Highguard, Cairn, Ace Combat 7 | Noclip Crewcast

Thank you.

Hello, friends.

Welcome to episode 265 of the Noclip podcast.

Is it the last podcast before the Winter Olympics kicks off?

I'm not quite sure.

I'm not that... I don't know what's going on with the Winter Olympics.

They're in Milan, I think.

Something like that.

Jeremy, if you could, you know, enter a Winter Olympian event, I mean...

We're not expecting you to win it.

Just for fun.

If you could enter one, just to give it a go one time, what would it be?

Well, you know, in the winter I like to, I like to cozy up inside and play a nice like MMORPG.

So is there an event that, where you like, there's like a two phase thing where you prepare like a nice cup of hot cocoa?

And then the second phase, like a triathlon, there's like different events.

And the second phase is playing, you know, like 10 hours of EverQuest.

Like competitive vegging or nesting or something like that.

I would get at least bronze in that, I want to say.

Okay.

All right.

Well, there isn't, but, you know, there's always hope.

I don't watch the Winter Olympics, so I just assumed.

20 to 30, let's make it happen.

Frank Howley, if you could be in any event, what would it be?

You don't have to be good at it.

It doesn't have to be DDR.

I feel like eating food seems pretty easy for me.

That's definitely in the Winter Olympics.

If there's competitive food eating at the Winter, I imagine, like, Yeah, there's ramen.

Like what, s'mores or something?

Like what's a winter food we're eating?

Chili.

Ramen, right?

Like a bunch of chili.

Okay, wow.

Okay, I thought I knew nothing about the Winter Olympics.

It turns out I might be beaten to that.

Jesse Garasha, do you have any Winter Olympics, you know, categories, sports you might want to?

Sports.

I'm giving you a clue here.

Winter Olympics, mostly sports.

Oh, is it?

Yeah.

Hmm.

Well, what about eSports?

Do they have any eSports?

Shit.

Because I would love to play high guard in the Olympics.

Okay.

I bet I would do well in that.

Nice.

My actual answer is bobsled.

I think that would be fun.

I was thinking that too.

I was thinking Bob, I was going to say luge, but then I, then you're on your own and and you're also like, just you know, you're just out there.

There's no, there's no pretense of safety with the, with the sled.

At least I know, you know, four Jamaican guys can survive a crash.

I was just about to say, your training.

Your training montage is just you watching cool runnings on repeat, kissing my egg over and over again, trying to make sure it's okay.

Yeah, I think that'd be Bob's, that'd be good.

But you, where's the safest spot?

Because the back person does the brakes, the front does the driving.

So in the middle you're just like yeah, are you just throwing your weight around?

Is that what?

Yes exactly yeah yeah, I'm probably.

I probably weigh enough for two people.

So they could probably just put me in the middle.

Put me in the middle.

I'm Danny and O'Dwyer.

Yeah, exactly.

I'm like, I'm like two Olympians in weight.

You know, we talked about stone before, but I think Olympian.

What's an Olympian?

One, one 50.

So we're saying it depends on the event.

I guess it does.

It's a good point.

I'm not 300 pounds by the way.

Just that was not anymore.

Yeah.

Not since I had that penis de-enlargement surgery.

Boo.

Boo don't, don't you rope the battle pass holders into this.

Yeah, don't you dare, don't you make them part of this.

I'm so okay, let's.

Uh god um, how do i know who's on our?

Uh no, clip bobsledding team?

Exactly, crammed into the bogs, bob bod sleds, the bobsled, the bog sleds.

That's, that's what we do in ireland.

We don't have snow with a bobsled.

You just put a huge metal bin in a bog and use a stick to try and get around.

Raise down the peat.

Exactly.

Yes.

I love it.

Smokey.

Cut up some of that delicious bog.

Wog juice.

And then burn it in your fucking house.

Just like our good friends.

Honestly, it's a pretty good transition.

Our Battle Pass holders, Brian Baru, the ex-High King of Ireland, is getting joined.

The man largely responsible for stopping the Viking invasion of Ireland is now one of our Battle Pass holders.

A little toast to Lovepreet.

Yosh Dwayne, the Rock Lobster, Anthony Thomas, Nico Basseteri, It's-a-me Ferraro, they're both going to be at the Winter Olympics.

Oh, yeah.

They're doing that.

What's a two-person sport in the Olympics?

Winter Olympics.

Oh, two-person.

Is it like a three-legged skiing?

Maybe.

Tie two people together.

Like a relay ski.

Oh, that would be fun.

That sounds like hell.

It does.

Sounds like a great way to break.

Break every bone in your body.

