Marvel's bad, buh buh buh, but you all know it's actually really good. Marvel is pretty good. We have to sit here and spin this narrative. It's incredibly difficult to spin this narrative. We have so little to work with. No. So many ways. We just don't have a chance to show the people the greatness that they can't see. Hmm. This is pretty peak fire. For real. Really, it's the peakest fire as it's been. But people aren't giving it a try. That's accurate. What exactly is that title of the stream? I don't know. It's the title of the stream. Ask me again once we've seen all three of the video essays and then I will try my best to explain why. How do I always end up in these three triple threat scenarios or double duos and just like kill me at the end? Kill me, baby, one more time. I don't think it's long. I like that. That could be something that you don't. You have to be like a vampire or a zombie. Yeah. Yeah. It could work. Or like Raish Al Ghul ending up in the Lazarus pit. Isn't that right? I'm going to say Raish. Whoa. Raish. No. No. Raish Al Ghul, boy, isn't he's not in the Lazarus pit. Wait, is this the one being guarded by the Confederate general? Sure. You don't know your DC shows. Yes, I do. That's the Lazarus pit was guarded by the Confederate general. We watched this on Infinite Earth. That's the only one where they pronounce it. Raish. I can't remember. Why do you always have to talk about Raish? Brax is talking about. Oh, it's the book. Right. You'll talk about. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm pretty sure it's Jonah Hex in that shitty thing, I think. I'm not sure. He's the Confederate general, yeah. Is Jonah Hex a warlock? I don't know. Let's see. With the last name like that. Warlock question mark. See what Google's got for us. Yeah. When did he get his degree? Is Jonah Hex a time traveler? Actually, he has time traveled a couple of times. All right, that answers my question. Basically a warlock. Basically a warlock, yeah.  Does Jonah Hex ever wear a Confederate uniform? It's the only uniform he'll fit in. What? That's as long as he doesn't have a Confederate self-dispensary. Yeah. Do they mean like you can only fit into it in a personal way? I don't want to wear nothing else. Okay. Well, I only want to wear this. He wants to be ready for when the South rises again. Yes. I learned a lot about Jonah Hex this stream. I think we could wrap there, I think. Pretty solid exploration of DC comics. But we got some other stuff we could do if you're interested. Like, well, you know, there's some videos, which to be fair, I want to shout out to the good old people in the audience. They're the ones that these three have been selected from. And then we'll post asking people for what they would like to see us cover. And I scanned through a couple of them and these caught my eye. And then of the ones that caught my eye, I gave a little look. I was like, ooh, these could cause some very interesting conversations. One of them is just for memes, though. Well, we have to talk about one thing. I looked at the EFAP Discord before we started and someone posted that. And I thought that was the thumbnail and I was wondering, okay, we got Kratos, Master Chief. Why don't we just have Iron Man's hand? That was really weird for you to make the thumbnail of that. And then I was like, oh, this isn't EFAP number two. So it just wasn't pasting the full thumbnail. EFAP number two, you're not, it is. And also I'm not here. Yes. Well, all of it will make sense, the fear that we go through. And there's no reason for us not to start straight away, unless this is something you guys want to bring up. You guys are going to complain about something again. I would like to bring up something that I thought would be okay.  Listen. So mother and father, right? Mother starts with M and father starts with F, right? I can't wait for this is going. We're analyzing the words. I'm following, I'm getting it. No. Then there's, I actually forgot when this was going. Yeah, that was where it was going. Yeah. Male and female, right? Male starts with M, but mother starts with M. Female starts with F, but father starts with F. And that just was a thought that occurred to me randomly. Yeah. It's just a little quirk of linguistics. They did. They made the father version. That was really good. Did you guys see the mother? Remember that movie with Jennifer Lawrence? I saw I am mother and that was really good. There was one called mother, as far as I remember. I haven't seen it. I just know that it's a Gooba film with, it's like artsy and crazy. That's all I know. What about Mamma Mia? Oh, classic. Get to hear P.S. Brosnan, Colin Firth and Stellan Skarsgård singing it. Isn't that what you want? Isn't that just the one thing you want? Oh, I was, really? I was referring to the, yeah, that's pretty good. I love movies. I didn't think you were talking about the song. I love it. It's really good. Abba's good. Yeah. How is P.S. Brosnan singing voice? I don't remember. Is he any good? Chat, was it any good singing? I remember people making fun of P.S. Brosnan singing, I think. I can't remember. Did you do it? Yeah. Pierce was considerably the worst. They should have P.S. Brosnan singing. Imagine I was like, surprise guest, P.S. Brosnan today. He saw it on our podcast. He was the only character we liked in Black Adams. So we got him on the podcast. Yay. He just comes in like, I don't think I was that bad. Hawke was all right. Hawke was all right. Falcon, is that what you think his name is? Falcon. Hawkman? Yes. Get it right. Falconman. Falconman. Falconman. He's the Mr. Siga to our Mr. Clean. Professor Disinfectant. Of course, we're just welcome in general. It's been a while to CJ. How you doing, buddy? Hello. I would do this with everybody, but we see these other fuckers all the time. So it doesn't really matter. Yeah. You know how to make a man feel special and important today. Exactly. You're in the perfect episode, I would say, because we're covering things that you know about, like Iron Man. You know about Kratos and Master Chief and Iron Man's Hand. Iron Man's Hand is quite a big character in the Iron Man movies.  But I provided. I'll think about it. Is that Chris Redfield? It is. Oh my God. I was for a second there, I was like, who could that be? It could be 78 different people. And it's like, oh my God, it's Chris Redfield from Resident Evil 8. It's actually only one person. That's the message. The amazing video game. That's very good. Is everyone in the watch together? I see six. I don't see seven. Yeah. I'm ready to watch Big Buck Bunny. Well, I guess someone is missing. They show the still for Big Buck Bunny is him about to be murdered. Yeah. Yeah, but that's funny. So it's okay. Seconds before the disaster. This is, if they did the furry version of what's the Brendan Frazier Fat Man movie. Oh, well, well, well, then this would, he would be the guy playing it. He looks whelish for a rabbit. Normally quite lithe and small, but this rabbit is like gargantuan. I mean, maybe that's why they call him Big Buck Bunny. That's probably a bug. There we go. We have seven. All right. Well, there's no reason not to get going. This video is called when the filmmakers get stuck with an unlikable character and it's focused. I thought you're going to say when filmmakers get stuck. Stuck man eyes pray it doesn't happen to you. Yeah. No, the reason this would trigger people I think in general is because Tony Stark is the focus of it. And it's like unlikeable. But that might just be a form of just, you know, who knows what the video is about. It's well received. It could be a lie. It could be a twist of words. You know what I mean?  That's true. But it could also just be a hot take. Who knows really? You could be. Yeah. You know what? We're going to find out. Why is his title all low case? I don't know. Lower case.   Maybe that's his style. Are you jealous that he can get away with it? You can. Whoa. Postmodern. Well, you know what? Maybe it's a bit of time we have some postmodern because everyone's using too many capital letters and it's ruined it.  I'll own it. Oh, wait. I've got the cover on. I'll carry on. One second. There you go. Chat getting spanked. No offense. There we go. All right now. Warning for critical damage. Warning for critical damage. Whoa. Status. Oh, my goodness. Oh, my goodness. Which game is that? He's fallen. I assume it's a game. It was going to be an animation. Whoa. Who's doing that? Oh, my goodness, Grace. Oh, someone's doing something. Someone is skipping through the video. And whoever did that, you banned officially. Oh, no. It's unfortunate. It's unfortunate. Mr. Talk is right. I didn't know it would also control the video. It's skipping us through the whole video. You can't just skip to the ad. Okay. We're going to get through this. They're cheating. Yeah. Warning. Critical damage. Mark closing critical damage to the effect. Oh, my goodness. It's unfortunate. Mr. Talk is right. I didn't know it would also control the video. It's skipping us through the whole video. Mark. You can't just skip to the ad. Okay, Mark. It's not how it works. Ruin it again. Oil the video through this. They're cheating. Yeah. Warning. Critical damage. Mark closing critical damage to the effect. Oh, my goodness. This is a 2007 Iron Man advertorial video created by then future Deadpool director Tim Miller. It was one of three promotional shorts designed to introduce the character of Tony Stark and Iron Man to a generation of kids and mainstream moviegoers, many of whom at the time really didn't know who Iron Man was. Catch a beat in the background. Do you know where I learned about Iron Man? Where did you learn about Iron Man? I learned about Iron Man at the Mecca of Childhood, which was, of course, Chuck E. Cheese. Because there was an Iron Man arcade game. It was a Marvel Avengers arcade game way before the Disney stuff. It was when I was a wee lad. And that's when I learned that there was this character called Iron Man. And he looked really cool. He had the classic outfit. He shot laser beams. He had rockets and stuff. I was like, wow, this Iron Man guy's really, really cool. Before that, that's how I learned about Iron Man's existence. Never knew about him before then because I wasn't like a comic guy. So I wonder how everyone learns about these sort of obscure-ish kind of heroes. The big blast of Marvel information I got was from watching episodes of the animated shows and the top Trumps and Marvel Ultimate Alliance. Those are like the big sources where I was like, oh, I know stuff now. I know this guy. I bought a set of trading cards called Marvel Universe Series 3 in the early 90s. And it had, I think, like 350 cards in it. And every one of them had a pretty decent picture of the character. And then a big list of their attributes, how fast they are, how strong they are, a brief summary of their origin. And that's kind of how I learned everything I know about Marvel heroes. And when I was eight, nine, something like that. I wish I could remember what the name of that game was called. If I scrolled around and found it, I know it wasn't like a fighting game. It was one of those games. There was one for the Simpsons. And there was one for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles where you'd go from left to right.  And you could go up and down and stuff. But it wasn't like a 1v1 fighting game. You mean it made him up? Like it made him up? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, the Simpsons one is fun. It is, yeah. That was one of my very few and possibly first exposure to the Simpsons when I was very young because my parents wouldn't let me watch the Simpsons. It was too brutal.    I think that Simpsons and that X-Men game were probably my first exposure to multiplayer gaming having more than two players at one time. I think there was two players. I think there was an X-Men one as well. Yeah, there is an X-Men one. It plays really similarly. I think it's made by the same people. Yeah, I like those styles of games. I played Castle Crashers with a friend. That was really fun. I like those styles. Those are fun kinds of games. It's a neat style. When was the last time that you played Beat'em Up? I think it was last year. It was late last year. Pride round. No, not late. August or September when I went to a friend's house and he had Castle Crashers on his Xbox 360. We were playing Halo Reach and stuff together on the Xbox 360. It was fun. Just doing some nostalgia. We played Four Swords on the GameCube Slash Game Boy with the connection, the little cable that would link your Game Boy Advance to your GameCube. Yeah, he actually has all the components. He has the Game Boys, the Four Sword Games, and all the cables, and a GameCube. We put it on a little CRTV and we played... We had some fun nostalgia games. In Pokemon Sapphire when they had the GameCube there and they talked about the system link cable thing and I was like, wait a minute, can I play my Game Boy on my GameCube?  That's exciting. Well, it says we're already on a deep, deep tangent. Do you remember, speaking of Pokemon and crossovers, do you remember the E-Reader Pokemon cards? Does anyone here remember those? I know of them, but I've never used them. Let me post a picture and you might remember.  Here, I can get a picture here. You basically slide it into something that looks like a credit card reader that you would attach to the top of your Game Boy Advance. You could even get the original Zelda as well as the original Metroid for E-Reader as well, like little cards that just had those full games on them. And I remember how everyone... We all had Pokemon cards when we were in grade school and stuff.  It's like a virus. I don't remember anyone ever buying them, but somehow we all just ended up getting them. We all had some of these in our collections somehow. I don't know where they came from and no one had an E-Reader, but these cards just sort of popped up and they came and went. I feel like I skipped this somehow. I don't know. I think it lasted very long. I think it was one of those attempts at making this. How do we get... We have got the Pokemon cards, we got the games, we got the Game Boys, and they did all of those things where they want to... They want to get accessories in the early days of handheld stuff, like linking two Game Boy advances together to play multiplayer games by a physical cable. They had the E-Reader stuff. All the little knickknacks and doodads that they tried. I think they bundle these with the regular card packs. I can't remember. Not the E-Reader specifically. And they were specifically for E-Readers, but you could get like mixed packs of them, like that looks like a deck, a little package writing cards, like a three-pack. I think what happened a lot of the time was that young kids would go and buy a pack of Pokemon cards because remember gambling used to be fun and then they wouldn't realize that, oh, E-Reader means it has these things on the left and the bottom and it has that E-Logo. I guess this is for some weird gadget that I just don't have, but at least I have Pokemon cards, so, you know, whatever. A similar thing they did with PlayStation Vita was these little almost QR code things that would make AR games that you could interact with the touchscreen and the back camera. It looked like you were playing the game in your living room. Back when that was kind of an obsession with games for a little bit, a couple of years. Nintendo even had that lab-o thing that looks like a VR headset that you can make out of cardboard as well. The cardboard thing. Weird accessories. I bet Nintendo has a... They've got a host of both successful and failed gadgets, knick-knacks, doodads, add-ons, all sorts of stuff from especially... Remember Amiibos? Yeah. Oh, I thought so. There's a little plastic mini figures, right? I've got pretty much all the Zelda and Metroid Amiibos. They're cute. Kind of a waste of money, but I like them. They put them on the thing and they don't lock something in the game, right? Like a skin or whatever. Are they not still actively making those? I think they are. They would just continue while I was working at the toy store, as far as I remember. I'm pretty sure that's not true. I think they're still making them. I remember that there was like a new one for the new Zelda. Yeah, I have the Tears of the Kingdom, Zelda, and Link. Yeah. I think they kind of didn't care. I was like, that's fine. It's very possible that maybe they... Yeah. Maybe they only slot in certain countries. Remember, there are the things that were happening at that time, like Disney Infinity and stuff. Yeah, that's the one that they totally canceled. Oh, it might have been. They might be mixing them up, yeah. I don't even know about Disney Infinity. God, keep in track of all that.  