What's up everybody I'm the hook and I'm the blade welcome to the hook blade podcast where we talk about all things hook blades yeah I was gonna call it the the look blade podcast because you might have noticed we have a new look a new aesthetic but Tim Tim stepped on my line so I'm sorry the hook blade podcast the hooky blade podcast has a new blade which is all just also something you said I never said that yes you did no I didn't all right well we'll agree disagree um Tim how are you today well okay hold on I should introduce myself I'm your host Lawson and with me as always is my co-host Tim and Tim how are you doing today I'm doing pretty good so you know what a pressure cooker is right yeah and so you can make bombs out of them I haven't tried that yet you'll have to Google pressure cooker bomb but Google it at work yeah or at school get arrested so I got one of those nifty like kitchen gadgets that is a pressure cooker but it also like it has the functionality of like at CO's hidden blade it's got it kills people it's got a pressure cooker it's got a slow cooker it can bake it has air frying capabilities it can also what else can you can see or saute in it air crisp which is their version of air fry slow cook obviously I can make yogurt which will never happen there's a bunch of other stuff if my mom was listening to this right now she would be quaking so essentially this one it's it's from the brand ninja I'm sure you may have oh yeah I'm here with ninja yeah so it's like an all-in-one kitchen appliance essentially and I've been like it has been for anyone who's if anyone who's ever considered it it is it's worth every penny because I have had such a easy going time with it and I can cook things with such more proficiency and I'm not a very good cook that's the thing it's just a can I got a smart toaster oven once and it did a lot of different things like that like you could broil stuff yeah oh you can broil that's another function is royal I forgot broil have you seen the June oven no the June oven it's essentially your guy and Marquette Marcus Aurelius the guy that Marquez Brownlee the guy that you watch the tech guy yeah Mark yeah he's the most famous tech reviewer yeah I was I was I was left in an AMA of his and he he was shouting out the June oven and it's essentially it's it's like what you just said it's a smart oven and it has cameras built in so you stick a pop tart in there and it's like hey is this a pop tart you have in our oven and then they and then you inserted a pop tart into me and you can like track it on the app and it has a little probe thermometer so that your meat doesn't get overcooked legal note the hook played podcast is not sponsored by the June oven or Ninja or the Breville smart oven but it's like it's like a Tesla ovens because it constantly updates itself for instance everyone okay I'll stop no I was just gonna say you're really cute when you get excited about something oh thank you couple notes at the top of the show I you know how a couple episodes ago I was like hey Tim would you believe it that I'm still sick and you said no and I was like I'm not yes I can now say with with scientific certainty that I have had strep throat for two and a half months so I've been sick the entire time the last time anyone's heard my non-sick voice on this podcast was episode 3 Jesus not that anyone would notice cuz according to some of our friends you and I sound too similar yeah apparently I've gotten used to it I suppose so I don't even know what you sound like not sick yeah I don't remember I think I think this is just yeah that's my normal voice now I think this is current I think I'm currently speaking in a not sick voice I don't know I think you sound handsome and smart and charming all the time thank you Tim you're like the Juno oven of people it's called the Juno oven subliminally I'm aware on some level that this is an Assassin's Creed podcast speaking of Assassin's Creed I wanted to I wanted to follow up a little bit on our last episode because it turns out in the context of the whole I'd I own a mission that I'm actually just a big dummy because there are multiple ways to figure out which one was the good one and which one was the bad one interesting okay you can you can go to bird vision and check them out with your with your bird boy you can just pay attention to the cutscene apparently one of them is choking the other one so thanks I'm a big dumb dummy idiot stupid head actually it turns out aren't we all also I wanted to add to my forgot to say last week because of that mission right when I was playing on ps4 I actually in an attempt to get it to unbreak itself I updated the software in my ps4 and that software update bricked my disc drive so Odyssey has taken a lot from me I have more reason than most I would say to hate that game and yet I remain fair and balanced I just I wanted to put that out there you've you've sacrificed so much you've lost so much Odyssey has literally killed my family at this point I'm still out here being like it's okay it's got it it's got a better story than origins it does I can't say I can't say for certain yeah you can't comment so Tim why are we why are we gathered here today what's the actual topic of conversation besides cooking appliances and dialogue choices well aside from those two things you and I ended up replaying the first ever Assassin's Creed 2007 G the word all began parentheses or did it yeah so this has been interesting we both replayed Assassin's Creed one and we've had some interesting experiences with it I guess the headline for my impressions would be that I kind of on this particular playthrough have the opposite experience that I usually have with AC one don't know why yeah not like oh I usually like it but this time I didn't more that like in the past when I would replay it for like the marathon and stuff I would really enjoy the game at first and I'd be like wow this is really fun and good and cool and interesting and then over time I would slowly begin to completely hate it and I would just really not enjoy playing it at all this time I actually I had a lot of trouble with it at first at first I was like oh this sucks this is bullshit I don't want to play this anymore and I definitely over the course of the game I warmed up to it a little bit more I like I did want to get it over with not because it was that aggressively like frustrating to play but more because I just really wanted to play AC to you know yeah but but I did and I don't know if this came across in some of our conversations about it I did warm up to it a little bit as it was how did you how did you feel so I didn't replay it in quite some time so coming back to it I was very excited about it and there's just there's just such this certain iconography and seeing it in that game and just seeing like Damas and Acre and Jerusalem and stuff like it still was as effective as it was you know when I first played it or would have you but I had a very similar experience I was having kind of a rough time with it at first and you know I mean that could just be because I haven't replayed it in a long time I'm very rusty and I'm more used to the recent games and I am to that game for sure for sure yeah and just in general like you know I I haven't been playing video games as much as I was when I first played Assassin's Creed well not first sorry but when I would have replayed it I haven't been like as active as playing video games so just all around I I I'm not exactly like an expert with AC1 and you know as as as some of our friends are but I definitely warmed up to it later on I mean look all the assassinations being memorable and everything it's just getting to those assassinations really became kind of a chore you know yeah and definitely some of those assassination activities or sorry investigation activities got a little tedious more for you than for me because I actually was playing for the first time on PC and there is a significantly better variety of activities on the PC version just saying yeah only they add they add something called Informer challenges but Informer challenges itself is a pretty broad selection of activities I found stuff where it was like stealth challenges like go kill all these guards without getting detected which was often pretty fun or you know kill these archers there were races things you had to collect a bunch of flags whereas I believe I guess in the original game you're pretty much limited to to beat someone up pickpocket someone and well drop so so what you're describing I actually did have in my version of the game oh really well I had certain informant option like I could go to I can go to an assassin informant and he'll either have me collect some assia flags I can kill archers or I can go kill us very specific kind of guard without anyone else seeing me so what did the PC have more of then I I don't know I just was always I always heard that the directors kind of PC had more like investigation stuff was there was there any of those that you didn't mention that like you had to do yeah so I'm looking it up Ubisoft is this is an article from 2008 on Eurogamer Ubisoft has revealed the four new investigation types for Assassin's Creed on PC there's the rooftop race challenge where you charge from one informant to another within a set time limit archer assassination which has you murdering rooftop dwelling guards in a set area without being seen the merchant stand destruction challenge where you have to trash the livelihood of tradesmen tied to your assassination target and the escort challenge which has you guide a fellow assassin somewhere safely yeah so all the ones I didn't mention yeah yeah so yeah I those are the ones I did not see so there you go yeah so you did have a you didn't have a bigger variety which would probably make a lot of it better I pulled up on I went all the way back to the year 2014 and I found the very first post that was ever made regarding the Assassin's Creed marathon which was titled 65 days until Unity and Rogue release 66 memory sequences in the AC main games let's do a sequence today for 65 days and this these were my impressions back then I said I loved running down the hills of Masyaf and slaughtering Templars along the way it was very immersive and the chaos going around me was pretty exhilarating the very first ever leap of faith was brilliant and epic I completely forgot how it was so cleverly used as a way of demonstrating the Assassin's welcoming of death to the Templars activating the trap and watching the logs crush to Saddle's goons was pretty freaking sweet too this is me as a 15 year old I get that the tutorials served a pretty important purpose of introducing the character to the gameplay mechanics but damn if it wasn't the most tedious and cumbersome