Dislocate your hip.

Yes.

Definitely happening there.

Reed Dredge.

Senator Armstrong.

Harry Flanagan.

Joosh.

Arno.

Matt Pearson.

Mark Rojas.

Quote.

Tucker Morgan.

David McGarry.

Goddison.

Sven Hooster.

Pez.

Bone Mold.

Thank you all so much for your incredible support of our podcast and our various YouTube channels.

We have to talk about some video games that have come out.

And Jesse, you know what?

You've already mentioned it.

It's the game on everyone's lips.

The nightmare marketing story of High Guard has reached its zenith in that it came out yesterday.

Was it yesterday?

Yeah, that feels right.

Well, yesterday as of recording on Monday, yeah.

Give us the skivvy, first of all, on sort of what happened with...

How was this game publicized?

How do we know about it?

Can you give us a little bit of a one-on-one on the sort of the weird little memification of this title over the last few weeks?

Sure, yeah.

If you missed out on the Game Awards because you have self-respect and didn't sit down for three hours of commercials filled with commercials, you might have missed that at the end of the show, Jeff Keighley's.

One final big thing he decided to show off at the end of the show was High Guard, a new game from Wild gate.

Is that wild rift entertainment, i believe is the studio name.

Please someone double check wild something.

Thank you um, it's a team formed of x, apex legends, titanfall developers.

Uh, they split off and formed their own studio light, wild light, thank you.

So many wilds this year.

Wild Rift is the League of Legends thing, I think.

And Wild Gate is a completely different game.

It's a different game.

Yeah, exactly.

But Wild Light, they've done this new game.

It's called High Guard.

They showed it off with this trailer.

And Jeff's big announcement was not only is this game coming out soon and I'm very excited for it.

I got to play it.

It's like I said.

It's out in like seven days or 14 days or something from the announcement, or a month, something like that.

And now it is here and we can play it all for free on Steam, PlayStation and Xbox.

This is it's funny.

The reaction to it, I think, is is so disproportionate because it's like the thing everyone asks for is trailers and then the game to be releasing shortly after.

Not this soon, necessarily, but like the desire is for a trailer and then the game to come out.

The problem is they showed the trailer and the trailer was bad.

Like.

I think for the vast majority of people, it was like, that's not a particularly exciting trailer.

It doesn't do a good job of explaining what you're doing in the game.

It sort of just shows characters and that there's combat and they have special abilities.

There's a million games that have come out in the last couple of years that look like High Guard.

I think reasonably people saw that marketing and were a little confused and wanted more information.

And then they went quiet from the announcement of the game until the release yesterday, when they put out a big trailer explaining everything, showing off all the gameplay.

Their plan was supposedly, based off interviews, to go and shadow drop this game on launch the way they did with apex legends.

But jeff keely showed up at their studio or was invited.

He played the game and was like guys, this is awesome, let me highlight it.

At the game awards i'll give you the big spot at the end.

You know, i don't know what the deal was, but essentially that's, i think there was no money.

I think exactly there was no money.

Yeah, my understanding is that if you were doing, i mean, the game awards, stuff can get super pricey like it's it's yeah, it's six figures for sure if to to get certain spots on that show.

But um uh, i believe at least it was the case at one stage.

I'll have to ask um, i'm gonna see jeff next month at a thing.

Um, i'll have to ask him about it.

But at the time it was that if your game was like a new announcement, like a new game world premiere, you wouldn't.

You don't pay for those.

This was what, unless perhaps it's a, you know, mobile free-to-play thing.

I don't know.

It's a gotcha game, yeah.

Yeah, maybe there's exceptions.

I don't know.

Is the idea behind that that it's like mutually beneficial for the Game Awards to have those reveals, or something?

I believe so, yeah.

I think it's... I think it also is a form of... Like, I guess...

Trying to get it so that people maybe think of the Game Awards as the place to do the announce.

Because you could easily like do your own announcement on your own platforms two weeks before the Game Awards.

But then that might take a lot of the heat away from the Game Awards.

So having that sort of, you know, carrot on a stick, I think probably helps them in that regard.

Because there isn't much of like a pre-Game Awards season.

You know what I mean?

Like it's mostly quiet for the first couple of weeks before it.

It kind of feels like it's the game award season all year.

He finds whatever show he can show up at and do like one hour bit.

It is, you know, it's still the 2019 game summer of gaming.

We're still there, baby.

Nothing's ever changed.

Um, yeah, the whole situation there is so interesting.

And I think um, I think it's like a reverse exposure thing of of show your game off at the game awards for us, that you get a big audience and then we get to be the cool place where games get announced.

