Giant Bombcast 01-24-2012

[0] Hey, everyone, it's Tuesday, January the 24th, 2012, and you are listening to the Giant Bombcast.

[1] I'm Ryan Davis.

[2] Let's take it around the table.

[3] Chewy Tannen here.

[4] Chewy Tannen on weather.

[5] Patrick Klebbik on sports.

[6] Go Chicago.

[7] No. Chicago already wins.

[8] You took off your Chicago shirt.

[9] Yeah, it was my biking shirt.

[10] Patrick came in rocking a real hard nipples.

[11] Oh, yeah, mid -90s, 3 -peep, 6 -peep.

[12] Yeah, it was a good Chicago Bulls shirt.

[13] That's what thrift stores are for.

[14] Chicago Bulls shirts.

[15] Jeff Gershman is here.

[16] I am.

[17] As our psychic expert.

[18] Yes.

[19] Hang on.

[20] You're thinking about wine.

[21] Weird.

[22] That's actually accurate.

[23] And Brad Shoemaker for color.

[24] Oh, man. I want it to be weather.

[25] No, we don't do weather in here.

[26] Damn it.

[27] It's hot and muggy in here.

[28] How about that for weather?

[29] It's uncomfortable already.

[30] Warm front coming in.

[31] One minute in.

[32] I hope warm front coming in doesn't mean what I think it means in this room.

[33] Yeah, it does.

[34] Thank you for spelling it out, though, Vinny.

[35] What?

[36] I'm sorry, chewy.

[37] What were you guys talking about?

[38] No, chewy.

[39] Front.

[40] Oh.

[41] I did just finish that egg sandwich.

[42] Real warm.

[43] You still doing introductions?

[44] No, I'm done.

[45] Okay.

[46] How's it going, Vinny?

[47] My stomach's upset.

[48] Well, apparently Brad should have been on weather then.

[49] He knew it was coming.

[50] Floods are coming.

[51] Mudslides coming.

[52] Good Lord.

[53] What are you guys talking about?

[54] What are you talking about?

[55] Weather.

[56] I thought we were talking about wine.

[57] Drink some water coffee.

[58] Yep.

[59] You know what?

[60] South Africa suing weathermen for being inaccurate.

[61] Was it South Africa?

[62] Did you guys hear about this?

[63] Mm -mm.

[64] Did you guys hear about this?

[65] What else is going on?

[66] What's in the news?

[67] What's the deal with weather?

[68] And they're like, we want all the Krugerrands.

[69] I don't know what you tell me, Jay Leno.

[70] Crickets.

[71] Did you guys hear about this?

[72] So, yeah, I think I don't have a joke.

[73] My Jay Leno is just my Christian.

[74] There's just no...

[75] High pitch.

[76] High pitch smacking and whining.

[77] My apologies to both Jay Leno and Craig Kuyava for those comparisons.

[78] Neither come out good in that shakeout.

[79] It's not even necessarily an accurate impression of either.

[80] No, no. They're really not.

[81] Not even like in spirit.

[82] Nope.

[83] No. Hey, Vinny.

[84] Hi, Ryan.

[85] Oh, it's fun to laugh.

[86] It's nice.

[87] Get it out of there.

[88] It's good to be able to laugh.

[89] Has it been a dark style?

[90] Kind of.

[91] A little bit.

[92] Vinny, how you doing?

[93] Doing all right.

[94] Fantastic.

[95] Yeah.

[96] What's going on with you?

[97] What's going on with me?

[98] You were just...

[99] We had to drag you into this room because you're busy making cables out there.

[100] Making cables every morning.

[101] Just making your own.

[102] Put the red light on.

[103] Are we still talking about your rear end?

[104] You're making cables.

[105] He's making...

[106] Lay in so many...

[107] Fiber optics.

[108] Like roast.

[109] Down there.

[110] A fucking bridge cable.

[111] Just thick and coily.

[112] Braided.

[113] Spanning.

[114] I've seen that before.

[115] Saints Row DLC.

[116] The Genki Bowl 7.

[117] Call it what you will.

[118] It's named, so I would call it that.

[119] Call it what it's called.

[120] I finished that this weekend.

[121] It took maybe the whole weekend.

[122] It took maybe the span between turning it on and then figuring out I wanted to play Skyrim to finish it.

[123] Because it's fast.

[124] Oh, that must have been quick because I saw you...

[125] Right back in.

[126] Saturday morning jumping on Skyrim.

[127] So yeah, maybe 10 .30 to 11 .30 Saturday morning.

[128] The amount of time it usually takes to patch your PS3 to finish the DLC.

[129] It was fast and kind of boring.

[130] Yeah, Jeff, you just wrapped it up too yesterday.

[131] Yeah, yesterday I started it and finished the DLC as well.

[132] It's eight activity missions.

[133] It's like eight side missions.

[134] But two of each.

[135] Two of each.

[136] Three of the four activities in the game are...

[137] Just things from the main game.

[138] Yeah, maybe like a little.

[139] Rescanned and changed up a little bit.

[140] But the activity, it's basically.

[141] And then the one new one sucks.

[142] The Genki, the fun house thing where you shoot everybody.

[143] Drive in the car like the tiger thing.

[144] Keep Genki.

[145] Escort.

[146] Yeah, escort mission.

[147] The destruction mayhem stuff.

[148] Okay.

[149] Isn't that the one you do with the.

[150] Take mayhem but with a yarn ball.

[151] With a yarn ball.

[152] Like Katamari style kind of controller.

[153] And then the one that it's kind of making a debut is like flying around in like a panda suit.

[154] Kind of going through rings.

[155] It's not so much flying as falling, controlled falling.

[156] Yeah, there's a set of rings that you have to fly through.

[157] But your altitude keeps going down, but you have a bit bigger glide.

[158] It's like hang gliding almost.

[159] Yeah, it's sort of like hang gliding.

[160] And then you have to land on rooftops and kill a bunch of mascots and then launch yourself out of a cannon that's on the rooftop to get back into the air and keep gliding.

[161] Land on the platform.

[162] So a lot of just kind of repurposed mission structure stuff.

[163] Yeah.

[164] But none of it is very engaging.

[165] It's stuff that if it was in the main game already, it would have fleshed out the Genki stuff to where it would have made sense that it was there at all.

[166] Because I felt that was kind of a weird inclusion that felt sort of out of nowhere in the main game.

[167] It was weird because you got the sense that they made really significant asset investments into the whole Genki thing.

[168] Right.

[169] Like with vehicles and bonus weapons and gear for your dude.

[170] But it was just a side activity that was not great.

[171] I guess that's kind of also true of a lot of the Nightblade stuff.

[172] Yeah.

[173] invest pretty heavily in that, and it's kind of just a weird little stop in the story.

[174] They do do a lot of one -off stuff like that, but the Genki stuff just felt like they had created this reality show and this part of the world and fleshed it out to a weird degree, and then it was this one type of side activity that you never really heard about.

[175] Yeah, that's true.

[176] So this is stuff that feels like it probably should have been in the main game or probably was at one point planned for the main game or something.

[177] They never really contextualized it too much in the primary.

[178] Right, and they don't really hear it, which is still a shame.

[179] because that is the most fun I had in Saints Row was doing the crazy things in context of something else that's bananas or dialogue or a setup for something that's like, okay, you do this, and then there's a crazy payoff because the dialogue is so smartly written.

[180] And this is just kind of do these side missions, and then you win.

[181] And then the best part of the DLC is like the very end.

[182] Yeah, like one of the lines.

[183] Yeah, and then you're like, okay.

[184] Yeah, there's a couple of funny lines in the opening and the close, which is where they kind of put.

[185] any dialogue at all right and this you still see kind of sparks of the genius that made saints row um the third uh a fantastic game uh but it's it's in like you know them using their music cues correctly and them using smart dialogue but then like once the rubber hits the road and they're like okay now play you're like you didn't give me enough to go on you didn't build this up enough was it more fun now that you've you've like totally maxed out your dudes that you can just kind of lay waste to everyone or It was fun for me in the fact that I can get through it quickly.

[186] Yeah, none of those activities were things that I would want to spend any real time on.

[187] Yeah, they made some stuff slightly more difficult than I think some of the stuff in the main game was.

[188] But that doesn't mean it's hard.

[189] I had some trouble doing the skydiving thing.

[190] Well, the controls are not that great.

[191] Yeah, the controls are kind of bad.

[192] And trying to figure out what the hell you're even supposed to do the first couple of times is...

[193] But once I got the hang of how the controls work, it just knocked out those two missions, and it was like, great, never going to do that again.

[194] And you don't have to.

[195] The escort stuff I never really enjoyed.

[196] In that particular, I didn't really enjoy it.

[197] Sometimes you just get hung up on stuff, like I'm caught on this telephone pole or something like that.

[198] Destruction stuff was really easy.

[199] You just rolled around.

[200] Yeah.

[201] And stuff breaks.

[202] But then you do get a couple of cool or at least interesting rewards.

[203] You do get the giant ball of yarn as a reward.

[204] You just call it as a yarn homey.

[205] Oh, it's a homey.

[206] No, no, no. It's not a homey.

[207] It's in the sense that a homey drops off a vehicle.

[208] I'll bet which is fun because you call it.

[209] Do you run on top of it or you just go inside of it?

[210] You hit the get in vehicle button and you just disappear.

[211] There's no...

[212] But it is fun seeing the giant bowl of yarn come around a corner to stop in front of you.

[213] And then a guy appears as he sees getting out of it to leave it for you.

[214] And he's dressed up like a spaceman.

[215] You're like, this game's stupid.

[216] You got a panda suit.

[217] You're describing just some of my favorite scenes from Saints Row the Third that I've never seen.

[218] It's like, yeah, that's...

[219] You know, it's janky, but they're like, ah, but that's funny.

[220] So it's like exploding carts.

[221] And you get some more homies, which I don't really use the homies that much.

[222] But that also just populates the world weirdly.

[223] The homies?

[224] Yeah.

[225] With different people?

[226] I mean, just by choosing the different kinds of homies, you'll just see them.

[227] No, it's not like gang outfit stuff.

[228] It's specific people you can call.

[229] It's like the calling of Burt Reynolds.

[230] I thought just more like mascots.

[231] You can call up Sad Panda and have Sad Panda, Sad Panda roll with you.

[232] Or Angry Tiger or whatever.

[233] Gotcha.

[234] Just ladies.

[235] Tiger ladies.

[236] Is the stuff just scattered around the world?

[237] You don't launch it from the...

