0:12

Alright, hello everybody and welcome

0:14

to Access the Blood God, an RPG

0:16

podcast where I, Naughty Oxford, have been

0:19

thrust into the spotlight as the host

0:21

at kind of the last minute, so

0:23

we're just going to be careening like

0:25

there's a bumblebee in the car. So

0:31

I'm going to do my best. Everyone's going to do their

0:33

best. Kat's not here. She went out to get cigarettes again.

0:35

She really got to give that up. So

0:37

for now, I've got one

0:39

of my co-hosts here, the lovely Eric

0:42

Van Allen, who is not feeling so well today. I'm

0:44

going to get through it. Don't worry. We're

0:47

going to fight through this illness and just

0:49

really turn on the

0:51

gas and produce a podcast

0:53

and I will die afterwards. Kind

0:55

of like an octopus, just kind of you live,

0:58

you die, you mate, you die. You

1:00

live, you make a podcast, you die. What a way to go, you know?

1:02

That's how I want to go as an octopus. Why

1:05

are octopi sentient? That's all I do. Anyway,

1:08

I'll talk about animals some other time. Let's

1:10

talk to our special guest and say, hi, Jesse

1:12

Vitale. How's it going? Thanks

1:14

for having me. Oh, thanks for being here.

1:16

This is like going to be fun.

1:19

So I, we are

1:22

going to. Talk all about.

1:26

Question mark. I'm

1:28

Ron Burgundy. We

1:32

are going to talk Dragon's dogma, too. We are

1:34

going to talk a little bit about visions of

1:36

mana or impressions of that. Not mine. I didn't

1:38

get to play, but Eric and Jesse did. And

1:41

we'll probably talk about the card

1:43

game. I keep mispronouncing. Baltero,

1:49

Velato, Velato. There.

1:51

Balto. Balto. Was

1:54

that the name of the husky? Balatro. Balatro.

1:57

Balatro. The shit with the jokers. Okay,

2:00

so. Let me the new

2:02

name. Is

2:04

your Phuket? It's. Ah, right? So

2:07

ah apparently he like this podcast are supposed

2:09

to give us money through their feces. And

2:11

just go to plugah.com for such patriarch

2:13

of no sorry. Patriot. Dot com

2:15

far flash floods, ipod. Or your l

2:17

his love of God Potter. Everything is blood God Pond

2:19

if you want to give us something good. Of

2:22

communicate with us. Blood. Gods Hot is

2:24

probably your in my Twitter and Blue Sky

2:26

is now you're offered. I'm really trying to

2:28

get off twitter. It's. Got.

2:30

To the point where okay, the train wrecks Not funny.

2:32

Anymore. It's more dangerous than anything, so

2:34

I think I'm going instead. So Blue

2:36

sky? All of that. I'm not a

2:39

oxford. Go ahead and follow me if

2:41

you like. Eric can. Be found. It

2:43

seems to see that as he A

2:45

M O S I. I.

2:47

Never imitating the Midwestern accent when you do

2:49

that. I in and it has not Can

2:51

argue that the have I knew what was

2:53

your email us or you're you're You're elegant

2:56

Whatever how it exists I do not contact

2:58

me not just getting it's as if you

3:00

to savage as if I tell ya find

3:02

me. That's like most of my the handles

3:04

are just my name. All

3:07

right he time my name and google I got the best

3:09

as he a result of any Jesse by telly out there.

3:11

so. Our months I've gradually since.

3:13

The stage God knows

3:16

so. ah. Yeah Also if

3:18

you want to support as the ten

3:20

dollars other we have Pantheon episodes for

3:22

you. Pantheon of the Blood God where

3:24

be Determined is the best as the

3:26

best in terms of Rpgs. This

3:29

coming up certainly ability during our discussion as

3:31

sleek it into and I think we all

3:33

know where that's going to wind up. flat.

3:35

It's wicked and. Goddamn. To well

3:37

on talked about it. Do we have a

3:39

winner for the next panting yet air. Arm,

3:41

I believe it ends on

3:44

these thirtieth today. Yes, so.

3:46

Are, we do have a winner

3:49

and by a narrow margin, Mirada

3:51

Moto has emerged victorious over Easy

3:53

Lacquer most of daughter to become

3:55

our Pantheon pick. not lose

3:58

it was neck and neck for

4:00

a while. I think it was like

4:02

five-fourths apart at some point. Holy crap.

4:05

Yeah. So, ease is definitely

4:08

a hot topic. We will certainly be

4:10

revisiting Mr. Adol, who has

4:13

the unfortunate name in the future. The

4:16

thing I was hearing from the people, you know, I

4:18

have a ear to the ground, you know, I listen

4:20

to the people and the people listen to me. Yeah,

4:24

yeah. Is that this was apparently

4:26

not the ease game that some people wanted?

4:29

Yeah, I think that makes sense. I love

4:31

ninth. I might be alone in that one,

4:34

but I just adored all

4:50

the zipline crap going on in

4:52

ninth. But, ease is for another day.

4:54

Today we are going to talk about Dragon's

4:56

Dogma 2 and Visions of Mono. Where shall

4:59

we start? Let's do Dragon's Dogma

5:01

2. Okay, so I

5:04

just started playing. I haven't really

5:06

done much in the way of quests, but I'm kind

5:08

of getting my feet under me with sub quests. And

5:10

I made a really sad Lionman by

5:12

accident. He has

5:14

Ichiban's hair and he's like a snow leopard.

5:17

And it looks really weird. I can't remember how to

5:19

change anyone's appearance in this game. I'm hoping to figure

5:22

it out soon, but I just want to dye his

5:24

hair a little bit better. I have a pawn who's

5:27

a Linus. And I met

5:29

a pawn on the road who's like, Hey, old

5:31

friend, I'll help you find this jerk who got

5:33

lost. I said, Okay, sure, you can join me.

5:35

And then he starts talking about how his

5:38

old master fucks. Like just like he

5:40

had so many people in his bedroom. Like,

5:42

Oh, cool. I met you for about five

5:44

minutes ago. Never the same person. Never

5:46

the same person. Oh, teach their own. It was

5:49

pretty funny. So I want to,

5:52

I want to kind of go

5:54

over what the story is for Dragon's Dog.

5:56

But how does the universe works? Because I

5:58

feel like I still have no idea like

6:01

what are pawns what are the Erisan what is the

6:03

Erisan so like top

6:05

down vision for anyone who has

6:07

not played dragons dogma this might

6:10

be their first dragons dogma to

6:12

is largely in the same vein as the

6:14

first one where you have the Erisan where

6:16

the Erisan is someone who's had their heart

6:18

stolen by the dragon and

6:21

this kind of marks them as the

6:23

hero of the land they are going

6:26

to become this this great person everyone

6:28

kind of looks up to the Erisan

6:30

as they point

6:32

out being the Erisan also means

6:34

that you like take the throne

6:36

and stuff like that so basically

6:38

dragon comes over touches your heart

6:40

you're special now you are now

6:42

the Erisan you know

6:44

classic way of deciding what's

6:47

the line from Monty Python like

6:49

a government based on watery tarts

6:51

lobbing scimitars yeah like

6:53

watery woman with the swords yeah

6:56

so it's it's

6:59

that and then pawns pawns are kind of

7:01

weird and actually this is a reason I

7:03

like dragons dogma to is that it's kind

7:05

of grappling with the fact that pawns

7:07

are strange and pawns are very odd

7:10

is that pawns are these they

7:13

are human but they

7:16

are distinctly alien

7:18

too because they kind of live

7:20

in these rifts they go between

7:22

the rifts and stuff like that

7:24

they're multiversal beings that just live

7:26

to serve the Erisan and

7:29

pawns are like they

7:32

look and sound and talk human but they're

7:34

also just like completely devoted to the Erisan

7:36

and I think it's really cool that in

7:38

this game they're kind of tackling

7:40

what would it be like if they kind of

7:43

existed in society because right first game didn't really

7:45

do that first game was very much like pawns

7:47

are just kind of a gameplay mechanic there here

7:50

dragons dog with two is very much like incorporating

7:52

pawns into the story in a way that I

7:55

find very interesting but so the Erisan and the

7:57

pawns need to go kill the dragon they have

7:59

like big chosen they must go

8:01

fight the dragon. That

8:04

quest will take them on a variety of

8:07

different situations and one of the things I

8:09

love about Dragon Stogma especially Dragon Stogma 2

8:11

which I think it's doing very very well

8:14

is that you kind of just

8:16

get told to go places and you will run

8:18

into a lot of things on your

8:21

way to said places. So early on you

8:23

meet this dude named Brant and he gives

8:25

you kind of different quests and things like

8:27

that. He's like go kill these monsters over

8:30

here and go investigate this thing

8:32

over here and go look into this thing over

8:34

here and it will take you to all these

8:36

different places in that first large

8:38

hub open world that you're in.

8:42

But on the way you will definitely

8:44

find things to do. You will get

8:46

up to shenanigans on your

8:48

way there and this is a

8:50

really good game for I'm setting out on

8:52

one quest but I'm going to end up

8:54

doing so many other things on

8:56

the way there that I will sometimes even forget

8:59

why I was on this path in the first

9:01

place or I have that moment where I've

9:03

just you know I'm

9:05

like drenched head to toe in

9:07

blood there's like a dead cyclops and a

9:09

griffin and like 15,000 hobgoblins

9:12

all lying around me my pawns

9:14

are like barely walking and I'm

9:16

like oh man okay so I

9:19

gotta go find that note

9:22

huh. It's really really great

9:24

for that. I'm loving

9:26

Dragon Stogma too. I think it's a

9:28

very strong successor to the first game.

9:31

I also find a

9:33

lot of the discourse around this game fascinating

9:35

but we can get into that after we

9:37

kind of talk about our own personal impressions.

9:39

Yeah that's a quick question. Can you

9:41

lock on to an enemy? I feel like I'm missing something there.

