Star Wars shows has been Andal which is by far the most political in the universe political of all of them it takes politics seriously in Andal and it's because the politics did not doomed the prequels it was the terrible story in the awful characters and everyone being stupid and the odd pacing and all sorts of all the other things if you're doing serious world building in the Star Wars universe particularly in this time period you actually do have to pay some attention to the political arrangements of that system like what is happening with the New Republic what is the New Republic even how powerful is it how far does it reach who's in charge all of these things are really vital to setup in a really compelling way again Andal is the classic example of how you can do that in a compelling way with a strong character driven story but Ahsoka comes along and you compare Mon Mothmarin Ahsoka to Mon Mothmarin in Andal they are not the same person Leia is not the same person none of these people they can't even fit together in the sort of the vague timeline sense when you get the beginning when the guy is giving the speech and he says it's been several years since the fall of the empire that's really helpful I love being grounded in this universe I love knowing whether we're before Mando season 3 or after it like incredibly important piece of information and they can't even give you that until the penultimate episode of the series and it was funny I feel like if Gilroy was told I know until they decide well that's probably the case like they didn't even know or like they weren't sure well we found that out with Captain America whether or not he's alive I was just about to say that this is not unprecedented shocking as it is he's not knowing basic information or being able to that's got to be a bit of a power play too because as a writer you'd be like I need to know that information and they're like you're not going to get it move on and you'd be like and I'll just have the character say I have no idea what year it is and we've heard about the many creatives that have left contact with Disney or working with them and it's got to be stuff like that like how fucking annoying would that be how would I write my story I need to know if he's dead you're telling me that you might establish later that he was dead the whole time and I have to write it as though I don't know whether or not fucking don't you think they're going to have an opinion to share if he's dead like it's going to come up well yeah you're just yeah don't bring it up yeah just yeah it turns the whole plan because I think it's the penultimate episode of Soka is when they reveal that it's all set after Mando season 3 which already causes problems because it means that Morgan Elsbeth's character has been on a prison ship for about three years at that point but then it gets even worse because you have the shadow council stuff well that's true but you have the whole shadow council stuff in Mando season 3 when it now, thanks to Soka we know that the Imperials plan is to divert all their resources to wait for a guy they haven't contacted and don't even know is alive because the witch magic hasn't been used yet and they're not helping Morgan Elsbeth anyway because they don't give her any resources if that fits together it can't actually work in that way and if the gap is truly three years how long has the gap been between Soka discovering the information about the location of the map device and going to the map device that doesn't make any fucking sense I know none of it makes any sense and it's funny because if you asked them they might actually they might actually go like oh fuck it's like oh you didn't think about that no fuck we didn't think about that they were probably like well to be fair it's like why don't you know why don't you know this is your life you make Star Wars all the time I fucking hate you you have the opportunity to create a television show do you have any few people on the planet earth have that incredible opportunity and you're squandering it and that's kind of what makes me a little bit mad it kind of pisses me off that you're wasting this insane opportunity that people would kill for zombie stormtroopers what the fuck they're ones ever truly gone they've got a whole army that they I dude that's one of those things where it's like I can't I can't I just can't do it I can't look at Empire Strikes Back watch that story and those characters in that world and imagine yeah and some years later there are going to be a bunch of zombie stormtroopers I just can't I can't do it I can't watch the prequels and be like oh yeah Anakin had this orange apprentice lady and I'm like that no he didn't he did not have that shit you made that up I will not accept the big why there's only so much that you can I think I'm pretty willing to accept it I can accept terrible things as being canon unfortunately my brain can just square those things away I've accepted the prequels so we're there but the point being I've said it because I think it was the first instance in Star Wars especially of like dude no no that didn't happen which is Han Solo dropping Cthulhu into a black hole that the Han Solo that we meet in a new hope did not I can't accept it my brain can't accept it as having happened it's just that's made up bullshit that didn't happen and the zombie stormtroopers is going to be another thing of made up bullshit that I totally will remove from my brain as being canon all of this is made up but some of it is way made up like I think there's one scene that sums up all of Ahsoka though I think it's got to be Maroc Maroc is probably one of my favourite bits in the entire show it's like all the episodes leading up and you've got all the rooms all who is he is he actually Ezra is he going to be Starkiller from like in Force Unleashed whatever it was is he going to be this person, that person, that person oh no no he's just a fart no he's a fart he's actually full of his blowing out like smoke up your ass he's like I mean smoke that's all he is he's not seriously you're talking about the people involved not knowing what they're doing the guy who wrote and directed that episode was actually asked specifically about that character and he doesn't know what it was because Dave Filoni didn't tell him so how do you you're writing this character you're writing the death scene how do you not know who he is can you make more of these fart people they seem to be pretty good with like flying and fighting and everything don't we've done the cloning Jedi thing we don't want to go there why did he why is he a fart because people do when they die they fart how annoying hey Dave what is this character I was like I don't know wouldn't you like to know just kill him off oh who is he oh he's just a fart oh okay he's still a better written character than Sabine though she's the worst she's like really really lame God she's annoying Sabine is bad Sabine is bad Hera's bad they're all bad I like the robot I like him yeah a robot David Tennant robot is pretty cool yeah I like him Sabine's got some doomed from the beginning is it the first episode where yeah obviously yeah but like when um when Sabine's got watching that hollow log of Ezra which is really just filling in for the audience who hasn't seen rebels or the clone wars like what the hell these people are and that audio log is when Ezra says like oh yes Sabine I'm your good friend Ezra Bridger you were like a sister to me and in that moment it's kind of screwed because like what's their attachment to each other it's just a vague friendship they don't even want to bone so she's going to go and potentially sacrifice an entire galaxy in order to get to a person that she doesn't really give that much of a shit about and then they meet and it's just oh hi oh hi how did you go here she really cares about this guy where's the Soka how did you get here he's like don't worry about it how are you doing I mean it was only two days ago that I saw her as far as I'm aware and it was my fault too also the guy you sacrificed yourself is trying to make his way back but don't worry about it let's have some fun adventures with those little turtle people adventures are fun she undid she reversed Ezra's sacrifice she put in Uno reverse cons like his whole his whole arc well that explains how terrified and you know Grim he looks when she shows up and not being thrilled to see his old friend my old friend being Ren cause it's funny he's like oh it's being kind of tough it's like dude it looks like it's been a breeze it looks like you're having a good time here with your little friend you look like you've been living very comfortably it's not like you've got a whole bunch of new scars because you've been at all of these really close calls and fights and you know malnourished or anything you just you chill and of course there's no repercussions for that they don't talk about this it's just they just leave and then it's like seems like a pretty natural way to implement some drama it's like wait what the fuck are you doing I just sacrificed myself and now you're back and he's going back to where you do fake drama he just he can't do it he can't tell stories he doesn't even seem to understand like what you're supposed to do in stories he doesn't understand the conflict and resolution you know like that sort of dance is like a part of storytelling he just can't do it and now he's in charge that's amazing how he gets put in charge poor Tony over there just like writing and redrafting well I guess the thing is that yeah but the problem is like I mean I guess in a sense it makes a lot of sense yeah it makes sense it's labeled as the guy who gets it and knows how to tell Star Wars stories and he's made stuff that is ostensibly successful so yeah but you know but now who are you gonna blame you know like if I mean it was all like he deserved to blame for a lot of the stuff that's already happened but now he's the chief creative officer so now there's no one to blame Chief creative officer of Star Wars yeah I believe that you only fail upwards I guess so um more black pill depressing nonsense about the industry well hey I think uh I don't think we know I don't think we know I think it's up in there maybe I think it's like a lot of things at Disney they're trying to figure out maybe what their plan is because you can't ignore the holes in the dike right now you gotta figure out how you're gonna plug them oh well Wikipedia says Ahsoka is a miniseries so it's done according to Wikipedia but hey interesting who knows you know it could stay in miniseries or it could get a second one but if it doesn't get a second one then that means it's canon in Star Wars that Ahsoka and Sabine are just cast away in a different galaxy it's kind of what they deserve so I'm happy with that yeah I'm okay with that I'll take that yeah they deserve to be stuck on a planet with each other for eternity yeah um I think one piece came out uh next one piece but I heard very good things I watched only the first episode and I didn't mind it but I didn't really continue but you guys all told me it's very nice I like it it's a really easy thing to point to as good it's good it's straightforward it's good it has characters who are all different uh and have their own journeys that they're going on that are gradually sort of resolved and developed on over the course of the season as they go to different places and meet wacky characters and uh getting some cool action scenes in a kind of fun world that um for as absurd as it is accepts what it is like with earnestness this would be like an example to point to of it accepts yeah we live in a crazy world with wacky characters and crazy powers and there's a bunch of pirates in all of these islands scattered around with zany wacky entities and it just kind of accept that as being what it is and embraces it with a smile on its face it's like a really fun show that's like a really easy one to recommend I don't really know much about the anime though so like all the manga so I can't really speak to like anything to do with like how faithful it is or whether they are I mean I uh I recognize a lot of things on that first episode I watched back in the day when it came out in good old Germany uh so I think it's pretty pretty accurate from what I know whatever I remember but that's me from years and years ago but I I think it's pretty the guy who made the manga involved in it so that he had something to say yeah that always helps something that I really liked about the show was the production design it had these really cool sets lots of cool like makeup applied to certain people like the the fish guys that were more involved towards the end and just like that everybody kind of played it off as essentially being like real in that world like the production design was super impressive it had a big budget though I'm pretty sure and they used it pretty well I'd say I really like the set for the uh for the um the big um restaurant in the middle of the sea that they went to like in the middle of the season I really liked that set and that was cool yeah it was good there's only a couple of fair like the only episodes I think I would say would duds would be episode three and four with the cat people villains um there's the the slightly irritating section that I have in mind anyway is like he actually does he wants to kill them he catches them he's actually got one of them in his clutches and proceeds to not kill them in order that he can live which is just kind of there it was still like fun it was just irritating as opposed to the rest of the show which I thought was generally fairly tight for what it was well yeah because you definitely got like some conveniences and stretches and stuff like that but um it hits a lot of the standard power of the beats literally some stretches in the show yeah stretches I like him I like Luffy a lot he's uh he's a cool protagonist um it's cool to have this sort of like relentlessly upbeat optimistic guy who uh extends that optimism to everybody that he meets in his life but at the same time when uh he means business he means business who will like steadfastly protect his friends and do what he believes is right it's just I like him a lot he's a cool protagonist hmm it's refreshing to have something that isn't at all cynical I think yeah he sort of embodies that which is it all of the people around him are individualists they will have their own motives and they are prepared at various points to double cross anyone they're with uh if the the team threatens to get in the way of the individual motive but it's the guy who is the most like blissfully naive and optimistic all the time who even though he is naive is the one who makes his naivety come true like he is the one who gives them the grander family he gives them the collective and it sounds like a really tween simple message but yeah friends will do things for their friends and so there is no necessary conflict between your individual one and and the one to the team um it's just nice but interesting true as that may be have you considered that I'm a loser friends suck and also divorced isn't that fun maybe they'll try that for season 2 isn't that pretty clever and fun something that was super interesting was that Zorro was like one of the first people to really come around to liking Luffy because he had no reason to dislike him he looked at him as a guy that had like no ulterior motives or schemes that he was playing at he was just a guy chasing his dream and that he found that immensely respectable like I found it cool that the guy who's like the you figure the one that would be the hardest to get on board was actually one of the first I like you a lot actually I'm gonna stick with you to the end um he's a bit of a powerhouse of a character and he wants to give that