[238] There's missions, but there's start points for all the activities.

[239] And some of them are given to you as part of a mission, like a quest line, more or less.

[240] Do you think just more rapper would have helped this?

[241] Yeah, more rappers.

[242] Like Lil Jon would have helped.

[243] How is he not in this game already?

[244] He probably wrote most of it.

[245] Coolio?

[246] Yeah, Coolio was busy.

[247] He's actually a sad panda.

[248] Coolio and Kelly Deal hanging out a lot.

[249] Yeah, if there were more stuff.

[250] I know Coolio was doing time.

[251] Damn.

[252] He's not.

[253] I would have liked stuff with that to explore.

[254] Don't say anything libelous about Coolio here on this podcast.

[255] I want to clear the air about Coolio.

[256] Coolio is not, as far as I know, in jail at this moment.

[257] We can either confirm nor deny where Coolio is.

[258] As of this recording.

[259] I don't think his cooking show is still on the air.

[260] Cooking with Coolio?

[261] He was on that Rachel Ray and what's his name?

[262] That asshole with the bleached hair.

[263] Guy Fieri.

[264] He was on that show.

[265] On that celebrity cooking show.

[266] Great.

[267] So he's doing that.

[268] He's around.

[269] Cooking.

[270] I did not see him in Fantastic Voyage.

[271] Fantastic Voyage of cooking.

[272] That's pretty good too.

[273] He should just have a sailing show and call it Fantastic Voyage.

[274] Cooks on his boat.

[275] The Fantastic Voyage.

[276] How about a foodtastic voyage?

[277] Yes, foodtastic voyage.

[278] Wow.

[279] I'm thinking two.

[280] Fan sandwich voyage?

[281] Go ahead.

[282] Your turn.

[283] Fantastic porridge.

[284] I almost got a spit take out of me on that.

[285] God damn it.

[286] All right.

[287] We're done.

[288] That's it.

[289] That's it.

[290] So it sounds like that DLC might be more valuable if you haven't.

[291] played through the game yet.

[292] If you were integrating into the main game and playing it at your own pace along with the rest of the stuff, that would probably be better, but just bang through it as the last eight things that are available for you to do on the map sucks.

[293] I would have liked it to be a little...

[294] I got excited once you got past the first one and you realize it's not just going to be all the stuff in the funhouse.

[295] I thought it was going to turn into like, oh, let's have this personal relationship with the ganky this weird like let's dive into that and like what he's doing in Saints Row and like around the game show so you're doing these missions that are just like you know he wants to go do this other thing that's related to the game show because you're escorting him in the second it seems like a bit of a revelation like just that Professor Genki is an actual dude.

[296] Yeah, right.

[297] Like, just a disembodied voice.

[298] So I wanted some more of that, like, in a room, the cutscene in a room with him, like, sitting there, you know, takes his mask off, we only see the back of his head, and then finally turns around and...

[299] The SCU mission does at least give some sort of context.

[300] Professor Genki hates his overbearing fans, but loves murder.

[301] He's pleased by murder.

[302] So the mission just ends with Genki is pleased.

[303] So I think they do right by Professor Genki in some weird way.

[304] But the activities are rehashed from the main game.

[305] They're not engaging.

[306] The one new thing they developed is not good.

[307] And it's over in like an hour.

[308] So it's just not a...

[309] I don't think people should buy this content.

[310] If they already bought the season pass, hey.

[311] You're not missing much.

[312] Hopefully the next ones are better.

[313] How much is this one?

[314] I don't.

[315] Separately.

[316] No. It's like $7, I think.

[317] It seems like a really weird, especially the way that game ends.

[318] It ends so strongly regardless of the ending.

[319] And now it's been, since the game came out, two months.

[320] This is your reason to return?

[321] I think this is one of the things where they had to make some decisions about DLC pretty early.

[322] and kind of went the safe route with, like, here's some stuff we know we can nail and we know we can put out on this schedule, low risk, and hopefully that means the next ones will be more ambitious.

[323] Hopefully those will be reactionary or developed as a reaction to what people actually liked about Saints Row of the Third.

[324] And then it's a bearing fruit, and then six months from now, it's like, actually, it was all worth it.

[325] We had to get through one crappy DLC to get to the really good ones that seemed to be three and four, which seemed to be named story ones.

[326] This one, I didn't buy the season pass, and it sounds like it'll be cheaper for me to just wait and buy the two story ones.

[327] Yes, maybe.

[328] So you have the panda suit at the end.

[329] Which has a little short cape on it to justify how you can kind of hang glide while wearing nothing but a panda suit.

[330] Oh, okay, it's got powers.

[331] But no, no, but when you wear it, it doesn't.

[332] In the mission, it does.

[333] But when you just put it on, it doesn't.

[334] So I put the panda suit on from the top of my thing and then jumped off the building and just hit the ground.

[335] Did you have all fall damage turned off?

[336] Yeah, that's why I didn't hit the parachute.

[337] Because I thought it was funny to just keep falling.

[338] Just watch that little suit.

[339] I got a panda suit!

[340] If they had given you the ability to just glide around the city at super high rates of speed.

[341] That would have been maybe worth the seven bucks.

[342] Yeah, that would have been kind of a dumb...

[343] weird thing to add.

[344] Maybe you hit the turbo or something.

[345] Maybe I'm doing it wrong.

[346] Does anybody else have this awful gut response when you jump off a thousand foot tall building?

[347] I literally have to look away from the screen sometimes because I can feel the bottom of my stomach drop out.

[348] I can't handle it.

[349] It's just awful innate fear of heights kind of thing.

[350] It's a slight visual cue.

[351] Something they do to the way the screen warbles a little bit.

[352] There's some games that doesn't happen to me, but in their other games Does Assassin's Creed do it the same way?

[353] That's the only one that did it for me. Even the, whatever they call the jumping into the hay bales and stuff.

[354] Yeah, that's more what I'm talking about because if you're just not jumping into hay bales, that's a fun way to die.

[355] I've played every single one of those goddamn games and every time I have to shimmy out and pull myself up onto the little sink point on the top of those towers, that is always a stressful, even at a low level.

[356] It's always some sort of stress.

[357] I got it the worst, and I think it was in the last Assassin's Creed, where I think you're climbing inside the dome of something, and it's like you're on the inside, and you're just like, and you're so high up, and you're just on these, like, little, tiny, little nooks and crannies, and, like...

[358] And you have to do, like...

[359] And you're just dead.

[360] You have to do, like, jumping backwards from just hanging, like, just these impossible, insane...

[361] And the camera's just panning kind of over you, and you just see the bottom.

[362] Because the end of that is supposed to be like you're supposed to assassinate a dude who's on the ground floor from this crazy high up position.

[363] It was terrible.

[364] That was a bad one.

[365] Also getting when I get hit with the rocks and I just fall off a high wall, that's when my testicles jump into my stomach.

[366] Oh, I can't.

[367] This is uncontrolled fall.

[368] This is broken legs.

[369] This is bone.

[370] You're not going to walk again, Ezio.

[371] The story ends here.

[372] Just ragdoll.

[373] Black and white.

[374] Aerosmith.

[375] Yeah.

[376] It's Aerosmith.

[377] And that's bad.

[378] Dude looks like a lady.

[379] When you get hit by a rock, dude, it's Aerosmith.

[380] Yeah.

[381] Yep.

[382] Music is a weapon.

[383] Then Skyrim.

[384] And then Skyrim.

[385] And Aerosmith.

[386] And then Skyrim.

[387] So listen to the greatest hits of Aerosmith while playing Skyrim.

[388] Listen to Steven Tyler sing the national anthem.

[389] I heard it live.

[390] Oh, I had to.

[391] God, awful.

[392] I was in the kitchen while I was playing, and I reached up and turned on the exhaust fan on the stove to drown it out.

[393] I'm not kidding.

[394] Was that this weekend?

[395] Yeah.

[396] Was it the playoff?

[397] It was the other game.

[398] It was not the Niners.

[399] Ravens and Patriots.

[400] Aerosmith and football.

[401] It's American Dream.

[402] It sounded like a cat.

[403] Like a fucking cat.

[404] Like a cat that's about to die.

[405] Like a tough cat.

[406] Like a street cat.

[407] You ever hear early 70s Aerosmith?

[408] Dream On is the only song I even know.

[409] Listen to the way he sounds in that versus now.

[410] Do they get old, man?

[411] Go watch some recent videos of Meatloaf.

[412] Meatloaf cannot hit any of the notes he used to.

[413] He actually now just gets actively booed on stage because he can't do any of the stuff.

[414] Think about how the Crypt Keeper sounds when he talks.

[415] And then look at Steven Tyler and you're like, yeah, okay.

[416] Saw him in Vegas one time.

[417] He's like five feet tall.

[418] Crypt Keeper?

[419] Yeah, yes.

[420] Cryptkeeper rolling dice.

[421] If there's a place I would expect to run into him in person.

[422] Yeah, it was in the lobby of the Bellagio.

[423] Three o 'clock in the morning, hitting the buffet.

[424] Two shows a night.

[425] Black on Monday.

[426] No, no, he was just there visiting.

[427] The Cryptkeeper does Aerosmith covers.

[428] He's got a backup.

[429] He's got a backup.

[430] God, I would love to play those in a bar.

[431] Marrowsmith.

[432] Fuck you.

[433] He started on all episodes of Tales from the Crypt.

[434] I fucking hate this podcast.

[435] Terrible.

[436] The little diddly.

[437] It's gotten really bad.

[438] Just humming like an opening.

[439] Just get on iTunes and start voting it down.

[440] These guys are assholes.

[441] What is wrong with this bullshit?

[442] The Lost podcast never aired.

[443] Start over.

[444] I like it better when they drink stupid drinks.

[445] I know.

[446] So much more entertaining.

[447] So give us the updates from Skyrim, man. Oh, man. I'm working my way through it.

[448] I cleaned out my miscellaneous quest log.

[449] I cannot believe that you did that.

[450] A, why would you do that?

[451] Because it was annoying me. There's stuff in there.

[452] None of it's consequential.

[453] You get nothing from it.

[454] Once it's cleared out, it's like the next three people you talk to.

[455] Hey, you should go do this.

[456] Don't talk to anybody.

[457] That's the thing is that it's never going to not fill back up.

[458] Don't talk to anybody.

[459] Well, I...

[460] Some of the repeating quests I just stopped.

[461] It's like you guys haven't met Vinny before.

[462] Stop talking to those.

[463] It's very, you know, the guy needs his book back.

