them, like Mary Joe Peel, all of them were back on that one. And then Mike Nelson was doing rift tracks by himself, and then like it within two years, Bill and Bill Corbett and Kevin Murphy joined him on that, and they've been doing that for 20 years now. Wow. Um, and now they're like, well, now that the license is no longer in you know in Joel's hands, why don't we just make more MSG 3K ourselves?

SPEAKER_01 2:13:44

Right.

SPEAKER_10 2:13:44

There's there's no fucking way they're only doing four episodes.

SPEAKER_04 2:13:47

Like you don't the thing is, I think once you figure out a way to make money riffing on movies, right? Like once you figure that out, why would you ever do anything else?

SPEAKER_10 2:14:01

Yeah, no, like you you cracked the code.

SPEAKER_04 2:14:04

You cracked the code to like have the most fun with your life, right? Yeah, you found a way to pay your bills by watching movies with your idiot asshole friends and making fun of them, right?

SPEAKER_10 2:14:15

Like it's a timeless experience.

SPEAKER_04 2:14:18

Yes, why would you ever do anything else with your life? Because that is the I think that's the most fun you could have as a career. Yeah. Like, yeah, of course, all of the like the MST3K guys, like everybody involved, were like, no, let's just keep doing this in one way or another forever, right?

SPEAKER_03 2:14:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 2:14:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 2:14:36

Um I do like because I was curious to look it up and turns out it's true. Even Jay Elvis Weinstein, he was literally only in like the first season of MST3K and basically got ousted from the show the instant it went to like National Syndication. Yeah, even he went back for Cinematic Titanic. That's great. Because he was like 16 or 17 at the time or something crazy like that, and the fucking producers just kept like being extremely mean to him. He's like, I quit.

SPEAKER_10 2:15:04

I'm done, this sucks. Yeah, the whole thing was that like he was he was like a teenager and also wanted to do more improv versus like a scripted format.

SPEAKER_05 2:15:13

Right.

SPEAKER_10 2:15:14

Um so like yeah, they eventually he just he just left because you know he was a kid. Uh but yeah, even he came back for cinematic titanic and he like had fun because it was in front of a live audience. Like he was a little bit.

SPEAKER_03 2:15:27

Well, he apparently he apparent He was apparently in some of the more recent MST3K reboot stuff as well.

SPEAKER_10 2:15:32

They brought him back to do a couple bits for some of like season 13 stuff too.

SPEAKER_03 2:15:36

That's so funny. What a what a what a mysterious jogo for which I mean television shows.

SPEAKER_10 2:15:41

What a mysterious science. Yeah. 3000.

SPEAKER_00 2:15:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_10 2:15:45

Um, yeah, there's no way they're only doing four episodes. Like, you don't you don't put all this effort and get all these props back and build all these sets and be like, four, we're done.

SPEAKER_01 2:15:54

No, they're four.

SPEAKER_10 2:15:56

You you leave that you leave that in the warehouse so that you can be like, want do you want to do one more? Do you want to do another one?

SPEAKER_03 2:16:03

You leave that in the warehouse and you go, hey Netflix, I know you want you, I know you want us back. I know you want. They didn't like those seasons with the with with you know uh Felicia Day and Cat Oswald and Felicia Day. So you you need the original old fuckers back if people will show up for it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 2:16:19

You need you need that midway, that true Midwest charm, baby.

SPEAKER_03 2:16:24

Your problem is that you tried to glam it up with these with these ritzy Californian nerd actors, and nobody gave a fuck. Nope, nope. They don't they don't know enough about hamdingers to be funny. Sorry, dude.

SPEAKER_04 2:16:35

Not a single one of them has ever drank a shitty Midwest beer, you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_10 2:16:40

I'm I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_03 2:16:42

All of them have imported their Malort. None of them have gotten locally sourced Malort.

SPEAKER_10 2:16:47

I look, listen, I like Felicia Day and Pat N Oswald as much as the next guy, right? I think Pat Noswald is a very funny guy. None of them on that on this the seasons 11 through 13 could have written a bit as funny as a joke by Ingmar Bergman. I'm sorry. Not a single one of them. None of them have the Eastern European grandparents required to be able to make that joke.

SPEAKER_06 2:17:16

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_10 2:17:17

Let's count the blanks on the dog.

SPEAKER_09 2:17:23

When you're out of slits, you're out of peer.

SPEAKER_03 2:17:29

MS T3K are I think the only people, besides literally the people who could do it, who could remake from first principles the bit in uh Space Ghost Coast to Coast where he follows an ant for like nine minutes.

SPEAKER_10 2:17:46

Absolutely. Oh my god.

SPEAKER_04 2:17:50

Oh god. Okay, that's Do we No, do we have to do the news? I mean, is it all depressing?

SPEAKER_10 2:17:56

There's some cool stuff in here.

SPEAKER_03 2:17:58

There's a little well the a lot of a lot of the We can blitz by the depressing stuff because we've talked about it quite a lot in this Sforge already, I'm sure.

SPEAKER_10 2:18:07

Uh well sorry, but there's some there's some cool stuff.

SPEAKER_04 2:18:09

Alright, heavy.

SPEAKER_10 2:18:10

Absolute Batman to become animated series from Warner Brothers Animation DC Studios.

SPEAKER_04 2:18:15

They pulled the they pulled the fucking the ripcord on this one extremely fast, which is very funny to me. Yeah. Um I hope it's good. We won't see it for another two years because they literally just announced it. So uh at least I I it's a Western animation thing. I I hope it's like just a one-to-one adaptation, kind of like what Invincible is doing, right?

SPEAKER_10 2:18:39

That's what be the that'd be like the smart thing, because like it's not it's already an adaptation of something, right? Like you you want to see the story of Absolute Batman animated, right? Like you want to be. If you just make it like a cartoon that's kind of like absolute Batman, it's not Absolute Batman, it's just another adaptation of Batman, right?

SPEAKER_03 2:19:04

I want to see the thing you told me about with like the hose and the stomach acid or whatever.

SPEAKER_04 2:19:08

Yeah, exactly. There's so much it's supposed to be I wanna see Psycho Batman. It's supposed to be a CG, a CG thing, which is I was a little eh about, but then I remembered Dor Hetero exists, and I went, oh, okay.

SPEAKER_03 2:19:21

Yeah, that's the pseudo you get. And also the problem is you need to actually get Mappo to do it because they have a lot of experience doing CG.

SPEAKER_04 2:19:28

But they have done, they did this one thing, it was called like Batman Ninja. I've never seen it, but I've seen clips of it. Um and it's a CG show, and it looks really sick. Um and if it has that kind and it's kind of has the sort of that cool, kind of grungy look that Dora Hetero has going on, right? Where you're gonna have these very like detailed kind of like I wanna say like heavier and finger quotes character models, and it works better because you don't have to animate, you you just have models instead of having to hand animate all of it, right?

SPEAKER_08 2:20:00

Right.

SPEAKER_04 2:20:00

Um, I hope it looks good. I hope it is good. Um, the one nice thing is that one of the biggest beefs I have with like these animated adaptations is that the people who make the comics don't get to make money off of it, but this time literally Scott Snyder, the guy who writes Absolute Batman, is the showrunner for it.

SPEAKER_08 2:20:17

Good.

SPEAKER_04 2:20:18

And um Oh, it's not Greg Capullo, it's uh who draws Absolute Batman? Pop. Uh I know his name. If you if I wasn't trying to recall it, hold on. Absolute Batman.

SPEAKER_10 2:20:32

Nick Dragata?

SPEAKER_04 2:20:33

Yes, Dragata. He is also he has a consulting role on it. So both the guys who make Absolute Batman are getting paid to make this animated series, which I think is cool.

SPEAKER_09 2:20:44

Good.

SPEAKER_04 2:20:45

So um I hope it's good. Cause I and I hope it means fuck, we still don't have anything Wonder Woman, and literally one of the best-selling comics out right now is Absolute Wonder Woman, which is one, gorgeous, and two, really interesting of everything I've seen of it. I haven't started it because I got 10,000 other things to read, but it's on the list.

SPEAKER_03 2:21:13

I I've seen that Wonder Woman. Uh that that one's up there. I want to see more. I want to see more of her. I want to see her, like, I don't know, crack some fucker's skull open. That would make me very that would that would do things for me.

SPEAKER_04 2:21:25

If they're gonna if they're adapting absolute Batman, they she literally is in one of the storylines.

SPEAKER_08 2:21:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 2:21:31

So she'll at least show up in that show. I really hope this means we'll get an absolute Wonder Woman adaptation because there's never been a Wonder Woman cartoon, literally ever.

SPEAKER_10 2:21:40

Yeah. And um Wonder Absolute Wonder Woman is a good way, good place to start, I would say.

SPEAKER_04 2:21:45

That's an easy, that's an easy W to do Absolute Wonder Woman.