There were so many characters that I didn't even know which they belonged to. It wasn't the beginning of it. What was the Spyro or a spin-off thing? What was that called? What were the Landers? Yeah, there was that. Yeah, I remember that as well. We have full sections for all of them. The Infinity logo looks familiar. It was funny because the fully stocked one was clearly the unsuccessful one, you know what I mean? I have Disney Infinity 2 with an Anakin and Obi-Wan thing for it because Ninja Theory, the people who did Hellblade and that Devil May Cry reboot and Heavenly Sword, they actually did the jet run-off when they added Star Wars to Disney Infinity, so I was like, oh, I might actually fire that up. It was okay, but it kind of just played like a Lego game with slightly better combat. I'm assuming Amiibo came first out of those Skylanders. Skylanders was first. Oh, interesting, okay. And then everybody wanted to do it. A lot of people had a Star Fox crossover, I think. It was called Star Link or Star Command or something like that. Yeah, that was the game on, I think it was on Switch. Yeah, the Ubisoft made that. A lot of people who are really young... Wait, what's this?  Thank you so much. I don't know if you'll point them out, but like, jeez, thank you so much. A red boy. Dang. That's a sad one. Let's see. After Halloween 2019, my wife sent... Well, I'll just read it right. Why half read it? After Halloween 2019, my wife sent Mola pictures of our pumpkins carved as Mola Rags and Wolf. I don't want to meme fab, I think. It was one month after she was diagnosed with cancer and given a year to live. Yesterday, she finally lost the battle. And if you toxic drinkers tonight, please toast to Corrine, I assume, pronounced Corrine. Oh, Corrine. She was 33. Well, sorry to hear that, man. That sucks, man. Yeah. Sorry. Yeah, that's... But she... So they told her that she only had a year and she managed to get another four years. Looks like it, yeah. So... Okay. At least...  Yeah, cancer's messed up. We've lost so many good people in cancer. But at least you got more time than you thought that you were going to get.  We thought they were awesome, but... They were very awesome. We certainly remember them. 33. Way too soon. The tragedy.  Especially when, like, that's basically my age. I can't, you know, imagine being that age and have it cut short. It's a terrible thing.  Cancer's one of those ones that just... I've said before, it feels like a... But it literally is a glitch, right? Like, in terms of how it would be categorized or explained to, like, a child, how it works. Yeah.  And it just ain't right. You know, the sooner we get rid of it, the better. Hopefully every year we get closer to stamping it out for good. But yeah, absolutely. I appreciate all of that. And we will do our best to keep your mind in a more entertainment-focused place, perhaps. A bit of escapism tonight, because we got these three videos. There's some wacky opinions in here, especially we want to, you know, end up talking about Pokemon e-cards. You know, it's just something that comes up. So, hopefully that's all right to you. But yes. Sorry for your loss. And thank you very much. Mm-hmm. Right. So, one thing I was going to actually ask is, because I didn't know if you were free to give it ads, but what... Because I don't think I've ever heard you ask this question. What was your introduction to Marvel? Like, knowing stuff about it. Was it comics or...? My introduction to Marvel in general. Yeah. I don't know. Probably would have been like X-Men, like one of the animation movies. Oh, X-Men movie. No. Would have been, yeah. Would have been like X-Men or X-Men 2. It was so funny for me, because I just had like random, deeper, specific knowledge, but then a general lack of knowledge on Marvel. Like, I knew that Apocalypse's name was... It's like N Sabanur or something like that. Like, I just knew that. It was like, why? I was like, I don't know. I just saw the top trumps. Like, that's where the description at. It's just information that's in my head now.  In the same way, the Batman Arkham games will have all this kind of crazy law from the comics. It's almost like direct references or adaptations of, like, works from similar writers that are part of the projects, but that it introduces a whole new set of people in a really cool way. We're not really at that point right now. Any new audiences that Marvel's pulling in aren't exactly going to encourage people to search further into their stories. No. Anyway, let us see where this video is heading. Because most people never heard of Iron Man. Most of the population. I guess it helped because a year later, John Favreau's linchpin blockbuster would go into gross over half a billion at the box office, launching the most successful film franchise of all time. At a time, Zay. Man, look back.  And now the MCU is just it really takes you back to the beginning. Absolutely. Push out! But while Iron Man's international appeal would rejuvenate the comic book movie industry and Robert Downey Jr. and the MCU would solidify the character as one of Marvel's most likeable comic book heroes, Iron Man didn't exactly start out that way. Back in 2008 under the impending shadow of Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight Marvel I'm more kidding. It's a maybe. But you could definitely have killed them by doing that. You could have killed them and also how what are you could you your legs are broke. I was gonna say he's got some big old booties. I think I'm not sure exactly. Well it has to it still has to transmit all that force and to land like that and to not be fazed by it. He's got that. The Dark Knight is a very, very good movie. It's great. It's amazing. The Dark Knight is really good guys. I don't know what we were thinking. I don't know what we were thinking. Someone sounds passive aggressive there coming after the movie. Okay, fine. I just I I've never actually thought about the safety of his knees at this moment. He has bat knees. Marvel was staking their future as an independent movie studio on a character who is literally designed to be oppositional. Let's face it. This is not the worst thing you've got me doing. Oppositional is an interesting way to use both. We'll see what he says about it. See where he's going. I'm creating Iron Man. Stanley once said I think I gave myself a dare. It was the height of the Cold War. If there was one thing the young readers hated it was war. It was the military. I got a hero who represented that to the hundredth degree a weapons manufacturer. An industrialist. I thought it would be fun to take the kind of character nobody would like and make them like him. It's exactly what makes Tony Stark so unlike conventional superheroes that ended up paving the way for one of the most compelling and successful narrative through lines in mainstream cinema because more than any other character in the MCU. The thing is so far this is all still kind of He's setting up. Establishment stuff. I don't disagree yet. We're on like a shaky ground. Tony Stark's characterization and his true character So characterization and true character not a distinguishing set of categories that I would use but I'm always up for people to give me what they mean by that I guess. I would assume it would be who he acts or how he acts versus what he truly is privately or on the inside but The problem with that I guess is the true character in that instance would still come under characterization and a lot so if you're going to put him to two things like how he acts typically and then what he does in private whatever you say it'd be like well both of those still characterization though there's a movie you know Yeah the fact that he is even if he's pretending to be something in front of people that is who he is that's him acting a certain way him exhibiting elements of his character whether it's because he's whether he's very full of himself or egotistical or he's always comparing himself to everyone he's overly competitive, insecure there would be a number of reasons for it but that would be an element of his true character Yeah the most at odds with each other I'm just not the hero type clearly. In his seminal book story Robert McKee writes characterization is the sum of all observable qualities of a human being all aspects of humanity we can know by taking notes on someone day in and day out Now this on the other hand is agent Romanoff's assessment of you. Now if you've watched through the MCU then you know how Tony Stark is characterized genius billionaire playboy philanthropist um that's actually not so the problem is that clip is already past IMM1 and 2 which have way more than those categories right like he's a very layered detailed character but one of the points in that scene is that you know it's like Steve says right after that um you know I guys with none of that worth 10 of you because the actual more important thing that's being driven at that Tony Stark has is like heart you know if he's talking about how many in the world see him versus who he is that's one thing but he's characterized as characterization which I'd be like well yeah that's what I don't understand there's a lot to summarize every characteristic Tony presents in IMM1, 2 and Avengers would take a bit you know a lot of stuff and what do you say to your other nickname the merchant of death yeah apparently I'm volatile self obsessed and play well with others textbook narcissism agreed that's good stuff but also yes most of those are more so how people see him than who he is it's quite the laundry list of flaws to sell to a mass audience but director John Favreau and his team on the first Iron Man movie did something clever I mean aside from the obvious they pitted their fundamentally flawed protagonist against a similarly characterized antagonist Tony Stark and Obadiah Stain share a profession, wealth power, hubris a dictator's need for control I mean Stanley's cursory description of Iron Man could have just as easily been used to describe Iron Munger a dictator's need for control in Tony Stark I don't agree why wouldn't we have just put it as a desire for control which is much more of a human nature thing to be honest with you I mean that's why people are nervous when they get into airplanes even though it's the safest way to travel it's that lack of control that makes you worried we want to have more control if he's about to highlight like Tony doesn't come across anyone near as likable without Obadiah Stain as a foil I don't know that I agree with that no I mean the first scene you see him is super charismatic and likable immediately Obadiah is not revealed as a villain like as a much more antagonistic role until far later in the film at that point I'm pretty sure everyone's on Tony's side because of what you see him go through yeah absolutely like when we see him trying to be better which is already super invigorating in a sense of like yeah I want this kind of win because at that point he already said stop producing weapons all together gonna shut down everything yeah and Obadiah panicking on that note I don't even call that like a you know like a desire for it he's just like a businessman at that point be like whoa you were just in terrorist captivity for three months now you have a torpedo out company please don't have a conversation but then later on it becomes clear that he's gonna stop him no matter what right right if he's trying to look at Tony Sark's character as a whole over the entire series the dictators need for control thing really doesn't make sense because of civil war he was the one trying to give away control I would go as far as I'm fine with him desiring some form of control he wants to control the situation to prevent suffering right that's what Tony would probably say you could even say that's a Captain America to a degree yeah I think to an extent you could argue that all superheroes are agents of putting their control on the world in some way should perform but usually in the form of trying to protect people yeah it's also interesting by him saying that we need Obadiah staying as a foil to get us to like Tony Sark is interesting considering that while he was playing all of those clips of Tony Sark that were sans Obadiah we were all going huh oh boy I sure do like Tony Sark I mean what people usually talk about is like why do we like Tony well you see him go through something horrible and then he sees that it's a result of his own potential like manufacturing sees what happens to so many people as a result of it and then starts to want to change it himself personally it designs himself a weapon to go against the weapons of his that have been sold to the people that are hurting people you know what I mean it's like that's a story in and of itself it's so interesting it's like what about Obadiah I was like no no sure Obadiah I don't even think he's the main factor for having Tony become so likable so quickly oh man especially because he's only in the first movie there's no like all the other ones add and add and add and add and those are without Obadiah staying I think he's talking about in the context of just the first movie but I'd still say it's fair to say that most people seem to like Tony the most out of all characters in the MCU by the end of his story even so as with thinking about how did that happen especially if Obadiah is not in most of it like the vast majority of it but probably probably also worth noting that the sort of general character archetype and personality that you get in Tony Stark is probably similar to a few other sort of character types that we see done more poorly than well like Harley Quinn comes to mind you have Jinx in Arcane is a good example of that sort of kind of character done really well and written really well manic pixie dream girl Alice in Batwoman that's a good example of it done well oh yeah she's great she's really really good absolutely but yeah with Tony Stark you have that kind of personality in a character if it's written poorly or even so so a lot of people will come across as you know really not liking him at all you can almost see like maybe almost like a first half of that is accepting as best I can along with that like how this point could be defended that Obadiah is important as a mirror to Tony but as some people in chat have highlighted and I was just thinking about yeah when these movies were coming out do you remember one of the many primary complaints about the state of the MCU in phase one and sort of every single villain is the inverse of the hero yeah in a bad way like oh look I'm you but bigger or I'm you but I have a gun okay okay and you but he's serum did not work on me yeah I'm iron man it was done to get a bit it was just like oh he fights another iron man you know when he says Invis I assume he means like Marley like they're the same but they oh okay I got I got a red skull who was