9:44

Okay so it's not just some abilities

9:46

have like a soft lock on. Some

9:49

abilities will kind of tether to an enemy

9:51

but like there's no traditional lock-on in this

9:53

game. Combat is messy

9:55

in a way that proves to

9:57

be pretty fun I think. Because

10:00

in that way yeah Jesse

10:03

what is your experience with dragons dogmen tube in so

10:05

far because you you have rolled credits at this point

10:08

like yeah I'm on my game plus yeah,

10:10

so I review the game for a game reformer comm if

10:12

you want to go read my review I Am

10:17

just like head over heels with this game I

10:19

like to think I'm like a pretty tough critic when it

10:21

comes to reviewing games and this game

10:23

just like I Don't know

10:25

something about it just really grabbed me I think it's

10:28

it's the fact that it's not afraid to

10:30

just be difficult But not in like a

10:32

from soft way where it's like oh these

10:34

boss fights are really difficult these enemies this

10:37

world is unforgiving Like dragons dogma 2 is

10:39

obtuse but it's obtuse in

10:41

like a way that pushes

10:43

you to think outside the box like you look at a

10:45

lot of modern game design and I

10:48

think of like Final Fantasy 7 rebirth right that is

10:50

a game that doesn't want you to miss anything That

10:52

is a game that is going to signpost everything for

10:54

you And it's gonna be like

10:56

hey if you go to a new

10:58

area and you come back you can still do all

11:00

the side quests You can still do everything like we're

11:03

gonna very clearly mark the point of no return in

11:05

that game like and then you have dragons Augma 2

11:07

which is like you're gonna miss stuff We're intentionally gonna

11:09

like throw things away if you move on too fast

11:11

like we really want you to take your time

11:13

We want you to talk to every NPC We want you to

11:16

really like put your detective hat on in a lot of

11:18

ways Mm-hmm, and it is

11:20

so just like unabashedly just this

11:23

is a 360 game that we

11:25

put on modern hardware Yeah, wise right and

11:27

I love it for it It's like janky

11:29

in all the right ways, and it's it's

11:32

just like I was in a fight with Some

11:35

skeleton mage at night one night, and I've

11:37

shown Eric this video, but it's like it

11:40

created like a tornado And

11:42

I was like oh Okay, I'll just stay

11:44

away from it and it like whipped me into the

11:46

tornado and my body is like rag doll everywhere But

11:48

you would see in like a ps2 360 area the

11:50

game And

11:52

I'm just like because I haven't hit the ground

11:54

yet the game hasn't Like

11:57

determined that like oh you are dead, so I'm

11:59

just like mashing the heal button and

12:01

I'm healing through my body like rag doll

12:04

in the round. Healing through a tornado. Yeah,

12:06

and then as time finally hit the ground,

12:09

I have full health and I'm

12:11

like, alright, I survived because I ate a

12:13

bunch of like fruit while I'm whipping through

12:15

this tornado. And it's just the game is the

12:17

game is like funny, like it

12:19

is like a physical level of humor to it that

12:22

is like, man, this is so this

12:24

is just so good. It really is. It

12:26

strikes me as one of those sometimes you get Japanese

12:29

games that are very dry. And

12:31

has that just that sense of humor. It's

12:33

it's also very systems driven. Like I was

12:36

talking with some folks last night just included

12:38

who I was saying like, I feel like

12:40

a lot of our big games in the

12:42

last five years have been very systems

12:45

driven games like Breath of the Wild, Tears

12:47

of the Kingdom, Baldur's Gate 3, Elden

12:50

Ring games that have a story. Yes, there

12:52

is a story in Dragon's Dogma 2, but

12:54

the thing you end up talking about later

12:56

on when you're you know, do people

13:00

talk around water coolers anymore? Is that the

13:02

thing? I was wondering to myself not that

13:04

long ago. Sure. The stories you

13:07

end up sharing. Yeah, the stories you end

13:09

up sharing later with your friends are

13:12

like, I did

13:14

this crazy thing. I got on the back of a

13:16

griffin and it flew and it flew me to a

13:18

different part of the map like Jesse was showing me

13:20

a little like a literal video of that happening. And

13:24

it's it's incredible game for what it

13:27

manages to put in the world and let

13:29

you interact with and find and discover. I'm

13:32

constantly amazed at the

13:35

clever solutions that I can find two different

13:37

things. There's there's a bit in the game

13:39

that I don't want to spoil it all

13:41

because it's very, very funny. But basically, the

13:44

game presents one solution that

13:46

is meant for like,

13:48

like people to find. And I found

13:50

it and the game was like, you

13:52

got the solution. Good job. And then

13:54

later on, I went back to said

13:56

place and I found by complete happenstance

13:58

a different thing. And

14:01

that was when I discovered that, oh,

14:03

there was a second solution to this

14:05

quest. And the other one was

14:07

for dummies. It was like, yeah, we put

14:09

that out there. So that way anybody who

14:12

stumbles across it just thinks that they like

14:14

got the solution and they're good. And only

14:16

like people who, who actually are, who were

14:18

looking for are going to find

14:20

this second solution and prove

14:22

themselves worthy. And I was like, yeah,

14:25

man, that would have been so embarrassing

14:27

if I had anybody, you know, I

14:29

never did that. But can you imagine

14:31

being that guy that found that other

14:33

solution and walked away thinking he was

14:35

smart? Yeah. What a gifted individual.

14:38

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That

14:41

guy. No, it was incredible because I

14:43

was like, yeah, this game is unafraid to call

14:45

me a dumbass. Like,

14:47

like you really thought that was

14:49

it. You really thought that was the answer. I've

14:53

solved quests in such wild, interesting

14:56

ways that don't feel like

14:58

they should and they

15:00

don't feel necessarily natural. Like

15:03

Jesse was saying, this isn't a rebirth

15:05

where it's going to kind of guide you towards

15:07

like, here's what the paths are. Here's how you

15:10

do things. Like I figured

15:12

out that I could solve a quest where two

15:14

different people wanted the same item and

15:16

I went to somebody and made a forgery of

15:18

it. And so I gave the forgery

15:20

to one of them and gave the real one

15:23

to the other and I got both quest rewards.

15:26

But it turns out that if you

15:29

give the forgery to somebody who's

15:31

like smart, they'll

15:34

try and get it appraised so that I

15:36

had to bribe somebody to be like, just

15:38

tell them it's real. Just tell

15:40

them it's real. It's cool. Like, like,

15:42

and I had to keep bribing them. They were like, I don't

15:44

do it. Come on, man. Like I'm a

15:46

professional. But like, look at how much gold I'm putting

15:49

on the table right now. And it

15:51

was like a really organic, natural

15:53

moment of I couldn't believe

15:55

a game was having this like conversation with

15:57

me as a player. I adored

15:59

it. It was fantastic. This was all stuff

16:01

like side quests. I just stumbled across in

16:04

the in the open world not like I

16:07

think one of those ties into a main

16:09

story quest but like other ones are just

16:11

like here's this stuff that you can just

16:13

Find and encounter and run into and it's

16:15

so good When you um

16:17

when you go to the the forgery place, I

16:19

don't know if you've looked at those items But

16:21

they're all their names like this game has like

16:24

like in the text is also very funny Like

16:27

if you try to make forgeries, it's like oh, hey

16:29

These don't work exactly as you might think that like

16:31

they might not work exactly the same way So like

16:33

a wake stone which is used to revive you is

16:35

called a woke stone and it's like my work my

16:37

work I don't know It's like it's

16:39

like a little stones woke Like

16:42

a thorny or a panasonic, uh

16:44

tv panisorni It's

16:47

just like the little things in that game that like they

16:49

just add up like it's a lot of little things that

16:51

just constantly Keep you just like

16:53

damn what this this game this game's funny The

16:56

woke stone is so funny. It's very funny,

16:58

but the stone that makes you woke Was

17:01

it worth it to keep bribing someone for this

17:03

quest reward? I mean, yeah, it

17:06

ended up being profitable in the end Uh

17:09

if it had not worked out then I

17:11

would have been attacked by the town guard

17:13

and that would have been Another

17:15

complication because I was trying to sneak

17:17

through a gate at the time and

17:20

I didn't need that heat on me, you know Stop

17:23

right there criminal scum That's

17:25

another moment that has a lot of different ways

17:27

you can go about it specifically the gate There's

17:30

like there are multiple ways to get past that and

17:32

again, it's like you talk to some npc's you find

17:34

a letter You're like, oh I could do this or

17:36

you could go over here and grab this item. That'll

17:38

let you through it's like Again,

17:40

it's just however you want to carve your path through

17:42

that That world is just

17:44

lets you If you're an

17:46

athlete, you know, the greatest motivator of all is

17:49

the fear of letting your teammates down After

17:51

all the team is only as good as its weakest

17:54

link So you owe it to those

17:56

wearing the same jersey as you to be your best

17:58

every time you step on the field That's

18:00

why there's no vape in team When

18:03

you vape you can expose your lungs

18:05

to toxic chemicals that can damage your

18:07

lungs if you're a step behind The

18:10

team's a step behind brought

18:12

to you by the real cost and the

18:14

FDA Yeah, so far. I'm

18:16

having a pretty good time with it. There's something better that feels

18:18

I don't want to say loose,

18:20

but just like less pressure on

18:22

you to as you say go places like I

18:24

finished F7 rebirth absolutely loved

18:27

it, but this game Dragon's Dog. What

18:29

you have a very different feel to

18:31

it Not as rigid.

18:34

I don't mean like FF7 is rigid in a bad way It

18:36

just means they have a certain experience that they

18:38

want you to have and Dragon's Dogma

18:40

is much more Hey, if you

18:42

go out without pants, that's not my lookout. I think

18:46

the thing I keep thinking about is there's

18:48

such a rich history of RPGs

18:52

in Yee-olden days if we had Felipe

18:54

or somebody on here, they'd be yelling at

18:57

me right now but

18:59

like RPGs that

19:01

were very much trying to just

19:03

simulate a tabletop Setting right

19:06

like born out of the idea that you

19:08

can have this world that just feels Alive

19:11

and interactive and the stories you make

19:13

are not ones that are necessarily pre

19:15

scripted and pre laid out, but right

19:18

They're the stories that you make by

19:20

just interacting with this world again very systems

19:22

driven and Dragon's Dogma 2

19:25

feels like a 3d game trying to

19:27

capture that life that the energy and

19:29

I mean again It's it's not the

19:31

first game to do this although Dragon's

19:33

Dogma 1 at the time was very

19:35

I think ahead of the game

19:37

And that right back so in some ways this feels

19:39

like eat snow and the team

19:41

really saying like hey We were right the

19:43

first time you were just early And

19:46

there I will say there are some

19:48

issues. I've had with this game mostly

19:50

around like optimization. I think the game

19:53

is It is

19:55

struggling to run at times, especially when

19:58

I'm in the big cities and stuff like that. It's like like,

20:00

oh, oh, calm down now.

20:02

PS5 is OK. I

20:05

think it's 30 frames locked. But

20:08

that's also the thing that I find

20:11

fascinating, because this game has obviously taken on

20:13

a lot of popularity. It's gotten really, really

20:15

popular in a way the Dragon's Dogma one

20:17

did not for a long time. Like, DD1

20:19

was always a cult classic for

20:21

the people who knew, and it would spread by

20:23

word of mouth. And when you do that,

20:26

you kind of have the ability for someone to, they're

20:28

going to tell you about it, and they're going to

20:30

stay up from, OK, it's going to feel a little

20:33

bit dated, a little bit out there.