[464] So now he has his book.

[465] You said you were going to look for the book.

[466] I found the book.

[467] I just think about how much time it must have taken to do all the movies.

[468] It's pretty quick.

[469] I mean, that game tells you where everything is.

[470] It's just like, you get this quest, go here, run in here, kill these guys, get the thing.

[471] And I'm pretty strong, so, you know, it doesn't take that long.

[472] But everybody's happy in the world.

[473] They're psyched.

[474] I wish they were more psyched and acknowledged that I have become the leader of every guild instead of being like, dude, get me a book.

[475] And I'm like two steps away from being a god.

[476] I really have grown to dislike that part.

[477] I think it really...

[478] The things you are doing in each of the different guild quests are cool, but when you think about what your character has become in the context of the world, it really breaks it for you.

[479] That's not the game's fault, though.

[480] I think it is.

[481] Like, what you choose to do with your character is not on the...

[482] No, but I think at the point that you become...

[483] The game just chooses to make you the leader of everything.

[484] There's no reason you couldn't have gone to all of these and you just experienced a quest line.

[485] Like, at the end of it, you become the leader, the chosen leader, the divine leader of all these things.

[486] In terms of...

[487] It breaks it for me in, like, I like having this character in the world that had this quest and the Dragonborn part, I get that...

[488] sort of elevate you in the world in terms of importance, but there's no reason for me being in charge of everything else.

[489] I know it's a suspension of disbelief, but I like to play the game to a certain extent as though I'm a character that just has this role in this world and you have a part to play.

[490] Like role -playing.

[491] Yeah, and it's not like I'm really role -playing, but it's, I don't know, it's really dumb.

[492] They should have created a quest line that is like, unite the guilds.

[493] So when you become the leader of all the guilds, they had one more thing that's like, all right, now get all these dudes together because you unite all the guilds.

[494] And then that ends in fucking tragedy and chaos.

[495] Yeah, exactly.

[496] And everyone's dead.

[497] What if those questlines all ended in some sort of backstabbery or just tragedy?

[498] That'd be great.

[499] Work your way up to the top of the Dark Brotherhood and then...

[500] Someone turncoats on you.

[501] Or just like there are situations where the game will give you dialogue trees.

[502] It's never the trees in that game, but where it's like you are now going to be charged.

[503] And then you can say like, no, no, I'm not really interested.

[504] They're like, that's too late.

[505] Like at least at least give you the option of like wanting to contextualize your character.

[506] Like or at least like give you like, hey, you can only be in charge of one guild.

[507] And as a result of being in charge of that guild, you get some really cool perks.

[508] Right, right.

[509] You've made a choice.

[510] Like, of course you're going to want to experience all the content.

[511] And that's – and I can suspend the disbelief of, like, how are you going to be able to participate in all of these guilds and no one thinks that's sort of weird or would hear back about it.

[512] But I think it would have made a lot more sense if they made you sort of choose.

[513] Like, I found the Thieves Guild to be the most interesting, and I really hated giving up the Nightingale armor for the Dragon armor, which is just better because I – I identified with that quest line.

[514] I thought it was really cool.

[515] I enjoyed the way it ended and felt like I'd really earned my way as part of this whole society.

[516] And then you just do all the other ones, and it just sort of diminished everything I accomplished.

[517] It could just give you an active effect that's like, okay, you're the leader of the Thieves' Guild.

[518] You're Sneak plus 50 % now.

[519] And then if you want to take on the leader of the Mages' Guild, you get an active effect.

[520] Those stones or whatever.

[521] I think there's value in letting the player be this petty god.

[522] If the player so desires to.

[523] It's the double standard because they, in some cases, news travels really quickly around that world.

[524] Right.

[525] Where, you know, you have NPCs acknowledging stuff that you did, you know, on the other side of the world as soon as you could fast travel there.

[526] But then to not acknowledge that you're also the leader of all this shit and running everything and killing people in broad daylight.

[527] I feel like they could definitely ride it out of the game if they had the time to just basically, like, Two ways.

[528] One would just be a throwaway line of dialogue when you start a new guild that's like, I can't believe the leader of the insert X, insert Y, insert Z would want to become a new Jack.

[529] Oh, well.

[530] And that's it.

[531] Or they could just say at the end of every quest line, we should keep this secret that you're the new leader and not tell anybody because you'll bring a lot of heat.

[532] And then that's it.

[533] I prefer the idea of the running joke of every single time you go to a new guild.

[534] And they're just like, can't believe the leader of the Mages Guild and Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood would want to start from scratch and go fetch me coffee.

[535] That would only be good if they stitched it together like Joe Montana football style.

[536] I can't believe the leader of the Thieves Guild and the Mages Guild and the Chicago Bulls.

[537] Pippin.

[538] That's my DLC.

[539] But yeah, that part gets a little weird.

[540] But at this point in that game, I'm so overpowered.

[541] Not overpowered.

[542] I feel like, like you said, like a petty god or just kind of like the lost Daedric Prince running around.

[543] I guess like part of what's implied with your character in Skyrim and kind of all of the Bethesda games is like you are this specific character and you have this role in the story that plays out.

[544] But you're also just – that's just sort of like the lens into the world.

[545] of like, here we've built this crazy world with all of these things that are happening, and it's through this character that you get to see that stuff.

[546] I get the impression that they probably don't take that very seriously, that they sort of don't care.

[547] That it's just like, whatever, we built all this content.

[548] Experience the content.

[549] They are saying, here's a giant smorgasbord.

[550] If your macaroni and cheese happens to run up against the cranberry sauce and it's mixed together, you shouldn't have put them right next to each other.

[551] Except there are really easy ways for them to not have that problem.

[552] There are equally easy ways for them.

[553] you to not experience it.

[554] You could go make another character to do the bad guy guilds if you want to.

[555] I guess, but I don't need to be in charge of everything.

[556] There are really easy ways of giving players choices to opt out of that.

[557] It's not an impossible problem.

[558] You can experience all the content and suspend the disbelief while also having a grounded context for your character's role in that world, while also allowing the players that want to break all of it to do that too.

[559] It's not a crazy expectation for them to allow you to do that.

[560] I think it's just a little more frustrating because They do track some of that.

[561] You see them tracking some of that stuff.

[562] They come so close to nailing that stuff in other areas.

[563] You have fur coming out of your ears.

[564] Like, yeah, I did the werewolf thing.

[565] That's right.

[566] Like, you smell like a wet dog.

[567] It's like, I know, but I purified myself, so stop with the wet dog stuff.

[568] Thank you.

[569] Would you still get that after?

[570] Oh, yeah.

[571] Stop breaking your genitals.

[572] I haven't gotten that.

[573] No, I did that before.

[574] This is a Thieves Guild thing.

[575] I'm very limber now.

[576] Makes sense.

[577] I got those ribs removed for a reason.

[578] Yeah, I'm doing the Dark Brotherhood stuff, which is my last guild quest.

[579] I hope that's good, but the Thieves Guild so far has been fantastic.

[580] Dark Brotherhood was a giant disappointment so far.

[581] I think I've done half of it.

[582] I finished it, and it's fine, but it's not.

[583] We ran into the same issue, which I am convinced has to be a glitch.

[584] is that early on, when you start the Dark Brotherhood, you are given a couple contract kills.

[585] Yeah, three.

[586] It's to try and get you, like, hey, if your character hasn't been, like, killing innocents, we're going to kickstart this real fast, where you're just going to kill some people that you've just been assigned.

[587] But the idea is that, like, Dark Brotherhood, you're, like, you...

[588] I've already been playing a thief character, so I was used to being hidden and silent and stuff like that.

[589] But there's one character where she's part of a mining operation.

[590] Yeah, she runs the smelter or the forge.

[591] For whatever reason, someone wants her killed.

[592] And no matter what you do, it always causes a bounty and guards to come after you.

[593] I waited until she went back to her home.

[594] She was asleep.

[595] I crouched behind her.

[596] I put on my Thieves Guild, like, invisible for 120 seconds power.

[597] Like, drank an invincibility potion.

[598] Like, I put on everything I could.

[599] And no matter what you do, the guards run in immediately.

[600] I don't think that happened to me. Because it happened to Vinny.

[601] And I started reading about it.

[602] And it seems like it's...

[603] Yeah.

[604] You automatically get a bounty and you have to kill, like, the six guards that come up so that you get the...

[605] you've killed all the witnesses, and then you can just run away.

[606] Maybe, yeah.

[607] I don't know.

[608] It was a while ago that I did that stuff, but yeah.

[609] Yeah.

[610] I was hiding in a corner, like, hitting her in the face with a bow, and it would tell me, like, sneak damage.

[611] So, like, I had done it.

[612] Like, the game acknowledges I was hidden, and yet everyone still walks.

[613] Yeah, I had that problem, too.

[614] That's where I am, actually.

[615] I haven't reloaded that part.

[616] I've done a couple of them after that, and it's just, I don't know if it's just that Thieves' Goal was just so good.

[617] I just, I don't feel like I'm doing anything particularly badass or...

[618] Yeah, the companion stuff didn't really...

[619] It seemed a lot shorter.

[620] It padded out with some kind of menial quest.

[621] Once you encountered the werewolf stuff, after that, the companion stuff wasn't nearly as interesting.

[622] The werewolf reveal is pretty good.

[623] Oh, that is cool.

[624] I didn't see that coming.

[625] Where you're in the cage.

[626] You get caged and all of a sudden...

[627] I haven't done anything past that mission.

[628] That was definitely the best moment of that stuff.

[629] The Mage's Guild...

[630] I don't even remember much of it.

[631] It was just kind of...

[632] The Eye of Magnus?

[633] Yeah.

[634] I thought they didn't explain enough of why it was important.

[635] I get this weird feeling, especially in the Eye of Magnus one, the Mages Guild, a lot of the lingering stuff, I know they haven't said what the DLC is going to be or they haven't decided, but there are all these dangling things that very clearly set up in a lot of the different guilds.

[636] Like when you finish the Thieves Guild one and they...

[637] They say, you know, at some point you're probably going to be called back to defend this place.

[638] Right.

[639] Oh, right, yeah.

[640] Don't go too far.

[641] That sounds like something they could do later.

[642] The Mages Guild definitely played on more of the political stuff that's going on more than any of the other ones because they had the visiting dude, the Thalmer.

[643] Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[644] That's right.

[645] I haven't gone down the main storyline, so I don't know if they fleshed that stuff out more.

[646] The Thalmer stuff is all side quest stuff.