power to someone who's uh with while and suck yeah I mean Luffy proves himself a whole bunch of times in front of him so it's just easy for him yeah so whereas it was like Nami who was the hardest one to bring around because she had all of uh her basically plans that she needed to accomplish she had a lot of reason to be very world weary and cynical and structurally they do a good job of spreading out everybody's sort of stories and development throughout the season it's um remarkably structurally fundamentally normal it's uh it comes across me as completely recognizable as a structure even though it's a wacky show once again it's kind of stuff we were talking about earlier if that's the theme of what we've learned about media this year it's that take your shit serious it's it's a stupid wacky crazy world but all the characters are very much uh aware of just how bad things can go and what things mean they don't fucking wink at the camera every five seconds mm-hmm I I quite like the uh the I can't remember the captain they uh the the guy who was chasing him Luffy he's uh his grandfather right yeah I liked him a lot he was uh pretty entertaining his scenes were often pretty interesting good actor yeah I like the dynamic yeah the back and forth everybody there got yeah I like got yeah we'll be paying attention to season two the next season yeah and I wonder if this will be an instance of interest the general takeaway is that this is one of the best uh anime like live action western anime adaptations mm-hmm so I wonder if that's going to influence again but whether or not that would positive or if they learn the thing which is oh give them give them like colorful hair that looks like in the anime and that's good enough in and among disaster we have these little hints of like oh what's that you know in the little adaptations that aren't as cringe as you might think you know my god what does it mean going forward who knows we'll find out it goes back to the video game point which is you know this is successful because it does not run away from its premise there's a there's a reason all of these original properties are so successful and denuding them of those original aspects is not going to make them better necessarily so yeah even if it's a live action anime adaptation play up to what the anime did and that makes it popular don't pretend that because it's live action it has to be more serious and somber and adult well is it there's probably a very borked conventional wisdom of like well it isn't a games we can't just or film is an anime because it's just like why no and if you think about like Resident Evil that franchise was pretty money-making the pulled of us and some ones and they just they're just hilarious in terms of adaptations I could see people I could see pulled of us and tell you like you can't just take the games to make them into films that would never work you have to do what I did you have to fall we we would have plenty of imagine like a direct adaptation of Resident Evil 4 you could do it it would be great absolutely yeah that be even Resident Evil 1 like I'm convinced you can make a fucking sweet Resident Evil movie but I quite I haven't seen it done yet I think did you talk about Blue Beetle no I saw it I talked about it on FNT if anyone wants to see my take of it it was pretty bad I'm trying to remember it now the main thing I'm taking away is Susan Saranda's acting was so bad it was hilarious she couldn't give less of a fuck about being in that movie it was actually funny and almost worth seeing just for that the main actor did a really good job I bought his enthusiasm and you could tell he really took this role seriously and wanted to make it work but all your standard like horrific plot just everything's coincidental or holes there's plenty of like jokes that didn't work but like I guess it's it was better than like the flash yes that's something I guess the 3 out of 10 territory basically yeah I think there was some things I kind of like there's a lot of things I did not like at all it's but seriously that one has been flushed it's almost like you saying that maybe things like I did see that yeah by the way flushed films expend for balls also relates around that was so shit that was miserable that was miserable it was boy that was the most I assume it's like money grubbing just make another one yeah but this one didn't make any money exactly expendables is dead as an IP now thinking of that movie the thing that comes in my mind when I think about expend for balls is how Sylvester Stallone's in it for 5 minutes and 80% of that is him sitting down in a chair somewhere which makes me wonder like hmmmm oh this this information about something going on with him and the IP or the company's whatever behind us obviously from our perspective like we just is just a sad film that needs to be put down yeah it's stupid you can see us talk about it for 20 minutes on Meadows Forge while talking about a bunch of other things on the 3 hour stream we talked 20 minutes oh and I just remembered because I was playing a particular game we talked about it and we should probably mention at least somewhat would be Liza P that was good it was really cool to play an entry into the souls like genre that wasn't just funnily enough it did fall victim to a lot of carbon copy issues but it also did a bunch of new things and cool things created a will and also didn't copy some things that they definitely should have copied but for some reason didn't yeah it had the full selection it's like oh god I wish they copied that dude what do you have this whole stagger mechanic but you don't give me a bar that shows me how far this goes up surely that's been modded in now right like someone's got a mod for it it's gone I wonder if that makes the game like super good you know I was surprised to learn that it wasn't from software I was convinced it was for the longest time like oh it's a different company really it looks so similar the souls games well souls like is a genre for a reason there's so many derivatives of dark souls now that sure you remember the era of all video assays related to games would reference dark souls there was a time on youtube that was absolutely platforming every single fucking it would be cringe as hell and you'd almost collect them like pokemon like all the people saying it and then mark brown at the top of the list the episode would be like it's very similar to dark souls speaking of dark souls armoured core 6 came out this year as well yeah that was good too I finished that last week nice what do you think I liked it for the most part it's been ages since I played an armoured core game I think 3 was the last one I touched so a bit of a learning curve to get back into it I probably accidentally completed it more than strategically completed it but I did complete it still complete it, that still counts well I know there are a lot of games that came out in September because Starfield came out I played that for like two streams and I did that for yeah I didn't even had the intention to really play it was like oh it's on game pass I don't need to pay extra well I might as well give it a go and stream it and man this is a drag, it's just boring so what's the general takeaway boring it's boring all those planets are empty as fuck for the most part and it's poorly put together and the more you dive into its development just the more brain damage do you become tell us about that normally with those games I like to do a lot of optional stuff and I was like you know what I'm just gonna go to this place I'm gonna build a big ass base so I can get all these minerals and what not in one place and put them there but then you learn oh wait I need to unlock the skill tree all the way to level 4 on this particular one which I need to do specific things before I get to the next level and also level up before you can even get all the resources and grind your way through the specific skill tree so you can put bases on a hazardous planet oh you go through all that and then you realize that the outposts also are pointless because the number of resources you need for research is extremely low compared to the amount of time you invest into leveling it up I didn't even get that far I would have been very disappointed if I actually went through that man actually that was a common trend of reviews was they were praising the outpost system but none of them had actually played with it you mentioned that there was a story with the development what was the deal there so basically they didn't use a centralized design document when they were creating the game the design director has specified that they had a bunch of smaller little documents but that's still not supplemental so what you have is a bunch of these elements and mechanics that are all independent and working separate of each other and working against each other in a lot of ways and it results in this overall experience where there is no cohesion between any of the game's mechanics that sounds really stupid so the guy that's responsible for that is Emil Pagliarulo and he was also the lead on fallout 3 and fallout 4 which should explain the kind of decline in quality in those games some people get it confused and think that he was the lead on Skyrim he actually wasn't that was a pair of gentlemen Bruce Nessmith and Kurt Coleman and Nessmith came out recently and basically said yeah we made Skyrim and we thought that we were infallible so we just said fuck it did whatever we thought was good and it kind of bit us in the ass with fallout 76 something I would say is that it is now inviting people to consider just how dated Bethesda RPGs seem compared to a lot of their contemporaries and also how limited they are compared to a lot of their predecessors by way of player choice and interactivity I think one of the things that for a long time Bethesda games kind of had going for them was that they were kind of the only ones doing that kind of game there are ones that are kind of like them a little I could see why someone might compare the Witcher 3 to Skyrim or something like that but they're clearly different experiences but there's not it's almost its own genre a Bethesda game a fallout 4 and New Vegas and Skyrim they are their own kind of game kind of like in a way sort of like the Souls Likes yes as emulated as often the only person emulating Bethesda games is themselves and often very poorly but it just if you want that thing you have to go there they're not really competing with anyone else and no one's really competing with them but what has happened is they've started having to compete with CD Projekt Red and they are they're badly losing on that because they were resting on their laurels and that allowed them to be typically three to four years behind the rest of the industry and you can't be stuck in a 2020 mindset when you have Baldur's Gate 3 coming out a month before you and Phantom Liberty coming out two weeks after you I feel like Baldur's Gate 3 dooms Starfield in that it came out and seemed to blow like I've heard nothing but positive things about it yeah I've been playing it offline with a friend as I've said many times before and I've been quite enjoying it what do you think it has raised the bar for a lot of people's expectations for fantasy games of its general kind the point about putting it next to Starfield is really apt one because everything that Baldur's Gate 3 does well really just exposes how shallow Starfield is funnily enough not only in just a game itself but also in just fixing the game because like a couple of like a week for like weeks like every day they put out patches of things they got told by the community and I think just a couple of weeks ago they put out like another four gigabyte patch with even more changes and fixes so they've been just keeping on the game to just keep it keeping it up yeah I got people who tell me that they're really good and they're loving it and they're really getting into it super hardcore and that it's like finally realizing its potential and a lot of work got put into it so I don't I presented with the choice between Cyberpunk and Baldur's Gate 3 I gave Cyberpunk a chance maybe I'll do it again but it's probably going to be Baldur's Gate 3 whenever I get around to it because it just seems like out of the gate like Baldur's Gate 3's success is really important in terms of highlighting that genre that has for a long time essentially been declared by certain entities in the industry as being unviable is one of the most successful games of the year. I'm pretty sure it's still got like hundreds of thousands of concurrent players on Steam months after its release as a more old school turn based CRPG managing to outperform the newest Bethesda big budget like RPG I can check that 250,000 concurrent players at the moment. That's a lot of people that makes one of the potential for yeah the peak today was 287 and a half thousand players there's so much to do Baldur's Gate is massive size Starfield's great problem is not like mechanical bugs at least when I played it and I didn't get very far into it because it did become incredibly dull but Starfield's it's immense it's got a massive scope and there's nothing in it to justify the amount of space that you have so the first planet I tried to explore fully when oh there's a cave over there that looks really deep and complicated and there must be something important at the end oh no it's another procedurally generated craft that doesn't need to be there and then the main story oh well you've woken up and you've touched a magic artifact that's given you visions of a dystopian future and then you have to go and figure out what that is. I've seen that so many times before and your earliest mission go here pretend to get a job for someone else by going here to fill out a form to go back this is tedious whereas Baldur's Gate 3 it's massive but there's something to do wherever you are the player choice actually matters there's a huge range of it the characters are really well drawn you're probably not going to play it the same way twice no matter how many times you play it but there's always a reason to be somewhere the world feels alive and it justifies the amount of space that the world is taking up and we do seem to be in this phase of there are certain game developers who seem to think the bigger the open world you have the better but that's not true because you do actually have to have content to fill your open world if there's no reason to go anywhere there's no point having the place there to begin with something an impression that I've now alright I'm going to clarify I'm kind of talking out my arse here I've never quite understood the appeal of like the Bethesda RPGs at least not in terms of I can't understand why anybody would be interested in them but I always got the impression that like the amount of praise they got seem to outstrip how good they actually appeared to be the Bethesda games look at them I've really not played much of them I played I think like 10 hours of Fallout 4 I barely played any fucking Skyrim at all maybe like an hour I've only ever looked at it from the outside in and always wondered like it looks to me that there are other games with better open worlds that there are other games like with better combat that there are other games with better RPG elements that like there is no single aspect of what these games do that you can't point to another game that does that component better the Bethesda games are a collection of things that when taken together give you a particular experience but no single thing in them is really noteworthy they're often described as a jack of all trades style of game where yeah it's a game where you can have a stealth system that you can also be running around and doing action combat or running around and