referring to there did he got power from the serum taking the inverse effect it did to to yeah then you have Abomination who's like I'm the Hulk but gross and it's like okay yeah sure and then Thor you end up having him fight which was probably the most interesting in terms of a dynamic because that's the one they ended up banking on several times he's back in Thor 2 and he's back in Avengers but yeah that was a good one iron manga no one really misses Iron Monger they're like oh man I wish Iron Monger comes back you know they don't want to create characters that were the problems we had with the MCU better times mate because one of the criticisms many people have of Iron Man's third act is Obadiah goes for being an interesting kind of antagonistic force to go straight up super villain fucking crazy yeah which is so I I'm gonna rip it out of Tony Stark and let him die it's like oh that's a bad idea feel like this video has presented something that sounds true but fundamentally isn't both when the film came out and in retrospect Obadiah Stan was not really an important factor to making everyone like Tony Stark I would argue the most important factor was Robbie Downey Jr. I think so he is incredibly charismatic and he plays that role perfectly well you're casting him yeah I would say that the bad version of Tony Stark like Tony Stark but done shittily with a lot of parallels would be Galadriel from rings of power I think there's a lot of parallels you could draw except she's a really shitty character and how she's written Tony is well written in that same thing but at some point things change their arcs diverge revealing a separation between what a character seems to be on the surface and who they truly are so you didn't need that bubble there it's been a bit different or you're giving me you want me to listen to you talk but you also want me to read something that I can sort of hear but not really hear well just play the clip without just play the short little clip it's like two seconds just play the clip instead of you know it seems like he's made it clear now so he's saying how they present on the surface versus who they are underneath but I feel like that whole characterization is you know that's just all characterization it's almost like a character reveal in universe perspective or something um but I don't even that's just strange to me I don't know why it wouldn't just be categorized as characterization it's just all encompassed in describing who they are to some extent and I wouldn't even argue if he was selfish about the entire movie but then he does a selfless act at the end it's not even like that like Iron Man has his character seen I say that as though I'm being critical of him not when he's talking to Pepper right and she basically says you're gonna have to die if you're doing this and then he explains his fundamental motivation which is entirely like something that leads you into seeing his selfless act it's not common I would have an instance of what this video would describe as true character not being seen by other people in the same way that the characterization is seen by the other people which is why I find it I guess a bit of a strange distinction to make yeah because kind of everything you do how you carry yourself in front of others that's a part of who you are that is your nature we don't nobody behaves in public the exact same way that they behave in private they're just fundamentally different things you're just not going to do the same things in front of other people that you do alone we can that's like everybody we obviously know there are many people out there who would claim to be like some of the most moral and selfless people ever but if push came to shove they would just like immediately run away serious and serious and vice versa might be a lot of people who are like I don't care about anything and then they see a kid in trouble and they're like I gotta help him I think the term characterization is a function of like what the audience is seeing what they're observing and learning like I could see like you could have a character that has a true nature that is unseen in a movie but all the stuff that's in the movie is the characterization of them and so like potentially you could have an audience perception of a character that's way different than what they actually are I don't know why you would make a movie like that I'm just saying for the sake of example but I think the way people normally split this up is how the character is seen how we see them how they see themselves and then who they are fundamentally you can make those categories not characterization versus true character I feel like these are confusing well because part of what would make it confusing is what happens when we're dealing with a character who what if they're static you know what if they are a static character who doesn't change and so their characterization and true character would be one and the same because there is nothing that they're concealing or hiding you know or they're super secure about themselves so they behave virtually identically between how they are in front of others and how they are alone which is a very rare thing very very rare thing well I mean the interesting thing would be if you applied it to villains there are plenty of villains where the characterization and true character distinction is not useful where what you know especially if you're talking about some of the what's the name of the one in Thor the dark world what is that guy's name Malekith yeah what's the difference between his where is the characterization and true character line drawn for him in his motives you know you're asking me to remember Thor the dark world so I don't know I can't help you I was half tempted to make his name up and see how many people knew like Malados or something well it started with MAL so I'll buy it whatever it's fine Malavolas Malavolas played by Orlando Bloom why not but uh yeah so just pointed out like I'm not too psyched by his categories but let's see how he uses them maybe uh so it makes some sense and it's here that we begin to lean into Miki's next point which is that characterization is not the same as true character true character Miki says is revealed in the choices a human being makes under pressure the revelation of true character in contrast or contradiction to characterization is fundamental to all divine storytelling so I want to hear that again I'm finding these definitions a bit watching Iron Man save that guy I would happily argue is characterization instead of that's what I learned it is characterizing it is a choice that he made that tells us who he is and it's a true character as a distinction I don't even know if that makes sense and he said that it was true character was the decisions they make under pressure I'm not sure why the under pressure part why wouldn't we just be saying that any decision that a character makes contributes to their characterization I just don't like that I don't like the idea that what you do under pressure is who you really are I think it's kind of the opposite I think that when you're under pressure you often do things that are out of panic you don't think about them it can go both ways I can understand both so there's this idea of maybe it's like the old saying don't judge too harshly people who've made decisions under pressure in high stakes scenarios when you're in a place of safety and comfort I don't like the idea of who you really are is when you're under pressure I don't think that's necessarily true at all I agree because there are times where it totally reveals something about a person when they hope to keep it secret or just he saves that guy and opens his parachute at that time I don't believe that I wouldn't think that Tony Stark wouldn't do that because he'd never try to not save anyone the whole point he's here is to get rid of all these terrorists here to save all these civilians I think you are because what you're probably inching out there is that that's a moment in which it's going to cost him time he could spend escaping against people who are actively trying to hurt him and that's why we don't have a pressure antagonistic toward him however are absolutely not like heroes but they're innocent people they're just doing their job so yeah it makes sense to us with everything that we know that Tony would absolutely try and save them so we don't go in that scene we don't see him do that and go ah see that's who he truly is we're just like no that's in line and it's like a good moment because it backs up a lot of what we thought true character is revealed in the choices a human being makes under pressure and the revelation of true character in contrast or contradiction to characterization is fundamental to all find the story yeah see I find the distinction strange when you could simply say that any contrast or even potential contradiction to other aspects of their characterization is what makes for an interesting story rather than trying to separate it into like completely distinct categories cause like at what point do you say that the choice was made under a sufficient amount of pressure that it rises to the category of true character rather than saying it is characterization all of it is there's an equal there's a good argument to be made that your character can come through when there are no stakes or cost for you at all and at the same time who you really are is also when the stakes are really really high it depends on the person in the scenario if you have nothing to lose and nothing to gain and it doesn't impact you at all and you still decide to make a particular choice well maybe that says something about you but is that to say that guy like Steve Rogers who is genuinely pretty good and characterizes being an all around good dude all the time is he not a hero because he's just never pushed beyond his limit in that respect no I think we get that in the sort of the first act I guess you could say of the first Captain America movie when he is I imagine this guy would absolutely agree that there are plenty of he would say that there are plenty of instances where you see Cap's true character which is hyper selfless hero man establish that before he becomes a superhero if I watch the scene of him jumping on the grenade to save everybody I wouldn't view that as that's his true character that's his characterization that's him that's who he is I just find the categories strange because they kind of seem they feed into each other very blurry and that it only makes things more confusing than just saying it's all characterization I'm not necessarily going to say this is like fallacious or anything but there is an element of me that kind of wants him to explain why this gentleman he's quoting should really be taken super seriously and why this is the definition that's being used and he's going to explain why he's right yeah I guess so it's just like this is basically to me it's some guy remember the the glass onion one or was it I know brown table did it once but the famous one is this reminds me of Karl Marx he's like why the fuck do you care about what Karl Marx is absolutely a video essay playbook thing of just quote someone quote somebody that's where the bilbo beam partially comes from a lot of other things it's just a thing they have to do it makes you seem more well read or more considered when like I said I feel like he needs to address the fact that these could easily be the same thing and there's nothing stopping them from the same thing and the line between them is incredibly blurry like Fring mentioned but for reference everybody this is cold when filmmakers get stuck with an unlikable character and we are halfway through exactly and also I don't think it was ever established that he was an unlikable character I don't remember him ever being unlikable he has a lot of traits that are like difficult to make someone like them when they when labeling all those traits right like narcissistic or self-centered whatever well weapons manufacturer and stuff like that I think that's what he mentioned as well yeah it's just I guess that's already well that's kind of the built in baggage you're bringing with that is that if you make weapons you're a bad person well even though in the test for the Jericho missiles he shows like a very high degree of charm like charisma and showmanship so like the regular but he's definitely charming as I mentioned the performance from Robert Downey Jr gave him so much likeability it was insane I'm not going to deny the writing of course too absolutely but to imply as was mentioned earlier that Obadiah Stain as a foil is partly like or significantly however he sort of put it I just don't think it has much to do with Obadiah at all and then secondly we come to like Tony with like before the first act even over you know a lot of it is just being a human try to get out of a horrible horrible situation then we kind of on his side and then we start to you know build him back up but when he's when he's home so yeah this not working so far but we'll see we're not doing a good enough job we can do better we're going to do something else like one this relationship is in some ways the inverse of what we see in say Sam Raimi's Spider-Man 2 intelligence is not a privilege it's a gift and you use it for the good of mankind two characteristically good men of similar some would you say intelligence is a privilege well he wouldn't say it he said it's a gift that you need to use for the good of mankind are you saying that like other things that calling it a privilege is incorrect yeah I don't know I guess in a way it is I don't know it's thinking oh wait he's like mind controlled you know from his tentacles we had to say he was using it for evil I guess you could say that right bad men where one is driven to use a common power for good sorry did we just categorize Tony was just a bad man go back go back yeah I need to hear this again here we have two characteristically bad men where one is driven to use a common power I don't think I agree with that I don't agree Obadiar I'll agree on right once we find out that he's willing to just kill people to make as much money as he can selling to whatever markets for possible Tony the fact that he sees that he himself is blown up by his own missile isn't necessarily the thing that makes him so that he doesn't want to sell them anymore it's the nature of how his missiles are being sold to people he doesn't want them to be sold to yeah because remember this is little known fact is that after that he makes this suit with all of these weapons systems in them and it could fly and go around and blow things up and we were literally watching him on the screen blowing something up as he walks away very cool like so he's still making weapons yeah he's taking more of a fucking interest in exactly where they go and how they're used because it was a big part of what he's been why he was still doing all the things well except just taking it from his dad basically when he passed he wants to protect America basically and the US military and provide weapons for them and so they like the US is protected because he's like that's like a thing yeah and his role and the responsibility he takes in that I don't think any of his before he becomes Iron Man it's meant to be malicious in any kind well the reason this is all funky is because he's trying to create like a mirror with Spider-Man 2 two good men one of them uses their power for evil two bad men one of them uses their power for good it's like no neither of those really works like that's thematically that's really cute but unfortunately it's not accurate well that's one of those square peg round hole because like I said I feel like it's a bit of a gap there with Octavius not even being in control certainly not fully yeah it's a bit it's a bit