20:36

It's going to push back on you

20:38

a little bit. This is not

20:41

even Elden Ring. Even Elden Ring, I think, does

20:43

push back on you a little bit, but not

20:45

in the ways that DD1 and DD2 do. Dragon's

20:49

Dogma 2 has found new

20:51

popularity. It's also found a lot of people

20:53

that I think aren't meeting

20:55

it where it's trying to do something.

20:58

The microtransactions are a different thing. I

21:00

think that just sucks. I think that's

21:03

Capcom trying to shove microtransactions in

21:05

a place where they shouldn't belong.

21:08

Yeah. And when did you have the DMC5 had it?

21:12

They've always done it. And that's not to

21:14

say it's a good thing. It's always a dumb,

21:16

stupid thing. And I think a lot of people

21:18

were pointing out how pointless the

21:20

microtransactions are in this game, and that

21:22

even further highlights how it's just this

21:26

silly subversion of what the game is actually

21:28

trying to do. It's not some, I've

21:31

seen wild conspiracy theories about the

21:33

fast travel in Dragon's Dogma 2 is

21:36

bad because they want you to buy

21:38

fast travel stuff. And that's not the

21:40

case. If you played DD1, you would

21:42

know that's not the case. I

21:44

think they're also one-time purchases. Yeah.

21:48

I mean, I haven't bought them. I don't know. The

21:51

consensus seems it's like, oh, you buy this one

21:54

time. So it's like, they

21:56

made it limited so you could buy one additional

21:58

fast travel token for $99. I

22:01

don't I don't buy that it's

22:03

silly it's dumb, but that

22:05

that stuff aside There's also the stuff about

22:07

like the dragon plague which was like the

22:09

hot topic last week Well when we were

22:11

at PAX it felt like everybody was talking

22:13

about the dragon plague and what was happening

22:15

there. I heard something that we clap clap

22:19

Something I'm gonna go to gonorrhea. Yeah.

22:22

Oh the dragon crabs. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah,

22:24

um no uh uh

22:28

For those at home who don't know like there is a plague

22:30

that your pawns will start to talk about that's

22:33

like hey when pawns get this Their

22:35

eyes will glow red and they'll start to

22:37

like disobey their their arisen and eventually they

22:39

will like start murdering people indiscriminately

22:43

and this can happen and people

22:45

have had their save files run into things

22:47

where they go to sleep and while they're

22:49

asleep their Pawn murders everyone in the town

22:52

just heals Like

22:55

a whole thing wiped out That

22:58

to me is sick

23:00

as hell. That's terrifying. So cool

23:03

I love that but a lot of people

23:05

I think maybe go into this expecting a

23:08

skyrin type situation or something where it's like

23:10

Okay, I'll just roll back my save

23:12

and yeah No This like dragon

23:14

stogma is very much about like you're going

23:16

to make choices in the moment and they're

23:18

going to have Consequences and you can kind

23:20

of roll back a little bit, but you

23:23

can't always roll back. It's the

23:25

idea of like the

23:27

things you do matter the the

23:29

situations that you run into the stories that

23:31

you have are important and part of that

23:33

importance is like rolling a d20 on the

23:36

Table sometimes you roll an at one and

23:38

that is an important part of the storytelling

23:41

of a good rpg and

23:43

so I

23:45

love the dragon's plague. I think it's so sick.

23:47

I I get why some people don't like it

23:49

But I all I want to encourage people

23:51

who hear that and are like, I don't know First

23:53

of all, you're gonna know when your pawn

23:55

has dragon plague like their their eyes will

23:57

be trying. Yeah. Yeah They

24:00

tell you about it also the way you'd

24:02

like stop dragon plague It's hilarious because you

24:04

just pick your pawn up and run to

24:06

the ocean and throw them into it and

24:08

it kills them And then when they come

24:10

back, they're cured. It's great I'm

24:13

telling you this now both as a PSA for

24:15

if you get it and also because It's

24:18

hilarious to pick your pawn up and throw them

24:20

into the ocean, but I also haven't run into

24:22

this in like the Probably

24:25

about 12 to 15 hours. I've played so far

24:27

of dragon sogma, too Jesse

24:29

did you ever run into dragon plague? So

24:32

I was in a weird position since I was reviewing it

24:34

There was not a large pool of pawns to

24:36

pull from the other thing is like it

24:39

is it is Like given

24:41

through pawns like if you have a pawn

24:44

in your party that has oh we should

24:46

explain on system We haven't yeah pawn system.

24:48

Yeah. Yeah, let's roll back them. Yeah pawns

24:52

They are basically your party members like

24:54

that That's kind of the role they

24:56

fill and you go to these rift

24:58

stones and they're all player-made So

25:00

when you start up the game, you'll make your character and then

25:02

a little bit ways into the story You'll make your pawn and

25:05

your pawn is just I made Sephiroth

25:07

to like I just made a Character

25:10

like discounts. I tried to make a

25:12

discount Sephiroth, but it didn't fit But

25:15

so your pawns act is sort of like your main

25:17

pawn is sort of like your buddy your your person

25:19

like they're gonna They're gonna be

25:22

with you in the story and they're gonna do

25:24

everything and then you can hire two additional pawns

25:26

Which are what the other players made and you

25:28

go into these these rift stones because like Erica

25:30

said earlier Pawns kind of exist like multiversal. They

25:32

kind of traverse the the world and they can

25:34

go to other people's games. Yeah, and

25:36

so You could pick up

25:38

two other pawns and you know for

25:41

me I had a sorcerer a mage and a fighter

25:43

and I was like cool That's like my rounded out

25:45

party because I'm a thief I got my sword guy

25:47

and I got my two magic people We're good to

25:49

go And

25:51

that being said like your personal pawn you can

25:54

customize and change a vocation your job You

25:56

can you can do a lot you can even change the look

25:58

of them later on in the game if you get the

26:00

right thing. But they really

26:02

are your party members, and they will help you in

26:06

a tremendous amount of ways in this game. Whether

26:08

it's if your pawn had traveled

26:11

with someone else, let's say, they

26:14

can come back and be like, oh, I was in this area

26:16

with another adventurer. I know of a treasure

26:18

chest over here. And you can follow them, and they'll

26:20

show you a secret treasure chest, or a cave, or

26:22

a city, or something you haven't experienced

26:24

yet. Or sometimes you're doing a quest, and

26:26

your pawn's like, oh, I've already done this quest. I'll

26:29

show you where to go. Follow me. Let's go. And I'm like,

26:32

oh, that's neat. I had a moment

26:34

where I had a fighter pawn that has the

26:36

sword and shield. One of the abilities is that

26:38

the shield will like, you can

26:40

launch people. They'll run up, and they'll

26:42

want to throw them up. And there was

26:44

a chest on a cliff. And my

26:46

pawn came down and was like, come over

26:49

here, and launched me up onto the cliff

26:51

to get the treasure chest. And

26:53

I was like, oh, this is a really smart

26:55

implementation of combat skills

26:57

that are also used in just the

26:59

wild. And

27:01

they really double down on what the pawns

27:03

can do, what they're

27:05

willing to do, and also this reward system

27:08

for other people picking up pawns

27:11

as they go along. Because you might get

27:13

a pawn that speaks a

27:15

language you don't speak, and then you can

27:17

interact with a whole community of people that

27:19

their text would not be in English, and

27:22

you would not understand anything they're saying. If

27:24

you have a pawn that has that skill,

27:27

now you can interact with a whole new area of

27:29

the game you couldn't previously. That's pretty cool.

27:32

Yeah, it's a very open-ended game,

27:34

which I'm looking forward to stumbling

27:36

around in it some more. It's

27:38

definitely one of those games that's great if you're a

27:40

curious person and like to get into trouble

27:42

by experimenting. So I personally

27:44

am enjoying it very much. I haven't gotten

27:46

too far yet, though. So I will probably

27:49

reserve more judgment for later.

27:51

Eric, is there anything you want to

27:53

add to Dragon's Dog About 2 discussion?

27:56

Yeah, just a last thought. Friend

27:58

of the show read a book. Valentine has also

28:01

been playing this game. I was posting about it on

28:03

blue sky the other night and posited

28:05

that this is a cozy game and I

28:09

am a want to agree with that because

28:12

there's something about how this game captures

28:15

the idea of You

28:17

and your party are gonna set out

28:19

on an adventure. You're gonna put up

28:21

camping sites. You're gonna Run

28:24

into things you didn't expect to run into

28:26

you're gonna find new things along the way

28:28

You're like discover stuff together. I think

28:31

it is somehow Hear me out

28:33

somehow the best Lord of the Rings game

28:36

that we've ever had because it reminds me

28:38

of the fellowship specifically the

28:40

way that you set out on

28:42

this journey and you don't

28:44

just Walk over land,

28:46

you know, it's I think of

28:48

like the back half of Game of Thrones and

28:50

things like that where they're like Okay that those

28:52

people are moving over there. We'll see

28:55

them next episode Let's cut to somebody else

28:57

who's doing something and like fellowship is my

28:59

favorite Lord of the Rings movie because you

29:01

get to see The journey

29:03

and the adventure and the things you

29:05

run into along the way. It's a

29:07

very like classic fantasy role-playing

29:10

game in that sense and I

29:13

Get that for dragons dogma. I get that

29:16

feeling of oh, man We just

29:18

like I was saying that that situation earlier We

29:20

just killed like that cyclops and Griffin and so

29:22

many hobgoblins and you go put down

29:24

a tent And he put

29:26

some meat on the fire from the the

29:28

things that you've just killed and it cuts

29:31

to like a full-on FMV thing. Yeah, they

29:33

could grilling because Capcom was like we need

29:35

to film a real meat being cooked. We

29:37

can't render this It's got to look delicious

29:39

and Then

29:41

you get your buffs and you go to sleep and you

29:43

wake up and you sit out fresh on

29:45

your new journey and it's It's

29:48

an adventure. It makes me feel like I'm

29:50

on an adventure and like Baldur's Gate 3

29:53

did that as well Right different

29:55

way. I think it captured the The

29:57

scale and and the enormous.

30:00

The of a quest very well

30:02

and the feeling of. Humble

30:04

beginnings and starting at level one

30:06

in eventually getting to the point

30:08

where you were fighting you know

30:11

it's still wildest stuff ever. I.

30:13

I think Dragon's dogma captures that

30:15

feeling of. I'm. Going to sit

30:18

out on a quest? I'm going to

30:20

stop along the way and when they

30:22

have a campfire with my bro's ends.

30:24

Yeah. It really feels a

30:27

conversation with Final Fantasy Fifteen as well.

