Speaker 1: Hi everyone, Dylan here. We are just a few short
days away from the release of Death Stranding two on
the Beach, so I thought it would be a good
time to re release our review of Death Turning one,
which she did all the way back in twenty nineteen
when the game first came out. And you know, it's funny,
geek first, we've been around for so long now that
there used to be have to be a disclaimer when
we re release an old episode that oh this is
what that with our old mics, the audio quality is
kind of garbage, you know, disclaimer, But you know, this
episode six years old, and our audio quality was pretty
good because we had the new the first round of
new mics at this point. So yeah, this is of
course from back way in twenty nineteen. Me and Travis
reviewed the game after we beat it. It's full spoilers section,
but we kind of block out the different spoilers of course,
if you still don't want to get spoilered, I suppose.
But yeah, this was you know, way back in the
day before the director's cut was the thing, before the
movie was announced, before the sequel was announced, so we
obviously didn't have any of that information. But Hey, I
think that's really all I'll say. I guess the one
quick disclaimer here, audio quality is good, but this is
before we had like ad ads implemented into the episode,
so they might be a little bit abrupt when you
get hit with those in this so you know, sorry
about that, but that's just the way she goes. This
is a long episode, so I will leave it to that.
Have fun with this one, and yeah, come back in
a few days. We're desk trending two. We're gonna do
a impressions episode the week after on side Quest, and
then we'll do a spoilers episode, probably in July, maybe August.
We'll see how long the game is with me and Travis,
and then you know, probably two years from now, you'll
hear Kirkland when he finally picks up the game at
some point, probably get his impressions on it later down
the road. But okay, that's all for me.
Speaker 2: Enjoy. Hello, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the two
hundred and thirty fifth episode of the Geek First Podcast.
I'm the hashtags save Hannibal Trass.
Speaker 1: Now that's that's almost too good. I'd want to take it.
I'm the Adam Hardcaster. Don't.
Speaker 2: We got lots of stuff for review man, Lauren. We
do the first two episodes, We've done Luig's Mansion, Tanya
and I are doing Jayphon or anything that star is happening.
You should just subscribe you're a fan. We got lots
of you guys, did out our World's Impressions. What else
did we do recently? I did a newscast with Taylor.
We got lots of Next week.
Speaker 1: We might do like a Game Awards thing. The Numbies
are coming up.
Speaker 2: I'd like to talk about those, so I would like
to cover them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I definitely expect that next week. I'm sure des
Straying will pop up there.
Speaker 2: So yeah, uh uh yeah, that's what we're gonna do.
We're gonna do so. Also, game reviews working a bit
different because we're gonna review the game. We usually say
the story stuff for the last so you can hear.
I think this game is like characters and story.
Speaker 1: A lot of games. You can like the characters, there's
a whole lot to them, but I think this is
definitely more spoiler territory for a lot of them as well.
Speaker 2: And we'll still do like a non spoilers, like what
we saw the story and characters. Well, we'll let you know, don't.
Speaker 1: Worry, we'll let you know ours into the big spoilery stuff.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah. And this is a game that you definitely,
I think you want to play before if you if
you have any interest, you don't want to really be spoiled.
I'm happy I didn't get spoiled because I just feel
like at one moment, there's just like reveal after reveal
after review. Also, it's a heavy game, so I'm gonna
lead it off. No no, no, that's not I said.
I'm gonna let the great Dale must lead this off.
So what do you think about Death Strand were talking
about Strand, we're talking about off cast that our first
D three, we saw this game revealed. We've been waiting
for it and it's finally here, So you know, what
do you think?
Speaker 1: It's kind of interesting to think back on on that
E three because that was the one that to me
convinced me to buy a PS four and I bought
one probably within a few months of that happening. Because
unlike Briggs who also said that and it is still
don't but it was like it was Spider man, it
was Horison on, it was the funck is death Stranding,
it was even it was Days Gone at the time,
which didn't I still haven't played that one.
Speaker 2: Day didn't get it.
Speaker 1: What I was was Last was shown there as well.
I'm trying to think, like I have all.
Speaker 2: Those games come Last Office was not shown?
Speaker 1: And how about the Ghost of Tushimo? Is that that
E three? I'm trying to think, like, has that first
D three that we saw death Straion? Has all those
games come out? Now? This is the last one to
kind of cap it off.
Speaker 2: What was the first reveal a ghost?
Speaker 1: I want to say it was the year after the
first thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think everything from that conference has now came
and gone.
Speaker 1: Right, so this is the last one kind of capping
it last night You're wrong on that, but at least
this feels like this feels like the one we've been
waiting for, right because since that reveal, like I don't know,
that was probably the most interesting one to talk about
because it's like, what the fuck is this is so strange,
so weird, such a different direction, like now that he's
doing his own coajam is doing his own studio. Uh,
and then every like E three after that, just another
weird thing with more actors that are in it, strange imagery,
still never any gameplay, so it's just been like this,
I don't know, this is Enigma, right, It had like marketing,
and even in the last couple of months, he's definitely
rolled out a lot more stuff. Like I think a
month ago there was like a forty five minute a play. Yeah,
I didn't watch that either, And there's a.
Speaker 2: Part there's a point where I stopped and I was
just like, we're not going to me.
Speaker 1: All I need is eat three conferences. I was like,
I don't know what the gameplay is like here, but
I and most of the time that's all I ever
want from these things. But for this game, I was like,
I don't know what it is, but I just want
to find out for myself. And uh man, it's been
a wild experience just playing this game. I will say
that I love it very much. It's it's super weird
and not what I was expecting. Like, like I said,
gameplay wise, I'd maybe seen like a minute tops of
like what actual gameplay was like before this game came out,
so I had very little expectations of like or I
guess like anticipation of what I should expect, and uh,
I think that I think that did it Like that
was to its benefit for me personally. However, I do
think this is a weird game to recommend, Like I
don't know who i'd recommend this to. I got to
think about that, and I think we'll get there. But
as for like, this game is just super unique, very
much feels like a movie at times, and it's just
gameplay that I've never really encountered before. Yet it still
has a lot of like harkens back to a lot
of things that I really appreciate, things that I really love.
So in terms of movies, you know, funny we have
this inception up here. I do get a lot of
inception vibes and the character and like the sci fi elements,
and even like this idea of like dream sharing, it's
not the same, there's like that kind of idea is
kind of explored here in a different way. I get
a lot of Black Mirror vibes, just in like weird
technological stuff, whether it's just like some quirk to a
character that feels like that alone could be like an
episode for Black Mirror, or just like overarching technology things
and what it could look like in the future. And
then obviously it kind of brings back to Hannibal as well,
just seeing like a really dominant performance from Matt's Michelson. Again,
it's it's different in this in this game, but it's
just because it's a little more like a wild and
out there Wars. Hannibal is like a more realistic character
in a sense.
Speaker 2: But even though they had trippy sequences as well, always
right with this, like the deers and yeah it's coming
in black. So Matt it's always into it, and Casilias
he's always doing weird stuff.
Speaker 1: I know. It doesn't really bring me back to that performance.
It's almost like Star Wars. It's really just the handbal one,
which is fun because that's so important I think.
Speaker 2: We're all getting in the story. But it's a very
sensual performance, and Hannibal is a very just like he's
in your face.
Speaker 1: He's your friend. Yeah, there's no makeup on him, it's
just his face. It's zoomed in and he's just like
killing that performance. So for like movies and TVs, that's
where like it really calls back to some of those
things I love so much In terms of games, it's
just like a really weird spread where like it kind
of reminds me of Marwin in a bit, in the
sense that, like the questing system in Marwin is very ambiguous,
like you don't in that game, you don't have any
way points or markers or anything. You're just going off
like journal entries. But it feels the same in this game,
where when you're going places, like, yes, you could just
follow your waypoint directly, but that's never really the best
thing to do. It's kind of like planning your roots,
like planning, like trying to be efficient with the directions
you're going, things like that, and even just like thinking
about where you've gone before, where you have experience with.
Speaker 2: Places, yeah, don't go there.
Speaker 1: Don't exactly and then even like having to adapt on
the fly based on like weather or other things. And
then in that sense, it kind of reminds me of
Animal Crossing of all things, just like making deliveries to
people and how like, Okay, what what are the missions
that I had? Again? How can I get it there
in the most efficient way possible? And it's just like
simple gameplay, like on a minute to minute level, but
it's still really like satisfying there's something like cathartic about
just like making deliveries or something. Yeah, and then even
like there obviously is Dark Souls influence all over this game,
but particularly with the online interaction. Wearing Dark Souls, you
put signs in it on the ground that will say
like short cut ahead or like bonfirehead or boss boss
something around the corner steep so if yeah, people will
put down like little tips and tricks and uh. And
I think that that was something that was really interesting
in Dark Souls because it's like it has this online
component but it's not. I mean, there is also PvP
in that game, but at least for the signs, it's
it's an interesting thing and a couple of games have
tried that since, and this does it really well where
it does have those signs a little more colorful and
fun with them, and they like move when you hit
them and stuff like that and and whatnot. But then
there's also this element of online in our activity where
people are building things and then you can see them
in your game or you're building something and getting feedback
when other players are using it, which is really satisfying.
So for games, it's like this weird thing where the
game play minute to minute doesn't really compare to anything else,
yet it still kind of reminds me of some different genres.
And I think the thing that really struck me about
this game was it actually brought me a lot back
to my trip to a pall Edded earlier this year.
I've just I've just like the idea of scale, right,
that was something that I found really interesting when I
when I was into Paul, I did like a fourteen
day trek and I found that just like the idea
of how long it takes to get from one place
to another just on foot and you just have like
this big backpack on and you're just walking through the mountains.
It's like this really weird, this weird thing where if
you're doing that for various days, it's like that mountain
feels really far away. It's like I'm gonna get there
in two days, and you realize, oh, it only took
like four hours to get there, and then something might
look even closer than it takes a really long time
to get there, and it's a really weird feeling emotion
that like, I don't I don't think a game was
ever gonna hit that, but I feel like destrain and
it kind of encapsulates that feeling. And I just I
love hiking so much. It's a big like, I don't know,
I've done a lot of trips just hiking and us
the reason I went to Nepal across the entire world
to do that. So it was really interesting that I
kind of got some of the feedback there things that
I liked from that trip brought to a video game
in like a really authentic way. So yeah, just this
weird amalgamation of things that don't really fit together at
all when you look at them for phase value, but
ended up making this like really unique game that is
unlike anything I've played before, and I just loved it.
It's it's very long and that works for the most part.
I do have a few problems with this game. There's
like little UI things, some things I'll bring up, and
then I did have some pacing issues, particularly with like
I don't want to say the ending, but cause it's
kind of like i'd say, maybe the last like twenty
fifteen percent of the game. I do have some pacing
issues and I have examples. I'll explain those a bit
later in the cast. And we're full spoilers, but for
the most part, like most of my problems are like
little things that don't really take away from the grander
experience of it. And overall, yeah, I just love this game,
and I think right now it's it's really up there
for me. I've played a lot of games this year,
particularly in the last couple of months. I've really been
catching up on a lot of stuff, and so far
it's like it's either it's in that one to two slot,
like at Worse it's number two for my game of
the year right now, so it's it's up there.
Speaker 2: I'm that's impressive.
Speaker 1: I'm loving it. And you know, I got to catch
up on like Luig's Mansion and Jedi Fallen Order. I
want to do that before game boards and stuff. So
I handed off my copy to Kirkland today so he
could play it, and like, I just want to go
home and play some more distraints.
Speaker 2: Oh I know. Yeah, it's funny because I like doing
some but it's been such a journey with this game,
and it's and as I compare like myself when I
was taught even Dylware playing this this game, I wasn't
sure how we were both gonna feel. Upon it and
mostly everything that Dylan said, I think maybe one hundred
percent I can agree. I think that's the best thing
of this game. There's different experiences and that we'll talk about.
But I wouldn't have thought because I always say on
this cast, I'm easily the most mainstream gamer we have here,
Like look at my Gauntlet record right now. These past
two months, I've been like getting rock so like all
the games I play, or I've been like especially look
at some of my fair games, like the Batman games,
stuff like that, I don't have the knowledge that you
do in the in depth as far as like the example.
That's why I was gonna ask you because this is
a game that I've never played before anything like this,
because I don't play the souls, I've never played more.
And it's also a game that I didn't think I
would have liked I one hundred percent if you would
have told me, because when I was playing this game
at first, because even when I talked to you, I
was like, we are both worried it might get a
little repetitive and a little like, oh, we're enjoying it.
Speaker 1: But likely hearing some risky things on it. I don't know,
well that didn't help too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because I was hyped for this game since day one,
but it was the two weeks leading up to when
people were getting their hands on it. It was a very
divisive game. Which it's weird because when you look at reviews,
it's still in like the mid eighty eighty forty five
a Meerkats, so it's still getting favor of the reviews,
but still just like it sounded like the people that
didn't like it really didn't like it. I had heard
some things that made me scared, and I tried to
stay away from reviews, but you hear them. I listened
to podcasts repeople bring it up. But I was always
excited for this game until then because I love Hideoka Gem,
I love the middle Gear series. I loved I didn't
love like Normagia's being in it, but I loved the
idea of they were making that Sun Hills game. It
got canceled, so I loved it was like this rebel underdog,
like we were trying to make a game it got canceled,
and we're doing it again. And I remember when Mads
got revealed, it was just like, it just feels like
he's making this game for me. So I was excited
the entire time until two weeks ago. And then if
you had told me that I would have loved this
game where you're pretty much just a delivery boy for
most of the time, I would have been in shock
because as I was playing, I was like, oh, I'm
really liking it, and I was just playing like this
is definitely my favorite game of the year, and I
was like, oh, this is definitely a top ten game,
and this is definitely top five and a top three,
And I'm not gonna because I need to for a
while and say with it, but like, it's weird that
I honestly can say, like I think this might be
my favorite game all time. I need to say with it.
I'm not gonna, but I think it's top three. I
think speaking of Luigi's Mansion, it's bumped Luigi's Mansion down
because before it was always my top three is Mansion, Batman,
Arkham City, and then Kotar kind of like sometimes a
mix on the day, but yeah, Arkham City was always
my fair I got that Batman biased, but this was
a game that as I was playing it, the further
I got into it, I was just enjoying it. More
and more and more, and this is I think, just
like a minor sport. But it's good to know if
you want the game, you don't really do much action
or to me, get like a gun or anything like
that until like, yeah, twenty twenty five hours into it,
and if you had have told me that same thing
on paper went and I don't know because the Meddle
gear is Meddle Gear is like it has like the
spy espionage. It's very stealthy, but then other times it's
just you're in a helicopter with Bazukas and you're going crazy.
And that's why I loved it. It's like an eighties
action movie. I loved that. And when lots of people
would say it's not like male gear, there's touching, which
I just there's some touches of it, but it is
definitely very different than ale gear. But that was very worried.
But yeah, I love this game. I love like what
Dylan was talking about, the hiking aspect of that same
thing me and Dylan as far as gamers were different
and lifestyles. I hate hiking. I don't like that.
Speaker 1: I like.
Speaker 2: That's why you can see why I've had two British
bulldogs in the past because they're lazy dogs that sit
there and like we'll go on that one walk for
the day and that's it. I like, I do like
hiking in certain times, but like Dylan, like that's a
big thing for you. For me, it's like ah on occasion,
and that's where the same thing this game, like the
experiences and that And I don't even know the closest
I would say I could compare it to is Red
Dead is all like this? But with Red Dead at
times it felt like I'm just trying to plow through
this and I end up liking it more. I like
the online aspects more, but this was just I couldn't.
Like I was near the end, I was planning my
routes a bit more quicker, just because I wanted to
finish it for the review, the story wise, But when
I first started playing, I wasn't planning at all, just
like I treated like any other video game, like oh,
I'm gonna get there, no problem, and it'd be really quick.
But then there's times where it's like I'm hitting rocks,
I'm on my bikes. I literally had to sit down
and plan it out and be like, hey, I take
this route. If I take this route, I gotta crash
the bike, or if I take that, I gotta bring
some pccs, which is like if you don't know, they're
just like a system that you could build things to,
you know, charge things you have. So it's like you
really have to plan out, where in other video games
they say, oh, you gotta plan out, but really you
can just go and you'll figure it out and you
could walk over some rocks. But this is literally like
if you see rocks on the maps, like, oh, that
changes everything. Now what I'm gonna do, especially if you
don't even have there's some stages you don't have a
bike or something like that, Like I want to take
more to make more deliveries, but at the same time
that's gonna slow me down. So do I want to?
Like you? Just there's always to me a choice and
that's what I love. And it's choice in a different way.
As far as RPG, there's no nothing like that. There's
no like you're changing the story this, it's just like, yeah,
it's a choose your own adventure and the best way
I compare it to in this way because I always
give a lot of hate for it. But the same
way people talked about Breathla the while, how they felt
like they were living in this world and they had
all these experiences of ventures. I didn't get that with
this game, but I got that with this game. This
is a game that I will play again. I'm gonna
do more deliveries and figure it out. Like played like
not the game, plus with the game after, but it's
a game that this first time experience. I will play
a game, but it's always gonna stick with me. And
it just felt like this event and it felt like
that's why those other games where I sometimes I know
Luigi's Mansion is not the greatest game of all time,
but it's just like the experience I had with that
that age just stuck with me. And that's what this was.
It's like and the story and the characters and the
world is incredible. It feels like For the examples I
put down for something remind me, I had Inception as well.
The other ones I had were for UH where I
lost it Boom. For movies, I had like Interstellar an
ad Asher, which is bad because you haven't seen that asher.
You gotta see this year. But it's like this, like
and I had Mad Max, and there Mad Max was
like because there's just certain times where you're this lone
kind of gunslinger and you're going around helping the world,
and it's just it feels like some manytimes when you're alone.
It's just it's literally you versus the world. That was
the Mad Max feel, but the ad Asher Interstella, it's
just like this game has like a Melchollie feel and
it's just like you're just alone with your thoughts, like
as the character and you're learning stuff, but just and you.
Speaker 1: Really just kind of have to hunker down. Sometimes you
feel like except that, Okay, I know where I'm going
and it's gonna take me half an hour just one.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah. Especially there is one point in this game
you literally have to cross the entire map, and the
map is huge, and it's also it's not like GTA
where it's like you could drive and get this quickly.
There's obstacles, there's routes, and you maybe placed somewhere where
it's like this is very inconvenient, and there's bad things
that pop up. And that's the other thing where I
put in alien and aliens, like the horror vibes. Those
have there's many times that this game is scary and
it has those aspects and it's kind of everything I
was hoping for. And yeah, Inception was the other one
because it's just like there's lots of trippy stuff, but
all these things I love in the world building aspect
really reminds me of the Blade Runner series as well.
It's just that it just reminds me of the best
sci fi movies where it seems you even like we
did Manamori and like the original Star Wars, it just
brings you in that world. It sets the rules up
and you just you don't question it and it meshes
very well. And as far as characters in story, I
think they knocked out of the park the story. It's
a day O Kajima, So you've got lots of cut scenes,
you got lots of exposition, definitely, and I think sometimes
it does hinder it, but it's like it's the same
way as like any movie or a video game even
that I've given a purpose score too, or anything, same
mass piece. There's nothing that's perfect, So I can see
people having more problems with it because there's things where
that are really repetitive as well.
Speaker 1: And there's some things that are just a little clunky,
like for example, there's one point where you're you're making
that long trick and like characters will stop you to
talk to you. And most games would just have that
over the calm as you're traveling, and that's a perfect
way to do it, right, Yeah, because and I don't know,
I think maybe the reason is that is like there
could be things that distract you and make them destroy
that cut scene or something. But I that's just it
just fucks the pacing one percent. And especially when like
I don't I'll talk about that more later. I don't
want to get too spoiler.