[647] It's all read the photos.

[648] I don't think they will do DLC.

[649] has you go defend the Thieves Guild thing because then they're having DLC with a prerequisite.

[650] They can't count on you having done any specific stuff.

[651] There's definitely some of that Thalmor stuff in the main storyline.

[652] You go to the embassy and you deal with it.

[653] So I had to read all the books to figure out why this is an issue or what the history is and the span.

[654] Stop.

[655] Started buying some books on Amazon.

[656] Don't justify why you read the books.

[657] Don't stop.

[658] There's a lot of good stuff in there.

[659] I think I have a pretty good sense of the creation myth and lore and the last three eras.

[660] The nine divines.

[661] Do they ever explain, like, because when you go to the mages college, they talk about, like, how the...

[662] What's the city outside the Mage's College?

[663] Winterhold?

[664] Winterhold.

[665] How the Winterhold hates the Mage's College because a bunch of it fell off a cliff.

[666] Right.

[667] Is that a side quest I haven't experienced?

[668] Does that ever get explained?

[669] Nothing I've seen.

[670] The Mage's Guild says they didn't do it, that it was just a natural act.

[671] Yeah, they said it was part of a volcanic thing that I assume is part of other Elder Scrolls lore that I don't know much.

[672] Yeah.

[673] Hey, guys.

[674] I bet it was magic.

[675] It wasn't magic.

[676] I bet it was magic.

[677] The Mage's Claim didn't do shit, but I bet it was magic.

[678] You're a magist.

[679] I bet it's magic.

[680] You don't like magic.

[681] I bet it's magic.

[682] Bloodite.

[683] Yeah.

[684] It's probably magic.

[685] It's fairies.

[686] Is that magic?

[687] It's the type of magic.

[688] Is that what's in the big Bethesda Elder Scrolls book?

[689] It's probably magic.

[690] How did this happen?

[691] It's probably magic.

[692] It's probably magic.

[693] And there's a roll eyes in the actual lore book.

[694] Probably magic.

[695] Come on.

[696] Who's an Aedra?

[697] What's an Aedra?

[698] What's a Daedra?

[699] What is an Aedra?

[700] What is an Aedra?

[701] Aedra apparently are – Those are just good Daedra.

[702] Yeah.

[703] Well, the Daedra are from a different plane.

[704] Deciphered that amazing.

[705] The Daedra are – well, they're not the same though.

[706] So the Daedra are from apparently a different plane of existence.

[707] And the Aedra are the things that created like the earth basically.

[708] And one of the main Aedra helped Locan or something, helped create the earth.

[709] Nirn is the name of the planet I guess.

[710] This is something that I can never not think about whenever you dig into fantasy stuff.

[711] This is a world.

[712] This is a planet somewhere.

[713] So that means there's fucking space.

[714] That means science fiction exists somewhere outside of the world that you're in.

[715] Not in science fiction.

[716] Yeah.

[717] So, yeah.

[718] And then some of the Adra lost their power when they made Earth, and they became the ones that people worship.

[719] But there are more Adra out there.

[720] Basically what you're saying is Fallout takes place in the ninth era.

[721] It's way past.

[722] That's what I'm hearing.

[723] It's magic.

[724] Yeah.

[725] It's magic.

[726] Okay.

[727] So, yeah.

[728] Fallout's magic.

[729] 90 -something hours.

[730] Good lord.

[731] I'm thinking I'll top out probably 120 is where I'm putting my money.

[732] That's a lot of time.

[733] I don't know how far I am in the main storyline because I've been doing all that side quest stuff.

[734] Where'd you stop?

[735] I don't remember.

[736] Okay.

[737] A dude with a beard told me to do something.

[738] Oh, the graveyards?

[739] Yeah.

[740] Wow, that is early.

[741] Well, that happens several times.

[742] Somebody told me to do it.

[743] I have the last shout.

[744] Something magical.

[745] I shouted the last, or I learned the last part of the push furado.

[746] Fus.

[747] Fus.

[748] That's where we were last week, though, I think.

[749] Yeah, I haven't done any main storyline stuff.

[750] Yeah, so that's fun.

[751] Skyrim.

[752] Skyrim.

[753] You think you're going to play the DLC?

[754] What is the deal?

[755] No idea.

[756] Haven't said.

[757] Okay.

[758] Let me finish this first part first.

[759] I got everything done.

[760] Got to get everything done.

[761] Tie it up with a bow.

[762] Any other mods that you've kicked in since last time?

[763] No. You know, that big booty mod is real tempting.

[764] Understandable.

[765] Are the booties clean?

[766] Are they clean?

[767] Damn it.

[768] Clean booty?

[769] Two separate mods, man. Okay.

[770] Some people want a dirty booty.

[771] Yeah.

[772] Can I get a dirty big booty or clean big booty?

[773] Do I have to choose big, dirty, or clean?

[774] I think you put the big booty and then pick whether you want them dirty or fast, cheap, great, pick two.

[775] That's right.

[776] You can't have them all, man. But yeah, I play with the controller and a lot of the mods for the UI stuff I think are for mouse and keyboard stuff.

[777] Somebody did send me something to try and bind a quick save to the controller.

[778] But it wasn't working quite well.

[779] Give it another go.

[780] Scripting.

[781] Basically, you override the input commands for the controller and say, hey, when I push back.

[782] Hold on there, Nedry.

[783] Back and left and right.

[784] I don't know this.

[785] Button.

[786] It will quick save.

[787] Okay.

[788] Which would be great.

[789] That would be super nice.

[790] But it's not working.

[791] It crashed.

[792] So it's definitely not working.

[793] I think the copy and paste I did into the file was bad.

[794] So I think he sent me the actual file.

[795] So I'll try it out again.

[796] Report back.

[797] Yeah.

[798] That would be a great feature.

[799] Anything else, Vinny?

[800] I'm talking about SSX.

[801] Yeah.

[802] All right.

[803] You saw.

[804] Hey, Ryan.

[805] You saw SS.

[806] I sure did.

[807] You and I and Sean Kuntz.

[808] Hesse.

[809] Hesse.

[810] Hesse.

[811] I learned yesterday that Vinny can't say SSX.

[812] He can say it.

[813] He's just not confident when he says it.

[814] He's afraid he's going to do too many times or not enough.

[815] He's afraid he's just going to say Essex.

[816] Essex.

[817] S -S -S -S -X -X.

[818] See?

[819] That's what I do.

[820] That's what it sounds like coming out.

[821] S -S -S -X.

[822] That's too many.

[823] S -S -X.

[824] And then he ends up always going S -S -X.

[825] Deliberate.

[826] Just as awkward as possible.

[827] Took way too long to say that name.

[828] S -S -X.

[829] I think I'm just afraid I'm going to put that extra S on there.

[830] S -S -S.

[831] I still would have known what you were fucking talking about.

[832] It would have been fine.

[833] But yes, Super Snowboard Cross.

[834] We went and saw that.

[835] I saw SSX.

[836] That's what SSX stands for.

[837] Super Snowboard Cross Tekken.

[838] That was crazy.

[839] Yeah.

[840] With a chin's ass with a snowboard.

[841] A Koontz game.

[842] It was a clean.

[843] Yeah, we brought Koontz down with us as the resident whiskey media number one SSX appreciator.

[844] SSXpert.

[845] I've never met anyone that loves.

[846] I really enjoy.

[847] I played SSX.

[848] I played all of them except for Blur for the Wii.

[849] All of the SSXs?

[850] Yes, all of the SSXs.

[851] I have really enjoyed that series a lot, but Sean Koontz takes it to another level.

[852] He comes from another plane of existence where all there is is SSX.

[853] And Daedra.

[854] So he did a snowboarding.

[855] It's a band.

[856] The nine divinities had to sacrifice their power.

[857] It's the dirty sport known as the unholy sport.

[858] To make some choice powder.

[859] So we did a quick look road show with Connor Dugan.

[860] Connor Dugan.

[861] Producer on it.

[862] Remember how to spell it?

[863] D -O -U -G -A -N.

[864] Nice.

[865] I had to write the lower third.

[866] Oh, right.

[867] He also spelled it.

[868] He also spelled it.

[869] So the part that I thought was really funny, after 45 minutes of doing the Quick Look Roadshow, Sean is talking to Connor, and they're rapping, and Sean knows basically the travel tour these guys are going to be on.

[870] Like, oh, so you guys are off to here, and then you're going to Aspen, and then the dude just...

[871] looks at him and is like, you really are a fan.

[872] Like literally just like what the tour that these professional snowboarders are going to be on and that this guy is attached to.

[873] And he's like, wow.

[874] Like just kind of like this weird, you know, like we deal with these guys who are like, yeah, I like us.

[875] And it's you, dude, what's wrong with you?

[876] You know where I'm going to be in like a month.

[877] It's because, yeah, we totally upset the way of things.

[878] Yeah.

[879] We brought an outsider.

[880] Oh, no. Someone who actually cares about video games.

[881] Right.

[882] No one on either side of this equation is used to seeing that, and they try to keep them at arm's length most of the time.

[883] Apparently, Sean's 360 had broken, and he had just been playing different PlayStation 2 SSX games.

[884] I'm mostly playing 3.

[885] That's his favorite.

[886] I agree with that.

[887] Just coincidentally.

[888] Not like, you know.

[889] That's what he plays.

[890] said his 360 ate it during the break and he's been all over the SSX.

[891] SSX is a snowboarding game.

[892] Accurate.

[893] All right, moving on.

[894] It has...

[895] So, I mean, that game had, like, a really long, crazy development cycle.

[896] Like, we've seen it kind of debuted multiple times with different, you know, kind of aesthetics or focuses, it seemed.

[897] Like, there was, at a time when it was SSX, Deadly Descents.

[898] Right.

[899] A weird military aesthetic.

[900] Right, which was, like, Call of Duty.

[901] Call of Duty, yeah.

[902] It's like, the dude's gonna have guns, and they've toned back a lot of that stuff.

[903] They've just kind of focused that into this...

[904] Probably for the best, because, like, I wonder if they toned that back because there was such a...

[905] negative reaction to that trailer.

[906] It was one of the Spike reveals.

[907] I think people just saw that and were like, what the fuck is going on?

[908] It's the wrong direction for SSX.

[909] I can't even put that in a taste thing because SSX is about bright colors and this reality -defying feel, which if you try and...

[910] Grounded too much in reality.

[911] I want a gritty street SSX.

[912] That's not with no snow.

[913] Your dude should have glowing hands and shit.