casting magic it's trying to give you as broad a spectrum as possible one thing I want to impress about Starfield though is that I realized this a couple weeks into working on my video on it that there were no memes about the game or if there were memes they were about the release of the game not actually derived from the game itself and it's the same with the state of the fan art and the porn that's been generated of it it just doesn't exist compared to something like Baldur's Gate 3 or Cypherporn it's about to say like at least I get the Skyrim stuff but like jeez on the Bethesda thing what I tend to hear is that it was the older games that they made like Morrowind and stuff that were cool and that it was sort of like later that it was starting to get but the thing that I consistently hear about Fallout is that New Vegas is like the best one of that era well what you have to understand is New Vegas was not developed by Bethesda that's upsetting and that the old Fallout games like Fallout 1 and 2 those ones are better than the 3 and 4 that's what I also hear um I can compare them I imagine they're very different from one another yeah they're very not just genre different but in terms of like priority as well with the people who had created them back in the 90s Bethesda Fallout likes to lean more into the humor like comedic aspect to it whereas Fallout 1 and 2 were more kind of serious I mean it was still you know retrofuture in the 90s Americana but they did take those concepts more seriously okay do you think that Starfield is going to like develop a really big modding community that's going to like improve the game well I heard the modded play people stopped because they said the game is too boring I don't know if that's true but I I had a 3 hour conversation with a gentleman named Lester who created the modding tool X edit which is significantly important for modding Bethesda games and it is his opinion that it is going to be extremely difficult for any modding scene to prop up around Starfield in part because of various changes that they've made to the file structure of the game itself making it very difficult for let's say you have two mods that change New Atlantis the game can't reconcile the difference between those mods and you can't stack them in terms of which one ultimately gets resolved first which one actually gets to make the change let's say let's say that you want to let's say you want to make your house on destroyed earth right in order to do that you can't just make your house and then put it into the game you actually have to replace something that's in the game already and then your house from then on can be pulled by that randomized system of the PCM so your house can show up on other planets I don't understand Bethesda should clearly know when launching Starfield and getting it ready that the mod scene is something that they need to encourage to blossom as much as possible for their games they're leaning more into the paid mod direction where basically they can put their syrup tap on it and just get dividends forever more or in perpetuity for other people's work how much if someone makes a mod that they put into the creation club what percentage of the money goes to the person who made the mod I'm not aware of the new creation system but I have been told by somebody who talked to one of the creation club modders they're under NDA of course so this is all anonymous but they were paid per contract which means they did not get any kind of royalties for if they were bought years after the fact so they were just paid a flat fee to make it I heard $800 to make one of those creations $800 which is not enough when you consider the amount of work that would be involved in creating a piece of DLC for them based off of the ones that you showed in your Skyrim video they got way overpaid I know what you mean creation club was certainly not a it was only a good thing for modders in so far as some of them were hired into Bethesda some of them as full-time employees and some of them as just temporary contractors here's a question do you think that Microsoft is going to be implementing major changes of Bethesda in response to Starfield which was definitely hedged by them as one of their big releases this they have already put in one of their executives to kind of be Bethesda's tarred wrangler from here on and there was a big exodus of employees on September 21st whichever day Pete Hines left there was also multiple developers who left okay well so for instance will shin who is the lead quest designer on Starfield left the company pretty much as immediately after launch so he's not going to be working on their DLC or anything is that a good thing or a bad thing I was just thinking Microsoft executive in it's like the blind leading the blind basically oh no absolutely they're going to just run it like it was 343 and they're going to run their new property into the ground 343 what a success story I don't know Microsoft is just so ungodly rich it's like it's like a sport what was the heavy guy seeing forget it but it seems like it's like a spoiled rich kid playing with extremely expensive toys who doesn't understand their potential value because like Halo is basically on life support in terms of its cultural significance at the moment when it used to be I mean like the phenomenon of Halo 3 living through that was nuts yeah it was that shit sold consoles and a bajillion of them first now it's like under this it's like the 360 game I mean you think you hear the words Xbox 360 in your mind it's just like I'd like to clarify for the chat that while Will Shin left he was just the lead quest designer there's still Emile Paglia Rulo above him and Todd Howard above him and they're making your Elder Scrolls 6 so now now I know who that is because I've watched a lot of your videos at this point but Emile Paglia Rulo is catch everyone else on kind of who he is this is funny he was a game reviewer at a website called Adrenaline Vault back in the late 90s alongside Pete Hines so what happened was Todd had hired Pete Hines for Morrowind's development as a as a producer and as like a marketer and then Emile had joined I forget their name but they were the company that made Thief and then they went under and he needed a job so Pete Hines got Emile a job working on Morrowind and he went from rinky dink quest designer on a DLC to like a lead quest designer on a major faction to like the lead designer on Fallout 3 like that those three steps boom boom boom and as soon as he hit that lead design position everybody in the industry was talking about how he's this amazing writer on Fallout 3 so he kind of let that go to his head to a bit and said well my shit must not stink and that's how we ended up with Fallout 4 and that's how we've ended up with Starfield as it's just the kind of degenerate way that he likes to make games has only gotten worse with time the degenerate way he makes games yeah it's funny how that works right you just sort of fail upwards in game design you want to talk about fucking upwards I know a few industries where that happens I think one of the big sort of like proof of the pudding sorts of thing is I played Skyrim when it came out I played it like everyone else except Fringy um but I played it I didn't play it I think I stopped playing it before the DLCs came out and I sunk a shit ton of time into it but I was finished with it as an experience before the DLCs and everything and when I look back it's almost like a black hole in my mind I remember it's like trying to remember a dream you just had you sort of remember bits and pieces but you don't really remember anything that happened whereas I remember a lot of the Witcher 3 I remember the Baron and a lot of the weapons and the armor and the quests and the experience I remember Skellige and all sorts of stuff I don't remember like anything from Skyrim nothing stuck with me I've been told often that when people watch my videos I remind them of a lot of things that they've done that they had no recollection of Yes, that's the feeling I was getting seeing the Draugr Crips and everything like that I was just like oh yeah in a previous life it feels like I played a game that took place here or I did this quest and I had to dig deep down for how I might have felt when it first happened to me it was a game that has figured out how to turn people's brains off and they've never been able to replicate that part of the formula that it's supposed to be just this comfort food of games you play it when you're on a depressive phase the reason there's so many Skyrim videos is just that those guys probably played Skyrim for two weeks and wanted to justify wasting two weeks of their life on something and so they just shit out a Skyrim video it lulls you into this sense of complacency for an experience because you just sort of you just sort of play it and it happens it's like you're mesmerized by it I think and then once you sort of snap you stop playing because you're just finished and then you just can't it's like you're snapped out of a trance and then you go about with your life as if nothing sort of happened Yeah, so what's funny with Starfield is that that's basically the broader industry of kind of realizing things that for a long time that Skyrim wasn't as good as you remembered and they're bringing like to assume that they're just keeping that level of quality is just because you don't play it out that often or something and they're kind of seeing it and also me shining a light on the development practices Mr. Pagliarulo has actually been getting a lot of tweets about the whole no design document thing and he's been he's posted multiple responses at this point kind of sniping sideways at the issue it seems like such a disastrous thing that you obviously don't do everyone needs to be on essentially not even like the same page the same pamphlet if everyone has a general sort of thing that they're working toward and is directed towards like obviously that's what you do when you're making a new IP not just a video game but a new IP well the example like it was zero g combat none of the quest designers basically use that mechanic because if they didn't know it was going to exist why would they write a sequence for it while based on space remake is like yeah we're doing zero g combat it's gonna be fucking baller I mean it's been the year for games has been pretty good to where it seems like they couldn't just coast by you know like they had to actually be really good and to not be really good was to fall flat on their face I still want to see the version of Starfield pre-delay I can't imagine because I don't know if you haven't seen my video there is a Todd Howard quote where he says that they didn't figure out how to make the game fun in their in their words until 2022 I thought he said that the game didn't feel fun until it was about a year I think that's what he said by the way pretty fucking worrying but I guess generally in game development you figure out how to make the game fun first and then you build the content well known anecdote but I mean with Super Mario 64 they spent like a year just trying to work on making Mario fun to move around and have them jump around and control yeah you have to have that good core gameplay thing that around which everything else is built whether it's the gunplay of your shooting the movement of your platform the fun in Halo it's what they say 30 seconds of fun and you just repeat that over and over and you got a video game but if that's not fun like Fringy was saying that Nintendo method of like establishing a character in a move set and then perfecting that just have like developers endlessly running around a play test area just testing every single move going is this fun is this fun okay and then you move on to the next phase and building a world around that where it's like we can take advantage of the single jump the double jump like that'll let them take advantage of this move to get to this part of the world right are you trying to tell us the secret of Mario's jump there is something of a secret to Mario's jump in the sense that Mario games are consistently fun platformers that may have to be gone for like 30 years the development gets locked down it gets locked down in phases right where it's just like we're not going to move on until we fucking nail this part of it it's like okay are we done with this now we'll move on to the world design like that kind of discipline I think is key I will say ideas this was like the first Bethesda game since I don't even know when but I never had something about starfield always put me off like I never had any interest in it I thought some of the aesthetics were really neat but that's kind of as far as it ever went with me I never felt any desire to play starfield you mean during like marketing kind of they through until present day there's never been anything about it that like called to me to play it before which you know I for all of its issues I did enjoy that I modded the fuck out of that into an experience that I legitimately did enjoy but even starfield there was never that thing that grabbed me that encouraged me to to play I agree with rags I was like I wasn't that sore on starfield I was just like it looks okay it doesn't look terrible to me in fact it kind of looks a bit interesting and I'm looking for a reason to play it and then a friend of mine he like streamed this thing it's like some youtubers he follows where they just play through the game from the very start and I watched like two hours of it and I was pretty underwhelmed particularly at the part where you finally get into space and like I was expecting that there was going to be this system like no man's sky or even fucking starlink on the Nintendo switch where you can fly out of a planet's atmosphere and seamlessly go into space without any kind of loading screen or even if it's a fake loading screen it like it won't look like it and it'll feel like it's not a loading screen it'll actually just feel like you're transversing from you know a planet's atmosphere to space but no in starfield it's literally like press E to activate ship and then you it fades to black go to a fucking loading screen fade to black again, fade in boom you're in space and then you just fly around and it's like well that's it because like my limited experience playing starfield you're kind of disincentivised to actually use the space flying stuff at all because you can just fast travel to pretty much anywhere you need to go and most places you need to fast travel to so what you're just trying to figure out how you have less loading screens a lot of times it's like oh I want to go to the land over there but my ship is only allowed to hop to maxing it's about loading screens I'm only allowed to hop to systems at once because my ship has only that much fuel so you hop there hop to the next one so if you want to go to somewhere that's like top right of the map you better prepare yourself for some loading screens well that's the amusing thing too is Pete Hines was talking about how the grav drive was essentially designed to work in such a way that anything to do with space is supposed to be entirely optional the game is like weirdly designed in a way where absolutely everything in it is optional and so it just makes you wonder why you would play any part of it if you're not yeah if you're not getting me to engage with your systems then I'm going to go play a game that wants me to there's so many games that are I mean let's take a game that I figured that patrician was big that's what I'm going into is 7 Days to Die I got a lot of time in that I really enjoy that game the game is definitely um it is the best worst game I kind of love it there's a lot of weird strange things about it and they all coalesce into an experience that isn't