Speaker 2: And that's the thing that like for me and just
my experience, I can look at this and I'm nervous
to this book game that I feel like it's a masterpiece.
I love. It remind me the same time when I
walked out of Once Montane Hollywood, just like it's everything
that I love as far as themes and certain it's
the same thing like the Mads and Leal thing. It's
like actors. I like, like it was just this perfect
Travis stew And I was really worried for a while,
but it ended up just it just left me in
awe and as I keep for going to say it,
but the characters I love that they have and I
think there I've heard some of this that it's a little, uh,
kind of mixed as far as how they maybe reveal
some stuff with the characters or how the pacing is.
But I really enjoyed it. That's where I felt like
almost pulp fiction vibes that, like it's a story from
A to B, but there's also just this kind of
anthology feel to it, and the story some of the
characters specifically, I guess I can say for non spars,
but like Mama's story and stuff like that, and even
Garyala del Toro's dead Man story. The things that they
did with these characters made them stuck out, they made
them feel different, and I I loved every second of it,
you know, And I just I applaud them because they
could have just made certain characters just side characters and nothing,
but you learn things about them and it just changes
the world. And yeah, and I also think we'll talk
about story spoilers, but I think Mad's middles to me
is like, uh, I I love the guy, but there's
a reason I think he just should be a shoe
in for that Video Game Performer Award. If he didn't
get normal, be disappointed. But it to me is this
is the other thing. I think it's the best well
acted video game because we've seen so many times actor
put in the video games, and sometimes it's seamless transition,
and sometimes it's a little this to me did.
Speaker 1: Yeah, sometimes it feels more like a marketing thing.
Speaker 2: And this to me felt like an animated movie at times,
and it's to me the best performance acting.
Speaker 1: And yeah, I think they nailed the uh animations and
what not for him in particular, there's a couple of
characters where there's some things i'll I'll bring up. I
think for Mad's they fucking nailed it, like he looked
amazing and Norman as well, those two, I guess.
Speaker 2: So I love this game and uh, yeah, I who
I would recommend it to.
Speaker 1: That's a hard question.
Speaker 2: Is it's certainly like Briggs was talking about. I think
I would. I think it does.
Speaker 1: Briggs played for like three or four hours at my place. Yeah,
and he really liked it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think I legitily would have to ask like
what your games have you played? What movies have you played?
Speaker 1: That's the thing like I don't even know. I feel
like people might like like the games I recommended for
some reason. You you would like Dark Souls for a
certain reason. It's like it's not like it doesn't play
like Dark Souls, it just has like some inspiration from
there that's taken like just enough, right, It's just a smidgeon.
And I feel like that's kind of all the things.
Like even I forgot to mention Horizon Dom, but it
reminds me a lot of that in terms of the exploration,
like the size of the world beautiful. We can go
from like one side to the other without really loading screens.
Like that's something I want to mention as well, very
little loading screens in this game. There's a lot of
things you can you can like skip through as well
that like you if you do skip, it doesn't have
like a loading screen. It's just it just quickly does it.
But yeah, like Horizon just like the scale of it
as well. But even though it does remind me of
some other games, it's hard to say that like if
you like those games, you'll like this because it's almost
like just little aspects of those games that are taken
and putting in here. Yeah, And I think one thing
I want to mention as well is I don't have
any experience with his games Kajima, Like I've gear game
maybe like a little bit here there, but I've never
played one from start to finish. I was in a
PlayStation guy growing up, so like, yeah, it's it's I
don't know. I can't even recommend it from that point
of view. How would you how would you compare that
to his previous works. Do you think there's any relation
there or is it just so far gone?
Speaker 2: I think there is flashes of it. The menu is
honestly the closest thing the how that works for the
pros and the cons because there's so many times where
the load outs everything can be frustrating. To me. There
is times where you select a mission and it will
kick you out of the menu, but it's like I
gotta go back in and I gotta rearrange, just like
I do that. So that has never changed for him.
But he has this like if you look at everything
he does as far as the uh, there's certain stuff
like you shower in this game, or every time you
make it delivery, there's the same animation every time. That's
very kind of mail gear. So it's all these little things.
I'd say when it gets into like this game at
times does get a little action y, I'd say that's
the closest, but really I wouldn't.
Speaker 1: And he kind of does, like the meta commentary stuff in.
Speaker 2: His oh in this movie or this movie. This the
game is very political, and it feels like it's very
made in this timeline, Like you can tell this was
a game made from twenty sixteen to twenty nineteen because
it's talks a lot about America and talks a lot
about being together and stuff like that. What you're talking
about spoilers, But that's why I think it is a
lot like Middle Gear as far as the pacing of it,
as far as the weirdness, the quirkiness, especially near the end,
the kind of the bets, and there's these things called
skulls mail gear. Near the end, he was starting to
get a little bit more weird and horrors, so you
could see, like, to me, the seeds were planted in
that game to be like, he has something weird in
his mind, but he's stuck in this like army like
espionage game. So I think there is layers of it,
but I don't think I could say, for sure, you're
gonna like it if you like the Mailgare game. I say,
there's definitely skeletons of meilgear, but I can't say, oh,
that's a bona fide, you know. But I think that's
some of the best careers because I think we've talked
about what we did the Tarantino retro, and I've always
Saidkajima was the Tarantino of gaming, because there's Tarantino movies
that I love, but then there's ones that I still
really appreciate, but like in Glorious Bastards, where I'm like,
I appreciate how good it is, but I don't love
it like you and Kirklan Briggs and you guys would
be the same with Jangle where me Kirkling Taylor, And
that's where I feel. It's like I always appreciate what
they do and there's always you can feel the Tarantina,
you can feel Kajima, but it's still so different. So
I think I I, I don't know. It's the recommendation
is tough because it's the same thing I wouldn't have recommended
to someone like me, and I end up loving it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like a lot of people online. A lot of
things I saw last couple of weeks was like, oh,
this game is boring and I and I completely understand
why a lot of people have that perspective. I did
not have that at all, but I can. I can
see that. So that's why it's hard for me to recommend,
because I think this is like such a specific game. Yeah,
and that's the thing like some things that Yet if
you're just like into the story, like I think the
story alone is like it's a really good game story,
you know, yeah, well not even game story, just a
good story and jeer. At that point, I could make
the case when this would sound bad, I'd want you
to support Kajima. But if you thought the gameplay was
boring and something that, that's the point where I could
say you could just watch it on YouTube if you're
really to, because I do think if you don't like
the gameplay and you don't like the almost like it
feels like day to day living aspects, it is a
slog to get through, Like if you hate the gameplay,
you're gonna hate playing this game to get to the story,
even if you love the story. But that's the thing
for me, those day to day aspects going home, shower
and getting little stuff low.
Speaker 2: Now, I like that. I love making the missions. Yes,
sometimes the menu and stuff like you're telling you, I
is not the Crispus. Sometimes it still feels I don't
want to say dated, but just inconvenient.
Speaker 1: Like you'll skip a cut scene and then there's like
another cut scene that you can immediately escape, so well,
why doesn't it skip both of them?
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it's like for all of them, it's like
the pause start.
Speaker 1: It's not like the classic like gotta hold buttons to
do things, which oh my god.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's just it's strange, but he's he's always
been like that. He and you could tell like it's
he does that deliberately. Why I don't know, but I
think it is just like I think it's almost still
the set this pace. If he wants you to feel like.
Speaker 1: He wants you to watch all this stuff, well yeah.
Speaker 2: And I also feel like when people talk about the
day to day life aspect of this game, I think
he wants you to be like in your life, there's
stuff that annoys you're like, oh I gotta find this,
or I lost my keys. That's with this is like
you drop something you're like, there's one time I felt
it's like such an idiot. I showed up to delivery
and I was missing one piece. I didn't lose it,
I didn't crash. I just forgot to pick it up.
I made a bad load. I was like, oh, I
gotta go all the way back, and I did. There
was never any time that I like fast traveled other
than the times where it requested you to. I just
I loved that aspect, and usually sometimes I don't be guys,
I like, I'm a fast travel.
Speaker 1: A real consequence to fast traveling. Yeah, so I like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what else do we want to talk about?
Speaker 1: I kind of want to just like, I don't know.
I feel like, what did you feel about?
Speaker 2: This is a non spoil I feel like for a
gameplay aspect, because this is someone when I first started playing,
I'm like, I'm not gonna like this game was the
leaning at first.
Speaker 1: That's the thing where I feel like a lot of
this game like that gameplay stuff I think is best
experienced on your own and like learning it because that's
so much of this game early on is is is
just learning how to actually control your character, like what
is actually happening? A lot of it is really unclear,
and I have a couple of times where I think
that goes so far that it's a con So of
it is due to the UI. Like, for example, my
first night of plane, I had to like just act
like to make a bridge or something. I had to
like hold a certain button right. I could not tell, Like,
it was so unclear to me what button. It was
like the thing on screen, it was like small, it
was it didn't look like anything on my PlayStation controller.
I fucked around with it for probably like ten fifteen minutes,
maybe twenty minutes. I was like, I can't I cannot
tell this is I googled it. No one had the
answer because it's such a random screen.
Speaker 2: So when you say so, I messaged Travis.
Speaker 1: Next morning he had something replied, and I was then
I could continue. I just had to hold the options button,
which is just such a it's so your choice, it's
so weird, and I don't know. I was a little
salty when that happened.
Speaker 2: And there's a lot of those where he doubles down
where it's like this means this, but then if you
hold it it means a different thing. It's not even
anything like to me, that's like the options is like
a pause or if you hold that you can build something.
It's like, that's two completely different things. It should be
like pause it to get to your menu and maybe
hold it for the map, like it does that with
control schemes, and he's done that always and it's not
and I agree with you. The other thing i'd say
that for a game, and this is the Minor's Mind
spoiler for jiphone order. That's a game that right away,
it throws you very quickly into the game and it
teaches you everything, but it's a very kind of basic
game compared to this. This is a thing where the
game takes its time. The first five hours are really
just like learning about delivering going this. But at the
same point, I still feel they throw way too much
at you too fast, between both like controls and how
the world works, but the story aspect as well. They're
throwing out terms that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you don't learn it, like, yeah, they definitely they
it's yeah, they blast a lot of you right away, yeah,
and then you kind of they trickle the information to
you slowly, and then you can also speed through some
of it by like reading emails, like you get like
extra dialogue, things that you can read that.
Speaker 2: Will except with the except once you get to them.
The here the end of the game, and you're getting
like seven emails.
Speaker 1: Everybody didn't I don't get me wrong. I did not read.
Speaker 2: All the no I know, but that's what I mean.
At first you're like, Okay, I can handle this, and
then eventually it's like, oh so, I feel like that's
the problem, which I'm surprised, like it would be a
con for me, but it wasn't enough to hurt it.
It's a little thing. But I thought for such a
slow paced game, some of the information, both story and gameplay,
they could have spread out a little bit more. But
I felt like there was a point where she's like, boom,
it throwed so much at you, and I was low.
I think there's dooms or just like some of the
stuff they eventually taught you, But sometimes I felt like
I didn't even learn till the very end of the game,
and stuff that I could kind of assume, but I,
like even Bets, I was.
Speaker 1: Left a little unclear, like whether or not it's like
stuff that my character Sam doesn't he doesn't know these things. Yeah,
you're supposed to learning alongside him or he has been
in this world where he knows these things and it's
just like being fed to the player in a weird way.
Yet there's weird points where there's like really over the
top exposition as well. Oh yeah, so it's like, I
don't know, it's it's maybe a little uh, I don't know.
I guess the way it's displayed isn't like super consistent
in that sense. But yeah, I kind of want to
get into some gameplay stuff, and I think I think
now is a good time to say, like, I don't know,
like spoiler wise, we're gonna keep the story character stuff
till the very and but you know, from this point forward,
I think it's like a lot of this stuff is
best kind of just experienced.
Speaker 2: The weapons experience and stuff like yeah, so unless you
people want to getting this game, if you olt just
an Xbox and to break it, yeah you don't like
a gym and everything that, but yeah, where you going
to start?
Speaker 1: So I what I think is so interesting about the
gameplay right the minute to minute stuff is, as we
talked about you our reporter, you're just making deliveries and
so like, how how do you make that interesting? The
way he made that interesting is by actually having like
a logical encumbrance system. You think about, like how many
games you can just like arbitrarily hold one hundred and
fifty pounds with this stuff is like bees the game
beause the games is huge on this, Like I just
have twenty guns, three rock launchers in my back pocket,
one hundred grenades. It's like, where's that stuff? Logically it's not.
It's just just somewhere, you know. You just got to
accept it. Yeah, And most games don't care about that
because it's like that's something as gamers that we just
suspend our disbelief on that, right, like we because it
would be tedious to have this in every single game.
They don't have systems like this. But I found it
super interesting that this game is like, Okay, what is
our core mechanic. Our core mechanic really for most of
the game is just like carrying stuff and balancing your weight. Yeah,
and I think that is brilliant. It's something that you know,
it's funny, meaning Taylor on our Outer World to be
brought up as bringing up outer world or sorry Outward
that game I played earlier this year, just some small
indie game kind of did a similar thing where you
have like your stuff in your backpack, and when it
comes time to fight, you just like click a button
to drop your backpack, so you're a little bit more
mobile while you do this actual battle. It was a
cool little system because I think, like I said, most
games don't really care about encumberrents in a logical way,
so it's cool they did there. And this is like
that Time seven, right, it's so good, Like the way
you can attach stuff to your shoulders, the way you
can put them on your legs, you can put certain
things in like your pouch. You can eventually get like
a spot for your grenades, the way you kind of
have to like balance its that you if you go
too tall then you're just gonna fall over too much.
And then I love that the right and left trigger
are simply just like the actions of your right and
left hand right because that's used in so many ways.
Like having one mechanic that does like many many things
is always almost always beneficial if it's done correctly. And
I just I love that encumbrance is something that this
is like that's the core mechanic of this game. It's
such a weird little detail that most games don't care about,
but this to focus on it did it so well
and it makes for a really unique type of gameplay.
Speaker 2: Well that's the thing, Like you said, there's maybe like
the game you play, there's games that may be touched upon,
but to take something that is just so thrown aside,
so that's not worried about really in any games. Every
once in a while it might be like, oh, you've
gone your weight, but even like that same thing, that's
usually what it is. Just yeah, you can carry arbitrarily
this much.
Speaker 1: It's a cutoff. Yeah, and then more feather you can't
carry and exactly.
Speaker 2: And it's to me that like in the gameplay where
it's a weird comparison, but I compare it to like
the movie Joker, where Todd feels like I want to
see how a guy actually becomes a joker. To me,
I was like, I want to see how someone actually
carry all this stuff, And they go, what else are
you gonna do? The games like, well, that's gonna probably
be most of the game. Yeah, and it really is.
And that's what was like I said, the same thing
I wouldn't have thought was interesting to me, but it
was fun getting the stuff what do I want to
take And then eventually once they teach you, like, hey,
that important stuff you want to put at the bottom.
Everything like that, and it is and just the aesthetic
of it too, of just sometimes when he would have
just a stack and she's like, this is so outrageous,
but it works in this world, and it was. It
was crazy. I did, like I said, because I had
seen I think you bump.
Speaker 1: Into a root. If your stuff bumps into the roof,
it's like, that's not just an animation. It will get
fucking docked right out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and god forbid you go in a river that's
just a tad deep, and like you get stuck and
your stuff's gone, and oh my god.
Speaker 1: Yeah, when that happens in like twenty or like maybe
logically fifteen objects will fall all just going down the
river at different paces. Your character's like exhausted. So it
was like, oh shit, yeah, you have to run and
go grab yourself.
Speaker 2: I did drop a human character in an accident.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah. I was always like extraordinarily careful when you
had to carry the humans.
Speaker 2: Oh, and that's what I like that. It's in a
way of because I've never played the Souls games and
people have talked like Ji Phone or a similar that,
but I'm not that deep into it. Yeah, that's where
there's no bosses but the travel and a couple of bosses.
Well I meant, I guess there is, but I didn't
feel I felt with the bosses, I didn't need to
learn too much. I didn't feel like those were hard
to me.
Speaker 1: It's like there are more like shadow of the Classes
style bosses where they're about just a cool look, very
cinema menacing appearance more than like actual intense game plan.
Speaker 2: But I've heard from like Souls and Blood Born it's
all like it's like a learning curve, right, you go
and approach the situation.
Speaker 1: And you might have patients.
Speaker 2: And that's how I felt about stuff like when I
dropped someone in water and things like that. It'd be
like you're trying to be quick, you were trying to
take a shortcut. You shouldn't have done that, you know.
And that's why I like, constantly throughout the game, you're learning,
you're taking different paths, and you're like that where I go.
I after I did that, I never did that again.
And if there's special cargo, like I'm not gonna go
water unless it's all blue, I'm not gonna like. That's
why I loved about that. It is punishing in a way.
It'll make you hurt if you if you get too careless.
And there's so many times where I just ran down
a hill because like, oh I just want to get here,
and or I got a delivery to make, and sometimes
it worked up, but then other times it's risky and
you know if you do this, you might not come
out unscathed and you might hurt stuff.
Speaker 1: And so sometimes you have things like that, like you
just said, like a risk of like Okay, I'm gonna
go through this water right, It's like how simple is that?
It is very simple? But then you also, just like
the minute minut stuff, there's also that risk reward where
it's like how fast do you want to move?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: Because if you if you crouch and hold on your gear,
you're never gonna fall over no fucking tank. However, if
you're just like start running around, you're not holding onto
your straps, you can move a little bit faster. It's
like every little ount, like every little ounce you're trying
to gain to just get your objective a little bit faster.
Speaker 2: The train's always changing, Yeah, exact uphill, downhill waters, just
a constant gameplay of like Okay, sometimes you're holding on,
sometimes you're not.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the different paths you're taking is really satisfying, like
just trying to weigh those things. So I found that
really enjoyable. And then it like you know, changes with gear.
So it's like some point you can you can get
upgrades the exoskeletons, so carry more gear, but now you
can no longer carry stuff on your legs, so kind
of like a risk ard there, or you can go
for like the speed skeleton which does the same thing.
Or you know, eventually you get something armor you can
put on your upper shoulder, so you can't carry stuff anymore,
but now you can take a little more shot. So
there's really fun balance there as well. Again you're really
making a choice of the what game you want to play.
That's why I love that it has like these like
RPG elements, not for characters, but just for you and your.
Speaker 2: Body and what you're gonna do. Because I never want
to use that armor. The second I heard you lost that,
I never have not use it once in the games.
Is like shoulder armor, Yeah, never once use because it's
like I value I was, and that's why I.
Speaker 1: Found so interesting. It is like, depending on what your
mission is or what you think the mission is going
to be a lot of time, you don't have all
the information you can make those changes. Right, So if
I if I thought I had to go through like
some mule territory or something, I might have loaded up
on some armor, or if I was like not caring
very much, like I might as well throw some armor on.
But yeah, it's like that's so cool as well because
you something like let's say you think you're gonna get
get objective really quick and it's probably not worth it
to bring the container repair spray, yeah, so that you
can like clean your gear because you're gonna get the
quick enough, don't need to worry about it. However, if
it's a longer journey, you might want to bring one
do cans of that because you might not be able
to find any before you get there. And it's like,
well that, now that adds an extra risk on because
you might that might that might put you over at
the limit where you're gonna pick that topple and lose.
Speaker 2: Everything, especially because there's an aspect in this game where
there's certain things we talked about the PCC, like you
can't use if you're add of the network boundaries and
at points because the map is all blacked out. But
you sometimes don't know when that next one's gonna come.