So it's, uh, Yeah.

Interesting situation.

I've seen some perspectives on that deal that I don't necessarily agree with, but I do find some value in of like doing.

That was a weird situation for the devs.

They were planning to shadow drop it.

And then Jeff's like, show your game off.

And they admitted like we rushed the trailer.

So we had something for the game awards.

Right.

What level of influence does Jeff Keighley have over that situation?

That's up for debate.

It's whatever.

Who really cares?

It's his show.

He does what he wants with it.

He said that in the past.

I mean, they didn't have to do it.

Absolutely.

But also, as they said, it would be foolish to not.

It's a very hard thing to say no to.

Absolutely.

To save half a million dollars to show off your game, right?

Why would you not do that?

Unfortunately sort of backfired for them in those few weeks because everyone was like that trailer was bad.

It didn't do a good job of selling the game.

I'm excited for this in the, is this going to be a failure sort of thing?

And I think that sucks that that's the reaction that sort of led to it.

I know we weren't particularly positive about it, but I think the opinion we had from announcement until now, at least here on the podcast, was ridiculous.

The trailer was bad, but let the game be what it is.

Wait for it to come out before you have an opinion on it, because we can all play it.

It's going to be free and, following through on that, i decided to play high guard yesterday and some of today for like maybe six hours, i think.

I played total probably seven or eight matches.

Um, high guard gameplay wise.

Now that it's out, we can finally explain what it is it's.

It's supposed to be a i think they call it a raid pvp shooter.

So this is a 3v3 multiplayer shooter That takes place in a set of phases in a single match.

So you're playing as two teams in a base, a sort of dome shield base that are trying to attack and destroy the other enemy's base.

Each base has a generator that you plant a bomb on.

You get into the base with a shield around it, using something called a shield or a shield breaker or something like that.

Stormbreaker that you go and find.

It's like an item out in the world.

You do a little capture the flag gameplay with your opponents.

First person to turn to the other team's base, plants the flag quote unquote, uses their shield breaker and then they start a raid and they're trying to destroy the enemy bases generators, kill the other enemies and keep going know, doing the pvp combat until they have reduced their enemy's life bar to like uh from 100 to 0 uh, each generator does like 30.

There's a main generator that has no protection around it and that does more damage.

Um, and can the other team not attack you until like, that phase is over and another one of these like wannabe flag shield breaker things is available?

Or are they always available?

Yeah, exactly.

The the shield break is actually they spawn.

I think there's like a so there's rounds to it.

Sorry, though.

The waves, I think, are important in explaining this.

This is the game's biggest problem to me is that there's so much going on.

It's kind of hard to follow it.

But basically, as you start a match, you spawning your base with no equipment.

You have to go out and find it. which is like in random loot crates around this world.

It's like a pretty big map, but it's not ridiculously large.

I would say it probably takes like two in-game minutes to cross it.

But you can go really, really fast on this horse that you have, which I'll get to in a second.

It's a horse?

Dude, I'm telling you, this game has 900 mechanics in it.

It makes no sense.

It just feels ridiculous.

Did you say panthers, Jeremy?

Yeah.

There are also cats.

We'll get back to this, but in one sentence summation I think that the weirdest thing about this trailer to me was the tone of it was very like.

It's like Apex Legends, but you're riding a World of Warcraft mount.

And I was like, there's a weird lack of aesthetic cohesion.

Because what Jesse's describing sounds so fucking cool.

And then I look at it and I'm like, I don't know.

I don't want to play a game.

I don't want to play this.

And that sucks to like... It's not just the aesthetic.

It's like the presentation and the atmosphere that's turning me off a little bit.

The tigers.

Is there...

This thing looks sci-fi, I'm guessing, mostly, right?

No, it's more fantasy.

The sci-fi parts of it are more So.

You're shooting guns but like they're not.

They are sort of sci-fi fantasy guns but there are a bunch of them that are like There's fire glowing off of them and everybody has an ability.

That feels more fantastical than say, Apex Legends, which feels more scientific.

And it approaches like if people have like gas mines and stuff.

And this you spawn eagles like there's a bunch of different heroes like Apex Legends.

You can spawn an eagle that scans an area or you can spawn like little.

I don't know what they're called, but like little units on the map that will throw concussion bombs at people.

So they're like trap AI enemies, stuff like that.

Everybody has their own different little abilities, but it's a lot more fantasy focused than than Apex Legends or Titanfall.

The structure of it again.

When you start with nothing, you sort of have to go out into the map, open up chests in the chest.

There are weapons or armor or equipment or whatever.

