0:00

You

0:17

Hey everyone, welcome to waypoint,

0:20

I don't I don't do the mmm, I don't know

0:22

what the intro is I'm this way one.

0:24

It

0:25

feels like for the the 101s

0:27

have been so disparate and far

0:30

apart Feel

0:32

like Rob has one but I I guess

0:34

I need to come up with my own when Rob Rob is

0:36

not involved So Rob, if you're

0:39

listening to this, I'm sorry that I disappointed you and

0:41

not having a

0:42

carefully curated intro Which maybe that'll just become

0:45

my version of the intro is just apologizing

0:47

to Rob Over and over again for not

0:49

having an intro and then that can just become

0:51

my bit but we are here today

0:54

because we're here to talk

0:56

about Kingsfield for

0:58

the ancient city as

0:59

summarized by Wikipedia a medieval themed

1:02

first-person role-playing game developed by from

1:04

software for the PlayStation 2 in 2001 is

1:06

the fourth and final game in the Kingsfield series H

1:09

they published the North American release in 2002 while

1:11

Metro 3d published the Europe release 2003 well,

1:14

hopefully as a result of this podcast It

1:16

will not be the last game

1:19

in the Kingsfield series because I am joined

1:21

by as you just heard Our

1:23

podcast producer Ricardo Contreras to talk

1:26

about this. We were also

1:27

joined by prolific streamer

1:31

dark soul streamers soul streamer extraordinaire

1:33

and including a Kingsfield for streamer

1:36

both originally

1:37

And I think it's like 2006

1:39

and then and then again because I

1:42

prompted him to Jr.

1:44

Which if you're a big soul fan, I'm sure you

1:47

have seen his work online. Thanks.

1:49

Thanks for joining us, man

1:50

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for having me and

1:52

thank you for that That will lead up.

1:55

I hope I you know live up to all your

1:57

your labels there But

2:00

when I sent you a message before we started

2:02

recording, just like over going over logistics,

2:04

and I also asked, you

2:07

know, would you like to be called by

2:08

your real name or

2:10

like, you know, your online pseudonym. You're like,

2:13

hey, I've been called this name since I was

2:15

in third grade. So it's become your adopted

2:19

personality, huh?

2:20

It is, yeah. I mean, my last name

2:22

is Villa Lobos. And my

2:25

first name is Mike, which is a very common name.

2:27

And I had a PE teacher who just

2:30

called myself and my brother Lobos. And it

2:32

was like, OK, cool. So it just stuck. And it

2:35

kind of became the

2:36

name for all of my online interactions

2:39

at this point, yeah. It's

2:42

very funny. We did a stream recently

2:44

where this is

2:46

a Waypoint 101, which is

2:48

our kind of like ongoing series where we revisit

2:51

old games that we either played or wanted to

2:53

play and do that with the audience. And

2:56

to figure out the games we were going to play for the rest of this

2:58

year after doing King's Field, we

3:00

did this stream. Yeah, I know you know

3:02

where this is going, Kato. And we

3:06

all gave PowerPoint presentations. I'm sorry, Google Slides

3:09

presentations on trying to convince

3:11

one another what would be the best game going

3:13

forward. And then, of course, the reveal

3:15

was that, oh, actually,

3:16

we're going to do all of these. And that was part of the fun. And

3:18

so we did a poll to figure out the order in

3:21

which we were going to do them. And the

3:24

audience on Twitch was determining that. And

3:27

Kato, who we always call Kato,

3:30

he refers to himself as Kato. And so

3:32

it would be understandable that an audience

3:34

member would just assume, well, that's

3:36

just his birth given name. It is Kato.

3:39

And so when we put up the poll, he put up Ricardo,

3:42

his actual name. There

3:45

was a sizable enough amount

3:47

of the audience that was asking genuinely,

3:49

who's Ricardo? Is

3:51

this a typo? A

3:53

new person? Me. Me. I

3:57

think that might have sacrificed you some votes, Kato.

4:00

In the end, I think the confusion created

4:02

a split vote. That's why we're not

4:04

playing Team Fortress. Oh, Team Fortress,

4:06

Jesus. Fan fantasy tactics until...

4:10

Exactly. It's quite a mix up there. Team Fortress

4:12

versus... I don't know how I got there. I don't know how

4:15

I got there. I think I was thinking the letters T and F together.

4:17

Yeah, that makes sense. Fantasy and tactics. I

4:19

swapped them and then went to the first thing

4:22

in my head that was TF,

4:23

which is not... Let

4:26

me go ahead. It's

4:29

like it's kind of like a sense

4:31

kind of like slowly drowning. It's like,

4:33

no, I've got you. I've got

4:36

you, buddy. I guess before

4:38

we get to talking about

4:39

Kingsfield, I mean, Lois,

4:41

I'm curious, what is your sort of

4:43

like Dark Souls, Souls origin

4:46

story? How do you find yourself to

4:49

the Souls series, which then draws

4:51

you to Fromesoft? Where

4:53

does that begin for you? Obviously, it's become like a pretty

4:56

important part of sort of like your online

4:58

career or these games and this developer.

5:01

Yeah, it's a long story sort

5:03

of. I had a beginning like

5:06

many others where my first introduction

5:08

to that sort of game, this From Software

5:11

empire, if you want to call it that,

5:13

was Demon's Souls. And

5:16

I played it for about two hours. I

5:18

got to a certain point. I particularly was

5:21

fighting the red eyed knight in Bolittaria

5:23

and I got frustrated and gave up

5:25

and said, well, this game's dumb. Like, who's

5:28

going to have fun playing this? I'm

5:30

not playing this. I put it down and it wasn't

5:32

until maybe like two years later, I

5:34

had a couple of buddies of mine who sat me down

5:37

and were like, you are going to play Dark Souls

5:39

and we are going to watch. And

5:41

I was like, OK, whatever. They can give me some

5:43

tips or something like that. So I did it, managed

5:46

to kind of

5:47

figure out what it's all about and

5:50

fell in love. And at that point, I was very early

5:52

into my streaming career. I

5:54

had done a lot of speedruns of kind

5:56

of retro game, Super Nintendo, that sort of thing.

5:59

And it's. just fell into suite that

6:01

I was going to speed run Dark Souls as well. And

6:04

from there, it blossomed into whatever it

6:06

is today. Chaos. What is the

6:08

key to speed running a Souls game?

6:11

Are

6:15

there particular tactics that

6:17

carry over from one game to another?

6:19

Or is it hyper-specific to

6:22

each game? No, it's pretty like

6:24

all the games are structured

6:27

fairly similarly. There's a path through

6:29

the game. You need to identify

6:31

what weapon's going to carry you and how

6:33

quickly to get that, and then what upgrade

6:36

materials and where to get them.

6:38

And that's pretty much it. Once you have all

6:40

that, it's practice

6:42

of learning what. If

6:44

you're running through an area, what's going to cause

6:47

issues? What commonly will block

6:49

your path and how to deal with that?

6:52

And just practice beyond that, really.

6:55

And is the way you approach

6:57

getting better at speed running these games, are you constantly

7:00

looking up what other folks are doing? Or are you

7:02

trying to chart your own path through

7:04

figuring out, oh, these are my strategies

7:08

for making it through faster?

7:10

Honestly, so my plan at this point after

7:14

several releases that I've been up to date

7:16

for is

7:19

I do my first playthrough.

7:21

Then I will do maybe

7:24

two to three, or maybe

7:26

one to two casual runs with different

7:28

builds. So maybe I'll do a melee

7:30

build. And then the next playthrough, I do magic.

7:32

So I can learn

7:33

how good that is and how it

7:36

functions and just

7:38

continue familiarizing myself with

7:40

the game in general.

7:42

And then I'll do some challenge runs, like

7:44

no leveling or no healing. And

7:46

those are the kind of things where I hone and figure

7:49

out, like, OK, this boss causes me a lot

7:51

of problems. But

7:53

in doing that, I practice the boss and

7:55

I learned ways to

7:57

successfully avoid all

7:59

the damage.

7:59

and kill it quickly or whatever. And

8:02

then, usually once that's

8:04

all said and done and I have a good idea

8:07

of what I'm doing, then the speedruns will

8:09

commence. I don't

8:11

speedrun too hard. I don't do it really competitively.

8:15

I just kind of, I get

8:17

an idea of what I want to do and then if I do

8:19

it smoothly, I say alright, and then

8:21

I move on.

8:22

And that's pretty much it.

8:24

I don't know if we've, I'm sure we've

8:26

maybe talked about on the podcast what your

8:28

Souls origin story is, but

8:30

I figure for like

8:32

the sake of this podcast, like setting everyone's

8:34

markers down is interesting. So where

8:37

do you enter into this conversation? I

8:40

am a

8:41

Dark Souls baby. I

8:45

came on near

8:47

the end of the PS3, so I got

8:49

a PS3 very, very late. Like, I

8:51

feel like the PS4 was already like announced when I got a PS3, but it was

8:54

one of the first games I

8:57

picked up because I had watched a friend play some

8:59

of it. I thought it looked really cool.

9:01

And I like got it really into my head that those

9:03

games weren't hard, people were just

9:05

playing them wrong. Which is, I'm playing you

9:08

in your ass. Well

9:12

look, I mean it is kind of the thing, right? It's like

9:14

people expect a sort of action-y

9:17

game that doesn't have

9:19

the same type of friction that these games do,

9:22

but if you're patient about

9:24

it, it's not about

9:27

a sort of dexterity almost,

9:30

it's more about knowledge, right? Which

9:33

is a different kind of difficulty, I guess. I don't

9:35

know. We're gonna get into fucking difficulty discourse

9:37

on this podcast. But I remember

9:40

seeing them and being like, oh you just have to be careful

9:42

and you can make your way through.

9:45

Maybe slower than people who are used to like,

9:47

I don't know,

9:49

the one big comparison for some reason

9:51

I had in my brain was like the Devil May

9:53

Cry series. It was a different game,

9:55

right? But the idea that

9:58

that might have been why people say

9:59

Really hard and then I watched my friend play and I was like

10:02

this doesn't seem that that hard I could probably

10:04

do that. It seems fun and then And

10:07

then I suck I suck with I skipped

10:10

two

10:12

Still haven't played that one. I want to go back

10:14

and play that one, but then did three

10:16

and born in Sekiro

10:19

and

10:21

Yeah, I really just enjoyed this

10:24

I devoured Sekiro that the

10:26

second that came out Yeah, that's what

10:28

I think it's one right? Yeah, I

10:30

think so I think it rides that line

10:33

between actually having both

10:35

things of the like

10:37

you have to be patient but you also need

10:39

to learn a there's

10:41

a There's more

10:44

active button pressing I guess is

10:46

kind of my mind to it. Where's like if you

10:51

If you're jamming on buttons too quickly in souls

10:53

you're probably like panicking But

10:56

in Sekiro like blocking had such a

10:58

like quick cadence to it most of the time Especially

11:00

during boss battles that I found really really like

11:03

enjoyable

11:04

So yeah, I really

11:07

really loved that one

11:08

Yeah, and you know I've

11:10

told this story before it's not all that exciting because

11:13

it lines up very similar to Lobos

11:16

in which I I didn't play demon

11:18

souls and

11:20

but then Dark Souls came out I got as far as

11:23

The Taurus demon to like wrap my

11:25

head around it and went Yeah,

11:28

I guess yeah, I guess I guess these could

11:30

be interesting But I don't know why people

11:32

would want to play a game that's so mean to you. It just seems

11:35

masochistic and boring Put

11:37

it down and then you

11:39

know between Dark Souls and Dark Souls 2

11:41

Like the legend of souls

11:44

only grew amongst folks that I

11:46

like respected and in my friend group and so by the times

11:49

Souls 2 came around it lined

11:51

up neatly with my Wife

11:53

being out of town, and I just like she

11:56

was gonna be gone for like a week and a half I'm like alright fuck

11:58

it. I'm gonna just like boot up a twitch stream I'm going

12:00

to turn on Dark Souls and I'm just, we're just going

12:02

to power through this game. I have like nothing going on

12:05

except me, pizza,

12:08

beer, and a week to myself. And

12:10

so let's just do this. And I, you know,

12:13

I like a lot of people like made it to the, you

12:15

know, ringing the first bell in Dark Souls. And

12:17

I think if you make it past the two gargoyles,

12:20

essentially at that point, you can make a determination

12:22

on whether these games are going to work

12:24

for you or they're, or they're not. And like, I

12:26

was fully bought in at that

12:28

point and have been,

12:29

have been committed to them ever since. But

12:32

I think it's interesting, Kata, what you mentioned

12:34

about the notion of like patience and knowledge.