Sometimes it's right away, and it's like, oh, I there's
so many times where I had like four pccs for
nothing or something, or I learned that early on if like, hey,
you don't got to take so much because at one
point like all right, I have three bowl of guns,
I have this like I have so much like for
a huge trek, and it's like, well, no, if you
get to this situation, you can buy some more. But
then there are times where if you if you're light,
you could be really hurting, especially if you had attacked
by whether they're meals or the bets, which I'm sure
we'll talk about in a bit. Yeah, but that's where
I loved that you didn't know what was gonna happen.
And that's why that's why I think the first experience
for me is always gonna be this kind of like
s Tier. I loved experience because I'll play this game again,
but you always kind of know that now going in,
you'll remember parts on you and know, okay I should
probably I'm.
Speaker 1: Saying that learning experience of it is really satisfying because yeah,
is unlike any other game that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and to me, it's the game that I feel
like even near maybe to like the seventy five percent mark,
and then after that it's like a lot of story stuff.
But then up to that point, I still feel like
I'm learning. The good thing is you're always getting new
gear and really, like you talk about just a lot
the differences, and it's like based on how well you do.
Speaker 1: It's based on how much like extra content you do,
Like the more you delivered to the engineer, for example,
he'll hook you up with the newest like gun upgrade
or something because that's what he would give you. So
I think that's pretty cool. And uh, what was I
gonna say something? Uh? Yeah, So the idea of like
like how much you want to bring on your adventures,
Like if I'm going through mule camp, maybe it's like
I kind of want to bring a bunch of assault rifles. Yeah.
But the thing what I like about is that like
I never found an issue with buying stuff, Like I
always had enough minerals, kyro CHRISTI is like I never
didn't have enough money to buy what I wanted. I
wasn't just buying excessive amoss. I was usually just taking
what I needed or what I felt like I needed.
And so I like that as well, because it doesn't
feel like super punishing, like if you take something it
doesn't go well and you have to like drop a
gun or something because you can't carry it.
Speaker 2: All.
Speaker 1: That's fine. It's it doesn't feel like I made a
grave mistake or something. I think that's really satisfying about
it as well, is it is just like more for
each like each mission at a time, you kind of
just take it, take it there, and then you always
just stuff in your locker. Who knows, maybe you'll come
back to that location later. Oh shit, I put this,
like these grenades in here. I can pick those up and.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, there was one time that did that happen
and I was like, oh man, like I forgot us here,
and then the other thing.
Speaker 1: I sometimes they'll just like if you do mission, well,
there's put some stuff in the locker for you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And then I learned to actually use that because
I learned one time when you I think I had
to fast travel somewhere and I had a bunch of
my stuff on the truck, but the truck didn't come
with me, so I lost all that stuff. And I
was like, yeah, oh man, you know, but it's like
I deserve that. I got punished for it, but uh yeah,
that was. That was That's the as far as two
little things I want to show with the gameplay as
uh oh, I guess it's just one thing. But I
love the bicycle the motorbike in this game because I
post on Twitter. It reminds me so much of the
Dark Knight Batpod. It's just like the way it moves,
it's fun. You got like turbo on there. It's uh.
I like the truck too. Because you've been in the game.
Is there a point where you can actually unlock the
truck where they'll give you it or do you always
gotta take them from the mule because I haven't got
that yet. Really yeah, I got that pretty early on.
Oh my god, I still have not gone that, So
I wonder if I'm not made one delivery to somebody
that unlocked that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm trying to think of who it was that
like gave me that.
Speaker 2: But I that's exciting. Yeah, no, we can.
Speaker 1: I like the like the bike, you get the like
the long range version, So that's the one that has
a like sect twice as much bad cargo.
Speaker 2: I didn't use that one because I was always throwing
cargo on the first one because that was the thing.
I loved the truck as those remind deliveries. I was
always trying to take as much as possible, taking fource ups.
Eventually near the end I stopped that again just to
like get through the story a bit more. But I was, yeah,
that was my strategy, like I'm taking as much as
I can. They get money and I for nothing because
I got no.
Speaker 1: It's a cool point as well, because the different characters will,
like early on in the game, like there's like three
or four characters that tell you different things, like ones like, oh,
you should prioritize doing these trips quickly you'll get all points.
Someone will say, hey, it's better if you take like
a lot of stuff. People are really gonna appreciate that.
And then somebody like, oh, you want to make sure
that it's not damage at all. People are gonna be
really happy about that. And so I like that. There's
there's not really an answer it's kind of all of them, right,
but each of the characters like push you in a
different direction, which is kind of this like fun I
mean he does that a lot in this game, right,
where like commenting on a gameplay mechanic through a character,
Oh can like kind of a it's kind of not
really fourth wall comment, but like almost right, like three
and a half wall calm.
Speaker 2: I think so, and we'll talk about Higgs later. Higgs
is like, yeah, he's the character that goes over the
top floor for sure. As for the vehicles, I really
I want to mention as well that I like how
fragile they feel, like how weak they are, like that
they are really funny, and not that they're really weak, right,
but they're still but they're still like super like they
are really useful. It feels great to have a bike.
Speaker 1: Once you finally get it's like, oh, yes, everything is
so much easier now I can take more with me
you need it. But yet I love how how weak
they are, like they feel like paper thin. At times,
you go off like a ten foot cliff or something
and the bike just like blows up and it's like fuck,
like that was such a small little jump. And then
even just like the idea of it running out of
battery like that can happen really quick sometimes, especially if
you're boosting, Especially if you have to go up a
mountain and you have to use boost to get up
that mountain, then you're gonna kill that battery quick. And
I like that because if you are screwed and your
and your bike breaks, well you're not screwed, right, you
just take it on foot because the game is designed
to be that way. Yeah, So I really enjoyed that
system as well. In the truck, I found the truck
honestly was a lot more problem or a lot more
trouble than it was beneficial for particularly going up hills.
It just like starts to fall because the weight of it, right,
it falls over. Like I found it really hard to
go up a hill unless I just had like a
ton of build up to it. So I like that
they both have.
Speaker 2: Their pros and cons.
Speaker 1: Like obviously the truck you can just carry so much
shit and oh yeah a lot tankier than the car deliveries.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but yeah, it's.
Speaker 1: Still it is a lot more awkward. So I like
that the cars are in there, but they don't break
the game, right, and they don't like make it so
oh man, now I have to walk again.
Speaker 2: It feels shitty.
Speaker 1: It's like they are so weak that they make the walk.
You never feel obsolete, it's like you're always you always
accept that. Okay, sometimes they're gonna have to like even
with the BET's right, they destroyed the truck cars instantly
as well, so you're gonna have to get off your
car anyway at some point.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I wish. The only thing is I wish there
was maybe a meter they put in to see how
far away you could be till you lost your gear
and say, oh, you're getting too far. Because there's one
situation where I had a truck but it was terrain
that I couldn't drive over, and then after that was bet.
So it's like I have a really far away from
my mission and that and that's where and that could
just be the game that they wanted, like, well, that's
you use the truck. So I was problem. But I
wish even that I got a little bit of a radar.
Speaker 1: I know that's maybe like, what do you mean, like
you would have run like in that situation which they
told you, so you could have tooken a bike.
Speaker 2: As well well. No, so I yeah, well yeah, so
I would have put it in a private locker or something,
because then I'm losing gear that was in that truck.
Speaker 1: Oh I see like you put extra.
Speaker 2: Yeah, when like the yello would come up like oh
you've gone too far, and then it gets the just
the insult of like, oh other players can take your
stuff now, but it's like and I can't go back,
or I would least like if they said, hey, it's
on the map, people can take it, but if you
get back in time, you can get it where it
would just be gone. And I wish there was some
radar because I was just at one point had a
really difficult position where I said, there was so much
terrain where I couldn't take that truck there, but I
needed to get this for a main story mission. And
then I lost that and the truck, and I was like, oh, well,
I'm really bummed out. And that was my thing with
the I. I was sometimes screwed because the bike. Other
than the BET's, I never had a bike explode on me,
but I was bad with the battery. I sometimes i'd
say the first half bad with a battery management. So
I was a big fan that first bike. But that
was problem where I'd put so much on the bike
and then if I have almost so much weight, it's like, oh,
I'm really screwed now because those bikes that I have
no battery? What I do with this gear and it's
like I gotta drop these blood like then I do.
But I love that aspect. You're like, like, what's the
essential exactly what do I need to drop? And it's like, okay,
blood bags I'm keeping all the time. Will I need
this gun? It's like, well, there's no meals here, but
it's like you never know what's coming, so it's like,
at least keep one.
Speaker 1: That's what's cool too is the guns. You can put
them on the side of the of the cargo and
they take up less space that way, or at least
the like the assault rifles, they take up like two slots, right,
two squares, you can say, so you can put them
on the side of your thing and only take up
one slot. So you learn little things like that as well,
which is pretty cool.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but yeah, I loved the vehicles, both of them.
But yeah, the bike it felt good because it's somebody
one's gonna tell me about the while I'm smy notorists.
I hate the horse and mechanics. I hate traveling, and
that to me is a big thing in games is
vehicles and traveling. They need to hit that end. Yeah,
I love the bike. I just felt like Christian Bale
rolling around. I love the set and that's one thing
I should have said in the opening. Uh score, soundtracks,
sound design for the bike, for everything, the little movements, characters,
the way they move, the where like the BT's, the
sounds they make. To me, this sound design sounds like
they may not be perfect movies, but the Star Wars prequels,
the type of sounds they do and how unique they
were was just like created, just a revolutionary as far
as oh how do you do this? And what you do?
And you see the watch behind the scenes of like
fan Mass, They're doing all this weird stuff and I
don't know if they went to that death and maybe
they use some pre stuff, but what they use for
the world everything so sounds so unique and so specific
to that but something different. I love that. And the score.
Oh yeah, I love the score. It had like this
like synth like eighties field tips. I played runner and
then I love the soundtrack. Tons of low roller on there.
I love Loroer. The only thing that I do is
because of the E three trailer reveal was a low
Roer song they played out for the credits of this game,
and that's why I discovered them. So obviously Kagen is
a big fan. But I think it felt I talked
about that before. For the melancholy field just is like
even when you're achieving something, Especially the character of Sam,
who is a very quiet guy, he feels like he
has I wouldn't say a deppression, but just a lot
of weight on him and not in like the sense
of light he's caring, but just emotionally. And that's what
I think this This game was going for a certain
tone and it nailed this. I just want to say
from that technical aspect before I forgot. Yeah, everything I
do is sound in this game. I love it, and
even like stuff like the bats that it was scary
and horrific and yeah, I locked all that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I definitely agree. I don't think anything to add
on those. I like the soundtrack as well. It is
very distinct and yeah, melancholy I think is the best
way to put it. Yeah, that definitely encapsulates it. And
it was like it just feel like the music, because
could you just choose to put stuff on?
Speaker 2: I think you maybe can. I think you well, I
didn't check in game. I know you can when you're
sitting back at home, but I think you can. I
do I think maybe.
Speaker 1: Something that I never felt like I needed to put
a song on. But yeah, it felt like a lot
of times they would pop up at like just the
right moment where you just you just climb this hill
after just getting like a bunch of beats and you
can see some sun. At the end of the time,
fall chimes in and then the music starts and it's like,
now I'm great. When you're going to Portnite City. That
happens the first time when you have to get through
that uphill battle which is just like a brutal section
where my bike got destroyed. The fucking beats caught me
and I had to climb up the hill. I was
getting dragged. So when I finally caught to the top
of the hill, saw the city, saw the sunlight, I
was like, oh, I could make it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And that's the thing with HIDAO. I feel like
all that stuff is perfectly placed. We have some problems
with the other things, but as far as for me,
like tone everything that stuff, even the score, Like I
love like the music when the mules kick in and
that's like the most actiony it gets. But I just
I love everything about that type of stuff.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I want to touch on a couple more
just basic game plays because I just fucking love this game. Right,
So once again the system of just like right and
left trigger are straight up your right, right and left hand.
That works works really well for just picking up cargo right.
You just you can simply pick things up with the
right or left and then just like let go to
drop them on things. It's so simple, but it just
feels really good. And there's like a little bit delay
when you let go. I feel like, yeah, and then
it puts them down, so it's a little awkward. I
got used to it after a few times. Yeah, at
first I never really looks right, but it feels good,
So I like that. And then even the idea of
just like throwing something, there isn't a throw button. What
you do is you punch with the object in your
hand and then just let go of the button. Yeah,
it's genius, but it just like the game feel that
is so good. Yeah, it feels so so good.
Speaker 2: It was fun because at first I was like, ah,
this is because this is gonna be a hassle mid fight.
And then I did accidentally one time and then there's
a part where you really have to use it. But
then I found myself once they really enforced it, I
was like, Okay, this does feel good. There's times where
like and it was satisfying just to whip a briefcase
at somebody to like beat up one meal, take his
case and one guy's coming and just whip it at
him like that to me was where it was MeTL gear,
where it just felt actually like John Wicki that quick time,
not quick time, but just in movies away it's just
like wrap it and it feels it flows. Yeah, it was.
It was really fun just to throw briefcases at people. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Another thing is just the idea of see right, like
sometimes he's just so exhausted that you just gotta you
just gotta hold that rest button, put him to sleep,
and just go get a glass water, just go leave
for a couple of minutes yourself.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think it's like a really genuine way to just
like I think even when that happens a couple of
times it says like, well, you take a break too,
and it's like that's a good point. Sometimes I've been
playing this game for five hours straight. Yeah, before that
was cut scenes, I'm not getting enough breaks here. It's
like that's good, Just get up, go grab some water. Yeah,
that could get annoying if it was like overdone, but
I think it was just the right amount where it
was only after like really intense mule chase down to
something was like, man, I really just gotta sit down
and rest. And it fits the character right because like
you feel that weight on him right when I was
into Paul as well, and I actually saw porters in
real life. We don't have those here. We just have
delivery trucks do everything. But seeing those people and they're
carrying like four or five hiking bags. Mine is heavy
and I just have one. They just have a bunch.
The weight is pulling against their forehead, like it was
just really crazy to see that. And then I don't know,
seeing that Alan Sam, I felt like very sympathetic for
him after kind of witnessing that in real life just
earlier this year.
Speaker 2: It's not even just pouring for it. Also, sorry but
He's not just pouring deliveries, is also pouring like the state,
like this for the fate of America, right, So just
like yeah, literally like a person. Yeah yeah, it's like
literally this guy and he has all this weight on
his shoulders literally and figuraly, it's just like, oh man,
you just feel you feel what he's going through.
Speaker 1: So yeah, especially at the end where they're really hammering
at home, like we need you.
Speaker 2: To do this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, really like come on, man, give me a pretty
h Yeah. I guess a couple other systems I like,
I mean the battery we talked about for the cars,
but also one thing we didn't mention is that when
you go through the water as well, like it depletes
your battery quicker. I think that's once again a good
system because it really reinforces you to think about the
path you're taking. And then also the just the battery
that Sam has a well, like depending on how much
gear like up pretty gear you have, it'll drain your
battery quicker. So for example, the exoskeleton that makes you
move faster, I found that uses a lot more battery,
especially if you're sprinting. It just like drains your batteries
super quick.
Speaker 2: The powerhouse one is good. That's when I used the most.
Was like the one that made you wait more, preparing more. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
that I found had the best battery.
Speaker 1: I used it the most, like for yeah, the majority
of the game, and then in that last like eight
ten hour stretch, I was mostly with the exoskeleton. You
have just basic running, right.
Speaker 2: There's one point where you're getting no vehicles pretty much
and you have to really and it's like, yeah, I
need the speeds.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So there isn't a ton of items that I
found that use battery, Like there is your the oxygen mask,
which I only needed to use the one time. Yeah,
what else was there? There really isn't a ton that
uses this battery.
Speaker 2: I used once, but then I didn't use again. There's
a little kel carrier that you can put stuff on.
Oh really, yeah, I love that thing. I never I
didn't end up using that thing like all the time
I always brought with I'm gonna use it more this
go around once I'm doing like deliveries outside. But I
just I don't know why. It was just like I
just think I didn't want another battery power thing to
really worry about it.
Speaker 1: I don't think that thing uses your battery?
Speaker 2: Does it not?
Speaker 1: Maybe if it does, I never it was never a
problem to me. Okay, well I don't know if I
ever used it with the exoskeleton. So I feel like
if you if that did use battery and you had
the exit the speed skeleton, I would really drain it.
But I love that thing. That thing is great because
one you can you can you attach it behind you, right,
it's essentially like a wheelbarrow, floating wheelbarrow that follows you.
It floats above the ground, so it doesn't get fucked
by the terrain like you would think it would. So
that works sometimes it does. Right, if you're like trying
to climb a wall, it won't follow you because it's
like what is it going to levitate to? It doesn't
go on the wall, So you really got to think
about your path there. So it's not just to it
be all fixed. It doesn't just say here's six hundred
more pounds you can carry.
Speaker 2: Like.
Speaker 1: It is limited in its ways, but it's multi use.
In a couple boys one, I mean you load a
lot on there, you can have two of them that
follow you. But the thing that I loved about it
is you can just hop on it and use it
as like a snowboard. So I was wondering what, though,
was okay, Now I saw that, I saw that tool tip,
and I was like, that's kind of weird. And then
eventually I was really at one point, you're doing a
lot of trekking through the mountains in the snow, and
I was like, man, I really want to try this out.
And it is amazing.
Speaker 2: It's great because it's like it's.
Speaker 1: An alternative to a car. You can't go up hill. Obviously,
it's just to go downhill, but there's a lot of
that you have to do in the mountains, and it
really saves a lot of time. And then yeah, it's
like it's quick and easy that you can just like
if you have a couple of things on it, just
throw them on your back, hop on the thing, quick
ride down the mountain, put them back on there. So
it feels really good and I ended up loving that thing,
and through the last like eight hours of the game,
I just threw like like probably eight guns on that thing,
and I would just bring that with me as there's
a lot of combat in the end. Oh yeah, and
so I just had like eight extra guns with me
at all times, so yeah, it was it was essential.
And you know, things go wrong, you'll fall off a cliff,
you'll get attacked by someone'll, you'll lose it, you'll lose
a bunch of gear, but hey, that happens all the
time anyway, so I yeah, I think that thing was
a great addition as well. And all the buildings are like,
they're all kind of unique in their ways, like as
I think we talked about the battery tower, which is
just good for you and your car. So there's the
bridges which are amazing, the time fall shelters. I didn't
really build those very often, that a couple of times, but.
Speaker 2: Yeah, using other people on them when they are really helpful. Yeah,
they kind of fix your gears conditioned a bit and
then you can skip time forward.
Speaker 1: So pretty nice there.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Overall, I just I always was carrying a couple pccs.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I did near definitely near the like the back
not the back half, but the second half for sure. Whatever,
it's a long game.
Speaker 1: So I never actually built a house after the first one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I didn't either, And I actually I never built
a bridge again either because I always yeah, I always
found I was wanting to, and then I was not
in the right position, so I was like, Okay, I'm
gonna find it, I think.
Speaker 1: So I built a couple when I was after You see,
it's sequence of your going up to Loachna in the
like mountains and you're okay, and you have to go
through like swampland and there's a lot of mules there. Yeah,
and uh, there's a couple of people that put bridges up,
but I didn't think they were good enough, so I
wanted to put a couple of extra ones. So yeah,
and it was a struggle because there was mules all around,
so I had to do some combat so that I
could just clear out the area to put the bridges down.
But I think that's the fun thing about it. It's like,
did I need to do that? No, because I only
needed to go past that sequence once or twice. But
there is that secondary motivation of wanting to help other
players out one hundred percent.
Speaker 2: And that's the thing thing. Because I had battery problems.
There is one I can't remember. When you're getting into
the more rock your terrain. There was one base I
got to that had no battery around it at all,
and I was like why is and put it on here?
And that was my biggest, like one I can't remember.
I think when I lasted, I was like up to
three fifty, and I was like, that's what I like.