malformed on both sides as lovely and poetic a thought as it is it is unfortunately not correct I figured he was going to get to an unlikable character like later in the video and he was just using Tony Stark as like a positive example but it's all Tony what the fuck I think it was kind of just that a bit ago but like was there ever a time in the film where we were like that Tony Stark I so fucking lame and annoying not really yeah even if he was a womanizer or a bit selfish or a showboater like narcissistic do you remember his opening scene he's being chill with like the military people right there's soldiers in the Humvee yeah he's super charismatic it just starts with like rock music playing and he's just like oh what's up I think I'm going to be executed soon because nobody's saying anything and then just kind of just loosens up the mood and it's like super charismatic it's like I love that intro to this Tony Stark this video should be about stuff like that that's all the weird I remember even in that scene this was back in the day when heroes would actually like either try or express some sentiment relating to trying to save people it was 2008 is a different time for heroes back then we had them and then on top of that he's going to be going on an arc in the film when you're going into these films you're generally having some expectation of that so even if you look at a character with flaws who still have flaws by the end of the story anyway that you know you know that they're going to be heading in a certain trajectory so it would be very strange if somebody was like wow this guy is just like worthless and then they were stunned by the end of the film like oh my god at first I thought I was going to hate him forever but then it turned out that he's a good guy after all just be a bit weird yeah it feels like a rewrite of what actually happens in the film to fit like a point that wants to be made about characterization about the idea of the filmmaker being stuck with an unlikable character yeah maybe a maybe sort of a 2020 I guess four mindset whenever this movie was a modern mindset that's being applied to maybe how that character would be looked at from 2008 landscape I'm guessing that whatever the book is that he's referencing is probably old would be my guess but again it almost probably fits by the original Iron Man creator right oh no no no I mean the book where the characterization and true character distinctions come from he said it was from like a writing book oh yeah the um I forget I feel like I feel like with a quote like that you'd want to give it a bit of and here's why it's correct and here's why you should take this quote seriously or this quote is a guideline to some idea that I'm going to present to you as being you know a truthful one but um I think he just sort of said the quote and then we went with it now granted the true nature of Sam Raimi's talk about Octavius is substantially more complex than Iron Mongers and a topic I've covered before but this is all complex to the point of it doesn't work as an analogy well that but I was also going to say like he's more complex than Iron Mongers like Iron Mongers like known to be a bit of a laughable villain why we even there's no shock to say a protagonist should surprise us the greater the dichotomy between true character and perceived characterization the more captivating our hero becomes I don't I don't know about that there's something there's something to be said about a character who is just so self assured confident stalwart and secure that they will act very similarly outwards as they are inwards I mean there's a lot of characters who really kind of imbue that and just saying that the difference is what makes them interesting I mean to paint it as like sort of a broad rule I agree that it can be really cool when a character surprises you with the choices that they make absolutely I don't think that it's the kind of general rule that could be applied to all characters that you should be increasing the distance between the way that they present themselves to the world and who they actually are because that that just doesn't encompass the every kind of character that you could write that people would agree are great what about I mean of course I presume this is only being applied to protagonists would be my guess because with villains if you did this this also locks off like a whole bunch of different types of villains that you can have in your story I mean some of the most famous villains are going to be absolutely static they ain't going to surprise you with the decisions they're going to be ruthless like that's you know a big ol but if someone was to say well no it doesn't apply to antagonists I'd be like okay obviously Superman but like someone just mentioned in channel I was like oh yeah cool it's Luffy he's not going to surprise you with a sudden like villainous turn or at least he doesn't in the first season the live action adaptation which is what I've seen part of what's so interesting about him is his unrelenting positivity and support of people he loves like that's pretty cool in terms of like despite all odds he'll always try and remain positive and supportive it's like oh look at that that's nice especially when you're surrounded by more nihilistic characters in other pieces of culture perhaps sometimes he's just surrounded by all the evidence being stacked against him being positive yeah and if someone wanted to say that I find that boring it's like that's fine anyone can find it boring or interesting but to say a character's true character versus characterization being more and more at odds is more and more interesting I'd just be like careful encouraging that shicks you're going to end up with a assassinating character probably and with a lot of characters who don't make sense and I don't even potentially yeah I still don't agree this is what's happened to Tony I don't agree like we're practically saying like that moment where he saved that guy is like is it somehow at odds with how he's characterized no it's not yeah if anything you could make arguments for why him saving that guy just plays into his narcissism and how he wants to be perceived if you want to there's plenty of stories that you know where the hero is going to be doing it just because of their perception I did literally who I was thinking of yes Homelander so I mean even you know Spider-Man to a degree is kind of like that where he goes on his arc oh I mean you mean Billy McGuire Tom Holland oh oh yeah yeah yeah homecoming so there's a lot of uh yeah I don't know I feel like this is really something that deserves a bit more exploration because right now it's more declaration than well we got three minutes left well that's true percentage wise that's a big chunk of video so yeah that's true see the real trouble for the screenwriter doesn't come in crafting this contradiction it comes in maintaining it over the course of multiple films don't push it I'll give you a war you won't believe McKee notably cites Rambo as an example of how a failure to maintain this dichotomy can have a detrimental effect on franchise sequels gonna say up front don't remember much of Rambo so oh first blood's great I remember one in the three pretty well um and then the newest one was funny about Rambo two is the second best one the first blood's the absolute like none of them touch first blood like it actually is the best movie but two is fun although at the same time they all kind of exist in separate universes in some way like they are continuous but you can definitely imagine that never in the history of the Rambo franchise was the next film considered while they were writing the one they were working on I just find it amusing as well to just sort of be like do we have time to bring in Rambo we're kind of funny because I was looking away for like two seconds just looking at something as like all of a sudden I look back to my other screens like why is there Rambo all of a sudden I was talking to an Iron Man what was going on I mean Metal we are doing a first blood forge at some point if you've done things sure in first blood Rambo sequels are action-slot but like the first one I felt like I had actually something to say about PTSD war veterans in first blood Sylvester Stallone's Rambo begins a burned out war veteran traveling on foot in search of peace and solitude but when he's unceremoniously provoked by a local sheriff a ruthless killer is uncaged it's a gripping contradiction but by the time the sequels rolled around it's not a contradiction it's not a contradiction just because if I was happy five minutes ago and then this video makes me sad that's not a contradiction in character Rambo is not only driven by circumstances he's very driven by how he is treated by the people in the town that he ends up in because the thing with contradiction is it kind of bakes in an idea of irreconcilability but like it's not as in like it's there's something that's wrong in a sense there's a clash a dysfunction but I don't know if you would describe it as just well when certain events happen to a character it changes the way that they react to the world and move I don't yeah contradiction just I don't know that's not the right word yeah people behave people are capable of expressing opposite emotions and actions in different contexts you would analyze a character having contradictions by them behaving in wildly different ways and essentially two of the same scenario what to say and what to actually do like you know people saying contrast or dichotomy these feel like better terms than than contradiction but I find Rambo Rambo in particular though is so consistent that during the entire film he's still who he was in Vietnam well it seems like he's almost halfway there it's like that person is being drawn back out of him through circumstances that he's expecting to absolutely not do that like committing to action X and then experiencing something heavy and then doing action Y that's seen as contradictory in the most like bland and mundane and clinical sense in terms of at X and Y are different it's like yeah but we have cause and effect for it so I'm not sure why you're calling it a contradiction and I just you know in reference to Iron Man as well it's still like hard to follow what exactly he thinks he's saying with this so he's saying that in the future films they're not as effective because there's no revelation that there is that man that lives underneath the one that we saw at the beginning of Rambo you know cause that reveal happens in the first one and so the rest of the films are just that character that we saw revealed in Rambo so much for slow reveals of how characters change over time or how they have some character flaw that that bubbles to the surface as the context changes in their life the circumstances in Rambo 2 and 3 and the rest of them I forget how many there are now he's 5 in fucking warfare essentially like the idea that we'll never see that man again back from war and just wants to settle down and so we don't see that contradiction it's like well those are different stories they could have told those maybe they would have been better maybe worse it's like you can take it's weird because this mindset leads you to a point of thinking that there's only one place you're supposed to take a character or supposed to do with a character if they are a particular way it's like how many different directions think for example if someone said Luke Skywalker's got to make the new Jedi Order and refuse to help the Republic in their war he sees it as a contradiction of power or something give that to 70,000 directors and you'll get 70,000 different stories they're not going to be the same just because they've got like a base even if you know because I said that but compare it to like no guideline the implication here is that Rambo 1 has a format that the rest of them failed to do but the thing is like Rambo has every right to go any direction it wants he's a human being you can direct him in many different ways feels weird to say like that's a failure on Rambo's part as a franchise I guess the term true characters feel so static like you can apply it to certain characters I think like Captain America for instance where it's just like you kind of want him to just be same old cap all the time but could you say Walter White is a what's Walter White's true character you know what I mean yeah some people change far more than others I mean we all change all of us we're not the same person we were 10, 15, 20 years ago if someone especially a lot of that has to do with the fact that we're all pretty young and when we first meet how old are you? 40 I just turned 40 last week that's not old but when we first meet Tony for instance he's already like well into his adulthood and most of his experiences are behind him in that sense so it it just seems different to me I don't know if people change Cap has a very very firm and foundational sort of underlying principle that would take a a lot of work to change to where it might not even be possible so he wouldn't expect him to change I could see this video being like Cap is in favor of helping people and yet in civil war he's punching Iron Man contradiction like and you know that shows us true characters like what are you talking about? all these things happen for very specific reasons that relate to fundamental principles why are we pretending otherwise? true character is characterization still annoying to hear but hey we're coming back to Iron Man so let's see what we got all right oh well producer Kevin Fleike managed to avoid this trap by not resolving the discrepancy between Iron Man's character and characterization too early in the final scene of the first Iron Man now he's calling, he's not even calling true character character and characterization character and characterization that shit's confusing yeah it gets you lost again video essayist used to do because this one is eight minutes so so short but they used to do the thing of like how he is like how he is seen by the people in the world versus who he is but even then that wouldn't because it's about this video is about how we see him are they like is he trying to separate into like ego super ego stuff? like this is how he acts but these are the things he values um if he wanted to do ego, super ego and edge then he should have said those things like instead of character versus true character I don't even know what his thesis is is he seems to be unlikable? my guess here especially with the title is that when you have a character that is definitively like unlikable at the baseline being traits that are bad let's say cowardice let's say self-centeredness selfishness furious just nice things happening he's just a big old goblin what you need to do is have those things presented and then show a truly good man in the times that matter and continue that formula throughout the films where you show him to be like a mild managed chill veteran who then is really angry and then in the future films show him being angry still like you know what I mean this feels very borked at the point of view the movie Tony Stark is instructed by agent Coulson to share with the press a story that would effectively cover up his involvement in the events of the film and maintain his secret identity after all that's why superheroes wear the mask but for Stark to do that would be to resolve his hubris to undermine his need to control the narrative and to align the true character partially unveiled to us in this film with the conventional characterization of a superhero which is why in a twist ending and a famously improvised line by Robert Downey Jr. Stark openly admits to the world I am Iron Man in one line were reminded that this character is still interesting in one line still interesting if he chose to remain