really like any other and it's full of systems that you just feel like you want to engage with whether it's the leveling or the base building or the actually my favorite thing about it is the version design of 7 Days to Die or whether it's everything from I mean daisy to they're full of these little systems and you would figure out how does it work how do I get better how do I streamline this experience how do I do this that and the other thing but if everything's optional then it feels like they're trying to it's too casual if that makes sense like they don't want me to take it seriously all I gave was black flag black flag as a video game expects you to engage with it's combat system and expects you to engage with it's ship building system neither of those things are optional when you play that game which is why I actually I wasn't interested in those and so I stopped playing because of it but I can respect it you don't want to be in a position where Ubisoft is expecting you to actually play the game and you're not you know yeah there is some element of like I the ships fighting ships in this game this game just isn't for me and you know not every game has to be for me but the mega watered down nothing matters lol do whatever like this insistence that I have fun by saying that nothing matters is an interesting strategy um but I don't know these games just don't grab me give me the focus was the winner this year in terms of games and providing a very focused vision and experience yeah yeah um it's not what you wanted then okay I guess it's not for you then there is a specific tailored experience rather than just it's like the you know the kind of it's funny you bring up black flag because Ubisoft has that problem right the Ubisoft open world generic open world game that wants to be everything and ends up being basically nothing makes no impression yeah and that's such a it's a risky move to make because like I really liked origins I loved exploring and looking at the world and the combat was fine and I really enjoyed just going around and doing stuff and I never beat it I put like 80 whatever hours into it and I'm like you know what I'm done I I'm just done I've gotten my fun out of it I've enjoyed my experience time for me to move on I have no desire to beat the game or really do anything else but I'm glad I played it and it's not even like a you know Starfield doesn't seem like a game where I could say that I've gotten my thing out of it now I'm done like I can't like if it's a buffet normally you go to that and you eat your fill until you're satisfied but Starfield looks like a buffet I just don't even want to do yeah it's extremely it's extremely underwhelming for being a 200 million dollar game and supposed to be this flagship product for Xboxes yeah well I didn't sure Microsoft is not thrilled I didn't even understand the purpose of the space stuff because like you know you you're on a planet right you go into the ship you go to the pilot seat hit E and then it's loading screen boom you're in space and then at that point you can just fast travel to wherever like planet or section of a planet that you want to go to so it's just like what what is the actual purpose of the space part like what what's stopping you from just like fast traveling from just like one section of a planet to another section of a planet and just skip the space part entirely and so it seems like the only incentive is just like getting into occasional dogfights and then you might get some unique loot in the blowing up of ships that you fight with like I don't see other utility resources you only get like material resources you don't actually you can't upgrade your ship through doing ship combat you know you can't find like a new weapon or new armor or anything like that like you'd be used to in a traditional Bethesda combat formula right yeah and I was thinking like okay if this is how it works then I guess this space area is just basically a skybox where you're not actually traveling in any direction you know what I mean like where like you're not if you if you see something in the distance it's basically just a skybox where if you were just to hit W you're not actually getting in any closer to anything over time but you actually are which is but it leads to geometry that you can't actually interact with it was really weird there was this weird there's a streamer on Twitch I think that did this they basically held down the W key in space and they went to sleep and then they woke up like eight hours later to see where they would get and it's like yeah in fact you can actually travel to the geometry that you can see in the distance but it doesn't do anything once you actually pass through it you clip through it yeah and you basically just look around at the untextured interior of it and it's just like okay this is nothing like this is actually more jank than if it was just a skybox you know I'd actually prefer if that was the case sorry go ahead yeah emphasize for the chat you cannot fly in between planets manually you have to select that planet and then hold a button down to watch a cut scene of you flying to that planet if you want to fly to planets in a in a video game play Ratchet and Clank a Crack It Time released on the PlayStation 3 back in good old 2009 because Ratchet and Clank always had fun loading screens to contextualize going from one place to the other but in that one you can actually fly between between those planets and there's things to do in the in the system that you find yourself in you can go to a bunch of like asteroid fields and that's crazy that sounds like a real game pretty I think we've made it up I feel like there's something to be said about setting people's expectations where your game actually is and just owning it confidently just to say yeah we're gonna have a bunch of little maps and they're procedurally generated and you don't like fly around in space completely freely you know you go from place to place and just own it and say yeah that's what it is you know we have a you have a loading screen when you travel to a planet and then you land on it there's all this stuff to do and everything like that you know just be better for them to say that than to set everyone up thinking that this is a game where you could go anywhere and do anything just spend 45 minutes of their Starfield Direct saying very little accurate about the game but setting everybody's expectations high one thing I wanted to mention was in the game awards in the part that people could vote for they had accidentally leaked what the results of the poll were and Starfield was number 18 but number 20 was No Man's Sky for game of the year yeah for the players players voice game of the year yeah all right players voice what I liked about that was like traversing from planets to space seamlessly I thought that was really cool the other stuff I'm kind of meh on like you know there's like a meme about like the creatures generated in that game where it's all like procedural and it's just like you have arms put on these creatures with like these heads and tails that don't quite make sense they look kind of derpy and whatever it has it has an endearing charm now it's a much more functional game I was unfortunately quite broken when I went to review it a couple years ago but no the No Man's Sky fans they swear by the game is the experience that Starfield had advertised I've heard that a lot of work got put into making that game something like an actual game yeah you know another science fiction thing that came out in September that I think I might be the only person here or watch was the creator did anybody watch that no you're the reason they didn't watch that watched it did anybody did people in chat watch it the film came out there was a lot of conversation about oh look it's like an original science fiction film that has like a cool aesthetic he does have a cool aesthetic it just doesn't really have anything else no it's honestly pretty terrible I'm actually in the street with Cap talking about that film it's really bad like if you actually delve into the plot and how everything connects together it's a mess it's kind of unfortunate I would not recommend that film basically to anybody cool aesthetic but I think it wastes its premise and it's just filled with like shitty writing it's like really early on as well you think one of the most interesting things about having this AI villain is that you know you have AI which does sort of mean something you can do really interesting things if your villains are AI and it's conceptually fascinating and there are so many new innovative things you can do with that premise the worst thing to do besides maybe the mission impossible approach of never even bothering to define it is to say yeah these AI things the first thing we're going to set them up as being is just human they are that's all they are because what is even the point of them being robots at that point they are just metal human beings that's it but I guess it's nothing more than a little bit of world flavor at that point but it's like fine I guess but that seems weird the whole film it's about that that's what the whole film is who directed that movie Gareth Edwards really which is why I was partially interested because I do like the work he did on Rogue One between him and Tony Gilroy Rogue One wasn't useless and then it's funny you said it came and went it's the anthem of films remember that game anybody with that I feel like it's that one's almost been scrubbed from history anthem like the it just didn't have very much cultural stain no it's died straight away I know a few people who have tried to make videos on anthem because it's a live service game and so there's a limited amount of time with which you have to even make a video about it right wasn't the deal with anthem that they were going to do like a retooling to fix it up and then they quit they had a roadmap and they had a live year plan and then they gave up they just said oh no we're not doing it we can't justify it so yeah it's over it's done so the opposite of no one's going away then yes where they actually persevered through it but the problem is they're EA that's actually funny because their game before that was Mass Effect Andromeda which at its inception actually had a very similar premise to Starfield they were going to do a big galaxy full of procedurally generated planets I think maybe this is a I don't know part of me is hoping that it's a phase the procedural generation stuff but who knows maybe that just depends on how good it gets it works it works for No Man's Sky it works for Daggerfall but you have to have a very specific mindset when you're developing it and a lot of game developers don't have that mindset they have a handcrafted world so I think when I first saw Anthem come out the big wow moment was like its introduction of 360 degree traversal like you could rotate the camera wherever and go in that direction but then they spent so long getting the game out that other games just ended up doing the same thing and it's like even Dead Space did that of BioWare Magic where they were working their employees 80 plus hours a week for 18 months on end right well cause the story with Anthem is that they basically started developing the game properly like maybe a month before they revealed it to the world that they had spent 5 years in pre-production fucking around and then EA shut up and was like where's the video game and they didn't have anything to give them it's even better the guy that they were supposed to bring stuff to change in his mind of what he wanted at one point he just said he wanted an Iron Man game and so that's why the flying is in that game because oh right yeah yep sorry absolute disaster is what that one was nobody played Mortal Kombat did anybody play Mortal Kombat 1 this also came out about around that time nope no alright well I saw X though that was coming out saw X of course we did the Saw arc and saw X it was capped off with that which was a surprising highlight of the 10 movies they finally it took them 10 they finally figured out what they should be focusing on it's crazy not like amazing or anything but kind of is for a Saw fan like wow they did the things it's a Gooster movie I don't really take it too seriously as a scary film I don't think anyone takes Saw as a series of that series is scary rather than the many different ways you can enjoy it mostly just holy shit what are they going to do next and what would I do if I was in this trap more so would I be able to engage in the exchange we concluded that Six was the clear winner for the best Saw film and that it cracked the formula and it would have been neat if more of them would have followed something like that and we know that there will be a sequel and we'll be on the way so not only yeah which is going to be crazy because we've got to try and get that done while also doing the new arc and I was just thinking imagine they released another final destination this year and so we just have to keep adding to all of our different arcs while creator do slow down yeah a little bit but you know I don't blame anybody for being completely disgusted by Saw in general I understand it's alright well maybe they'd rather watch Five Nights at Freddy yeah a Willys Wonderland I came out around that time I don't think that's a 2023 was that also a 2023? no it was a couple of years ago it could stay there yeah Willys Wonderland sucked it was fucking horrible I hated Willys Wonderland and it was obviously just a Five Nights at Freddy's rip off a bad one when the real one came along okay well maybe this will be interesting I don't know yeah I don't care about Five Nights at Freddy's as a franchise or anything I haven't played the games they look like the opposite thing that I would ever want to do but the movie was fine yeah well ultimately those are not out yet but we have recorded we've recorded so many E-Fat movies it's like 50 at this point and you will see a lot of them in good time everybody in good time uh I got bored of Five Nights at Freddy's as soon as they started fully showing the animatronics and they're like working together with them and I'm just like I don't really know what to be afraid of anymore you know what I mean it just felt like it blew its load I feel like it should have started good is it even really a game adaptation? I almost think it's like an internet meme adaptation at this point so you could say either or with the limited knowledge I have of Five Nights at Freddy's I would say they did what I would have expected them to do when turning that game into a movie they even did some things that I think are quite wise in terms of being able to make a story out of it we went too happy with a lot of the choices they ended up making just for normal story reasons but the film itself does kind of take the story seriously it's not like it just memes they're probably going to try and build a franchise out of it for like a movie wing and dramatic payoffs like it's not just laugh my ass off, Robert kills you in goofy ways or whatever it made a lot of money further emphasizing that we're probably going to be seeing a lot more video game adaptations in the coming years yeah though speaking of video games Super Mario Brothers 1 there came out, am I the only person who played it? I still haven't played it I thought it was great yeah it's one of my favorite games of the year it's like one of the best 2D platformers in a long time, really really really cool easy recommendation hmm came out the same day as Spider-Man 2 actually well let me tell you Super Mario Brothers 1 is essentially like what I think everybody kind of wanted them to start doing like the new Super Mario Brothers games are cool, they're fun but they're very safe they're basically just trying to essentially like