SPEAKER_03 2:21:50

Um, because it I'll show up for Absolute Wonder Woman. I'm not I'm not like a big Wonder Woman fan, but like I'll show up for Absolute Wonder Woman.

SPEAKER_04 2:21:57

If it means I get to see an ad an animated version of that fucking Zatana design as well, yes, sign me up, baby.

SPEAKER_02 2:22:05

Can you can you show me that this one?

SPEAKER_03 2:22:08

Hold on.

SPEAKER_00 2:22:08

Oh hang on, hang on.

SPEAKER_03 2:22:10

I think I have heard you mention it in in on occasion, but I don't think I've ever actually seen it.

SPEAKER_04 2:22:15

Can I find it quick enough? She's she's such a stone cold baddie. Uh hang on.

SPEAKER_10 2:22:23

Oh, here's the image. Hold on.

SPEAKER_04 2:22:28

Which one?

SPEAKER_03 2:22:30

Good lord.

SPEAKER_04 2:22:31

Yeah, that one. Yeah, she's uh, you know. She's really she's really good.

SPEAKER_03 2:22:38

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I I can see that. I can see that.

SPEAKER_04 2:22:42

Yeah, so uh hopefully we'll get an absolute Wonder Woman uh animated as well. So, you know. We'll see.

SPEAKER_10 2:22:52

That would be cool. Uh you know what? We're just gonna call this next block the PlayStation block.

SPEAKER_04 2:22:58

Oh god, let's do it quick.

SPEAKER_10 2:23:00

Lots of news about the the Sony PlayStation. Alright, let's do it quick. Let's first start off with an update from PlayStation Studios. They are laying off Bungie. Just like all of Bungie. Almost all of Bungie.

SPEAKER_03 2:23:18

Yeah. Uh a lot of bungee. So basically they're they're taking off some of the Marathon team, most of the Destiny 2 team, probably just whatever people they need to maybe push out one last hotfix for the issues in that last update, and then nothing after that. Yeah. And then a few people at Sony itself whose job was to like basically be an envoy between Bungie and Sony. Like, like, you know, middle, middle not middlemen, but people whose job it is to be between those two companies. Uh so that's not great. That's uh does not I was literally thinking about when you're talking about consultancy on the show, I was literally thinking about Marathon, and one of the funniest things learning about Marathon being uh the thing that came out when it released, which is that they, you know, because spongy doesn't like they have their staff writers, but they do a lot of work with contract writers as well, and some of like the best writing in Destiny is from contractors, and finding out very funnily, uh that they actually had the the people who developed the Caves of Kud game consulting on Marathon because they wanted like they were like, this is the tone and style of writing we're looking for, so we want to get like your feedback on like certain things. Okay. Hmm. I was just thinking about that and how sad it is that they're uh going to kill Bungie within a within the year. Yeah.

SPEAKER_10 2:24:42

Well, they won't be the only ones getting killed. Uh the bad the news from Sony continues uh with PlayStation is deleting 551 movies from customers' accounts, reminding us nothing digital is ever truly ours.

SPEAKER_03 2:25:00

I think brought this up earlier on the gorge. Once again, it seems like Sony just sort of neglected to renew licenses at the uh direct expense of its consumers.

SPEAKER_04 2:25:09

Yeah, and there's no there's no remuneration, no refunds, no nothing. You bought you bought it. You paid the money to own it, uh, but actually no, you don't, and now it's gone forever. Sorry.

SPEAKER_10 2:25:24

And uh, you know, this is this is the shot.

SPEAKER_04 2:25:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_10 2:25:28

The chaser being that speaking of digital, you don't actually own anything digital. Uh uh. Physical disc production ending in January 2028 for new games releasing on PlayStation Console.

SPEAKER_04 2:25:43

Feel like this is gonna get walked back.

SPEAKER_10 2:25:47

They if it doesn't, we will not see a new PlayStation.

SPEAKER_04 2:25:52

No, absolutely.

SPEAKER_10 2:25:53

They will try they will try to release one. They're clearly stupid enough to. We will see 10% of the PS5 sales in the PS6.

SPEAKER_03 2:26:04

Yeah. Well, yeah, because when the PS6 comes out, it's going to be like $1,200 minimum. Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_10 2:26:09

It'll be a $1,200 console with no disk drive.

SPEAKER_03 2:26:12

And also all the games will be $92, $100.

SPEAKER_10 2:26:16

If they don't roll this decision back. And also you won't own any of those games in the game.

SPEAKER_04 2:26:22

Yeah, yeah, you'll never need to own any of those games. Yeah, that's the thing. And I think I've been hearing a lot is that like, you know, at this point, PC gaming has become it is exclusively a digital ownership thing.

SPEAKER_08 2:26:35

Right.

SPEAKER_04 2:26:35

Right? And everyone's like, well, why is it okay with PC? Why isn't when it isn't a console? And the answer is that the PC is a is not a closed garden, right? Right.

SPEAKER_07 2:26:45

Right.

SPEAKER_04 2:26:46

If you lose, if like, you know, famously for a long time you couldn't buy Alan Wake, right?

SPEAKER_08 2:26:52

Right.

SPEAKER_04 2:26:52

Um, because of of uh you know licensing problems with the music. Um yeah, but you can always pirate it. Like that's why that is why piracy will never die, is because it's the only way to actually like maintain ownership of something if it gets taken from you, right? Like, yeah, Steam has been has been the go-to way to purchase video games for the last 20 years, I want to say, at this point.

SPEAKER_03 2:27:24

Pretty much.

SPEAKER_04 2:27:25

But that doesn't matter because, like, yeah, that's how you buy it if you want to give the people who made the video game money, but you also there's no chance of ever eternally losing access, unless it's like a you know, live service game, but that's a different bag of cats. Um you never hi, peanut. Oh, it's got home. He's excited. Um you never lose access to a thing that you want to play because you can just pirate it from somewhere on the internet, right?

SPEAKER_03 2:27:58

Yeah, or like let's say if Steam uh suddenly overnight just started being like really horribly anti-consumer in ways I've never done before. Like, I can buy a lot of the games I play on there on GOG or on Itchio, or if it somehow be magically became a better and more desirable platform, I could buy them on Epic a lot of the times. And like the reason why this works for Steam and not for PlayStation is because on my PC, A, Steam is not the only place I can get these things from. Right. Right. But also B, I will continue to have access to these things on future computers. Or past computers or other computers. There is not a box I have whose singular only purpose is to load into Steam and load my Steam library.

SPEAKER_04 2:28:49

Right. Like the question becomes, and I mean, you know, the the I mean, this is a hypothetical that will never come to pass because of how the gaming industry is going. But like, let's say the PlayStation 6, you know, comes out and in 20 years, you know, it comes out next year, and in 20 years you buy a PlayStation 6 and you want to like play those games, you have you literally have no means of buying of playing any of that shit.

SPEAKER_07 2:29:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 2:29:19

Because they're already like shutting down, they're finally for real shutting down the PS3 and Vita store, right?

SPEAKER_10 2:29:26

Right.

SPEAKER_04 2:29:27

So if it's just a box that you use to buy games and it the store for it ceases to exist in 20 years, what is the purpose of the box serves no purpose, you can't even watch movies on it. It's an old Roku.

SPEAKER_03 2:29:44

Can you imagine when GTA 6 comes out too and it's going to definitely have like mandatory connection to Rockstar's online services? There's a world where you got a PlayStation 6 and then bought GTA 6 on it for $100, and within five, 10 years of doing that, uh you just can't play that game anymore. Yeah, 100%.

SPEAKER_10 2:30:02

Yeah, by the way, I didn't put it in the news, but like they're not releasing a physical disc for GTA 6.

SPEAKER_04 2:30:08

No, they're not doing physical discs for GTA 6. It's all so you can spend the money on a plastic box so that you can with a piece of paper in it, which is fucking insane to me.

SPEAKER_10 2:30:20

$80.

SPEAKER_04 2:30:22

$800, actually. Because they're paywalling a bunch of con like literal content for GTA 6 behind the $100 version of the game.

SPEAKER_03 2:30:35

It's the thing that people were always bellyaching about in 7th gen that didn't really happen that often, right? But then it like to the most maximal extent possible.

SPEAKER_10 2:30:47

Like you know, collector's editions in the past are usually like, oh, it's a skin for your gun, like it's a handful of skins or like some background music or something, right? Like, whatever, no big deal. You know, if you want to cough up a little bit extra to get that, maybe some some physical dude ads, whatever. This is like they're cutting out stuff like character customization options and like vehicles and weapons.

SPEAKER_04 2:31:15

There's literally like quests and stuff that are being locked behind the behind the the collector's edition and finger quotes, you know? Like, it's absurd.

SPEAKER_03 2:31:29

And it's it's it's they want to sell a game for $100, but not say that they're selling a game for $100. So it's an $80 game with a $20 bonus for the collector's edition when in reality it's a $100 video game. Uh selling on a console which, like, despite wide adoption, has only been getting uh price increases across the board and has been seeing like significant reductions in the degree to which people engage with it. Uh and also well, that wall being maybe the most expensive video game ever made.