12:37

I think that gives us like a good introduction into talking about

12:40

Kingsfield four because

12:42

like, this is a game that comes out in 2001, which is,

12:44

let's see, when did Demon Souls came

12:51

out in.

12:53

2009, February 5th, 2009. So

12:57

you know, quite a gap between

12:59

those. I mean, obviously from soft, I'm sure release games

13:01

in between, but I think we

13:04

were talking about before we

13:07

started recording was that I

13:09

think for the, I think I can generalize

13:11

here, the vast majority of people who

13:13

now call themselves

13:15

from software fans means

13:17

something very specific, which is that

13:20

they became fans of the

13:22

Souls games starting either at somewhere

13:25

along the continuum of, you know, demons

13:27

to bloodborne. I feel like bloodborne is like, like

13:30

introduced the series to a whole ton of new

13:32

people, given the different aesthetic and

13:35

combat style. But you got

13:37

to join that train at some point and then maybe

13:39

went back as far as playing Demon

13:41

Souls. Maybe you played the remake that came out on

13:44

PS5, but that

13:45

Kingsfield, you know, from soft in the studio that's been

13:47

making games for decades and

13:50

they haven't done anything to make playing

13:53

those older games accessible

13:55

or easy. Like they've not done a from soft

13:58

collection. Would you like to see?

13:59

Yeah. The design legacy of this studio.

14:03

And so that was the motivation for

14:06

Kaidanai to sit down and check out

14:09

Kingsfield 4 because it seemed like, all right, this can be a gateway

14:11

into what they were doing before, but is also simultaneously

14:15

the most modern version of

14:17

that. And it would be curious to see like this

14:20

marker before Demon's Souls

14:22

kind of is this kind of like sliding door

14:24

moment that fundamentally changes the

14:26

company and is the introduction of Miyazaki as

14:29

sort of like a principle creative. And

14:32

what I would say, like first impressions

14:34

having played, you know,

14:36

the, you know, the 15, you know, 16

14:38

hours of it that we got through, we didn't manage to get through the entire

14:41

game unfortunately, but was

14:44

actually, I was shocked at how much, how

14:46

similar it felt to the Souls games,

14:48

how much DNA that I have come

14:50

to appreciate or I

14:52

should say more accurately a tribute

14:55

to

14:56

Miyazaki or Souls

14:58

specific were actually things that

15:00

FromSoft has been doing for much

15:03

longer before, you know,

15:05

that the sense of isolation, the sense of

15:07

patience, the sense of exploration, the

15:10

sense of sad, sad sack of shit

15:12

NPCs that are

15:15

just bum bummers to talk to. All

15:17

that stuff is here in Kingsfield 4

15:20

and I have to, you know, although

15:22

I've not done the exhaustive run to the

15:25

all the games before that, it signals to

15:27

me that this was something that was part of From Software

15:30

long before Souls came around. And

15:32

so, you know, Lois, I

15:34

know that you had

15:35

played it, you've done a run through it years ago

15:39

and then revisited for the sake of this podcast,

15:41

which we appreciate. I

15:43

don't know, like,

15:44

I guess where do you fall in that similar sort of bucket

15:47

of like having, I assume you played it after

15:49

being exposed to Souls and then went back

15:51

to this to try and understand what else the

15:53

studio had done.

15:55

Yeah, totally. So I did an entire

15:57

playthrough of Kingsfield, well, US

15:59

one. all the way through ancient city.

16:02

And I did some other front and soft titles

16:04

as well. Eternal Ring is in very

16:08

similar vein to Kingsfield. I actually

16:10

liked that game so much. I speed run it and

16:12

now hold the world record of

16:14

the two people who run it. So,

16:17

you know, I can still say this, but

16:20

yeah, totally. Playing these games

16:22

and even just watching them, I

16:25

noticed from my viewers, they just go, oh yeah,

16:27

this is, I can see where Dark Souls came

16:29

from. There's this whole

16:33

kind of upfront

16:34

vague telling about what's going on.

16:37

And they just drop you in here and

16:39

you're running around and you're not certain

16:41

if you're doing the right thing or

16:44

where you're supposed to go. And there's people who

16:46

are there, not really to necessarily

16:48

help you. Sometimes they're just antagonistic

16:51

and just like, whatever. And you're like,

16:53

okay,

16:54

let's see where this goes. And

16:56

just like the Souls games, they've got, you

17:00

know, you'll spend hours traversing

17:02

an area and suddenly it loops back

17:05

and you're where you started. And you're just like,

17:08

where have I been going? Like

17:10

it's this magical feeling of,

17:12

like you said, isolation

17:14

and just discovery exploration.

17:17

And that's just what I fell in love

17:19

with Souls games in the first

17:21

place for.

17:23

Akkada, you largely

17:26

experienced this game watching me play

17:28

it. I know that you played a little bit on

17:30

your own, but I think the vast majority was watching

17:32

me do it on stream. I

17:35

don't

17:35

know, like what were your first

17:38

takeaways playing or watching me

17:40

play the game? I

17:42

mean, yeah, I think that

17:45

there was a lot of surprise,

17:47

like you were saying before of how

17:49

much of that DNA was there

17:52

that early.

17:54

Especially something about the

17:57

combat struck me as like, oh,

17:59

this is just, way slowed

18:02

down version of the concepts

18:04

they hit in Souls eventually,

18:06

right? Like the way you have to wait for your stamina

18:09

bar to come back up is kind of like

18:12

the cooldown between weapon

18:14

swings on like a heavy weapon, right?

18:17

Like those things are kind of built in but they're built in

18:19

in a way where it's a little more esoteric,

18:21

it's a little harder to read maybe because

18:23

you can you can swing faster than that and

18:26

you do like zero damage and you're like what's

18:28

going on? Why? I'm just I'm hitting the

18:30

swing button but nothing's happening. It's like oh you

18:32

have to wait for the fucking bar to come back up instead of them

18:34

locking it into the weapons intrinsic

18:37

like oh you can't swing faster than the

18:39

weapon can go, right? But it's still

18:41

interesting that that sort of baseline of like

18:43

what they want you to do is take to to

18:46

take measured swings when you're you know really

18:48

consider and be deliberate

18:50

about when you're hitting that button instead

18:52

of you know just hitting it as fast

18:55

as

18:55

humanly possible and

18:57

there's really yeah it's really interesting to see like the precursors

19:00

of that sort of design philosophy in

19:02

this one.

19:05

It was

19:06

so I you

19:08

know I played this game using

19:10

a hacked PS2 connected to

19:12

my computer is how I'll explain it for

19:15

let's say Vice's legal department

19:18

but one thing I was

19:20

I was I was sanctioned by a Dia

19:24

Lassina who was a contributor to Waypoint

19:27

and also a massive Kingsfield and

19:29

specifically Kingsfield the ancient city fan

19:32

and I was instructed

19:35

by Dia that it was okay

19:36

for me to remap

19:38

the and the the look

19:40

controls to the analog stick

19:43

to get closer to the sense

19:45

of free look but the game obviously

19:47

doesn't have that it now the game is designed

19:50

to be discreetly like this is so difficult

19:52

to explain if

19:53

you're a gamer that

19:55

has grown up always understanding

19:58

that oh they all if you've

20:00

always lived in the analog stick era, that when

20:02

you look around or you manipulate

20:04

a camera, which you're in a third person

20:07

game, that you have

20:09

free ability to move that around

20:11

when in Kingsfield

20:12

it is it is

20:15

more like a D-pad. It is it is there is

20:17

an up, there is a down, there is a

20:19

left, there is a right. And you can

20:21

combine those things to emulate

20:24

the sense of, you

20:26

know, free free look movement.

20:29

But the game is always has a sense

20:31

of awkwardness because like

20:33

forced awkwardness, like chosen awkwardness,

20:35

because it

20:36

is it is mapping those things separately.

20:39

So even though I I mapped the

20:41

up, down, left, right to the analog

20:43

stick and was

20:45

able to then like give myself

20:48

like a little more freedom of movement.

20:50

Like you're still stuck in that sort of restricted

20:52

space. And kind of correct me if I'm

20:54

wrong, but I think when you

20:56

when you were playing on your separate playthrough, you

20:58

did not do this. No. And you stuck

21:00

you stuck to do you. I can

21:02

explain what the controls were like,

21:05

how you look around. So on the D-pad,

21:07

you have move forward, move back, turn

21:10

left and turn right.

21:12

And then on the

21:16

on the L1 and R1 buttons,

21:18

you have strafe left and right. And then

21:20

on the L2 and R2 buttons, you have look

21:22

up and look down.

21:24

Which honestly, for some

21:26

reason, I think I

21:29

don't like I mean, I enjoyed my

21:31

time playing with these controls because

21:33

I'm a monster, I guess. But

21:36

like it

21:38

it felt like, you know, they've

21:40

deliberately de-emphasized up

21:42

and down because it does very rarely

21:45

matter. And like you usually have the

21:47

time to kind of like set yourself

21:49

up

21:50

before you go in. And

21:52

so I found moving around

21:54

with just like I was able

21:56

to move everywhere I needed to. So

22:00

it's kind of the same concept, right? I'm using my top

22:03

fingers though instead of the

22:05

stick. So

22:08

my thumb was free to hit the

22:10

attack button. So

22:12

it felt like it was achieving a similar thing that

22:14

analog sticks do, where if you put attack

22:16

on the shoulders instead.

22:19

But it made me not

22:21

look down a lot.

22:24

And I found that unless

22:26

it was the slimes, which you really have

22:28

to kind of stare at. I

22:30

was hitting most everything. The slimes

22:32

are impossible. I don't know what

22:35

their fucking hit boxes is. What is it? I

22:37

can't tell. The slimes

22:39

combined with the games, like incredibly

22:42

difficult to parse, like sense of

22:44

distance is, I think

22:46

in the 15 hours I played, like

22:49

that was the most,

22:50

like there were a lot of parts that were like sort of awkward

22:52

or weird or challenging, but I

22:54

think the most trouble I had early

22:57

in that game was just like, how

22:59

close do I need to get to hit

23:01

this slime without being poisoned

23:04

by this slime? Because I don't

23:06

have that many, and you know, you

23:09

sort of like end up breaking the currency.

23:12

You will be poisoned. You

23:14

will be poisoned. You should probably just

23:16

run through them and go

23:20

stick

23:20

your tongue in the fountain that like

23:22

gives you health around the corner when

23:24

you go left down that mine early

23:27

on. Lobo,

23:30

so like, how did you play the game? Did you like remap

23:32

things? Did you play with the original controls or

23:35

like change that in different times that you've played

23:37

it?

23:37

I'm pretty much always an original controls

23:40

guy, even if they're horrible. You

23:42

know, I do a lot of retro games

23:44

and whether they are ones I've

23:46

played in the past or ones I'm new to,

23:49

I like to kind of immerse

23:51

myself in what it would have been

23:53

like to play it, you know, as a kid,

23:56

maybe on the couch, playing Kingsfield

23:58

like,

23:58

oh, these controls. Kingsfield

24:03

is interesting because a lot

24:05

of the combat is based around

24:07

your turn

24:10

speed and your look speed. It's

24:12

interesting because they definitely can make

24:14

it faster. For example, Eternal Ring came

24:17

out earlier and the

24:19

turn speed is much more reasonable,

24:21

I guess. It's

24:23

still something to deal with. But later

24:26

in the game, you get to these enemies that

24:28

will circle you faster than you can

24:30

turn. It just becomes like, how

24:33

do I deal with this? Just like back

24:35

away? It's

24:37

really interesting. I think a lot

24:39

of people, maybe younger

24:41

gamers today, would just

24:43

touch it once and just say, this is awful and

24:45

never touch it again. But

24:48

like Kata was saying, it is from softwares.