translate the standard template for what a 2D Mario game is the old Super Mario Brothers games to newer visuals but it's like a really straightforward 2D platformer they're good, they're really good but the fact that they sort of kept doing that without making any major changes I feel like by the time we got to new Super Mario Brothers U everybody was kind of done everybody was a little bit bored of it and then this one comes along with the same like core framework for a 2D Mario game but with a whole bunch of like new power-ups and the new like the Wonder Seed mechanic that like fundamentally changes the level in an unpredictable way like presenting with new platforming challenges and obstacles that you need to contend with really like vibrant art style good music as per usual cool new animations and everything like that it's just like a really easy great game recommendation yeah I agree man that was dope and it reminded me a lot of Super Mario World yes it felt like a sequel to that game in terms of continuing with that kind of like spirit yeah there are parts like lifted I felt straight out of Super Mario World like when you defeat a castle in Super Mario World you have that little like cinematic cutscene where it's like Mario and maybe a couple other characters I can't remember who who are looking in the castle in the background getting blowed up and it's just like well your adventure is not over yet basically whatever the text was I can't remember but it was just like in Super Mario World they basically did the exact same thing and then but like the saving grace I think of Super Mario Wonder is the Wonder Flower just like this game changing element that you pick up and it just drastically changes gameplay fundamentally of whatever level you're playing like you could be playing 2D at one moment and then you pick up top down the yeah exactly you'll pick up the Wonder Flower and you could be playing top down all of a sudden where all of a sudden the background is now the floor and now you're wandering around in like a top down space and it's a guy that has to cling to the walls to like navigate you can't really jump but you can cling to the walls and sort of maneuver through the area or like where it turns everything turns into a silhouette and you have to try and navigate the landscape only using the silhouette without any other additional visual information or you got to run away from like a stampede that's chasing after you or it's just like there's an immense variety I think they only repeated like maybe once or twice there's a lot of variety to the variations on the level there's very few repetitions there are a couple but startlingly few like it's pretty unique like going stage to stage what the Wonder Flower actually does which I found really impressive and it's like totally optional right you can go through the level and not ever find the Wonder Flower because sometimes they're very occasionally I mean most of the time you can sort of like if you're a skilled enough player you'll find the Wonder Flower like 90% of the time at least but like there's some levels where it's just like oh I didn't get it that time like I wonder where it was and then so like it's not strictly it's optional you can get it and then when you do get it it's just like whoa what is this like this is crazy what it's doing I was surprised by the Badgers I figured I'd just mention that well not Badgers Badgers like when I first saw it I talked about it in the trailer and I'm like okay this just seems like kind of just things that you can get that raise the skill floor essentially no like lower the skill floor just make it easier but there's like some good meaningful differences between the Badgers that you can get that functionally change the platforming in ways that can actually make it more challenging for you or easier for you which is cool I thought it was just going to make it easier make it harder for you which is cool yeah based on your play style like you can have a badge that gives you like a level up not like a level up but you know like the mushroom that increases your size gives you an extra hit or you can have ones that have it to be where you bounce higher um in like specific terrain or like it gives you an additional like wall jump um yeah you can glide there's one that shoots a vine vertically across to the nearest wall and you grab yeah it's really fun and it's just like holy shit I can't believe this is just one badge out of the complete array because it's such it feels like such a game-changing thing but a bunch of the Badgers have that quality to it you know which is really cool it's uh it's a really cool fun video game really that's that's like an easy recommend to basically anybody I can't imagine anybody playing it going I didn't enjoy that I just can't fathom it no it was a it's a joyous experience like I mean there's other games where it's like there's a bleak aspect to it that I'm playing currently like Resident Evil 4 and Cyberpunk where it's just like there's sort of a misery attached to these games in some aspect but like Super Mario Brothers wonder is just you're just smiling when they add full frontal nudity to Mario then we can talk about the atmosphere I suppose we're going to talk about the other game that also came out on the same day as Mario which was Spider-Man 2 who played that I never played that I never touched it but I'm aware of so much the discussion about it I mean I have to talk about it all on my own this was the game you were meant to discuss no it wasn't I don't have that much to say about it it's like a really it's just like you know that's like that game it's okay yeah it's alright I think I think the big thing that works against that game is I keep thinking back to Arkham Asylum is a cool game Arkham City is a better game that like blows the doors open on the mechanics that they established there presented with a big new open world that you can explore a bunch of like new challenges and sort of gameplay opportunities where Spider-Man 2 takes an open world makes it bigger but somehow makes the game shorter it's shorter you can beat it in like a weekend if you play it a lot that weekend it's only like 20 hours long to 100% that game I 100% did it like the weekend that it came out and was done with it it really like is not a very big expansion of what was present in the first game and if we're all being honest with ourselves like the mechanics are pretty straightforward and okay like it's a fun it's got fun combat but it's not like mind-blowing or anything and so like to only kind of add a few new things in after like five years probably not good enough kind of like they could have done more well they added you can play as Miles as well but really the main difference that that makes is in terms of like certain special abilities that you can use but it's not like otherwise they have a fundamentally the same mechanics that they mess around with yeah it feels like with the PS5 the flexing is the bandwidth of the SSD hard drive that they have in the PS5 where you can switch seamlessly between Peter and Miles wherever they are on the map but fundamentally in terms of gameplay in terms of what you're actually doing like fighting and swinging around there's not really that much of a change that's a shame because having the ability to switch between protagonists you could have and the other two did it with Emily and Corvo her name was Emily right? yes but they like their whole power set and it seems like the whole kind of way they wanted you to play was totally different where Corvo seems really like the like stealth and subversion oriented and Emily was a bit more like aggressive and going to get you but they had totally different like powers and feelings of playing the two something I want to mention about the game is in a lot of action games like the sort of third person action games you'd be thinking about like Devil May Cry and stuff keeping yourself in the air for a long time is kind of like a challenge and a testament of skill if you can like stay in the air like basically indefinitely because usually it's kind of hard to keep air combos usually be harder in these types of games and combos on the ground and Spider-Man like a reliable excuse me a reliable strategy to win every time is get up in the air hold triangle to pull the enemy up into the air, web him up and then hold triangle to slam them in the ground hold triangle pull the next enemy up web him up, fling him into the ground hold triangle pull the next enemy up web him into the ground one of the great benefits of playing it this way is that it means that you are invulnerable to the majority of enemies the only enemies you got to worry about is anybody that can shoot projectiles but you just get the spider-sense that goes ping and then you just press circle to dodge pull out their weapon pull them up into the air web him up throw him into the ground that is like a reliable strategy to basically win every single fight in that game unless you're dealing with a boss battle I'm pretty sure they removed there were less gadgets I think in the first game you have like a weapon wheel that you could select gadgets from whereas in this one they're like they're bound you got four that you can use they're bound to bound to the controller and that's it which I don't know how I feel about that but it's fun web slinging is fun gliding around New York is fun you know it's alright but it's not it just didn't make that much of an impression on me and then as for the story it's just got problems alright the plot it's got problems the character writing's got problems I kind of like Craven before you go into more depth I could say as someone who hasn't played it at all the impression that it made on you seems to be representative of what it made on the world it was like given a lot of press and sort of bumped up in terms of hype and everything but ultimately disappeared and people didn't really talk about the story at all compared to certainly to negatively well so I was going to say Spider-Man 1 I've seen around the block here and there I know particular scenes not necessarily the scenes as a whole but imagery right like him and Doc Ock I've seen loads of images of him and Aunt May there's things I've seen from Spider-Man 1 again and again and again people sharing big moments from the game that really had an impact on him Spider-Man 2 barely anything except of course the cinematic moment where Sandman throws Miles Morales and that a billion times because we will talk about why that got shared everywhere in a moment but what I was going to get out was just that the games it just disappeared it didn't have any longevity and all I kept hearing was that it was incredibly short I saw a couple of people I'm aware of saying check out my Platinum Trophy 100% after like two days and I was like wait what yeah like again I 100% cause the game came out on Friday I think 100% by Monday as in there was literally nothing more that the game had to offer me and I completed everything I had to offer it's really short and the thing one of the things as well is a lot of the side missions I think one of the things that makes for side missions like in an open world being more interesting is when you present people with like fundamentally different experiences they can add an easy one to point it was in Red Dead Redemption you can go play cards you can just go to like a place and play cards or go fishing or like there's a bunch of different side activities that you do that offer a different experience then running around and shooting guys completing a side mission so it literally just isn't the same for everybody yeah and then random encounters in the world that are kind of interesting and not just hey there are some bad guys there doing some stuff go fight them but like oh you encounter an entity in the world and then you can interact with them and then that will maybe send you on like a side mission with narrative and stuff whereas in Spider-Man it's like more or less every single side activity is you're gonna be fighting people more or less or not that it's gonna be like some traversal thing or like you pilot a drone through some areas like you just fly around a thing and then it's like they're really they're really straightforward and basic and you complete them really quickly and they're just like repeated across the open world so it's not really surprising that you can get through them so quickly because it feels like a checklist you just it's just like oh yep there's one there I'll go there the ones I liked was the Mysterio ones like you go to these Mysterio places around the city and then they give you a bunch of like missions that are kind of like unique and have specific challenges and you can get like a higher rank depending on how quickly you get through and it's like yeah that's cool but you know and I mean as for the story aside from just general like writing problems I think that the first like when you compare them the first game has more like big impactful moments big impact scenes whereas this one has less of those and the ones that are there aren't as they're not as good I really like Craven I think he's kind of cool as like a villain I feel like Venom is pretty severely underutilized though he's not in it for long and I feel like we don't get that much for him and Lizard doesn't really get that much either those are like the three main villains it feels like Craven got the most and then he's gone and then you know it's just like yeah then then you got Venom and it also feels like they're really struggling to figure out what kind of story they wanted to give Miles a lot of like the main plot things that are happening in that game related to like the symbiote and all of the shenanigans with Craven like most of that is about Peter and Miles it feels like basically the only angle that they could really work with for it is he wants to get revenge against the like Mr. Negative because he killed his dad and he works through those problems and then he basically goes on to like I guess like take over the role of being Spider-Man um well Peter's off doing something else and that's kind of where it's at and it looks like now Insomniac's going to be making fucking Marvel games for the next decade which I gotta say I don't know if he's a little bit lame it seems a little bit late to hop on that train they they struck while the iron was tooling significantly Marvel fans are moving away from the MCU into other into other formats they never seem to embrace the element of video games there doesn't seem to be that many like Marvel games that came out considering their dominance and you know the theater now they're catching up because they're making the Wolverine game and then I believe they're making they're making Spider-Man 3 obviously they tease that apparently they're making like a Venom game as well and they're also going to be making like an X-Men game and that's and they're making one Ratchet and Clank game and that's that's their next decade essentially which um I don't know and especially after Spider-Man 2 I think now like people will be looking at Wolverine a little bit more like let's uh let's like sort of wait and see on that one because I get the impression we've talked about a bit God of War Ragnarok is like the best of the snoy cinematic walkie-talkie you know like it's the best of that of that type basically um because especially with Valhalla I feel like it vindicates that Ragnarok has systems and mechanics that are reasonably in depth um and that there is something to master there with the combat system and then of course it's got an amazing story um it's got exploration um it's it's it's the better version of that whereas it feels like uh Spider-Man 2 is a little bit more like the you get into a bit of the lame version of uh the