SPEAKER_01 2:31:59

Yep.

SPEAKER_03 2:32:00

So uh have fun, Rockstar, with whatever.

SPEAKER_01 2:32:02

We're gonna see how this goes. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 2:32:05

We gotta come back. You're not going you're you all you cannot physically sell enough within the fur within launch window to be in the black. So like have fun with that. Yeah. Good luck.

SPEAKER_04 2:32:16

It's gonna be awesome. Fingertick. This is awesome. It's gonna be awesome when Grand Theft Auto 6 comes out and is the best-selling video game of all time, and they still lay off half the staff who made it.

SPEAKER_10 2:32:29

Like, it's it's not gonna be this, but the game next game that thinks it can be GTA 6 is the Crash, right? Like that's that's gonna be it.

SPEAKER_04 2:32:40

The Crash is already here.

SPEAKER_10 2:32:42

But I mean, like it's gonna be like that's gonna be like the pivoting point.

SPEAKER_03 2:32:46

Yeah, for sure. I'm gonna like I'm gonna be real, like GTA 6 is gonna sell like 10 million in the first month, and it's literally not going to be enough, and they're going to lay people off.

SPEAKER_04 2:32:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 2:32:55

Yeah. Which is psychotic.

SPEAKER_04 2:32:57

Which is insane to me. Yeah, it's gonna be like the fastest best-selling game of all time. And because the game costs two billion dollars to make, it won't be enough, right? Like, it's gonna be crazy. So, you know, I uh I mean, but you know, the crash is already here. I mean, this is the crash, right?

SPEAKER_03 2:33:15

Like, okay, two billion dollar game. I wanna I wanna put this into perspective. Let's assume that Rockstar got literally 100% of those $100 collectors edition sales, and that everybody who bought the game would need to would buy those. They'd still need to sell 20 million units at that level to break even. Yeah, to break even. To break even. Oh my god. For a $2 billion video game, yeah. And even here's the thing: even if it was one billion dollars, we're still still talking about 10 million sales at $100 with full. Getting literally 100% of it to break even. It's simply not having like Sony's got Sony's taking like probably like what like a 30% share, 40%? Like the the game's the game's going to lose the money.

SPEAKER_10 2:34:14

I want to remind everyone that the PS5 itself has only sold 93 million units. Yeah, like they need to sell over 20% buy rate.

unknown 2:34:24

Oh.

SPEAKER_03 2:34:25

And that's assuming that everyone who bought it got the $100 version that Rockstar got literally every single pack of that. Right. Like, realistically, you're looking at something like an attach rate of like 40 plus percent of all PS5s literally ever sold to hit the black, much less to make money. So it's going great.

SPEAKER_04 2:34:49

Uh so video games are going great right now. Everything's cool. Don't worry about it.

SPEAKER_10 2:34:54

Once again, Nintendo wins by doing nothing.

SPEAKER_09 2:34:59

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_10 2:35:00

They're like, hey, when you buy, when you buy, like, even if even if it is just like a digital download, when you buy a Switch 2 game, it comes with the cart you put inside the console.

SPEAKER_03 2:35:12

Yeah. Like I'm like, I'm gonna be real, like, as much as like Nintendo is like a scummy company that I hate, it's also like you know that when they first were like Tears of the Kingdom's gonna cost $70, it was through, it was like not with the clenched teeth of charging you $70 for a video game. They have no compunctions with that, but through a clenched teeth of like, we didn't want to do this yet. But this is the first game that ever cost us like a single hundred million dollars to make. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I will say everything else we've we they've put out Pokemon games that cost less than 10 million, I'm sure. Yeah, you know? Most of them, yeah.

SPEAKER_10 2:35:52

I think I do think Nintendo is going to put out Fire Emblem at $80. And then they are never gonna put out another $80 game again.

SPEAKER_03 2:36:01

They're gonna go bad idea. The thing is, they're gonna continue to put they're gonna continue to put out $80 video games. As I recall, Mario Kart World was also $80. The problem is they're going to put out Fire Emblem uh Fortune's Weave at $80, and then they're never going to release another Fire Emblem game. That's also possible.

SPEAKER_00 2:36:16

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 2:36:17

That thing's gonna move like optimistically 125,000 units.

SPEAKER_00 2:36:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_10 2:36:22

Yeah, Mario Kart did have the have the bonus of coming of you could buy that with a Switch Switch 2 and get that game for $50. So that's why it worked, but like I think they're they're trying that again with Fire Emblem and not realizing people only got Mario Kart because it came with a Switch.

SPEAKER_02 2:36:37

No one's showing up for Fortune's Weave for $80. Certainly the fuck not.

SPEAKER_03 2:36:41

That that game better suck my dick for $80. I'm sorry. Like Fire Emblem's cool, but that is not that fun of a strategy, RPG.

SPEAKER_10 2:36:48

But that's $20 a campaign. That's a good deal, right?

SPEAKER_03 2:36:53

I don't know, man. I got hundredline cost me $60 at launch, and it goes on sale for $30 frequently.

SPEAKER_04 2:37:00

Yeah, I uh by the way, I'm looking, I wanted to know, because a lot of video games the problem is that so much of post-COVID game development was built off the back of the fact that like video games sold a lot during COVID. Like, yeah, no shit, dude. Um nobody could go anywhere, they couldn't leave your house, right? So I was looking. So Fire Emblem Three Houses is the best-selling game in that franchise, of course. Makes sense. Game's pretty good. Um the other thing is that it came out in 2019. So it also got uh it almost certainly got a COVID bump as well. Like it sold well in 20, it came out in July of 2019, right? So pretty laid into it. And it sold well. I guarantee you a lot of those four million sales uh happened in 2020, you know?

SPEAKER_10 2:37:48

100%.

SPEAKER_04 2:37:49

So I feel like Fortune's Weave is as doomed as like the second Final Fantasy VII remake game that didn't that could never have sold in no even if that game had been better, right? There was no universe where it was gonna sell as well as the first FF7 remake because of the COVID bump, right?

SPEAKER_08 2:38:11

Right.

SPEAKER_04 2:38:11

I feel like that's gonna happen to Fortune's week as well. We shall see. But pairing the $80 price tag with the fact that it can never sell as well as Three Houses did, right? I feel like that game's boned.

SPEAKER_09 2:38:27

You know?

SPEAKER_04 2:38:28

Um, but we'll see. I mean, maybe it'll do great. Who knows? I the market's so weird right now.

SPEAKER_03 2:38:33

Look, look, Nintendo, I'm I'm a reasonable planet. Uh I know you put out that fire emblem engage game that sucked ass that nobody liked in it, but you do have that legally distinct Astolfo in there, and I'm just sort of like, maybe you just move them over to this new game. I'll consider it. I'll consider I'll consider Open90 for a legally distinct Astolfo.

SPEAKER_10 2:38:55

I'm imagining a world, by the way, where GTA 6 is the best-selling video game of all time. And Rockstar can't break even with it. Right? Like, no matter what it sells, it just doesn't work. Imagining a world where Fire Emblem Fortune's Weave is a total bomb, but somehow still makes Nintendo more money than Rockstar makes with Grand Theft Auto 6.

SPEAKER_03 2:39:25

Yeah, but yeah, they they outsource it to Namgo Ban to Namco Bandai or whoever. They made that game for like $50,000 tops.

SPEAKER_10 2:39:33

Well, we only sold like a hundred copies, but we uh doubled our profits for how much it costs to make.

SPEAKER_03 2:39:41

God, that is that is a peak. That that game shouldn't cost $80, not because of the lack of content or whatever, but because that game definitely didn't that game cost less than Claire Obscure to make it for sure.

SPEAKER_00 2:39:54

Yes.

SPEAKER_10 2:39:55

Listen, someone's gonna not me, but someone's gonna boot up Fortune's Weave and wander around a Hub City and go, wait a minute, this is just Garrick Mock. These are the exact same things.

SPEAKER_00 2:40:05

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_10 2:40:06

Wait a minute, I recognize this bush full of apples.

SPEAKER_03 2:40:09

I'm I'm gonna make a a a shocking and controversial uh statement of opinion here. If your game costs less than Claire Obscure Expedition 33, you have no business charging more than $50 for Nintendo.

SPEAKER_00 2:40:30

Yeah, no, I agree.

SPEAKER_10 2:40:32

How many times do we have to teach you this lesson, old man?

SPEAKER_00 2:40:35

Yeah, we'll see.

SPEAKER_03 2:40:37

I I am Claire Obscure Expedition 33 is the exact threshold at which you can begin to charge $60 for your video. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_04 2:40:44

And the fact that they charge $50 for their video game is like, oh, okay, well, that's reasonable, right? Like actually cheaper than I would expect. Like, good for you guys. Um, so yeah, no, we have to return. We have to return.