30:29

Because of that you might i lay,

30:31

lay campsite are such an important part

30:33

of role playing adventures to me and

30:35

Dragons Dogma to gets that and gets

30:37

it in a way that I think

30:39

games don't. Routinely. Get

30:41

it you know his own ah you think

30:44

about of as he seminary birth in their

30:46

answer to the the tend to the camp

30:48

site was Cloud puts a cushions on up

30:50

as yes I love it is literally that's

30:52

funny I live you live or out on

30:55

it is a i feel awkward clowning on

30:57

rebirth lot on this pot and nods I

30:59

and I love is a lot of design

31:01

that's all yes there he added some different

31:03

areas of design. Fascinating. The these games came

31:06

out next to each other cause they do

31:08

feel a two very different approaches to Rpgs

31:10

and it's interesting. To compare and contrast them.

31:12

So yeah, Dragon's Dogma to I'd I really

31:14

really like it. I'm looking for to play

31:16

more of it. Yeah.

31:19

So am I and others are disgusting on

31:21

dragons are my two so far away as

31:23

move on to a game that I nature's

31:25

that the did not play visions of mana

31:28

and are we going mana or manner I

31:30

like mana I will not judge you to

31:32

sunny love playing the game as like. Month.

31:36

Monotonous is and isn't of my. Sister.

31:39

Everyone else. Ah, Yeah.

31:42

so jesse we both played visions right

31:44

are we bomb ass sat down and

31:47

played yield acts are they did wrong

31:49

and as a method then had to

31:51

play or on a ruthless i changed

31:54

jobs or something in the second demo

31:56

and i totally just ignored that advice

31:58

and then the phone PR person had to come

32:00

over to me and be like, Hey, can you run that again? We'll

32:03

like show you what you did wrong. And I was like, Oh, okay. Uh,

32:05

so I, I put that demo more than once. Uh,

32:09

it was really funny because in my demo, uh, I

32:13

was, I was playing and they did an

32:15

interview with the series producer. Meanwhile,

32:17

from friends of the show, uh, John

32:19

Carson and Lucas white were over there

32:21

playing and Lucas was just

32:23

reloading the demo over and over again

32:26

to like frame data, that thing.

32:28

And I don't think they expected someone to do that.

32:30

And Lucas was just like, Oh, that's sick. If I

32:32

do this and then this and then this, I can

32:34

get like a re stagger and a combo up into

32:36

the air and people were just like, Oh

32:39

man, I don't think we

32:41

expected this level of dedication in here

32:43

today. It was

32:46

really fun to watch, but yeah,

32:48

visions of mana is so to

32:50

preface this. I know

32:52

of mana. I'm I

32:55

understand what mana is. I have not sat

32:57

down. I understand the essence of a game.

33:00

Yeah, this is, I've not sat down and played a monogram

33:02

yet. Uh, I actually

33:04

wanted to put mana on our Pantheon

33:07

for this month because the month theme

33:09

was action RPGs. And then we were

33:11

like, well, visions is coming out later

33:13

this year. So we'll probably reserve monogames

33:15

for that. But, uh, I think

33:18

I like monogames. I think I vibe with them.

33:20

They're so cozy. They're very easy to vibe

33:22

with. They're very like, they're cozy

33:24

in a different way from dragons dog and

33:26

two that we were just talking about where

33:28

dragon song. And two is like cozy, like

33:31

sitting around a campfire cozy. This is like,

33:33

I just woke up on Saturday morning and

33:35

I'm eating cereal and watching cartoons like that

33:37

kind of cozy. Like I just put on

33:39

the WB kids block. And there's this anime

33:41

I've never heard of called visions of mana.

33:44

And I'm digging it. I'm

33:46

vibing with it. It's, it's fun. It's,

33:48

it's silly. Uh, I

33:51

didn't get much of what the story of this

33:53

game is. My understanding is that the story of

33:55

man, the games are also not very deep. In

33:58

the first place. It's like, there's a tree. Go

34:01

to tree. Yeah,

34:04

yeah. But the

34:06

world is fun. The combat's fun. It's bright.

34:08

It's colorful. It's vibrant. I think some of

34:10

the class stuff is really, really interesting. Being

34:13

able to use different elements and then how those

34:15

elements affect the way that your class plays and

34:17

how you can affect those elements in battle. Everything

34:20

about it just feels very like

34:23

another, I don't know a friend of

34:25

the show, we haven't had him on

34:27

yet, but a former coworker of mine,

34:29

Timothy Momblow, was describing it as like

34:31

the mid budget comfort RPG.

34:34

And I think Viges Amana

34:36

sits like very squarely in

34:38

that genre, in that

34:41

designation. What I find

34:43

fascinating myself is that the characters that you see

34:45

in the trailer, one's a boy, I can't remember

34:47

his name, one's a girl, I can't remember her

34:49

name, but they look very similar to the heroes

34:51

from the very first Final

34:53

Fantasy adventure, quote unquote, dash, seeking

34:56

tenetsu. And they traveled

34:58

together in the first game or she

35:00

gets kidnapped at some point, but they do travel a lot

35:02

together. And monogames tend to have

35:04

sad endings, because at the end of

35:06

this game, spoiler, the girl is part

35:09

of the Monotribe, she has to turn

35:11

to the tree. The boy is the

35:13

defender, he is basically, well, I lost the love

35:15

of my life and I have to defend this

35:17

tree for the rest of my life. So I

35:20

don't know if they're going somewhere with that with the characters they

35:22

have, but it looks like they have a cute little cast like

35:24

there's like a dragon girl with one wing is like, Oh, God,

35:26

here comes another one-winged angel. But yeah,

35:28

it seems like a lot of fun.

35:30

I like the idea of a mid

35:32

tier RPG existing after

35:34

all these huge chippewa of

35:36

games plus all the layoff

35:38

news. Let's take

35:41

it easy for a bit here, people. Jesse, what

35:43

did you think? I'm

35:45

in this like weird spot. So I have no familiarity

35:47

with the Mono franchise. I've never played it. I'm aware

35:50

of it. It's one of those games where every time

35:52

I see it, I'm like, Oh, I should probably get

35:54

around to the series at some point, right? I

35:56

feel weird because I walked away from that demo feeling

35:59

a lot of nothing. I

36:01

was like my precious mana. Yeah, it

36:03

was like the characters are cute. It's

36:05

like bright I thought the

36:07

combat was like kind of stiff in a way that

36:09

it's still a work in progress Like the games not

36:11

coming out for a couple more months Yeah But it

36:13

was one of those things where it's like coming off

36:15

games like tales of our eyes and grand blue Fantasy

36:17

relink and like these other sort of action RPGs that

36:19

are very fluid and fast

36:21

and sort of have a lot going

36:23

on I felt like mana like weirdly

36:25

there's like There's

36:28

just like a weight to the combat But I'm

36:30

not getting the feedback from the enemies when I'm

36:32

hitting them so it doesn't

36:34

feel good It feels very slow and

36:36

sluggish But not in that like

36:38

monster hunter sort of way where it's like oh

36:40

everything has weight to it And it feels like you're really

36:43

hitting And then they had

36:45

us like switch jobs and so there

36:48

was this cat boy And yeah, they

36:50

had like yo cat boy sick They

36:52

had like two daggers and then their tail

36:54

also was holding a dagger and I was

36:56

like oh I got three daggers This is

36:58

cool, and it kind of played like

37:01

the other class that I was playing with them And I was

37:03

like I'm not like

37:05

I got like a new ability, and I was like that's kind

37:07

of cool But I don't know there's just something wasn't about it.

37:09

Maybe the demo just wasn't great for

37:11

showcasing like a wide breath But I don't

37:14

know it just kind of felt like this is something.

37:17

I'm not super into Maybe I just don't like mana and like

37:19

the mana sickos will come for me, and that's okay But

37:22

I don't know that demo just didn't really do it for

37:24

me It didn't give me a reason to like this is

37:26

where I got to jump in this is the moment I

37:28

have to I didn't get that from that demo I

37:31

do think that's an interesting character to bring up because

37:33

I think there were Three classes

37:35

that we could use total for that

37:37

character in that demo and two of

37:39

them were both like using the

37:41

daggers and then the other one was using

37:43

the sword and I felt

37:45

like the weird part was yeah the

37:48

dagger classes felt very similar felt very

37:51

Like okay, you swapped like a little bit

37:53

out But really we're just kind of changing

37:56

elemental affinities, and that's like what really changes

37:58

here where I sword was like It.

38:00

Had some Virgil devil may cry two moves

38:03

where he he did the thing where he

38:05

like can afflict is sort out from the

38:07

season. They do like the the slashes moving

38:09

forward or whatever like Virgil always does. It

38:13

was very, very virgil, and that was

38:15

kind of. My experience with some. The

38:17

other characters was if they swapped weapons

38:20

suddenly if only be played radically different

38:22

if the cat stayed on the same

38:24

weapon but changed elemental affinities than it

38:26

was like there's. A subtle. Differences

38:28

but not like huge obvious. The

38:31

way that like picking up a

38:33

new weapon in blood borne is

38:35

okay. Now I'm playing a different

38:37

game. I'm fighting a different site

38:39

now so. Yeah.

38:41

A into your point se I would agree that.

38:44

If you're comparing the citizens of her eyes or

38:46

grandly was like a really good. Like.

38:48

Recent comparison point is I think Green Blue

38:51

a socket the John Carson About this we

38:53

we should do an episode on blog out

38:55

about grammarly fantasy relaying cause I think that

38:57

game is going Slept on and every time

39:00

I look at footage of it or talk

39:02

to people who have played it they're like

39:04

grammarly relax. It's good stuff so maybe I

39:06

mean he to do something with that they

39:09

did you apply God Stream how know how

39:11

think about this. But ah. Those.

39:14

Those games have combat systems that are.

39:17

Much. More. Robust.

39:19

And obviously robust. I think where you

39:21

have these kids that are wildly different,

39:24

everyone's kind of interacting with each other.

39:26

I didn't get a whole lot of

39:28

party interaction, it vans the manner in

39:30

the combat account, just felt like everybody

39:32

was hidden stuff. Ah, there was one

39:34

character who had the Moon globe decade

39:36

like do the the Deo Zola though

39:38

and like for us as I am

39:40

in a bubble and stuff like that,

39:43

that was really useful. By.

39:45

Otherwise, Yeah, was kind

39:47

of just like weird fire and again it's.

39:50

I. Think it's important to stress that. For

39:53

me at least I didn't think that was bad.

39:55

I didn't tell you thought that was bad either

39:57

but it was just like not hitting. Peak.