You have three weapon slots your main secondary, and then you have a raid weapon which includes, like a rocket launcher or a hammer.

And you can use these to destroy parts of the environment, some of the environment, not all of it.

And it's usually pretty obvious.

It'll be like a white wall that you can damage or a wooden wall that you can damage.

You can sort of tell by looking at it.

You can hit those either with your melee weapon, which has like this sequence of attacks that you have to time like you're reloading in Gears of War.

It's like it's it's not really reload.

It's active damaging of the walls.

It's weird.

If you fail it, it's slower.

If you succeed, it's faster.

And then you get an extra attack that like is an automatic.

So you don't have to do that chain.

So there's a little bit of strategy strategy, sorry, to the melee.

Or you can use the raid weapons that you have, but they have a limited amount of ammo.

So you should save them for when you're actually doing a raid when you get to the end.

So you get all your items, you get your build ready, you've got your weapons that you want.

You can still fight the enemies in this period of time on the map as they appear, but your goal is to get as much resources as you can to prepare for the raid.

Then you go get the shield breaker.

You have to run to that point, break the shield, destroy the generators, and this goes back and forth until you're done.

If you don't deal any damage within your raid, then your base loses 30 health.

But your enemy, I think the enemy, every time you start a raid, whatever team is being attacked automatically loses 30 health.

I think is what it is.

And then the generators.

Again, each of them does 30, and then there's a big one that's harder to defend but does more damage.

It's like when you read the Harry Potter books and they explain Quidditch and you're like I don't really get it.

That sounds like a lot of stuff.

Here's how I would describe this game up until the raid, even maybe including the raid.

I think they took Fortnite and crunched it down.

Like Fortnite's gameplay loop is a really big map.

You spawn wherever you go, get your items.

Right.

But the problem with Fortnite Danny, I think you were kind of talking about this when you, when you and your wife were playing it separately or together.

We still are good.

Perfect.

So she's running around upstairs right now as Dwight Schrute.

Like in Fortnite or like in real life?

It's a weird kink, man.

Hey, sorry.

No kink shaming.

It's not weird.

It's fun.

Whatever works for you.

Sip of water.

Sorry.

Yeah.

The structure, again, it's like Fortnite where it sort of crunches it down.

Instead of it being you're waiting for the end, when all of the teams that are actually good at the game are in a tight area.

Right away, you're starting in a tight area.

You're going and getting the equipment that you need.

There's even like...

This is so stupid.

Like I was saying with the meleeing, there are things that you can pick up.

Like there's money that you can acquire by breaking these glowing blue shard things.

You get the resource and then you can go to a shop and buy upgrades if you didn't find stuff that you wanted from the chests.

Fortnite.

It's you break the walls, like you're trying to reinforce walls and stuff, like it's very, very much hitting a lot of the same notes that Fortnite hits or just any battle royale.

But I think very explicitly there's parts of it where I'm like, this feels a lot more like that.

Like Apex Legends, from what I can remember, didn't have destructible environments in that way.

So it's I am having a lot of fun with it, to be clear.

It sounds very confusing.

I think it makes a lot more sense once you've done a couple of matches of it.

There's still parts of it I'm not entirely sure I understand, really.

The meleeing stuff feels good, but it doesn't quite work for me.

The walls you can destroy...

Very few people have actually used that.

Right.

And I've mostly played random games with strangers.

So I'm not really queuing up with like a team.

I imagine this game would be a million times better with a team.

But even then, when you're fighting other opponents, it's not like I've never felt like they've broken a wall and like Rainbow Six Siege.

Yeah, it sort of is just a thing you do during the raid.

You're also like this is day one of a free to play game, right?

Totally.

Yeah.

And then next week, the meta is going to be different.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

And I think that will be an interesting thing to see play out.

But I kind of wonder what the appeal is for this long term.

I imagine they'll have new game modes that will appeal to a different set of players.

They don't have ranked yet.

Like they're waiting to launch ranked.

I imagine, because of what you're saying, they need to see how the meta shapes before they release that and do any patches for ranked mode.

But there's so much to it.

Like it's just so involved.

I wonder...

There's a lot of different paths you can take, like you can focus on getting the armor, or you can just focus on attacking your enemies.

Maybe you want to drag out the time because there's like an overtime mode.

And then you like, if you have the shield breaker and like there's just so many steps to it that it it really does feel like there's a lot to do.

But once you're playing it, it feels very straightforward.

You're kind of doing the same thing every single time, every round.

It's like go get the items, upgrade your stuff, go fight, get the shield breaker, break the shield, do the combat in the raid.

Catch the snitch.