24:51

I

24:53

don't know how they approach. Getting

24:59

into the game, you

25:02

have to understand that

25:04

you are limited in this way and make that

25:06

work for

25:07

you and not against you.

25:11

It's fascinating because it's

25:14

a deliberate choice. In

25:17

my head, because my first experience with Kingsfield

25:19

was when I was extremely

25:22

young, renting

25:24

Kingsfield 1 or I

25:26

don't think Kingsfield 1 actually came to

25:29

the US. I think it was one of the... The original 1 did

25:31

not. 2 came to the US as 1.

25:35

As 1, right. I think that's the one that I played.

25:38

I played 2. That 2 is the one that

25:40

I played. I

25:42

was picking that up at the local video store with

25:45

my parents on a Friday night. I

25:47

remember bringing that home.

25:49

I played

25:51

a bunch of it. It

25:54

didn't really stick in my brain. I don't think

25:57

8-year-old, 9-year-old Patrick particularly

25:59

found it.

25:59

impressive, but what first it's

26:02

so then I guess the reason I make that point

26:04

is because I Sort of like stuck it

26:06

stuck in my brain that O Kingsfield is a ps1 franchise

26:08

and so That's

26:11

why it sort of broke my brain when

26:13

booting up

26:14

the ancient city because oh, this is a PlayStation 2

26:17

The analog sticks have been here all

26:19

along like in the ps1 Of

26:21

course that you know You might not have proper

26:23

analog stick support because like the dual shock

26:26

came along like midway through

26:28

the the life cycle of the PlayStation PlayStation 2

26:30

like we're here baby like we got

26:32

analog sticks and so they

26:35

they use it but like it's such a They

26:38

are deliberately trying to harken back to like

26:40

I mean Kingsfield itself is you know

26:43

Speaking in in in the legacy

26:45

of dungeon crawler games like it is a three-dimensional

26:49

Turn based you

26:50

know dungeon crawler that all that happens to be

26:52

in real time and like that's sort of like the gimmick

26:54

of Kingsfield and what it makes that

26:57

no one's the ancient city so wild to play is

26:59

like hey

27:00

We're still doing that 15 years

27:03

later and Yes,

27:06

we could have let you just look around but we're not

27:08

because that's the kind of game we're making

27:10

and I think that is where you see a lot of echoes

27:14

or or

27:15

You can see the the this Long-standing

27:20

tradition within the studio to make

27:22

what may seem like frustrating or arbitrary

27:25

or I

27:27

don't know like anti-player choices

27:29

But they are deliberate choices on

27:32

their part to evoke a

27:34

certain feeling and also to evoke a certain play

27:36

style right like I think You know

27:39

kind of look kind of looks at demon souls and

27:41

says

27:42

The world is full of idiots if they would just play

27:44

this properly They'd be fine You

27:47

know what what what demon souls was going for

27:49

was like it was like running against the trend

27:52

was like right you could see The Kingsfield

27:54

in you can see why they built it like it feels

27:56

like a natural extension of

27:59

of Kingsfield but giving the player

28:01

a lot more freedom of movement

28:03

and it shifts closer to an action

28:05

game, but still has

28:07

a lot of that deliberate

28:09

pace. You still do a lot of, maybe

28:12

not for you, Lobos, but for us

28:15

amateur Souls players, frequently a lot

28:17

of what you're doing is going in a circle

28:20

around an enemy. And you know what

28:22

you do a lot of things, Field? Go in

28:24

a circle a lot around an

28:26

enemy. Yeah, that's

28:28

the circle around, hit them in the butt. That's what I'll say.

28:31

I'll say it all the time when I'm doing it. It's

28:34

what works. And they've definitely become, they've

28:36

added in counters to

28:38

that as they go that are harder to make that.

28:40

But you can still do that in a lot of cases. Yeah.

28:44

And it makes it interesting having played the game

28:47

with the analog stick, MAFT, because

28:49

it actually, other than

28:51

making it a little more approachable, it actually does

28:54

break the game fundamentally because

28:57

you are capable of

28:59

moving at, you're not actually doing

29:01

a turn speed faster than what is possible,

29:04

but you are manipulating the player

29:07

at a speed that they didn't really design the enemy

29:09

in counters for. So I felt

29:12

like frequently I was getting into situations

29:14

where like,

29:15

all right, I'm just dancing around

29:18

these dudes because the

29:20

game isn't really, I'm moving at a speed that

29:22

the game isn't anticipating. And

29:24

so I can sort of like, not quite break,

29:26

but I can definitely make, if the closer the

29:28

game has to an easy mode is just

29:31

being able to move and look at a reasonable

29:33

speed at the same time, which makes it

29:38

easier for me to get through and fun for the audience.

29:40

But it definitely does,

29:42

in retrospect, sort of pushes back against

29:46

the feel they were going for, which is kind

29:48

of the main interesting point of like, yes,

29:51

the up and down being mapped to L2 and R2 seems

29:55

odd at first, but you're right, when I think about all

29:58

of our time spent in that game.

29:59

Like, how often

30:02

are we looking up and down? Like it's only just to

30:04

scan an annoying skeleton with

30:07

a bow and arrow. But

30:09

I'm not shooting up. Maybe that changes

30:11

later in the game. But

30:14

you're not spending a lot of time

30:16

vertically interacting with enemies.

30:19

It's always sort of happening horizontally.

30:21

There's a few moments where it feels like,

30:23

and this is where we decided to put in the

30:26

other dimension. Right, where you're like, the

30:28

bugs are a little low and then that fucking

30:31

ceiling spider early on. Also,

30:33

you have to kind of look up for that. But apart from that,

30:35

like all of the other normal enemies

30:38

are all

30:39

right at eye height. And

30:42

you're mostly just going forward and backwards and not really

30:45

needing to do too much of that up and down

30:47

movement. But

30:50

you can, you can like set yourself up and then run

30:52

at them while looking down a little bit. It's

30:54

not too hard to control then. But

30:56

yeah.

30:57

Does any of that

30:59

change, Lobo's like later in the game? Like you've

31:02

played more of this game than either. And

31:04

I have like, where did we made, so

31:06

let's see. The kind of, where did

31:08

we leave off? We left off. Yeah,

31:11

Pepsi Man, big. Ice

31:13

guys, yeah. Judo Chop ice

31:16

soldiers as you're working

31:18

your way through the.

31:19

Yeah, after the kind of the earth

31:21

area, you go into like a misty

31:24

cold area. Is that what you're talking about? Yes, yes,

31:26

yeah.

31:27

Yeah, I mean,

31:29

yeah, for the for the most part, those enemies are going to

31:31

be right in front of you or maybe maybe below you. But

31:34

like, like you said, they do pepper in.

31:36

There were birds. I don't know if you saw those in

31:38

like the center tower area that fly. So

31:40

you can't look up. Yeah, I don't

31:42

know if you guys got a bow, but you do wind

31:44

up getting a bow and you get some ranged magic.

31:47

So I did a fair bit of looking up and down.

31:50

It, you know, sometimes you can peek over a ledge

31:53

and shoot at guys who are who are down there.

31:55

But yeah, generally it is. Is that

31:57

straight on combat? It's that

31:59

they.

31:59

they'd work around. Yeah,

32:02

we, Connor

32:05

and I made a valiant effort to shoot those

32:07

harpies or whatever equivalent. And

32:10

I think once or twice through

32:12

sheer luck,

32:14

an arrow was touched by God

32:17

and managed to connect, but

32:19

then they would come over and do their wind

32:21

magic and I would die. Yeah.

32:25

And then my decision going forward was just,

32:27

I'm not going to,

32:28

I'm not going to fight these flying creatures. I'm just going to

32:30

run. Run, run. I'm just

32:32

going to run because it just seems like they're contained

32:35

to this one area that all I need

32:37

to do is get to the next bridge. I

32:40

don't see any reason that I need to

32:42

deal with them. Maybe they drop

32:44

some cool shit, but you know what? They do drop a

32:46

ton of gold actually. For that point

32:49

in the game, they drop like 300 something gold

32:51

and most things are dropping like between 20

32:53

and maybe 50 or something. Yeah. Yeah.

32:55

It's very huge. But yeah, it's it's

32:58

rough. It's rough trying to kill them.

33:00

I still need to watch

33:02

at some point. They, you know,

33:05

because the pacing of the game is so

33:07

stark when you first start playing

33:10

it that people are like, you really need to

33:12

go and watch speedruns of King's

33:14

field because they are wild.

33:17

And I

33:19

guess like the base level of how people is like,

33:21

they don't pick up any weapons. They just

33:24

use the fists all the way through and like,

33:27

OK, sure. Yeah, why not? And I guess a

33:29

game that is supposed to take 25, 30 hours. They finish.

33:31

I mean, I shouldn't be shocked that they finish it in 45 minutes,

33:34

but I still am nonetheless. I

33:37

guess it stands out even more just because the movement

33:39

speed in the game is such that like the

33:41

notion of doing that game and not

33:43

falling off something in that 40 in 45 minutes

33:46

is I

33:47

don't know. At some point I'm going to have to watch one of those because I just

33:49

need to

33:50

see how it gets done.

33:52

Yeah, I watched the speedrun actually at the end of my

33:54

playthrough this time around. I

33:57

did just about 100% run. this

34:00

time and it is a beefy

34:02

game. It was about 40, 45 hours. And

34:06

that's having played it before too. So I,

34:09

and I was also using, you know, advice

34:11

from chat in certain cases, like, okay, what am

34:13

I missing? What do I need to get? And

34:16

I

34:17

don't know how much

34:19

we want to talk about late game or end game. I don't

34:21

want to spoil it for you. Yeah, you can spoil it.

34:23

I'm okay with that. Sure. So

34:25

there's basically two endings, you

34:27

know, akin to the Souls games. Typically they give you

34:29

a choice. It's like one way or the other.

34:31

It's not necessarily as obvious here, but

34:34

you can, you can wind up,

34:36

you know, gathering a bunch of equipment and items

34:38

and actually forging the,

34:41

the moonlight sword, which is a staple

34:43

across from side. Right. Since before

34:45

Demon's Souls. And if you use that on

34:47

the final boss, it like permanently

34:50

defeats it. Whereas if you use any

34:52

other weapon, it does

34:53

not. And, you know,

34:56

the cycle continues kind of. So

34:58

it's, it's interesting. And,

35:00

but, but with the speed run in particular,

35:03

they will, you know, do that faster route

35:05

because they don't need to collect all these things.

35:07

But yeah. Yeah.

35:11

The, I think the

35:13

thing that struck me and kind of

35:15

when we were, when we were

35:17

playing it was that,

35:18

and I guess this, this is true in

35:21

the Souls games, but seemed to just

35:23

so much more apparent here was like, you

35:25

can just go to that end game area, like

35:27

pretty early in the

35:30

ancient city where like Kato and I, it

35:32

was like,

35:33

we touched the door and it said like, you're not kingly

35:35

enough, but then if you go around the corner

35:37

from that door, you can go to like

35:39

down a long hallway and then you walk up

35:42

this kind of like stairway and there's light,

35:44

there's like light. It's like the most atmospheric the game

35:47

has been to that point. And, and,

35:50

and the chat is buzzing and being like, you

35:52

really know you should go there, but

35:54

you shouldn't, but you should go there just to see what's going

35:57

on. And like we walk through and I mean.