The common sense of you either drive up and you're like,
I'm happy this is here, a good job and I'll
like it, or you get you're like why has no
one done this yet. The other thing was there was
one time where I was trying to uh bet us
there as again blackerr and this was very early on
the game. I really didn't know because I don't think
they do the best job of explaining how to avoid
BT's right away in my opinion. So that's maybe like
a little minor con I caught onto. But the very
first time, I'm like, okay, they're popping up. I know
I have to crouch and hold my breath, but how
And then with the censor, like okay, I figured it out.
So but again I think it was that.
Speaker 1: It doesn't hold your hand for most of the games.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it was just that again of like
it happened so quickly if I maybe learned that on
its own and then had some breaks, but it was
just like, oh, I learned this in this, but I.
Speaker 1: Feel like there's tutorials for things in the first like
four hours and then nothing.
Speaker 2: No, no. So I was at one point, what was
it doing. Oh so there's this rain going on and
someone had put the like, oh, cave, shelter, pinpoint whatever,
but they put like really deep in the cave, so
when I where I was, you couldn't see it. So
it's like it didn't really help me. So what I
end up doing I put two more like leading to
it because yeah, trail of breadco we yeah, because yeah,
you might get there and be like, oh, it's like
this could be a lie. It's not the rate, like
there's not cover, but if you get to it, you'll
see another one, then you'll see another. And that was
what I did because I was like, I can't see
this from this far. It doesn't help me at all.
So that's what love. I know. We talked about the
only aspect, but I loved that aspect because it felt like,
obviously everyone is playing as Sam, but it feels like
in your head canon, these are people all in the world.
Speaker 1: Dementia yea, yeah, yeah right, so hey it feels like
it fits. Yeah, I love that.
Speaker 2: I'm sad anyone there so fun. I'm just like I
am here. It was just that's such a weird GENI thing.
But yeah, I loved all those aspects of the online
stuff and that, just like I said in my head,
Cannon made me just go, oh, it's another world where
there's other porters out there doing their things, and it's
just it lies. It livened up the world because you
don't see that many people out of their bunkers.
Speaker 1: If like, for I saw porters maybe three occasions.
Speaker 2: Yeahah, for very minor supports. Everyone lives like underground because
it's dangerous to be out, so you don't get that
much human interact for a while.
Speaker 1: For honestly, the first six or seven hours, I thought
that there was gonna be like some twist where there's
no people alive. Oh yeah, like it's all holograms, because
I was like, have I seen anyone in person? No,
because you see dead Men and die Hardman at the
start of the game, but they're just like holograms at
that point. I'm pretty sure. So I guess you technically,
I guess you see Fragile, but I didn't.
Speaker 2: I didn't know if Fragile was real or not for
the longest time until just teleport. Yeah, until other characters. Again,
that's not big spoil that are like, oh, you met Fragile,
but like there are times, especially the way you meet her,
I was like a kind of weird. Well, yeah, this
it's a figure in my imagination especially I'll say that
for the story. But there's certain science and that's what
that's the inception part where there's many times in this
story where you're a little off, you don't know what's
going on.
Speaker 1: So yeah, definitely little dream sequences. I think. The last
thing I want to mention on, like just the basic
deliveries is uh said, they do switch it up a
little bit with things like you know, maybe the car
you have to carry can't get wet, so you have
to make sure you're not going to the water at all,
so that changes it up. Bombs. Yeah, the bombs were.
Speaker 2: Pain in the especially because you're going to the most
rock is there. They're bombs where it's like if you
take a bomp, you go and water, you go down
a hill wrong, it loses ten percent and that you
got one hundred percent, So if you go there, it
just blows up.
Speaker 1: Using a vehicle with those things.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and I learned quickly the bike that I
love was not gonna help me there. It's like you're
gonna the old shoelaced express. Yeah, you're gonna have to
take a long trek for this one. So yeah, So
I like that.
Speaker 1: And then even as we kind of mentioned, you sometimes
a couple times you have to carry a human on
your back because that's really awkward the way it messes
with your weight, and then you can't carry very much
extraneous stuff. On top of that, you can maybe put
stuff on your shoulders, you can put a couple of
things on the back, but really you just got to
go bare bones for those and that's like the scariest
ones of all because you're carrying a human being. So
I like that they mix it up a little bit
there that you can, I don't know, just have a
little bit switch up with the formula. But even then,
I just it was so much fun for me, just
like plan, Okay, how much do I want to take,
Like it's an extra fifty pounds if I take on
that order. Eventually you get like a robot you can
send out to do a little cheap orders for you.
Speaker 2: He always is terrible. I know they come back at
d because you get report cards if we have said,
like on your delivery, and that all has to do
with like time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, people are mad.
Speaker 2: I'm like, I got better shit to do, I know.
And I always send them on the ones that required
lots of way, because there's one that was like, oh, like.
Speaker 1: I always tried to just send him one where you
wouldn't have to go through mules because I didn't know
if you'd be able to make it. Oh yeah, I said,
don't know if they actually go or if it's just
like a simulated thing.
Speaker 2: But I think that's just assimilate that. I think that
like uh uh. I was like, that would have been
cool though, if you could have bumped into him. But yeah,
I'd always send them heavy ones or ones that are
very long, like I'm not getting back there for a while.
But yeah. No, the human thing was fun. That's where
I almost did kill a human though, because that's the
one I dropped in water and it was like, I
won't say, but it was like blanks almost dead. I
was like, oh no, I'm gonna yeah.
Speaker 1: I never dropped someone was carrying in the water. I
did accidentally kill a porter by driving into them with
a truck.
Speaker 2: I did too.
Speaker 1: I honestly, the sick part of me wanted to see
if I could, yeah, see if the game would let me.
And I got like the mare a hundred likes on
that one.
Speaker 2: I did accidentally because I thought he was a hologram,
so I just drove past them and it just blew him.
But but that is satisfying, not him. But when you
get to the mule camps, who are these are like
these like that's not you gotta see that astra because
they have a thing in the movie very soon with
that that these are just people terracets that are gonna
take your gear. And I just love like on the
bike just clipping people and knock them out. It was best,
I would ask though. And this isn't two story spoils,
But did you kill anybody? Because they tell you not
to write They say it's best not to kill the
mules and stuff. Yeah, like not like in story when
maybe you dictate to you. But did you ever just
take a gun and shoot somebody on mules?
Speaker 1: I'll never use the uh the bowla no, not the
bowl of the what is it called sultry?
Speaker 2: The non lethal salt Okay, yeah I did too. Yeah, Okay,
I just wondered because I've seen what does happen if
you kill somebody? But I never did, which is what
what if you kill someone that creates a void out
and it's like that, it like all sinks and it's
like I've not seen him. I don't know, I've only
seen a photo. So I'm gonna do it now. Eventually.
That's something I should have experimented with. I know I
should have too, but I was all like, yeah, I'm
not gonna kill anybody. And that's what I love about too.
Speaker 1: I wonder if I killed that guy when I ran
over with my truck.
Speaker 2: I know, you don't they just knock them out? Yeah, yeah,
yeah uh. And that's what I love with Hedeo. With
that aspect. It's funny that he comes from metal Gear,
which is so much is about stuff, but then after
that it's just about like killing the crap out of people.
But this was just like specifically telling you, like I said,
you don't use a gun for a long time in
this game, and then also telling you, hey, don't kill people.
There's bad things if you do that, And I love
that you're kind of trying to be. He has a
game called peace Walker and Medle Gear. So that's funny.
But you are like this peace Walker. You know, you're
trying your best just to do your deliveries. And I
appreciate that because that's a different type of game. There's
so many games where you're just just mowing down people.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's talk about BT's or mules. Let's talk about
one of those. What one do you want to talk about?
Speaker 2: We do mules. I think that's quicker. I like them.
I think they added a nice aspect to the game.
I think it could have made you done a little
bit more with them in story. But at the same time,
this story was already so big. I don't know if
you need to add on. So I think it was
like a fun I think it was a fun brain break.
If I did want to go fight or want to
go do some action, it was good for that because
everyone in a while, I would just like, I'm gonna
crash this camp just because I want to. I do
want to shoot something. But I like them, but nothing.
If I were a list of things that I loved
in this game, that would just be like, oh, I
really liked it, but I'm not gonna brave about the mules.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it's something that I'm curious. I own it,
Like at some point I want to do some more
experimentation with them and see, like if you kill all
the mules in a camp, does it like destroy that camp?
Speaker 2: I think it does.
Speaker 1: So that's something I think I did it once, so
I only like all those orange barriers are still on
that map.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think I did it once. I took everyone
out and then like, oh, you cleared this area and
because I think I used one of their port boxes
and it was no longer orange, So I I think
I think that's what I'm I could be wrong because
it could have just been in the story and there's
a lot of stuff, but.
Speaker 1: Right, well, so yeah, at some point you do, like
so what happens that they have like their set area, right,
their little like poles that send out a warning if
you go in their terrain. It's like super I don't
think you can really sneak past it. The only way
I've found that you could really get past it is
later in the game you get like the your your
sensor thinking like counter theirs can like negate it if
you get the tailing right. The pain, so that that
thing's pretty nice. But up until that, like they are
terrifying early on, right, because I mean they're not terrifying
in like a horror sense, but just in like a
way that they're tracking you down. They're fast, they're not
carrying as much shit as you are. So if you're
trying to run with all your deliveries, you don't want
to lose your deliveries. You don't want to lose the
things they have to take to your destination. Then you
have to get out of there or you have to
fight them. And I feel like the first two or
three encounters I have with them were just like very messy,
very scrappy, Like I just got a couple punches out
and then just ran. I lost a bunch of shit,
but I kept my essential things and like I got
out and it just instantly rested on my Holy shit,
that was intense. My heart is like racing super effective
at like just really the intensity, as you mentioned earlier,
the music that happens like when you're there, it's just
like scary. And then just one of my favorite interactions
was I had to go into one of their camps
to seal something and I could not think of a
way to like do it in a stealth fashion because
there is earlier in the game you're kind of giving
like almost like a stealth tutorial on them, and you
kind of have like a nice place you can sneak in.
This place I had to go to is like I
don't know how you're supposed to sneak in here. There's
no way you can get around without going right past
like one of those sensor bars, and so I like
snuck in there. But then they got weary of my position.
I ran up on like this little rock and I
was kind of just hiding there. And I was hiding
for a bit, and then eventually they spotted me because
they'd have like pretty logical line of sight, like they
don't have as much vision as you, but they can
see like really far more than most stealth games at least,
And so that was just a mad scround. By that point,
I just ran and I was like, I'm gonna go
get the thing and I'm out of here. So I
ran into their base like shooting the bullgun like wild
grabbed the item I needed after a little hacking sequence.
Then I stole their truck, which I hadn't driven a
truck at this point in the game yet, just a
bike or two and I just took it and I
just like booked it out of there. And then from
like one hundred feet away, they sniped me with them.
They're like electric poles, stunned the vehicle. So I just
had to hop out and I'm like, oh shit, I'm
on foot now, and I just booked it out of there,
like probably the most high energy moment I had in
the whole game. Movies so intense. So I don't know,
the mules are like very it's a very simple system,
but yeah, it was really effective for me at like
really spiking that adrenaline for like a short period of time.
Speaker 2: I said, I wouldn't put in the things I love
the most, but it's not a thing I would take
out I love because either, like I said, there's the
brain break, or also it just is another threat. And
that's good for the world thing too, because it shows
that there are other people, other people that are against you,
that are just looking for their.
Speaker 1: Own provis like a unique gameplay element to the game, right,
like go look at Horizon down, Like obviously it's all
about fighting the giant beasts. Yeah, and that's amazing, but
then when you do have to fight the humans, like, Okay,
they kind of dropped the ball here, like this is
pretty lame, Whereas I think with the mules, they really
made it. Like that's I mean, it's it is about
stealth like the beats are, but it's in like definitely
a different way. So I feel like they have their
place in there.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I think more so, like there is a
way you could take on the beats, but the mules
you can just throw around. I can't take these guys out,
But the BET's not so much.
Speaker 1: Did you go to that area? I think it's when
you're trying to go to the junk dealer and you
have to like go through this. It's just flat lamb
but there's like little cracks, little crevices. There's a like
a bunch of water and everything. No, there's no water.
Speaker 2: It's just like there's a bet can.
Speaker 1: It's right from like the main I don't know, the
main distro center and you have to go to the
drunk dealer and it's just like there's just these giant
like canyons ravines almost not of water, but like I
don't know, because before you're there, they don't have the bridges.
No one set those up yet because you have the
Carl network, And that was like a really scary area
to get through. I can't because, like you, I just
fell in there like multiple times. My bike didn't make it.
I tried to climb out, couldn't find the exit, was
trying to throw bladers, but these dudes shooting me.
Speaker 2: It was oh yeah, no I didn't have that experience.
Speaker 1: No, no, no, Luckily, I think you may went around
a little yea sofa or something.
Speaker 2: I could have. Yeah, because there's sometimes where's like I tried.
I don't want to fight these people. You know, I
got too because one time I learned that the hard
way where I went to fo out them, I went
the middle of their camp. So many of them showed up.
They killed me, and I lost all my gear that
I had on me. I was like, yeah, oh, so
I was like, I don't want to do that again.
Speaker 1: Lost a lot of stuff.
Speaker 2: Those nuals, yeah, scavengers.
Speaker 1: Yeah, how about the betes. How'd you feel about those
in general? Like I said, like the core Stelf mechanics.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like I said early on, I didn't love it
because I just felt again I was too much, too fast.
I didn't exactly understand how, and I feel like I
don't know why I missed exactly the I didn't even
put together right away, like the little sensor you have
on your shoulder, Like I knew it had something to
do with it, but I didn't. I think I don't
know if I misunderstood it at first. But like I said,
at first, I was not not not a fan of it,
but I was like getting frustrated. But I love the
design of it. I love that they usually come at
such an inconvenient time. But then near the end, I
just felt like a pro at. I feel like, oh
I can easily, I can get past this no problem.
Where the first fifty percent of the game, I was
worried every single time, and I'm still worried because it
makes it inconvenience. It changed the way you play because like, oh,
I got a dish his vehicle, I gotta change some
things up. But I really liked them. That's the horror aspect,
and I love the uh uh. Like obviously I hate
it because when you get sunk in at first, there's
just like the tar and it's like, oh, this sucks.
But when you get sunk in. That was to these
mini boss battles. That was something I was not expecting
what happens the first time you because when it happened,
I just like, oh I died. They like swallowed me
up and just suffer fricated me. But if you want
to play the game is if you get caught by them,
there's a big kind of tar that comes up, and
like tar, people are trying to tear you down, and
you can fight out of it, but then you might
be pretty much yeah, you're shaking them. You could jump
and you can get past the star, but if you don't,
they'll pull you down and then they literally just like
pull you into it. You go through, almost like if
you were in a pool and someone's pulling you through it.
You come back up and then there's like buildings and
cars floating and you're just in this ocean of tar
and you either gotta kill this huge monster tar monster
that's going around, or you gotta escape the Red Ring.
And I usually escape that depending on the mission, just
because it's like I might not have the gear for this.
But when I killed my first one, that's when I
shared that I have the high Ground gift because it's
just like, uh, they even say that, like just get
the high ground. I was like, okay, but the first
few times I was getting rocked, I was losing stuff,
I was dying. But once I learned, I was like okay,
and then near the end, I'm a master. I won't
say a master, but I feel confident now and.
Speaker 1: I yeah, yeah, I feel I think they're a decent
like I like them from the horror element, like I
think they are properly scary. Yeah, And just like the
way sometimes the scanner just like starts going crazy and
you know you're right beside one.
Speaker 2: It takes a while before you atmosphere.
Speaker 1: It takes a while before you get like the insta
kill on them, like the instance stealth kill, which was
interesting because most games give you that for free, Like
if you sneak up on someone, you can just crack
their neck or whatever is it's an insta kill, but
you have to wait until you unlock that.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then even when you get that, it's like
that usually alerts other ones, so it's like risky thing
to do. I think my problem with it is, yeah,
once you do get caught and all the tar pops up,
I found like I found that it was pretty much
the same thing always, like you just start running away
from them, eventually get out of the zone and it
kind of disappears. And I found by like the fifth
to sixth time that it happened, that I was it's
just kind of an annoying interaction more than it was
like interesting gameplay. Yeah, it wasn't really like I think
part of it is that there isn't really consequence, and
I think that is a I want to say that's
a good thing. But at the same time, maybe that's
why I didn't like it as much, because I didn't
feel like it really mattered. If I did get caught,
I could just repatriate and it was like whatever, yea,
no big deal. But I never yeah, I never felt
like I got enough gear to fight them, so I
always just as well, maybe I should have tried to
fight them and I would have got like a more
interesting scenario.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, no, I tried a few times in that work.
But yeah, no, I can agree. I think I like
it just from the more atmosphere, like even when it's
raining and then the rain turns in the black rain,
so I liked, Yeah, I love the environmental Aspecteah, I
think I liked the idea of it more than the
game playing of it.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I think some of the sequences really work though,
Like particularly one up when you're in the snowy mountains
and you have to carry like this time you have
to carry that bomb. It's like it's fucking intense because
you can't see ten feet in front of you, so snowy.
So I think sometimes it really was effective and other
times it wasn't. But oh, that reminds me of just
the blood mechanic I think was really good in this game,
because blood is is is your HP. You get like
a thousand, and it kind of as you get hit,
you lose HP, and then if you have a blood bag,
it will just slowly like intravenous almost, like just kind
of slowly reflows. But then at the same time you
also have two you can with all your weapons, you
can switch between basic bullets or blood bullets because you
can use your blood to deal damage to these bets. Yeah,
and so I think that was That's like a brilliant
use of mechanics where your HP and your AMMO is
the same is pulling from the same pool. Like that's
just a really genius little shift on something that just
makes it, Like, like I said at the beginning, like
when you have this carrying system that is so dynamic
and then it's covering like three or four systems all
in one mechanic, that's good. That's just a really creative design.
And they did it as well with the health mechanic,
and I think that's great because that's something I really
appreciate about Dark Souls. Well, I think Dark Souls about anything.
I think the best part of it is that it
uses checkpoints and healing in better ways than anything else
in the genre, like in games ever, Like just so creative,
just simple little tweaks, and this is another cool system.
I think it could be refined to I think it
could be a bit better, but it still is really creative,
and I thought it was overall. It's just even aesthetically,
it's kind of weird. Oh yeah, that's the tone that's
gonna say.
Speaker 2: The two things from gameplay aspect, I like because it
makes you say thing we troll about this game having choice.
It's like, Okay, I could use this, but it's like
do I have enough blood bags to risk this? Is
it better just to run? So I like that, and
I just love it from a story world burial things
perspective that it's this weird kind of like apocalyptic future
that is sci fi, high tech, but they have this
gun that can take all these monsters, but it's linked
to your blood. So it's like you literally gotta make
that choice of you gotta hurt yourself to take down
these things. And it's just it was It's such a
cool thing that when I saw it, I was like,
why is no one in any it Maybe there has,
let me know in comments or whatnot, but any weapon
in a movie, your game where it's like this is
linked to my blood and my health, you know, I'm
sure it has. It must have been done before in
some ways. And I know other games are creative with it,
like Doom, for example, is really cool when your low
health just you have to go punch someone in the
face like close range.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a great like that's a great way to
deal with a healing mechanic. Right, Yeah, so other other
games do it. But and I would not be shocked
if someone else has done something like this, but it
still is. It fits this game perfectly, so it's perfectly
placed right here. Yeah, there was some of the point
that I just thought, oh, yeah, so this is a
tooltip I saw. I never actually tried it, Whereas if
you throw these hamatic grenades, which are like the blood bombs,
you can throw that and it kind of like is
like a big dust cloud almost, and apparently you can
shoot that dust that like blood dust at the betis
to kill. I saw that tooltip, but I never tried it,
just because I'm like, I feel like, you gotta be
fucking comfortable about trying that. Yeah, so that's something I
want to try out because that would be another really
cool way that system is intertwining with. Well, now you're
throwing a blood bomb, but then you're using regular bullets, Like, yeah,
a cool way to play with AMMO there, because AMMO
is really limited in this game.