tutorial I've ever played still true I much prefer the other games usual approach of giving story significance to the tutorial rather than just doing it in an empty animus techscape AC3 did this as well no coincidence then that oh this is my 2014 me talking AC1 and AC3 are my least favorite games in the series wow there was so much terrible yet to come my young self so much terrible yet to come my third point Jesus Christ Altair is such a dick damn I wanted to slap him he's very arrogant has no respect for the Creed or the wishes of his supposed brothers I'm wall in seems very wise and dedicated to the assassin order of course we all know the truth now yeah we all know did you would you have any comments on this did you participate fuck no aw also this would have been long before you and I ever talked so it's not like it would have been like oh my friends doing this thing I should join in oh yeah well yeah so not you know I always would have liked to participate but 2014 that was I was still on the forums making shitty posts there so I wasn't I didn't even know what the subreddit was I didn't even know what reddit was to begin with so I wasn't around for that with with the only games existing at the time being you know one two brother had revelations three and four as of 2014 yeah I guess three and one would have been my least favorites out of that group yeah I suppose so I mean there's nothing in that group that would that I would have liked worse than three and one yeah interesting because now now I let me see I'm gonna pull up my actual ranking list and see where AC1 scores and this is still 2014 ranking no I'm gonna pull up my current ranking list okay yeah AC1 is in fourth place on my on my last time I did this list there's no way that that's accurate to now it would it be lower yeah yeah I think I would have it just above unity odyssey origins in three yeah I think I'd take this over unity for sure yeah yeah so in general I guess my yeah my experience with AC1 was pretty rough which is a shame because there is a lot to like about it there really is yeah it definitely has the best story and as far as the modern day goes for absolutely yeah and the it definitely has the most consistent internal mythology of all the Assassin's Creed games the way that it's presented for the the layer of animus between you and the game that's like really well done I think yeah and I had forgotten I mean I tweeted this out a little bit ago I completely forgotten how well done the anus integration is now yeah keep in mind it has it has some rough edges there are things I don't like about it I found that it was pretty it can get to the level where it pulls you out of the game a little bit to be like fast forwarding memory to a more recent one well I'll tell you I'll tell you what's really annoying about the animus about the animus stuff that in this game that isn't in other games so much is when I get detected or anything happens my screen has a fucking seizure and it's like that doesn't help me with like assessing my environment you know like I get detected by one guard and like my screen flips the fuck out you know it's like you know we've practiced as you're saying that we like the animus integration in the hide but that is a feature I do not fucking miss fuck that because big blurry yeah because detection in this game is not forgiving and so you get detected all the time and at least if you suck like me yeah and like so my screen is flipping out all the time and it's like it gets me to the point where it's like I don't even want to like participate in stuff I might as well just go kill everyone like literally be easier except for me you know something we've talked about a lot cuz well let me ask you this point blank just I'm gonna put you on the spot put me on always told me that in your opinion the best that combat has ever been in Assassin's Creed was a C1 after this replay is that still your opinion as of right now yes yes because is wrong with you know the look the combat is fine it that there are other problems like stealth being non-existent I actually had a big problem with the stealth with the combat which was that I felt like it did not behave predictably I felt like I could do exactly the right thing as far as countering or dodging or grab breaking or whatever like it felt like there was a chance element where even if I timed it exactly right on countering it wouldn't counter or so even if I didn't time it right it sometimes would I feel like I was constantly just playing the odds and I don't know why so I I do I do see what you're saying a hundred percent because I even ran into that so in no way am I saying that it's a perfect system I think they start to go in the wrong direction with AC2 that's a conversation for another time but I do think that in terms of just like visceral like you know weighty and brutal combat you know like the way that certain enemies are just laying there writhing in pain when you're done and the and like some of these animations like I every time I would fight someone I would or a group I would see the same like four animations over and over and over but that presented in such a visceral way that I never got old it was still so much fun and I completely I was not impressed by the animation a variety I thought it did get old after about three sequences well look I'm definitely there is be more animations but I started switching to different between weapons just to like refresh my eyes and I do that too I'll switch from the short blade in the in the sword but keep in mind though a big problem with the combat is simply that when you get hit your screen flips out so if memory serves you know I'm pretty sure that when you get hit by something like your screen your entire screen gets taken up for like a frame you know I mean yeah there's definitely like a I don't know the word it's an aberration of some sort where the camera and the and your character become dislodged from each other for a few seconds while it while it shakes around to give you visual feedback it's a little aggressive I think yeah yeah so it's not perfect by any means and there are probably more like fun and timeless versions of the combat that are that have existed I don't even know if I'd say that I think there are better versions of combat full stop I think that there are games in Assassin's Creed that had more variety of animation still were challenging and still were functional and that didn't give me the same problems that the AC1 did right I think it's and I'm open to this opinion changing it just as of right now I found that it kind of does kind of scratch that itch of combat being kind of cinematic and for me and the thing is too is what I really like about the combat is while you know it can't canonically all tire you know doesn't even get a scratch during this whole game there are plenty of ways to fuck up and the guard can like punch you in the stomach and you fall down or he can grab you and throw you the ragdoll physics or something else yeah well not and not letting you have all of your skills at first like grab break yeah does make it more challenging I will say though that does lead into another complaint that I have because something that I love about this game is that is like the narrative linked progression throughout like you get more skills you get more web you get you get better weapons throughout yada yada yada however I think it's a brilliant idea to strip you down and have you work your way back up I think it is you just want to see someone strip I'll tell you down I think it is an equally bad idea to wait until like the end of the like basically the end of the game to get you fully equipped with everything again yeah that's very very fair and like I think it'd be one thing if there was any way that the game opened up or recontextualized its gameplay at the end of itself that made it so that now that you have all these abilities there's actually something rewarding and fun to do with them but yeah you don't get to spend a lot of time at maximum assassin quality which is definitely a weakness of the game yeah you're you're 100% right on that it's just kind of like it's the same experience now you just have all the abilities you did at the beginning of the game and I like that idea that it's like you kind of in the in the beginning missions and stuff you have you have even in the beginning you don't have that much time to utilize the grab breaks or the catch ledge and stuff because it's almost instantly taken from you which keep in mind I don't have a problem with it's just it's like the final ninth person I'm pretty sure and then you get your shit back finally let me ask you this did you start warming up to the game once you started getting those skills back I think so there is definitely I always was a big fan of the throwing knives in this game so I was able to have like all of them and I could kind of use them more strategically as part of a stealth attempt I definitely enjoyed that more and just also big part of it for me was getting comfortable with the systems as far as parkour and combat and quote-unquote stealth because there's a lot to get used to especially when you've been trained on you know modern AC games the parkour in this game is straight up garbage it is really bad I've seen a lot of people like I saw a guy in on Twitter making a clip of like here's all the cool stuff you can do an AC one parkour I should not have to have all tight-ear straight up like sniffing the ass crack of a hand to get to move to it I feel like it's worth the worst part is when a big part of the gameplay in this game more than more so than in any other Assassin's Creed is getting chased and when you get chased in this game first of all there's the whole Assassin's Claw thing we talked about so you can't move the camera which is right just a nightmare but then you have the fact that when you are climbing a building trying to escape from these people who are all like throwing rocks at you and stuff it's so slow you can almost hear all tier going I guess we're going to that one and then you've been hit with a rock and so you say fuck it and you go find a ladder and climb the ladder like a dumb little bitch boy who can't do parkour or you just say fuck it and you get pelting of the rock you fall down the ground and you just slaughter them yeah or you just kill them all immediately I did notice one point I'll give to the combat is that I was much better at the combat once the game had already made me angry like if I was pissed off I could slice and dice and nail the counter every time which I guess it's maybe a design like but they had to really piss me off sometimes for me to do good parkour or good combat like that one mission there's a there's the assassination where you think you