35:59

and it's incredible looking. The game

36:02

is so restrained and chill,

36:07

despite the fact that it's like an extremely hard dungeon

36:09

crawler. But in terms of an aesthetic,

36:11

it is so restrained. And then you get to here

36:13

and it's like someone pulled out a heavy metal

36:15

guitar and is like, here we go,

36:17

it's time to take down these

36:20

fantasy creatures. And then when they walk around a corner and

36:22

there's some fucking crazy energy knight,

36:24

I don't even know. And he just takes us out in one

36:26

shot and then Chaz is like, yeah, that's

36:29

the end of the game. You can't go to it right

36:31

now, you shouldn't, but I mean, you

36:33

could if you would like to. So

36:35

I'm actually watching like some highlighted

36:38

stuff from my playthrough just to kind of rekindle

36:40

any thoughts or ideas. And I'm actually in

36:42

that spot right now, but that is the one place

36:44

that I remembered

36:46

from my first playthrough because yeah, you're right, it's

36:48

just a stark contrast. The music

36:50

kicks up, which normally the music's kind

36:53

of melancholy or chill

36:55

and just there. And you're like, all right, I'm vibing.

36:58

But then yeah, here it just, and you're

37:01

just like, you're panicked. And you're like,

37:03

in the whole area, you're just taking damage

37:06

over time. And you're like, I got to do something

37:08

here fast before I run out of all

37:10

resources and figure out what it's all

37:12

about.

37:13

And yeah, I love that part.

37:15

Yeah, like as soon as we'd started taking like, I

37:18

think maybe like the equivalent of psychic damage or

37:20

something, I have no idea because

37:22

the game doesn't, the game doesn't even tell you like

37:24

the different like element states that you

37:26

can get into. It's just all of a sudden a very scary looking

37:29

skull appeared next to the status

37:31

of my character. And it's like, why, you don't

37:33

want that. You hate to see it

37:35

when the pink scary skull becomes

37:37

attached to your character because things are probably

37:40

not gonna end well that way.

37:43

I

37:45

don't know, like what are your some of the bigger takeaways

37:48

from having played

37:50

and watched the game?

37:52

Um, yeah, I mean, I don't

37:55

know. I feel like

37:57

I really... I

38:00

expected it when I first saw the kind

38:02

of way that it controlled to

38:05

be a wholly separate kind

38:09

of experience, but I found

38:11

it related so much more to

38:14

Souls than I initially thought. And

38:18

I like, it made me kind

38:20

of very interested to maybe

38:22

look back at some of the other From Soft

38:25

Games, because I'm looking at a list now actually

38:28

of what they've made. It's like, holy shit. Oh yeah.

38:30

There's a lot. There is more

38:32

pre-Demon Souls than there is post-Demon Souls. Oh

38:35

absolutely. So many. So many different

38:37

titles. And so many different

38:40

types of games like Horror

38:43

and

38:44

3D Dot Game Heroes is a game they made and the

38:46

Mech games and just all over the place.

38:48

And it's just like, you wouldn't think it given how

38:50

big the Souls series became, right?

38:53

How kind of dominant as

38:57

the front facing franchise

39:00

for From Soft in the modern era.

39:03

I feel like I had never heard

39:05

of them before Dark

39:08

Souls entered my personal

39:10

viewpoint.

39:11

I had heard of the Armored Souls,

39:14

or Armored Souls, God. Armored Souls. I

39:17

know, look, I know we're trying to wish that into an existence.

39:21

It might happen later this year if those leaks

39:23

are accurate. Oh my god. I

39:25

had heard of the Armored Core series before,

39:28

but nobody I knew was playing them.

39:30

I just knew it was a name of something that existed in the

39:32

world. But apart from that, I

39:35

did not hear From Soft. But

39:37

it's like,

39:40

yeah, I'm way more

39:42

willing or way more interested almost in going

39:44

backwards through the Earth stuff at this point,

39:46

just because there's so much. There's so

39:48

much that I feel that could be there.

39:50

And that's one of the things that was

39:53

instructive as

39:55

part of this project, was reading up on From

39:58

Soft. had associated primarily

40:02

that with them is like, oh, right. Before that, they did games

40:04

like Armored Core and Kingsfield. And then you look

40:06

through the whole list. And there were multiple

40:08

times where I have

40:10

truly loved and enjoyed various

40:14

FromSoft games, not knowing.

40:17

Echo Knight is a spooky

40:20

horror PS1 first-person

40:22

adventure game that I really,

40:25

really liked. I

40:28

don't know if I ever beat it because some of the puzzles were

40:30

fucking obscure and weird

40:33

as shit. I was reading someone

40:36

on my Twitter feed. I don't know if it's

40:38

the original Echo Knight or one of the sequels. But one

40:40

of the puzzles involves you having to sight-read

40:43

music notes.

40:46

And if you just don't know how to do that, you just cancel

40:48

the puzzle, which is extremely

40:51

funny. But it is obtuse in a way

40:54

that feels very from

40:56

software-ian. And

40:59

of course, they would just pull some sort of dick move

41:02

like that with one of their puzzles. And

41:05

what's the other one here? Yeah, The Adventures of Cookies and Cream,

41:08

which is a co-op. Excuse me? The

41:11

Adventures of Cookies and Cream, known

41:14

as Curry Curry Mix in Japan and Europe, an

41:16

action-adventure game developed by FromSoft for the PS2.

41:19

And I guess it was ported to the DS as

41:21

Cookie and Cream. Huh. It's

41:25

a game where one player is

41:27

on the left, one player is on the right. You're playing

41:29

these two bunny-fox characters.

41:31

And

41:34

it's kind of like a top-down platformer

41:36

sort of thing. But you both have to be moving

41:38

forward together to accomplish

41:41

what you're doing. And I distinctly remember

41:43

getting in a lot of fights with an

41:45

ex-girlfriend of mine playing this game.

41:48

I don't know why we played it as often as we did, given

41:50

that it rarely resulted in a positive

41:53

outcome. But I have

41:56

super intense memories of

41:58

that game.

41:59

At no point could I have told you, like

42:02

prior to a week or two ago, that

42:04

that was made by From Software. But

42:07

just like goes to show like the breadth at which that

42:09

studio

42:10

has been making things, like despite their

42:13

sort of like popular

42:15

sort of interpretation now. The

42:18

one I've wanted to go, this is related to King's

42:21

Field, but lots of people

42:23

have said that they really like the Shadow Tower

42:26

games. The first one was released

42:28

here, and

42:31

then Shadow Tower Abyss for the PS2

42:33

was not released outside

42:35

of Japan, but people have pitched it to me

42:37

as like, what

42:39

if you play it like a first person from soft,

42:42

adventure

42:45

game akin to King's Field, but you could get a gun eventually.

42:48

And I was like, fucking

42:50

excuse me? Loboza,

42:52

are you familiar? Have you picked up a gun

42:54

in Shadow Tower Abyss? Have you done

42:56

this journey? Absolutely, so I played Shadow

42:58

Tower. I actually didn't finish

43:01

it. Are you gonna gun in that one too? You do. Wow,

43:03

that's just part of the Shadow Tower,

43:06

the Shadow Tower guarantee is that we'll

43:08

give you a gun. Yeah,

43:10

it's kind of blood-borne-y,

43:12

you know? I mean, blood-borne leans into the guns

43:15

a lot and makes it a real thing.

43:17

And Shadow Tower,

43:20

I didn't finish it because they had

43:22

some, it's very like,

43:25

much like King's Field, think that,

43:28

but then they changed some mechanics in

43:30

ways that maybe aren't even less

43:32

fun, perhaps. So for example, to repair

43:34

your weapons, you have to

43:36

spend health to do that. Oh

43:38

my God. Yeah, so I got to

43:40

a certain point and they also like break pretty

43:42

quickly. And I've just never

43:44

really been a fan of repair mechanics at

43:47

all. So yeah, it

43:49

got on my nerves and I. I need to

43:52

go back though. X-sickos face, yes, yes.

43:55

Well, that was one of the fascinating, like.

43:58

The

44:00

fact that durability is technically

44:02

a thing in the ancient city,

44:05

but it's not actually a thing in the

44:07

ancient city. Like you are getting this,

44:10

Kingsfield 4 is just like every two

44:13

steps is like, hey, you want

44:15

another fucking weapon? Like

44:17

so many weapons to give you. And it just

44:19

felt like every five

44:21

steps you're opening a chest and you're

44:23

getting a different weapon. And that the only time we

44:26

actually ran into any sort of durability questions

44:28

was

44:31

what was it Kyle? We realized

44:33

that if you're swinging, if

44:35

you swing a weapon that when you don't have

44:37

full stamina, that impacts

44:39

the durability. So if you're like going in for fast

44:42

swings without waiting for the full

44:44

impact, that can fuck up the durability.

44:46

And so then like the forest

44:48

people fire knife that I was a big fan of, down

44:52

to like 50 at a certain

44:54

point. And now that it mattered because I just

44:56

came across something

44:58

far superior. An

45:00

hour later with

45:02

the fact that you, I don't think you can repair

45:05

them in the ancient city unless I'm

45:07

wrong on that front. But that- Well, it just

45:09

sounds like you didn't find where to repair them.

45:12

Oh, okay. Well, that's, I mean- So

45:14

just to touch on the durability a bit, it actually

45:16

dramatically affects the damage of a weapon.

45:19

And later in the game, you still

45:21

have weapons, but you kind of choose

45:24

for much longer periods of time.

45:26

Like this weapon is really good. And you

45:28

still, yeah, like I said, you do still find new

45:30

weapons, but you'll stick with them longer, at least

45:32

I did. And I would

45:35

notice around 50 durability that just, oh

45:37

my gosh, it takes me

45:38

five hits to kill this guy now instead of two.

45:41

And so I made

45:43

a lot of repairs on my playthrough. Oh,

45:45

and you would like this too. So the way that the repair

45:48

mechanic works is there's an NPC that does

45:50

it,

45:50

but you give the item

45:53

to the NPC and it tells you two

45:55

minutes repair. And it's

45:57

real time and you just sit there.

45:59

and you wait, and then eventually

46:02

he has an option that says retrieve. You

46:04

mash that until it pops up, gives

46:07

you a display, and it tells you which item you're

46:09

going to retrieve once it's done.

46:11

And so you just have to

46:13

end up sitting there, and some of the stuff later

46:16

game takes upwards of eight minutes.

46:18

I think that's the longest one is eight minutes. Thank God.

46:20

Amazing. Amazing. On the bright

46:23

side, he will do all of it simultaneously.

46:26

So you can hand him all of your gear and

46:28

then... not

46:31

press fast forward on the emulator. And

46:33

then he knows how you start doing that. You would know.

46:35

No, I mean, look, when you hack a PS2

46:39

and connect it to your computer, you can do a lot of crazy things.

46:41

Yeah. Yeah.

46:45

To be fair, I think I would love

46:47

that as a kid, you know? I would understand

46:49

that it's time to repair. So I would

46:52

just queue it all up and then be like, OK, I'm going to go

46:54

make a sandwich and then come back. Me and Mom,

46:56

I need a snack. Yeah.

47:00

Wow, it's like you need an eight minute snack.

47:02

Exactly. I don't understand. That

47:06

is that is that's really a kind of

47:10

conjecture that is that related?

47:13

So my theory is where we ended up was we needed

47:15

to warm up the frozen forge. That's

47:17

like as far as we got in the game. So my theory

47:20

was and in that frozen area,

47:22

you find a bunch of like

47:25

a black, I assume blacksmiths or dwarves

47:28

that were like frozen and ice and those would unthaw

47:30

when you undo the forge. My theory is that we would because

47:33

we found the blacksmith, but he was not

47:35

home and he and specifically what

47:37

a funny. Yeah. Oh, my God. One of the funniest

47:40

parts in the goddamn game. You walk into

47:42

the blacksmiths area and just like a

47:44

voice recording plays like out of

47:46

nowhere. There's like, hey,

47:49

I'm not home right now. I'll

47:51

be back later. That's not like you pick up and

47:53

there's no note that you like pick

47:56

up. It just like plays over like what

47:58

I must assume is some sort of ancient medieval.