[914] That's kind of what SSX is about.

[915] These glowing hands hold an M16 and I gun people down while I snowboard.

[916] So we were playing the online stuff, which has a lot of asynchronous stuff.

[917] They've basically taken the hot pursuit.

[918] The wall.

[919] Do you have your snow log?

[920] Rider net.

[921] Yeah.

[922] Rider net wall.

[923] Rider net.

[924] Is what they call it there.

[925] But all that same basic stuff and it still works really well for that.

[926] I would say it works great.

[927] Yeah.

[928] Because it's the same thing of like, dude, this guy beat your time on a thing.

[929] Is this what you want to do?

[930] Yeah.

[931] I want to just – I just want to basically – Let me play the – And from the sound of the way they're structuring things, like he – Connor, when he was showing it to us, giving us the demo, said that the single -player stuff, the structured mode that we have here, kind of what counts for a story in SSX, is not real huge.

[932] Like this is kind of the – he didn't want to just say tutorial.

[933] He's like a little more than that, but this is kind of us.

[934] Teaching you the...

[935] Getting you ready.

[936] All of the stuff that's in this game and, like, what, you know, all this gear, what does this mean and what does survivability mean and what can you do to, you know, impact that.

[937] There is a bit more to it.

[938] That quick look is long.

[939] That's, like, a 50 -minute quick look.

[940] And I'll say, man, like, you know, I played that game...

[941] in Vegas, like, at some point last year, when they were showing off all the Mass Effect multiplayer stuff, and they had a build of that there.

[942] And it was one of those things, like, I played it and saw, like, this has potential, like, it's not, I'm not an SSX expert.

[943] An SS expert?

[944] No, I am not an expert on the SS, and please fuck you for even trying to pin that on me, you dick.

[945] Gerstmann.

[946] Oh, shit.

[947] But it looked like it had a lot of potential.

[948] And watching the video that went up today.

[949] Yeah.

[950] It seems like they finally have put it all together, and you watch it and go, oh, fuck, this looks awesome.

[951] It seems like they're finally realizing a lot of the potential.

[952] Crazy -ass tricks, a lot of big air.

[953] The mountains look good.

[954] It looks great.

[955] The snow deformation stuff and that avalanche stuff, it just looks outstanding.

[956] Try to outrun the avalanche and the way that they're putting the text kind of on the mountain.

[957] I think that stuff looks great.

[958] The glow coming off the tricks, the trick animations.

[959] This is just a lot of really, really cool.

[960] Great looking stuff.

[961] It's a game that I think looks really sharp in motion.

[962] Like when that game is moving.

[963] Screenshots is just like, there's snow.

[964] I don't know.

[965] Yeah.

[966] And I don't know that the characters necessarily really pop when you kind of are just looking at them at the beginning of a run or whatever.

[967] But when everything's going, and I experienced a couple of frame rate hitches, but I don't know if you saw any of that when you were playing.

[968] Yeah, just a few at the end of a race.

[969] But I also kind of, after the last time that I saw SX, which was the first time, I...

[970] Went and got, re -familiarized myself.

[971] I hadn't played any of the old games in a really long time, so I went and played a bunch of SSX3.

[972] And so going into this game, I'm like, yeah, they do have, like, they have a new control scheme, but they also have a classic control scheme if that's the way you want to go.

[973] And the classic control scheme is very accurate to the way those games handled before.

[974] But the new control scheme is fine.

[975] Like, they've done a good job in kind of modernizing that.

[976] That's all right stick stuff, right?

[977] It can be right stick stuff or it can be buttons.

[978] Okay.

[979] For the standard controls, as they call them.

[980] Kind of the only difference for the classic controls is the introduction of the rewind and some of your survival abilities.

[981] In fact, you have a wingsuit now, and you can equip that.

[982] And if you have that or some other gadget equipped, those can have different effects.

[983] But I feel like it handles pretty good.

[984] SSX never had a huge, at least on a character -to -character basis, a huge variety of tricks because it's a pretty simple trick system.

[985] All told.

[986] Right.

[987] Because you can do it with just buttons.

[988] So it's like, hold these two buttons and hold to the left and you'll do a spin variant of this trick.

[989] Sounds like there's a signature trick, though, for each character.

[990] But I think that signature trick is just what activates when you have the super tricky activated and you hit a certain button combination.

[991] There are a bunch of characters.

[992] Yeah, there's a ton of characters, most of them returning.

[993] They kind of just look like snowboarding dudes.

[994] They're not as extreme as they've been in the past.

[995] red -headed big afro dude or anything like that.

[996] I know.

[997] So they've kind of gotten away from that.

[998] That's maybe the good benefit of the deadly descent stage of the development.

[999] I get the sense that that's where this character design was kind of born from.

[1000] A lot of dubstep.

[1001] And the music seems to integrate really well.

[1002] Guy was saying that actually when you're...

[1003] That'll do beat matching.

[1004] There's clear stuff of the musical volume will drop away when you're in the air, and then it'll hit again when you touch down.

[1005] They'll cut it off a little bit.

[1006] Yeah, they'll do it with that cutoff, and then it'll open back up when you land, which is a nice touch.

[1007] But he was saying that if you're grinding a rail and you start spinning...

[1008] the game will actually try and beat match the music to the rotation of your spin.

[1009] I wasn't playing with headphones, so I couldn't really notice that stuff.

[1010] Yeah, and it's something that might not come across well in the quick looks.

[1011] Because we're talking over it constantly.

[1012] And there's a lot of bleed from the...

[1013] The music is real sharp.

[1014] I think it seems like it also, when it cuts off severely, there are times you'll land that will make a shockwave go through the ground, and it seems like the music will...

[1015] Time well so that you land on a beat.

[1016] So what you're telling me is heavy drops.

[1017] Heavy drops.

[1018] Immense drops.

[1019] A great match for the heavy drops.

[1020] And you drop while it drops.

[1021] You drop while you drop.

[1022] Exhibit dubstep.

[1023] It's a lot of stuff.

[1024] Now that's tricky.

[1025] There's a bunch of gear.

[1026] Yeah, they have a whole gear system that you equip before you do a run, and that can affect your performance.

[1027] And every time you go before a run and you go to the store, I guess the stock is randomized.

[1028] And they're just using like Borderlands style of just like, you know, pick a couple of adjectives.

[1029] This has color -coded loot.

[1030] Yeah, this totally has like purple fucking snowboard gear.

[1031] It's actually got colors on it.

[1032] Like yellow and purple.

[1033] Now I want to play this.

[1034] I want sick purples and heavy drops.

[1035] With names like epic, you know.

[1036] Is there a snowboard gun in there?

[1037] Is it like a dev tool that can just shoot out zillions of snowboards?

[1038] Oh, man. I got to go reinstall Gary's mod.

[1039] It's like epic sturdy snowboard or like flimsy.

[1040] But, like, totally familiar, like, RPG loot naming convention for that stuff.

[1041] I just wish they had gone, like, Snowboard of the Tan.

[1042] Flying epic snowboard of the bear.

[1043] But there are ones that will have regenerative qualities to them, and there's a set that I've seen on a couple of characters that just straight up glows.

[1044] What do you mean regenerative qualities?

[1045] Well, for your health.

[1046] Oh.

[1047] So they've still got race events and trick events, which are kind of like the basics for SSX.

[1048] But they've also now introduced the survival events.

[1049] I think this is more the Deadly Descent part of the game.

[1050] This is where the Deadly Descent stuff comes in, and it's crazy.

[1051] called that.

[1052] No, no, no. There's still a mode in the game.

[1053] I think the subtitle for the story mode was called.

[1054] You go through the nine deadly descents through the world tour.

[1055] SSX.

[1056] They just dropped the...

[1057] the Deadly Descents from the title, but that's definitely where that comes from.

[1058] And these are courses where there are massive gaps or obstacles.

[1059] Actually, they have a lot of variety to those Deadly Descents.

[1060] Vinny tried one where you start at the top of Mount Everest, and you don't have enough oxygen.

[1061] So you have to have an oxygen tank, and you have to breathe from it.

[1062] At intervals, or else you start getting the tunnel vision, and so black starts coming in from the sides.

[1063] That's pretty wild.

[1064] Yeah, yeah.

[1065] So there's that stuff.

[1066] You had a snow blind one.

[1067] There's one where it's in the middle of a snowstorm, so you have to use these pulse goggles, which just give you a quick flash of the grid of kind of what the nearby mountain looks like.

[1068] You could probably not go out snowboarding that day, but you've got to.

[1069] And so you kind of have to go by that, and then also the flares that are laid down to kind of give you a sense of where the track is.

[1070] You can't tell necessarily if some of those flares are telling you, like, hey, this is a place to jump, or this is the edge of the world.

[1071] So you have to kind of play that one a little bit more safe.

[1072] There's armor.

[1073] There's ones where you have to wear armor, where, like, if you impact a tree, it will take away your armor and eventually your health, and then you will just get knocked the fuck out.

[1074] Oh, the avalanche stuff where you're...

[1075] Yeah, the avalanche stuff, but there's some really cool...

[1076] But yes, the avalanche stuff.

[1077] Avalanche stuff.

[1078] Looks really cool.

[1079] That's cool.

[1080] It's procedural based on the avalanche.

[1081] You'll kick it off every time you land really hard.

[1082] A bunch of snow will kick up from where you land.

[1083] It's not just like you go past a certain gate or whatever, and it's like, okay, now it's time for avalanche, so just go real fast.

[1084] It's actually every time that you are jumping up and landing really hard, you're going to cause a little slide.

[1085] So it kind of ebbs and flows.

[1086] It's not like it's just constantly ramping up, and so it's like, I've got to go faster, I've got to go faster.

[1087] Kind of manage it some.

[1088] But ultimately you're just trying to get down to the bottom of the hill in one piece.

[1089] But a lot of these, like the survival stuff, kind of the Deadly Descent stuff, I feel like there's a lot of really unique course design for that stuff.

[1090] Like some really bizarre – like there's – one of the ones that we saw was basically just this narrow ridge that's just kind of going down this mountain that you just have like open air on either sides of and you just have to basically stay on this extremely narrow little course without – Fucking falling off and eating it.

[1091] Yeah, that's interesting.

[1092] Stuff like the wingsuit makes that more possible.

[1093] And then you also have this rewind feature, which they kind of put different limits on depending on what mode you're in to be able to kind of save yourself from completely.

[1094] Because when you fall off one of those things, they're like, that's the end of your run.

[1095] You need to start over.