40:00

I wasn't sitting there going like I'm doing such

40:02

cool stuff. It's more like oh, yeah, okay I

40:05

think when you bring back a franchise, right

40:08

Like after it's been gone for because the last Mona

40:10

game was a while and that wasn't a remake the

40:13

last new Mona game was a Decent

40:15

over over 15 years ago. Yeah, yeah,

40:17

telling us. Yeah I just I feel

40:19

like at least for me personally like you

40:21

got to bring something like new to the table You got

40:23

to like you're be like, all right This is why we're

40:26

bringing it back right like we got this this grand idea

40:28

and that demo at least didn't showcase to me like oh

40:31

I get no pun

40:33

intended the vision And

40:35

maybe that's just because it was a small vertical

40:37

slice of a demo like, you know The larger

40:39

game like maybe the narrative is really what they're

40:41

going for this time or something else But for

40:44

that little slice of that demo I walked away like oh,

40:46

okay It's like and it's like a

40:49

neat little action RPG that just maybe not for

40:51

me Yeah, Mona games tend to

40:53

have heavier combat like I know in the first game

40:55

A lot of people aren't too

40:57

fond of it because you have to you swing your

40:59

sword or whatever weapon You wait for

41:01

a few seconds for it to recharge and then

41:03

you hit it you swing again for a full

41:06

powered swing Like otherwise if you spam You're

41:09

just gonna do like one or two damage because you don't have that

41:11

power in your swing And I know the first

41:13

game has a lot of weight behind it and I was enjoyed

41:15

that about it Which is why I enjoy the combat but Yeah,

41:19

I wish I'd gotten a chance to try visions myself

41:21

and just kind of judge from because if they give

41:23

me like more of that weighty Combat

41:26

that I'm familiar with because I think trials was

41:29

like that as well I'm

41:31

fine with that. I know it's not a rise. It's just

41:33

different. It's mana Yeah, I

41:36

think my my main takeaway was I interviewed

41:38

the series producer You can check that

41:41

out on destructoid, but my main takeaway

41:43

was that he stressed That

41:46

this is a game that is made

41:48

to kind of like try and capture the

41:50

passion of mana Like this is very much

41:52

a game made by a longtime man of

41:54

fan For longtime

41:56

man of fans who have always kind of wanted

41:58

a new game in

42:00

this series. So

42:02

I think that's gonna end up

42:05

being what this game is, is like it

42:07

might not be like Tales of

42:09

Arise was a game that was made to try and get new

42:11

people into the Tales series to

42:13

like completely reinvent that series all

42:16

over again. Visions of Mana feels

42:18

like it's being made to capture the hearts

42:20

of people who have just wanted this to

42:22

happen for a long time. And it seems

42:24

like it could do that. But also, I

42:27

think even now, in the

42:29

small, you know, sample size that we have

42:31

here, it might not always grab

42:33

people who aren't already very on board for

42:36

just a new Mana game on paper. Yeah.

42:38

And I think that's what I learned from

42:40

this is like, Oh, as somebody who is

42:42

not a Mana fan, like, maybe

42:44

this isn't the entry point that

42:47

I thought it might be maybe this is like, Oh,

42:49

this is for the fans. And that's cool. And I

42:51

love when that stuff happens. But

42:53

I think I learned a lot about this

42:55

game just from playing that like our demo was like,

42:58

Oh, okay, I don't think this is for me. But

43:00

it's cool that it exists. I

43:02

guess we'll see how it comes out. When does

43:04

it really fit? It's summer? I don't think I have. Yeah,

43:07

no, no, no, it's a day. So it

43:09

sounds like this will have a lot of time to kind of like,

43:11

give it that extra layer of polish. Who knows, they might like fine

43:14

tune the combat a little bit. Either

43:17

way, I'm looking forward to it. So we will

43:19

see what happens. Hey, you might like it too.

43:21

Who knows? Yeah, it's certainly possible.

43:23

I mean, it's a couple months, like six

43:25

months away, maybe potentially something like that. Yeah,

43:28

if that. Yeah,

43:30

so that is it for our discussion

43:33

about Dragon's Dog went to an efficient

43:35

Amana, let us go on to some

43:37

random encounters. Your

43:48

box got sold by the

43:50

Embracer group. How much was that for again?

43:52

That was for over

43:54

400 mil, I think.

43:57

From from Embracer. to

44:01

take to. That's it.

44:03

Yeah. So someone escaped Embracer. The

44:05

Embrace of Embrace, I suppose. It's

44:08

more like Embrace is falling apart. And

44:11

yeah, because like,

44:13

like to stress these, these companies are getting

44:15

sold or they're getting

44:18

laid off or they're getting in

44:20

the case of volition, like closed.

44:23

And as much as people

44:25

were like, Oh, cool. Gearbox is

44:27

out from under Embracer. There were

44:29

also layoffs at Gearbox that happened.

44:31

So what a

44:33

mess. Embracer leaving a permanent scar

44:35

on the games industry. I say

44:38

this every week. I've been saying this every week for

44:40

a while, but someone needs to go to jail over

44:42

this. It'll never happen.

44:46

I wrote in the notes here, Larian says FU to

44:48

power skate and lizards of the

44:50

coast, which is not

44:52

FU, but they, they, it was

44:55

clear. Yeah. Wait,

44:58

what did you just call? Naughty, we got

45:00

to talk about pronunciation sometimes first, cilantro and

45:02

now this, uh, we got to work

45:04

on this. Uh, Baldur's

45:07

Gate, basically Larian has been out there. Uh, it came

45:09

out as part of a GDC

45:11

talk and then, uh, Sven Vincke was kind

45:13

of out there like clarifying the thinking behind

45:15

it. The Larian was basically saying

45:17

like, we're not doing Baldur's

45:19

Gate three DLC. We're not doing Baldur's

45:22

Gate four. We're not doing D and

45:24

D like we're kind of moving on

45:26

from Baldur's Gate. Uh,

45:29

we are doing something different. Uh,

45:33

he would not confirm whether that was

45:35

in the divinity franchise or not. Sven,

45:37

look, you've been on the show before you

45:39

might be watching dragon commander

45:42

two. I'm just saying. I

45:44

never played the original. That's

45:47

the problem. More people need to play dragon

45:49

commander one. Uh, but

45:52

yeah, they, they were basically saying no

45:54

more Baldur's Gate, all those characters, that

45:56

world that's all back in wizard's

45:59

hands, which Depending on

46:01

how you feel about Wizards of the Coast may be a good

46:03

or bad thing Me

46:05

personally, I'm like a little bummed by it,

46:08

but also Baldur's

46:10

Gate 1 and 2 are kind

46:12

of their sequels to each other But I I

46:15

think with especially how Baldur's Gate 3 was

46:18

still within that continuity, but definitely very

46:20

separate from it Yeah, I

46:22

think we can just leave it. I

46:24

think it's fine. I think that is a very

46:26

tight contained good game We don't

46:28

need to Franchise it

46:31

now granted. It's in

46:33

Wizards hands now. So are we gonna get some

46:35

live service game with like a Starion skins and

46:38

stuff like that. Who knows? Oh sure. They're gonna

46:40

get the AI girlfriends with shadow heart So

46:43

she can come in and greet you every

46:45

day. Now look, um, I'm

46:47

normally against AI but I Would

46:52

like I would like to have Shadow Heart as a friend Coming

46:55

in hugger every day. That'd be nice. Uh Celeste

47:00

that the developers of Celeste are working on I think it's

47:02

called Earth blade earth

47:04

blade. Yeah, and that got delayed in the next year Yeah,

47:10

yeah, they're working hard on it, but they can't make it

47:12

work for this year. So yeah Yeah,

47:15

well always next year and Eric we

47:17

should talk about well, all

47:19

of us talk about a little bit about Dawn trail and

47:22

the Doesn't know anything

47:24

about 14 don't worry about it. Oh,

47:26

I thought you were a 14 head. I'm sorry Another

47:33

thing that Jesse put me on to that I get

47:35

to then be like, oh Jesse doesn't know anything about

47:38

this We're not gonna talk about vinyl Cards

47:44

completely out we're not gonna talk about those I Got

47:48

myself into Pokemon cards anyways,

47:51

yeah 14 Dawn trail They had a

47:53

big pack show that I think all

47:55

three of us were in the audience

47:58

for that light was blinding Right

48:00

in your eye like Eric did you know

48:02

that surgery? Yeah, I had sunglasses I was

48:05

hoping that there would be you so

48:07

I couldn't see if you put the sunglasses on I

48:09

had my sunglasses on for those who have not

48:11

been following the deep blood god lore I had

48:14

eye surgery a couple weeks ago and so

48:17

I've been having to wear sunglasses when I'm outside

48:19

or in Situations that have

48:21

bright lights like maybe a PAX panel or

48:24

something like that So

48:26

I was sitting there in the audience of this

48:28

dawn trail thing and they had like the house

48:30

lights on just blaring down It's so like five

48:32

minutes into it I had like my eye covered

48:34

like this for a bunch of it and then

48:36

I was just sitting there with sunglasses on like

48:39

Cool neat y'all can

48:41

turn the house lights off now. You don't

48:43

need to see us. We're unimportant We in

48:45

the crowd are unimportant to what is happening

48:47

right now. They love to put the lights

48:50

on us for some reason Yeah, I was

48:52

a outlet like hey everyone. It's not yeah.

48:54

Yeah Eric I like you put your

48:56

shades on like Barrett from FSS having rebirth

48:58

very yeah, very topical Every

49:00

way I'd catch like a stray spotlight that would just

49:02

like oh Yeah,

49:05

yeah, imagine how that feels when your

49:07

cornea is still healing Yeah,

49:10

so Got a funny message

49:12

actually about dawn trails It was supposed to come out

49:14

the week of the Elden Ring DLC was like yeah,

49:16

we're gonna move this back It's

49:19

a really yeah They confirm

49:21

that they are moving or they

49:23

had moved dawn trails launch So

49:26

that people who want to play the urge

49:28

tree DLC can have a week to play

49:30

the urge rate or treaty Yeah, it's really

49:32

so Yoshi P can play the urge tree

49:34

DLC. Yes. Yeah same man that was playing tears of the

49:36

kingdom during a live letter You

49:40

have to play he's like you get

49:42

one week one week one week and

49:46

And yeah, we're getting FF 16 An

49:49

event in there which means we get

49:51

the torgo as amount and I

49:53

think is there a minion I can't

49:55

remember what else to get from the 16. I don't

49:58

know if they've shown anything else. Yeah besides Torgal

50:00

and the Efreet fight they stay they haven't shown

50:02

the fight but they've shown like that's kind of

50:04

what where it's going I imagine

50:06

it'll be kind of similar to the 15 event where like

50:08

it's you get the mount for completing the quest and like

50:10

maybe Some cosmetics and then they'll have that like weird thing

50:13

You can kind of like event that

50:15

you can like loop to then give currency to like

50:17

buy some additional. Yeah, there's like

50:20

Orchestra rolls and I think whatnot make

50:22

music and there's probably costumes hairstyles the

50:25

usual kind of stuff I remember doing the

50:27

same event for ff 15 because I wanted

50:29

noxious as hairstyle and I was like a lot of

50:32

Work at the gold saucer and then I got it and I'm

50:34

like, oh this Did not

50:36

fit my warrior of light, but

50:39

I got there if he ever wants to pretend to

50:41

be noxious I like noxious. I would like to design

50:43

like a broody little Little boy.