47:59

speaker that is like detected

48:02

that I walked in the room. But

48:04

anyways, my theory was that you'd

48:07

warm up the forge and then at the conclusion of

48:09

that arc of the game, the blacksmith returns

48:12

and then I could return my equipment for him to repair

48:14

it. Is that true or does it

48:16

go in a different direction? That is

48:19

accurate. I mean, you know, you see a dwarf

48:21

and there's like, you know, like

48:23

kilns and stuff nearby. Obviously

48:25

he's gonna be the blacksmith. Yeah. Right.

48:28

Yeah. It's just,

48:29

that's such a truth. I don't know.

48:32

But yeah. So did

48:34

you go into the hot area after

48:36

there? You didn't make it there. The

48:38

pot area? The hot, the heat. It's

48:41

actually called like cave of heat

48:44

or something like that, but it's actually full of lava. We,

48:46

you know, we had a, right. I

48:49

think kind of we were approaching that area. Like I think

48:51

we stepped into it. We rounded

48:53

the corner. Yes. I saw what looked like some

48:55

sort of devilish kangaroo

48:58

that's like all I can describe it as. Like I just, I

49:01

just remember looking up and seeing something that

49:03

had a kangaroo-ish appearance had

49:06

some sort of red eyes. And I said,

49:09

it's probably time for us to say, we've been streaming for eight hours.

49:11

I have to pick up my children. And so we ran back to

49:14

a save point because we committed

49:16

ourselves to using the save

49:18

points in the game, which I'm sure added

49:21

three hours to

49:24

our time in the game. I mean, that's probably

49:26

half the, yeah. You

49:29

gotta lose all this time. That's how you

49:30

get that much play time on these sorts of games. Or

49:34

even us, you know, like, you know, discovering

49:37

how fast travel

49:39

worked. I guess it's such a weird,

49:41

but like extremely cool concept.

49:47

start putting like sticky notes of like, where did we leave

49:49

the blue? Where's the red one? Yeah,

49:51

like I was using, you know, the colors

49:54

to kind of denote. So I use the yellow for the earth

49:56

area. And then like, where there's a watery

49:59

area that's blue.

49:59

and that sort of thing. So I just make that

50:02

that connection for those.

50:05

If people are listening to this and didn't play

50:07

the game, like just to clarify how it works, like,

50:11

you know, whereas in a lot, you know,

50:14

like in Souls, you can jump from

50:16

like

50:17

a bonfire to another bonfire.

50:19

In Elden

50:21

Ring, this is a spoiler because in the network test, but like,

50:24

just, hey, man, you want to travel,

50:26

like just pull up that map and, you know, you can that

50:29

game is like very friendly for you to

50:31

move around and get around its bigger space. And

50:34

in

50:35

the ancient city, you many,

50:38

many hours into the game, get

50:41

access to these. And

50:43

in fact, you get access to a marker before you

50:45

have any idea what the marker does.

50:48

And it would be very reasonable to

50:50

leave the marker there and not carry it

50:52

with you because you don't know what this object does. You don't

50:54

know what this statue that it's connected

50:56

to does, but you you pull

50:58

these markers, kind of stone tablets, and

51:00

then you can put them into different slots, different

51:03

statues in the world. And then you get

51:06

the if you do, you know, an

51:08

optional quest, I think is like, I

51:10

guess you could probably play the game without ever interfacing

51:12

with the fast travel.

51:14

You can get these three wands,

51:17

red, blue, and yellow, and

51:19

then use the wands to travel

51:22

to the markers. And it's just it.

51:25

There are you touched on this,

51:28

Lobos, but the.

51:31

Playing this game, if you

51:33

were a kid, had no access to

51:35

anything except maybe

51:38

some kid who imported the original

51:40

game and like tried to do some shitty

51:42

fact on game facts. Like there

51:45

are so many things to miss in this game. Like

51:47

it is true that the Souls games, like I

51:50

would say they part of their appeal

51:53

is

51:54

what they don't explain about themselves. But

51:57

comparing, you know, a game like

52:00

like Demon's Souls

52:01

not explaining exactly how a stat

52:04

reacts to what the player does, compared

52:07

to King's Field leaving fundamental

52:10

game features to be missed, optional,

52:13

or never seen by the player if they

52:16

don't have a live chat yelling at them

52:18

to go back, go

52:21

do that thing. It's truly

52:23

striking the freedom to

52:26

miss things

52:27

that is included in the ancient city.

52:30

Yeah, I believe there

52:32

is a point that you need to fast travel

52:34

because you find the wand

52:37

and when you warp, it takes you

52:40

kind of to behind an area you couldn't

52:42

reach and then you can gain access to that. Right, oh, that's

52:44

the, I think that's the, yeah, like

52:47

we, Kato and I were trying to figure out like, well,

52:49

I wonder how we get the green marker. And then I

52:51

think I, like, I don't consider myself

52:53

very good at solving puzzles, but when I remarked, what

52:56

if we just try and travel to where it is right

52:58

now? Because shouldn't it be somewhere? And I was like, oh,

53:00

perfect. See,

53:05

those are the moments I live for in these Souls

53:08

games.

53:08

Also another sort

53:11

of similar moment. The game kind of teaches

53:13

you that like water is great and it is

53:15

all healing and all powerful and you always want to

53:17

drink it.

53:18

At the end of a particular section, I don't

53:20

know if you remember this, but

53:22

you open the door and there in the corner,

53:25

there's this fountain. You're like, great. You

53:27

walk up and you drink it and you're

53:29

poisoned. I

53:31

literally said this because I turned left, there's

53:33

an old man. I'm like, he is going to tell

53:36

me, don't drink the water. And that's

53:38

absolutely what he tells you not to do. But

53:40

they obviously, they put the fountain first and

53:42

then him and he's like, oh, make sure you don't drink

53:44

that. It's even worse. It's even worse. I

53:47

went, I got to that part afterwards after we

53:49

had done that on stream. So I knew not to.

53:51

I talked to the guy.

53:52

He didn't say shit. He doesn't warn you. That

53:56

dialogue only comes up after you've drunk

53:59

the poison water. That's amazing.

54:01

It's amazing. It's

54:03

very good. So he's like scolding you. He's

54:06

just like, hey, hey, don't do that.

54:08

What are you doing? It's very obviously poison.

54:10

Look at the color. It

54:13

looks like normal water to me.

54:16

That the game, if that's

54:18

how the game functions in which it doesn't tell you until

54:20

you

54:21

are a total dumbass and do

54:23

the bad thing that

54:24

the game has tricked you in doing. But

54:27

we had a similar moment where when

54:30

you meet the vendor

54:32

at the ancient city, like directly to

54:34

your left, he has,

54:36

let's

54:38

call them red barrels in his

54:41

shop that are not apparent

54:44

immediately to be red or

54:46

different. Because we've gotten so

54:49

used to being excited that, hey,

54:51

we can now, because at the beginning of the game, you

54:53

can't open up

54:54

boxes and things like that. It's not really till you

54:56

get the pickaxe in the mine that

54:58

you can do that. And so

55:01

we're just chopping everything

55:03

and just seeing what we can find. Because actually that

55:06

is like a difference between

55:08

Kingsfield and the Souls games. The

55:10

Souls games, look, I will

55:12

roll into every barrel and I will bash

55:15

them open knowing there is

55:17

absolutely nothing inside. The games

55:19

do not hide anything in those barrels. The

55:21

opposite is true of Kingsfield 4, the ancient city.

55:24

There is so much shit in those barrels that

55:26

when you enter a room and there's 15 of

55:28

them,

55:29

you're excited because who knows how many herbs

55:31

or antidotes could be hiding

55:34

inside. But so you get to that NPC

55:36

and I'm swinging away and just

55:38

fucking, the room explodes.

55:41

I get blasted across to the other

55:43

side. I've lost the vast majority

55:45

of my health. And then I walk over to

55:48

that

55:49

son of a bitch. And his response

55:51

is like, hey,

55:53

careful those red barrels. They're explosive.

55:55

And I don't know why

55:57

he has a Yogi the bear.

55:59

But I just feel like really I've

56:02

exploded in your shop. I

56:06

have my arm is on the floor somewhere. And

56:08

your response to that is to tell me, hey,

56:10

by the way,

56:12

maybe don't swing at those barrels. But

56:14

that's like a very funny way to handle tutorialization

56:17

of the game, which is after

56:20

the fact as opposed to ahead of

56:22

time.

56:24

Yeah, I definitely had

56:26

a death to those on this replay. I did not

56:28

remember.

56:29

And for me, maybe my

56:31

colors were a bit off. They didn't really look red, but they're

56:33

definitely smaller. And so that's how I identified

56:36

them going further, just don't hit the small ones or

56:38

hit them from a distance.

56:42

Well, before we get to questions that people

56:44

wrote in, I don't know. Kyle, is there anything

56:47

that comes to mind about

56:49

the ancient city that you wanted

56:51

to hit?

56:53

I think we've covered a lot of ground,

56:56

but I'm curious to see what questions

56:58

we got about it. Do

57:01

you guys plan to finish it all the way? Yes. Yes.

57:05

Okay, I'm excited for you because it goes deep. There's

57:08

a lot and

57:09

it continues just what it started. That

57:13

feels vaguely like a threat both for you and the

57:15

game. I'm one

57:17

of those NPCs that you just encountered and I'm like,

57:20

yes, step forward, it will be fun. And

57:23

you're just like, do I kill this guy?

57:25

Well, that was one of the first things

57:27

we did when we jumped into the game was

57:31

the first NPC that we

57:33

met on the way to,

57:35

was it David Bunches? Yeah, David

57:37

Bunches. He's a shop keeper. Right,

57:41

but before you get to him, you meet

57:43

one of the first sad sack of

57:45

shit NPCs who has just got his head down.

57:50

I wanted to know at that point, actually

57:52

one of the fun parts about playing this game was

57:55

what is something that became a thing in

57:58

Souls and how much of that, like,

57:59

travels back here, and so

58:02

then you're taking knowledge of their future

58:04

design and trying to understand where

58:06

it intersects with the past design. And

58:08

so of course, I just walk up

58:10

to the NBC and I'm like,

58:12

I'm gonna wallop this dude in the face. And

58:14

so, hit him, and he, ugh,

58:16

and he turns red, but

58:19

he doesn't get mad at me, he doesn't respond.

58:23

Do you know if it's possible to kill them? Do they have? Absolutely,

58:26

yeah. Whoa, okay, all right.

58:28

Totally, yeah, I mean, my

58:30

first playthrough, that's, I am notorious

58:33

for killing NPCs, because you never

58:35

know, like, you gotta do it just to

58:38

see what they drop. I know

58:40

it's like, you know, it's not maybe the best

58:42

way, but,

58:43

I mean, whatever, I'm gonna play through the game a bunch

58:45

of times, so I know.

58:47

I gotta do it both ways. So

58:49

do they drop shit in the

58:51

ancient city? So this playthrough, I didn't

58:53

do it very much, so I don't remember. I

58:56

don't think you can get softlocked

58:59

by killing. I

59:01

think they will always drop, like, if you need

59:03

an item, or maybe you can't play. But

59:06

I guess I meant, do they drop

59:08

items? Like, do they have hidden stuff

59:10

that you... In general, not that I remember,

59:13

yeah, unless it's like key items, yeah.

59:15

Gotcha, oh, that's fun. Well, you know what,

59:17

Kyle, I think we're gonna... David

59:20

Bunch's has, he's, I

59:22

think he... We need

59:24

to know. We need to know. Also,

59:26

he has a graveyard, like full

59:28

of skeletons,

59:31

and a basement full of water. The man's

59:33

up to no good. Something's going on there. Something's

59:35

going on there. Something's going on there. He is obsessed

59:38

with cleaning, polishing

59:40

that sign. There are other, look,

59:42

Kyle, we will go there. We will buy the

59:44

ultra rare items that he has on him.