can be stealthy you climb up the you sneak around all the guards you climb to the top of the thing you look down keep he's surrounded by like eight bad guys and you think because you've played good assassins before you think you can air assassinate this guy there's no air assassinate in the game so you can't you can you can tell me you can tell me that I could have done it I don't believe you I don't believe that I could have jumped off the scaffold and done a perfect air assassinate trying to it's in the demo I kept trying to do it and I couldn't it couldn't do it I I assume that's the game's fault not mine and then you have to fight like nine dudes and some brand you can only distinguish him because he's the only one with a bad haircut and try to focus your efforts on killing him because once you kill it could get mixed up it's not some brand it's it's William yeah you're right it's William DeMon for that this is the second character I've accidentally called some brand on that's the only name I remember okay so yeah the air assassination is not very intuitive but it does exist sure if you insist all I'm saying is that I got killed by those guards four times which it turned out was the exact number of times it needed to happen for me to get angry which immediately allowed me to slaughter them all man yeah look I mean I kind of look there's there's a fucking mission in here too that like we're combat pissed me the fuck off too so the assassinations memorable 100% when it comes to the air assassinate I like look I know it exists in the game but it's not intuitive and here's an example and one of the assassinations I was doing I climbed up the proper building I killed the archer that was gonna see me otherwise and he's right in my view and I leap off the building I'm doing the air assassinate and a major innovation excuse me in the last minute that's second actually like as my blade is approaching his fucking ear lobe as it's tickling his fucking neck hairs he like does the whole animation of where he like catches me midair and throws me it's like he didn't even know his back was turned to me you know and so look I know that there are people who fucking like massacre stealth in this game it's just I had such a problem with doing it effectively and detection in this game is not forgiving call me you know like yeah I don't know call me a pussy I just pussy Tim I'm just not I didn't have a good time with the stealth and no you know perhaps it's because maybe it's user error I just didn't have a great time with it I just think yeah I mean there's something to be said for the fact that these missions design they're very linear there's typically a stealth path and a combat path and if you can if you have eyes that work you can at least see what the stealth path is but then you're probably going to fail at attempting it and you're gonna feel like you didn't fail it because you were bad you're gonna feel like there was an unpredictability or there was a system problem that that caused you to fail it we were watching an interview with Patrice Desole where he was talking primarily about AC2 but he really views he really thinks back on AC1 as like an experiment just to prove the viability of this world in this gameplay style and that really AC1 is more of a toy or a tech demo than it is an actual good game and I think that's probably yeah I think that's true which I have to give it credit for I mean we got to be we got to be real here I think AC1 is is a cool game like I really enjoy the world building I really enjoy the story I really enjoy the way that the character progresses over the course of the narrative it's a simple game it's a simple story you don't get much of any of Altair's you know inner or outer life besides the process of killing these targets but that's a form of limitation that I feel like they did some interesting things with you know and the atmosphere of this game the mood and the tone of it is unparalleled because as soon as AC2 came around took things into the slightly more goofy blockbuster territory and it's been in that world ever since but I enjoy the just the vibe of AC1 it is a vibe that is so distinct and so well-crafted that that alone in my opinion saves the game from a lot of its faults yeah I agree and it's an atmosphere and a setting that I've been wanting to get back to ever since the first game so it yeah for it to have that effect on me it does it very well what I will say I do have a problem with I guess my only nitpick with like the atmosphere and the vibe is I don't know I I suppose I don't know I'll tell you it doesn't really feel like he's a part of the world because he's voice acted terribly well because does that make sense like I just because he has the wrong accent and he's the only character in the entire game with the wrong accent no not that I know you know I know it's a gripe for you but what I'm saying is I don't know this like the lack of I don't know I gotta you can just probably cut this out because I think I get what you're getting at because something that we talk about in class for those of you who don't know I am a student of television writing that is what I've taken classes on there's something that comes up a lot where they talk about the characters inner and outer life and that's like all of the things that a character does all the ways that they interface with you know their outer life being the people in the world around them their inner life being their own feelings and their own characteristics in that context and versus someone like Ezio or really any other AC protagonist there is no story about Altair that besides the fact that he kills people and eventually we learn that he gets jiggy with a Templar lady so yeah that so yeah that's pretty much right on the money because in the book for instance see what you need to read sicker crusade there's a lot of that momentum shifting where the Altair will go from kill to kill but you get his internal monologue you get his internal feelings on everything even even when he gets back to Masia after leaving Malik and his brother for dead not leaving but you know causing them to be kind of yeah betraying a little bit and he gets back and the weight that you feel an Altair in the book is a lot different than in the game and I'm not saying that the game doesn't execute it properly but when it comes to like the weight like he feels ashamed and the inflections in his dialogue and stuff in that instance are represented a lot better in the book and I understand that the book has the ability to be like this omniscient force and to be able to say it's coming after the game too so they have all the context of what happens in the game of course during that with emotion and story right and I'm not saying that the game doesn't hit you with those cues because Altair's character arc in this game is still one of the best but you have to keep in mind especially in a game without cutscenes at all you don't see emotion and Altair's face you don't see you hardly see emotion in anyone's face you don't hear emotion in his voice either yes you yes I will agree with you on that and so you can pick between like five camera angles in this game but like none of them probably kind of like tell a story with the camera work and whatever and look I like the over-the-shoulder look but eventually it got a little old and I just wanted to see like the camera turn around and show me Altair it took us until revelations to get a proper cut scene with Altair yeah like does that make sense you know that makes perfect sense that's our our criticisms are going hand-in-hand where because of these these elements of the game we are kind of deprived of a real like fully developed characterization and fully developed story and honestly you know there's a lot of like I used to think it was really subtle and cool and interesting how Altair's understanding of the conflict evolves over the course of the story yeah honestly coming back to it now with some of the things I've learned and some of the things I've you know explored in my in college and I can't say I I like it as much today like I used to think it was subtle and cool it's it's definitely it may be cool it's not subtle there are good three or four times in the story where Altair is like it's wrong to kill people just for disagreeing with you while killing someone for disagreeing with him yeah that happens like three times at least that I count well but I think okay sorry go ahead obviously on some level he gets the irony but does he you know that's the thing that is definitely explored in later games as the irony of the creed and all that and I think especially in AC2 they very much lean into the it's they still lean into that morally gray area of like yeah I mean are the assassins really the good guys at the end of the day like they might be the the more noble maybe or the more like righteous but saying that they're good guys you know and that changed that changed kind of later on but I will say this game and the next definitely pick up on that a little more I don't know if you would agree I don't know if I would I mean I think AC1 definitely because of the way it treats the relationship between assassins and Templars and because it isn't completely black and white it's not like here the the good assassins versus the evil Templars there's some gray area the assassins themselves are eventually pretty much revealed to be you know systematically corrupted by yeah it's by yeah by Templars but at the same time you know you you get the impression that we're not dealing with Jedi and Sith right in this in this story that's great that it does that in the first game because it kind of gives them license to you know later on it's it's still part of the identity of the creed and the identity of the conflict that there is that there is gray area even though some games I think AC2 being one of them choose not to really explore that I think AC2 is a good example like many AC games where the priority was not to really mind that that depth of conflict at all the priority was more like yeah here your assassin good guys and here your Templar bad guys Templar bad guys are very bad and they're obviously bad and the assassins are obviously good well keep in mind though I also do think in a lot of the confession scenes like I do find myself sometimes being like that was actually kind of a good point and like yeah no it is it's believable for all of these targets to think that they're doing the right thing and all about all time here all that also affects all time here because all time here is like I'm questioning this and that I think works very well in the context of the story at the same time though I don't think that it's very believable to me that all time here is so surprised to learn that