Exactly.

You know, if you win, if you catch the snitch, you win the game.

Avoid the beaters.

Yes.

Bludgers, whatever they're called.

Don't get bludgeoned or whatever.

You said you played like six hours and you played like six games.

Are they long matches?

They can be.

I've had some take 30 minutes.

I've had some take 10.

It just depends on how the raids go, right?

The raid determines how much damage you deal, and then you're just trying to wipe everyone's health.

If all of the raids take their full time and no one takes any damage outside of just the 30 points you lose if your raid fails.

That takes like 30, 40 minutes.

It's crazy how long it takes.

And that again is determined by whether or not the people who get the shield breaker go straight to do a raid or if they're just running around the map.

People I've seen matches just do that.

They get the shield breaker and they run around because eventually you go into overtime mode and then there's no response.

So you're playing like search and destroy for capture the flag.

And then like and then they have to go do it, or eventually the the shield breaker will just go to the nearest base and trigger automatically.

So you have to be careful about your positioning if you're doing that little strategy.

Things like that that I think will be, will lead to interesting situations for some players.

Again, I don't, I can't feel too much of this.

That feels like it doesn't have a sauce, you know.

I mean like it doesn't.

It doesn't quite connect for me.

It has a lot of cool individual pieces, but they sort of don't feel like they slot together really well for me.

I don't think I have a name for this, but there's a look to these games that, like Immortals of Avium, has the same problem to me.

It's like...

It's something about a certain type of techno fantasy that I just do not vibe with at all.

And this game has a similar thing going on, you know?

Absolutely.

I don't know what it is.

No, no, it's a look that feels like it betrays the fun part of sci-fi and the fun part of fantasy.

Kind of, yeah.

It feels like a compromise for both things.

When you look at world of warcraft, it's like these hand-painted big, like chunky stylized, but like committedly fantasy things, even the technology, even like the gnome tech or whatever they have.

They somehow get away with it, don't?

Yeah, there's like cars in world of warcraft, but there's still.

They feel like cars that would be in a fantasy world.

Well, because it works, because you see the gears on the wheels or you see, like the steam coming out of it.

Just put some gears on that shit, bro.

It makes sense.

Put some brass in there.

But when I'm looking at some of the guns in this and it's doing sci-fi particle effects, I'm like to Danny's point.

It's like what?

Pick an aesthetic, you know?

Like, go all out.

Give me a crossbow.

Why isn't there a crossbow?

Stuff like that.

You get a zipline gun.

Like, I get it.

Ziplines are fucking fantastic.

You don't have to convince me to use a zipline gun, but. that's just Apex Legends.

I was going to say, it does feel like, especially like the UI looks so much like Apex Legends.

It's so exactly the same thing.

It's identical.

It's fucking, I like cackled when I saw it.

It does feel to me like, even though the actual game loop of this is so different than Apex, it does feel like a lot of things from like the zip to like the presentation to what it looks like maybe like the TTK and the like movement and stuff is reminiscent enough of Apex or something Apex adjacent that like if they're gonna take that and transpose it onto a new game mode and a new aesthetic, I feel like those two things need to be fucking like... perfect because otherwise if it's if it's so its own thing that people aren't immediately making those comparisons then i feel like it can get away with being like like oh they're trying something so wildly different that it's a little rough around the edges but it's so interesting and novel that it can get away with it but uh but yeah i don't know i don't feel like i agree i haven't played this but just for i watched a lot of gameplay yesterday just out of curiosity and it didn't seem uh i didn't feel compelled to play it i guess yeah it doesn't dive deep enough, deep enough.

Sorry.

I think into any of the particular mechanics that I don't get excited about it.

Like the breaching part of it or the breaking wall stuff that for me is Could be compelling.

Rainbow Six Siege made that a fun idea.

But because the game is so fast paced, it really doesn't feel like there's any reason to set up.

It's loud.

You can hear every footstep or the horse trotting or panther running from like a mile away.

And it sounds like it's right next to you.

So you can't possibly miss where they are.

So if you're trying to break down a wall with melee or with one of your raid weapons or planting, like what is this essentially?

An explosive charge onto a wall?

You can hear it like the other team will hear it.

And it's not a subtle thing.

It's real.

And by the time you've broken down the wall, there's so much particle effects.

They know where you are.

You can't see anything.

And they're just shooting at you because they heard you.

So it's stuff like that where I'm like this is a neat idea in theory and I have had it result in some interesting situations of like oh cool.

Now I can go above and then raid from above in the one patch of the room that I can break.

But because it's so specific, it's like there's not a ton of strategy to it.