[1096] We're not going to just blink you back to 20 yards before you.

[1097] did that.

[1098] One of the most interesting things the guy said, and I'm not sure if this made it into the quick look, was that in the previous games where they had like nine courses or something like that, they were all kind of handcrafted.

[1099] Yeah, it was nine drops, I think is what he was saying.

[1100] But yeah, whatever.

[1101] Yeah, like three mountains, maybe nine drops.

[1102] And for this, they said, it's really easy for us now to just get topographical data from like Google Maps and like we could generate 200 mountains almost instantly.

[1103] And then we have to go in and tweak them to make them fun to play.

[1104] But basically the...

[1105] The foundation for those maps are very easy to generate, and they're realistic, but nobody wants to snowboard down actual Mount Everest because that's not very fun.

[1106] Yeah, they're saying that they're using – they've said this before, but they're saying they're using NASA topographical data for all these mountains.

[1107] Yeah, I think that was one of the first things we heard about the game.

[1108] They developed some kind of weird technology to just generate.

[1109] And then they're clearly spending a whole lot of time going in there and actually tweaking.

[1110] Making them fun.

[1111] And adding jumps and rails and all the things.

[1112] Red pipes.

[1113] Yeah, big red pipes and all the features that you kind of need to make that a playable thing.

[1114] But there's 152 drops in that game.

[1115] Right.

[1116] Which it seemed like there was like three or four drops per peak.

[1117] And there's a ton of different regions and there's multiple peaks in each of those regions.

[1118] And PS3 gets an exclusive.

[1119] You know, that's mountain bully for the PS3, but it seems like there's already just a shitload of mountains in that game.

[1120] It seems like there's a lot of courses to go through.

[1121] Some of the drops overlap.

[1122] Other drops, it's just, you know, some drops are included.

[1123] This is like a different leg, and then the bottom half is going to be all the same.

[1124] There's definitely a lot of that stuff.

[1125] And not every one that I saw was a complete winner.

[1126] Because they're kind of wide open and there's so much stuff going on at different angles.

[1127] And this is just kind of, I guess, true back to the SSX experience.

[1128] It's easy to – you can't find yourself just like in a weird cave.

[1129] Like I'm totally disoriented.

[1130] I'm trying to go down, but my physics are kind of kicking me up the hill.

[1131] Like I definitely had that once or twice.

[1132] But it seems like they always want you to go down.

[1133] Yeah.

[1134] Watching that guy play was so much better than watching any of us play.

[1135] If you have any interest in this game, I encourage you strongly to watch that quick look because the guy that's playing is the best SSX player in the world.

[1136] Currently, Connor.

[1137] Connor Dugan is the best SSX player in the world.

[1138] So he claims.

[1139] And Sean bristle.

[1140] Yeah, Sean did not like that claim at all.

[1141] I'm coming at you.

[1142] I think Sean said, for now.

[1143] Well, even he said, he said, yeah, then the game will be out two days and all my scores will be completely demolished.

[1144] Yeah, that wall stuff is interesting.

[1145] Yeah, all the asynchronous stuff because they're throwing ghosts out there for when you're doing the runs.

[1146] I hate it when they throw ghosts.

[1147] So you've got to get the power pellets, but then the ghosts only stay blue for a little while.

[1148] And you can set up...

[1149] You can go around corners fast and then go through straightaways.

[1150] If you've got a bunch of people together, you'll...

[1151] Race the Mountain kind of, what's that game you really like with the planets?

[1152] I don't know.

[1153] Yeah, that one.

[1154] I don't know, the one with the racing cars.

[1155] Trials Panic?

[1156] Yes.

[1157] So yeah, it's kind of like that.

[1158] But you just have right clips through each other.

[1159] Sold.

[1160] So you see other people racing.

[1161] Can I buy this game with planets?

[1162] Can I use planets to buy this game?

[1163] We didn't ask that.

[1164] I don't know.

[1165] What's the black market like for planets?

[1166] You know, I haven't really seen one.

[1167] I don't think IGE is selling planets.

[1168] No, it's not planets.

[1169] That's too bad.

[1170] How much can I get for Nirn?

[1171] Nirn?

[1172] I think it's Nirn in Nil.

[1173] It's Nirn Root, isn't it?

[1174] Yeah.

[1175] Yeah, so maybe it's not Nirn.

[1176] Well, I know that if you buy another retail code for the game and enter it, you get another stack of planets.

[1177] So there actually is a real -world money to planets conversion rate on some level.

[1178] You just can't get it out of the system once it's in.

[1179] I want to play more SSX from what I played yesterday.

[1180] It seems like they found their voice.

[1181] You know, how to go with maybe a dark patch, trying to...

[1182] It seems like the Daily Descent stuff, while not the focus anymore, like the visual flair.

[1183] I think it adds to it.

[1184] It seems like having gone through that...

[1185] Because at some point they had been thinking, we can't just make another SSX.

[1186] We have to broaden the appeal.

[1187] Games just scale differently now.

[1188] They have to be more epic and awesome.

[1189] We have to just snowboard.

[1190] It's not going to work.

[1191] Look at Tony Hawk.

[1192] We need to do something different.

[1193] So I see how they arrive at that conclusion.

[1194] And it seems like the fan pushback maybe perhaps allowed them to get nudged in the direction.

[1195] That is a nice compromise.

[1196] You get these cool new different modes, but also it's just another SSX game.

[1197] It's honed.

[1198] It seems like they are, you know, adding to it without sacrificing, you know, the appeal of the original SSX games.

[1199] It's got the soul of SSX with some new twists.

[1200] Yeah, it's got some nice polish.

[1201] It's got that, like, kind of burnout -y polish to it where, like, the music kicks in at the right places.

[1202] And I think they may even mention, like, he was dropping a button.

[1203] He said, like, yeah, we want this to be, like, you know, burnout.

[1204] On Snow.

[1205] Who's making this?

[1206] EA Canada.

[1207] They made Blur, too.

[1208] They made SSX Blur, I think, too.

[1209] Did they do that one before?

[1210] If I recall correctly.

[1211] I wonder how much carryover there is.

[1212] That was a while ago.

[1213] Yeah.

[1214] That was about four or five years ago.

[1215] This is not an EA Sports Big release.

[1216] No, they're not bringing that back.

[1217] I don't think EA Sports Big survived past the PS2 stuff.

[1218] February...

[1219] February 28th.

[1220] They were originally on for Valentine's Day and then pushed back two weeks.

[1221] Don't know why, but the game looked pretty sharp from what I saw.

[1222] I'm eager to play more of it.

[1223] It's a week before Mass Effect.

[1224] There's nothing else.

[1225] Jeez.

[1226] Kind of like that.

[1227] No. Interesting.

[1228] Yeah.

[1229] I feel like they've done some good stuff modernizing the package around the basic gameplay.

[1230] The basic gameplay still, to me, feels very much like SSX.

[1231] Although I guess some of it, like looking back, the old standard SSX controls, which I enjoy because they give you a certain amount of granulated control of – because the thing with old SSX controls were that you had your analog stick for movement and then you used the – D -pad to wind up for jumps.

[1232] Yeah, you'd hold down.

[1233] No, you'd hold the A or the X button to charge up your jumps, and you'd basically wind up your spins using the D -pad.

[1234] So it's kind of like you lined up a jump, got off the analog stick, and went to the D -pad to start winding stuff up, which I kind of enjoyed, but I can totally see how that is counterintuitive.

[1235] I hated doing that.

[1236] It was one of the things that drives me away from all the snowboarding games that did that sort of stuff, like the wind -up mechanic.

[1237] I just never clicked with me and never liked it in anything.

[1238] I mean, this still relies on that a lot, but it's all on the stick.

[1239] So now you're just holding the right analog stick down?

[1240] No, the right analog stick.

[1241] You're holding jump, and then at that point you can't steer.

[1242] You can only wind.

[1243] Or what?

[1244] No, you get some air control.

[1245] Yeah, you definitely do.

[1246] How is it your hand configured on the controller, I guess, is what I'm trying to do?

[1247] Well, it depends.

[1248] So, again, you can use for tricks.

[1249] You can use either holding face buttons or you can do gestures on the...

[1250] on the right stick.

[1251] Okay.

[1252] But you can also wind up using the left stick.

[1253] Oh, okay.

[1254] And I think, if I recall correctly...

[1255] So that's kind of the thing that breaks me in a lot of ways, because winding up instead of steering seems like a bad trade.

[1256] I am always adjusting where I am at until the very last moment before I jump.

[1257] That's the trade -off.

[1258] Yeah.

[1259] If you want to have big jumps, you have to line it up early.

[1260] Which is why I don't play SSX.

[1261] So, done.

[1262] It doesn't sound that different from preloading on an ATV, though.

[1263] Is it?

[1264] You often preload.

[1265] I mean, you're preloading up -down, so you're still steering.

[1266] But you have to get straight onto your jump for that jump to matter.

[1267] You still have to line it up correctly.

[1268] I think at ATV you still have more steering control.

[1269] Yeah, you do.

[1270] You're also generally not spinning your ATV horizontally.

[1271] You will do flips on an ATV, but rarely are you trying to go round and round.

[1272] And you're not necessarily preloading your suspension to do flips in most of those games.

[1273] You're just trying to get maximum air off stuff.

[1274] So it's pulling up, but you'd still steer while you do it.

[1275] But the plant your feet.

[1276] You can't steer because now you're winding.

[1277] That always threw me. You get a little bit, but never liked it.

[1278] I think they're splitting the difference in this.

[1279] They're making it so that you still have some control, but you are sacrificing some of that to start winding up.

[1280] I think they're just presuming if you're holding down the jump button, it's like, okay, you're getting ready to go.

[1281] So if you're going to load up.

[1282] Whereas I play Tony Hawk almost always holding down the jump button because you never know.

[1283] Well, this is definitely not Tony Hawk.

[1284] Yeah.

[1285] Again, why I didn't play all the other SX games.

[1286] Yeah, liked it.

[1287] Again, watch that quick look.

[1288] It's lengthy, and Connor shows off a shitload of stuff in that game.

[1289] Some of the stuff he does is amazing.

[1290] He is very good, so he kind of gives you a sense of, like, this is how awesome it can look.

[1291] Your experience may vary.

[1292] I was going down the mountain on my butt.

[1293] Well, that's one of the tricks.

[1294] When you're on your butt spinning along that pipeline, you were scooting.

[1295] I was just kind of scooting.

[1296] I was walking down.

[1297] Anybody here ever actually snowboarded?