SPEAKER_10 2:40:56

I do hope Fortune's Weave becomes a 3DS situation where they go, sorry, sorry, sorry, it's 40 now. After like three three months after the game comes out, they're like, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, here it is.

SPEAKER_04 2:41:08

Here you go, here you go. Normal price, normal price video game. Just make it 60 bucks. Honestly, if you made it $60, it would, I mean, it'll move three times as much. I'd buy it. No, me too.

SPEAKER_10 2:41:20

This looks like a long, like a lengthy uh tactics RPG. I'd try it for 60.

SPEAKER_04 2:41:26

$60 is absolutely the value of that video game. I am not spending $80 on any video game, literally ever.

SPEAKER_10 2:41:35

No, listen, I've I've clenched my teeth and bought maybe more than I should have $70 games. I'm not $80, $80 is that $71 is my limit.

SPEAKER_04 2:41:49

I think I've spent embarrassingly, I spent $100 on Starfield. You know, shame, shame. Yeah, of course. We all did it. Um but the only other time I've spent $70 on a video game was Tears of the Kingdom. I'm pretty sure.

SPEAKER_03 2:42:10

And like, God love it. It it is m- it is a lot of Breath of the Wild, but it is also Tears of the Kingdom.

SPEAKER_06 2:42:19

Correct.

SPEAKER_03 2:42:19

Look, you That is a game that's probably you you look at the amount of things in that game and just go, yeah, you're fine.

SPEAKER_10 2:42:26

Tears of the Kingdom Tears of the Kingdom is probably the only video game I have played that justified being se like you look at the things I looked at things that I could build in that game and went, Yeah. Yeah, you can be 70.

SPEAKER_04 2:42:38

The physics wiz wizardry alone in Tears of the Kingdom is like, okay, you get to be $70. That's fine.

SPEAKER_03 2:42:44

Yeah, I've seen the game developers like, how the fuck did they do this for something that you don't really think about when you're playing it, but then you think about and they go, wait a minute, that's actually kind of crazy to pass.

SPEAKER_10 2:42:56

I remember building I remember building a paddle boat wrong and it fucked up and didn't work right.

SPEAKER_04 2:43:04

Yes.

SPEAKER_10 2:43:04

And I went, what do you mean you programmed it like that? What do you mean the physics are that like I have this off balance and the game doesn't go eh close enough?

SPEAKER_01 2:43:15

Right.

SPEAKER_03 2:43:16

My favorite, even more than the physics thing, is someone noting uh the uh music, the band uh NPCs you encounter in the stables, right? For that questline. That you know they'll be playing their music, and if you go up to them, they'll stop playing, and then they'll talk to you and they'll resume when they when where they left off. And they're like, you don't understand. They had to program the characters playing this note by note in sequence so that they could then remember where to stop and where to pick up when they're done with the conversation. Nobody does that.

SPEAKER_01 2:43:48

Nobody does that.

SPEAKER_03 2:43:48

Why did you do it?

SPEAKER_06 2:43:49

Psychopathic! Why did you make it that way?

SPEAKER_10 2:43:52

It's all those little things that you don't even you don't even realize are happening. It's yeah, it's that old adage of like of like, uh, hey game developer animators, we need you to design a an epic starship battle with 500 different spaceships all going at different speeds in different directions and like firing off lasers and missiles in all random areas. Yeah, sure, no problem, boss. Okay, in this scene, we need a woman to take something out of her purse. Impossible! It can't be done.

SPEAKER_07 2:44:20

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_10 2:44:22

If we maybe if we can hide her arms somehow, we can maybe pull it off.

SPEAKER_04 2:44:27

The the the thing about the the scene in Uncharted Four, I think, where Drake, in a single unbroken take, takes off one shirt and puts on another, buttons it up and puts on a tie. And that's the most magical piece of technology in uh in Uncharted 4, right?

SPEAKER_03 2:44:50

Just like everybody be like, How did you do that? If if you don't develop video games, you have no idea what a nightmare it is to depict someone picking up an object, very clearly holding it, and it not just hovering in their fingers, and then handing that object to someone else who then also carries it. Yes, exactly.

SPEAKER_04 2:45:14

Nightmare.

SPEAKER_03 2:45:14

There's a scene.

SPEAKER_10 2:45:16

There's a scene in Dead Island 2 where a character hands it picks up a gun and hands it to another character, and then someone in the comments was like, How the fuck did they do that?

SPEAKER_03 2:45:31

That's what that's what that 10 years of radio silence is for making that single animation work. And I remember I remember when they first announced uh The Last of Us 2, and there was that whole like that very long reveal for Last of Us 2, and there was a scene uh where uh Ellie kissed her uh romantic interest. Uh I forget if it was the one who is her girlfriend for the whole game or if it was just like a different character, I forget. But they were like, but I remember even on stage, but then also all the press being like, damn, that kiss looked like naturalistic. Yeah, that kiss looked real as fuck. Yeah. You saw the like the lips like made contact and had like volume deforms and shit. That's crazy. It's so it's because it's a huge pain in the ass to do in a video game.

SPEAKER_10 2:46:14

It's like I saw people like because there was also the scene in in Last of Us 2 where someone like takes off their shirt.

SPEAKER_04 2:46:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_10 2:46:20

And they're like, like, people were like, This is how the fuck did you do that? And then someone in the comments posted a clip of Dante from Devil May Cry 3 putting on his coat, and they're like, We've been doing this since the PS2. And it's like, no motherfucker, watch that again and look at how many times it cuts to what is clearly not Dante's model.

SPEAKER_04 2:46:38

Right. There's so many like tricks involved, yes.

SPEAKER_10 2:46:42

The reason they do the really cool cinematic thing where the camera's in Dante's sleeve and you see his arm come through the sleeve.

SPEAKER_06 2:46:48

It's so they can hide a cut to swap out the model.

SPEAKER_10 2:46:50

Yeah, is because that's all that model is is his arm and a do like a circle of sleeve.

SPEAKER_04 2:46:57

Yes. A fabric donut.

SPEAKER_10 2:46:59

Yeah, that's not a real that's not a real model. That's just an arm.

SPEAKER_00 2:47:04

So funny.

SPEAKER_03 2:47:06

It's like the only thing that Naughty Dog has going for them as a developer, is that they they have learned the techniques to do that dark science.

SPEAKER_10 2:47:14

Exactly. One day we'll get some we'll get someone besides Francis York Morgan to get under the covers in bed.

SPEAKER_00 2:47:21

No.

SPEAKER_10 2:47:22

It won't happen.

SPEAKER_00 2:47:23

It'll never happen.

SPEAKER_10 2:47:24

That's why that bed was so big, is so they had like easier physics to work with.

SPEAKER_04 2:47:30

All the physics just didn't break instantly. Absolutely. Christ.

SPEAKER_10 2:47:36

Okay, we've got some good news.

SPEAKER_00 2:47:38

Okay.

SPEAKER_10 2:47:39

Nolan North's Deadpool completes full Marvel Token Fighting Souls roster.

unknown 2:47:45

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 2:47:45

I did see this. I'm glad Deadpool does the Jack O pose. He does way more than that. Uh there's like a It's the one that I care about most.

SPEAKER_10 2:47:54

Uh so uh we saw Ghost Rider's team, uh, the Samurai Outrider, so it's Ghost Rider, Blade Loki, and Deadpool.

SPEAKER_04 2:48:03

It's so funny that we just can't get a blade game. We can't get a blade anything. We can't get a we can't get a blade movie. We can't get that blade game. And it's like, and then you see him in Tokon, and he's so cool.

SPEAKER_03 2:48:17

He's doing fragile shit! Arcsists are the only people who understand that the essence of blade is okay, here's this black guy. He has sunglasses, a cool coat, and a sword, and he fights vampires and it's sick as fuck.

SPEAKER_06 2:48:32

How is it so hard? Why can't we pull off?

SPEAKER_04 2:48:37

It's so simple. He's a black half vampire and he kills other vampires with a sword.

SPEAKER_10 2:48:44

You made three of these already! Two of them weren't even good!

SPEAKER_03 2:48:51

How do you fuck it up? Well, he he it he does he he does say some motherfuckers always be ice skate, ice skate uphill.

SPEAKER_10 2:49:01

God, he's like I'm watching the I'm watching the trailer and this is an Arxis game and he's doing fucking MPC3 Virgil shit. He's so cool!

SPEAKER_01 2:49:10

That's it's not hard. It's it's actually really easy.

SPEAKER_03 2:49:14

You Marvel, here's the secret technique. You're worried about like how do we make a blade game that's like a a triple A single player like action, whatever developed by Arcane. You don't need that. You can make uh the the scope of development that you need to make a cool blade game, you could sell the game for about $20.

SPEAKER_04 2:49:35

You I don't understand how how nobody is just like, we'll just make a devil may cry.