It's sort of just setting up traps and then flanking around the traps, but very quickly.

I don't know.

It's missing that level of strategy.

But you respawn anyway, right?

Yeah.

Yeah, there are respawns.

There's limited respawns once you start the raid.

But you respawn basically right outside.

Yeah, and that shit only works in like Rainbow Six Siege where like...

Yeah, it's search and destroy.

Yeah, if you die, you're out.

You know what I mean?

So setting traps and stuff like that, I feel like, is such a Yeah tertiary thing in so many of these games.

I hear what you're saying.

Yeah, I hope this finds an audience and stuff, but when I hear you talk about it and see gameplay of it, it just reminds me of how important having a cohesive, if nothing else, just art style like helps like.

And i know i keep fucking going on about our creators, but like i i i said in my game of the year video, i like that.

I do think one of the reasons why i think i enjoy that game so much is because it has a refined idea.

Like you look at a screenshot of our creators, you're gonna say it's our creator.

You can tell what the fucking game it is.

Right, you look at a screenshot of this and it could be one of 10 of these games.

And I think that really suffer, like I think these days, where aesthetic and vibe is so important when people are buying games, I think if it has this sort of like lack of identity, especially with a free-to-play game, like surely the vibe and the ethos and the community and like how people feel about the game, is the game cool, is like a big part.

I feel like that's a big part of those communities.

I think that's the reaction to it as well.

Like that's why that's part of why it was so frustrating, for some people is like I've seen this before.

I've seen parts of this before.

They didn't even know what the gameplay loop was yet of like, oh, this feels like a BR, but smaller.

This feels like Fortnite, but smaller.

They didn't know that yet, but they saw like.

This character, literally the first character you see looks like the guy from Immortals of Avium, the game you brought up earlier.

Like it looks the same.

The character models, none of them are particularly standout.

Like they look like people I've seen before.

Oh, you throw a falcon in the air to scan people.

That's Assassin's Creed and like a character in multiple.

Far Cry.

Yeah, hero shooters also.

You could also do that.

Yeah.

Most Ubisoft games really have a thing like that at this point.

Like there's so many parts to it where I think visually it just didn't stand out enough for it to be exciting.

And then it's like, oh, it's another hero shooter.

But this time you're on a horse like you got to give me more than that, baby.

That's not enough anymore.

You know, it's like, it's like when I go to Subway and I'm a bit stoned and I'm, and I you know they're like asking you what you want and you just keep asking for stuff.

You're like, yeah, actually, yeah, I want pepperoncinis, yeah, and onions and this and this.

And then at the end, they're like fucking trying to close this sandwich.

And you get it and you're like I love all of these things individually, but like, what sandwich did I buy?

I don't know.

His peanut butter Italian is just not his.

You know, it's got the crunchy onions.

There's so much in here that it has lost any identity of itself or something.

Um, Yeah.

I mean, people seem to be review bombing it as well.

Cause it doesn't.

It sounds like it's all right, but it's got.

Like you know, this is what happens with free to play games.

16,000 reviews, mostly negative.

That seems like it's not really accurate.

That's wrong.

It's not that bad.

It's not even bad.

It's like a fine video game.

It is the perfect.

I will play this for three weeks and then never think about it again for the rest of my life.

Multiplayer game.

Okay, negative reviews, for that is ridiculous.

I think it's just coming from this perspective people wanting and like who cares about steam reviews in the first two days?

It's like, unless it's a indie game where you're trying to like, prep it up.

For the most part, for games like this, it's just people trolling.

There's this broken desire for things to fail in the games industry of like yeah, Wanting it to fail and criticizing it are two different things.

If you're honestly criticizing it and saying, like, I don't think this works.

There's problems with it here.

Here's what they are.

That's a different conversation.

But I'm seeing like cancel culture shit come out about this already.

Like, oh, sweet baby ain't worked on.

Shut up.

Like who?

You don't care about this.

Why are we still doing this?

You guys are 35 years old.

Sweet baby.

If they have any influence over like.

They never figured out how to have another opinion on anything.

They're just parroting the same shit they said five years ago.

And now it's going on to this game.

It's like, you don't really care about this.

Oh, this is the fall of the industry.

This is the fall of the industry, not the layoffs or anything else going wrong.

It's always when art I don't care about comes out.

Who cares?

At the.

You know danger of playing devil's advocate.

Because I don't because, fuck all those people.

I do think there is this underlying, and I feel like we have this too.

There is this underlying concern frustration with the games industry.

When you see games like this that have spent so much money and they're just like one nodule to the left of the game that tried this a year ago, like I get that, that's frustrating.