50:46

I'm a 15 apologist. I'll defend

50:48

that game. I love good. I

50:50

know it had problems but I Appreciate

50:53

that. Yeah, Lance heart baby torgo better be a

50:56

minion There's a scene in

50:58

a movie in the video is a minion. I

51:00

think baby torgo is a minion Yeah,

51:02

cuz you know we're in the trailer where

51:05

like one girl's like yay And she's on top of the

51:07

torgo mount and there's a guy looking at a little tiny

51:09

wolf and he's just shrugging I'm guessing that's

51:11

no woman. Yeah, it looks really

51:13

cute. I Just hope

51:15

that torgo transforms. Yeah flies. That's what I

51:17

want into a man. Yeah wolf neck Yeah,

51:21

no in a different way if you've

51:23

played 60 like six you'll know yeah

51:25

those who know know but Yeah,

51:28

I I'm really looking

51:30

forward to dawn trail I like used that

51:32

whole packs panel as an excuse to get

51:34

back into 14 and start

51:36

catching up I'm finally patch current.

51:39

I was still at the end of

51:41

6.5 where I was I had to do like the

51:43

the final trial and

51:45

stuff like that, but Like

51:48

14 it's weird because like

51:51

our our pal Moises is Finally

51:54

getting to shadow bringers, and I'm thinking about

51:56

a way that I felt when

51:58

I was getting to show Shadow of Ringers

52:00

in 14 and what an incredible

52:03

experience that was. It was. I'm

52:05

not expecting that from Don Trail, but

52:08

I do feel like I'm in the right mood

52:10

for just a very fun,

52:13

light, 14 expansion pack

52:15

that isn't super like...

52:18

There's almost something appealing about the fact that this is

52:20

not going to be tied into some broad narrative that's

52:22

going to be really heavy and emotional and stuff like

52:25

that, that there will probably be some

52:27

twists and turns, but so far they're

52:29

just kind of making it seem like

52:32

it's a beach episode. Everybody's having fun,

52:34

doing stuff. Doing some light. That's how

52:36

they would go into a false sense of security. Yeah.

52:39

True, but Shadow of Ringers and Endwalker, I cried

52:41

through the last six of Endwalker. I didn't stop.

52:43

So I'm kind of ready to not cry. Or

52:46

I still cry a little bit, but not through the whole thing.

52:48

Lightly cry. Not through a whole map.

52:50

Yeah. Lightly cry. It's that quote

52:52

that Yoshida had brought up at the end of Endwalker.

52:54

It's like, okay, we got to pull the power scale

52:56

back. We got to bring us back down

52:59

now. Endwalker ends

53:01

in the most anime-inspired way possible. It's

53:03

just like, we're going to keep escalating and escalating

53:05

and escalating. And now Dawn Trial is like, all

53:08

right, we got to... I mean, even the post

53:10

patches for this, for the most part, brought

53:12

it back. It's like, let's buy a treasure map and go on an

53:14

adventure. We saw where that got us.

53:17

It was fun. Yeah, I liked it. I loved Final

53:19

Fantasy IV, so everything there was FF4.

53:22

I'm good. I'm just drooling. I'm

53:25

eating it all up. The music

53:27

for the other moon, the red moon. Oh,

53:29

god. So good. Their remixes.

53:32

But yeah, anyway, that's... I

53:34

suppose that's all the news that's fit to talk about, unless

53:36

I missed something here. The

53:38

16 DLC, like the actual 16

53:41

DLC also got announced. The

53:43

Rise and Tide. Yeah. That's

53:45

right. We're actually really looking forward to this. It looks

53:47

really, really good. I

53:50

am a 16 defender on here. I like

53:52

that game. And

53:54

the Leviathan stuff, I love Leviathan

53:56

as a summon, as a character.

54:00

I'm really happy that they're including Leviathan

54:02

and they found this way to basically

54:05

like give Clive a gun in that

54:07

game So it's gonna play even more

54:09

devil may cryy And all

54:12

the stuff they're doing with that form

54:14

with the new area looks really really cool really

54:17

pretty And also they're

54:19

adding like a rogue like mode and stuff like

54:21

that for yeah more challenge So it seems like

54:23

a really robust update like I've said that multiple

54:25

times I don't know why the word robust is

54:28

stuck in my head, but it

54:31

Looks like a really solid update and a

54:33

really like meaty update For

54:35

Final Fantasy 16 and then obviously the

54:38

PC version is coming down the pipe

54:40

at some point and and I

54:42

got to interview Yoshida and some

54:44

of the others who were working on that game and

54:46

they definitely They did not confirm

54:48

anything, but they were like once

54:50

we finished finished the PC version and

54:53

the DLC You

54:55

know we would like to continue to

54:57

expand And that was kind of where

54:59

they left it. They were just like You

55:02

know we'd like to continue to bring this

55:04

to more players, so who's to say? Neo

55:07

Geo, let's go. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, there's

55:10

a fit There's also the free update

55:12

that they're putting out which I thought was pretty neat that

55:14

they kind of glossed over a little bit during The presentation,

55:16

but it was like they're adding like 40

55:19

orchestrian rolls And they're doing the

55:21

whole like you can remap all the buttons on the

55:23

controller which I should have been there earlier But like

55:25

yeah, it's I'm glad that they're putting that in now

55:27

and they were like oh and a bunch more stuff

55:29

that we're not gonna Talk about right now, but like

55:31

when the patch notes go up so it like on

55:34

top of the DLC There's also this free patch that's

55:36

coming out that sounds like it's adding a ton of

55:38

stuff and like maybe

55:40

rebound They specifically said we're rebalancing.

55:42

We're not nerfing some of the

55:44

abilities So there's

55:47

like that stuff coming in the pipeline too, which

55:49

is interesting I'm always fascinated

55:51

by major patches for single-player games and

55:53

like what they decide to do or add

55:56

so yeah 16 is getting a lot this

55:58

month Yeah, good for it. Good I

56:00

haven't played it yet. I will. I promise. And

56:04

I guess that's it for the news. So why don't

56:06

we roll into the tavern and talk a bit about

56:08

what we are playing, what we are watching, whatever we

56:10

are doing. Eric, you're not feeling well. Why don't you

56:12

go first? What?

56:19

I don't know. I

56:22

like, I'm once again in that place where I can't

56:25

really talk much about, you know what I can talk

56:27

about? I was going to talk about just manga that

56:29

I've been reading because I'm in that place where I

56:31

can't talk about games I've been playing or whatever. But

56:33

I will say quick shout out. I

56:35

started reading on the plane back. They

56:38

gave me the option. I had to fly. Okay.

56:40

Side tangent. I had to fly for

56:42

my flight back from PAX, Boston

56:44

to Atlanta and then Atlanta to Austin, which

56:46

is basically almost two, three hour flight. I

56:50

think it's like two and a half, two and a half

56:53

on the second flight. They gave me the option

56:55

for a very reasonable price to upgrade the first

56:57

class. And so I was like, I think

57:00

I'm doing it. I think I haven't flown first

57:02

class since I was in like high school. I

57:06

got to do it. Y'all, they

57:08

live different at the front of the

57:10

plane. They do. They do really live

57:12

different. They were like, here's

57:14

your comfy seats with all your leg room.

57:18

Would you like a drink, sir? And then I finished my

57:20

diet Coke and they were like, would you like another diet

57:22

Coke? And I was like, yes, I would. And

57:26

it was wild. So I stayed awake. I slept

57:29

the whole time on the first plane because I

57:31

was just exhausted. So I did the classic like

57:33

head against the plane wall.

57:35

So if that if that had blown off,

57:37

I would have just died. You wouldn't have

57:39

had an idea. Second

57:43

flight. I think I would have woken

57:45

up at some point. Second flight.

57:48

I was like, I'm in first class. I got to stay awake the

57:50

whole time. I started. I put the

57:52

March Madness. It was the women's March Madness

57:54

game. I think Iowa versus West Virginia, which

57:56

is very fun to watch. And then

57:58

I pulled up some manga on my tablet. I

58:01

started reading Naoki Urasawa's 20th

58:04

Century Boys. That's such a good manga.

58:07

It goes so hard. Oh. It's

58:09

so good. I love that manga.

58:11

It's excellent. It is. Friend.

58:15

It's really, so

58:17

I knew of Naoki Urasawa because of Pluto

58:19

in the Netflix series and I really got

58:21

into it. I loved it. I thought it

58:23

was really fantastic. This one is a

58:26

lot of the same art and even some

58:29

of the same vibes but a very different kind

58:31

of tale, different setting where you are following this

58:35

group of boys that grew up in

58:37

the 20th century. So I think they were all born

58:39

and were growing up in the 90s. I

58:42

wanna say no, no, it's current time is 90s. So

58:44

they were growing up in the 70s. Very

58:48

stand by me vibe. Very, very

58:50

receiving king vibes from this guy. Where

58:53

they're all kind of doing stuff and hanging out

58:55

and just getting up to the kind of hijinks

58:57

that you would before the internet existed and stuff

58:59

like that. So they're riding their bikes everywhere and

59:01

there's kind of these inner cliques and stuff like

59:03

that. So they're like the mean boys who bully

59:05

everybody and stuff like that. And in

59:07

the present time, they're trying to

59:10

figure out why people are being killed

59:12

because there are basically like murders happening

59:14

that have weird ties to the boy's

59:16

past. And it's

59:19

such a masterful, they

59:22

make the timeline swapping and all

59:24

that feel completely normal. I

59:26

think I've been very burned out on this sort

59:29

of like mystery box story because I was watching

59:32

Westworld obviously like burned me out after the first

59:34

season. I was watching Three Body

59:37

Problem on Netflix and not really vibing with it.

59:39

Cause it felt like the only substance

59:41

I was getting from it was like, what could

59:43

possibly be happening next? This is weird, isn't it?

59:45

I wasn't getting a lot from like the character

59:47

writing or anything. 20th century

59:49

boys complete opposite where it feels like

59:52

the mystery just enhances the relationships

59:55

between these characters. Like the

59:57

ways in which this, this

59:59

manga. talks about growing

1:00:01

up and getting older and the things that these

1:00:03

characters have dealt with. And even just

1:00:06

the idea of like, one main

1:00:08

character feels very much like, are you the person

1:00:10

that you thought you would be when you know,

1:00:12

when you were younger? Like, okay, you're in your

1:00:14

30s now, do

1:00:17

you think you're the person you thought you would become?

1:00:19

And as somebody in their 30s now, boy,

1:00:22

does that hit like a brick

1:00:24

truck? Like, oh, so 20th century

1:00:26

boys. Incredible. Very, very good. Also,

1:00:29

shout out a few PAX East games I played.