SPEAKER_10 2:49:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 2:49:43

Like literally, just make it doesn't need I mean, of course, because everybody has like triple A stars in their eyes, it can't be that simple. But like just make it a Devil May Cry. It does not have to be a souls like with like with like levels that wrap back in on themselves and are a bit more kind of exploratory, right? A blade game can just be a series of hallways with with vampire monsters in it that you fight. Do you and you it doesn't-that's it.

SPEAKER_03 2:50:13

It doesn't have to look any more realistic than literally No More Heroes 1. It's so You could just do a blade game that plays like No More Heroes!

SPEAKER_04 2:50:23

You could.

SPEAKER_03 2:50:23

Oh, that would be sick.

SPEAKER_04 2:50:24

That'd be so good.

SPEAKER_03 2:50:25

That would be that would be sick as fuck. I want I want to be a one-to-one clone because I do want uh extended segments of Blade just doing odd jobs around town because there's no vampires to kill at the moment.

SPEAKER_04 2:50:38

Yeah, you gotta wait for it to get dark because he's a half vampire, so he can do both, right? So in the day, he's gotta yeah, what's up?

SPEAKER_10 2:50:44

Sarah, you remember when we played, we played the fucking ghostwriter game? Yeah. It was so fucking good. It was so easy.

SPEAKER_04 2:50:50

Just make it a fucking Okay, so I need you guys to boot up your PS2 and go buy the Nicholas Cage fucking Ghost Rider game and go play that because it kicks ass.

SPEAKER_10 2:51:04

Unironically, one of the better Devil May Cry games out there.

SPEAKER_04 2:51:08

Like, extremely good Devil May Cry ripoff game. Like, and then I need you to take that and just make that. Just make that, but for a PlayStation 5. That's it. That's that's all we have to do.

SPEAKER_03 2:51:20

You don't you don't need Arcane to make Blade, they should be making like Prey Two or whatever. Yeah, you literally just go to Digital Extreme's office in Canada and go, we will give you about five million dollars to make a blade game. We don't care what you do with it as long as it's sick as fuck. And they will produce something that is worthy of the faith that you placed in them. Yeah. God, he's so they know how to cheaply make a very fast video game that's about doing cool shit with ninja swords.

SPEAKER_10 2:51:54

There's liter That's all you need. There's literally a shot in this trailer where he's he they're showcasing his moves and he's fighting Carnage, and he does like this this heavy vertical slash down, and the screen splits.

SPEAKER_04 2:52:06

That's cool. It's not hard. It's not hard, goddamn.

SPEAKER_10 2:52:10

It's not hard.

SPEAKER_04 2:52:11

Whatever.

SPEAKER_10 2:52:12

Um, so but in this, you see Nolan Orth's Deadpool shows up. And uh instead of doing just just fourth wall breaking, he so he f opens with saying, and time resumes, because in Japanese he's he shares a voice with Dio.

SPEAKER_04 2:52:28

Oh, okay. Then they're so funny.

SPEAKER_10 2:52:31

Yeah, they're like Dio, so like obviously we're gonna have him make the reference.

SPEAKER_04 2:52:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_10 2:52:35

He does Johnny Cage's groin punch with the splits. Um he he has Scorpion's spear and then spear into uppercut. Doesn't he have the shitty ass Mortal Kombat crouching low kick also? No, he does not have that, but he what he does have is he has uh Scorpion's uh weird A pose that he did in MK like the original Mortal Kombat when he did his fatality.

SPEAKER_01 2:53:00

So funny.

SPEAKER_10 2:53:01

Uh they've got the Jacko Crouch, obviously. He's what you need. He's got Vegeta's assist from fighters, where he he jumps in the air and does a beam spam, but it's him throwing down the PS1 Polygon head thing they tried to push as their mascot early on. So it's just him throwing those things. Um he's got Doctor Doom's foot die from Orl from MVC. Uh his his super with the Deadpool core is Mega Man's Final Smash.

SPEAKER_01 2:53:36

That's so funny.

SPEAKER_10 2:53:37

He's just pulling from everything. Like he's got other guilty gear characters, he's got Yoshimitsu's uh uh Seppuku attack from from uh Tekken, where he stabs himself with a sword to hit his opponent in the chest as well.

SPEAKER_01 2:53:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_10 2:53:54

He's got like it's every move is a reference.

SPEAKER_04 2:54:00

Man Good. I mean that's that's perfect. That's like that's the the that's the sauce you want.

SPEAKER_10 2:54:05

That's what you would want to do with Deadpool in this kind of game.

SPEAKER_03 2:54:07

Right, absolutely. The the more Deadpool ideally in a fighting game should as much as possible resemble a bizarre Mugen character, and so they they succeed 100%.

SPEAKER_10 2:54:20

Um so yeah, that's that's the whole base roster has been revealed now.

SPEAKER_04 2:54:26

Cool.

SPEAKER_10 2:54:26

Great character picks.

SPEAKER_04 2:54:28

How many characters does it come out to?

SPEAKER_10 2:54:30

Uh 20. 20 to start with.

SPEAKER_04 2:54:35

Well, that's pretty decent, yeah.

SPEAKER_10 2:54:36

And then you know, you can just do sets of four DLC packs, you know, every couple months or so or whatever.

SPEAKER_01 2:54:41

Yeah, absolutely. That's that's a very reasonable amount. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 2:54:44

I know, I know Hal in the Discord earlier was like, it it I'm I can't believe there's not a Fantastic Four team like in the launch roster, and it's like buddy.

SPEAKER_04 2:54:53

Oh buddy, that's the first thing they're gonna sell to you.

SPEAKER_03 2:54:56

Literal first sets $10 season pass they're gonna sell you or whatever is going to be the Fantastic Four team. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_10 2:55:02

Oh yeah, easily. Like that's just that's just that's that's a discussion they had day one discussing roster. They're like Fantastic Four, not DLC.

SPEAKER_00 2:55:10

That's DLC.

SPEAKER_10 2:55:11

Now that's too obvious. We're making them DLC.

SPEAKER_00 2:55:13

Yep.

SPEAKER_03 2:55:13

Now the thing that I want is for the the cuckaldry arc between uh Arxus, Marvel, and Capcom to come to the heartwarming conclusion where we can have I don't care which game it is, but I want Deadpool and Ingrid to be able to fight each other.

unknown 2:55:28

Yeah!

SPEAKER_10 2:55:30

God, please. God, imagine imagine if Deadpool gets to be in Street Fighter VI the next ro DLC.

SPEAKER_04 2:55:38

God, could you imagine as Tifa and Deadpool in the same game?

SPEAKER_03 2:55:43

They're not making Smash Brothers anymore, so now in Street Fighter VI you can have Tifa fight Deadpool.

SPEAKER_00 2:55:49

Yeah. Mm-hmm. Oh god.

SPEAKER_03 2:55:52

You know, the thing I'm I'm I'm really excited about for Tifa is because of the aside from, you know, Tifa. Of course. Tifa! Oh, Bant's beach!

SPEAKER_06 2:56:02

Oh, Miss Tifa!

SPEAKER_03 2:56:04

Is that part of the thing they do with those uh all those characters, even if they don't actually represent it in that mode, really? Is that every character they add, they're like, yeah, you can get them as a quote unquote trainer in single player mode and put their moves on your create a character. And so you could use like Tifa Materia moves on on your own vlog, which would be fun.

SPEAKER_07 2:56:29

Okay, what else?

SPEAKER_10 2:56:30

Monster looks great. Uh next Variety Persona Live Action Series in Development Netflix.

SPEAKER_03 2:56:40

This is the scariest news this week.

SPEAKER_04 2:56:43

Uh this, I'm pointing at the stands. It's not even gonna make it out of pre-production.

SPEAKER_03 2:56:48

Here's the here's I I hope you're right, Sarah, because here's the thing that scares me about it. The showrunner and lead writer, and also main production company, this isn't a Japanese live-action persona. These are the production companies that worked on stranger things.

SPEAKER_04 2:57:04

Yeah, no, it's the guys who make like that shitty uh uh the net 911 show that sucks ass, and everybody like everybody's boomer parents are obsessed with. Like, no, I am playing stance. This will not exist, mark my words. If it does, I I don't I'm sorry, I don't know what I'll do.

SPEAKER_03 2:57:23

But what if white persona that's called Scooby-Doo?

SPEAKER_00 2:57:28

Yeah, that's just called Scooby-Doo.

SPEAKER_03 2:57:30

Well, yeah, I mean it's a production company, but it was partly responsible for stranger things. We are familiar. So I They They know how to make white Scooby-Doo.

SPEAKER_04 2:57:37

I I don't know. In a in a if we lived in a cooler timeline where this wasn't being made by the people who made fucking Nashville 911, um it it could be interesting, you know, having a persona story set in like an American town is conceptually interesting, right? That is the that is the most rope I will give it. Um this this um like there there could be some sauce there, but as it stands, no, there's no universe where it's good, there's no universe where it gets made, or if it does get made where it has any sauce at all, right?