the people he's killing think they're doing the right thing just because I find it to be the case nine times out of ten in real life that people are not typically thinking of themselves as doing the wrong thing even when they absolutely are like you could take the worst people alive today and you know you could interview Joseph Coney or whatever and he'd be like well actually I'm the hero of this story like I think most people think that way so for that to be kind of the driving force behind Altair thinking that there's more going on like I don't know it's it's it's maybe a little simple it's maybe a little not that deep yeah I mean I can't say I necessarily disagree with you on that one I just I also think like it's a very smart way to develop the Templars beyond just mustache twirling and that's true like I do think that if you're a story designer on this game and you're given the gameplay system of you know well each level you you go you kill the guy and then you have a little chat in in heaven about it right like the writers on this are using that opportunity like they're getting the most out of what systems are available to them they're getting the most out of the fact that all of the the story in this game is pretty much existing to motivate the gameplay right which is normal that's how most games work but they're doing it well in the sense that there's there's a clear visible feeling of each kill that you accomplish you are unlocking a different piece of the puzzle right and I think in terms of most of your targets they all seem like they're bound by like the Templar order obviously but they all have independent motivations and independent like thoughts and feelings and I I think that's something that was lost for a little while on certain targets like even though the assassinations that led up to them sometimes didn't work right for me or I had a bad experience with them you know for instance like with the Sabrina assassination I will always remember that one because I remember parts of the context I was given as leading up to the story or sorry leading up to the kill the kill itself and the confessions and like the glitches and stuff and you can you know press about and get a different camera angle and I think it's just I can't disagree with you on that one Larson well I mean you can but I appreciate that you don't I guess that kind of leads into the other thing I want to that we want to talk about which is the modern day unless you had something else you want to talk about I think that wraps up pretty much most of my if there's anything that comes to mind you could probably just move the edit around I guess sure yes a modern day modern day I vividly remember when I actually started playing this game for the first time which was right before three came out my parents like just got it for me as part of like a bunch of cheap games they picked up somewhere and they were like happy birthday kiddo here's here's Assassin's Creed and I was like yeah I've I've known that this existed for a while but it kind of became popular in a time when I was like too young to play a game that was completely about murder so I booted it up and I had never ever been told or found out in any way that there was any modern-day sci-fi elements to Assassin's Creed I learned that while playing the game and that was a really cool moment because I'm I'm a big sci-fi guy I'm not a big historical fiction or fantasy guy so that immediately like pulled me in to the world and contextualize the historical stuff in a way that made it far more interesting to me to contextualize it as being part of this modern-day ongoing saga versus just jumping around in history and playing different stories right yeah but I just remember the the cliffhanger at the end of AC1 just put me on my ass like I had to know I had to know what happened next I literally bicycled down to the post exchange the very next day and bought AC2 from Gamestop yeah I mean that that that's the thing is this game has probably the most like consistent view of the Assassin's Templars like in the modern day yeah because as we talk about a lot later on you know like in AC Gold they're the underdogs or in the comic they're superheroes yeah and in this game you really get the idea of like you know fuck like even though Desmond technically is an assassin you know like is the rescue mission goes fucking terrible and and we know and we get these little hints that they've been dwindling in numbers for a while now because the Templars to the Templars have their thumb on the scale and they pretty much directly reference the purge yes exactly yeah 100% because that's the thing is what other reason why would the assassins like go from like and that's the thing too is giving us such a giving us the crusades and the assassins then and then giving us the assassins in the modern day and but they do it in a way that's not jarring because we don't necessarily see them you don't see them at all yeah so they do it in a way that that's like very believable too because the idea that like Desmond you know kind of like escaped his his his assassin compound or what have you and well it was originally it was the farm but I don't think they mentioned the farm in this game but Desmond escaping it still kind of gives you that idea that like maybe the assassins aren't necessarily like the most like accessible thing for for it for just everyone just like why did Desmond want to run away but also that that element kind of threw up some interesting questions for me where it was like you know on some level Desmond is acting for the entire time that he's you know in obstegro activity like he doesn't know he doesn't know his ass from a hole in the ground pretty much the whole time he's like what's all this assassins and Templars that's crazy but then then he's like oh yeah I escaped from other compound one time I'm not I don't consider myself an assassin it's like oh so so you do know what they are because a moment ago well yeah we have because he says like he's like I'm not an assassin not anymore yeah I was a little unclear on that I think he's just being coy and I tried to play this whole game from the perspective that that Lucy is actually working for the Templars even when she presents herself as otherwise and like it is a stretch well can we talk about that no yeah we can talk about that I like especially you're playing this game I fucking hate that retcon like it makes no sense it's pretty stupid because it like it doesn't make any sense it's actually if anything it's a better twist that Lucy isn't a Templar fuckface yeah it's not necessarily a twist but you know what I mean like that's so much more interesting than oh this woman at obstergo also happens to be a Templar yeah fuck and the fact that they reveal that she was a Templar in a DLC anyway makes me feel like you can almost get away with pretending it's not true all right that's what I do fuck that shit dude like it's it's just like up until up until revelations it's not even like explicit yeah because the the the the big change happens at the end of well we'll talk about that when we get there but just fuck fuck that and you can tell that this game has like certain pieces moving forward like the fucking satellite that just gets forgotten about between ac2 and ac brotherhood we know why that happened yeah and it's just like I and I look I know there are certain people on twitter that like will mention the satellite plotline I never quite got why people cared about it so much now I get it because I replayed and I realize that they were building up a lot of internal mythology about what obstergos plans were and then to cash in on annual releases they're like ah fuck that no and whatever yeah and it's just yeah fuck off you know it's like a certain point I get so cynical about it because just instead of completing an arc efficiently they just they're worried about how they can keep making this make sense and stretch it out for longer games and they fuck it all up yeah they really fucked it up because when I play this game I realize how much potential there is in the modern day and especially through the emails which you so much don't care for I also couldn't find them like I kept trying to interact with their computers um every time I had a modern day interlude and like it let me look at Lucy's once but I could never look at warren's for whatever reason so to get to get into warren's you have to pickpocket his pen off of him oh well I never knew to do that well there's a scene where he's like get in the animus Desmond and he turns around from you and you can walk up to him and I'll just take that pen of yours to access your computer and the next time you come out of the animus you can access his computer and then at the after the credit sequence you can you can get the code to the conference room and you can get into the conference room and then there's a laptop in there with with all the emails one of which that we read during the conspiracies review you're blowing my fucking mind dude because like that's the kind of thing I would have tried to do when I played the game the first time because I was so attracted to the mystery of the the modern day and what was going on that I explored like every inch of the area that was available to me and I tried to find all the opportunities to learn more stuff and then after that in like subsequent playthroughs that felt less important to me because I've played the sequels I know the answers and I know there's really not that much going on here but I never knew you could get into the conference room I also never knew you I never changed the camera angles much during cut scenes so every other playthrough I missed the part where you could like actually see Alan Reichen like I think you and I had a conversation once where you're like he's in the game he speaks he's you can see him I was like no he's not yeah he's through the he's through the conference like I got the very end you can see him through the window but he looks exactly like Jeremy iron he's kind of hard to see oh yeah he looks exactly like yeah but yeah we can agree this is the best modern day ever yeah and I mean the emails to me also just represent like a a completely different world that it that it ended up becoming like I think eventually eventually it just started becoming our world but with assassins and Templars yeah but I think in this game and a little bit in AC2 they are very much different worlds for sure for sure yeah there's a lot of that world building stuff some of these yeah well because some of these emails just represent like a like like a the entire continent of Africa not being accessible because of a virus yeah or the fact that yeah like I had a little brain alarm go off because when I read the one about