well it's weird to be like oh if he chose to remain hidden he wouldn't be interesting yeah that's just obviously not true I almost want to play that section again because I I'm really not following what he's trying to say yeah I was about to say the same thing I'm just a little lost here at what point is Tony not an interesting character during the first Iron Man film because that scene happens at the end of the first film like right at the end of the movie it's like oh you know what this character is actually interesting were you not compelled for the other two hours I'm gonna give it another go see if I can follow this time in the first Iron Man movie Tony Stark is instructed by agent Coulson to share with the press a story that would effectively cover up his involvement in the events of the film and maintain his secret identity all that's why superheroes wear the mask but for Stark to do that would be to resolve his hubris to undermine his need to control the narrative it would resolve his hubris and undermine his need to control the narrative I think those two things are potentially completely different I'm not even sure if I agree with either about him as a character under mind controlling the narrative it's not the right yeah also hubris and pride are not interchangeable a lot of people act as if they are and they're not he wants the spotlight he wants people to know the Iron Man he wants the celebration of him pride is how you feel you are hubris is what you think you can do hubris is it's typically in stories if someone has hubris it's specifically the pride at least to their downfall it was his hubris that killed him because a lot of people have pride but hubris is that taken to a degree that it becomes self-destruct to the point that your pride leads you to take an action which becomes your undo right okay well Iron Man 2 would give us near the beginning that he's happy to announce himself as Iron Man because he wants to be the face of the sense that don't fuck with us and I will also be the person to stop just me I have the power I am Iron Man to go immediately negative with that and be like it's a narcissism thing there's certainly elements that work with it but simultaneously it's an interest in trying to be like why hide it instead of actually have a show of strength and be like yeah the whole point of me engaging in this is to try and prevent bad things from happening so I'll be here I'll be back is trying to develop shit and he's like laughing at the fact that they can't catch up to him but he owns the market on this kind of power which you know the desire for control but it's not what did he say? Dictators desire for control that was earlier yeah which I assume is still relevant he's also dying of blood poisoning at the start of the second one right so that's like I imagine that's influencing his decision making quite a bit from there he's like way more reckless yeah I think that's already happening when we start the film up yeah and to align the true character partially unveiled to us in this film with the conventional characterization of a superhero which is why in a twist ending and a famously improvised line by Robert Downey Jr Stark openly admits to the world I am Iron Man okay so he so with that party was saying that it's created the contrast again because typically superheroes don't do this is I guess I just feel like this is like are we going with comparing him to maybe like one or two there's like a thousand different types of superhero I guess he'd probably be appealing to the sort of the general idea that a lot of superheroes have a secret identity yeah we can say most it just doesn't matter though compared to there's so many that don't yeah no I I'm just saying I think that's his observation I just don't I don't see what that assists well it plays into the idea of if you know contrasting him with I guess what the expected norm is might be sort of parallel to him saying that the only thing that we need Obadiah staying to contrast with Tony to make him like a ball maybe it's sort of a similar kind of line of reasoning I mean I think a lot of it comes across like an interestingly different thing but like at the same time is why would this be the only interesting outcome or the one that makes him interesting yeah what if the film decided at the end that maybe he's learned to be a bit more humble and secretive and something like that at the end he decided to become a dictator and just said yeah I am Iron Man and now you all bow to me and then just he said I must control the narrative dictator man because I think that he's arguing like this is a promise of that that lineup of the narcissism and all those flaws and stuff is still present despite the heroic acts we've seen him do which like I said I feel like that's being treated weirdly as a contradiction as opposed to that is the character in one line we're reminded that this character is still interesting in one line seeds your conflict are planted for a decade of films to follow I really feel like I am Iron Man stuff like this is all to do with his parents there's a whole different dimension to his character if he was very humble I think that this fight would still yeah there's no anyone could end up where he is here as a result of seeing that video that's not to do with being a narcissist or wanting control necessarily or like announcing I am Iron Man like not caring about a secret identity a friendly scene that fight again recently it's just so good really good your struggle to reconcile who he is when was the last fight in the MCU that you thought was really good I don't want to think about it Echo and Daredevil oh yeah it's a classic it's really really good does that include fighting CGI monsters yeah it's just a fight just an MCU fight that you thought was actually like good I didn't mind I suppose I didn't mind the fight with Chiwetel, Edge of Four and Doctor Strange and Multiverse of Madness it was shot kind of nice but I didn't care about the fight no I didn't like that one there was Shang Chi maybe on the bus there was some stuff yeah yeah oh wait everyone's jumping out of their seat Spider-Man and Goblin yeah I love the fucking vicious fight on that that was cool that's true yeah that might be the one actually I like the winter soldier fight on the highway I thought that was cool with Cap and Winter Soldier Cap and Winter Soldier this character's struggle to reconcile who he is with what he is that is after all the question that drives the whole thing who he is with what he is I'm so lost again I feel like we shouldn't be introducing that this late yeah that's weird and also I just I feel like who he is and things and what he is is like a male homo sapien Slash and Bone yeah like I said too late to introduce that because now I'm wondering if the whole thing was supposed to be about that the reason we as an audience have even been able to trace Iron Man's arc through the MCU is because the conflicts in each film were built up and up from the incongruity between Tony Stark's true character as a superhero and his characterization as an abundantly flawed protagonist those aren't contradictions abundantly flawed those are both the same person I'm sorry the delivery of that sentence just makes me angry it took him so long to say he's a flawed person and a superhero contradiction like no I wanted to yell so badly just now wait till he learns about a lot of famous people in history and you learn about oh yeah maybe people are complicated especially when you go back in history it's just a different world in terms of you know morality and expectations and attitudes about things like boy this will blow your mind people can be very complicated thank you all the heroes we're very familiar with with maybe some exceptions have like significant flaws in their personality usually helps drive storylines I don't know why we're pretending you might even consider their strength to also be like a flaw that's how traits often work is that they have like a trait that you have can be it could also be you know a negative someone's greatest strength can be their greatest weakness especially if it's something along the lines of like being trusting or seeing the good in people things of that nature here it's a character in a show who when he's walking past a homeless man who says if you got any change he says get a job you lazy piece of shit or something like that who then, seven episodes later dies to save everybody if someone was to say that's a contradiction because he clearly shows care enough to sacrifice his life but he doesn't care enough to I don't know give a coin to a homeless person you should be like you're a very strange person like in terms of how you analyze media just saying protagonist as long as Stark had flaws as long as he had ego and arrogance and hubris he had conflict conflict for his true nature and for the franchise he keeps repeating it over and over again he's got an ego but he'll also give his life to save people curious this video should have been it should have been there should be more in it because for 8 minutes we can't be repeating ourselves this much but also maybe this needs to be an exploration as to how characters can have a multitude of traits and yet maybe how a character might seem complicated something like that an exploration into why people are the way they are they don't care about something else but it just seems like a misplaced sort of topic quite poetically Iron Man self perpetuated his own arc gradually working through that laundry list of defects along the way until finally his characterization and true character well why why? in Iron Man he did this in Avengers he did this this is not a revelation he's done this before this is Tony being consistent you showed the scene where he flies the rocket into space you dumbass exactly you showed the thing where he was like the thing is one might argue there's a line in Avengers where he says save the rest for the trip back Jay like as in fuel and stuff so he knew he would survive he almost fucking died absolutely he knew there was a good chance he'd die he was the one he believed he was gonna die when they activate the arc she literally says but you'll die and he says push it so this is bullshit this has already happened and I'm at one I think what I found weird was well in the observation he was saying the contradiction means that they can self perpetuate the arc throughout the whole series when I'd say it's pretty apparent that he's going on different arcs like the story lines he's going through a white civil war through after Avengers that they really fumbled for a while of him dealing with them sort of fumbling with the PTSD until they actually decided to try and work with the trauma that he had and then leading up to the relationship that he started to build with Peter as well these are different arcs they're not arcs they're downstream from the arcs that happened earlier in his story but it's not like they are the product of it would be weird to say that they were the strict product of this contradiction between his true character and characterization it's more so that different things happened that made him go on a different journey genuinely speaking if we did a breakdown of his arc specifically we would be going over very specific lines and choices of action and how they almost bungled it several times in different ways but that recontextualized certain things to fix it back up all the work that's done by Iron Man is not look he said I am Iron Man what a narcissist and then he did the snap and killed himself to save people I guess he's not a narcissist that's an incredible character it's like no no it's done in all the tiny scenes between everything connecting you all up making you like him all the relationships he develops and the several arcs has been pointing out that he's not just this one about whether or not he's selfish like it is there's so much more to him and I just feel like this video has not helped explain it at all because at this point you'd be like so I've got to characterize them as X but when it comes down to it they do Y okay and then you know if they misunderstand this video enough you end up with a Palpatine who fucking saves people randomly but he could not save himself no he could not well I guess he did right because he was on X to call oh yeah that's right he's right resurrection is my true character yes I feel like this doesn't capture almost anything to do with why Tony Stark works yeah this is a story could end yeah that was pretty bad what even was that video it's so short too he mostly repeated himself it was like a it was like a minute and then the same minute the same minute the same minute yeah this was it was a lot of repetition it was short it wasn't a proper exploration of the topic as it presented itself it breached into things that didn't make sense it made incorrect statements it arguably was all based off of a appealing to an authority that I didn't necessarily that I just I don't think I do agree with no attempt was made to make that I guess the thesis quotations like convince us that those are correct correct yeah I really don't think it had I mean and of course we had you know like golden rule of EFAP we had our visuals that contradicted the statements being made yeah I'd love to know how he contextualizes all the other times that Tony did what he did in endgame and how they don't play into this I have no idea because he said like once he'd done the one in endgame his story could end it was like could it not end at the end of the endges could it not end at the end of im1 how does your system work because the thing is like I assume we all agree if Iron Man had survived the snap there's more stories to tell with him yeah oh yeah 100% easily I mean you couldn't speculate on right it's like it would have killed anyone else but that the Iron Man suit protected him enough and it's now like through the snap it's gone into his bloodstream and his flash to the point when he's like serious surgery and that he's like all of the like half of him is machine now not to fucking vader him but you know what I mean like there's plenty we can do in terms of repercussions but simultaneously moving him on if you really want to he's more iron now than man he's more iron now than man noise well bad video better like next time I think it's just too much of a short man okay short man bad it is too short yeah I mean it needs to be longer and better funny thing is yeah it's like for eight minutes you could have done way better so I don't know you can pack a lot of info into eight minutes you really can he said a little something there about like true character and characterization being one in the same but he framed it in such a way that if it's ever out of alignment then like the story is not being well told or something that was the impression I got but like I think in the ideal screenwriting situation you want to like in the characterization you want to contradict I'm not saying this applies in every case but you want to contradict the true character in the beginning and like the arc maybe is the character becomes less selfish over time due to certain plot things and then around like the end of act two or the third act fight then it's like oh that's his true character I get it this is the character we all know and love like I kind of get that but I'm not sure that was his point you also mentioned at one point that the more they contradict the characterization true character the more interesting which is just strange this feels like getting tangled up in these weird writing concepts that just kind of distract from more fundamental universally applicable principles that you can apply to storytelling this whole getting tangled up in what is characterization versus true character just seems counterproductive rather than it's all