59:47

There's a magic spell that we need to buy off of him, right? I think

59:49

that's what we learned. That wind

59:51

spell.

59:52

And then we swing away, baby. We're

59:56

gonna, he's going down for the count.

59:59

So these are some of the questions that people

1:00:02

sent in. Anna writes, who

1:00:05

is the most wretched little guy in all of

1:00:07

FromSoft? Thank you, love

1:00:09

y'all. Which I guess I believe

1:00:11

that that is in the spirit of the

1:00:14

sad sack of shit NPC,

1:00:17

or maybe like the goblin, sort

1:00:19

of, you know, kind of like, who's

1:00:21

the antagonist in the Souls games, the ones

1:00:24

who's always

1:00:25

dropping you into a-

1:00:28

Oh, patches, you mean? Yeah. So,

1:00:30

I don't know, I guess more

1:00:32

generally, I'd maybe rephrase this as,

1:00:35

Kato, do you have a favorite

1:00:37

NPC, like a weirdo

1:00:40

that comes to mind in these

1:00:42

games?

1:00:44

Oh, I mean, there's

1:00:46

so many fucking weirdos. I

1:00:48

mean, before we

1:00:50

had our David Bunch, we're gonna go kill David Bunch, moment

1:00:52

I probably would have said David

1:00:54

Bunch for the update just because of the name. I know, I'm convinced

1:00:57

he's one of the biggest weirdos in these games. It's

1:00:59

very good.

1:01:02

God. I

1:01:06

do really appreciate

1:01:10

the one armed, oh

1:01:13

God, I forgot his name. In

1:01:16

Sekiro, the guy that you're like upgrading with throughout

1:01:20

the game. Oh, this Gulliver? Yeah. Yeah, the

1:01:22

one armed soldier. Yes, who then

1:01:25

turns into that one boss? Spoilers,

1:01:29

I guess, I'll mark that just in case.

1:01:33

That guy was

1:01:35

super cool and then very, very

1:01:37

sad story ending

1:01:40

there. So

1:01:42

that's stuck with me.

1:01:44

Lois,

1:01:46

you've been through these games countless

1:01:49

times. Is there one that still sort

1:01:51

of like sticks out when you go through,

1:01:53

is there one that particularly like

1:01:56

killing over and over again for some

1:01:58

reason? So if you would read the.

1:01:59

the exact question again because I had something

1:02:02

pop immediately into my mind. Oh, okay. Yeah. Who

1:02:04

is the most wretched little guy in all of FromSoft?

1:02:07

Yes. So when you say wretched

1:02:09

little guy, I think specifically in

1:02:11

Dark Souls to the PvP

1:02:14

covenant guy, his name is Titchy Grinn. He's

1:02:16

behind the, yeah, yeah. He's

1:02:18

behind the Chariot boss and

1:02:21

he is all about blood, man. He

1:02:23

loves blood and he is a wretched little guy.

1:02:26

His voice acting is great because he's just,

1:02:29

he is a, yeah, I don't know.

1:02:31

He's a character.

1:02:35

This is more general as opposed to specific, but

1:02:37

I enjoy talking to anyone

1:02:39

who is like locked behind

1:02:42

a prison cell in a FromSoft

1:02:44

game because they will always cackle

1:02:46

in the weirdest way and they always have just

1:02:49

the strangest stories to tell. And

1:02:52

every time that happens, all I can think of is

1:02:54

I

1:02:55

wish, like I

1:02:57

would so desperately love of

1:03:00

all the things I could do to like cover a game that

1:03:02

I won't be able to do because I'll never get access

1:03:04

to doing so. I would love to be sit

1:03:06

in for like the voice recordings for

1:03:08

the NPCs of a Souls game

1:03:11

because like

1:03:13

the, just the oddity of

1:03:15

like their vocal inflections and the

1:03:17

way they pronounce things is just, I

1:03:20

would just love to see how, like how, now

1:03:22

that it's a house style as opposed to maybe

1:03:25

something they stumbled into, I just, all

1:03:28

that, I would just love to see someone do the but

1:03:30

like I want to see them doing it to a microphone and I want

1:03:32

to see them, I want to see them do it in person.

1:03:37

This comes from J.G.

1:03:39

Minto, which modern FromSoft

1:03:41

game do you think evokes the design decisions of

1:03:43

Kingsfield for the closest? Are there

1:03:46

any specific mechanics you'd like to see return

1:03:48

to

1:03:49

their modern games?

1:03:51

Zendy comes to mind,

1:03:53

Lobos?

1:03:55

That's a good question. Let's

1:03:58

see, I guess I would have to say... They... Demon's

1:04:03

Souls is probably closest, just because

1:04:06

as they've progressed, the

1:04:08

games have gotten a bit more accessible and

1:04:10

more accessible as, you

1:04:12

know, now suddenly they have so many eyes

1:04:14

on them, I think that it's kind of a necessary evolution.

1:04:17

But

1:04:19

as far as mechanics

1:04:21

that I would like to see in

1:04:23

a Souls game or something like that, I

1:04:26

really like the

1:04:29

emphasis on weapons in the Kingsfield

1:04:31

games. Like, it's almost always like you

1:04:34

wind up,

1:04:35

you know, you're constantly trashing weapons,

1:04:38

and then at near the end

1:04:40

you kind of have heard about and

1:04:42

work towards this like legendary sword,

1:04:45

and you don't necessarily need to do it, but you can totally

1:04:47

build up to it and upgrade to it, and then

1:04:49

you have it and you feel like a god. And

1:04:51

that's kind of not... I don't know that that would

1:04:54

fit necessarily in the Souls series, but I

1:04:56

like that the feeling

1:04:58

that evokes, if not in a weapon or

1:05:00

at least some sort

1:05:02

of armor or something like that.

1:05:05

I

1:05:07

know this is less of a specific mechanic

1:05:09

as much as I

1:05:10

would love to see them make another

1:05:12

first person something. I

1:05:15

would love to see them take

1:05:17

all the lessons you've

1:05:20

learned from making

1:05:22

Dark Souls, and you know what,

1:05:24

just cash in all of this success

1:05:27

and just make a weird first

1:05:29

person something. Like, I understand

1:05:31

their audience is so big these days, and

1:05:33

it warms my heart that so many people

1:05:36

like these games and love these games, and I think

1:05:39

the accommodations they've made in that direction

1:05:41

have not lost the spirit

1:05:44

of what made them special to begin with. But

1:05:46

boy, what I'd love... I don't think they can

1:05:48

do it with

1:05:50

the Souls games anymore, and even the ones that

1:05:52

are spoking off, a Sekiro, a Bloodborne,

1:05:54

you know, if they do it with Armored Core.

1:05:58

I think you can do it with King's Field. because who gives

1:06:00

a shit about King's Field? Like, nobody? I

1:06:02

mean, we do. We're here talking about it.

1:06:05

But I mean, like, the broader population,

1:06:07

if they announced a new King's Field that was a hardcore

1:06:10

first person, we're going to

1:06:12

kick you in the ass, push

1:06:15

you on the ground, and spit on you. Like, I

1:06:18

think people would be OK with it because they

1:06:20

don't have the attachment. And the perspective

1:06:22

shift would give them an opportunity

1:06:25

to revisit

1:06:27

something that is in concert with all that they're

1:06:29

doing now. But like,

1:06:31

a King's Field game with, like, modern

1:06:34

graphics would look sick as

1:06:37

hell. And

1:06:39

so I really want them to, when

1:06:42

this person asks, are there mechanics that I see

1:06:44

returned to the modern games, I would like to see

1:06:47

all of these mechanics return,

1:06:49

but like, in their own game. So

1:06:52

they are kind of like stripped of the

1:06:55

responsibility that goes along

1:06:57

with building a Souls

1:06:59

game specifically and the mainstream audience

1:07:01

that that entails. It

1:07:03

just seems like they have the cachet at this point. Like, what's

1:07:06

Bandai Namco going to do? Say no

1:07:08

if they want to make another

1:07:10

one of those? Like, if Microsoft wants,

1:07:12

see this what Microsoft should do, is like, they don't, you

1:07:15

know, Sony's got a partnership with From Software.

1:07:17

You know, Namco's kind of got the multi-platform

1:07:19

thing unlocked. What Microsoft needs is

1:07:21

a Xbox exclusive

1:07:24

King's Field game. What else

1:07:26

could Game Pass want but, like, highly

1:07:29

punishing next-gen King's Field

1:07:31

game? I think I've solved it. And

1:07:35

if I could take that a step further, I've been saying for

1:07:38

years I would love a modern King's

1:07:40

Field

1:07:41

with VR

1:07:43

because they dabbled in. They even

1:07:46

dabbled, you know? You see it. They made Derasine,

1:07:48

which was just out of nowhere. And you're

1:07:50

like, OK, they're like, they're thinking

1:07:53

about, I mean, they're doing VR. So clearly,

1:07:55

there might be more to that.

1:07:58

And so

1:07:58

if they announced

1:07:59

Kingsfield VR like, man. Whoo.

1:08:03

Now you just made it even worse, Logan. I'm

1:08:05

sorry. I'm sorry. But yeah. Someone

1:08:09

brought it up in the chat when

1:08:11

we were playing the game. God, imagine

1:08:13

playing this in VR. But the version I imagined

1:08:15

it was like,

1:08:16

so your head could move

1:08:19

freely, but then you'd be waiting 10 seconds

1:08:22

for the camera to catch up. And so

1:08:24

you could just throw up on your way

1:08:26

towards the camera. You

1:08:28

know what?

1:08:30

If you made a

1:08:32

first-person next-gen Kingsfield game

1:08:34

in VR in which the

1:08:37

movement was still slow,

1:08:40

deliberate, paced, but you

1:08:42

could just look around at the world using

1:08:44

the headset, you

1:08:47

could evoke a modern feeling even

1:08:49

though the pacing of the game is slow, would better

1:08:51

fit VR, because VR works

1:08:53

better in slow. Man, we're

1:08:56

cooking with gas here. The

1:08:59

dream is here. This

1:09:01

one comes in. Hello,

1:09:04

Waypoint Crew and Lobos.

1:09:06

I hope you all doing well and remembering to drink water as you

1:09:08

wait for Elden Ring. First, I'd like

1:09:10

to say I love the work

1:09:11

that you all do. And for Lobos specifically,

1:09:13

I love watching your modded runs of

1:09:15

the Souls series. It's been super

1:09:17

cool to see the Souls modded community

1:09:19

just do everything in their power to meld the game into

1:09:22

different forms and new experiences. As

1:09:24

someone who messed around with Dark Souls 1 on Cheat Engine,

1:09:26

it is extremely impressive to me the lengths that modders

1:09:29

are going to create these experiences. My

1:09:31

questions are these. What do you think the future of modding

1:09:33

scenes like this looks

1:09:35

like? What would you like to see out of both the modding

1:09:38

communities and the companies behind the games that are being modded?

1:09:41

And so I can cheat this into a Kingsfield

1:09:43

cast. If you were to play a modded run

1:09:45

of Kingsfield 4, the agent

1:09:46

said, what type of mod would you want to run? Take

1:09:49

good care, Botter

1:09:51

from Kuwait. So I guess we

1:09:53

split these out into two. I guess that Botter

1:09:56

is asking, what do you think the future is

1:09:58

someone that's done a lot of Souls?