snoy cinematic game and I imagine that it's going to be the same Wolverine is probably going to be the same it'll have like you stand at third person Arkham kind of like action you'll run around and sort of open worlds and there'll be like a some amount of traversal and there'll be like a story and we'll see how good that is um and I wonder if that's going to be something that they can keep doing without people starting to get bored of uh that type of experience I'm not sure don't know but it looks like Spider-Man 2 is kind of it it sort of came and went um yeah well and the most notable thing that it did was have a huge war with Baldur's Gate 3 for some reason yeah because uh Spider-Man 2 uh it was in the same position as Horizon Forbidden West was that other year where it got nominated for a bunch of awards at the game awards but won nothing because of course it didn't it was a really competitive year where you had like Baldur's Gate 3 Tears of the Kingdom um Resident Evil Dead Space even though Dead Space didn't get nominated for anything unfortunately uh Street Fighter Final Fantasy 16 Pikmin 4 like there was a whole bunch of really great games that came out this year um you know so was that the the source of the rivalry between Spider-Man and Baldur's Gate was the game awards nomination they got nominated for everything and lost everything they didn't win at that time I just happened to be witness to basically all of the individual viral tweets by absolute chance right like the first one being holy shit look at this Spider-Man 2 incredible and it was the Sandman throw and the blah blah blah and then eventually someone would quote to that and be like you can tell the gaming industry is in like one of the fucking worst holes ever when everybody's blind blown by a fucking cutscene that went viral and then the next one goes viral of being like so I guess we're just at the point now we won't appreciate the absolute like incredible artistry of seamlessly tying this into gameplay you know into a cutscene and then the spectacle of it the graphics like that that's just something we can't appreciate about games anymore that went viral and someone else quote to you that being like oh yeah that's the discussion it's not at all about the fact that games have moved into basically movies with barely any interaction and no mechanics at this point that went viral then another tweet saying like that's ridiculous and absurd Spider-Man 2 was amazing mechanics then someone else quote to you that with I don't know if that's when Baldur's Gate 3 comes in but they start back and forth thing as to the mechanical depth of Spider-Man 2 versus Baldur's Gate 3 and you got everything you got the people showing like a selection of Baldur's Gate 3 that's like 10 minutes long with very little happening or what seems to be little versus like look at this sequence of Spider-Man 2 and you kill like 10 million enemies all in a row it's amazing and then you get someone else doing the reverse where Baldur's Gate has all this in-depth amazing options for dealing with one situation there's a girl who labels like 50 fucking options that sound really awesome and then the comparison is like Spider-Man 2 or so which uses the same move again and again and again again again again again again to win and so I was just seeing all of this like developed I was like how did why is this happening it is because of the game awards I think that's when I started to notice that because it was people were like it was robbed Spider-Man 2 to be clear Spider-Man 2 was not robbed of anything all the other games were better at all of the individual things that like Spider-Man 2 was trying to be like and the way that I approach this sort of thing is like it's I want to see good games and good developers get recognition in some way from the industry so it's like when like I don't care about like the Oscars really but I want to see someone who did a lot of work and who performed really well get an Oscar for their role because it feels like them getting the recognition they deserve it's not that something is good because it has an Oscar but if someone earns an Oscar that can be particularly meaningful and important for them and I want to get I want people I want the good rewarded start only got one nomination at the game awards let me guess one too many what would it be nominated the best was game well I'm going to go ahead and throw it out there I presume it was for best RPG only that was the only one yes okay guess what guess what happened boulders gate 3 wins I wasn't going to beat boulders gate 3 on that one and I think it showed the picture of Todd Howard like in the crowd that must have been rough having to go personally to the game awards like in your heart of hearts probably knowing we ain't going to win shit and everyone's going to ask me the questions and I'm going to have to tell them I've got to smile and say yeah we're really confident about our game and how it did and yeah we're going to do you see that stage you can go there but I can't because I remember talking to you about Spider-Man 2 another game that released around that time Lords of the Fallen I was thinking of something else tell me about it not much to say graphically pretty impressive mechanical addition to the souls like genre of having two worlds running at the same time and if you die you enter the dead world and that there are places you can get to in the dead world that are easier than the living world and that the dead world gives you more souls when you kill things stop talking about the dead world we already discussed Starfield we're going to have to keep this moving kind of cool kept me and Mel interested for maybe about a streams worth of time and then it sort of doesn't do anything else and dies out and you clearly see how much they were rushed and it needs a hell of a lot of polish you need a bit of a hulking beast machine to run it properly and just the further along in the game you go the more stretched out thin and crap it gets until it basically just sits on the floor struggling to live that's a shame it's already released I feel like I've heard of this game before Lords of the Fallen is an IP that did come out before it was one of the first copycat souls games and it was terrible I fucking hated it then they gave it another shot and this one was actually kind of neat for a moment and then it completely died out and it's like how's it compared to Liza P it's not even fucking close Lords of the Fallen I wouldn't even recommend it it's like a tutorial that gets you interested but then it just stops doing anything like it ends you know it's my assumption because we all know well you may not know but the story came out that they were rushed like crazy to make sure they got it out before Elden Rings DLC I think was one of the aspects and they also apparently had to change engines from I think Unreal Engine 4 to 5 which just seems like such a higher up decisions like just update to 5 flash this number just switch it out no problem as far as we're aware yet there was like not necessarily leaks but posts on 4chan I think from people who claim to be one of the developers or inside knowledge and it seemed pretty believable with the references and just nightmare scenario everybody destroyed by the whole project and the game itself was damaged significantly and it sucks because you can see there's a game in there that might be pretty awesome but we didn't get to see that yeah like maybe the first aid of the game is the most refined it gets yeah you were ahead of me and you kept telling me it's like yeah those bosses are not getting better and there's just poopy bosses ahead basically it's like oh the Fallen is a really appropriate name for it then pretty much both times I failed miserably thank you yeah that's about that for that no one will remember it and that's what happens when you rush the hell out of a game and destroy it that's its legacy then it'll just fade into nothingness you guys have to talk about Alan Wake too now that also came out oh you know what I was thinking of another game that you were going to reference but I don't know the timeline I don't know the cover of what it fucking came out I was going to say Kong Scully it was on the list it was last month wasn't it it was in October so I mean to be quick about that one it was an embarrassing it's even worse than Gollum probably oh my god really absolutely embarrassing I can't believe it got released it's a stupid meme game you should go watch my stream on it it was funny for about an hour and then it became incredibly boring me and Alan had the same experience it was again just I don't know how stuff like that happens and this is where I mean some people are like what a bad year for gaming it's like no it's been crazy we've had like everything everything has happened this year so much good lots of shit if you only tally up the worst games then no year is a good year for gaming you gotta take the highs with the lows I still think we've had a shockingly amount of good games in the mainstream high budget it's been a good year I'd say it's been a good year one of the really important things about it this year is that games that are representing underrepresented genres or better business models have been successful this year meanwhile I feel like almost the height of that might get more depressing if you find out how much money it actually made but the height of like live service annual release bullshit this year was Modern Warfare 3 yeah that kind of stuff is speaking of don't play them don't engage with them if you don't act like they're there they literally do basically go away just play all the good stuff reward the good a game apparently coupled together with pre-existing assets to the point where we'll actually ask you to insert the Modern Warfare 2 yeah Modern Warfare 3 Modern Warfare 3 began as DLC to Modern Warfare 2 that was entered into development about 16 months before about a year and a half before launch and that somewhere along the line Activision said no this is a full-price game but the problem is so as I understand it the campaign is comprised of partially of like warzone maps and elements all of the multiplayer maps are remakes of ones from older games which entails work but it means that there's you just got less of the whole fundamentally figuring out the core design of a brand new map compared to remaking all of the maps in Modern Warfare 2 so yeah it was DLC that got turned into a full game plain and simple campaigns like 3 hours long like that shit wasn't making enough money for Activision they needed more well I remember it got reported on by that Shryer guy that they didn't have a release for 2023 and then Activision's like no we have a full-price premium Call of Duty release in 2023 they said but yeah I mean next year there'll be like a new full Call of Duty game whatever that like I guess Treyarch's next one but I don't know how successful Modern Warfare 3's actually been it's been reviewed and received horribly but I presume warzone's still making a good chunk of money it's frustrating how short-sighted their profit seeking is you know we need something this year now now now get it out now but don't we want to establish a legacy that will pay off for generations to come fuck you money now but they could also make a shit ton of money pouring a few years into actually making something that was respectable no but the problem is here's the problem though they made Crash 4 which is a really good game a really good platformer and then make as much money as Toys for Bob was perceived to be making if they got gutted and turned into a Call of Duty support studio which is what they are now they got gutted after Crash 4 and got turned into a Call of Duty support the Activision don't make fucking anything except Call of Duty anymore every single other studio has been sacrificed on the altar of Call of Duty High Moon Raven Radical Entertainment I don't know if they're making like all but they got gutted Toys for Bob got gutted also make Call of Duty like support yeah I just don't if I was a video if I went into video game development and I worked in a big studio my first mistake I feel like if I got all my stuff got like taken from me and they said yeah you're working on Call of Duty now and I was like now I'm out I'm just out I'm out of it I'm gonna go be a farmer I'm gonna return to the land that sustains us probably wouldn't though it's a very risky industry and I think there was like 12,000 layoffs last year so I mean in terms of having income I mean working on Call of Duty at least you're gonna have a job every year I couldn't do it I couldn't bring myself to be a part of the Call of Duty machine like that it is kind of the big Asterisk for 2023 was a great year for gaming but a lot of people lost their jobs there was like massive contraction record profits massive layoffs the industry is actually always nice in the dire state despite the quality that has come out this year I mean it feels like we gotta be heading somewhere when it comes to the whole crunch conversation you know like that that's gonna boil over at some point what happens when the whole idea is that the new talent that comes in you know the people who start at the ground eventually work their way up to being leaders of studios you know project directors the people in charge but if those people are getting destroyed to the point that they're no longer even capable of like making video games anymore because they've been utterly destroyed by that process to just be replenished by new people who themselves don't get to stick with a company for years and work their way up and accumulate that experience at some point you're gonna be like leadership you know the people who are making like the big creative decisions on these projects it's not marble it's really a Disney thing it seems like they've completely lost touch of how they got to this point in the first place like at the top it's just completely lost them and this is of course putting to one side the destroying people in this way just to get these games out faster is bad like not just from a financial standpoint of it's gonna make it harder for you to make money in the future it's just like a bad way to do things it's a bad way to work for your competitors and they're gonna go make ballgame free it's more so just like you're just gonna run out of people to make video games yeah you'll get like the visual artists stuff I mean credit to Bethesda they actually are mostly immune to that side of the industry they actually treat their employees quite well oh that's nice I'm not gonna doubt Emil's passion the interesting thing is when you look at a place like Nintendo you look at a lot of the guys who are in charge it's like they've been with Nintendo for like 30-40 years people who work with Nintendo tend to stay with Nintendo and then the younger people become the new talent who then start making new things like Splatoon was made by people within Nintendo that was like a new thing that they managed to create but yeah I guess we'll have to see you gotta talk about Alan Wake too now nope not yet nope I can still leave it longer I saw a comment say what you said about gaming as an industry could easily be said about the movies as in my quote of well Rag said if you want to consider the bad then it looks bad and I said yeah we have plenty of really great entries or whatever and it's like oh yeah well I was thinking to myself like there's such a result of the binary thinking of how you don't have anything that's okay it's always great and terrible so you know like talking about Mario it's like so that's one of the greats it's like no no and then you'd be like ok so Mario 1 does not one of the greats I was like no no that is one of the greats and it's like oh you have to understand gaming