1:00:33

Urban Myth Dissolution Center is a

1:00:35

very fun point and click

1:00:37

adventure. That's very pixel art, gorgeous

1:00:39

pixel art. It has a

1:00:42

lot of, you know, you're kind of investigating these

1:00:45

cryptids and stuff like that in natural life

1:00:47

and using like social media to kind of

1:00:49

track them down and find them. It's a

1:00:51

really cool idea. The demo didn't give me

1:00:54

a great idea of what the loop feels

1:00:56

like. Right. But the pixel art is gorgeous.

1:00:58

I think you'll see this and immediately be

1:01:00

like, Oh, yeah, cool. It

1:01:03

had big world of horror vibes at times, which

1:01:05

is why I really gravitated towards it. I also

1:01:08

want to shout out Friends of the

1:01:10

Pod. I don't have

1:01:12

the dev names in front of me. I'm so sorry.

1:01:15

But there's a game called Forge of the Fae that

1:01:18

is very Breath of Fire

1:01:21

inspired RPG. And it just looks

1:01:24

absolutely gorgeous. It looks incredible. I

1:01:26

think the battle systems are really

1:01:28

neat. They were showing off

1:01:31

several different RPGs. There's one called I believe

1:01:33

it's called Quartet or

1:01:35

Quintet. I'm so sorry. It's one of those

1:01:37

two. I'm blanking and

1:01:40

I'm very tired. And also

1:01:42

Unfamiliar was the other one that was in

1:01:45

the Pax Rising area. But

1:01:47

Forge of the Fae is the one that I think I really

1:01:49

connected with the most. I saw it and

1:01:51

just immediately the look of it, the

1:01:53

way it played, the way it just looked like

1:01:55

Breath of Fire was immediately hitting battles. Yeah. Yeah,

1:02:00

yeah, I symmetric battles the Way

1:02:03

the menus pop up on the characters felt very

1:02:05

like throwback in a way that I really enjoyed

1:02:09

So yeah, I love that Playing on

1:02:11

my notes now to see if I had any

1:02:13

more games that I played and wanted to take

1:02:15

note of to mention later Lucid

1:02:19

always very good and lucid is a solid Metroid

1:02:21

mania that I think if you'd like Celeste and

1:02:23

stuff like that. You should keep an eye on

1:02:25

lucid heart worm is a

1:02:27

very Like throwback

1:02:30

ps1 survival horror Silent Hill

1:02:32

type game very very good

1:02:35

and throne of bone is Kind

1:02:39

of just went to it because I was

1:02:41

like the names fun and the game looks

1:02:44

fun It's like a deck builder slash auto

1:02:46

battler where you play as a necromancer That's

1:02:48

building this army of like ghosts and undead

1:02:50

and fungus and stuff like that And

1:02:53

it's just got a good vibe the battle systems

1:02:55

feel very good Synergy stuff feels

1:02:57

really really good I've played a lot

1:02:59

of deck builders and a lot of auto

1:03:01

battlers and so trust me when

1:03:04

I say that I've

1:03:06

played so many of them and they all

1:03:08

run together so much that this one still

1:03:10

sticks out to me a week later Having

1:03:13

played it. It's it's worth keeping an

1:03:15

eye on I think they have an early access coming up

1:03:17

soon So you keep an eye out for that if you

1:03:19

want? something to kind of deck build

1:03:21

and an auto battle with because it just feels like

1:03:23

a game where you could do that sort of One

1:03:26

more run and get really really caught up in it

1:03:30

Yeah, that sounds pretty cool. I'm definitely looking forward to Forge

1:03:32

of the Fae I will have to go back and put

1:03:35

another eye on that one Jesse, how about

1:03:37

you anything cool to share share show Intel? So

1:03:41

at PAX East I only played two games It

1:03:44

was visions of mana and I did the Final Fantasy

1:03:46

14 battle challenge And

1:03:48

we were on we got our team. Oh, he got your shirts. He got

1:03:50

you got our shirts But

1:03:52

outside of that I've restarted

1:03:54

Final Fantasy 9 with

1:03:57

all the with all the 14 Dontrell stuff

1:03:59

being like very nine inspired. But

1:04:01

I haven't played nine in like 12 years. I

1:04:04

should go back and just re-familiarize myself with

1:04:06

it. I'm only like two or three hours

1:04:08

in, not very far in it. But man, I love the opening

1:04:10

to Final Fantasy IX. I really do. It's

1:04:13

so good. I love the play with the music

1:04:15

and everything. You get to

1:04:17

play as Vivi, Steiner, and Zadane, like all

1:04:19

within like 30 minutes. And it's like each

1:04:21

one of those sections is so fun. It's

1:04:25

just, it's a good time. But not much to

1:04:27

talk about there. It's Final Fantasy IX. That game is good if

1:04:29

you haven't played it, play it. And

1:04:31

I started Stardew Valley for the first time yesterday.

1:04:33

Cool. Never played it before. I've

1:04:35

heard a million things about it, decided

1:04:38

to hop in. That game is so cozy. I

1:04:40

understand it. I get why people love that thing

1:04:42

so much. Excited to go back to my

1:04:44

farm and make more parsnips or

1:04:46

whatever I'm growing right now. Do

1:04:48

the parsnips, the money's in cattle.

1:04:51

Yeah, so people in my chat

1:04:54

were telling me like, oh, you should have got the farm

1:04:56

with the chickens. You should have got the chicken poop. I

1:04:59

just picked the basic farm. I don't know anything about this

1:05:01

game. How would I know that that's what I need? People

1:05:03

are like, when do you start making like mead? And I'm

1:05:05

like, I got like four

1:05:07

parsnips and like I haven't even met everyone in

1:05:09

the town yet. You all need to chill and

1:05:11

let me just- You'll have plenty of time to

1:05:13

do everything you want. Don't worry about that. Yeah,

1:05:16

I'm like the first weekend of Stardew. But

1:05:19

other than that, yeah, it's just been 14 really. That's

1:05:21

kind of my constant always. Looking

1:05:23

forward to checking out Pepper Grinder though. That game is

1:05:25

probably high up on my list of things

1:05:28

to finally get to. As for myself,

1:05:30

yeah, I mentioned I'm playing Dragon's Dogma 2. I

1:05:32

finished FF7 Rebirth. We

1:05:34

have to have a conversation about that ending sometime.

1:05:38

And I guess- You will

1:05:40

have a conversation about that ending sometime. I

1:05:44

will mention since I have a

1:05:46

short flight down to Boston from Toronto, I

1:05:48

kind of had to divide my movie watching

1:05:50

into two pieces. So I

1:05:52

started on Five Nights at Freddy's

1:05:54

and I ended on it too. And it was actually kind

1:05:57

of a funny, cute- I liked it.

1:06:00

I loved it like it's new

1:06:02

what it was it's extremely campy I

1:06:06

Mean Matthew Lillard is so good in that

1:06:08

movie. I'm so great. Yeah, so good I'm

1:06:11

just like okay. I was an 80s kid. I

1:06:13

went to Chuck E. Cheese I have this vivid

1:06:15

memory of there being broken glass on the floor

1:06:18

and being warned to stay away from it and

1:06:20

like It had

1:06:22

to they shut down like my favorite little tunnel

1:06:24

thing because of the broken glass and I was

1:06:26

angry But it to me like the place always

1:06:28

had a weird sinister vibe that I loved because

1:06:31

my my brother would go to the first birthday parties and

1:06:33

whatnot and Yeah,

1:06:35

just the sight of seeing like Animatronics

1:06:39

dancing to like 80s music. It's like oh

1:06:41

man That's it's a nostalgia

1:06:43

hit that you're not gonna get back anytime

1:06:45

soon But they did a great job

1:06:48

on this mix like yeah story

1:06:50

stupid But I think for

1:06:52

video game movies to succeed they have to

1:06:54

be honest about what they are Fun

1:06:57

as a Freddy's has a lot of weird-ass lore that

1:06:59

they kind of touch on in the movie But

1:07:01

if they had gone into it, you're gonna

1:07:04

lose everybody because people want to see Mex

1:07:07

eating people like I don't know what you

1:07:10

don't go in there for but yeah It

1:07:12

was it was fun. It knew exactly what it was

1:07:14

and sometimes that's all I want that a movie It's

1:07:16

like I even like Super Mario Brothers the new one

1:07:18

because it's like okay Mario Luigi Princess

1:07:20

Toad we're all gonna rescue the Mushroom Kingdom

1:07:22

and people say oh the first one's so

1:07:24

much better It's so much more creative. Yeah,

1:07:26

but it's not a Mario movie. I came

1:07:28

out of that as a kid saying what

1:07:30

the fuck was that? I

1:07:34

I I liked it for what it was But it's just

1:07:36

like that was not Mario if I was a kid and

1:07:39

I had been given the choice of those two movies

1:07:41

I'm like yeah, hell yeah, I'm going to the illumination

1:07:43

one. I don't care. That's what I

1:07:45

want from Mario movie But

1:07:48

yeah, so finance is ready. It's not bad. I Just

1:07:51

adding a clarification for those at

1:07:53

home spirus on the twitch chat

1:07:55

has been very helpful in locating

1:07:57

the actual names of these games and

1:08:00

developers and I want to shout them out both

1:08:02

because they're great folks and also

1:08:04

because my sick, addled

1:08:06

brain. I would feel bad if I

1:08:08

got the shout outs wrong. So it's

1:08:10

my familiar Forge of

1:08:12

the Fae and Quartet.

1:08:15

They're all by different publishers and developers, but

1:08:17

my understanding is that a lot of the

1:08:19

teams and the people involved are the same.

1:08:21

They're just kind of all under different team

1:08:23

names, but they were all showing epaxies. They

1:08:26

all look very good in their own ways.

1:08:28

Go check them out. That's awesome.

1:08:30

Super Mario. Super Mario. Thank

1:08:32

you, Spyrus. And I really love, is

1:08:34

that like an Alexander emoji, like from

1:08:37

Elder Ring with Jargai? I think it is.

1:08:39

It's very cute. His

1:08:41

name is Alexander, right? Sure.

1:08:44

I think that sounds

1:08:46

right. But in my head, I was like, wait, does

1:08:48

the pod have the same name as the thing from

1:08:50

Final Fantasy? A

1:08:53

to the E to the Alexander. God, he's going to rise

1:08:56

up. Boom, like thunder. Yeah. I love the

1:08:58

little podcast. I love the little one who

1:09:00

said like cause. Hi, cause what you

1:09:03

doing here? Cause Iron Fist Alexander. I

1:09:05

never thought about that, that they have

1:09:07

the same name. That's wild. What

1:09:09

if you fought in? No other Alexander, no other

1:09:11

Alexander's and there's no

1:09:14

other Alex's in the world. Definitely not

1:09:16

great ones, you know, that

1:09:20

I ever tell you about the time my family was banned from

1:09:22

our local Chuck E. Cheese. Yes. I don't know. Now is now.