We have dealt with that in our own ways, where Frank goes back and plays a bunch of classic games, ones that he really enjoys.

You know, Jeremy and Jesse and me, to a certain extent, play a lot of experimental stuff, a lot of weird stuff.

Right, I do think there is this sizable enough cohort of gamers who don't have the sort of the taste yet to like try stuff that's not.

You know what they think they want, but they're also frustrated with what's been coming out by Activision and Ubisoft and everyone for the past 10 years.

And I think when I see that negative reviews, I see some of that, you know what I mean?

Or when I see a reaction to a game that does well, like when Apex did well, or our creators most recently obviously Tarkov, I think got a lot of like love.

Similarly because people were like oh finally, it's a first, but you know, we wanted new stalker, we wanted difficult first person shoot.

So yeah, i think i think some of the reaction to this not to not to sort of whitewash it, but i think some of it is coming from that as well No, I do think reasonably and this is the case for a lot of things, whether it's in games or not everyone can sort of feel something is wrong.

Like everyone is going clearly something is wrong.

Everyone knows it.

The thing is, it depends on who you get your answer from.

If you're not inclined to figuring that stuff out on your own, you're going to latch on to the thing that makes the most sense the first time you hear it.

And.

Unfortunately, the biggest content creators for games are going to be people who aren't necessarily trying to tell you anything useful.

They're trying to get you to keep watching and clicking and making you mad.

And know nothing about how games are made.

Precisely.

It's like the easy answers approach.

It's like the economy is terrible and wealth is being.

There's like a K-shaped economy and wealth is being concentrated increasingly at the top.

And it's like, maybe poor immigrants are the problem.

Right.

It's like it's just like this fucking appealing to this like primal like tribalism.

It's just easy answers, I think, is the real answer here.

Totally.

But the tribalism could totally it could be swung the other way.

It's just it depends on who you end up hearing it from.

Like if you build the tribe or the totem for the you to be upset about.

Right.

You could just say it's billionaires.

You could just say that you could do that.

But like, that's not what's happening because the billionaires run all the media.

Right.

No, I mean, that's why you see again for like the politics allegory here.

It's like that's why you see people who would be like, oh, man, like I thought Bernie was cool.

And then I became a Trump voter.

And it's like that's such a bizarre phenomenon, like such a bizarre sort of like populist outcropping of political thought.

And it is, I agree with Danny that it's like I think that a lot of these people who are expressing sort of like misguided discontent with the state of games,

I don't think that they could necessarily articulate that this is their position or sort of like.

I don't know, maybe they could.

Maybe I'm being totally dismissing these people's self-awareness on some level.

But I think that like, I agree.

I feel like when I look at what AAA games are coming out, everything feels like it's either a remake or one a one degree pivot from something very recognizable.

And I think we're missing that sort of middle ground where, like you know, like Metal Gear Solid 2 comes out.

It's this incredible hit game.

It's like mainstream a ton of you know that like you could, you'd see people wearing like a Metal Gear T-shirt in public.

Like it's like a cultural phenomenon on the level of a blockbuster film, but it's also like deeply experimental and weird.

And I think that we're really missing that middle ground right now, where capital meets experimental artistry.

Yeah, and look at the reaction to Claire Obscure.

Like, that is...

To me, that is wholly the inverse of the... Like, it's the argument you're making.

Like.

It is like when something comes out that people feel like has been made with fresh ideas, with love, and it gives them an experience that is not wholly different, but different enough for them to like really wake up and enjoy it.

Like, people love that shit.

You know what I mean?

Totally.

Like, it's... Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, especially with these games just want to be the new Fortnite.

You know what I mean?

Like, that's what they're... I have little, yeah, care for this type of stuff.

Like, a marathon's a similar situation, right?

Where they're taking an old IP and attempting to make a new shooter out of it.

I mean that project seems like it's had plenty of trouble and directions and bungee, middle management or executive level stuff and in you know, parent company problems.

But I also like, am I excited by it?

Like, I don't know, maybe more people are excited about this type of stuff, but just, I don't know.

My eyes glaze over a lot of this stuff.

Why with marathon in particular?

I think the techno, I need a name for this.

You know what I mean?

This techno fantasy, because to me, Destiny was the same shit.

But Marathon's leaning full into.

I think the argument you're making about the sci-fi fantasy overlap.

I completely agree.

I think it's like, like I said, it underdoes it, but Marathon is like all the way in on sci-fi.

Yeah, I think it's, I don't know.

I think it's, I guess I just don't.

I think ultimately I just.

It's too clean.