characterization just think about who your characters are in ways that you can challenge them and test them or change them instead of well make sure that the contradiction between true character and characterization is sufficiently large that they're interesting weird it's a weird definition but true character is simply character when things are high pressure yeah we gotta explore when you say stuff like that there's gotta be that voice in your head that says like man you need to like explore that that's a bold thing to say sounds like a thing that we could have a very long debate and discussion over that you just sort of say casually and then carry on with I'm surprised too if he's if he's mostly trying to highlight a difference between Tony Stark's personality and what his true character is it seems like Iron Man 2 was sort of when he was at his lowest point right like where they sort of the demon in the bottle story um yeah because he thought he was going to die and that he didn't know what his legacy would be at that point and what to do with his weaponry and stuff low point it's a little bit complicated you could argue his low point would be the beginning of endgame oh really when Thanos has snapped the whole world they can't stop you know that's probably a low point that's pretty low yeah well I don't know but I'm sure he probably felt pretty good about everything he'd done up to that point because it seemed like Iron Man 2 I mean character wise he was in a pretty dark place there and I don't think he'd ever gotten that dark after that I mean thinking like I'm in a desperate situation I'm going to die is like let's face it something that happens quite a lot I would say that he definitely was at his lowest point in endgame of having lost and presumably going to starve to death on the stretch in the middle of space like there's no way a character like him wouldn't have thought man if only I had done that move or this move to Thanos you know yeah that's true I get why you would point it out though it's definitely a low point next up we're moving to the realm of video games I like those I'm not as controversial as the lady says but I'm a big fan of video games I sure do like them this is something that a couple of people have suggested to cover and by God from the title alone I was like yes this sounds like it's called how God of War ruined resident evil village hang on say that again how God of War ruined resident evil village well I seem to recall I'm already lost episode on resident evil village God of War never came up in our discussion on why that came sucked balls one vice versa right do we have a reference village in our God of War I don't think so but anyway have a little look see who knows what we're in for like the two games had a fight one day it's like what I'm sure it'll make sense oh it's so weird it's no I just I saw that I saw that footage of Ethan Winters in the castle on the balcony I was like man all that makes me think of is how stupid the gameplay elements of that are like oh I'm a bad guy I gotta kill you I gotta get you oh you went downstairs well I couldn't I couldn't possibly go down there to get you I'll go to the bottom of the stairs but I won't actually go into that room to get you I'm just gonna go back up here so if you need me I'll be back up here the invisible line I just remember a metal breaking Demetresk's AI and slapping her ass that was nice that was really funny misogyny of course of course but really good stuff it's it's kind of interesting because I think I played through the through that game like four times and I barely remember anything about it I did one full play through and then I started a second where I just specifically tried to fuck around and see how easy it broke and I was shocked at how much the game needed you to stay on those yeah on that very narrow roller yeah I think it was bizarre I think I didn't want to go back to later I played it once and just found it oddly railroaded like absolutely lackless open because they're saying hey you've got all these four people to go fight go off and find them and oh but you have to find them in this specific order yeah I was like why did they do that I was like he could have made that a go in any order kind of deal and I think it would have made the game feel a lot more flexible and interesting it's a game with very obvious very clear examples of very very bad video game design think of this like one of those special weapons unlock I think I did a full play for a while we're doing the e-fap on that I think one of the points I made could just lead run for the game pretty easily I never played village but I did play seven and I just found the main character really insufferable and idiotic he doesn't get better yet because he is he gets anything he gets worse it's dark well they at least in village they do make an effort to try to explain how the hell you survives half the stuff he did in seven whatever it was no but that doesn't work because the explanation they give means he couldn't have ever died who cares no one likes Ethan Winters it's like oh thank goodness he explained why he's still alive also true he's just one of those moron idiot loser nerds it's Ethan Winters in seven too right yes it's the same in both yeah and the BLC of village is third person and you play as Ethan's daughter and it's probably the worst thing I've played in the entire resident evil series I don't think I've ever played I think he tried it I wasn't compelled at all I think James explained to me what happens in that I forgot what it had something to do with he's mold now or something I don't know well yeah he's mold because it doesn't even crumble apart at the end of the game sure yeah it turns out he was mold all along and he can only die from some special bullshit which makes you wonder how was there ever a game over in seven and eight up to this point I don't know how about we don't think they're gonna do because they show him enough okay I would say though we can if you if CJ if you haven't played the resident evil for remake I would highly suggest it yeah not the remake you have you played the death I have I have yes I did like it I did like it yeah I think the death remake is the better remake what we loved it it is I did really like it I love them both but yeah I was skeptical about them having his character actually speak as opposed to just being a silent protagonist the whole way but I think it worked yeah no I don't think it like ruined anything they also fixed that fucking stupid turret section true there's certainly games where it's better that they don't talk but that was an example where I think it actually works better the other way kind of rights performance was really good too that helps yeah yeah Tonya Clark everyone else yeah all right come over that we got to talk about how God of War root in evil village let's do it one of the points I made in my resident evil village video was that it reminded me a lot of God of War 2018 originally I planned to expand on that more that's a good idea because I'm already confused look I haven't played God of War but I have played resident evil village and boy village has some of the most mediocre dull bare bones combat I've seen in a video game it is so is such a boring slog of a game to play the enemies don't react to shots the way they do and even the original resident evil four who was yeah it's just like we spent so long this game is with the yeah this game is put the reticle on the enemy's head and click eight times now do that for the whole fucking game it is so boring so dull just the bare necessity of what you need in combat it's awful I hate it there's there's virtually no interactivity with enemies awful expand on that more and there was a large section I eventually decided to cut because it felt weird to just go off on a tangent about God of War 30 minutes into my village video but I definitely wanted to address that point basically what do I mean when I say village reminds me of God of War 2018 the aesthetic comparison isn't that important though I would say it's insignificant both games have they both have snow they're so well come on you didn't even let him complete the point before disagreeing you gotta let him say what he said he means I would say I does God of War only do 30 FPS um no no no on our base ps4 yes on even a ps4 pro though you could unlock the frame rate and it usually kicked around 40 to 52 never really hit a queen 60 though okay because because the footage on the right looks like his own capture because it looks good and it's running at least 60 and the one on the left is is from gamers little playground yeah it's clearly not the best version of the game it's obviously running at least half the frame rate and you can see yeah well that could be pulled off youtube or whatever and encoded in in such a way I want to you would just be 60 FPS footage off youtube right I want to know if it's snow if it's because they're in snow let us find out important though I wouldn't say it's insignificant both games have you spending lots of time in environments that look and feel the same but it's not really the main issue the okay man that was bad I think it's safe to say that I think it's safe to say that it's because there's snow I don't even know you don't want to make a point like that so quickly and show that as your evidence that's bad well yeah I wouldn't say it's about time like I don't even know what to begin into think about all of the places that you go to that don't have snow I don't know man, yeah I want to stop the opposite of snow I'm struggling I'm struggling to find something that links them because I'm inclined to say they're actually quite polar opposite I certainly would like the polar opposite I mean look alright it's got to be snow because the architecture and the environments aren't even the same one of them is set like Norway and with all of this like Norse architecture and old buildings and the other one is set in a village in like not Transylvania yeah and I don't even think as for as shitty of a video game as village is like there's decent variety in the places that you go yeah I'd say well yeah I mean you aren't exploring any like opulent sort of mansions in God of War you're not going through any of these crazy interiors of like the level design is reflecting the gameplay of both games though as was mentioned earlier like Resident Evil Village you can take full advantage of the enemy I a lot of the time well God of War good luck most of the time because you know pick the difficulty you can fucking beat them at well typically it's set up and it's the arena that it puts you in doesn't really give a huge amount of room for you to be able to exploit that you know the right I have the enemies so yeah it's like you're not going to be able to walk out of it then you exactly yeah you make the play area such that you can't do that sort of thing yeah he's going to go he's saying it's beyond the aesthetic so we'll feel the same but it's not really the main issue the issue is one of design philosophy and the kind of game they want to create for people if you've seen my video on why God of War with ruined not a fan of God of War the new one I guess was ruined you'll be familiar with these points and I'll be repeating them here only this time showing the same trends let's take a look at the old God of War games and the old Resident Evil games as well as newer titles now this is perfect because not only a mean metal I want to say Mark and John maybe but we're experts in all God of War games and Fringy recently was playing God of War 3 yeah yeah we're ready yeah I saw Mahler play God of War Ragnarok loser it's also a great game it's controversial apparently I beat one to three but I haven't played the new ones or no I played the new ones but I are not Ragnarok I haven't beat either of them you'd like Ragnarok you're almost done the new first God of War almost play Valhalla after Ragnarok as well the DLC is very much work on you I heard it's dope yeah the old Resident Evil games as well as newer titles like RE7 and RE2 remake that try to remain faithful to the classics and we're going to look at how these games are designed in terms of their systems and player accountability old God of War games had three starting difficulties and an unlockable extreme difficulty you could go for easy and just mash your way through or you could go for hard and actually have to fight smart and learn to defend and work to get enough XP for upgrades you absolutely have to do that just like the new games well hey he hasn't said that's not the case yet but that is absolutely the case in the new games too higher difficulties didn't mean you just died easier they also meant you got less resources back from health and magic stations so you're making smarter decisions about when to use I mean one could argue that that is you know like those are all like meters you can move up and down right make the enemy have more health make you have less damage make yeah it's not clever no it's not it doesn't make the game more difficult but it's it's not very clever I mean both very fun both in 2018 have like the give me god of war difficulty adds mechanics to the combat it is not just sliders it is also I want to say in an attack of the design in 2018 in Ragnarok that difficulty is they warn you before going in it's insane like you'll get killed in two hits when you start sort of thing but at the same time those who are very good at the game getting hit twice by the enemies is rare you know what I mean like you're like that's how good you would be at that point so it's like a it's a 50-50 thing in terms of I wouldn't look to god of war both old and new as a great example of how to crank difficulty I see them as normal you know I think my only major complaint between like the thing I do think that the original god of war series does better than the new ones is one very simple thing I think the camera perspective works better and I think that God of War Ragnarok in 2018 gameplay would work with that camera and you would have less issues with enemy awareness that's the most common discussion that's had with the new format for the fighting god of war I think it's worse but I think it works like I think people over exaggerate like crazy how much is a broken system I never would have called it broken I still got through it on both of them on the hardest difficulty so I mean there's like a 0.5% chance of all times I take damage where I'll go I feel like I couldn't do anything about that like the something hits me from behind with a really shit warning that doesn't make sense from my head at the time whoever it may be I think a lot of problems would be solved if you just were able to move the camera back just a tad just a little bit that would help a lot I am inclined to agree even just dark souls angle I think would work a lot better than the last of us or I mean hey Resident Evil 4 camera that you could argue that that's kind of the game that started the behind over the shoulder slash mid back close up yeah I think it's uh I think was a good move and um someone says uh someone in chat said rags thinking he knows about Resident Evil is funny considering he hasn't played half of the entire series no one has there's a shitload of Resident Evil just just just for instance this is kind of funny Fringy would you consider yourself a Simpsons expert yeah you haven't seen probably half of it at this point yeah that might that might be I might not have seen a third of it yes at this point it's probable I was going to concede that's probably true I don't really care though it's not what rags will be referencing is what he can reference you know I mean he's not going to be like I'm going to reference this game I've never played for why this this that you know yeah I'll only reference the things I have