1:09:59

modding? What do you think the future of that is? And then

1:10:02

separately, how would you how would you mod

1:10:04

a King's field forward and make it interesting on

1:10:06

a subsequent run? I always

1:10:08

think that one of the most interesting, most fun, most

1:10:10

replayable mods for a Souls game

1:10:12

like this is just an item randomizer

1:10:15

or enemy randomizer. And that sort of thing

1:10:17

just you can run a script, it

1:10:20

moves all the items around in the world, but

1:10:23

it does it in an intelligent way that you can still you

1:10:25

know, you won't get locked on your progression, you

1:10:27

can make it, it makes you

1:10:29

check every single item location,

1:10:31

not forget anything and

1:10:34

make your way through. So

1:10:36

item randomizer, for sure, that'd be my

1:10:38

most favorite. And as

1:10:40

far as the future of modding, I think

1:10:43

unless from software comes

1:10:45

out and actually

1:10:49

creates some sort of mod

1:10:51

community or embraces

1:10:54

it. For now, it's

1:10:56

kind of like this gray area where they can't

1:10:58

really acknowledge

1:11:01

that people mod because it's like, it's

1:11:03

not technically against terms of service

1:11:05

as far as what we can do with our game. And so

1:11:08

it's in this weird like tense state that

1:11:11

I would love if they just came

1:11:14

out and said, All right, here's this, this package.

1:11:16

And the funny thing is, they actually have

1:11:19

a Kingsfield maker,

1:11:21

and that they give you rights

1:11:23

to the all the IP. And you can

1:11:25

take it and you can build it. And

1:11:28

you will point this out like this. It's ridiculous

1:11:31

that like, I mean, people have to be pure have to

1:11:33

understand like,

1:11:34

love us isn't isn't bullshitting here. It's not just

1:11:36

that they did a Kingsfield maker that was released

1:11:39

for Windows in Japan, where you can

1:11:41

like build your own Kingsfield the game.

1:11:43

If you you can release,

1:11:46

sell and profit from

1:11:48

your own Kingsfield

1:11:51

like that is so fucking

1:11:53

like you just don't do that you let you can release a maker

1:11:55

and then you're a Nintendo which is or anyone like

1:11:58

this that's not even an intended thing like, hey,

1:11:59

Here's tools to make stuff we

1:12:02

would love to profit off of it because it's going to exist in

1:12:04

our proprietary service. And

1:12:06

we're going to make money off of, even if you charge for

1:12:08

it, on Steam. You

1:12:11

want to make hats for Team Fortress 2. Well, you're

1:12:13

going to sell those here on Steam.

1:12:16

And so we're going to take our cut even though you're making

1:12:18

that. And so the idea that they allowed people

1:12:21

to do that. And I guess it also notes

1:12:23

here that it was a full remake of the original King's

1:12:26

Field

1:12:26

was included with

1:12:28

the King's Field, or

1:12:30

the Sword of Moonlight, a King's

1:12:33

Field making tool, which is a great name. Yeah.

1:12:36

I played through a fan

1:12:39

remake of

1:12:40

King's Field 2 recently.

1:12:43

And yeah, it was great. Like, you know, it just

1:12:46

kind of

1:12:47

didn't have everything that the original

1:12:49

had. But it was all done by one

1:12:52

person. They had a custom soundtrack and

1:12:54

everything that fit very well.

1:12:55

It's really good. And they made it

1:12:58

with that tool set? With King's Field, yeah, with the Sword of Moonlight.

1:13:00

You can go download that for free. Oh,

1:13:03

actually, it's called King's Field

1:13:05

Return to Melanot.

1:13:08

And it's free. You can go download it. And

1:13:11

especially with them granting the

1:13:13

rights to the IP, just go do it. Go

1:13:15

play that. You can get the sense of what King's

1:13:17

Field is real quick.

1:13:19

God, that is wild. Kato,

1:13:21

if you were to imagine, if I was to start

1:13:23

King's Field again, what

1:13:26

would be the worst possible way to

1:13:28

replay that game a second time?

1:13:31

God, I mean, no, I mean,

1:13:36

fist only probably? No weapons. God,

1:13:38

yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're probably right.

1:13:41

You're probably right. You would have to punch things in. What you

1:13:43

did in my response, that would be, well, I'm going to sit here with

1:13:45

these. Well, I'm not going to go fight these

1:13:47

slimes. But whatever those bug creatures are

1:13:50

in that area before. You're just going to get extra

1:13:52

fucking swole? Yeah,

1:13:54

yeah. Before you level.

1:13:57

Just farm like five fist levels off David

1:13:59

Bunch, and you're good to go.

1:13:59

Oh no! Yeah, that's what

1:14:02

I'm thinking. Or, you know, I'm just

1:14:04

fighting those bugs in front of that, like, you

1:14:06

know, you beat that spider to uselessly

1:14:10

fill up that fountain that you are never,

1:14:12

ever gonna go back to. Like,

1:14:16

I would just spend my time fighting those bugs there. And then

1:14:18

I guess you'd have to wait for them to respawn

1:14:20

based on the game's completely arbitrary

1:14:23

and inscrutable respawn

1:14:26

mechanic. Like, it's, you

1:14:29

know, in the nearly 20

1:14:31

hours we've played in the game, occasionally

1:14:34

we've come across enemies again, but it's like super

1:14:36

unclear of what pace or

1:14:38

why or what determines it.

1:14:43

Which, I like the fact that it's inscrutable

1:14:45

in that way, and that it's similar

1:14:48

to souls in that, hey,

1:14:50

when you leave, enemies you fought will

1:14:52

come back, but it's not as discreet as

1:14:54

souls in which, hey,

1:14:56

when you save or upgrade,

1:14:59

you know, you're going to be punished by having the world

1:15:01

populated again. It like finds

1:15:04

a more obscure middle ground,

1:15:06

which is that we're just not gonna tell you, but sometimes there'll be

1:15:08

enemies here. Okay,

1:15:13

this does

1:15:15

not have a name attached to it, but

1:15:18

the name attached to it is Elden Ring.

1:15:20

It says, how will,

1:15:22

I feel like this one is specifically target at

1:15:24

Lobos because I think you tweeted this at me when I said

1:15:27

I was playing Kingsfield, is

1:15:29

how will FromSoft manage to improve upon

1:15:31

the excellent music, voice acting, and

1:15:33

crafting of Eternal Ring

1:15:36

in the soon to be released sequel,

1:15:38

Elden Ring? We didn't talk

1:15:41

much about Eternal Ring, but let me just say I

1:15:43

believe that that is the most accessible

1:15:46

first person RPG FromSoft

1:15:48

game right now. They have

1:15:51

basically a remastered version on PS4.

1:15:53

You can get off the PSN, unfortunately not

1:15:56

in the UK for whatever reason,

1:15:58

but in America, it and I even

1:16:00

have it on my ps5. It runs great.

1:16:03

It's smooth. It the turn speed is much more,

1:16:06

you know, reasonable than Kingsdale

1:16:09

ancient city is for some reason. And that's why

1:16:11

I chose it to speed run somebody's just it's a blast

1:16:13

and they they take the system and

1:16:15

they make it very like you get a lot of

1:16:18

magic in this game here, no doubt. But

1:16:20

there is a whole

1:16:22

spell crafting system where

1:16:24

you get these gems, you might get a fire in

1:16:27

a leaf gem, and you combine those

1:16:29

and suddenly now you have like the heal

1:16:31

spell or the throw fireball spell

1:16:34

and you can spend so much time

1:16:36

just figuring out what crafts into what and

1:16:38

how that whole system works. But it's really good.

1:16:40

And yeah, like I said, ps4, ps5 easy.

1:16:43

And also it has a fantastic soundtrack

1:16:45

as well. Just like the rest of these Kingsville

1:16:47

games. I mean, yeah, the ancient city

1:16:50

has some real. Yeah, bops and

1:16:54

it's always a joy when you it's so very,

1:16:56

very clearly being told to you by the game, you're

1:16:59

in a new area. It's like, oh,

1:17:01

yeah, we've changed. We have discreetly

1:17:03

left this level and gone to another level.

1:17:08

All right. This final question comes in from bike

1:17:11

Merlin. What do you think Fromsoft

1:17:13

could have or would have been like had Miyazaki

1:17:16

not taken over with the souls born series?

1:17:18

Seems like they had a lot going on before Demon Souls

1:17:21

and the

1:17:21

Demon Souls was a real, quote, sliding

1:17:23

doors moment for them. Thanks

1:17:26

for everything you do.

1:17:27

Bike Merlin. Kind of

1:17:29

like having, you know, seen

1:17:33

some of this game played a lot of the souls

1:17:35

games getting a peek into kind of

1:17:37

what the studio was like, I want to

1:17:39

pull up. Let's see. So

1:17:42

before I mean, there's a lot before Demon

1:17:45

Demon Souls, like Kingsville

1:17:49

does not necessarily the agency

1:17:52

does not necessarily predicate like a

1:17:54

split for the company for Demon Souls, but

1:17:56

I don't know. I'm curious what you make of.

1:17:59

Let's say Demon Souls. Dark Souls was a flop, and

1:18:01

then their answer is, I

1:18:03

guess it's time to make another King's Field game. What

1:18:05

do you think this studio's games

1:18:08

are like if Demon's Souls doesn't take?

1:18:12

I don't know. Yeah,

1:18:15

because do they lean into

1:18:18

Armored Core, but I guess they just

1:18:20

still make Armored Core 5 after Dark

1:18:22

Souls, right? Am I getting that? I

1:18:24

think those are more hard. Yeah, they did make the last one they made because

1:18:27

there was Armored Core 5 for

1:18:29

the PS3 and X-Y360.

1:18:32

Oh, and actually that they had, no, Armored

1:18:34

Core, Verdict Day. Verdict Day,

1:18:36

what is that? But then, that

1:18:39

is,

1:18:41

it was the 15th installment in the Armored

1:18:43

Core series. Oh my God, wow. But

1:18:46

this is around the era in which these games fall

1:18:48

out of style, and

1:18:50

they're also not selling very much anymore, which

1:18:54

is of course what makes Demon's Souls

1:18:56

such a weird inflection point because these

1:18:58

become, it starts

1:19:01

the track of them becoming blockbusters as opposed

1:19:03

to niche games.

1:19:06

Yeah, I don't know. I mean, does

1:19:09

a King's Field 5

1:19:11

hit, wait, is

1:19:13

it, is 4 was the last one, right?

1:19:16

Yeah, 4 is the X-Y360. Yeah, does a 5 hit.

1:19:19

I

1:19:20

don't see that

1:19:22

being a thing that they can

1:19:24

pick up with, I feel like. I don't

1:19:26

know, maybe FromSoft doesn't become the

1:19:28

kind of

1:19:30

more widely known dev that

1:19:32

it is now if

1:19:38

Demon's Souls completely doesn't

1:19:40

catch

1:19:41

people.

1:19:46

Yeah, it's very hard, because what else,

1:19:48

they still have a little bit of other

1:19:50

things like Monster Hunter, Dire,

1:19:52

what is this? They made a 3DS game

1:19:55

between all of their. Yeah, and

1:19:57

actually King's Field, like King's

1:19:59

Field actually.

1:19:59

lived on briefly

1:20:02

after the ancient city. I

1:20:04

think they made these mobile games that

1:20:08

didn't come out here.

1:20:12

Yeah, so I don't know if it's good to see. That's the real thing is like,

1:20:15

I don't know what the

1:20:18

actual amounts of these things coming over versus

1:20:20

them just being Japanese releases.

1:20:24

It does feel like there's a world

1:20:26

where FromSoft can't just continue being a Japanese-focused,

1:20:30

developer that kind of makes things that hit

1:20:32

the right way in Japan but don't hit worldwide.

1:20:36

But luckily

1:20:38

we got the timeline where they

1:20:41

made Demon's Souls and Dark

1:20:44

Souls and- Well, it was just so interesting

1:20:46

because Demon's Souls hits at a very specific

1:20:48

period in time in which

1:20:50

you had games like Gears of War,

1:20:53

a game I like, but this was, that

1:20:55

game and games

1:20:58

like it were during a period

1:21:00

in which games are becoming more expensive,

1:21:02

developers are spending so much time

1:21:05

building these worlds and

1:21:07

they want you to see them. There are,

1:21:09

they're including buttons in games

1:21:11

to like, hey, make sure you can see the,

1:21:14

you know, we want the camera to point, I

1:21:16

know that you control the camera player, but like if you hold this

1:21:18

button, we're gonna point the camera at the cool

1:21:20

thing that we built in the sky that we want you to see explode.