SPEAKER_10 2:58:17

Yeah, we're we're looking we're looking at a Death Note situation.

SPEAKER_04 2:58:21

It's a hundred percent a Death Note situation. Yes.

SPEAKER_10 2:58:23

If yeah, if this even comes to existence at all.

SPEAKER_04 2:58:27

And I really were like, you know, it just says persona live action series.

SPEAKER_10 2:58:32

Like people are like, so is it adapting three, four, or five? It's like none. It's there's no way it's adapting any of the games.

SPEAKER_03 2:58:40

Doing an original thing is the only way the show could possibly be decent.

SPEAKER_04 2:58:45

Yeah, like there's no other way, especially because like there's no like there's no universe where it's an all-Japanese cast, right? Like that just won't happen.

SPEAKER_03 2:58:56

No, are you are you gonna show me Timothy Chalamet and tell me his name is Arisato Minato? Like, no, you're not. Fuck off. That would be Psycho.

SPEAKER_04 2:59:03

So like the only way is if it's like I mean in my head, the show that that gets made, but again, it's not gonna get made, is a show that is called Persona and is kind of vaguely pulling from ideas from like every persona game, right? So like there's a group of kids murder mystery because four is like extremely popular, right? But like maybe set it in a city instead, so it's like persona five, you know what I'm saying? Yeah, like I feel like that's what happens. Um and in in like capable hands, that would be cool, but it's not gonna be in anybody's capable hands, right?

SPEAKER_03 2:59:44

Yeah, I I mean, I okay, I will say, and this is a scary part to me. Um you could do a really good live-action TD TV adaptation of Persona 4 specifically, because it would just be Twin Peaks, but if the entire cast was in high school.

SPEAKER_06 3:00:01

Yeah, see.

SPEAKER_03 3:00:02

Like you literally just had the high schoolers and they had to be the ones doing the entire story.

SPEAKER_04 3:00:06

Yeah, that's that's the plot of Persona 4, yeah. Like Yeah, you that could be good, but that won't, that's not what we're gonna get.

SPEAKER_03 3:00:14

They're not gonna make that, though, because they're the production company behind National 991, it's Stranger Things.

SPEAKER_10 3:00:19

Also, no matter what we're gonna get, it's like it's gonna be they go into a fake world, and it looks just like the original city that it's filmed in.

SPEAKER_04 3:00:36

Yeah, but with like a but with like a filter, yeah, over it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_10 3:00:41

Um, and you're gonna see those personas in the first episode and the last episode.

SPEAKER_04 3:00:50

I but I think is I don't even think they would fool with genuine personas. Like if I and I'm saying this as like uh if like you had to have me write a script, I think if I was going to do like an American persona thing, you would find a way to abstract it, right? Yeah, instead, because like it just doesn't work in live action, you right specifically the CG models to make them look like even acceptable, not even good, just like acceptable. That budget is way too high for a Netflix show, right? You're not the one piece show, only One Piece can get away with this shit, right? So, like, I don't know, I would find a way to abstract it, I think.

SPEAKER_03 3:01:37

I think the way I would do it, similar pitch, okay. We're doing a Netflix special length adaptation of Persona 4, it's a high school or murder mystery.

SPEAKER_05 3:01:45

Sure.

SPEAKER_03 3:01:46

I get a different production company. I specifically get the people who make all those tokusatsu shows.

SPEAKER_04 3:01:53

Ideally, yes.

SPEAKER_03 3:01:55

And because they they have they already know how to perfectly manage the balance of some some physical stuff and then lots of kind of bad-looking CGI to make something that moves fast enough that it doesn't look terrible. Sure. And that's like the only way you make the personas actually work.

SPEAKER_04 3:02:14

Right. I don't know. I feel like you yeah, you would have to, you would have to really abstract, and I mean this, you know, this is in mind like trying to think like an American TV producer, not like somebody trying to make a faithful adaptation of persona.

unknown 3:02:31

Right.

SPEAKER_04 3:02:31

But if you wanted to like make it like an American TV, but could still potentially be good, right? Like you you you'd have to find a way to make the persona more nebulous.

SPEAKER_08 3:02:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 3:02:45

Without having to spend too much on a CG budget, right? I don't know. Like I think it could be It's either that or they're all Mothman. Or they're all Mothman, and that would be two.

SPEAKER_03 3:02:56

Oh, okay. Uh guy whose name I forget, who works at the production company, it sucks. Listen to me. I know you're listening to this podcast.

SPEAKER_00 3:03:04

Please, please, please contribute to the Patreon. Thank you very much.

SPEAKER_03 3:03:07

The thing that will make this show good no matter what other qualities it has, is if you have someone in a practical effects Jack Frost costume.

SPEAKER_06 3:03:20

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_03 3:03:21

If you get like one of those Japanese-style mascot costumes that's like got like the big stubby limbs and whatever, and it's just Jack Frost who's like five feet tall, that show would be good as fuck.

SPEAKER_10 3:03:34

I'm just uh I'm just remembering uh the live action Diamond is Unbreakable. And that's a good example of how it just doesn't work.

SPEAKER_04 3:03:47

No. So I don't know, but I mean it's not gonna be good. No, no, no. It's not gonna be good. Um and it's not gonna exist. So don't worry about it. This is a a moot point.

SPEAKER_10 3:04:00

Speaking of things that won't exist.

SPEAKER_01 3:04:02

Oh no.

SPEAKER_10 3:04:04

So you thought it was bad at Sony, but don't worry, Microsoft's coming in too. Xbox got to close Dishonored and Blade Studio Arcane and cuts. So that blade that blade game ain't coming up.

SPEAKER_03 3:04:16

Wait, they're closing normal arcane too?

SPEAKER_04 3:04:19

Sounds like it.

SPEAKER_11 3:04:21

Fuck me.

SPEAKER_04 3:04:22

No.

unknown 3:04:24

Fuck me.

SPEAKER_11 3:04:25

What a fucking waste.

SPEAKER_04 3:04:27

What a disaster. What is the what is the saying? Um Sony is run by people who would rain.

SPEAKER_03 3:04:36

Who would drown so drown in the rain.

SPEAKER_04 3:04:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 3:04:39

However, however, Microsoft is run by the uh five years running world champion of slamming their own dick in a card basically how the rest of that goes.

SPEAKER_10 3:04:49

It's it is just it is just that fucking Simpsons bit where they crash the Democratic and Republican parties. Yeah. And it's we want what's worse for everyone versus we can't govern.

SPEAKER_00 3:05:00

Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. We hate everything. We can't make video games.

SPEAKER_03 3:05:04

It is insane to me that we're living in a world where in September, the Switch 2 is going to cost as much as the PlayStation 5 cost at launch. Yeah. Right? And somehow, despite this, Nintendo wins by doing nothing.

SPEAKER_06 3:05:25

Crazy.

SPEAKER_03 3:05:26

Nintendo is selling you a PlayStation 4 for the cost of a PlayStation 5, and yet they're the least of three evils.

SPEAKER_06 3:05:33

That's it.

SPEAKER_03 3:05:35

They they they they literally threw the court sentenced a guy to a lifetime of slavery. Yeah. And yet.

SPEAKER_04 3:05:44

And yet yet. They're the ones who are fucking it up the least somehow.

SPEAKER_10 3:05:50

They are still Mr. Krabs.

SPEAKER_04 3:05:52

They're the least reprehensible of the three. Because even with all of this, a thing that isn't in the news but does need to be brought up, even with all of this, with the industry in shambles, with sales down pretty much across the board because nobody wants to pay $70 for a video game and everybody's lives are too expensive. Sales are down. Um the consoles are all way too expensive, all of these mitigating circumstances. Even then, Nintendo has yet to do mass layoffs.

SPEAKER_03 3:06:23

Yeah, which is insane. Now I have heard, and this is a a factor in it, and to be fair, I do think Nintendo is smart enough not to do this, and they have like also made public commitments to increasing their investment in like you know, new hires and and what all, and maintaining their talent, uh, which is, you know. Wow, a video game company make uh investing money in keeping their talent crazy. Shocking. Um but I will say what does make a significant difference was pointed out to me, is that Nintendo and all of its developers are entirely based in Japan.

SPEAKER_07 3:07:03

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 3:07:03

Yes, which has significantly stricter laws about your ability to fire people at will. Right. Or for no particular reason. So that does you know make a difference.

SPEAKER_04 3:07:14

It does make a difference, but you know, would that I mean, even still, like they still manage to like, I mean, they're still making money hand over fist, even without mass layoffs, even without, you know, like I think they even handed out bonuses, you know?

SPEAKER_03 3:07:31

Yeah, that was that was part of what I was talking about, is they were talking about like recently everyone's like, yeah, that we're we're spending more money to make sure that the people who actively work here stay here and it's working here.