knowledge on for instance I've only played one Metal Gear solid game and that was uh five so I could speak to that but I couldn't tell you couldn't tell you anything about one, two, three or fours or the the whether a PSP one would you say hold as a person who loves the Metal Gear solid games I think they are far too anime for rags to enjoy I you all hate them listen I've seen people talk in gameplay and stuff and I'm glad that people really like it but I just don't think it would be my thing and that's all I think I can agree I'm not a fan of the the Resident Evil you know the originals it's just not my thing I don't like them I know a lot about Resident Evil but I simultaneously know very little about Resident Evil it depends on what we're talking about right I think there's something as well you need to keep in mind and that's that I've been playing video games for 30 years damn nice what's interesting is I can't yet claim that about God of War I need another what 10 years or so someone like that so it'll 12 maybe but yeah as soon as we get that I will be claiming it because thanks to a visit from Metal as well I have played all of the God of Wars everywhere even the handheld ones we streamed them there is one that probably none of us have played and it was a javascript game that was only on some Sony phones it has a unique story too it takes place between God of War 1 and 2 you are not a true God of War fan until you press circle to abandon daughter that's when you are thematically though it's as difficult for him to abandon his daughter as it is to rip the head off of God though his daughter to save her soul from utter destruction it makes sense and even I know that the thing that really ruined that for me when I played it through with Metal was the achievement unlocked deadbeat dad I seriously think that trophy is the reason people read that scene incorrectly what do you mean what will be the correct read well that he's doing it to save her soul in all of existence I feel like everyone knows that I'd be dad by letting her go the trophy names are a bit tongue in cheek deliberately right it could just be a funny meme it's a great time event to abandon it that's funny in and of itself listen press circle to abandon your daughter crawled so that press have to pay your respects I was about to say I've 100% been on a podcast where someone was bringing up that scene as a reason why Kratos was never a good dad before and I lost my shit on the guy I would bring it up as the writer's not taking it as seriously the fact that they would put that achievement on there and the fact that they would make it a quick time event they fucked up but it's so funny I don't know why they wouldn't have thought that would be funny the fact that they mention that in new games as well and make it meaningful it's just insane I kind of wonder if they're in a good way what's the connection though between the people who write the names of the trophies and the people who write the game do you think they all have any say really my impression was that it was just a different team that thinks up cool names for the trophies whether the trophy was written by Santa Monica well I think it was ready at dawn actually but whether it was them or someone else it doesn't change the fact that a quick time event to abandon your daughter is really combined with the trophy sound a deadbeat dad on the screen like what that's funny how much gamer score do I get for abandoning my daughter so you're making a bronze trophy I believe that one is a bronze if you told me it was a silver I wouldn't be surprised that's the platinum trophy that's the one that just gives you all the rest of them yeah so you're making smarter decisions about when to use magic and you're taking extra care of your health bar if you played I want to plant the seed that all of what he said is applicable to 2018 and Ragnarok yeah on easy or even normal you didn't have to worry about that stuff but there were still things in the game when you just killed a civilian yeah classic listen guys the first three go to war games they were really funny they were funny they were much edgier game that asked you to use your head and demanded coordination that's where we get into puzzle solving and most importantly platforming if you can't time your jumps to make it across a hazard area it doesn't matter if you're on easy or hard this section with the archers shooting arrows while you're this actually you do your thing well this is kind of fun because this was something I talked about in the Crash Bandicoot video an interesting thought about the nature of difficulty in video games the idea I think it was spurred in that by the conversation relating to the idea that games should have difficulty settings that that's something that they should do that there's something wrong with the game when it chooses there's only one level of difficulty sorry but I mean in a certain sense it could be said that like all platform like a platform or as a game at the end of the day you got to be able to make the jump and there's not really anything the game can do to help you with that you even see it in Mario where they started adding the um invincibility Tanuki suit it doesn't matter if you're invincible if you can't make the jump you just need to have sufficient dexterity to make the jump they can't fix that for you that's not like a bridge that is like the baseline level of difficulty in a platformer is can you make the jump it's kind of weird as well in God of War specifically because if you fail enough times the game is like do you want to switch to easy mode it's like that doesn't help me yeah which is kind of why it's interesting to bring it up here because this is a game that has difficulty because it makes sense to implement that as a feature because of the well or rather it's something you can actually do in a game like this because you know you've got health and the enemies have health so you can buff the player's health or increase the amount of damage dealt but I mean yeah platforming sections in a game like this I mean yeah I guess it is just a matter of if you can't make the jumps too bad well where he's going with it platforming is an interesting sort of phenomenon in a set of mechanics and video games when it relates to difficulty sliders because you have to make sure when you're developing a game and you have platforming sections that you don't accidentally softlock players from being able to complete that section if you take Guild Wars 2 as an example is an MMO with a lot of platforming in it a lot of jumping puzzles and things of that nature however Guild Wars 2 is also being an RPG in MMO is again where you can give yourself a lot of buffs and boons like swiftness and super speed to make your character move faster however if you don't have access to those boons which you might not depending on your class and the weapons that you have at the moment you have to make these jumping puzzles so that even a player who doesn't have those upgrades can still complete the puzzle so in games where you get to a section where you can't get back you can't make puzzles that rely on the player making upgrades if it has to relate to like double jumping or jump distance or their speed because you'll lock the player out of progress so you have to find different ways of making different jumping puzzles more difficult so in Guild Wars 2 it might be that the distances are longer so you have to be better timed there might be traps and hazards and you might be on a time limit things of that nature even though the actual individual jumps aren't changed that's a pretty cool way to do it adding because for example this box puzzle you can just make it stronger on higher lower difficulties right there's ways you can give people less options I suppose what's interesting in this is the question of because he's made it as an observation which is true that in platforming there's only so much that you can do but you can do a lot well like this timing the jumps thing it's like lower difficulty make the platforms bigger make the soul blades lower and disappear sorry I mean that's uh yeah I mean I guess you could do that well this is every Mario game yeah with the secret blocks the switches yeah even in Mario wonder I was just thinking about the progression of the game starting the first level is really easy and the last level what I meant is that there's only so much that you can do before there is no platforming anymore there's only so much that you can do before it ceases to be like a video game where like you can't get rid of the actual jumps there's gotta be jumps and you gotta be able to make the jumps that's like the the floor on the difficulty in a platformer because if you when failing the jump it just pushes you back out back to where your platform you know like you go whoa and jump back out of the hole back to where you were with no penalty yeah no no no sure but the idea would be that there's a possibility saying it's soft lock doesn't even sound right because it's just like well you can't beat it sorry but that like um if they if you failed and it said that's okay buddy and it just teleported you to the other side it's like oh so well yeah sure that applies to all that applies to combat as well right like if you're hitting p if someone goes I just oh yeah if you're missing them you know but uh do you remember how Cuphead gated its difficulty level uh getting past the tutorial if you can get past the yeah so Cuphead did something he pissed off a lot of game journalists too so half of the back few missions of Cuphead are totally locked on easy mode so you can't definitely play right so the only way that you can see the end of the game is if you use easy mode to practice get a sense of the mechanics and then try it on the standard difficulty I'm cool with that I mean even the game even well Mahler you'll be actually a lot of us will be Helldivers too actually does this to a degree where super samples are only available at difficulty 7, 8 and 9 so there are literally going to be shit module upgrades that are locked behind fucking get good you gotta get good enough to play at least level 7 or you can have your friends carry you through missions true um so wow that kind of that helps justify the existence of the Helldivers cash store a bit too especially considering that you can earn everything on its own the idea that it's like well if you don't want to get good I guess you could buy the stuff but also you can't buy that don't you get different things on every isn't it like every 18 hours or something just to be clear super credits and super samples are different yeah super samples are the pink samples you need to unlock some of the ship modules and you can only get those at level 7, 8, 9 they don't spawn at 6 and below you you don't get ship levels in the cash store ever because you get almost everything no you use no you get you you when you extract with samples you use the samples to upgrade your ship modules requisition points are used to unlock stratagems and super credits are used to purchase cosmetics all of which unlock war bonds can be found well which can be earned in game yeah yes everything ever seems good everybody so what's crazy is how much conversations are spawned because the first thing I wanted to say is I haven't said yet and I'm going to go ahead and say it now I want to know from Metal and everyone else who's played these games preferably more than once because that's kind of the way that I'm contextualizing this but when in God of War 1, 2 and 3 or any of the ones of the older format I walk into an arena and it spawns like 10 dudes and one ogre I'm like okie dokie so I already know I can deal with this and with my magics full I'm like yeah let's go baby however when I come across a moment like he's presented on screen I go and it's like why and it's like because these sections suck yeah the bad doesn't even the worst one we obviously why do they suck and I'd say it's like playing guitar hero songs where playing one of your favorite songs ever and you just gotta hit 80% of the notes and you'll make it through versus playing old mcdonald had a farm and it's only one note and if you miss any single note you die ok I like that a lot actually and if someone's like yeah but it's a good challenge and it's like I guess I mean yeah what constitutes a good challenge and not as always you know subject of a great deal of discussion sure many things are technically difficult but there's a difference between having things be difficult in a good way and difficult in a very annoying frustrating mind-numbing kind of way yeah I mean you gotta be careful when you demand perfection from players that's a very that is a legitimate very high bar I mean these jumping sections I mean we have the famous one in god of war one is it right the whole fleshy rotating bit underworld the underworld which is like Jesus Christ well if that gets brought up we will talk about that too I just like old Macdald had a duck wait no one is no joke my least favorite part of the entire series it's I think possibly everyone's is definitely one of the lowest rate it's like famous for being horrible and it always was like even when god of war 2 was coming out people would be like fuck stupid fucking level with the stew is like yeah yeah and then they send you Hades at the end of the intro mission of two yeah but it's not a cringe yeah most important isn't it also the case in these old god of war games like whenever you're walking on these narrow beams it does almost like a Tony hawks proskater thing where you're on like a limb and you're maintaining balance left to right yeah it's not like Dark Souls where you can just like run across you know if you're precise enough without worry you know yeah you can fuck up super easily and then you just have to do it over and over again it's just so annoying I hate it so much yeah if you can't time your jumps to make it across a hazard area it doesn't matter if you're on easy or hard this section with the archers shooting arrows while you're trying to move a box forward that box is gonna break on easy or hard if you can't watch that's not necessarily a good thing interesting part of the conversation is you know these are observations but is it good or bad when the difficulty is that way yeah he's got it in here this is the fucking nightmare realm that no one likes playing oh yeah there it is do you know what's really bad at it is the checkpoints can like be triggered when you shouldn't hurt so I'll do that my best to explain this but let's say you need to go to A then B then C let's say A is a button B is a button C is the door so you head to C and you do it first because you don't know the map yet so you go to C go past all the goober nonsense and you trigger a checkpoint and then you go oh I need I need to press the buttons okay I'll go back so you go back then you go to A and then you press the button then you die and you're like right my checkpoint is at A good and then you go to B press the button and you're like cool my checkpoints at B and then you go to C and you're getting through that horrible pathway again maybe get to the end die then your checkpoints triggered back at B instead of giving you that checkpoint at C because you triggered it earlier when you were just looking around and so you're like so I if you do it wrong which you wouldn't know you're doing it wrong you can fuck yourself over completely with having to do way more than you needed to do and it's just painful it's just a series of these little these bar while the blades are spinning at you lowering it to easy isn't going to help you out if you can't time and space your jumps you're not going to make it across this section the easy difficulty was just there to help you survive the combat there were still other at show that example earlier