[1298] I did.

[1299] I grew up skiing.

[1300] I almost broke my ass.

[1301] I tried doing it on snow.

[1302] It was basically ice.

[1303] It's rough.

[1304] Hurt your tailbone.

[1305] Hurt it bad.

[1306] Just one of those really like, I'm not getting down this mountain.

[1307] I'm going to roll.

[1308] I'm going to roll down this mountain.

[1309] It almost blacked out.

[1310] I thought of that because one of the last times I went, people that I was with actually went down on their butts.

[1311] Oh, really?

[1312] They just sat on the board.

[1313] At the end of the day, it was just like, oh, God, I just got to get off the mountain.

[1314] Yeah.

[1315] Got to get to that hot tub somehow.

[1316] It just was not carving into anything.

[1317] It was just kind of like just grating down the side every time.

[1318] I don't know how I survive.

[1319] When you're younger, you bounce back from those things.

[1320] You don't necessarily break your wrist.

[1321] Yeah, I haven't been since I turned 30.

[1322] Since you got brittle.

[1323] Yeah.

[1324] Osteoporosis set in.

[1325] It's that lack of milk.

[1326] Yeah.

[1327] See?

[1328] Shouldn't listen to you, Brad.

[1329] Tore a ligament in my knee the last time I went.

[1330] Jeez.

[1331] Yeah.

[1332] I remember as a kid.

[1333] Steve Tyler, great snowboard.

[1334] Of course.

[1335] That's right, because he's turned to dust.

[1336] He screeches the entire time down the hill.

[1337] Well, he's just an apparition, so he just flies down.

[1338] He turns to dust and then just...

[1339] See, wait, is he a horse ghost?

[1340] That wasn't a horse.

[1341] Sounded?

[1342] Sounded a little horsey.

[1343] That was a witch cackle.

[1344] Same thing.

[1345] I'm just picturing him, like, trailing, like, ethereal skulls and, like, black energy behind him.

[1346] That's accurate, yeah.

[1347] Everywhere he goes.

[1348] So you've been to Boston.

[1349] Seeing him in his natural habitat.

[1350] Singing that song from Armageddon's soundtrack.

[1351] Just colorful ribbons flying behind him.

[1352] He didn't want to miss a thing.

[1353] You mean the national anthem?

[1354] Patrick Klavik, what have you been playing?

[1355] Remember that music video?

[1356] It's, like, singing.

[1357] Liv Tyler's in the...

[1358] Hanging out in the...

[1359] What?

[1360] In the...

[1361] In the jet engine.

[1362] I used to like that movie.

[1363] I think I still like that movie.

[1364] Armageddon?

[1365] Yeah.

[1366] Yes.

[1367] Yeah, you do like that movie.

[1368] He has space dementia.

[1369] I don't think it's nearly as enjoyable as Independence Day, but I do enjoy Armageddon.

[1370] They came out the same summer as Deep Impact.

[1371] Yep.

[1372] We all know what movie won that battle.

[1373] It's like there's a scene.

[1374] They did have Morgan Freeman as the president, though.

[1375] I enjoy the shenanigans in Armageddon, but I can never get over it.

[1376] There's a scene when they're on the meteor and they're rolling around.

[1377] Once they get to the meteor, it's not.

[1378] The movie kind of falls off the fucking wagon.

[1379] As opposed to Independence Day where it keeps getting better as they go to the alien mothership.

[1380] Once Armageddon gets to the...

[1381] But there's a shot in Armageddon when they're coming up over a hill on the fucking meteor in their little space jeep thing or whatever.

[1382] And you can just see grass on the fucking hillside.

[1383] You can just see, like, yeah, we just went out.

[1384] There's this little kind of little knoll over here, and we just rode the thing up at night over the top of this.

[1385] You don't know where that meteor's been.

[1386] There's probably no grass on this meteor.

[1387] You know what?

[1388] What?

[1389] That's also not the most ridiculous thing in that movie.

[1390] But for whatever reason, a rolling meteor gathers no moss.

[1391] Everyone knows this.

[1392] It's the thing that sticks out.

[1393] Are they trying to split the meteor or are they trying to deflect?

[1394] Try to split it.

[1395] I think it's an asteroid.

[1396] Oh, is it?

[1397] Because it hasn't entered the...

[1398] No, that's...

[1399] Is that how it goes?

[1400] Is there actual physical difference between an asteroid and a meteor?

[1401] Yeah, it's big.

[1402] Oh, is it just size?

[1403] Yeah.

[1404] That's not a good strategy.

[1405] Don't try and break up your ass.

[1406] No, then you just have a bunch of still pretty big rocks coming at you.

[1407] What's the one where they – don't they eventually just deflect it?

[1408] Like they try and get it to – or is that deep impact?

[1409] What's the one where they try and edge it out of the way so that it gets caught in like the – Solar sails.

[1410] Something.

[1411] Yeah.

[1412] I don't know.

[1413] There's a deep impact.

[1414] They get hit, don't they?

[1415] That movie ends poorly.

[1416] That's the impact.

[1417] Isn't that a sad ending?

[1418] They're embracing as the giant tsunami comes to take them out.

[1419] It doesn't always end.

[1420] What do they do in Armageddon?

[1421] They blow it up, right?

[1422] America wins is what happens.

[1423] It ends with all of the smaller rocks streaking into the atmosphere.

[1424] It looks like fireworks.

[1425] Yay, America.

[1426] That's right, fireworks.

[1427] And the rest of the world, too.

[1428] But fuck Paris.

[1429] Right.

[1430] Those guys.

[1431] Forget them.

[1432] And then The Core happened.

[1433] That dog made it, though.

[1434] Never, never, no break.

[1435] That's a movie.

[1436] Yeah, I haven't seen The Core.

[1437] You should watch The Core.

[1438] Is Core enjoyable in that respect?

[1439] You like horror movies, right?

[1440] Oh, yeah.

[1441] Oh, you'll love The Core.

[1442] Stanley Tucci chews scenery in that movie like no one's goddamn business.

[1443] What is he doing?

[1444] Is he a scientist?

[1445] Yes, but he's like a highfalutin, like very well self -regarded fucking scientist.

[1446] He's constantly smoking and wearing like an ascot.

[1447] Yeah, he's great.

[1448] He's basically the Jeff Goldblum character.

[1449] No, no, no. But he's the scientist asshole.

[1450] He's like the one who's been screwing over the honest, good scientists all the time.

[1451] He eventually eats it later in the movie because he redeems himself.

[1452] He proves himself wrong.

[1453] Like, oh, okay.

[1454] Yeah.

[1455] All right.

[1456] He's got his own agenda.

[1457] Yeah.

[1458] My research.

[1459] A reason to go to the core.

[1460] Still my research.

[1461] That's right.

[1462] Fighting over research.

[1463] Was it Aaron Eckhart?

[1464] Wait, he's the main dude.

[1465] He's a scientist before Aaron Eckhart was like a named good in the acting community.

[1466] They find some guy who was just building a giant drill bus that would go to the center of the earth where they just walk into his hangar.

[1467] Delroy windows in it and I can't remember what the – that's actually the first movie that I ever heard anyone use unobtainium.

[1468] So fuck you, the core.

[1469] That's right.

[1470] Avatar is all your fault.

[1471] And that movie is – Really?

[1472] Yeah, they talk about something like the – Wow.

[1473] Like this ship that they need to make to drill into the center of the earth being made out of unobtainium.

[1474] That was a good...

[1475] That's a dumb fucking movie.

[1476] That was a great span of years when you just knew another disaster movie was coming.

[1477] Dante's Peak, The Core, The Inferno, The Apocalypse.

[1478] Volcano.

[1479] Volcano, I'll say recently, last year, watched.

[1480] That's a bad, bad movie.

[1481] Because there's not even a volcano!

[1482] Yes, and then also having lived on the block where the volcano, the lava is...

[1483] Or is it magma?

[1484] I always get it mixed up.

[1485] Once it's above, it's a volcano.

[1486] Okay.

[1487] Wait, what?

[1488] Volcano.

[1489] It's lava once it's outside of the volcano.

[1490] All right.

[1491] And it's going down Wilshire Boulevard.

[1492] But that movie, the volcano solves racism.

[1493] Yeah.

[1494] Because they have all the ash on them and just everyone becomes white.

[1495] No one could tell the difference.

[1496] The movie's tale is if everyone was just white, there'd be no racism.

[1497] Too true.

[1498] Thanks, Volcano.

[1499] Thanks, Tommy Lee Jones and Anne H. Gross.

[1500] Tommy Jones is in that movie.

[1501] Yeah.

[1502] It's on Netflix Instant.

[1503] What was the other volcano movie?

[1504] Dante's Peak.

[1505] Dante's Peak.

[1506] All right.

[1507] It wasn't The Inferno.

[1508] It was Volcano then.

[1509] Yeah, it was Volcano and Dante's Peak.

[1510] Because they come in pairs.

[1511] Dante's Peak was Pierce Brosnan, right?

[1512] Yeah, Pierce Brosnan and Linda Hamilton.

[1513] Yeah.

[1514] And then Armageddon and Deep Impact.

[1515] And The Core, I thought, had another one, but I don't remember.

[1516] Cut two, three hours later.

[1517] And that's all of the movies that we know the titles of.

[1518] Yeah.

[1519] Wait, wait, wait.

[1520] Williams Brothers 2000.

[1521] Done.

[1522] The biggest disaster movie of the season.

[1523] Jesus Christ.

[1524] Had a great N64 game, though.

[1525] Yeah, stupid disaster movies.

[1526] Day After Tomorrow.

[1527] That was kind of a late day.

[1528] Well, at some point, they just stopped rolling Emmerich.

[1529] That just became his name.

[1530] That's all he did.

[1531] Dean, what's -his -face, his writing partner.

[1532] Takahashi.

[1533] Devlin.

[1534] Dean Devlin, yeah.

[1535] After Godzilla was a big clusterfuck, they broke up after that.

[1536] Did you play any games?

[1537] Played a lot of Skyrim.

[1538] Yeah.

[1539] Played like 25, 30 hours of Skyrim.

[1540] Jeez, that's a lot of Skyrim.

[1541] Katie was gone this weekend, so.

[1542] Party time.

[1543] I started to get this feeling like if I don't really start plowing, like playing Skyrim like one or two hours a night, even over the course of a week, just doesn't add up enough.

[1544] And like, even though January is pretty sparse, it's like I really need to just.

[1545] Put this behind me. Put this behind, or at least as much as I can.