like oh people in America are taking refuge in Mexico like I've seen that trick used once before and it was in an episode of sliders are you familiar with the show sliders I'm familiar with the sandwich sliders are is a show about people who they they can slide between alternate realities and so each episode they're in a different dimension where things are different somehow and in the pilot he's like he's crossed over to an alternate dimension he's in a car and he's listening to the radio in the car and it's like immigration between the US and Mexico is at an all-time high and Mexico keeps wanting to shut us out they're just looking for a better life people and I was like oh that's really interesting that they took a thing that that we know about the world and they just did the opposite of it and don't justify it or explain it or explore it at all that's really clever it's not it's not the most elegant thing definitely I suppose when I consider that email though I consider like what if abstergo is like doing certain shit yeah in America that people don't want to have happen anymore no there's some lengths you can fill in and that is part of what makes it interesting I think I agree with you on the level that AC as a whole would have been more interesting storytelling opportunities for the modern day if they had committed to the whole idea that they're taking place in an alternate world the way that those emails imply that they are but I don't know that I would have wanted it to be the alternate world that is created by those emails if that makes sense like I love the concept of yeah obviously the assassin temple or conflict doesn't exist in our world so to tell us that here's a world where it does exist and nothing fundamentally has changed about the world as a result that does make it less interesting to me so to do a different world with alternate world building and and things that are true in terms of like the geopolitical scale and the way that people interact that's I think a great idea if they reboot assassin's creed that's on my list of things I would want them to do but I do think that the way that these emails are written it's a little lazy to a certain degree I do think all of the emails that have to do with absurd go happenings are very well written oh yeah no I mean I think they're all pretty well written I just I'm really just talking about like the choices that they made about some of the alternate stuff I I know what you're saying oh yeah I'm not saying that like you're thinking they're not well written in terms of I love the way that they were kind of characterizing Lucy and and and Vidic like in the Lucy emails that I read where she's all very you know she's like she's very a serious email writer you know like we all know that person and then Warren Vidic writes emails like a fucking boomer like that's amazing yeah she like she's like correcting his grammar and he's like why do you sign your emails you loser yeah why do you sign your emails it's at the top of the email I can see your name like I just loved that that was great but I I love how he's also like a dick over the emails too he's such an asshole Vidic was a really fun villain he was just he was very kind of seen chewing over the top bad guy another thing that's wasted in this fucking series the things that he says about the Templar ideology like it all made sense as far as like I can see an organization that's pretty maybe well intentioned organization that's just trying to end violence and create peace and all of that like it just it worked it there was something kind of poetic about the way that these ideologies played off each other and the way that some of these games especially ac1 used to take advantage of that conflict was it was just something else the thing that this game does very well is kind of like giving you an inch at a time of exposition like in the conversations that Desmond and Vidic have you really get an idea of like I guess what I'm trying to say is you always go you always leave one of their conversations wanting more yeah like when when Vidic is like they're gifts from those who came before you're like what the fuck does that was such a cool line yeah I remember hearing that for the first time being like what and it was like it really felt like you were just learning more about the the puzzle you were learning more about the world and it nothing came out of left field it it all kind of built on itself like okay to learn that there's a race of precursors that would be a pretty big drop but they don't cover that in the first game really but they hint at it and if they've established that there are these magical artifacts like a piece of Eden then yeah a very plausible explanation for that would be that they were left behind by a precursor race but we just get that that little that little tip tease that little tease of the tip that there's more going on I love it yeah that's the thing is it all comes down like this to the subtlety of it I mean there's a lot of conversation in the historical story between Amualam and Altair and it's like they're discussing the piece of Eden and things and events like there are certain events that Amualam mentions that like are explained away by a piece of Eden but it all makes sense in this mythology and I think at a certain point they just they really overplayed their hand oh yeah but when they when they were keeping it very close to the chest in this game in ac2 and whatnot like to me the entire time I was like please just like give me more of of like this stuff in the modern day yeah because you can make a good modern day conflict story but you what you can't get back is those little nuggets of precious information that they just gave to us and all the mystery that they've completely blown the load exactly and that's the thing is that's why I think that's a big part of why these modern days stand out so much is because we knew so little and we wanted to know so we had to and we exactly and we had to film the gaps ourselves until we told us otherwise that and that's what's missing is because now we know too much you know you took the words right out of my dick and I hope I did I agree completely oh here's a little note that I had that I wanted to mention maybe I'll slide this in somewhere the sound in ac1 is very very bad there's some cool sound design things I like the you know the piano thing and then when you collect a flag or whatever I like the really dramatic whoosh of when you assassinate some with the hidden blade but the music I mean these are very iconic sound effects the music is all over the place in my opinion there's stuff that sounds very like you know you got that really iconic like I think theme in damasque where it's like yep exactly like that's great but then you have like the chase music which is cool but also sounds like it's from the matrix like it's very sci-fi you know what I mean like that early 2000s for sure sound aesthetic and there's just no like I feel like there's no cohesion like there's a lot of really cool modern sounds and cool old sounds but nothing is blending them together remotely well at all I don't I don't I don't disagree I like I yeah I mean like you said I love the hidden blade sound effect that it needs to sound like that again I think and there's a cool like like I think that a lot of those pieces of music on their own are great it's just in the context of all of it together it's a very jarringly all over the place soundtrack I also think that one of the big problems with I mean look we're not gonna be the first people to shit on the ambient dialogue it is jarring that each city has the exact same lines of dialogue they've just replaced the accents but what makes it I think more annoying is the fact that I don't know if you notice this playing ac1 the sound of someone talking in the city in most normal games and in every other Assassin's Creed game the farther you get from that source of sound the quieter they get and you know you move your head to the left or right you'll hear them in the left or right it's positional audio ac1 doesn't do that at all it's all just like in the mix at full volume and that volume doesn't change whether you're on a rooftop or the top of a tower you're gonna hear you know someone say thief you are a thief at top value unchanging it's very jarring and distracting and also I think what they have are they have these like nodes that essentially emit the sound um positioned throughout the city so if you are standing nearby to one of those nodes you are going to hear whatever line of dialogue is programmed to it over and over and over again so if you find yourself standing on a rooftop for any reason for any period of time you're going to hear it a constant loop of I'll have your hands for that I'll have your hands for that I'll have your hands for that so it's very poorly done even by 2007 standards if anyone wants to jump in the comments and tell me that I'm actually wrong about the system or I'm wrong about how it was done uh or that there's like a really good reason why they did that way but I'm pretty sure immediately an ac2 that's corrected and I never have that problem again well also the something worth mentioning is that the just ambient talking from crowds and people and uh an ac2 has done a lot better than an ac1 like because like I guess we won't I guess I won't go into a tangent I just wanted to mention that I really like how the animus looks and I think it looks really like they how cumbersome it is the fact that there's like a whole whole section a whole corner of the room that's dedicated to servers alone you know kind of makes it really stupid that Leila just pulls out a fucking animus and out of her pocket they literally fucked that part of the animus by game two yeah I'm not disagreeing with you I'm saying that this game this game does the best and by ac4 it's a VR helmet oh yeah I'm not I I'm just giving that as one of the egregious examples yeah that's fair that's I think there are plenty I think there are plenty like ac4 I thought ac2 when Rebecca Crane was being like they just have no passion no competitive edge anything they can do I can do better I was like yeah all right sure I guess whatever you say Crane cool but we have more to talk about ac2 later yeah we're gonna do an episode just on the just on the corrupted sequences only all in all Assassin's Creed one you know it's kind of like when you have a parent you don't like very much like you got to give him a lot of credit they did create you but I've really lost track of this metaphor um yeah well they they kind of made you who you are but you moved you moved on to better parents yeah exactly and you know 13 parents later they're kind of all losing their magic yeah ac1 I got to give a credit great atmosphere great tone definitely the starting point and if it had not sold as well as it had we may not have gotten uh the Assassin's Creed we know and love and hate today but um really not that fun to play and I will probably never play it again I think I'm done with ac1 I've I've reached my ac1 quota but sound off in the comments you guys do you love ac1 do you hate ac1 what what do you think this is the official podcast of hating Assassin's Creed and still somehow liking it enough to be doing a podcast on it at all yeah somehow some way we're home to many contradictions on this show we really are uh go out and get yourself a ninja foodie go buy a June oven or whatever it's called a Juneau oven Juneau oven Juneau what I mean as always there are ways to support the show if you enjoy listening you can send our linky poos and linky pods to your friends who like Assassin's Creed and or podcasts um you can leave us a comment telling us what we got wrong about this Treviso Treviso if you have any fact checks you want to make leave them in the comments but also message them to us and put them on our discord server so thank you all for for listening thank you for interacting we we love you we love love love you muah muah muah muah muah muah I have been the blade and I've been the hook I've been the hook this time around guys and this has been the hookblade podcast see you next week so you can use one or the other