1:21:23

And

1:21:24

part of what made Demon's Souls work was not

1:21:27

that it was a brilliant design game in

1:21:29

and of itself, but that it was juxtaposed

1:21:31

against a trend in

1:21:34

a

1:21:34

lot of blockbuster games,

1:21:36

you know, largely games made in North

1:21:39

America and Europe that were, they

1:21:41

cost a lot of money, they took a lot of time and

1:21:43

they were, they really wanted players to see everything

1:21:46

they were doing. And like, Demon's Souls was a game

1:21:48

that was okay with you

1:21:50

like booting it up, not liking it and turning

1:21:53

it off or like missing things entirely.

1:21:55

And I think

1:21:58

Demon's Souls had such a fundamental. mental profound

1:22:01

impact on

1:22:02

rethinking that approach to what

1:22:04

games are and can be that is like

1:22:07

really hard to overstate because

1:22:10

it's hard to imagine sort

1:22:12

of like the modern gaming landscape without it

1:22:14

didn't do that solely, but it did it. I think

1:22:16

I think it popularized that idea amongst so

1:22:18

many people that you could actually have a game that

1:22:21

was in antagonistic to the player

1:22:23

and it didn't it wasn't it wasn't solely that

1:22:26

I'm going to play it on legendary difficulty

1:22:28

like a Halo game. It's like no actually foundationally

1:22:32

what this game is is going to be antagonistic

1:22:35

and it's going to demand a lot from the player and

1:22:37

eventually the player can bend this game to

1:22:39

its will and it's going to it'll

1:22:42

be okay with that but you have to earn the right

1:22:44

to do that and so I I

1:22:47

find the question hard to answer because like I want

1:22:49

I don't know what games look like without right.

1:22:51

I mean Elton ring is going to be

1:22:54

one of the biggest games this year

1:22:57

and that is just hard

1:22:59

to comprehend like it's

1:23:02

it's still a game this is going

1:23:04

at this is going out on a subscriber

1:23:06

only podcast like I'm not spoiling anything

1:23:09

too much of what I played that game like the game is so

1:23:11

hard as shit like there's done lots of things

1:23:14

to make it self accessible but like

1:23:16

at the end of the day it's a game where like you can walk

1:23:18

up to one of the first major enemies and you're gonna

1:23:20

get your ass kicked and not understand why you did

1:23:23

and the fact that that game was going to go on to sell

1:23:25

tens of millions of copies

1:23:27

is fucking wild to me

1:23:29

and so I don't know what FromSoft is if they

1:23:32

hadn't continued if Demon's Souls

1:23:34

and Dark Souls hadn't taken off like they did

1:23:36

because I

1:23:37

think it's like genuinely impossible to know

1:23:39

where both video games in

1:23:42

general went as a medium and where FromSoft

1:23:44

went as a studio because like those splits

1:23:47

are just so they're too big like

1:23:49

they're too wide like it's I don't

1:23:51

I don't know where that studio went

1:23:53

if things didn't happen the way

1:23:56

they the way they did I don't

1:23:57

know Lobos maybe

1:23:59

maybe you disagree I don't know if you have differing thoughts

1:24:01

there. Well, one thing that I really

1:24:03

kind of admire about

1:24:05

FromSoft's take on games is,

1:24:08

and I think

1:24:09

this is the case also

1:24:11

just because they're a Japanese developer, but

1:24:14

a lot of times it just seems like

1:24:17

they do

1:24:19

what they want. They make what they

1:24:21

want, and then they

1:24:23

just push it out there and like, like

1:24:26

it or don't like it, who cares? Like we made it and

1:24:28

that's what we wanted. And I remember that

1:24:31

I've been through the launch of Dark Souls 2 and Dark

1:24:33

Souls 3 and interacted

1:24:35

with people working

1:24:37

on the game and they'll say like, yeah, we like

1:24:39

send a message to FromSoft about this. And

1:24:42

they're like, yeah, no, no, we're good. We're not

1:24:44

going to make this change. Like we're not

1:24:46

going to make it a more enjoyable

1:24:48

experience or

1:24:49

like, you know, more accessible in this

1:24:51

way. Like we like how it is. Like we're

1:24:53

going to keep it like that. And I guess

1:24:56

I get that like a lot of people might see that as a negative.

1:24:58

But to me, like I just love

1:25:01

the departure

1:25:01

from

1:25:04

what everybody else is doing in that sense.

1:25:06

And I think as Souls has

1:25:09

ballooned into what it is today

1:25:12

and especially with Elinoring and moving forward,

1:25:15

I think they have made things more accessible

1:25:17

like you're saying. But at the

1:25:19

end of the day, it's still, you

1:25:21

know, you have to respect

1:25:24

the game and then it will respect

1:25:26

you and it respects you hard. And

1:25:29

vice versa.

1:25:30

So yeah, I

1:25:32

think without Demon's Souls

1:25:34

and Beyond, they would

1:25:37

have kept doing whatever

1:25:39

it is they wanted to do. And they

1:25:42

were doing it before. They were doing it for so long.

1:25:45

Before anyone was paying attention. I mean, people

1:25:47

were paying attention. But like relative

1:25:49

to where they are now, where like they are

1:25:52

like one of the powerhouses in games

1:25:54

where like anything they do shakes

1:25:56

the internet. That was not the case

1:25:58

before. And they. They were doing, I think

1:26:01

that's like, maybe a really

1:26:03

interesting way to close this conversation is that

1:26:06

part of it was so illustrative about playing the ancient city. It

1:26:08

was like, oh, they were already

1:26:10

doing this. It

1:26:14

was presented in a different way. You interact

1:26:16

with it in a different way, but

1:26:19

everything you see in Elden

1:26:21

Ring has a history and

1:26:25

playing a game like the ancient city is useful

1:26:27

in demystifying. I mean, I think Hitake Miyazaki

1:26:29

is a unbelievable talent, but

1:26:31

I think

1:26:33

also a lot has been

1:26:35

put on his shoulders as though

1:26:37

he is singularly responsible

1:26:40

for tone, approach,

1:26:44

theme, design of like,

1:26:47

why all of this works. And I

1:26:50

think a game like ancient city, like

1:26:53

proves that's not true. Like obviously

1:26:55

he is enormously talented and brought a lot to

1:26:58

the table and we're not where we are

1:27:00

without his contributions, but

1:27:02

that

1:27:03

Fromsoft had a thing and he just came

1:27:05

in and like whacked it with a blacksmith

1:27:07

hammer and took it in his own direction. But that like,

1:27:10

they already had a train that

1:27:13

was humming along and he just kind

1:27:15

of put it

1:27:17

on a different set of tracks.

1:27:19

So I think

1:27:21

that is going to bring us to the end

1:27:24

of our discussion on

1:27:26

Kingsfield for the ancient

1:27:29

city. Kyle and I will continue to

1:27:31

stream and play that game, which

1:27:34

that now task sounds all the more daunting

1:27:37

based on how you have

1:27:40

chuckled like an NPC, insinuating

1:27:43

how that may go in the future. But

1:27:47

it has been a pleasure having you on. Lobo,

1:27:49

we sincerely appreciate you taking

1:27:51

the time. Like this is a moment, what

1:27:53

have you got going on? This is gonna go out

1:27:56

to

1:27:56

our subscribers like

1:27:59

just before. you probably start streaming, but

1:28:01

like, what's your plan going, what do you got coming

1:28:03

up ahead with Elden Ring also launching

1:28:06

this week?

1:28:07

Yeah, that is it, like

1:28:09

for two months, like

1:28:11

pretty much two months booked out. I

1:28:14

have like, I do a lot of charity

1:28:16

fundraising in May where I do a whole bunch

1:28:18

of Souls runs and all that sorts of thing. That's

1:28:20

gonna be very heavily Elden Ring

1:28:22

focused, you know. There's, it's just,

1:28:25

it's gonna be a lot of Elden Ring. And

1:28:27

it's a long time coming and I cannot wait to

1:28:30

finally dive deep in.

1:28:35

Yeah, it's, I think

1:28:37

it's gonna be really fun because the fact that

1:28:40

it is as big as it is should hopefully

1:28:42

extend the period in which it is slightly

1:28:45

mysterious longer

1:28:47

than even the usual sort

1:28:49

of FromSoft release. So

1:28:53

that is gonna do it for us.

1:28:56

That's enough for Waypoint 101. If

1:28:58

you want more from Waypoint, you can

1:29:01

follow us on Twitter at Waypoint. You can see archives

1:29:03

for our video and streaming

1:29:05

work on Facebook and YouTube

1:29:08

at Waypoint Vice. The VODs go up immediately

1:29:10

at twitch.tv slash Waypoint.

1:29:13

This podcast is brought to you by

1:29:15

Waypoint Plus that

1:29:18

you, our beloved subscribers,

1:29:20

going to waypointplus.com

1:29:23

to support us, allows us to

1:29:26

justify our employment

1:29:28

by at a big company like Vice,

1:29:30

by playing things like Kingsfield 4,

1:29:33

the ancient city, which if we were to run that, if

1:29:36

we were to run that by a socials person

1:29:38

who has done an SEO search, they

1:29:41

would tell us don't play that game.

1:29:43

And I would say, but what if we could become

1:29:46

the number one Kingsfield 4 stream

1:29:49

while we're doing it as long as we don't overlap

1:29:51

with Lobos because he would probably have more viewers

1:29:54

than us. But that's cool. As long as we just do it at

1:29:56

different times, we can both be the number one Kingsfield 4

1:29:59

stream on.

1:29:59

which at the same time. So the fact

1:30:02

that we need to spend time talking about

1:30:04

games like this, like exploring

1:30:07

deeper our appreciation for a studio

1:30:09

like FromSoft is thanks

1:30:11

to folks supporting Waypoint Plus.

1:30:15

You can follow me at Patrick

1:30:18

Club at Cotto. Where can people follow you?

1:30:21

At A underscore Cotto underscore

1:30:23

appears. Our

1:30:26

theme music is from what? Cotto,

1:30:28

I don't have a written here. I don't know.

1:30:31

It's probably from this

1:30:33

video game because. Okay,

1:30:35

all right. Is that what you use? For the one on ones.

1:30:38

Yeah, sometimes I use the game music. I

1:30:40

mean, it's going to be a subscriber base.

1:30:42

Nobody,

1:30:44

don't snitch about it. It's okay, it's fine.

1:30:47

It's fair use. It's just like 10

1:30:49

seconds.

1:30:51

Our music is from the composer

1:30:53

to KCL4, the agency, Su Casa,

1:30:55

Saito. Thanks,

1:30:58

Su Casa. Shout out

1:31:01

to Saito-san for contributing 10 seconds

1:31:05

of completely

1:31:06

legal audio

1:31:09

to this podcast. Who

1:31:12

by the way, continues to do music

1:31:14

and did it for Sekiro and Dark Souls 3 and

1:31:17

that sort of thing. No shit.

1:31:18

No shit. Is that also the composer on Elden

1:31:20

Ring or did they mix it up for? That I

1:31:22

don't know. That I don't know. Let's

1:31:25

see, we can probably answer that. That's

1:31:28

the least we can do. So I've got

1:31:30

a list here. Dark Souls 3, Bloodborne

1:31:33

DLC, Armored Core, Kingsfield 4,

1:31:36

Eternal Ring, Echo Knight.

1:31:38

Looks like all the composer credits for them there. At

1:31:41

least on IMDB. The

1:31:45

Bloodborne soundtrack is so good. I will listen to that

1:31:47

while writing despite that being like far more dramatic

1:31:50

than one should have when writing for

1:31:53

an embargo of some video game. Well, either way,

1:31:56

that's going to do it. Thanks everyone for listening.

1:31:59

As always.

1:31:59

Fuck capitalism. Go home.