SPEAKER_10 3:07:42

Even if it's even if it is like required of them to not you know go through these layoffs, like they're still not trying to wriggle their way out of it.

SPEAKER_08 3:07:51

Right.

SPEAKER_10 3:07:52

You know, they're like, oh, we can't we can't lay you off, so you still work here.

SPEAKER_04 3:07:57

Yeah, okay. It's crazy to me. I don't know. It's just like wow, it doesn't, it doesn't actually have to be this way, but because of the nature of of game development, specifically in big companies in the West, like of course it's this way, right? That's all it that's what it boils down to, you know? Right. Um, and it's just it's fucking crazy to me. Like, we don't have to be doing this, but we are for what? Right? Like it's very bizarre to me.

SPEAKER_10 3:08:30

It is just like I was thinking about this the other day because like we were actually talking about it like in at at work, is the uh the Peter Peter principle.

SPEAKER_07 3:08:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_10 3:08:37

Which which is that idea of like eventually you can get promoted to a point where you are ineffective at your job because you are promoted beyond your skill level, right?

SPEAKER_01 3:08:48

Yeah, oh yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_10 3:08:49

And that's just the industry now. Yeah, is that we have we have evolved, like consoles and video games in general have like evolved, like triple A especially, have evolved to a point where it's no longer sustainable and people aren't good enough to develop games at the level that they think they need to be at now. Yeah, like it's not it's not tenable.

SPEAKER_04 3:09:12

Yeah, it's I mean it's just wild out there. It's I mean, you know.

SPEAKER_10 3:09:17

It and it was it was that like playing Star Fox on stream and thinking about the Kingdom Hearts 4 trailer of like, well, yeah, when it has to be on the Switch 2, it means you have to cut back, which means you can finish the game.

SPEAKER_05 3:09:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 3:09:35

It's it's so crazy that Nintendo was right to insist on the we're making our console on outdated hardware paradigm and then double down on it for the Switch 2.

SPEAKER_04 3:09:44

It was continue to be the most vindicated possibly any company has ever been ever. And I hate it. I hate it.

SPEAKER_03 3:09:55

The Switch, the Switch 1 having like a fucking eight or nine year life cycle was of nightmare because it was out of date when it came out, and everything like you could barely get a Pokemon game to run at 30 frames per second. It's Pokemon, man. And they were right to do it. Yeah, and it pisses me off.

SPEAKER_10 3:10:16

Now that they've finally caught up to what is the actual hard limit of development, and they're gonna stay there.

SPEAKER_00 3:10:24

Yeah.

unknown 3:10:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 3:10:25

They're like, oh, oh, you who you come crawling back to Nintendo, eh? Look who was right all along. Don't look at the Wii U.

SPEAKER_03 3:10:38

That's like one of the main reasons I ended up like breaking down and getting a Switch 2, besides the bundle with Pacopia, to be like, you know, Nintendo first party games never go on sale. That $50 is the cheapest you're ever getting Picopia, let's be realistic. But also, like, I already got a PC, and the PS4 is realistically the maximum degree of hardware that any game I ever want to play is actually going to run on. And I don't need a PS5 or a PS6. So I guess it's just gonna be Switch 2 for the next 20 years. I guess.

SPEAKER_04 3:11:18

Yeah, kinda.

SPEAKER_03 3:11:20

Nintendo's going to be the first company to be like, we've made the Switch 3 the next in our thing, and it's going to have identical hardware.

SPEAKER_06 3:11:28

It'll just be.

SPEAKER_04 3:11:30

I mean, I mean, because truly, what do you even do? Like, what does Nintendo even do after the Switch 2? I mean, it just came out, so we got plenty of time to think about it. Right. But like, what do you even do after the Switch 2? Because, like, yeah, like we've kept saying, well, playing Star Fox, video games don't need to look any better than this. Again, Autumn Knight is the most beautiful video game I've ever played in my life, and it came out 11 years ago now.

SPEAKER_03 3:11:52

You know what you do with the game. Star Fox looks as good as anything that came out on the fucking PS5, and even if you can notice the places where it's like, oh, this hair is like these all these planes or the polygons here or whatever, it's like it doesn't make it look bad though. Yeah. That game looks good as fuck.

unknown 3:12:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 3:12:08

I uh the lighting is beautiful, the models are gorgeous. Like, what else do you want?

SPEAKER_04 3:12:13

It runs butter fucking smooth. Like, what else do you what else do you need from a video game, right?

SPEAKER_10 3:12:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 3:12:20

It's crazy.

SPEAKER_10 3:12:21

I know what they do for the Switch 3.

SPEAKER_00 3:12:23

What do you do for the Switch 3?

SPEAKER_10 3:12:25

It's the uh Switch 3 DS. Shut up. You just make it a really big ass fucking DS. They're never doing it.

SPEAKER_03 3:12:35

Fuck on it. They're never doing it. They'll never do it. I I genuinely think realistically, because of the hardware apocalypse, there's a world where Nintendo's like, what if we just continue to sell the Switch 2 forever?

SPEAKER_04 3:12:48

Yeah, like I mean, until conditions improve, and at this point, I it doesn't look like that's gonna happen for a really long time. Like you just, I mean, you feasibly just sell the Switch 2, which is already like one of the fastest selling consoles of all time, right? Um, I think it's only behind like the Game Boy advance in terms of number of units moved in the amount of time since release, right? Like, I don't I don't know the exact numbers, but it's basically it's been selling extremely well, right? There's a universe where they just sell this thing for 10 years and it becomes the best-selling console of all time by like an insane margin. It's the first thing to ever blow the PS2 out of fucking water, right? Yeah, like first console to ever sell 300 million units, right?

SPEAKER_03 3:13:38

Like I remember even for the Switch 1, which was a world where Nintendo had competition, uh, which isn't going to be true for much longer. No, like there was a like it took them seven years and like over a hundred million units sold, like I think 120, 130 million, where they're finally like in an investor call. Like, we think we're finally starting to get close to market saturation.

SPEAKER_04 3:14:01

They are, yeah, no. The Switch, the Switch 1 is, I want to say, the second or third best-selling console. It's up there. It's extremely high up there. The best one continues to be, and borrowing, like, you know, a radical shift in pricing, uh, will probably always be the PlayStation 2, I think. Let me look.

SPEAKER_03 3:14:22

I will say it is funny for the PlayStation 2, is that I remember being around for whenever the Switch 1 would kind of get close, uh, they would revise the PS2 sales numbers uh to be higher because they're like, we we uh found some more. We we we went over our list, our things, and actually we were wrong about the sales numbers. Yeah. They're uh 10 or 20 million higher than last time we reported.

SPEAKER_04 3:14:42

I will say the Switch 2 came is within sniffing distance um according per Wikipedia. Uh the PlayStation 2 sold 160 million units, which is fucking bonkers. The Switch 1 has sold 155 million units.

SPEAKER_03 3:15:00

So there's a reasonable chance they could get there.

SPEAKER_04 3:15:05

I mean, I think the Switch 2 I mean considering again.

SPEAKER_03 3:15:09

The Nintendo Switch has sold has outsold the Nintendo DS. That's crazy.

SPEAKER_04 3:15:14

Crazy.

SPEAKER_03 3:15:16

That's Psycho. The DS sold 154 million.

SPEAKER_04 3:15:19

Yeah. So it's um, I think, like with this whole hardware apocalypse, right? Like I if anything could do it, granted, gaming as a whole, as like a hobby, is on a downswing because um, and I don't I don't mean to be like kids these days, but you know, the children, their brains have been melted by the roblox and by drugs, right? Um so like gaming as a hobby is kind of on a downswing. Um because you know, video games are expensive and inaccessible to a lot of people because of the pricing of consoles and shit like that. Um but I still think, even with all that in mind, um the the Switch 2 probably could become the best-selling console of all time.

SPEAKER_03 3:16:11

It's on the way there already for having come out last year. It sold uh nearly 20 million units already.

SPEAKER_04 3:16:17

Yeah, and that's literally last year. So, you know.

SPEAKER_03 3:16:21

It's within spitting distance of outselling the GameCube.

SPEAKER_04 3:16:24

Yeah. So, you know.

SPEAKER_03 3:16:26

For the GameCube's entire life space.

SPEAKER_04 3:16:30

Yeah, so we'll see. I mean, there is a universe truly where the where the Switch 2 is just the thing Nintendo sells for the next 10 years. Yeah. Maybe they eventually put out that OLED version, you know?

SPEAKER_03 3:16:43

You know what else it's within spitting distance of, actually?

SPEAKER_04 3:16:46

What?

SPEAKER_03 3:16:47

It's only it's less than 9 million units away from outselling the Xbox series.

SPEAKER_00 3:16:54

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_03 3:16:56

Which in its six years has only sold 28.3 million units.

SPEAKER_04 3:17:02

Wow. I can't believe that PS5 washed the series this hard.