[1546] It starts creeping up on you.

[1547] Yeah, like now, I think I'm 80 hours in.

[1548] the end is in sight.

[1549] Like, the decision will be, like, do I want to be, like, Vinny and, like, go really see everything?

[1550] Or, like, in the next 10 hours, I'll, like, have finished all the mainline quests and I can probably do all the achievements, like, another 10 hours after that.

[1551] So, like, I could finish it, possibly, in the next couple weeks.

[1552] But, yeah.

[1553] This week, it's kind of, like, this dark, like, you know, I've been living with Katie for, like, five years and it's just, like, what happens when she just disappears and I don't...

[1554] No one says, hey, we should go get lunch somewhere.

[1555] What does your self -care look like?

[1556] I've forgotten.

[1557] I've forgotten.

[1558] I have learned.

[1559] I've grown a new appreciation for my relationship.

[1560] And I think part of that is just that she hasn't traveled a lot in the last couple of years.

[1561] So I just haven't had opportunities where I can just dig real deep and go to a dark place.

[1562] Luckily, I have a dog, so I have to.

[1563] At some point, the dog is like, I'm going to pee on it.

[1564] All right.

[1565] I guess I'll go on the block.

[1566] For you, it's like, I have to keep this other thing alive.

[1567] Yeah, I have something dependent on it.

[1568] That's harder to keep alive than I am.

[1569] I don't care if I die.

[1570] I blame her for part of it because she knows that I will eat very poorly.

[1571] Everyone in the office knows.

[1572] I usually have these.

[1573] She makes – she's a wonderful cook.

[1574] She is.

[1575] All these great meals for me. She also knows that like – and I'll do this just to spite her sometimes.

[1576] I'll just eat real bad when she's gone.

[1577] I send her just pictures of like, oh, like I'm just getting McDonald's.

[1578] Just cheese steaks and giant burritos.

[1579] I got McDonald's.

[1580] She's texting me back.

[1581] Fuck you.

[1582] It's like I make you all these nice meals.

[1583] So before she leaves, she will like – she will make all of these meals and put them in like the freezer.

[1584] She makes soups and like meatballs and stuff like this so that – I will eat somewhat well.

[1585] It's wonderful.

[1586] Here's what you do.

[1587] You take all that food.

[1588] You just bring it in and give it to us.

[1589] And then we'll send her pictures of us eating that stuff while you're sending her pictures of you just like, look at all this popcorn chicken.

[1590] But the thing she hasn't realized is that because she's made all this food, I have even less reason to leave the house.

[1591] Because at least to go get terrible food, I have to go or order or have some sort of...

[1592] dialogue with another human being.

[1593] Instead, she's like...

[1594] Hold up in the bunker.

[1595] I don't even have to turn on the oven.

[1596] These meatballs, I could eat three times today and they'd probably still be pretty good.

[1597] So when she opens the door and comes home, there's like an airlock sound.

[1598] Fresh air rushes in.

[1599] I spent like three hours cleaning the place.

[1600] You just pop a bottle of water.

[1601] Oh, it's like the end of weird science.

[1602] The dog is just a skeleton that has his bed in three days.

[1603] But still standing somehow.

[1604] There's meatballs all over the ground.

[1605] Somehow there's a piano stuck in a chimney.

[1606] I don't even have a piano.

[1607] Or a chimney.

[1608] Or a chimney.

[1609] I don't know where I got it.

[1610] There's a nuclear missile coming up through the bottom of the floor.

[1611] So, Patrick, there's some serious business that I wanted to talk about.

[1612] We've been playing some Chrono Trigger.

[1613] We have.

[1614] Actually, we beat Lavos.

[1615] Maybe we have.

[1616] I hope we did.

[1617] This is recorded before we've charged.

[1618] This is recorded before but goes up after.

[1619] Maybe.

[1620] We'll see what the timing is.

[1621] But this is definitely recorded before we take our final charge or what we believe to be our final charge.

[1622] I've seen a lot of people saying, no fucking way are they going to do this today.

[1623] I have also.

[1624] I have also.

[1625] But equal number of people saying, no, you're good.

[1626] You have ultimate damage.

[1627] Yeah.

[1628] You've got the abilities that you need.

[1629] Make sure Ryan keeps attacking instead of waiting.

[1630] Yeah.

[1631] And you'll be all right.

[1632] Yeah.

[1633] I'm still super nervous about it.

[1634] We're going to do it live.

[1635] We're going to try and take a charge.

[1636] As soon as I suggested that idea, I saw a ping of fear go into you of having, oh, that's a good idea.

[1637] Shit, that is a good idea.

[1638] I don't know if we should do that.

[1639] Well, the problem is like I – I don't have a great sense of really how far we are.

[1640] The game is structured in a way that's sort of like, there's a character that says to you in so many words, hey, if you're ready to finish the game, go to one of these things and that'll start the end of the game.

[1641] Or you can keep fucking around out here and take on these side quests.

[1642] And we pretty much wrung out all the side quests that we could.

[1643] There's one that we just couldn't decode what the starting point was.

[1644] So in my, as I've been, people have been inundating this with comments about us finishing it, that is a mistranslation.

[1645] That is not even a side quest.

[1646] Oh, really?

[1647] I've heard both things.

[1648] It's not a side...

[1649] It is...

[1650] All he is...

[1651] That line where he's saying there is someone close to you, that is just the last line he says before he outlines all the side quests.

[1652] He's just saying every character has a side quest you need to go on.

[1653] Okay, got it.

[1654] And it's just...

[1655] Oh, I see what you mean by that.

[1656] So he's saying there is someone...

[1657] In the DS version, apparently, which is retranslated, it's not that way.

[1658] Okay.

[1659] Well, it's just weird then that it doesn't disappear after you're done.

[1660] with all the side quests.

[1661] Yeah.

[1662] Because if that's sort of what that's...

[1663] Then we would have probably pieced that together.

[1664] Maybe Lavos is a side quest.

[1665] But, you know, we...

[1666] People have said, like, hey, you guys beat all of the side quest bosses, so you should be...

[1667] I think that's pretty cute.

[1668] We've done as much as...

[1669] Like, we've seen all of the game.

[1670] We've got some badass stuff.

[1671] Our guys are leveled up nicely.

[1672] I mean, this is a game that's meant to be, like, theoretical.

[1673] Like, it's not long because it's, I think it has, you know, something like a dozen endings.

[1674] Like, it's meant to be played again.

[1675] And even from right here, I can see where those dozen endings are.

[1676] We should grab, like, every iMac and Mac Mini in the office and put the stream on, like, the chat and put, like, text -to -speech on and put them in the same room with you so that you just have computers screaming.

[1677] Put them in this room and then put each of them on a mic.

[1678] Yep.

[1679] And then stream that out on the other stream.

[1680] Of just the chat.

[1681] so people can hear what they sound like.

[1682] Shouting about a video game over the internet.

[1683] And it'll be way worse doing it live because people will somehow think that they can tell you what to do as if you aren't even looking at that chat.

[1684] That's just an alternate stream.

[1685] I'll look at that chat and you'll say something that seems like it'd be useful advice and I will look at it and laugh.

[1686] I'm not telling them that.

[1687] That was the fear.

[1688] I wasn't sure how far we were from the actual end.

[1689] It seems like the game is at this point telling you, You go to this.

[1690] You have started down that final dungeon road.

[1691] There is no return once you've gotten someone to that.

[1692] And we got a little bit into that dungeon, but we've given ourselves a lot of time to hopefully rock this out.

[1693] Yeah.

[1694] We'll see what happens.

[1695] It's still a wonderful game.

[1696] Yeah, I'm still...

[1697] It's amazing.

[1698] It's really interesting to see how game design philosophy has changed, how much the hand -holding...

[1699] When you play some of these games, it becomes...

[1700] so apparent like what has changed in just fundamental game design in terms of how you lead people to content like there is so much of this game that like even the hints we've seen from people when they scream at us for what we haven't done or haven't seen like how much is just is not apparent and yeah sometimes we aren't paying that much attention and stuff like that that's certainly a valid criticism but we're just playing to have fun and I think people forget what it's like when you played this when you were like The first time, and you're just futzing around.

[1701] You're not worried about seeing everything.

[1702] And you have nothing but fucking time to do it.

[1703] Yeah, but it's just really interesting, even from an RPG context, how things have changed.

[1704] Sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse.

[1705] There are definitely some missions where it's like, oh, I never would have figured this out.

[1706] Literally, that is such an obscure thing.

[1707] At some point, your brain has just been rewired by the way games are now.

[1708] It's hard to retrain yourself.

[1709] I don't know that I would have gotten it then.

[1710] There was a certain way you played games, especially JRPGs back then.

[1711] A lot of the conventions that – talking about Skyrim, everything is very guided.

[1712] It's open -ended in terms of how you get to things.

[1713] But at the end of the day, there's always an arrow.

[1714] And Chrono Trigger and all JRPGs relied on you talking to everyone.

[1715] And the clues were embedded in – That was a convention of that genre.

[1716] You talk to everyone a million times.

[1717] That's what you spent a third of your game doing.

[1718] You just don't do that anymore.

[1719] It's interesting.

[1720] I think the difference is you can still go and talk to every resident in Skyrim if you want to.

[1721] The game will let you do that.

[1722] It's only for color.

[1723] The difference is that it will make sure that you know that when a piece of information is being given that it's significant.

[1724] Well, it'll update something or even just like, hey, this is real stuff here that you need to be...

[1725] This is kind of like the next leg in the thing, whereas anything in Chrono Trigger could have been just a throwaway line.

[1726] Was that Chrono Cross?

[1727] That's a whole separate...

[1728] That's the next one.

[1729] You guys are just rolling right into that, right?

[1730] I'm just going to roll straight into Chrono Cross.

[1731] No, I've never played Chrono Cross.

[1732] It's not very good.

[1733] Ten out of ten.

[1734] I hear it's a perfect game.

[1735] I hear it's perfect.

[1736] I don't hear it's good.

[1737] I hear it's perfect.

[1738] You mean prime.

[1739] Whatever.

[1740] You get me on that.

[1741] I am.

[1742] It's true.

[1743] It's better than saying perfect.

[1744] No, I know.

[1745] Perfect's not good.

[1746] There were other games in that era that had all that stuff differently.

[1747] Like, when you played Link to the Past, like, it bolded important stuff.

[1748] Right.

[1749] So that even if you were just, like, hit A, A, A. But my thing is the...

[1750] This game doesn't do any of that.