Hey, what's going on guys? Patriot Prime here once again with another episode of the Sitrep. And I'm here with Matt, aka Matteo Potato from YouTube. Matt, how are you now? I'm doing pretty good. It's a little bit later here, but you know what? I'm doing pretty well so far. Excellent, excellent. Well, first, why don't you tell my people a little bit about yourself? Well, I do transformer reviews on YouTube. I do stop motions every now and then. I film short film projects. I do Star Wars reviews. But the main bulk of my channel is basically me sitting down with a transformer and just saying my thoughts on it, talking about it. Some jokes here and there, some stop motion here and there in the review. So that's basically what I do. Excellent. And I'm going to let everybody know, I believe you are my youngest YouTuber that I've had on the Sitrep. I've got to know. How old are you, buddy? I just turned 23 last week, so. Oh yeah, you're half of me. All right, well, let me explain how the Sitrep works. It's a series of 10 questions that I ask. The first five are regarding you and your history of transformers.  And I think you and I first met via a YouTube challenge through Facebook, was that correct? I believe so, yeah, from transformers and such. Although I think I had seen your work prior to, but I don't quite remember. You were one of the first guys I met when I was doing YouTube and started on Facebook. And I know you and I have been Facebook buddies for quite a while now. Yeah. All right, well, anyway, we'll get right to it. Question number one. What's the appeal of transformers for you? Honestly, it's the mind puzzle aspect. Transformers has always been, it's a toy first, it's a mind puzzle second, and then it's a robot third or a car third, however way you look at it. So I've always been interested in mind puzzles. I always had those weird chain and ball things where you always had to take the chain off the ball and it took you three or four hours to do it. So mind puzzles were really always my thing and I think the reason I got into those was because of transformers, you know, trying to figure out how they transformed. I would always buy them secondhand on a flea market. So I never had instructions. So I was always trying to fidget. You know, I didn't even know G1 Optimus Prime had ratcheted legs, you know, until, I would probably until last year when I started messing with mine a little bit more. So, you know, it's always that aspect of it.  Aside from G1, which is always the right answer. What is your favorite transformer fiction? But first, what is your G1? What's the transformers you grew up with? Oh man, my G1 is a mix between RID 2001 and Armada. I got into transformers right in between that sweet spot where you had the RID toys still on the shelf and the new Armada stuff was coming out. And I just thought it was also cool. You know, I had the orange bulldozer from RID 2001. I think it's Wedge from the Build King set. And I had the Bendy Prime from Armada. And those were like two of my first non-flea market acquisitions from transformers. Which one was Bendy Prime? He was the deluxe Armada Optimus Prime, the little one that came with the mix. The one that came with a little jet that turned into a gun. Yes, that one. Okay, I've got that guy. I didn't know that's what he was called.  I know that it seems like everywhere I go, they called him Bendy Prime because he had actual joints as opposed to like the bigger one that came out later that I guess was just a brick. I thought you was talking about some kind of gumby Bendy thing. Yeah, I mean, the first time I heard it, I didn't know what they were talking about. And then people referred to my review on it and I was like, oh, I guess that's a thing. So anyway, back to the question. What is your favorite transformers fiction? I gotta probably go with either animated or Armada simply because I recently just watched animated before I moved and I really enjoyed it. I liked the different aspects of the storytelling. I liked the twists and turns that they added, kind of added to the Transformers lore along with some of a lot of the older stuff that they brought back and made popular again. But Armada was really my G1. So like there's a lot of moments from that show that I remember and that I really hold dear. So I would probably have to say Armada with that one. And I know that's a probably an unpopular opinion, but... I can't remember, excuse me, I can't remember much about that show at all. I think that came out while I was in Iraq. I remember the toys being out and I remember getting, when I was overseas, we had internet cafes and this was when I was kind of getting in collecting and I was buying stuff on eBay and sending home to my wife constantly. So I know I got a lot of Armada stuff. I know there was some Energon stuff but I just, I can't remember anything about that cartoon other than the mini-cons talked like R2-D2. Pretty much. It was in that Pokemon-esque realm where it was an anime that they brought over and dubbed and just kind of put on Cartoon Network forever. I remember, I used to watch it before I went to school every morning at about 5.30 in the morning. I would watch Armada and then I would watch that old cartoon called Zoids because I thought they were the same thing for a little while and then I would go off to school. I saw where they're making a comeback. I did see that too. My mother actually said that to me. She goes, look what I found, so. I remember having some of those as a kid so they'd been around for a while. Oh yeah. All right, sir. Moving on, question number three. Do you have a favorite figure or grail one that you will never let go of? Say you gotta sell your whole collection tomorrow. This one's not going anywhere. I would have to say that is my carded G2 Seaspray because Seaspray was my very first transformer. I went with my great grandfather who ran flea markets and did a lot of grain stuff. They just got together and did sales for the community and whatnot. So he used to take me to those and he was a big car guy. He collected model cars. He collected little hot wheels and model boats. Basically anything that was cars related. And he bought a Seaspray, a Cosmos and I want to say the other one was a G1 First Aid because he thought they were hot wheels cars. And he would always let me play with them so I was playing with them on the wooden floor and I pulled Seaspray's legs out to transform him and I thought I broke it and I was terrified because I was like he just bought this. I just broke it. What am I gonna do?  So that was like my introduction to transformers but it was really like those fond memories of like going over to his house every weekend playing with like that Seaspray, having a fun time with him. So and a couple of years ago, I think I want to say it was last August or so. A fan was nice enough to send me a car to G2 Seaspray and they sent it as a surprise. So when I opened that thing up, I was like, yeah, that's going on my wall and that's never getting rid of. So that's probably the holy grail that's never leaving my collection. I'm trying my damnedest to find that Walmart reissued gears because gears was my very first transformers. I just want to have one on the car. I have yet to see any of those. I think I saw a tailgate once and I already have a tailgate. So I didn't bother to pick it up. But there was a huge display around Christmas time that had all kinds of, or that whole series. I actually got two bumblebees, one on card, one displayed in vehicle mode. Of course I've got an original G1 too. All right. Number four, what figure is your white whale? This is your most wanted toy. If you found this toy, you could stop collecting. This is your main figure. I would probably, it's a two-way tie. I would probably have to say it's between. Yeah, yeah. I would probably have to say it's a G1 Liokizer, the transformers victory combiner, or a G1 Star Saver. Those are my top two holy grails that I've been looking for for a very long time. And it's just really hard to find them. But if I ever found a G1 Star Saver and a G1 Liokizer in perfect condition, I would probably give up collecting transformers for a while. That's been everybody's answer. It's always for a while. I'll say, oh, you could stop collecting. I'm never stopping collecting. Well, I gotta collect other things too. So I would probably take a break from transformers and put more money towards the other collections. But those two would definitely be a stopping point for me. Mine's a G1 Overlord. I know he's just a big brick, but I've just been obsessed with this figure once I discovered he existed. I just wanna get this guy. He looks really good, so yeah. All right, number five, what is your favorite transformer character? Any fiction, any media? I would probably have to say the G1 version of Star Saver, just because he's very elegant and he's very kind and caring, but he's also very much a badass. You know, in the victory cartoon, you know, he was always an epic swordsman getting into like these really epic duels, taking on combiners by himself. And I think it's the fact that it wasn't the stoic Optimus Prime or the Optimus Primal or the Hot Rod or anything like that, because those are always everybody's favorite leaders.  