Speaker 2: And oh that's that's.
Speaker 1: Pretty cool as well, Like you have to carry multiple
guns with you instead of carrying multiple clips, and I
think that's a weird little change, but it fits well
with that encumbrance mechanic.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: It's just so many little things are intertwined in this
game and in really creative ways that I appreciated.
Speaker 2: No, I agree, I gotta try that too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I definitely want to see if that, like how
well that actually works as far as gameplay goes. We
kind of talked about it, but the online interactivity, Yeah,
it's just really rewarding. Right when you log in, it's like, oh,
a few hundred people use like whatever. I don't know
what it was, but it's cool. When you come back,
I'm like, oh, I haven't been when like when you're
making that trek back to the start of the game
and you see a ladder of yours that you haven't
seen in like forty hours of game play, it's got
a few hundred likes on it, Like oh fuck, yeah,
like a bunch people have been using this. That's that's awesome.
So it's a really rewarding little mechanic and takes that
ideas of what Dark Souls did with the Summon signs
and just revamps it in like a really craive way.
Speaker 2: So yeah, yeah, I liked it. Uh. I think I
think I said everything on the online that. Yeah, I
think I said everything too. The only thing I screwed
up on once is I thought when you dismantled something,
you could take that for yourself, and I did that
with a few ladders. Yeah, it's not the case piece ladder.
Then I just felt bad that.
Speaker 1: I don't really know why.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I just felt bad. It was just like to
be a dick then, because I was like, oh, I
ruined this guy hit some likes on but it's like
I need some.
Speaker 1: Other guys ladder. I only did it with my own life.
Speaker 2: No I did to anyone because I I need a
ladder and I'm like, oh this one back, Carey took
it and it was just gone. I was like, oh,
I felt bad so sorry forever that yuser was.
Speaker 1: I'm looking at my notes here. I'm going to talk
about some story character stuff if you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, sure, yeah, Well we'll keep it on spoils for
right now. I don't think that'll last too long because
it is. I think it's better to play if you're
interested in story, whether you watch or play it. I
think the same way that we talk about for years,
how the build up of this game was, like what
is it? I think it's still better to experience that
without us talking about that. But story overall, I really enjoyed.
I talk about this beginning is very unique. The world
building was great, characters were great, performances were great. I
think it was something that was different. It is a
bit more I would say mainstream, but easier to fall
than when he's done in the past because the last
Mental Gear and then once previous after that too, we're
just getting some territories where none of it was really
making sense, and I was gonna worry about that because
I was always The thing with Mental Gear five was like,
I love that game so much, but the story, I
can't say it's great because it's just it's so wacky
and it doesn't make much sense. But this one it
makes sense and the rules of the world and there's
some great twists in there. I think it's I think
it's paced very well. I think there is some slow parts,
but at the same time, I think he just does
that deliberty, deliberately to make you really feel like this
character or to sit with it. But those movies we
listed are types of games. As far as the sci
fi twistiness, I think I think you'd appreciate it then.
But it is a it's a great I think it
was a great story because it's it's just not stuff
obviously I could think of. You know, there's certain twists
that I figured out that we'll talk about in spoilers,
but I think it was very well done, and I
think even the way they would tell certain stories, like
the way they told Mads the story, I really really
enjoy it. So the story was a knockout home run
for me. I think for the most part, I don't
think I have any cons to be honest, I think
it was very well done. It's up there with some
like my favorite sci fi movies. So yeah, that was
that was all good for me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for me, it was. I mean the highlight was
definitely mads one because he's an actor I'm very familiar with.
I've seen in a few things now. Obviously love Hannibal.
I actually save Hannibal. But then yeah, there's a few
few of these people, these other actors that I'm not
so familiar with or I've seen only maybe a couple things.
So like Margaret Quality, for example, I've become a big
fan of her recently from once part time in Hollywood.
Of course, I cast her in one of our recent fancasts.
Go check out our Marvel Nights fancasts. We want to
find out for who. But yeah, I'm a big fan
of hers now, so I didn't even know she was
in this game honestly, because I don't think she was
in any of those three trailers, Like, I don't know
if she was a more recent care.
Speaker 2: I don't think so. The only reason I found out.
Speaker 1: Is I remember Fragile of course Norman Mad's yeah, trying
to think.
Speaker 2: A new Garmo because they'd show that off and.
Speaker 1: Him and Gear normally. I feel like you probably I
think you saw the red dress at some point, right, Oh.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I knew, but that because that's Lizlie Wagner and
she's like they de aged her. She's like right, six
year olds. But uh yeah. The only reason I knew
for I think it's hard in some promotion material, but
I just knew because I'd also looked for that fan
cast is oh, she's in destr Ending.
Speaker 1: So yeah, so I didn't even know about that, or
maybe I did, I forgot about it. But I really
loved her performance and her character.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's very intense emotional story. A favorite next to Mad.
I think Mad's be my favorite, and then Sam because
these are protagonists up there, but I put her up
there just with Sam as well, Like I really enjoyed
her and her story.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean Sam, a lot of it is as
as you kind of mentioned earlier, a lot of it
he's really just silent. He's not saying a whole it's
more like the ending, not really ending last twenty five percent,
where he's more talk sharing his point of view. He's
kind of uncovering more of himself. So, and I thought
Geramo Delta, I thought he was gonna be more of
like a side character or like slightly bigger than a
cameo almost, So he was in a lot more than
I was expecting. And I really liked his character because
he's kind of your your buddy, I guess you kind
of multiple buddies, but he feels like he's your closest
buddy in the game. And I really liked that.
Speaker 2: I think he was in there more just because he
didn't have to voice him, so lucky for that. So
oh really, yeah, didn't you.
Speaker 1: It's not his voice, no, So I don't really know
what he I think the only time I've heard him
talk is like his Shape of Water speech or something,
so I can't really remember.
Speaker 2: So for him and Heartman, because Hartman is the director
of draw if his.
Speaker 1: Name is yeah, he's he looked familiar to me, but
I couldn't place him.
Speaker 2: So if you would see anytime they'd introduced him, they
say special appearance by Gero Detorro, and then there's another
name below that that's the person of voice. No, no,
that's person of voice them. So yeah, so that some
of the people like obviously like a minus boy. But
he announces before I Colin O'Brian's in this game. He
voiced himself.
Speaker 1: Apparently Jeff Keeyes in this game at some point. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I didn't bump it to me.
Speaker 1: I saw in the credits. I haven't seen him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I bumped in Aggar, right, I bumped into the
guy that directed.
Speaker 1: Oh, I don't know what he looks like. So I
don't know if i've wh where was he? Uh he's
was he just like a random out post person. Yeah,
and I can't remember where he is now, but I
remember he was an essential one.
Speaker 2: No, I don't think. So he has a beard and
he has like longer black hair, okay, uh, and then
I you bump into the filmmaker. That's the guy that
directed Kong Skull Island. He's the guy that has the
big beard.
Speaker 1: And oh yeah yeah yeah like Indian guys.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and he's also directing the mal Garsol movie if
it happened right, but he's directing.
Speaker 1: I wonder who because I saw in the first area
there's kind of two main play areas in this game.
There's a couple of like special areas, and the first
main player I saw there's a musician. There's like a
house for a musician. You never have to go there
in the stores. I haven't been there yet.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I'm curious.
Speaker 1: Maybe that's like Jeff Keey or someone maybe a musician.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but yeah, so him, so Geramea and Hartman. They
had their looks, but they weren't voiced by them, so
it's kind of it was a fun like but I
I honestly don't mind that because like obviously like it
worked perfectly for me. Yeah, they're friends of Dale, and
I don't mind that. If it's done well in games,
is like, oh, you want to have a certain celebrity
look like that. Sure, dude, we see how a cyberpunk
come with Kean Obvious that's different voices in but I
still like that idea. And that's where it felt like
a weird event too, where it's like I love the gameplay,
I love like the story, but then also, you have
familiar faces coming in, and we've seen that in movies,
but that's or in games. But this just felt so
personal Todal because they're his friends. And that's what I
liked about that. It was just this big experience, so
I it didn't take me out of all. It was fun.
Speaker 1: It didn't feel like some of the other maybe celebrities
we've seen in games, where it's almost like a marketing thing.
Like I feel like Terry Crews and crack Down is
very much a marketing thing. Or you know, I shouldn't
speak about Ghost Recon. I love John Berthall. I'm not
sure what his performance is like in that, but it
felt like these were like they were really taking it seriously.
As you know, It's not like any of them were like,
don't care about I don't know if all of them
played video games. I don't. I don't really foresee.
Speaker 2: Mads, I don't.
Speaker 1: But but it still felt like he took it very
seriously and I appreciate that. And then I was really
impressed with I don't know how to pronounce her name,
Leah Leah said said, it's like a French name.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm not sure she's in James Bond's I have
never heard her name.
Speaker 1: Said it oh loud, so I'm not sure what it
does Lea say do something like that. She plays fragile
in the game, not that fragile, and I thought she
was great. She really blew me away, and she's on
my radar now. I'd love to see her in some
other stuff because.
Speaker 2: She's really she's a great actress.
Speaker 1: She's got a badass look. She's pretty awesome.
Speaker 2: She's been doing lots of actions. She's in the Bond franchise.
She's missing Impossible, so she that's kind of for a
thing recently Impossible. She know she was in number four,
so okay, Yeah, she's just she looked like.
Speaker 1: Distantly familiar, like I don't think I've seen a movie
with first, but I've seen seen her in an ad.
Speaker 2: Or something there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then yeah, I mean even just like the
side characters, a lot of random little people that stay
like the distress centers or whatever, and all the performances
like Bozones are kind of just fine, but none of
them were bad. I really liked the there's a little
side story between the the chiral artist is her name
and the junk Dealer. They kind of have this relationship.
Speaker 2: I like that.
Speaker 1: I don't know those are small actors. I'm guessing I've
never heard of them.
Speaker 2: The female is someone famous in Japan or something, because yeah, I.
Speaker 1: Think it seemed like she was very authentic. Was there
like her English was you know, weaker you could say.
But I really like that side story. I thought it
was cool.
Speaker 2: So the emails I got about that after quite I know,
it's pretty it's pretty weird.
Speaker 1: I only read a couple of them. I sat to
go back and sit. Yeah, but I like that as well.
You kind of get some feedback from some people here
what they're what they've been doing, and the whole the
emojis they put in their emails as well, just like
the clap and like the praise and what.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'll say that for this pot because it wasn't
sure how I felt about the emails for that story,
because it felt felt I don't not that it made
the mission feel less important, but it kind of did
a little bit.
Speaker 1: Maybe maybe I haven't read all them. Maybe I shouldn't
read them all it takes away from it a bit.
It might I like the actual mission part of it,
but yeah, I think that's I think that's like just
a testament in and of itself that we just spent
a few minutes talking about the characters and we know
their names for the most part, because so many videomes,
I mean, look at like any thing, Like none of
those characters have development. They just look cool. They're in
a they have they have an amazing aesthetic, they're like
fun characters follow they have twenty findy sound effects. All
that's on point, but they don't really go through like
much of a story, or they don't have like intense
dialogue to back it up or something. And then I
don't know, just games in general, like you could point
to Naughty Dog. They do a great job of that
stuff between Uncharted and Last of Us. But for the
most part, like when it comes to game stories, I
ended up I end up like skipping a lot, or
I just lose interest or feels like it's just kind
of put in there to facilitate like progressing to get
to the next level one to two to three. So
I was I was very happy with it overall. I
think some of the animations could use some work, Like
for example, Lindsay Wagner her character to me, your hair
never looked right, I think I'm like spoiled now that
I've played her eyes on, which has like the best
hair of any game ever, but her hair just looked
very like almost like blocky, like it wasn't flowing right,
and it.
Speaker 2: Really stuck out to me.
Speaker 1: And then for whatever reason, I don't know if this
is a character thing, but the character that Margaret Quality plays. Finally,
her eyes were never looking where the character was supposed
to be looking like it looked like she was looking
through you, like you were a hologram or something, or
like she was just looking at your forehead the whole time.
Like I just felt like her eyes were drifting in
weird ways that kind of I don't know it, Like
those are the two things that bumped out at me, Like, oh,
I noticed those, and they took me a bit out
of it, Like you could tell that obviously this is
like a new team that they just assembled, and I
don't know what. I don't know if they're using a
familiar engine or whatnot they're doing, but you could definitely
like I don't know, to me, there's definitely sold with
some refinement there in terms of that, and I think
they'll get there for sure, Pajima will, but for the
most part, man, I love this story so much. Should
we jump into some spoilery stuff of it?
Speaker 2: Yeah? There were I want to ask as well, say
anything as spoilers, and like, because you take this anyway,
people games to have this all the time, Kajima's next game.
Would you want to see a Death Stranding two or
would you want something completely new?
Speaker 1: Okay, I don't know. It's interesting. I'm trying to think
about what you would do world world wise.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because I'm in the I.
Speaker 1: Would I would want something new.
Speaker 2: I think, Yeah, I'm in the new camp because especially
you know, I'm something that like Joker standing and like,
oh give me more. This is one where I'm like,
I feel so fulfilled from the story, the gameplay, and
the world, and I feel like you could make another one.
And I think they leave certain doors opens or stories
and everything's covered in this that you could you know,
look at Melgary into me like five six of those
you know. So, But I just think it's.
Speaker 1: Not in that Cliff hearingery way that that Spider Man
or Horizon with it exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, where it's like, oh, what could be next? It
just feels like there could be more or this is
the story.
Speaker 1: And it is like a perfect ambiguity right now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I prefer that, And I would also love
that if they do do a desh Rant too, I'll
be there this, Like I said, it might be one
of my fair games of all the time. It is,
but it might be that top tier one slot, so
I'd be there of course. But I would also love
for the hype training that he would announce the new
game and it would be this thing over again, like Okay,
well what's this game? You're like, what's the story of this?
Because who knows if he has more exploiting on this one,
But I just wanted to ask, like this, Bill might
tune out, but I would I would welcome a second one,
but I would rather go do something else, and I
would be excited for I'm I've always said I'm excited
for Kajima does, but especially after this, it's like, I
don't know, I'm worried for my life. I'm never gonna
get a game to reach the heights again. I'm really
enjoying Jedi Fall in order as I play, I'm just
like this no deaf stranding, you know, like every game now,
like when we have Marvel Avengers coming out in a
few months, Like, like, I just feel like I've reached
his peak, So I wouldn't put it away, but I'd
be interested in a different route to see as in
his brain.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's just the thing, right with game games.
It's so hard to have a compelling story when you
have a game like this because just because it's open world, right,
It's like if you have something like and so if
you're playing a fall at four and you know that
your kid is out there somewhere, isn't that the only
thing you should be doing, right, You should only be
trying to find that kid. Ye, yes, I'm going off
fucking around with Raiders, going to nukere World, playing around
for weeks at a time, Like, yeah, you really get
taken to the story. It doesn't make sense anymore. And
obviously I'm sure you could do that some of that
in this game where it's like, oh, I'm gonna go
screw around for a bit, but I felt like it's
really pushing you along at a good pace and really
until like the later parts of the game, nothing's terribly pertinent,
Like even if you are spending the time to do
some extra deliveries, like it's justified within the game as
like that's needs to be done and that's helpful. You're
pulling up the world. Yeah, you're like, or it's like
that kind of thing that you need to do that
for the infrastructure to make sense for all of us
to fit together. So I feel like it hits a
really good balance of story progressing at a good way
while giving you some freedom that you aren't completely unrails,
because this is it's weird. It's like linear. It is
linear in some ways, but yet the world is very
nonlinear and you can take it in so many different ways.
So the story pacing wise worked really well, except for
the last eight towers for me, where I feel like
drags do some things that aren't even necessarily story stuff.
It's more gameplay stuff actually.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I agree with that. Jumana are spoilers spoilers.
So yeah, if you've stuck the whole way through and
you're worried about story story, story spoilers, now is the
time to drop out. If not, you know all that
works you listen to much.
Speaker 1: If you're not gonna play the game, go watch some
cut scenes. If you're waiting for PC, like Briggs is
then good luck trying to avoid some stuff. I mean,
I'm sure there's so much in this game that even
if you hear a spoiler too, I don't think anything
will will like ruin the experience for you. Some games
I've heard a couple like spoilers on like even one
detail of the story. It's like, oh, well, that's the
whole twist. Now the whole story has a little less
a lure where I think you have you have to
understand how much of the world for the story to
even make sense.
Speaker 2: So and I think a good thing is for that
if you're trying to avoid. Hopefully, for PC players, it's
not like a giphone or where that has such a
mass appeal. This is like, I feel like people will
be playing it, but it's not gonna spread as quickly
as Wildfire. I cannot wait to see that.
Speaker 1: I don't think there's gonna be dedalc for this game.
You're not gonna be hearing them more this like after
Game War, after this year is done. Like, I don't
think you'll be hearing much about this.
Speaker 2: Game, no other than people debating if it's a great
game or if it's a bad game.
Speaker 1: Yeah, people will talk about it who love it like us.
I'm sure we'll bring it up a lot, but unless like, like,
there's not gonna be new content. It's not like you're
gonna see a DLC trailer that like spoils something in
the main story.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, And I should have said at the beginning
when we talk about like the like people liking or
disliking it. To me, it feels very comparable when we've
like reviewed Hereditary midst of Our Lighthouse, where it's just
like I've been an experience where I've loved those types
of movies where I've hated them, where I don't get them,
And this is a game that I think all the
complaints have her justified, all the praise of her are justified.
It just kind of how it hits you, you know.
So and yeah, we'll get into the story of Blows now. So, yeah,
what do you want to talk about first? Because there's
like a lot to talk about a lot.
Speaker 1: Do we start with the I almost I feel like
maybe a good place to start with just talking about
some individual character stories unless you have a better starting
off point.
Speaker 2: I say we could say, like the side characters that
we love Mama, maybe to like the last becazos. I
think we not rapid fire, but talk quickly because they're
they're the big story abouts more about theirs whatever. I
guess I just want to talk about Mads, BB and
Sam pretty much, you know, because that's like a big
final reveals. Yeah, because I feel like there's like three
three sections to this and it's weird because they're really paced.
It's not the same way like a movie where it's
like first act third. It's like, by the time you
fight Higgs, you're like over halfway through the game.
Speaker 1: But there's three there's fourteen technically fifteen chapters, fourteen story
chapters in this game, but they're not evenly paced. Some
chapters are fifteen minutes, some chapters are four hours.
Speaker 2: Like when you have to an hour, and spots like
when you gotta face Mads down. That's a single chapter
by itself, and that's why at some points I was like, oh,
now I'm getting there.
Speaker 1: Has like two chapters because Clifford and then is like
Clifford ungar later.
Speaker 2: Well yeah, and well, because I think the first chapter
is just what's what's the name he's given? Isn't it
war Veterans or kids? Combat veteran. That's his first name
or remember your first introduced But isn't.
Speaker 1: The chapter called Clifford. I don't because I'm pretty sure
you learn his name during Yeah, maybe you do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but that's why I loved at first when you interview,
he's just combat, like fifty to sixty hours long.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so first to pinpoint exact moments, Yeah, tricky.
Speaker 2: That's what I love. When we met matts, it was
just combat veterans mats and obviously you had a lot
going into because after Norman, he was the second one
he revealed, and just that I remember the or the
cliff reveal of him as a trailer of like he
has these guards spawning.