SPEAKER_03 3:17:08

Oh, I mean, I can crazy the series.

SPEAKER_04 3:17:11

It's true.

SPEAKER_03 3:17:12

The problem with the series is that they had this idea where it's like, well, what if we had a good one and a shit one, and we had to make games that run on both, so you could just get the shit one, and then the problem was that like the shit one sucked ass and nothing ran on it. Yeah. And also you were like the other thing that I know about Microsoft is they had this thing of like, well, if you want to put your game on our on our platform, you have to be able, you have to like tell, you have to like promise us it will sell this many units, otherwise we'll penalize you monetarily. And we'll like demand that you owe us money if your game doesn't sell.

SPEAKER_07 3:17:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 3:17:47

And so it's like, why the fuck would you ever, especially when no one owns that shit in Japan? And very clearly, no one owns it elsewhere. It hasn't even broke 30 million.

unknown 3:17:55

God.

SPEAKER_03 3:17:55

God, putting it like it has it is you know what outsold this Xbox. The Atari 2600.

SPEAKER_00 3:18:03

Rice. Oh my god. Okay. Oh my god. What else do we have?

SPEAKER_10 3:18:09

Two more smaller ones here.

SPEAKER_00 3:18:11

Okay, okay.

SPEAKER_10 3:18:12

Quote: We're going to regret that decision. Uh D-brand cancels its companion cube Steam Machine case after Valve demands it.

SPEAKER_06 3:18:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_10 3:18:22

Yeah. You shouldn't have done that, idiot.

SPEAKER_06 3:18:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 3:18:28

You're telling me that you use someone else's IP without getting permission and they they told you to knock it off?

SPEAKER_04 3:18:33

I mean Valve is very cool and permissible about a lot of things, right? Yeah. Especially when it comes to kind of the greater Half-Life universe. They're very chill about they're very chill about partnerships, about fan-made merch, you know. Um, but you can't basically go and say like, yeah, this is our official companion cube computer thingy when it's not official.

SPEAKER_10 3:19:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 3:19:04

You can't do you can't you can't do that, guys.

SPEAKER_06 3:19:08

That's not how the name is works.

SPEAKER_10 3:19:10

You can't sell a product with someone else's IP on it.

SPEAKER_01 3:19:16

No.

SPEAKER_10 3:19:17

You especially when the thing you're selling it for is a case for that company's product.

SPEAKER_00 3:19:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_10 3:19:28

Like you don't you you you just punched a cop.

unknown 3:19:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 3:19:34

Like, don't I mean, don't. I mean you should, but don't. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_03 3:19:40

Like Ethically, morally.

SPEAKER_04 3:19:43

Ethically, morally, yes, you should do it. Ethically and morally, it should be fine to sell a case for the for the for the steam machine. Yeah. Steam machine.

SPEAKER_03 3:19:54

Ipies fake, suck my nuts, I'm putting Mickey Mouse on my on my child's coffee, right?

SPEAKER_06 3:19:57

That's correct. That being said, yes, there will be repercussions.

SPEAKER_10 3:20:04

The keyword you should be able to do that.

SPEAKER_06 3:20:08

Right, but you can't.

SPEAKER_10 3:20:11

And this isn't even like a form of protest or anything like that. It's just like, you did something really stupid.

SPEAKER_00 3:20:20

Oh my god. Uh it's very funny though. Good for them. Yeah. For being idiots.

SPEAKER_10 3:20:27

Uh, yeah, no, just this is like it's been a while since we've gotten something there where it's just like it's this blatant.

SPEAKER_08 3:20:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_10 3:20:34

You know? Uh in fact, our last article is about something that was also very blatantly illegal to do. Crassen agrees to pay subnautica two bonuses as developer CEO resigns.

SPEAKER_04 3:20:52

Yeah, baby, it means everybody's getting paid.

SPEAKER_10 3:20:56

Everyone gets the bonus, not just the uh co-founder, like the CEOs.

SPEAKER_04 3:21:00

That's awesome.

SPEAKER_03 3:21:00

And now the co-founder's like, now that I've gotten my bag, I'm leaving because I got my bag.

SPEAKER_04 3:21:05

I don't want to be with these people like working for these ghouls who are trying to rob me of my bag. That sounds bad and not fun. So he got his bag. Everybody else at the Subnautica do devs are getting paid as well. It's a happy the rare happy ending.

SPEAKER_03 3:21:22

I know. And uh uh uh like a fucking publisher Mega Mega Corp that I hate is also being forced to pay for it out of their own pocket.

SPEAKER_06 3:21:32

Correct.

SPEAKER_03 3:21:33

Next this'll happen to Tencent or maybe Nexon or whoever. Oh, could you imagine?

SPEAKER_04 3:21:39

Fuck, I would love it would I would love to see fucking like NetEase or Tencent or Nexon, any of those fuckers have to pay out like a $200 million bonus, right?

SPEAKER_10 3:21:52

God.

SPEAKER_04 3:21:53

God, I can only dream. No, I'm very this is a this is a feel-good story all around because not only did the CEOs get their bag, not only did every dev at Subnautica get their bag, not only does Crafted get fucked in the process. But Subnautica 2 is also a huge success. It sold 4 million copies already. It it's a happy story all around.

SPEAKER_07 3:22:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 3:22:24

Justice once everyone lives.

SPEAKER_10 3:22:28

We finally got an unambiguously good thing.

SPEAKER_04 3:22:34

I love it. We love we love to end the night on an unambiguous W for everyone involved except for the people who don't deserve it. Awesome.

SPEAKER_10 3:22:46

The industry may be on fire, but sometimes that can warm your hands.

SPEAKER_04 3:22:51

Just this once. Everyone lives. Happy ending.

SPEAKER_10 3:22:59

Well, alright, folks. We did it.

SPEAKER_04 3:23:03

Get us out of here. I did not mean to spend three and a half hours on this podcast.

SPEAKER_10 3:23:07

Well, we spent an hour and a half of that talking about.

SPEAKER_04 3:23:09

Sorry, talking about Arkham Knight.

SPEAKER_06 3:23:11

It wasn't my fault! I mean, it was explicitly my fault, but shut up!

SPEAKER_02 3:23:17

I was gonna say, well, it wasn't my fault.

SPEAKER_10 3:23:21

Two out of three podcasts uh didn't talk about Arkham Knight. Well, I didn't talk about Arkham Knight.

SPEAKER_03 3:23:28

Well, to be fair, Ben, you did you did contribute a little bit? This is only at most two-thirds Sarah's fault.

SPEAKER_10 3:23:44

All right, crap. That'll do it for us. Uh thank you to DJ Cutman Fuser Background Music. Email us at thegorgepodcast at gmail.com. Follow us on all our social medias. Uh join our Discord, uh, patreon.com slash thegorge. Listen to our other TTRPG, the reboot.

SPEAKER_08 3:24:03

That's right.

SPEAKER_03 3:24:03

We're getting to I mentioned at the beginning of the thing, we're getting to that. Uh we're going to be recording the first episode of that spin-off very soon. And then that'll be uh I I haven't committed to a length yet, but I'm thinking like, I don't know, like five or six missions. Okay.

SPEAKER_10 3:24:19

Uh and then eventually also keep uh keep a close eye out for uh uh Attention Bajoran Workers, our DS9 review cast.

SPEAKER_01 3:24:31

It'll have someday.

SPEAKER_10 3:24:32

That will last quite a while.

SPEAKER_03 3:24:35

That will happen whenever you uh like get in my DMs and put a gun to my head, like Saturn, we're recording this on whatever day I need you to re-watch the first two episodes of Voyager. So you you just have to tell me when we're doing that, and I will I will uh moan and cry as I uh comply.

SPEAKER_10 3:24:54

Yeah. It won't be that much crying though, because DS9's really good.

SPEAKER_03 3:24:57

Well, yeah.

SPEAKER_10 3:24:58

Um having to sit down to do anything, right? Uh right, so that'll do it for us then.

SPEAKER_03 3:25:05

Uh fuck Ben's friend Dave.

SPEAKER_07 3:25:07

Fuck you, Dave!

SPEAKER_03 3:25:09

I'm I'm gonna be hearing about these trail games for the next two years, and then my my two beautiful friends are going to tell me, no, Saturn, it's okay. You don't have to play them. But then I will continue to listen to them talk about it.

SPEAKER_10 3:25:24

Yeah, we're gonna So I'm fucked either way. Thanks, Dave. We're gonna be like, hey, let's let's talk about the new trails game, and then we're gonna hear Saturn get up from their chair.

SPEAKER_00 3:25:35

I gotta go, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 3:25:37

Like, like, I don't smoke, but I'm going to get a soundboard that has a bong lighting SFX on it so I can play it the instant trails and talk to me.

SPEAKER_06 3:25:49

Oh shit.

SPEAKER_00 3:25:51

Fucking fucking Dave.

SPEAKER_09 3:25:56

All right, good night, everyone. Good night.