did he do that one twice I think so I think he's just saying I don't know yet fundamentally you're not going to make it across this section I don't I don't agree with this saying easy moans only there to help you with a combat I think that the issue here is that the whole game is about the combat and not enough either attention effort or they weren't capable or how much platforming is there in like God of War one quite a bit it's a bit it's almost not 50 50 it's like 70 30 70 30 I'd say puzzles and platforming versus combat the thing is if you knock out if you distinctive between walking around and discovering things takes a lot as well like the actual platforming I'm not sure if that's that could be like 10% maybe 15 I'm not sure yeah that's like a couple of sections like this one he's showing right now like that that would like a platforming section walking around and you have to do this one twice as well so but a lot of the sequences where you walk around and just explore and find chests and stuff like that there's usually enemy encounters that just kind of bring up those not invisible walls but literal walls that only drop when you've completed the combat encounter yeah typically in games the difficulty is not going to apply to platforming sections it'll just be the same no matter what it does take that bit of a it shouldn't be really because platforming is part of the game and the difficulty should reflect that but yeah a lot of the time it's just the only thing that's going to be more difficult in a game is essentially the combat sections the only thing that comes to mind where you could set different difficulties for different things is like Silent Hill you had like a puzzle difficulty oh yeah I think the more other than like modern day accessibility settings yeah I think the last one lost us too this can actually inadvertently create a great deal of tension in games like I'll use Dead Space 2 as an example where if you're trying to go through the game without dying or dying as little as possible which is going to be necessary for you to do if you're going to play the hardcore mode is that there are segments that are going to be sort of like cinematic and cutsceney and you will have to do things that will if you get touched once you're dead whereas obviously in combat you got a lot more stuff to work with a lot more mechanics and then you get to these sections where oh I got to come down the you know the solar array and back into the sprawl and I have to fly through space and not hit any of the debris or else I'm dead and one hit or whatever how many people die on a hardcore run at Dead Space 2 at the eye needle puzzle hmm I feel sorry for those guys I've never failed it I don't actually oh really? oh my god no I'm really good at Dead Space but I've never actually failed that part I think there was I remember in my Dead Space 2 playthrough when I did beat hardcore mode and I was planning out because I played it a whole bunch I love that game I was planning out where my saves would be my first save was always when you go back to the unitology church and it's all fucked up after the marker you know it starts doing all its spookiness because there's a segment there where there's just a lot of enemies in the main atrium and that's a fairly difficult part and so that would be like my first save would be right before that fight because I knew you know you could die here they come in from multiple angles you have all the enemies so it was very easy to die suddenly just with the slightest mistake good stuff though it was very rewarding to finish that game and do that challenge it was I don't think the first Dead Space had a similar challenge I think it just had impossible mode which was just really difficult I can't remember if it did or not I got all the achievements for it on the Xbox 360 but I can't remember if it had a similar like don't die or only 2 checkpoint, 3 checkpoint systems I can't remember and you know someone said he's saying they designed easy mode with only combat in mind not that they should do it and yeah that's what we've addressed so far we haven't said that he said that they should do it he was talking about the nature of it and I think I would take issue with unless you have a quote or a source that it was intentional like we didn't want to change the puzzle combat of course we only wanted to change the combat combat but you know what I mean encounters I find that there's multiple explanations for that one of them could be that they found it easier to set a mode for the game of boosting all enemy health by 75% to create a difficulty but to change platforming requires a bit more yeah you gotta do a little more yeah and every puzzle is going to require a different difficulty and amount of numbers or combinations or clues and things of that nature I guess it might depend on how you code the game too because if there's just one sort of setting in the code for platform speed then you can just turn that all down to 50 across the board boost your health, reduce your health all your damage there's lots of ways you can do it quickly what I was gonna highlight was that when you take this moment for example and you're like alright I want you to extend all the platforms by two times and remove the sword blades that's time you're spending that could be spent on coding the game you know as is and it's like fuck it we'll just leave the puzzles as they are like I'm more inclined to believe that's the case than to believe they thought you know when switching it from easy to hard we will keep the puzzle difficulty the same there is an element of like do we really want to make the platforming more difficult for people or more easy like they probably when they designed at the time thought this was reasonable and they were like we'll just keep it this way a lot of the time having it was not reasonable one of the biggest issues I have with difficulty selection in games though is that it's not often clear which mode is the intended experience because now normal mode is this kind of code for like normie people mode like the casual audience mode and not not the easy one so it ends up being way easier than you're sort of expecting it to be but then there's plenty of games where if you pick the hard mode it's like oh yeah this is the sweaty get good mode that yeah only you'll only be able to even have a chance of getting through this if you know the game like the back of your hand and also yeah I don't know I'd like to just know what what's the the actual normal I know you mean I think me and Mel are the same on that where if it's easy normal hard expert will be like probably hard but maybe hard yeah maybe because I think it's like a couple of years ago when I started playing a game it's like oh you know what I'll do normal because that's probably the way they intend to play the game but the more it's usually what I do yeah because I really want to know you know but but firstly now most of the times just go be hard immediately because normal it's just like super easy too easy a lot of time but you know there are some games like Rogue City where everyone was like play expert play expert expert because hard's too easy oh yeah yeah fair enough yeah because I you told me to play that on the hardest available and I did and it was good it's good was I think I mentioned this on a previous episode but I always thought of hard mode is like sort of the developers normal and then they'll yeah for like that's sort of where I'm at to that could be Halo's influence on you they were being clear yeah maybe well yeah heroic like canon difficulty just gets interesting as well when you heroic is the intended experience that's what I mean more games should do that things like new game plus as well where it's like oh can I change my difficulty up after new game plus there's this games where they definitely intend you to do normal things and get like the loot you can get here and then you can go to high difficulty because otherwise you're just going to get thrashed as ARPG style yeah difficulty tiers difficulty is a just expert mode and the more you play it it would lock the lower difficulties like what you have to suffer a dive before we'll allow you to play lower difficulties it's like grinding experience points difficulty is a fun topic it's not as easy as this thing it's lots of factors and values you have to consider and I mean for instance that thing that was mentioned earlier about a universal slider for a game one that even affects the platforms it's like well that might not even work if you have platforms that are set at certain speeds to create certain openings in windows and by changing platform speed it might literally make the puzzle impossible so even in that element there is a each puzzle, each platforming section it requires its own particular look and it's why I appreciate a lot of the time when games and when developers go through a bit of extra effort to make sure that when I say I want the game harder generally will apply to everything and not just bump up numbers without any context Helldivers again you get different enemies on high difficulties all of a sudden those parts start shooting artillery at you like excuse me all of a sudden they have imperial walker sized bugs there's our ATRTs right what about the the ones that the automatons have they're like the ones from the clone wars those are yes T those are AT you mean AT's what are you talking about the clones yeah the clones small walkers I think you're right ATRTs because then you got ATRTs it's the walker of the gorilla walkers in one TLJ are they called ATAT ATARTs I think as well there's so many of them at this point I don't know they're just ATAT's no you see ATAT's in the scene but you see the new and improved better bigger visions and I think they're called ATAT ATARTs or something like that someone in Chatsburg are going to know wow that's a mouthful I was playing at ADHD which is what he explains why I could remember I was talking about the bile titans though the first time I saw one of those I was like okay so these are a thing I'm going to have to be fighting now oh fun fact if you didn't know if you take out the little green sacs underneath them they can no longer spit acid that's usually what I'm aiming for but I don't know if I have the weapons to take them down usually I usually bring a machine gun in and it seems like you really need one of the big booms for taking fighting them really do you guys hear about that like under the hood dynamic difficulty adjustment that I think Sony patented where like it'll adjust the game without you even knowing which I think is a fucking atrocious idea evil it's actually evil I think there are versions of that that we're all okay with though it's dependent on how it's implemented because Left of Duds has that Evil 4 is a famous user of that Resident 4 does not tell you that this system doesn't tell you that this is a thing that exists in the game and it doesn't tell you that this the professional mode of RE4 is just the hardest that the game can be all the time regardless of how well you're doing so what's I think it's in the execution well yeah and I think in the case of Left for Dead they at least advertised it like that was one of the selling points I remember was that it had an AI director he was watching you play and he's judging you yeah like I don't want any games like having that secretly you know where like I find out later it's like what the game did that really like fuck yeah I think it's fine I think that professional mode knowing that that's just the highest version of Resident Evil 4's experience all the time that makes me feel a lot better about it however it doesn't it doesn't tell you that Resident Evil 4 does not tell you that how that on normal mode it's it's got the difficulty adjustment and it doesn't tell you that professional is just it always on the highest tier of difficulty all the time so these are things that you you have to learn out of the game I'm happy I know that now yes alright anyway there's a video we're watching yeah we got to talk about this game the easy difficulty was just there to help you survive the combat there were still other aspects of the game that remained challenging for you no matter what difficulty you chose picking easy in God of War doesn't mean you can just coast through every part of the game now let's look at Resident Evil those there's no there's no what's attached to that so we just have to leave it as a statement it's like very well because what he said there's also the inverse element of it where the puzzles the platformings things like that it might be as hard as ever it might be as easy as ever and that could be completely independent from whatever difficulty you select because I mean Resident Evil 4 right doesn't matter if you're playing on easier professional you basically muscle memory all of the really really complex puzzles yeah it's I find the statement interesting because you can smell a prescription in there but there's none you're like what are we what are you implying something like the God of War original changes difficulty on combat but not on anything else doesn't allow you to just coast through like dot dot dot what are you those games traditionally only offered starting difficulties up to normal on your first playthrough and while I would love to see a higher difficulty option unlocked right away like they do for the modern games the reason I don't think it's nearly as big a deal as say an action game like devil may cry not offering a hard difficulty is that the challenge of Resident Evil doesn't come from combat the challenge of a resident is largely about is some of it does some of it does yeah well and resource management is combat and that's extremely important in the original Resident Evil game you know what is the challenge the challenge of Resident Evil if it's not the combat what is that to say what to say probably the puzzles puzzles also resource management like knowing whether it's worth it to kill an enemy or not yeah whether you're gonna where am I gonna you gotta picture battles in that game yeah I'm gonna use the fire and oil to get rid of the zombie permanently but the observation is it's not simply a matter of dexterity you gotta use your big old brain navigate the old yeah well the the whole crimson head system in this game really mixes things up which is one of my favorite aspects it makes it the scariest game in the whole series I think oh yeah like there could be presence of the crimson heads is the that's the deciding factor for me I'm like those are scary zombies man right in game like devil may cry not offering a hard difficulty is that the challenge of Resident Evil doesn't come from combat the challenge of a Resident Evil game is largely about exploring and understanding the map managing tight resources backtracking that's weird it's weird to say that and also have the visual of shooting and say it's not to do with combat like that's so weird because I feel like managing resources and combat are pretty fucking heavily linked yeah three types of resource management in the game are ammo ink ribbons for saving your game and healing and using your bullets in the right place at the right time it's like surely that's combat not just a management surely all of it is downstream from all of the observations of you need to understand how to navigate the map and you need to understand how to use your resources is else the combat will kill you right yeah that's right let's start falling out of a long stream the difficulty is all like it all leads to or else you'll die in combat or like miss a bullet and it's bad yeah nothing but the knife which is not very good in this game and then you have to set aside one or two more inventory spaces for one or more keys like you know in some cases there's like one door that