Speaker 1: With the like baby floating in the water.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And that's why I love with this game. He
was like my favorite part is for his acting but
also storry. You never knew until the very end of
what was going on. But as far as like the
like the big bats, he was really divided into. You
had Higgs, then you had Clifford, and then you had
like homily slash like the.
Speaker 1: Execution in like a kind of red hairing almost.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, Yeah, that not the extinction entity or right,
and so yeah, so I liked that. I liked them
all for different reasons because they stood out. I love
that Mads was like the tragic villain. I well, she
kind of was too e, but like in a different
sort of sense. She felt like, well, she's a little
more like godly, right, like she she's ego. Yeah, she's
very much. Yeah, she's very much out of the scope
of the world Wars Clifford. I mean, yes, he still
has the beach like inception style stuff where he's like
jumping around in dreams and whatnot, but he still is
very grounded, at least in like his personal moments when
you like all those scenes in the hospital, very personal.
And I love how his story is like really sprinkled
throughut the whole story, Right, you get these little sequences
where what you think is BB is like projecting his
memories to you. I never thought that because the reason
is I think it's because I've seen so many Saw movies.
Is the very first time Norman Reyes brings up The
Dead Man, he goes, oh, you share memories of the BB.
He's just projecting it, And then throughout the whole story
makes sense, right, yeah's in the world. Yeah, the whole story.
They're saying, Oh, it's Bebe's marries. But right when he
said that, I'm like, oh, Mad's is his dad? That
one I figured out right away, just because that is
such a classic Saw trope of like you throw one
little line and then it's gonna all come back, and
it did. So I had a like, I was I
don't want to say nine, I was one hundred percent
sure it was his dad. So that's the only twist
I really obviously I couldn't have figured out. Yeah, that's
something Imile's twist that she was this entire fucking beach,
and that one's a little more out of the scope
of like being able to conceptualize that. The Mads one
is interesting because it is very much sprinkled throat. And
then there's at some point where they're talking about the
timeline or they bring up the timeline of it and
they're like, it doesn't how they throw you off when
you first meet him, it's World War two, so you think, okay,
is he from the past.
Speaker 1: I can't remember the point, but there's a point in
the story where there's something that's mentioned the timeline that
really to me shouted out, oh, Norman is his son,
Like just the timeline, it makes sense, even though when
I try to think about it logically, I couldn't give
you that explanation. But I do feel like it just
trickled out enough that I don't think it's really meant
to be a big like Saw style plot twist, Like
I think you're supposed to have felt like I was
feeling that already.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then I hare it be and that fits
the character so well. Yeah, I agree, and some people,
you know, it might be controversial, but I feel on
the things that Last Jedi does well is the build
up to and Ray is like this whole thing like
who's my parents? And then that moment when Kylo says, oh,
they're no or she says they're nobody, He's like, yeah,
they're just junk rares. It felt like that movie, for
some false has to me earned that, like you're feeling
like she's no Like these parents aren't anybody, They're no one.
And that's why I agree with you that I it
wasn't a Saw twist. It just reminded me that's how
I picked up on like all that's gonna be the
important lair. But I felt the same way it was
just it even felt like Sam was slowly realized, even
though it is a big thing to him. It feels
like when he looks back on it, I should have
said that in my opening. I've never been emotional in game,
but the two times I was is when they he
takes bb back Clifford when you kill him, but then
he gives you that that moment, I literally was tearing up.
And then at the end too, just the the realization
and that him protecting his son Mads and you get
the whole. I love that you had all those flashbacks
and then you get the full story from point A
to point B. I realize. I think that one was
done flawsley. I think the one with m Omilly was
a little I didn't like that we'll get to she's explaining,
like there's a big plot point where she's gonna explain something,
and that cuts away and then he's like, oh, so
that's what that meant. I didn't like that. I know
they did that, and the credits I splan. I didn't
like that because I really wanted to know, and I
feel like it it made me question what happened. I
think I was like, did I hit a butN and
skip that. So I thought his story was I love
the story of it, but I thought was perfectly told
in the bright amount of pacing. And Matt's just he
killed it. He's just so good in it. I know
there's commute computer animators too that helping him, but that
just feels we've seen enough of Mads like he can
bring that, and he had.
Speaker 1: The whole hospital scene is deeply emotional. It's like traumatizing
the same time, right, and it really it helps to
paint Omily as very villainous. Yeah, as well in her
own way. Yet she has her justifications but still like
she does go far, but then she kind of regrets
it immediately.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and die hard Man too. That's what I love,
like all the characters.
Speaker 1: I think they did a good job with die Hardman
in the.
Speaker 2: End, other than Higgs, who in I think on purpose
is supposed to be. He even saying that like, oh,
one more battle before the big Boss, he is on purpose.
The on the noise, this is your video game.
Speaker 1: He reminded me of the the tier of the first
villain in logan. What's that guy's name again? Like the
guy with the arm, Oh don't a Pierce? Yeah, Yeah,
he's just like that kind of villa where it's like
they look super badass, they have a cool voice, they
have a cool look.
Speaker 2: Yeah, cool one, you're gonna fight out.
Speaker 1: Some sort of mechanical object on the really dope yeah,
and then like they can make for a really sick fight.
Speaker 2: And I also love that Tukas from the mail Gear's perspective,
there's tons of bad guys like that that are just
cool and badass. So I felt that was his way
of being like, oh, now you're coming into middle Gear,
where the next villains are very emotional and more centered.
So I liked that contrast. And other than Higgs of
what I was saying is like, all it's kind of
what we talk about with like a fanos or even
like a Joker recently the past few years. Like they're villains,
but they have a point of you, even ones who's
just like it's so out there and so weird. You go, I,
this is not right, but I understand because it's like
she's just literally made that way. She's just like it
that we'll talk a well, that is like the most confusing.
Then that's the one I had to go and read theories.
The other people did because after I sat that, I'm like,
they give you so much expeditious exposition and that scene
is like.
Speaker 1: Great, and that's like all that is, assuming that you
understand what strengths are.
Speaker 2: Like the beat, dooms and everything. But that's I would say,
the villainous characters all have light and they all have
reasons or they're all flesh out. That doesn't just feel
like they're bad to the bone, other than Higgs, which
I feel is on purpose to have some fun. But yeah,
I really meant to.
Speaker 1: Be over the top obviously because even comments on it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I really good Troy Baker. I didn't even
show him. I thought was really good performance too. I
thought he was fun. He's just cheesing, he's cheesing.
Speaker 1: It up and handing it up. I I like the performance.
Speaker 2: My loved his look.
Speaker 1: Part of my problem with Danian is that whole sequence.
And it's not it's not because of his performance or
the story stuff. I mean story wise, it's just like
his motivation is like the world's gonna end anyway, so
why not do it now? Yeah, that's kind of it,
And it's fine because you have other characters that are
making interesting and he's more deeper. He's more just like
a quote unquote muscle. But I think what took me
out of the ending there from his perspective was just
like the actual gameplay sequences against him, because as as
we talked about for like forty minutes, we just love
that gameplay, that delivery system, like the whole aspect of
me to porter. In the end of the last eight
ten hours, you're not really doing that anymore. You're more
just kind of going to locations. And so there's a
couple of sequences with him, like one you fight a
gigantic BT like it's just a massive one.
Speaker 2: Visually really cool, visually.
Speaker 1: Cool, but I didn't like it at all mechanically, just
because it was like inventory management, just a lot of
inventory management. I didn't feel like there's anything interesting mechanically there.
One thing I liked about it is after you shoot
him enough on the chest, like it pauses, it pauses,
goes into a cutting and he moves and he's like, Okay,
now we can resume, like that kind of forth.
Speaker 2: You had that multiple times, making fourth wall jokes right,
wrote them on. But he at least I think had
like ten, which and I think they're all I liked
them all for some reason. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I thought it was fun. I liked it, I like so, yeah,
that sequence to me just kind of dragged a bit.
And then the fight against Higgs I didn't really like
either because I like chucking the boxes at him.
Speaker 2: I did too.
Speaker 1: I had a couple of problems with it. One, if
you die so in the second I guess you could
die in the first phase. If you die in that fight,
it like there's no animation for your character even falling over.
It just instantly cuts to a scene that says continue
or like save or something like it's really really really
over the top.
Speaker 2: Well, oh yeah, one of the times I didn't die, actually,
so I didn't y.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So I died a couple of times on it.
And the reason is the second so after you throw
some boxes at him, you punch him, it goes into
phase two where you're supposed to use this strand object
which you countertech and then you're supposed to grab him.
I don't know about you, but i'd never used that
item once in the whole game.
Speaker 2: Oh oh, I used it for some mules. Yeah, okay,
so that's why, because oh yeah, I use it for
scene but the actual like the pairing and you gotta
like miss him and the get him that.
Speaker 1: Well, any of it. Like I literally had not you
hold that object at once, because it's that's something that
stand Like think about it back earlier in the game.
At one point you have to chuck a bunch of
boxes into the lake, and so it kind of is
teaching you how to throw items, which is not really
needed except for that Higgs fight you. I don't know,
maybe you don't need it, but it's like it helps,
it's kind of essential, whereas you also need to know
how to use the strand you have to hit one
R two once to counter and then you're supposed to strangle.
I thought you were supposed to counter and then punch
him bunst obviously.
Speaker 2: I thought, so I did that. I thought they taught
that in editorial for stuff. And I picked that up
because I I.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's set on screen, but you never have to
do it fair. So I had never used that item before,
and so I, yeah, I was countering him and then
I just punched him a bunch and then I did
that again. I did it again. I did it like
seven or eight times. I'm like, what, what was going on, here,
am I doing something wrong?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: I died. I did a couple more times fighting him.
I was doing the same thing. It wasn't working. I
was like, Okay, there's something else I gotta be doing here.
Eventually I figured out that if you get close to
him after that, you can like strangle him, and that's
what you're supposed to do. So to me, I just
I felt like, you're not supposed to die there, which
is why there's no animation for dying. Yeah, but yet
it was asking you me to do a mechanic I'd
never done before. So I just felt like that was
I don't know, maybe that was definitely something that only
affected me. You didn't have that problem and you thought
it was fine. To me, that fight ended up dragging
because you have to restart the whole fight. You don't
just start from that phase. Really, you have to go
back to the beginning of his fight. It doesn't take
that long, but still had to go chuck boxes. Yeah,
still quite annoying. I love love the third phase that
where you're just enter fighting game and you just do
a little like wee boxing style fighting, where you're pulling back,
you're moving down, you're punching, it's like it's really goofy.
It's really like it's like it's once again that Fourth
Wall thing where you're just entering like this final battle.
Speaker 2: So I like that aspect of it. I loved the
idea of it when this Time'm like, oh my god,
this is awesome. I love all the animations and cinemas.
I just never felt like I was in danger. So
that's what like, there's so many.
Speaker 1: Times you're feeling endangered older in any fight.
Speaker 2: Though I did when he was like had the gun,
He's like search and whatnot. It's like, okay, he might
shoot me, get me if I make a couple wrong moves.
But the punching, it just felt like his punches had
bare little effect, and when I hit him it would
just be like not just like they did like the
rocky slow motion amiation, but it was really like he's
taking like five percent, I'm taking quarters from him. So
I liked the idea, but and that didn't bug me
at the end. I know I didn't like this boss spot.
The only thing that bugged me from a story standpoint
is like I don't know if I would have believed.
Speaker 1: I guess and you played on normal. Right, there's like
I think there's four difficulties. There's very easy, which I'm
guessing is just kind of like the story. I think
there's very easy, easy, normal, hard.
Speaker 2: I play normal.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: For reviews, I always do. Just did you play very?
Speaker 1: I always start on normal.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I always do for reviews so I can get
through them and I and then it also gives me
something to play again after, you know, the first time
I joined the experience the Sime Challenge, I was just curious.
Speaker 1: Like damage zed, I found that I like that combat.
Like I was pretty close. I was in my last
like twenty fifteen percent HP during the fistfight. Really maybe
years better. I was no earlier this year you were
practicing all that we box and yeah, that's it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. But the only thing I didn't like from a
story perspective was Higgs is trying to take over real
kill people, and he just like throws his like powers
aside and his gun. He's just like I'm gonna not
few and like that's where again it kind of worked
as Higgs was that forced wallbreaker, but I was like,
if this is like Dire Straits where he needs to
beat Sam, I wouldn't believe he wouldn't use these godlike
powers he had, you know. But again, all these complaints
have are pretty minor, just because the stuff I love
was so strong. But I do have complaints about but
then I still almost have it like it's up there
as a ten. So I love it.
Speaker 1: But yeah, all right, so that's that's Higgs. Yeah, we're
all a fun character.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think we've talked about Mad's like
I'm trying to think of more talk about him.
Speaker 1: But I think it's an amazingfo I really, as you
said earlier, i'd love to see some representation of the
Game Awards fall Man too, if I don't know what,
like I haven't really thought about it. We'll find it
on Tuesday, that's when the the are getting mentioned. I'm
not sure, like I wouldn't. I guess John Birthall might
be in there this year as well, Like I don't
know if anyone else from Death Straining, I could see
Fragile or Norman Reads.
Speaker 2: There's a chance Norman gets it in there as well.
But yeah, I'm not.
Speaker 1: Sure what the other competition is though, but i'd love
to see a Mads win.
Speaker 2: That'd be oh if he was there. Vill Wares that'd
be great to live stream that. So yeah, I like
that whole story. I love the reveals, love the way
it was done. I loved the I guess I should
say his mini boss bells when he's taking to the wars. Yeah,
I love that because the first time it happened, you're
just like, what is going on? It will mix of
stealth and just like more action packed gameplay, and that's
the first time you really just like where's my oh
I know, and just his narration but like, and I
love the design of like the old soldiers that were
broken down everything like that.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, they were great, very really satisfying when you
get a headshot and sometimes that's not enough.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I love this. Oh yeah, so scared when they
run you headless. I love the soul motion when you
kill them to like just fy, okay killed them.
Speaker 1: And after I learned you used the could use the
fucking strand I started doing that on the skeletons later.
That's pretty awesome animation when you just pull it and
then their heads just fly off.
Speaker 2: And I love You're going to World War two, You're
going to Vietnam. It was just like, that's such a
funny Vietnam. One was sick, like just in the forest
there the drungle. Yeah, it was great. So everything with
Mads in that story was done very well. So let's
talk about the e Let's talk about this whole yeah
it so this is a complet they had day out
Croatian and this is the one that we'll talk about.
But I don't think I could fully explain exactly what happened.
This is the best. Probably gotta go on YouTube. I
don't know watch So so the part where I was
lost is because so the thing is they've explained that
your BET's are something that's caught between the life and
the afterlife. Right, it's in the middle where you're stuck.
It's not gonna go to like a heaven or hell.
That's how I took it, right.
Speaker 1: I took it out there. They are firmly in that
in like the afterlife or the dead world whatever it is,
I guess.
Speaker 2: Like the beaches or whatnot. Yeah, but then they but
to me, there's something after the beach, right, That's how
I always took it that after the.
Speaker 1: Beach, there's like the strand as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's the problem. There's so much but in
my head can it was there's life, uh, there's death,
and there's something weird in the middle, and that's BT.
And the thing that I didn't understand is so she's
at one point she's she's bridget right, and she dies
and this is this is the only part where I
get muddly, is like gets created on a beach, and
are we supposed to get that she's the first one
ever that this happened to this beach scenario.
Speaker 1: No, I don't think so. I figured that, like everyone
goes there.
Speaker 2: But to me it was weird that I guess, I'm lost,
Like how did she get deemed these?
Speaker 1: So is the beach like the creation of like the
chiral network? Is that where it comes from? I don't like,
because that connects everyone.
Speaker 2: Hmmm, I don't think so I took that as its
own thing just to do with the world.
Speaker 1: That could be how it happened, like how it just
started happening at a certain time, unless she like if
she well, she didn't know.
Speaker 2: She I thought she created that to stop the extinction, right,
that was her idea because she saw it coming, and
she said to prepare people, she could get them all
the link up together. And my because I I just
was lost as far as how did she get deemed
the extension entity? And I think it's one of those things.
That's how I took it, as she is ego of
just she just is she somehow she's been she had
visions and she was born this planet and that's the
thing that she got. I guess I can't explain a
meal because Bridget passes, right or something like, she doesn't pass,
isn't She like almost flat lined, and that's how it
creates a meal. Right, there's two of her. She like
sees how I took it, and this is where I
could be wrong. She like flat lines, and she was dying.
They brought her back. So it was in this weird
thing where Bridget was still live for her car, right
and then her ha. Yeah, usually that's supposed to be
you only have one or the other, but she had
two at the same time. And for somehow in this
part I can't explain it, she's the extension entity. I
don't know how they explained that. And she is just
a Meal and she's working this cause and she's trying
to create extinction. And then she gives the whole dialogue
about how I saw hope and blah bah blah. It
could be changed, but that's how I took it as
just she was maybe not the first, but one early
one want to create this beach. But even then her,
she explains, her beach has been around for like thousands
of years. I think there's just some stuff that is
just like fantastical and you'll never guess it was like.
Speaker 1: They like through research they determined that there was other E.
There's always another E that caused one of these things.
Speaker 2: But then it could always been hurt of me in
like uh coming back to live situation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I see, I had some pacing issues with that
stuff as well. There's like this one sequence where you're
so you you kind of confront her on her beach
and you have like beautiful shot, like just the color,
there's like the red planet in the background.
Speaker 2: Whatever it is.
Speaker 1: It's kind of weird, like it gives you like a
choice there. It's like you can shoot her or you
can or you cannot, and if you do it doesn't matter.
Just restarts it then, like not in an elegant way,
just like load cut scenes, like why why are you
trying to pretend that you're give me a choice? How
did you shoot her. I just shot her with the gun.
It didn't really work in the back of her hand.
Speaker 2: I just tried. I shot her all over. I shot
her six times and it just the bullets went through her. Yeah,
and then just went right to the cut scene of
just like, oh, you've chosen.
Speaker 1: I guess it doesn't if you just you just have
to go Huger, is what happened, That's what I Yeah. Yeah,
so I guess it didn't matter that I shot her,
but she walks and then it just like ends it.
But she also had like blood come out of her rise,
so I figured that maybe my bullets did something. I
don't know.
Speaker 2: I didn't get, but it was really it just.
Speaker 1: Kind of strange. That's trying to give you a choice
that it doesn't really make sense. But then you just
have this really long sequence, which are the credits right,
The credits are rolling, You're on this beach, you can
walk places, but then it brings you back and then
it's slowly drippeting you this information. That was an awful
idea in my opinion, It just like killed the pacing
at that point. I just wanted to get I was like, okay,
because then the game goes because here's the thing, those
are credits. The game goes on for another hour and
a half two hours after that point. Yeah, and that
stuff's all great. I love Mads, but like, to me,
that just destroyed the pacing where I was like, Okay,
this is just savage at this point, like cause the
last eight to ten hours are not where the fun
gameplay is. It's just a lot of story stuff and
then like travel sequences to get there. But I just
found it really hard to be super interested. And that's
where I think I probably should have an answer, feel
like what some of this stuff is with her story
and the extinction entity, But it was just so much
and it was so dense and and it was so
slow that and it didn't need to be right like that,
Why is there a credit sequence there? Why why am
I having to wait five minutes and then she talks
for ten seconds and then wait for five minutes talk
like it doesn't really make any sense to me. Yeah,
I don't know what that is supposed to do for you, Like,
if it was supposed to if it was supposed to
be really still on purpose for like some emotional impact.
I don't know if it was necessary because the whole
end of the game is really slow, like that last
eight hours really slow.