as much as there's plenty of complaints to be made it's just not as bad a position as movies that's absolutely not like the the coverage this year has been a really great look into how Hollywood's just fucking bleeding all over the place while you know gaming's got blood in different areas but that it's it's nowhere near as bad to the point where they're like you know considering a complete refurbishment of absolutely everything that they do I'm not even gonna say like if you try and collect up a bunch of examples you know if we had like the killer Tetris Oppenheimer I'm already like sort of mainstream high budget things that we consider to be the topest of tier I feel like the listing is so much easier for games you can list them off way faster and the fact that we got this crazy comparison remakes of Dead Space and Resident Evil 4 it's like wow they were two of the top games of the year and then how are the remakes or you know franchise entries do into the movie side of things it's like oh we tried out to talk about it is there anything as bad on the gaming side in the same frequency as what we got on movies because we're like okay we got Lord of Ring Golem you're like alright the flash fine we got Skull, Cog Island, blah blah blah you're like Indiana Jones fuck we got um Redfall Redfall we'll go with that you come back with Secret Invasion you're like shit full spoken full spoken you didn't even play it you don't even know how bad it is but fine we'll accept that Ahsoka you're like ah shit I think it would be is there any company that you could could you point to like one publisher and just talk about how like every single game that they made that year except for one was successful that most of them failed and that all of them were bad well and the point I'm making is just like obviously I was trying what I was trying to do there was just that like the gaming one you have to remember them and then say them and you're like oh fuck my list keeps running out while the movies and TV show side of things is so easy it's just like I got another one I don't know another one the fact that there are so many video game adaptations that have A done well already and B are coming down the pipeline would suggest that even the movie industry recognizes that gaming is in a more healthy state than the movie industry is I didn't even mention Quantumane or Marvel's yet but go ahead what I'll say to that is that the gaming industry has very much invested into a smaller number of projects per studio because you have to remember that games are made now somewhere between three to five years per and I think films come out significantly faster than that so it might also just be a quantity versus quality debate it's also a matter of like which space you're looking at as well because of course it's like a huge indie scene as well middle market games like on PC well it doesn't even need to be a competition there is declines in all different aspects within their own industries as well as you were just kind of implying like with film we need to separate out into genres sometimes or mediums or companies or level of money involvement or eras or particular years or IPs there's all different observations to make because you know the guys behind like John Wick as a franchise are feeling pretty fine right now meanwhile you know the people in one of the biggest movie franchises of all time being the MCU are probably you know not not feeling as well not feeling as great quadruple A have we gone to that point yet I think that's what I think that's what the studio that Microsoft made to make perfect dark they called it quadruple A but that game the development on that game has been a disaster quadruple A means they have unwittingly coined the phrase in a very negative way I mean it's not funny that the first quadruple A developer had to recruit another like entire development studio to help them make that game Chris is a yes that's right so now it's a 7a game but but hey so metal what do you think of Alan wake to oh god Alan wake to go over again so I did not have any anything on Alan wake so I went back and played through almost all of the other ones I didn't play American nightmare I think that's the DLC I did you did yeah it was a good choice it's a standalone it's like zombie DLC I always think it's a DLC but no it's a standalone and yeah Alan wake pretty pretty cool nice nice little story has like the like the feel of a the season of television almost because they basically play like an episode each and like a little thingy at the end as well with those I think this is a song for everyone it doesn't matter and then you go to American nightmare it's like an extra thing you wouldn't what is that about me usually you want to do that it's mainly about Mr. Scratch it's the alter ego that Alan wakes dealing with and you kind of defeat him in it but it's unclear as to exactly what of all of the things that happened were real what it means for you what it means for the people around you I think it's a fun it's one of those like it'll tide you over between the next iteration of whatever story that comes and obviously it took him a long time but they got there eventually with Alan wake 2 of course in between there was control which I played as well which was very cool I really enjoyed that it's basically a little it's basically like an SCP kind of dealio with a lot of objects of power is what they call it they do different things and you have to cleanse them basically and collect them back which is kind of nice and those are even get mentioned in Alan wake 2 and yeah I played those I was like I was pretty happy I was like oh that was fun it's neat and so I was rooting for Alan wake 2 and then it came out and I did my first stream I was still pretty positive I was like oh you were but it's slow I think but you know what I'm interested to see what's happening and then I I saw you play the next day and I saw as his tweet I was like uh oh maybe I have to have to look what's going on and yeah it's fucking piss I was very optimistic about the beginning because I don't know I wasn't high I was rooting for the game and yeah on my next stream I was it was like yeah I watched back the beginning and it's actually pretty piss so we got we got Saga which you start the game with so you don't even start as Alan wake 2 no no you don't start as Saga you start as naked both fat man you start as a fat man on the beach right I forgot about that guy yeah you start with him that's the victim that Saga goes to investigate because she's FBI uh maybe I stand for metal metal booby inspector yeah that was by Irene ooh nice exactly and yeah we just do the thing look at the woods we're in it's like oh look this guy has been horribly gutted but we don't really care also there's some supernatural stuff happening later and our characters that we've been playing as American for us so you completed it right so if you do the broad after I do like a sort of the experience because I don't know a lot about Alan wake 2 I watched your pretty much full play through and I played the best six hours but the experience is very much bizarre like the way you started like I complain if you want to look at the stream where I go over all of it in detail it's what a lot of people have posted on the subreddit being like why is it small and not like Alan wake 2 I love it and I was like fucking hell I just watched my stream I really need the answers but I went in pretty good faith I was ready to go but I encountered cringe dialogue immediately being the our little team you know you're playing a saga and you get told immediately how awesome you are as a detective and you're sort of like okay that's fine and then like take the lead you're better than me I was already just like why did why why it's a really weird experience we've gone over this before but it just gives me a sense of what the writer wants and can do when instead of showing me what I'm capable of or letting me do things they tell me what I'm capable of and make sure I know how awesome I am I'm just like why would you have chosen to do that and I wonder how that's going to influence things going forward in terms of your approach but tiny thing a little piece of dialogue it's fine but there's loads of them cropping up all over the place instead of listing them all and just say that that's what was happening yeah we constantly get told how amazing she is and then she does things or like she's retarded that was retarded your crime scenes all over the place she has to take pictures make inferences which is the kind of things like oh that sounds kind of cool especially if you get your little board and you you pin up you know conflicting information that makes you think about things like that sounds like it could work yeah especially if you map it out you know mechanically and make it very um inquisitive inquisitive based and you can collect things to add to the story and stuff but she'll just like randomly conclude shit yeah the game is going to be like you need to push this over here and push this over here and then you'll get your conclusion you know like that don't even see how this connects and it's like you do it and it's like of course it was a clown and you're like how did you how did you know that it's like there's a clown footprint it's like you can't possibly know that I was a clown footprint we all know a clown footprint it's like a human footprint the thing about it is that 15 size shoe where I was I was thrown off was uh I always reference this there was among the crime scene there was there was a what do you call it like a cooler with a bunch of beer cans and she says like from this I can conclude that they were here for a long time and I was so annoyed immediately I was like you have no idea how long they were here you have no idea how quickly they drink beers you have no idea how many they were they could have been here for five minutes and drank all them why would you ever conclude something so definitive based on something that's so loose and then it's like what we call a possibility yeah you put it in the further it's like oh there's a lot of it maybe they've been here a while if anything I would say the only thing that can really conclude it's like it's curious that they did like a full sacrifice here but there's just beers like do they treat it that seriously are they willing to or which is something that they didn't even plan for I'm not sure because you could go both ways on that they had the beers because it was planned or they weren't they were just hanging out and then they took the opportunity to do the sacrifice I'm not sure and then like meters away there's this little I think it's a caravan type thing and I was like well do the bad guys live it there you go over there and there's a lock box you have to unlock by getting a code for it and inside there's all markings of stuff that relate to the bad guys and I was like how is this not coming up in my case this looks like their house looks like where they lived the killer the fucking murder weapon could be in here we have no idea and then she's like well that wraps up the case nothing else to do here now and I was like oh okay I feel like this is important but fine and then you know the one will always references when you get to the diner and the ladies talking about how your daughter drowned and you're just like anyway you know my name that was a part that you showed me and I was like this is fucking bizarre no human no to this this way the people who made this are not humans she I can't capture just how insanely stupid that that opening five six hours was that just threw me out of the game it grabbed me and just tossed me out mechanically speaking one of the things that we we talked about before I spoke about it is so fucking annoying with video games but you you spawn in the in bright falls and like there's a whole section of town that's just completely locked off I was like why is that locked off that's weird you walk up to it and saga will like you know pull on the chain on a fence whatever she's like I'm gonna need a bolt cutter for this I was like do I is that what I need do I need to go over there why would I want to cut what security on some fence I have no I have no goal other than going to like the sheriff right now why would why would and you be like you nitpicking I'd be like it's annoying when video games just do this shit where they just don't care I love it when they put the care in so that if you get to things before you have reason to get there that the character can account for that but she was just like yeah I want to break it here I was like okay but why yeah I just didn't know I had a reason to go here and if I do and then of course you have all the standard shit like I don't I don't need bulk as I can clearly just jump over this thing I'll move around it or can I at least ask why I would go there all that kind of stuff outside the whole game has that every single thing you inspect and I think I searched about a third of bright falls before I was like it's one of those games everything is soulless and hollow nothing here matters oh yeah you get to bright falls and it's like oh obviously I'm going to explore you let me go this way and over there and this is nothing it's intermittently there's that that object with the white dot on it that you click examine and it's like this is what the object is yeah if you know you know so they don't they don't give you any it seems to be made of wood this is designed for sitting this is a door it is used for the transversal through walls yeah that's good true true do they not give you any reason for exploring the environments like they don't give you like some kind of item or staggeringly little to collect and talk to people about sometimes you'll see like batteries and stuff but it was it was scarce everything around much less than even if it's just like ammo or something yeah okay well that's that's the other part so when you're in the woods you can go around and collect all these things right and when you go that's the real woods yeah it's just full of things that you can collect yeah that's as a boy scout I can confirm the woods is just a bunch of stuff you can collect it is so it's so annoying because me and Moller as well we like to like go everywhere and find all the things like oh I want all these resources so I can use them later you want to engage with all the stuff the developers made for you like a crazy thing with the saga sections in the beginning this like pretty empty and I was like okay it's like the first area they probably don't even intend for me to immediately go everywhere but I do that every time and no enemies have been introduced yet okay fine so I think okay now I got all these extra resources when I go next when I go here next time when enemies haven't introduced I'm going to be fighting a whole bunch because I have all these resources right wrong so you go around collect all these resources there's nothing to do with them that I've went stretches with saga for hours and I killed two enemies and it's just walking around finding things like what about how exciting those two encounters were because they were they weren't I think I showed rags you and possibly freeing you like the getting killed by a wolf it was like you showed me the wolf part the wolf part oh yeah ridiculous sorry I know I've brought up before but I mean it's a year in review so I'm allowed to repeat things it's the she kills the wolf when it comes after that she's like the wolf is turned against me because of the darkness the only reason that a wolf would attack me Disney princess that I am is because obviously there's some kind of an evil force yeah and she deals with everything way too well like that nobody feels real in that world and a lot of people like oh it's not supposed to feel real because