Not everybody, but a lot of people like Hot Rod. And Star Saver is kind of like the underdog of like the Autobot leaders personally, so he's always kind of been my favorite. Plus he just looks really awesome, so. And you really surprised me with that one. I was not expecting that, especially from a 23 year old. You wanna, you know, you love a classic Japanese G1 figure. That's awesome. Yeah, I mean, I almost said animated Swindle, because Swindle in the animated series, he was just a greasy slime ball of a character and he was probably my favorite part of that show. I need to watch that again. I watched it all on Cartoon Network. I didn't like it at first, but as the story progressed, I got along with it, especially with all the G1 throwbacks, and I loved their Megatron. I loved his voice. Oh, absolutely. He was awesome. Absolutely, yeah. They, I found that Hasbro has like a whole channel on like a Roku, on my Roku television. So I put that on there and they have all G1 animated and then a couple other series too. So I watched it that way. There's one on PlayStation 4 that I have. It's called 2BTV. It's got Armada, Interjohn, Animated, G.I. Joe, G1, on the Y3 G.I. Joe in there, too. All right, now we're getting onto the YouTube questions. And this isn't one of my questions that I have on my list, but this is something I wanna know personally. Madio Potato, where'd that name come from? Well, there's actually a really funny story about that one. So I was not the popular kid in school at all. Like I was the kid who kept to himself and I kind of like shied away from, I had friends, but like I would shy away from being in like big groups of people, right? And all through high school, I had, there was two friends, or all through elementary school, sorry. I had two friends and I didn't get to see them very often because we had different classes or whatever. And this one girl, I won't say her name, but like she would always shout out in the hallway as I cross by, hey, it's Mateo Potato. And I think she only started saying that because Matthew in Spanish is Mateo. And the only thing she could think of that rhymed was Potato. So like anytime I would walk through in the hallway, you know, that's what I would hear if she was crossing or like three or four other people would call me that.  They said, Mateo Potato, can you come down to the office? So that kind of ended up being a thing. So when I made a YouTube channel, I was trying to think of something really obscure because you know, everybody does like their first and last name or thinks of like a username with numbers and whatnot in it. So I was trying to find something that would be kind of unique, but at the same time really simple and really familiar once you've heard it a couple of times. So I just ended up going with that. It works, it works. Yeah. All right, so on to the real questions now. What possessed you to do toy reviews on YouTube? I think it's the fact that honestly up here in Maine, we don't have a lot of collectors or I don't know a lot of collectors, you know, I know there's some down in New England, farther south and there's collectors all over the country, but like up here in Maine, it just feels like I'm honestly the only one because I've never run into another one ever, you know, anywhere. So me kind of being by myself was, it kind of felt lonely at times.  But then that's actually when I discovered toy reviews and at first it was like my little brother was watching him and he was watching like, oh, McDonald's toy reviews.  But then I think I stumbled across evangelists and few Adams and Piaw were like the first Maine three that I stumbled across. So I watched their videos and I was like, no, I don't have to like meet up with people in person, you know, I don't have to go to try to go to conventions and arrange these meetings. I can just do it on here and people can see like my passion for it. And, you know, I was really, I'm an, I'll say an aspiring filmmaker because that's what I would like to go to school for. So, and I had done some classes in high school. So I thought, you know what, why don't I take that and then apply some of my filming techniques that I've learned and kind of like mesh the two together. So that's kind of why I started it. And if you watch my first couple of reviews, they're really got awful. I just point a toy at a camera and talk and make dumb jokes. But yeah, that's what I meant. Can't talk today. I like that point a toy at a camera. Let's get. Yeah, right? No, I just put the camera at the toy and I rambled on for a bit.  So yeah, it's funny when you go back and look at your old stuff. It's like, you're so trying to find yourself. I think I've went through a couple of different phases before I think I've got to lock in on how I want to do what I do now. But it's always funny to go back and watch some of your old stuff and go, yeah, I did that the other day. I was uploading a video and on my phone, I got to try and keep my phone awake while I'm doing it. So I scrolled all the way down to the bottom. I'm like, oh God, here's the old stuff from like two or three years ago. So I was looking at it and I'm like, this is really bad. I should probably go back and redo some of these. But then I figured that's part of the charm of the older videos is they're not done very well and you can kind of see the progression. I like how the Collector 75 is one of my favorite reviewers. I mean, yes, this was the guy I always went to for G1 and he would do that. He, I think one of the reviews he did cause when I was wanting to buy my G1 Thunderway, I watched one of his reviews and then I think it was a few months later, he redid it once he, you know, you start to get a little better. He redid the review again. He calls him his G1 Redoes, R-E-D-U-X. Yeah. There's another shout out for you Collector 75. I want you on here. So.  Shit rap. There's, there's. I told you, I can't talk today. I'm sorry. Hi, this is Patriot Prime and welcome to a new episode of the shit rap. You youngins. Yeah. All right, buddy. What keeps inspiring you to get in front of the camera? Honestly, I'll use my latest video as an example. I found a figure that, you know, I thought I would never find in Studio Series Scrap Metal because distribution here is absolutely terrible. I just watched that one yesterday. Oh, thank you. But I found it and I'm like, oh man, I gotta do a video on this. Cause, you know, I'm, as somebody who's kind of, I'll say kind of excited for the Studio Series Devastator, just how big it's going to be and the fact that they all combine. I'm kind of super excited to at least see how it turns out. So I wanted to like, kind of sink my teeth into that review-wise and be like the first person to get out a scrap metal review and get all the, you know, get the first takes and the fresh hot news on it, you know what I mean? So that was kind of my aspiration for that one. But just about every single review that I do is an older figure. Like I did animated sound wave a couple of months ago. And it's basically just, I just want to say my opinion about the toy. You know, I'll take a toy off the shelf, mess with it, be like, oh, I wish I had somebody to talk to you about this cause I think this toy is really good. Oh, wait a minute. And then I'll set up the camera and I'll just talk about it for half an hour, 45 minutes, edit it and pop it on the computer. Nice. All right, where are we at now? There are thousands of toy reviewers on YouTube. What makes you any different from the rest? I personally, I would say I'm the average Joe Schmo. You know, I'm not, I was never like big into toy collecting. I wasn't a big toy enthusiast kind of guy. I don't know engineering in and out, but I do know what I like. And what I like is a good simple mind puzzle that I can sit there for a couple hours, mess back and forth with and enjoy. And after seeing like reviews on YouTube and whatnot, I figured I would take what works for me and kind of take tiny elements of what works for other people and mix it all together and just bring you this average guy who doesn't know a single thing about, you know, toy collecting or engineering or the whole process. But I just know what the character is. I know that the toy is enjoyable for me and here's what I think about it. So it might be enjoyable for my viewers. And you have a great sense of humor. You cracked me up with some of the stuff you did. This video is, I love it. That's a lot of years of ad lib and a lot of years of improv, so. All right, number nine. What's your thoughts on the Transformers social community? IE, YouTube, Facebook, et cetera. And do you have any special shout outs? Oh man, well, I know that the YouTube community from what I've seen, there's like one or two bad eggs here and there who try to go at each other's throats. But other than that, a lot of like the YouTube community is really, really humble and really kind and accepting, you know, super supportive of brand new fans. I remember my first video I did. I had Adam from Transformers and Video Games when it was on the old channel. He was probably one of the first people to comment on my video way back when. From the Facebook page, we've got the people from Transformers and such, you know, that whole Facebook group is filled with nothing but kindhearted people.  I can figure Twitter out. I've had one for about a year and I just for a life, I cannot figure Twitter out, which it may be a good thing. I just post what I think every now and then or post a picture or two and then people seem to like it. So I just keep doing that. Well, like back on the topic of like Facebook groups, you've got Transformers and such, which is an awesome Facebook group. You've got the New England Transformers community, which is a really awesome group. You've got the Transformers YouTube community Facebook page on there.  But yeah, for the most part of the entire community across the board is nothing but kindhearted, well-meaning individuals who really just want to share their love of Transformers and collecting with other people. Yeah, prime example right here. I mean, this is awesome. And we met via YouTube and Facebook. Yeah, exactly. We were two dudes that probably just passing a toy aisle wouldn't even look at each other.  That's how I met one of my good buddies. I'm gonna kind of move into the shout-outs. Shout-outs to Zero One Transfan, my buddy Dakota, who I met because somebody posted in Transformers and such. I think it was Chris and Natalie from Six Shot, All in a Blur Reviews. Shout-out to them as well. But they posted, they found, they were like, oh, here's our monthly challenge where we find a very small YouTuber and share their page. And I think I had to be like under 200 or something like that. And I went and found the channel. That was the one where I met you, you shared me. That was the challenge. Yeah, because you were the, I think you were the newest channel that I found.  