Speaker 2: I think a little of that, but then I also
think it's Dale's way of trying to make you not
skip over the credits and you're playing them out and
your staying in tune just to like respect the people
that created it and whatnot. And I get that, but
like it is, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I'm in the boat where it's like I love the
game so much that I would have sat there and
watching credits. I usually do for like a game, Like
when I finished Rizonon, I sat there through the whole
fucking credits and not I didn't know that there was
a post create said it's post credits scene. I just
sat there because I want to, and I did for
this game because even after the actual credits there is
a scene, there's more. I sat there anyway, but after
you like why, Like I just didn't really feel like
needed to be shown twice, Like it was a really
strange choice. It just destroyed the pacing. And honestly, I
don't really feel all that connected with Omily. Maybe it's
because I don't understand it, but yeah, to me, she
was kind of like a letdown of the of the story. Okay,
like she's essential to obviously make it all work, but
I was I cared more about all the characters around
her than I did her herself.
Speaker 2: So fair enough, I could say that that she's on
the lower tier for me, but I still like her
in the story for a few reasons. I like this
kind of like godlike figure. I actually think she had
some really well written dialogue to Sam. I would agree
with that when she's explaining about how being connected and
blah blah blah, and especially when they talk about at
the beginning that's where like the really political stuff's coming
in as far as like to fix everything, we all
need to be connected. And that's to me, like everyone
in the world, especially in America, is like right now,
they are known for being like they're very split right now,
right and it's hard to come together. And that's where
it's like, that's how we let this happen, as we
weren't combined. And it's like the whole the title, the death,
stranding and everything like that. So I liked it. I
had a feeling that she was not there was something
wrong because there's that one moment where she's not wearing
the necklace, and Norm's like, why aren't you reading and
why aren't you wearing it? She doesn't respond to him
at all, so I was like, Okay, something's wrong here.
So it's like, that's not his sister, that's not his mother.
So I didn't peg that one down. But they kind
of showed their hand there. But again, I think they
did that on purpose. So I liked it. And it's
also because I've looked into it. It feels like this
is the thing so far that everyone has their theory,
everyone has their way they read it. So maybe once
I sit with it, maybe once I play it again,
maybe once I hear a daily interview, once I read
more people, I think it's he on purpose, wanted to
make something that you got to ponder after and think for.
And I did enjoy it. It's not my favorite part,
but I enjoyed it as far as I gave this
epic scale andes and I thought some of the stuff
before the credits were really beautiful. When they're standing there
and they're watching Earth about to get extinct and obviously
stops it, but like the way the world's just like
folding in on itself, and she's talking about how like
beautiful and sad.
Speaker 1: And yeah, I think I think I feel like I
found that this stranding, and I do still like the
idea of beaches and it's kind of like shared life
or like pathway between. Yeah, it's it is almost like
the bridge between actual death, and it's like where you
can just go temporarily or something and you get a
couple of scenes there and it's like I really like
in Hartman's backstory, you get to see it and it's
like a really weird, demented place and I found it
really interesting. But I guess when she came into the mix,
it just got gets like way more convoluted and less.
But the idea of that being the death stranding, that's
where like you're stranded after death, like you know, directly
until you go into like this after after Like I
don't know, it does get really confusing, it does. Yeah,
I think from an imagery a standpoint, she's great, Like
just that red dress is so strong as the dark
grays and greens of this game, so that she's like
she really stands out and has that really strong aesthetic.
Speaker 2: So and one other thing I want to mention story
because we've not mentioned it really once at all is
the BB aspect. That's the other part with the Mads
giving BB back. And this might be because I have children,
but I thought the very last thing you do in
this game was very emotional, and to me, when Boebe
is alive, first of all, you're getting mixed with the
Mads flashbacks. But when you when it comes live. The
reason I love that is because I thought it was coming.
But this was a game I didn't know for sure
because the last like half last hour it is loly pace.
But if you just think about what's happening in the character,
it's all really depressing stuff. Like you learned Hartman's kind
of or die hard Man like is kind of shitty. Yeah,
he was forced to do some things, but still someone
you trusted. You learned that Mads was your dad and
you lost all this stuff. You learned that you didn't
have a sister, Like, there's all this stuff. Everything you're
learning is not good. And he even says that the
fragile she invites him and he's like everything I touched,
like goes a shit. He says it more elegantly so
to me, when he gets Bebe alive, I just felt
like this was really like this strong win and there
was something that the way they phrased it, I thought
bebe was like actually really dead in this container. So
there was just something so morbid as a obvious sudden
was a parent that like he's carrying around this dead
child and it's someone that he's bond in too. He
named it after the son he was gonna so like
I agree you the pacing was a little up to
the sun. Well, yeah, because that's how he figured. Uh.
Speaker 1: I think it was a short form of Louise, which
is like his wife's name. That's what I took it.
Speaker 2: As, is he because oh is it? Because I thought
Dead Man said that's what he was gonna name his son,
and they looked up.
Speaker 1: But you could be right, because that's like the post
credits thing, is he says lou Louise.
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh, I think you're right. I think so maybe
that he was gonna name it was retroactively though I
think we learned. Yeah, I think we learned first that
he was gonna name the sun lou but then we
learned his his former wife's name was Louise. So you're right,
but I remember that for a.
Speaker 1: While because we'll mention this. I guess we mentioned it now,
But there's some Horizon zero don uh stuff in this game,
just like some Holograms, some fun shout out. But I
was wondering if it was like a Lost of Us
showed after the Horizon stuff.
Speaker 2: Oh.
Speaker 1: I was like the arbitrarily called him lou just for that,
but then there's actual stories later. But I thought I
was wondering for a bid if it was another shout
out to another big PlayStation games.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but when you're going to the cinerator, the scores happening,
like the soundtrack and just that trek up there, because
every other time you've tried to do a mission, this
is just like the most life.
Speaker 1: You can't use a vehicle for that. If you try,
it makes you just take that one last walk and
that that one really powerful first mission. Right yeah, maybe not,
I guess is that your very first mission.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it must be to incinerate bridget I think it is, yeah,
And to me that's where maybe some pacing and then
the near end, but the very end just finished so strong.
And that was the other time I like welled up
in Godmosh because it was just like it was so
strong and it just hit me and I just was
like cheering for this character, just like finally, you know.
And that's where it feels so good when sometimes all
lots so many stories do end with something good happening,
but you don't feel it's earned. You're like, oh, that's
way it was going. But this just felt so earned
of like oh, thank god it didn't end that way,
and like he like attached this child and works. So
the very ending of the game I loved. I loved
the last mission, and I loved everything about the BB aspect.
The way they talked about how you know it it's
kind of like almost stillborn child's and they gets sense
like it's the same thing ever caught between life and death.
I loved everything about that. So I feel that's the
one thing as far as other than Omile's and the
extinction entity. Other than that, everything was pretty well explained
famost part and I love that.
Speaker 1: I should I get I guess I maybe I'm overacting,
but I did. I really liked the idea of Omile.
I just don't fully understand it. I think it's pretty intense,
but I still enjoy it. I think I'm just I
like other stories a lot more. Yeah, and that's just
a good sign of like, Wow, this game has multiple
story and multiple characters that are really really noworthy. That's
something that stands out in and of itself now for
video games, at least from the games I've played in
my life, which is a hundreds. So yeah, that's that's
that's definitely something well. And that's the thing that's still
and we'll talk about the other characters. Just feel like
such an ensemble.
Speaker 2: Right of now. Like with dead Man Diehard Man, I
have all these when you're making the comparisons earlier, I
still have all these stories and characteristics about them that
I'll remember for honestly the rest of my life.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like they they all kind of have a gimmick
or two, you could say, but they don't. They don't
really feel like gimmicks, like get a deeper good story.
Some of it, like I said earlier, feel very exposition ye,
but at the same time, a lot of it is
really really well done. Do you have anything left down? Omeleer?
Can we? I think I jump into Fragile next time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm just excited to hear more theories as the
life goes on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think I need to read something just like
you should. Try to conceptualize it it is. I played
for like six hours last night to close it out
to make sure I was ready to go for this review,
and it was. It was intense, and that's why, you know,
maybe the pacing was thrown off because I was really
pushing it. Maybe. Yeah, Like I feel like I did
feel like this game just the nature of the gameplay.
I felt like it's maybe a game that you're supposed
to consumes like over the course of like a month
or two, like yeah, slowly, supposed to play through it
for you the Fame delivery to in a day. But
I was just like, fun, I want to play this
for like ten hours straight, you know.
Speaker 2: And that's the same way with the NDA. I gotta
not play again or even more just like, uh sit
with because I did the same thing. I was not
rushed then, but I'm like, Okay, I want to finish
this long fish, get done. But who did you want
to talk about?
Speaker 1: Fragile?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: So Fragile I think is great because Higgs is very
much the villain for like most of the game right
before you know that Emily has some susses to her before.
I mean, for a while, dead Man's kind of like
maybe putting some blame on die hard Man as being
a little sketchy. And then Mads is just like in
another dimension. He doesn't really related to the other stories,
and you just see him a lot because of the
little memory.
Speaker 2: So he's the monster under the bed that yeah he's there,
but you don't know if he's really like you don't
know what it is.
Speaker 1: But he's at this point like, well for the whole game,
you've never seen him in the real world, so it's like.
Speaker 2: They said, he's dead dead.
Speaker 1: And yeah, he has like an undead army with him,
so he's very conceptually out.
Speaker 2: There, whereas and they also throwed the idea that Sam
might be crazy at some point, right, like he might
inception hallucinate some things. So it's like with Mad's you
never really know. But the and that's where Fragile I
didn't know for a while too, because when we got
introduced her right away, the acid rain fell in that
picture and I was like, is this covering the woman's
face and this is his wife? Like do we got
the classic okay again inception fantasizing about the dead wife situation.
So for a while I didn't know if she was
real or not.
Speaker 1: So that's interesting. Yeah, I think that. I mean, she
is pretty wild, like she can teleport around stuff. But yeah,
she has a great look whenever she does the teleport,
like the spikes on her jackeal come up, which is cool.
But yeah, she's she's great because she really facilitates to
build Higgs as a really strong villain and one that
you really like. You want to get to the point
where you fight him. You want to take him down,
you want to take him out because you see how
much he or how he used her and abused her
and just got her to do some really heinous acts
and destroyed entire city or one entire city, I guess.
Speaker 2: And I can agree with the christ out there and
this is a day out thing. I don't think she
needs to be in her like underwear when that happened.
She could have just been in regular clothes. Like I,
I see something.
Speaker 1: I didn't feel like it was I don't know, I
didn't feel like it was over the top.
Speaker 2: It's not like you're Bill. I didn't feel that way either.
But I can see some of those wrong, especially Norm
Retas is also naked in this game quite a few times,
but I like his ass.
Speaker 1: You know, you see anything of her, Yeah, pretty covered up.
Speaker 2: I just had a pass. So, like, there's a character
in Malgir called Quiet and she's a sniping invisible but
she's like very sexual eye. She's just like a bra
and just like so it's like I get it's kind
of like, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I like that. There isn't really any of that
in this game, although.
Speaker 2: There's you I thought you for sure getting out with Fragile,
but he just kind of not kicks with a curve.
Speaker 1: But sexualizes, you know, Norman Ritas in some ways, it's
big booty daddy. But yeah, I thought the story of
Fragile is great, and it's one because she's like the
chapter two I think, so you really get like cooked
on that character quickly, and it does have this good
amount of mystery where you you feel like she's good,
but there is like okay, I need to learn more,
and it's kind of trickled out in a good amount
of way. And she's like, i'd say, other than her
and dead Men are kind of the two most consistent characters,
like there in every chapter for a little bit. It
feels like, whereas some of the other characters, like at
one point like Lochana just kind of disappears and you
don't see it for like the last eight hours of
the game, which is kind of unfortunate, but you know,
she doesn't really need to be there, whereas Fragile always
has a purpose. And I think that was really genius
that you know, fast traveling in the game is conceptualized
within the game the character who has teleporting already, it's
just well, you know, brilliant why not. And then that
also works well when you want to take fast traveling
away for a couple of sequences in the game when
you need when you want the characters to make that
trek alone, well Fragile is busy or she's exhausted, she
can't hear you, so you have a like a reason why.
It's like, well, here's why you can't fast travel. You
gotta do this. So yeah, I think that.
Speaker 2: Was really well done.
Speaker 1: And yeah, the performance is really good as well, So
I want to see some more from her. She's really cool.
But yeah, yeah, I really liked Fragile.
Speaker 2: Yeah I did too. I think it was good. I
made some points every but I liked that for a
while you just didn't know to trust her out. Then
she was kind of your loyal sidekicker, partner or whatnot.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and even like her position in the world, like
her her father had a successful delivery company at one
point and then yeah, you know, due to Higgs and
his manipulation kind of got destroyed, her empire kind of
got destroyed. So yeah, it fits within the world, does
a little bit of world building as well, right, because
it's like it gives a little bit of context for
who else was doing this kind of stuff before you were.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I like that aspect. I was gonna say,
I'll go dead man just because I had don't too
much that.
Speaker 1: I just liked him. He's a simple character. Yeah, he's
never he doesn't have any hidden agendas.
Speaker 2: No. I liked his his little origin story of he
has a bunch of dead parts. Yeah, I like that.
I liked that he was just it felt slowly more
becoming friendly. And I like the again tumbel things that
earned the embrace they have at the end, Like the
hug joke was fun, but when Sam actually hugs him,
I think that was good. He's a good sidekick more
than like Fragile I said, psychic, but he's like your
true psychic. And I was a fan of that, so
I agree.
Speaker 1: I liked I like the kind of connection forms with
BB as well.
Speaker 2: It's yeah, yeah, I guess it.
Speaker 1: I didn't really feel like he was building to a
point where they were gonna have any problem with each other,
but I liked that there was that kind of dynamic
there where they were kind of bonding with each other
but also kind of bonding through this bridge baby, which
is the point of those So it's almost like a
two it's like a metaphorical thing as well.
Speaker 2: And then the two quickly ones. I'll add is with
Die Hardman and Hartman. I like them both. Hartman. I
liked the origin. I I don't know why, there's just
something that story didn't stick with me as much. I
liked the family aspect.
Speaker 1: I liked that he feels more disconnected from the other
characters right where he's like he interacts with Sam and
no one else. Yes, you can tell that Mama and
dead Man still interact. I Hardman and dead Man obviously
a lot as well.
Speaker 2: So exactly, it's a cool story, but I didn't feel
too I think you put it right. I didn't know why,
but I think it's just because he's just he comes
a lot later, and it does. I'm not really wondering
about him. I'm not really like, oh, what's the up there, Like, Okay,
I know what he's up to, fun little quirky like
room and areas.
Speaker 1: I've Yeah, I think I liked that one more than
you did, not for any particular reasons. I just I
thought it was a really interesting concept, just that idea
of like a twenty two minute loop, And I think
it's fun that while you're there, like it's at the
start of a loop, and then you guys talk for
I don't think it's actually twenty minutes. I think they
shorten it. But then he goes to sleep a minute,
and you just have a couple of minutes where you're
looking around his room, you can zoom in on stuff,
gets some info, and then he comes back. So it's
cool that it was like the story played into that
realistic factor, even though the timing I highly doubt was
exactly that twenty minutes. Yeah, but it's a really weird idea, right,
Like that felt like a very black mirror thing where
the guy is like of his day, he's spending every
like for every thirty minutes, he's spending five of that
in this kind of other world just exploring this beach.
So I really liked the idea. And then like that
cut still searching, Yeah, he's still searching this very day.
And then that just the idea that or like that
scene you get when you when he goes there and
there's just like all these people kind of like Zombifie
just walking into the water, really weird demented scene. Then
one dear detail I really appreciate it is after you're
like second time, you're having a conversation, after he wakes up,
the timer goes out as he's like mid conversation with you,
and he just falls over, and then you see that
like his floor is like padded and it absorbs the blow.
I thought that was I just thought from like a
cinematography point of view, there was a good detail that
they added in there. They didn't need that. He could
have just fallen over. It would have been fine, just
said they added a full animation of like him like
falling into this pillow that I thought was just a
beautiful little detail that they added. So and his room
was just I mean, nothing's that nice in this whole game.
Speaker 2: Right, It's all very bleak and dark.
Speaker 1: And even your room is just like there's a shower,
were in bed and your weapon rack and that's it. Yeah,
your monster energy. But I like that his room is
fully decked out and they got the fireplace when you
walked in.
Speaker 2: Yeah it was nice. Yeah you want to stay there
and diehard? Man. I think was a good character for
exactly what he needed to be. He's just like the
more of.
Speaker 1: A plot progression.
Speaker 2: Yeah, two fays.
Speaker 1: Can you trust him? Can you not?
Speaker 2: Yeah? The mask was fun. I liked his story as
far as it went to Mads Michelson's character. Uh yeah,
I liked him and I liked for he honestly ended
up too. I love the centertographe shot of when he
falls down to his knees and it's like pass like
you just see Sam's knees a little bit, but then
it's him crying. This is the way that was framed.
It's like, I'm gonna steal that shot one day, like
Tarantino style. Like it was just I like that at
the end of the day. And that's where it comes
down to that I don't need a sequel because it
wasn't like I felt they were setting up to be.
Oh he's he's president and we don't know if we
could trust him. But it felt like he knows people
don't think they can trust him, and he's gonna try
to gain their trust back because he had to do
a lot of shady things to either help the country
or because he was ordered to. But that's why I
like it wasn't set he's the next boss. Is like
a guy that realized, yeah, he should be the villain,
but he doesn't want to be, and he's made so
many mistakes. So I think I ended up liking him
more at the end than through the middle, because in
the middle, like you said, he is just more of
a plot device, be like, oh, pushing the story along,
which it was fine.
Speaker 1: Was good.
Speaker 2: I think after did a good job.
Speaker 1: I wonder if they should have sprinkled in a little
more details like early on, I guess dead Man quite
I don't know, I can't remember when, but at some
point he starts to put some doubts in your mind
of die Hard Man's up to something he doesn't want
you to hear, in a funny like shower scene that
I thought it was pretty uh, pretty comical. But by
the end, I think they gave die Hardman enough story
to be interesting and not just be like some generic
character and give him some good connection. But uh yeah,
I pretty much agree with you. I don't think there's
too much to say on him. I think they made
him better than like a generic quest giver, which is
a success in my books. And I think it helps
because it through his perspective you kind of see some
of the messed up things that Ama Lee has done.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's effective not his choice, you know, but yeah, yeah,
I guess that's a good point.
Speaker 1: He never pulls that trigger, so you see that he's uh.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they do that framing of it looks like he
shot him earlier, but then he didn't. So I was
surprised that Omily actually still kept him around after that, right,
But I.
Speaker 1: Think that's cool because really, like the obviously, you get
a lot of those BB shots where you just get
like a ten second clip, right, so then when it's
all put together in the end, but all of those ones, really,
I mean, I don't know, like that's it's supposed to
be obvious. It's diehard man, like they're I don't know,
there's like they played it with a twist. But I
feel like once again it was kind of obvious.
Speaker 2: It's obvious because it's his frame. And there's also not
another black main character in the story, so it's like
when we have one black character who's talking Normo series
and then one black character about the Mickleson, it's like,
it's pretty obvious they should have made the if they
wanted to go that route, they should have made the
mask like fully engulf so you can't see the skin
color at all, just see the person's eyes. But it's like,
this is clearly die hard man.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So once again, I don't know if that I
don't think that was supposed to be like super hitting
kind of catch on, but yeah, I think it was
good because in those little quick clips it generally portrays
him as like a bad guy or as someone who's
a little bit sus or something like that. But then
when you see at the end you see the context
of it, it really paints him a different picture. And
I think that was pretty well done.
Speaker 2: And again you could argue he's like a light sort
of villain. I wouldn't think that, but he could make
that case. Again, very layered, multi layered, not just oh
I did this because for my country. Yeah, like he
did do for his country, but in the way of
like it was very level. Then there's some things he
tried to help, you know. He wasn't just a soldiers
like I'm gonna stop you because it's best for America.