everybody's like written in a book or whatever but it's like yeah well they felt fucking real in the first game and that was the same situation so I don't buy it and again plenty of people are kind of almost normal and then plenty of people absolutely aren't I think correct me if I'm wrong but the five six hours I played I killed like four things and I was like I'm done yeah yeah handle this like the pacing is absolutely excruciating then there's the sheriff's department office I feel like we'd be remiss to not mention all the absolute insane shit that happens in there several offices and a corpse go down and then things happen noises happen gunshots and screaming and if you came down what you would find is all the offices are dead except the FBI from out of town and the corpse is missing you're under arrest you're a very under arrest you are all of the under arrest right now you will never sleep again because of all the arrests you are under and you that's what these two are the two characters we have been introduced by two that's the first time they see anything supernatural happening like that's their first encounter with us they take it pretty well they take it pretty well like okay yeah I guess that's happening right now brother was there the sheriff just disappears when he's just fucking vanishes he's now in the darkness world where you could talk to him as Ellen wake and when they open the door there's the corpse of the woman that's their friend that they've worked with forever they're just like oh geez what's going on yeah take care of the corpses we have to go back to the woods take care of our friend Ginny who's dead they're not devastated when they should be nobody gives a shit nobody acts human it was too much at that point I was just like I can't fucking I don't want to waste my time on a video game like this and then you know over the next few days and weeks everyone's loving it it's great and it serves awards nations like wow everybody loves it but I don't I don't know like it doesn't seem like people are talking about it much no not really not really no what I see is a really weird thing going on with it because like I'm a huge survival horror fan and like I was never a huge Ellen wake one fan like because I mean I played a little bit of it was okay but the horror of it is a little too flashy with like you know shining light on enemies and sparks I prefer the horror I prefer horror a little more subtle for it to actually like have an effect on me but I didn't think it was a bad game but like I was particularly intrigued by Ellen wake 2 and I saw that it was getting all these accolades by mainstream outlets but then I heard people like metal and and Mahler and other individuals saying like this isn't that great is actually borderline are you recounting the events a few seconds ago just to be clear no no no not only seconds ago but like before because I had been aware of their opinions I had been aware of their opinions beforehand and I was just like what the fuck is going on with this game like what why do you think it's getting all these 10s out of 10s from these mainstream high level production very autistic it's doing a lot of boxes for a lot of people that I don't think actually have much substance and the thing I get to see shared a lot is the song they made for it I forget the name of it but that's that song I see shared I don't see anyone sharing any of the major story points from the game at all well the thing is the game has seemingly not sold very well really which isn't really surprising to me because Alan Wayne is niche yeah that's fair maybe need to explain as well so someone's like what would you expect to see in a game that is good and so when Ragnarok came out I had to avoid spoilers and work through the games takes fucking ages to complete in a good way by the way I love the pacing of the game but when I was able to just go around seeing everything the scene I mean I can yeah I can say it this is where Fibers was the scene where Tia is revealed to be Odin that scene was getting shared everywhere when they first go to Asgard to begin Ragnarok right like that was shared everywhere I remember seeing the scene where he speaks to a traitor about like his nature to him as as his father obviously the one with the Norns that was shared because it was huge for like trying to understand the game's point of view on fate and then there's the several scenes at the end that were getting shared and I was just like yeah that's kind of what I expect when a story that hits hard is hitting lots of people is to see it celebrated and shared but like Alan Wake I haven't even seen the I've seen a lot from Mel's playthrough.  Kira something Ikea Gaia yeah none of that gets brought up even though it's like the first axe final big plot point is to do with the scrolls right like the planet tarnax I think it is tarnax so yeah like all of that was fucked but then the film itself is just completely fucked it's a sad entry into like a something they would have decided to do a long time ago and just had to commit to it's a writing problem right he's like phoning it in in terms of performance it's funny it would be both that and the lack of communication between projects I don't even know that the two projects know each other exist I would say the marvels felt especially hollow multiverse and madness is like truly awful and worse but it felt like it was trying to do something one of the things is that at the very least someone could point to if they wanted to defend it and be like look at that scene where Elizabeth Olsen is acting look at that scene where Dr. Stranger saying oh Christine I like you a lot it's at least got those scenes that are very poorly written not earned at all but it has them it has like the standard emotional beats that you the model is particularly thin by way of characterization like the character writing is like basically non-existent everything about the film is non-existent so like you can say up until this point I think I would even I would include multiverse of madness Thor Leaventhunder and Ant-Man as being awful films but still technically important in that you do need to see them to understand where you are and where the story has gone and where it's like to go next the marvels you don't there's nothing there's nothing on the level of character plot world building theme whatever it's completely redundant the close of the film actually sets up that practically nothing about the world state has changed from the beginning of the film you've got potentially four destroyed planets and there's a line of dialogue to begin with the film it's like now they're all fine oh okay fine great so there's all of that stuff we just watched what was the point of all of that the only thing you need to know is the fucking moniker is with the expert that's it beast and everything and that's the post-credits scene isn't it you have to go all the way to the post-credits scene before the first bit the most progress that's made for the story of the whole MCU is in a post-credits scene yes in the prison arc in Andor that explains to Andor that like there's a little hose that he can get food from but it has no flavour you get flavour from like working and winning at the game that they have to play the point being that the marbles is like that it's just calories that it's nothing it's like no matter how hard we work we don't get any flavour no there is no flavour it is just empty calories in the true sense of the word it's terrible but it's like the kind of film that's hard to muster anything from me by way of an emotional response I guess the post-credits scene is like the the jangling's like there might be flavour in the next one at that point what's happening there is they're jangling their keys very hard they're like standing on a fault line throwing their keys around like look X-men the X-men are here come on please watch our movie please the way they did it is so stupid as well because like I need to close the rift now and then she flies through the thing and closes from the other side it's like why did you do that just stay on your side that's a huge missed opportunity in that scene as well because there was the chance for it to actually give you a scene that makes you feel something if Carol knows in advance that she has to choose between sacrificing effectively her friend or the universe which would be like a moral parallel to the problems that she had at the beginning of the film where she wasn't prepared to make these tough decisions then she would actually be able to make a positive decision to get rid of one and save the other and get some sort of the conclusion to her arc in that scene but she doesn't because I don't even think the writers knew until they got to that scene that that was what was going to happen and Monica Rambo's character doesn't know until she does it that seemingly anyway that that's what's going to happen so she flies to the other side of the portal and she doesn't tell anyone that she has to stay right until the moment like the two seconds closes it and then she's like now I'm going to stay actually sorry and then by there's no chance to feel anything Carol doesn't really feel anything there's no yeah there aren't any characters in this film so there's no resolution to any character arcs in Mount Vellani is a decent actress and it would be nice if they gave her something to work with because she's very enthusiastic Freelassen is capable of a lot better she clearly doesn't give a shit and that's about it like everyone else is sort of around do you think we're actually going to see like her show up in another Marvel movie in any like meaningful capacity or she'll just show up Captain Marvel? Yes I feel like they'll have her turn up in Avengers yes but in terms of cameos she seems to have been willing I don't know if she will be after this I don't know what's going to happen now I mean I because I don't know that I imagine they're not going to be offering more money I'm sorry I'm probably your biggest incentive to participate and if they're not going to offer you more money then why you can do you can like work on real projects yeah just imagine being the studio behind that though because you can tell that the ideal was the close of the Infinity Saga that you know Captain Marvel is being set up to helm the post Infinity Saga MCU I'm sure that's what they wanted her to be she's so unpopular it didn't happen but the launch event for Phase 5 this is one of the reasons the Marvel's just doesn't another of the many reasons Marvel's makes no sense is that it feels like there's a film missing the launch event for Phase 5 Kevin Feige says that I can't remember which film he's referencing but he says it will pick up from the story in Captain Marvel 2 so like this is well after he would have known that Captain Marvel 2 wasn't a thing but apparently in the backs of their minds there was a there was a film before the marvels and that should have happened and so we are picking up I'm sure with bits and pieces of an older script for an older film in the marvels and none of the connective tissue because that film was discarded at some way along the line we talked about it a bit but Phase 5 was not something we were meant to be in Phase 5 was arbitrarily drawn forward because I'm sure that they saw that the sentiment for Phase 4 was pretty bad and to try and label it as Phase 5 was kind of like a cheap attempt to convince people that something can change when all of the films had been made under the same conditions with the same general production same approach to scriptwriting these were all meant to be part of like Phase 4 including the marvels it explains why there's no Avengers film in Phase 4 I guess doesn't it because normally that would be the clues for any phase definitive end is the Avengers team up movie and there wasn't one then and it draws to a close with Wakanda Forever which if you know where you're going from that then well done Wakanda Forever is just like dude it's so crazy how that film just came and went nobody came shit that was wild nobody cared nobody remembers anything about that film which um it was marginally less racist than the first one I think there weren't any people making gorilla noises wearing animal costumes take your wins where you can get them thank goodness if it was like with the marvels that felt like man I feel like it was kind of uniting because so many people were rooting for it because of what it represented if like a Marvel movie failed and a very spectacular it just feels like everybody's tired and it's kind of like it doesn't just broadly all from all across the place like in terms of looking at the film landscape everybody's about ready it's like can we just like fucking this marvel shit's getting really fucking annoying can we can we cut it out can we stop nobody was interested it didn't must or any excitement there was no there was no like counter narrative of how it's going to be really exciting an interesting film because everybody understood and knew you know like how what like a dozen consecutive awful projects puts a bad taste in people's mouth you know there weren't even that many pre-emptive defences of it because normally you would expect if it was still a hot button issue you'd expect to load of people before it even came out saying the only people who hate this are going to be evil like bigoted sexist types but there weren't even that many of those around the film got written off it felt like everybody sort of saw like there's there's like blood in the water when it comes to Marvel I mean the fact that you had that like variety article coming out just like very publicly and thoroughly essentially saying that like marvel's in trouble the way that they're making things isn't working they're course correcting and more of those articles coming out and the VFX stuff happening that all of that had primed it to where nobody was on that film side regardless of whatever narrative Marvel wanted to run with it almost seems like in the way the act to strike was beneficial because it allowed them to move past it really quickly well Kanda forever felt really aimless almost definitively as if that was the point of the movie because it's all about like the aftermath of the death of T'Challa and it's like well now what do we do and if there's no main character that comes later on you're just meant to be like oh I guess all of Wakanda is the main character of this movie and the bad guy is whatever Aquaman or whatever it's meant to be like Shuri is meant to be the new protagonist but didn't really pan out it was the tremendously brilliant introduction of Riri Williams as well as Ironheart in a starring performance that I remember absolutely nothing about it's kind of funny how like Ironheart keeps getting pushed back to where by the time she shows up it'll have been like two years who the fuck is this yeah exactly it was shit too so nobody cares it's kind of like how Miss Marble got introduced what nearly two years before the marvels obviously everything started going wrong with their production everything got thrown out of whack to where the project stopped lining up and they just pushed their head anyway because they thought that they could get away with it they thought that they could get away with pumping out shitty films oh yeah remember how they tease the kids avengers as well I don't think that's gonna happen I don't remember that the end of the marvels when Miss Marble recruits yeah I got ya and I'm pretty sure she says the same thing that Furi said after Iron Man 1 she was in the room she was there she knows exactly what he said to where she can reference it verbatim I said Lee but Nick Fury still in this universe right Nick Fury still exists it's time for him to move aside there's a person named Nick Fury but the amorphous co