And now we've become good friends. You know, I've been on his show a couple of times. He's been in a couple of my stop motions. And that's kind of how I met like that side. And then just basically anybody in Transformers and such, you know, Chris and Natalie from Six Shot, All in a Blur, really excellent people. And they were the tight ship. That is one of my favorite Transformer Facebook pages. I love that when I spend more time on that page than I do any other. So, definitely shout out to you guys. And I'd like to get you on here too, so. Yep. And I think the last shout out I've got for the night or a couple, I've got two more shout outs. I've got Larry Arts Production, who I kind of met through Zero One Transfan, who does like these stop motion, kind of Transformer comedy shorts. They're really good. And then, ah man, I literally just had it in my head and I just lost it. You're not that important. Yeah. But no, those are the shout outs. Excellent. All right, last question, buddy. Do you have any channel goals for yourself and where can our viewers find you? This is your chance to plug yourself. All right, basically for the channel, what I want to do this year is kind of just double the amount of subscribers that I have now. You know, I think that's a good yearly goal, double what you started with for the year before. You know, just, I plan on doing more stop motions because those are always really fun to make. More videos like my isolation video, I think would be really fun to make, more short films like that. Because that's kind of stuff that I just thought off the top of my head. I didn't make a script for it, didn't write it. I literally just sat down and was like, what would be a good film idea that would kind of be out of the blue from the normal stuff on my channel? So I made it over the course of a week, put it on there, and it was a lot of fun to do. So I was probably in that one. I didn't realize that was a short film. I just saw it pop up, so I clicked it. I'm watching going, this is the weirdest Transformer review I've ever seen. I didn't know what it was. Yeah, no, I was, somebody had asked me prior to that video coming out, oh, when's your next Transformer review? What figure are you gonna do next? And it was because we were starting to pack up and starting to move that most of my collection was put away. So I'm like, a lot of the stuff that I still had out was stuff that I already done videos on. So I'm like, I need something to kind of keep my channel alive for a little while longer while we're getting ready to move and what's something weird and different that I can do. So more videos like that, I probably wanna do later on this year once this place is kind of put together. And basically just expand my, I'm gonna say group of friends as far as like Transformer community friends go. I know I am trying to get on more talk shows or podcasts with Steel City Bots. That's a podcast that goes on. That's actually a bunch of younger, I think I'm one of the older ones on that podcast because I think Eric is the guy who runs it is a couple years younger than I am. So, but yeah, more podcasts, more videos, more short films, and that's basically it. Maybe try to double my subscribers but we'll see how that goes. Well, hopefully I can help you out with that because I will put a link to your channel in the description of this video. And at the very end, when I do my little Optimus Prime with a flag waving, I will have a link to your newest video and a subscribe button to you as well. And also, didn't you just recently get engaged? I did, yes. Back in December, that's actually a funny story too. My great-grandfather who I was talking about earlier, when he passed away, we had a memorial brick engraved with his favorite saying, now take your time and hurry up. We had that engraved on a brick and that's actually at Fenway Park. So what we did was we went down to Boston and hung out with her grandparents and her mother and stepfather for the weekend. So we went to Fenway tour, we went to all these restaurants. So I took her to his brick because she never got a chance to meet him and I had never seen the brick in person. So we went there and it was a complete surprise to her. Like she actually had no idea. And she's been pestering me for a year. She's like, oh, I'll do that when we get married, whenever that is. And she would always give me like the glance. So I'm actually surprised she didn't catch it ahead of time. Well, congratulations on that. Oh, thank you. Well, that's pretty much it. That wraps up our sit-wrap. I appreciate you coming on with me tonight. I know you've been pretty excited about it. I hit you up Monday, right? Yeah, I think it was like Monday or Tuesday. Yeah, thank you so much for having me on here. You know, it's really fun to just sit, chat with you. A couple of buddies are sitting here talking about Transformers and our hobbies and what we enjoy doing, you know? That's why I love it. I have met so many great people doing this. And I want to thank you guys for watching. Once again, this is Matt from Mateo Potato. Check out his link in the description and we'll catch you next time. This is Patriot Prime, signing out. Ho-wah! Hey, I really appreciate you guys stopping by my channel. Don't forget to like and don't forget to subscribe. Also, check out some of my other videos that I've done on Generation One Transformers, Modern Era Transformers, and Toy Hacks Reprolabel sets. Once again, this is Patriot Prime. Ho-wah!


Given a planar graph with e edges and v vertices, we proved that e has to be less than or equal to 3v minus 6.  This suggests that the minimum degree can't be too high either. Let's think about that. Suppose g is planar with minimum degree equal to d. If it has v vertices, then the degree sum will be at least d times v. Now, remember the handshake theorem tells us the sum of the degrees of all vertices in a graph is twice the number of edges. And so by the handshake theorem, we have 2e must be greater than or equal to dv. Consequently, there are greater than or equal to dv over two edges. Now again, if g is planar, e has to be less than or equal to 3v minus 6, and we know that e itself is greater than or equal to dv halves, so we can replace and do some algebra and Consequently, d is strictly less than 6. Consequently, in a planar graph, the minimum degree is at most 5. This leads to an important result known as the six-color theorem. While we can prove it immediately, remember it's the journey, not the destination. What are some consequences of the fact the minimum degree of a planar graph has to be 5 or less? Let's think about that. Let di be the number of vertices of degree i. So remember the degree sum and the number of edges are related by twice the number of edges is the degree sum, and we can express that degree sum this way, i times the number of vertices of degree i. Since 5 seems to be an important number, let's split our sum. So we're looking at the sum of the vertices with degree 5 or less and all the rest. And notice that this first sum, because we're multiplying the number of vertices by the degree of the vertices, that's going to necessarily be greater than just the sum of the vertices. Likewise, for the other sum, since every degree here is 6 or more, we can replace it with a smaller value and get the inequality and factor out the constant, which gives us the inequality. But now this first sum is just the number of vertices of degree 5 or less. We'll call that number k, and this second sum is just the number of vertices of degree 6 or more. And since there are v vertices altogether and k have degree 5 or less, there will be v minus k vertices of degree 6 or more. And putting this all together, we find that, but again in a planar graph, e has to be less than or equal to 3v minus 6, and so this gives us the inequality. And with a little bit of algebra we find, consequently, k must be greater than or equal to 12 fifths. Now since k is the number of vertices of degree 5 or less, and k has to be greater than or equal to this amount, this means that the planar graph has at least three vertices with degree 5 or less. In fact, we could obtain even more detail. While we use the inequality, that the first part of the sum was greater than or equal to the sum of the number of vertices of degree 5 or less, it's a finite sum with a definite cap, so we can actually write it out explicitly. And remember k was the number of vertices of degree 5 or less, well, that's just the sum d1 through d5. And so with a little bit of algebra we find, let di be the number of vertices in our graph with degree i. If g is planar, then this sum must be greater than or equal to 12. And in some sense this is a remarkable result because it means we don't have to know what the graph looks like to be able to say something about the degrees of sum of its vertices. For example, suppose we see a portion of a planar graph, and we know that no vertex has degree 1 and there are no other degree 5 vertices, what do we know about the rest of the graph? Now since we know we have a particular sum and the number of vertices of degree 1 is zero and there's only one degree 5 vertex, then we have, and at this point we can list all feasible combinations of degree 2, 3, and 4 vertices. Since we need the inequality to be satisfied, one solution is to have d2 equal to 3, and this gives us 3 degree 2 vertices. If d2 equals 2, in other words we have 2 degree 2 vertices, then in order for our inequality to be satisfied, we need d3 greater than or equal to 1, or d4 greater than or equal to 2. And so that's 2 degree 2 vertices and 1 degree 3 vertex, or 2 degree 2 vertices and 2 degree 4 vertices. And there are other possibilities. And now we're ready to prove our first major result. If g is a planar graph, the chromatic number is less than or equal to 6. In other words, we can color the graph using 6 or fewer colors. We'll prove this by induction. Clearly the theorem is true if we only have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6 vertices, so suppose the theorem is true for graphs with n equals k vertices. Let g be a planar graph with k plus 1 vertices. Now, we know that the minimum degree of g is less than or equal to 5, so there is guaranteed to be a vertex in g with degree 5 or less. So remove the vertex and begin a graph with k vertices, and we know by our induction assumption that the chromatic number is less than or equal to 6. So now we'll put phi back, and since phi has degree 5 or less, it has 5 or fewer neighbors, and so if we have 6 colors, we can definitely assign it to one of the existing 6 colors. And so the chromatic number of g is less than or equal to 6, and so any planar graph has a vertex coloring with 6 or fewer colors.