It's like he wanted to help this country, but he
also had friends and he wanted to let the guy
that saved his life so many times, like.
Speaker 1: Sam, we need you to make this delivery. Sam, every
every fucking calm he started with Sam.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I end up liking that and then anyone
else than Mama.
Speaker 1: Ummm, I think, I think. I think Mom Conan was
kind of funny for his quick cause player scene. I
want to go find Jeff Keeley. I lent the game Kirkling.
Now he's got he's got to play it before game wards,
so I'm happy to do it. But at the same time, I.
Speaker 2: You gotta play. I just want to die.
Speaker 1: So yeah, but yeah, no, I agree Mama, Mama and
lochna kind of two characters, two characters and one. I
think this was like possibly my favorite, honestly, like other
than Mads obviously takes the cake easily, but I was,
I mean one I was. I didn't know she was
in there. And it took a couple of cut scenes
because you don't see her in like the Flesh Show
to speak for a while, Like you just kind of
see her in the Calms in the quick little screen,
so you can't really tell her.
Speaker 2: And then you get the Star Wars like holograms where
they're blue and bloppy and yeah, I can't see.
Speaker 1: But yeah, So I was pleasantly surprised to see her
because I've become a fan, a big fan of hers recently. Uh,
and I just it was such an interesting story, right,
like on so many levels, because one, it takes a
while to get to her, and she's just like a fun,
helpful kind of what's like the guy behind the chair
almost right where she's hooking up the news gear, She's like,
here's how you use the here's how you make a
bridge here. So you got a new upgrade for your
exo skeleton, go check it out. So I like that.
But then you finally get to meet her in person,
it's just like this weird story where she has a
beat of her own. Who's her unborn child? Yeah, which
ends up not being her child but her technically her
sister's child. I guess that she's keeping.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess so, yeah, I guess it's uh, yeah,
I guess it is. Well, it's it was technically her child, right,
because I thought it was half and half. Yeah, it
was like her it was her sister's eggs.
Speaker 1: Right or was it the opposite of that.
Speaker 2: No, it would be her eggs because she could carry
the baby. So yeah, but then there was some man
sperm in there as well. So it's a couldn't caught
you yeah a real yeah, real real Saturday, real cocktail. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But yeah, that was like just a really wild story,
but also kind of interesting to see that kind of
more humanly connection with beets and that there can be
like some connection there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they weren't just monsters all of a sudden, it
was like okay, And then that's when they started to
flesh out the like, oh they people that have died
and passed. That's when they started to talk more about
the bebies too, because for a while, they don't reveal
they tell you that they help you with the beets,
but they don't tell you how. Yeah, like what what
the purposes or how they figured this out?
Speaker 1: So and then when it gets to so you kind
of another fun sequence, so you got to take her
on your back, which is a long that's a long
trend journey. Is that the person you dropped in the water.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's not too shock And it's like that
she almost die, you have to carry her for a
long time. I got the NOI vocation of Mama is
almost dead, and I was like, oh, man, I dropped
in the water and she was falling and I just
thought for sure and I dropped her in the water.
It was gonna be mission end. But it wasn't deep
enough to end it. But it wasn't shall enough to
not hurt her. So I felt really bad. But then
later on she dies, I'm like, well, I don't feel
that bad now, you know. True.
Speaker 1: I think that the character kind of ceases to exist
really once you get to Lachna and they kind.
Speaker 2: Of connect, which disappointed me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I definitely wanted more. And I think about it,
it's like, well, really, what does Zach like? That character
is more of an engineer. She's kind of just working
on the Kyle network, working on equipment, so I guess
it makes sense, but I would have liked to see
her kind of integrating the story a bit more.
Speaker 2: But because she als says, Mama is still in it.
Speaker 1: It's a really interesting idea, right, even they have the heterochromia,
the different eye color there, yeah, which I think is
a cool detail. But yeah, there are different characters that
kind of are very close at the same time, so
I think, yeah, I would have liked some more of
them in near the end of the story. But I
I love that that chapter as a whole. I thought
that was super interesting.
Speaker 2: So I agree with you on next to Mads. That
was my favorite. I got some earlier. That was the
one where I was enjoying the game by a second,
liking it more and more. But that was the chapter
when it hit where I was like, Okay, the story
is also something special because they're telling you stuff and
the story is good, but to me, it is very basic.
It's a lot of trippy stuff. It's like yeah, Higgs,
which we talked about, which is very video gaming. This
is where I was getting to the point where, Okay,
like I said, this story feels something special. This is
not just great gameplay and great hers is.
Speaker 1: Very tragic as well. Oh yeah, the Mads, And it's
similar to Mads really in Yam a.
Speaker 2: Child well, and same thing relating as far as Sam
because he lost a child and stuff like that, so
there's lots of parallels. And I love the flashbacks to
her under the rubble and just like the Class four
because that's one of my biggest fears of being like
talk somewhere like that. The only reason she survived is
because the way the rubbel broke is that the water
would sink down and like could help her drink and
be hydrated, so it's like just by chance she survived.
And then the BEV is what made her survive as
well too, because it cried out they heard the bb
not her. So it's just really in depth story for
just a chapter, but it made you automatically when you're
talking about her being the guy or girl in the chair,
it made you go from oh, she's just a game
guy to the tools too, I legitimly care about mom
and what happened to her, and then it's just super
sad when you get to there and then she's dying,
so it's like yeah again. And I think some people
might maybe not be a fan of just like the
chapter story of a character, but for me, at worked
from just jumping to oh, this is a real person.
She has a tragy to you've bond with her and
then she's just gonna die and there's no like and
that's where it's not video gaming where it's like we
could save her. We get this vile it's like, no,
she's gone and like and then you get this fun
thing where she goes in Lockney. And I agree, I
said too, like I wish there was a little bit
more there just because I like that character. But that
story almost very black Mirrors as well. It was very
uh is emotional and you tied to because it's just
especially just the setup too of like oh her her
sister couldn't have a kid and this and that, like
she did it for the right reasons and then she
broke apart and we've all had that where you've argued
with someone and just like it felt realistic in a
very non realistic way as far as you're dealing with
the ghost baby. So yeah, it was fantastic And I
love that character in that story, and it's another one
that I always kind of remem.
Speaker 1: And that one was i'd say the biggest surprise to
me because really, like I said, like gameplay wise, I
didn't know much about this game, if anything going story wise,
I knew some actors are new to expect for some people,
so yeah, yeah, that was just a really pleasant surprize
that she was in there and that it was just
like a really interesting story because at first, or the
first like a few hours, I was thinking that, oh, okay,
she's just gonna be more of an engineer help you
out from the from the intercolm there. But yeah, then
you actually get like a full chapter with her, and yeah,
I like that aspect that they deep dived on a
different characters.
Speaker 2: M hm uh.
Speaker 1: In terms of other character we kind of talked the
cause player sequence is kind of funny with Conan, and
then I like the Kyle Artist stuff. The email has
kind of ruined it for you.
Speaker 2: But they end up fighting and yeah, yeah, he's like, oh,
you should never get married and I I just I
and then they get back together. But I didn't read
that one yet, so it's good to know I'll read it.
Speaker 1: They they they're trying. I read the last one, like
the mom like finds out about it all and she's
like they kind of had the spat and then they're they're
gonna try and make it work or something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was it was a tough for me because
that was a fun, realistic kind of game, like a
dayo gaming thing. But at the same point, like the
romantic in me, it was like we travel all this way,
they found each other, Like, yeah, I kind of want
them to be happy, so I'll check that email.
Speaker 1: I think that one was also just kind of interesting
to me because when you go to go get when
you go get the Kyle Artists, you go to the
like pod, like she comes out of the room. That's
the first time one of those doors open. Yeah, and
that was when my my theory that like everyone's a
hologram was broken. It's like, oh yeah, this is the
first real person I've seen in the whole game.
Speaker 2: So it's quite a while. Yeah, and that area was, uh,
I love for that area as well. Tell what we
just reviewed the Man and Lauria and that's what's gonna
be the es. It just like it was red desert,
but still it had like that tattooine like you're off
in nowhere, and there was the meals there, which those
meals to me were very dangerous, and then there was
like you had at one point I came back someone
and build a bridge. But so it was good but
there was just like very little space at one point.
There's lots of places where you could have fallen, and
that happened to me once. So I really liked that
whole Yeah, I teas and stuff. I honestly think that
was maybe next to just like the regular nice grass train,
that was probably my favorite location. I just liked that.
It felt very mad MAXI as well too, just this desert, Yeah,
and you're alone, there's smoking smog, and it's just like it.
Speaker 1: For me, it was definitely the deep mountains, just the
top of the mountains, oh man, that just like I know,
that was like a Red Dead thing that was honestly
almost told me on Red Dead was when you're walking
in the snow and your tracks are just like kept
this great. Yeah, that is like, I I don't know,
just as a as a Canadian, possibly someone who spent
a lot of time in the snow truck around the snow,
like I love snowshooting and stuff like that. Just oh man,
chucking through deep snow is like such a satisfying thing
to see in a game like represented with like the
I mean one like Norman maritas As he's like trudging
through it. But even just seeing your tracks from before,
and I need some confirmation on this, but I found
I took a few paths, like the same path a
couple of times and like certain snow sequences, and I
noticed that it was like padded out. So I don't
know if that just happens naturally after you like attached
to the Kyle network, or if it was because I
took the same like close path multiple times that it
like eventually patted it out. But yeah, it's pretty cool.
Speaker 2: I think I think I'll appreciate the snow aspect when
I go back and do some missions now, because I
just felt like I was very nervous and scared that
point of like I because when you can't.
Speaker 1: See now that you gotta use the you gotta use
that carrier.
Speaker 2: I will, yeah, And that's where I was just more
like so focused on the game. I did enjoy it
because there's just sometimes where I got to the top
of the hill and just looked at it was just
so beautiful. But now when I go back up there,
I'll enjoy it more because I also that's when I'm
starting to get to like, uh, I was worried how
along the game was. I was like, Okay, I gotta
start trucking through this because I was getting bombard with
side like the just side deliveries, and I would just
do them. So But yeah, honestly, I don't have a
complaint anywhere. I think visually was all great. You know, Yeah, do.
Speaker 1: You have any more character story stuff?
Speaker 2: No? No, No, I've hit I looked at my notes.
I have hit everything that I need to talk about
for story games and everything like that out.
Speaker 1: I have like a list of little things I appreciate. Yeah,
and also nitpicks. Let's go through some days very little
load screens. I kind of mentioned that earlier.
Speaker 2: But I just wait to the Hi Fallen Order. Is
there a lot of them?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, it's I just blasted throughout the worlds. There's
a sh ton of them in there.
Speaker 2: I'm used to it.
Speaker 1: That's why, like when that was announced for PS five,
load times non existent. To me, that's always been the
biggest thing that takes me out of games more than
anything else. And it like, I think a game like
Prey might honestly be one of the greatest games of
all time if there was no load screens, if that
was a seamless way you go through that whole space
station that game would be just on another fucking tier.
But load screens they bring down a lot of games,
and I really appreciate not having like very much any
Like there is a few, i'd say, in the last
bit of the game where you're getting a lot of
cut scenes and allow them and whatnot. But for the
most part, like you probably spend like what it feels
like a thirty hour sequence of this game, right because
a lot of it right in the middle there where
there's not a ton of cut scenes and you're just
kind of playing where you're like no cut scenes whatsoever.
And I really appreciate that. You might get a couple,
but you can skip them, and that's like a nippick,
as we mentioned earlier, sometimes multiple cut scenes you gotta skip,
so anoid, let's see, what are some other ones leaving
snow in the tracks that really appreciate that. Oh yeah,
just the satisfaction of like after you completed delivery and
watching the path you took. I really like that super satisfying,
especially when you take one, like when you take Mama
all the way over to Lachna. It's like that is
a long trail to watch, and I find that really satisfying.
Oda World's actually kind of had that too, whenever you
go on a mission and when you get to the
place that shows you, like the path you took. This
is a little more detail because the map is a
lot more detailed, but I it's just really satisfying for
me to look at that.
Speaker 2: That's cool.
Speaker 1: I don't think I ever noticed a single invisible wall
in this whole game, right, Like, you can go anywhere
that you set your mind to. I'm sure the edges
of the maps ye to go out there. Obviously there's
gotta be vinca, but I never like, there's never any
reason to go out there, Like it's kind of obvious
where the map cuts off, and so I think that's
it was just a good way to nudge the player
in the right direction where I never encountered a single
vis wall, and that's something I really appreciate as well. Uh,
the one mission where you have to deliver pizza, it
was optional, and I'm sure you did that one.
Speaker 2: Of course I still got to go do another one
because yes.
Speaker 1: For another one, it's like a really long.
Speaker 2: Delivery schedule once I get back.
Speaker 1: That's another cool one because you have to make sure
the box stays horizontal the whole time, or else it'll
degrade the cold. I don't know like where the cutoff is,
but that's just cool, Like it makes sense. You got
to keep that pizza straight. As a guy who delivered
pizza for a few months, I know that feeling. You
got to make sure that that pizza stakes most and horizontals.
So that was a fun mission switch up. Yeah. I
mentioned this one earlier, how different characters kind of insist like, oh,
it's better to go quick, better to the quality.
Speaker 2: I like that. I was always, uh, quality, that was
my big thing other than mom I drop and I
had a few, but I would always focus on getting that.
Speaker 1: I think it was, yeah, definitely quality, and then speed
and then the amount of stuff. Yeah, I mean, but
it kind of depended.
Speaker 2: The map.
Speaker 1: I think looks great when you zooming, Like it's not
super super detailed, but I think that's a good thing,
right because if you could see every rock and every cliff,
that would kind of give it away. But just as
you learn it and you're taking multiple paths or it's like,
oh I don't have a climbing anchor upt here, Like
that was just super satisfying, just kind of breaking down
the map. Yeah, here's the question. So one of the
things you can build with the PCC is the.
Speaker 2: What's the word?
Speaker 1: It's the fucking not bungeee? What is the word? I'm
looking for?
Speaker 2: Zipline? Oh?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Did you ever use that?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I did one time in the snow there was
one down there. I use it.
Speaker 1: I go from my experience, there needs to be one
somewhere and yeah, like you have to put one down
pretty much and you can use like so I guess
you need How would that work because you would have
to put it at the bottom.
Speaker 2: Can you go somebody?
Speaker 1: Can you go up us a zipline?
Speaker 2: Ah? Yeah you can, but someone Oh, I'm pretty sure
you can. I thought I did, but I think my
zip line someone else that put it there, and I
built it on top of mountain.
Speaker 1: I was like, I'm okay, So you saw one down
in the valley and built one I found Yeah, to me,
I always found like you can go up I'm pretty sure.
To me, I always found that they were at the
top of the mountain. So it's like, well, I kind
of want one at the bottom so I can use
it up here and then actually use it. So I
did that was the only thing I think I haven't
experimented with it. Also, I was curious, but.
Speaker 2: I want to do it more. That's what's cool.
Speaker 1: Like I feel like there's still like a bunch of guns, weapons,
I've never used a couple of items. I really haven't
doven into deep yet. So yeah, that's that's pretty sweet. Yeah,
that was kind of all the We've kind of mentioned
everything else. Any nippicks, Yeah, I want to, uh so,
Obviously we talked about there's a lot of things that
like you have to skip twice. It's like, why I
want one skip. Another thing that kind of bothered me
was whenever you enter a BT territory or whenever you
get like close enough to one and your sensor pops up.
There's like that animation that's like ten seconds where it
slowly come like robot arms out and then points. You
can never skip that, and it gets kind of repetitive
by the time at the end of the game and
you've seen it twenty thirty times.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that.
Speaker 1: Should be quicker. I think after a while you should
be able to skip it something like that. Either way,
it's not a huge deal, it's just a little nippick.
This is kind of a pro anicon. But yeah, a
lot of like reused cut scenes, like when you turn
in a delivery, you see the same thing over and over. However,
I do think sometimes they did it really well where
there's a lot of times where you have to put
the uh oh god, what is it called the thing
where you connect to the caral network cupid? Yeah, when
you put the Cupid in the way we'll like transition,
that's always the same cut scene, but the way it
transitions into it from different cut scenes or just from
like walking up for the terminal is cool, like it
always loops back into that one. So I thought that
was pretty creative. And then you can always like skip
that that one. And then I thought I had one
more note here. Yeah, oh that one I mentioned of
when you're trying to get to fucking back to Portnott
City and you get interrupted by dead men as you're
just making that long truck back. I was just like, dude,
I need to get it. I want to get it
into this game. This has been really slow espo almost
like let me fucking go, almost like a day on
nose and that and that kind of reminds me too
when you want to skip a cut line dialogue, you
hit X, it's it, it ends the line and you
got to hit X again to progress on the next one.
Speaker 2: It's a weird tw weird you should just hit X one. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So yeah, a bunch of little things like that that
don't really matter in the grand scheme of things, but
are still nippicks. Yeah, nonetheless, that expels my notes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think from both of us you can tell
we love this game. For myself, like I said, I've
as you heard of the being the cast, I've debated
that it might be my favorite game all the time.
So that's all you need to hear. There is some concerts,
some nippicks. Is not a perfect thing, but just the
amount I love it almost reminds me of a endgame
where even when I saw and there's still some stuff
from like ah, that's it still bugged me a little bit.
Not perfect, it's just the amount of goodness that was
there just exceed my expectations. That's why I love and
that's why it's still my favorite MC because I still
think there's movies like Black Panther and Civil War that
are better than it. From just a from start A
to point B. But just how it made me feel
it gets that spot and that's why this is like
a ten at ten because just like how maybe feel,
Like I said, I'm very worried I'm never gonna get
experience like this maybe until another headay O Kajima game.
But I I love this game and I can't wait. Obviously,
I hate that it came out now because I'm doing
Jedi Fallen Order. We're busy. I'm gonna play Outer Worlds
for the Game Awards, but like, I just cannot wait
to jump back in this world. And this is gonna
be my game from like January to April May whenever. Pacters,
I'm not gonna be fun in the winter, late December snow. Yeah,
but yeah, I love this game. I can't can't praise
it enough really.
Speaker 1: So yeah, you're gonna drop a rating on this bad boy.
Speaker 2: Oh I didave the ten. I have to like, like
I said, there is cons on that it's just the
stuff that's good is so good. It's the buffet effect. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I love this game as well. All I did
have a couple of issues with pacing in like just
little nitpicks. I overall, it's like one of the most
unique games. Yeah, one of probably honestly probably just the
best game story I've ever experienced in just in terms
of acting, writing things like that, just like a really
fully developed world. And I know, like all this praise,
it's like, how is this not my game of the
year right now?
Speaker 2: But I think just goes to show how it's.
Speaker 1: Kind of right now. It's a competition between this game
and the Outer Wild. It's not the Outer worlds Utter World.
It is probably my three or four or five slot
somewhere up there, but yeah, this and Outer Wild is
a really also like one of the most creative games
I ever played my entire life. I played that a
month ago, so I'm in a good place for games.
There's been some fun games this year, but yeah, I
think it's between that one and this one for like
game of the year right now for me, And I've
played a bunch of games this year, so that's definitely
a big compliment. And I can't wait to talk about
this game more next week when we talk about the
Game Award nominations at the Game Awards, and then I fuck,
you know, we do Golden Geeks. I'm not mat and
Mott Mads, Let's fucking do it. I know it's a game.
I don't care.
Speaker 2: Let's do it. I'd find a way to get it
in there, and they'll shoot us down, but I'd find
a way. But if you like the slaves jellings, please
go subscribe. We we got lots of game reviews right now,
so check that out. We got lots of content. Just
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thank you very much for tuning in to this. Promise
the next thing here from us won't be boring.
Speaker 1: Later