1:09:24

I don't know what time to tell that story, but I guess

1:09:26

it is. Um, because you were

1:09:28

talking about Chuck E. Cheese five nights. Um, when

1:09:31

I was younger, uh, you know how they have those like

1:09:33

tubes that like the kids can like crawl through and like

1:09:35

you go down the slide and the ball pit and all

1:09:37

that. Yeah. Uh, I was probably

1:09:39

like six or seven. So my brother was

1:09:42

like three, four maybe. Um,

1:09:44

and there was like my cousins were all crawling through the

1:09:46

tube and my one cousin loved to egg my brother on

1:09:48

and loved to just get him to do dumb stuff. And

1:09:51

he's like, what if you took all your clothes off?

1:09:53

What if you just crawled through the tube naked? Wouldn't that be

1:09:55

really funny? My brother crawled through

1:09:57

the tube naked and pressed himself up against like the.

1:10:00

the clear like part of the

1:10:02

tube where like the you could like see out to the thing

1:10:04

and the Chuck E. Cheese employees were like You have to leave

1:10:06

and you can never come back. You

1:10:08

can never come back. You can never

1:10:10

come back. I'm sorry, how old

1:10:12

is your brother? My brother was like four

1:10:14

at the time or three and like my cousin was like six

1:10:17

or seven maybe like it was just like no Oh,

1:10:20

you wouldn't you wouldn't like cross the tube naked

1:10:22

would you that'd be so funny and then my

1:10:24

brother was like bet and then just did it

1:10:26

and Then we were banned

1:10:28

from our local Chuck E. Cheese Are

1:10:31

you like so is he okay? Like

1:10:33

it's always in life. He's great. So

1:10:35

it's not I mean, that's what those days Oh,

1:10:38

no, you could probably my brother stills like,

1:10:40

you know, you could you could probably convince

1:10:42

him to do something stupid But go back

1:10:44

was like a season adult go for my

1:10:46

mom being like mortified being like no And

1:10:50

then like having to like get him out of the tube because

1:10:52

that was the other part of it was he just kept crawling

1:10:54

Around and so yeah, we were banned from

1:10:56

our local Chuck E. Cheese. God, I'm like,

1:10:59

yes fired five nights at Freddy's Okay,

1:11:01

that makes a lot more sense now Good

1:11:03

lord, just like picturing that Simpsons episode

1:11:05

with really greased up going through the

1:11:08

grease me up God,

1:11:10

what a story hilarious

1:11:15

And I like I always thought you know Even

1:11:17

though I I'm not exactly unhappy that it didn't have

1:11:19

kids I thought it'd be kind of fun to have kids

1:11:21

sometimes they do something stupid like that and just like I

1:11:23

could fish your Like why are you doing? Yeah.

1:11:25

Yeah, cuz my mom has no idea. She's just

1:11:27

like down there with like the other adults And

1:11:30

she's just like looking up. She's like, oh, isn't

1:11:32

that shit? Oh, that's my son I have to

1:11:34

we have to go get him what fucked up

1:11:36

kid is that ocean? It's such an extreme reaction

1:11:38

like had there

1:11:40

not been a kid that just ran they get through

1:11:43

the Chuck E. Cheese like pit before like I So

1:11:46

they didn't like they didn't like take our picture or

1:11:48

like, you know, like right now I

1:11:50

know you can never come back here like that was

1:11:52

probably just a disgruntled employee but my

1:11:54

mom took it as like both

1:11:56

she's mortified so she like doesn't want to show her face

1:11:58

at the Which like

1:12:00

I get and two it's just

1:12:02

like she was like we can never take

1:12:05

your brother to Chuck E. Cheese He can

1:12:07

never come back Well,

1:12:09

okay, we got the sequel for five minutes right we got

1:12:12

the script for five minutes ready to everyone look

1:12:14

forward to it That

1:12:17

was a hell of a story as Nigel

1:12:21

says here. It's kind of a bonus pick cuz I'm supposed

1:12:23

to move on and give my little story I

1:12:25

really like it take us home

1:12:27

question mark take us home. I'm Ron

1:12:29

Bird y'all wanted to hear the story

1:12:32

it's a good story. No, I'm glad I heard that story

1:12:34

That's that's pretty freaking fantastic that off There was such a

1:12:36

quick turnaround from you want to hear about the time we

1:12:39

got banned for the Chuck E. Cheese Do here's how we

1:12:41

got banned for the Chuck E. Cheese. I don't want to

1:12:43

hear I said I said I want that ban

1:12:45

from the local church season and you're like, oh tell us and I was

1:12:47

like you sure I don't know if now is the time and you're like,

1:12:49

yeah, let's do it. And I was like, okay I'm gonna I'm gonna check

1:12:51

with tape on that one Yeah,

1:12:53

I think I said did I ever tell y'all about the time

1:12:56

I got banned from the my family got

1:12:58

banned from the local Chuck E. Cheese the different tone.

1:13:00

There's a different tone. It wasn't like I'm gonna tell

1:13:02

you It was like you are you were like, oh

1:13:04

tell us please let us know how you got I

1:13:07

got banned from a children's entertainment venue and you

1:13:09

say do you want to care how I'm going

1:13:11

to say? Yes, every single time

1:13:13

like there is no question here. So you

1:13:16

could have phrased it however you wanted it

1:13:18

I would have heard the story and yeah,

1:13:20

I know my audience. I knew my there you go. See

1:13:22

you're smart What a great story. I love

1:13:24

that and I don't really have anything

1:13:26

to compare with it because I'm thinking about

1:13:28

I Have a smaller

1:13:30

pit where I had to deal with Canadian customs

1:13:33

who well The

1:13:36

way Pearson Airport is organized now is that like

1:13:39

since I'm a citizen I come home and I

1:13:41

have like very very quick process To get through

1:13:43

and I'm waiting in the line and there's only

1:13:45

me so that's always dangerous because the customs Officers

1:13:47

gonna keep you there and talk to you and

1:13:50

he did so he looked at my passport and he looks

1:13:52

at me and said It looks at my jacket. So I'm

1:13:55

wearing my ff-16 jacket and he says it

1:13:57

has gold Final Fantasy. Why are there 16 entries?

1:14:00

I'm like, oh dear Christ, I can't. This

1:14:02

is the, you know, Jerry

1:14:04

Seinfeld voice. Why do they call

1:14:07

him final fantasy? It's

1:14:09

just the most like when you work in

1:14:11

retail and it doesn't ring up an item

1:14:13

doesn't ring up, it must be free. Yeah.

1:14:16

You're first time heard the joke. Brilliant. But

1:14:18

you can't tell a customs officer to go ask

1:14:20

themselves because they're going to have a problem. So

1:14:23

I don't know what I said.

1:14:25

I just like laughed. Ha ha ha. And said, like,

1:14:27

you know, I did tell him the story about like,

1:14:29

you know, why is funnel fancy? Why is it called

1:14:31

that? And I think that might be wrong, but I

1:14:33

don't care anymore. And, uh, yeah,

1:14:35

he started talking about Roblox. I'm like, I don't

1:14:37

know. Yeah. Roblox spy. So that was my

1:14:39

encounter. Final

1:14:43

fantasy. Yeah. Yeah. Let me tell you about Roblox.

1:14:45

Like what? Yeah. He was

1:14:47

like, was he like trying to get you to

1:14:49

play Roblox or was he just like, I don't

1:14:52

understand my son's really into Roblox. The graphics. Okay.

1:14:54

Like, yeah, I'm like, yeah, they're actually, you're right.

1:14:56

The graphics do suck for Roblox, but kids. I

1:14:59

think it's fascinating that kids aren't into graphics the way we

1:15:01

are. I like to think

1:15:03

the customs person was like trying to get

1:15:05

people to join their Roblox server. It's like,

1:15:08

all right, you want to join my Roblox

1:15:10

server? Join my Christian Minecraft server fleet. Uh-huh.

1:15:12

Uh-huh. No swearing. Uh,

1:15:15

yeah, I still like, I told this

1:15:18

as a pit before, but it was

1:15:20

hilarious when, um, I was still grooming

1:15:22

animals, dogs, and I was

1:15:24

writing about the Nintendo DS. I was kind of starting.

1:15:26

I was doing both at the same time. And

1:15:29

I came through what customs for God, it was

1:15:31

E3 2006. And

1:15:34

the guard was like, you know, what do you do for

1:15:36

a living? I said, well, I write about video games

1:15:38

and I groomed dogs. And he said, Oh, I bet

1:15:40

there's not a game about dog grooming. I said, yes,

1:15:42

there is. It's called Nintendo. He's like, get out of

1:15:44

here. Leave.

1:15:47

Just go. So yeah, that was

1:15:49

good. You're banned

1:15:51

from Canada. You have to live

1:15:53

in the airport now. Yeah. Oh,

1:15:57

so, uh, yeah,

1:15:59

that was. basically our show for today.

1:16:01

It sure was a thing, wasn't it? And

1:16:03

I appreciate y'all putting up with me and

1:16:05

poor Erica, who's got to have like a

1:16:08

scratchiest ass throat in

1:16:10

existence right about now. Try

1:16:12

not to think about it. Try not to

1:16:14

think about it. We're almost at the

1:16:16

end, Eric. We're going to move on to

1:16:19

our post show with the stars of Destiny.

1:16:21

We're going to talk more. Yeah, we're going

1:16:23

to talk some more, but you can talk

1:16:25

about nonsense. It's a little

1:16:27

bit different. And I want to

1:16:29

thank our stars of Destiny for supporting us

1:16:32

at the $25 level and

1:16:34

for joining us for the pre-show and

1:16:36

the post show. We have Antrax B's

1:16:40

Exixa. Drew, Eric,

1:16:46

you're here. Sardin,

1:16:49

flashback 2012, Harvest Lunatic,

1:16:51

Jesse, that's you, Kara. Patata,

1:16:55

Nuclear Sandwich, Spooky Man

1:16:57

BR, Spirus, and Teeps, who helped

1:16:59

us out a lot today, as

1:17:01

did Spirus. Thank you both. Thank

1:17:03

you all for coming. And yeah,

1:17:05

and guests, if you'd like us,

1:17:08

please support us at the Patreon

1:17:10

that we have. It is patreon.com.

1:17:12

Yeah, no, sorry.

1:17:15

patreon.com. patreon.com. You'll figure

1:17:18

it out. You're smart. Yeah, so

1:17:25

that will be all for us

1:17:27

here and from myself and from

1:17:29

Eric and from Jesse. Thank you

1:17:31

for listening and happy adventuring.