I do not really care about first person shooter shit like this anymore.

Like I do.

It's an extraction shooter too though.

So.

Not dismissing you.

No, I'll need to give it a go.

The PvE stuff in Ark Raiders is basically the reason why I play that game.

For sure.

I'll have to give Marathon... I'll give it its due like I gave Destiny its due back in the day.

But I just... I don't know.

Destiny is a game that I could never...

Like Halo.

I could not give a fuck about what was happening in Halo.

It was such a, like, dumb story.

Like, it was such a dumb story.

It was just like, like, Iraq Jesus.

Like, that's what, that's fucking... A guy named John is shooting a bunch of aliens?

Come on.

We already did Starship Troopers.

Shut up.

Oh, God.

I just, yeah.

It was such a stupid shit.

Like, I couldn't, like...

You know, I don't know.

But being stupid's awesome.

I genuinely love Halo.

I think it's so fucking cool.

I don't know.

I think the games are good.

No, defend it.

Yeah, absolutely.

Halo 1 and Halo 3, I think, are great games.

Halo 2, I think, is the worst a lot, because it's all just fucking.

Who gives a shit about all this stuff?

Yeah, he's got a laser sword.

Energy sword is sick.

I guess I just, like, I don't know.

I enjoyed those games, but like, I never have like a poster of Halo.

I know people like that stuff but like, for whatever reason that, like my, my love of sci-fi has to be like grounded, I guess, for me to

I will say the marathon, that fucking trailer is the best trailer ever made.

It's a great trailer.

That trailer is unbelievable.

Like the latest one they put out where someone dies like six seconds in?

Oh, the old one.

The one that they had that artist make.

Have you ever seen that?

You've seen that, Jeremy?

The one that was like 17 minutes long?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It was really good.

Fuck, that was good shit, man.

That was good shit.

Yeah, I think Marathon has a really good art style.

I do feel saddened.

It is so tainted for me by the fact that they stole art.

Oh, yeah.

A little bit of it's good art style is stolen.

You're right.

Like a lot of the sauce for it.

I mean it was like yeah, I mean there were like straight up ripped sort of pieces of art, just like throw it in.

I think they've rectified that.

I think it was also a situation where a project grows so big and they're like we have 4 billion people working on this game and 1200 of them are in some place in Indonesia and we've never spoken with them.

And then, just along the way, someone makes an unethical decision, whether it's for a shortcut or because they think the thing is cool and they want to take credit for it.

I don't know what the motivation is.

But nevertheless it is sad to me that that kind of taints the art style for me a little bit, because it's like oh wow, this looks so cool.

And then i remember that it's like, oh man, there's like someone out there who got like settlement money because this was like their aesthetic, this like independent artist, and that makes me sad.

But not whole.

They didn't steal the whole.

Like the character design, it was kind of like the, was it?

Was it mostly the sort of um, i don't know what you call it, but like the, not ui, but like the sort of two-dimensional, like postery, kind of yes, decals.

It reminds me a lot of like the wipeout stuff that that uh designers republic did, where it's not like the gameplay but it's like kind of the essence of how the game looks.

Is this is yeah, is in this yeah, a lot of like um, visual language, i would say of right more more like environment art and decals, less like character design and guns that eat floppy disks or whatever the fuck is going on in marathon, do they?

That sounds great.

See, you can't come up with cooler stuff than what's in there, man.

All right, delete that, and I'm making a different game not called Marathon.

It's like shotgun shells, but it's floppy disks that they shoot out of people.

I feel like they do have something like that.

Maybe that was a dream I had.

Great.

And they're spinning, so they can chop your head off.

That's just the razor blade gun in Unreal Tournament.

I don't know why I like Unreal Tournament.

I feel like that falls into the exact same trap as all this shit.

I feel like Unreal Tournament has.

Unreal has like what is it like?

Almost like a Turok kind of because Turok Rage Wars was obviously a rip off of Unreal but it has this like horror element to it that I think like it's a little like scarier and grittier or something.

I think it also doesn't take itself seriously at all.

Yeah, it's like, oh, we're fighting on an asteroid with two massive churches on it.

You know, like, cool.

That makes sense.

Yeah, I don't know.

Maybe it's the self-seriousness.

I think that might be it.

I think the stuff about Halo I don't like is when it like tries to get me to care about John and like same with destiny.

Like, Oh my God, the fucking horcrux of blah, blah, blah is being fucking.

I'm like, it's all Harry Potter today.

What are people's jobs here?

Like what are, you know, like tell me something.

Destiny is their job.

That's the world.

They're all just destiny people.

Yeah.

Everyone's a guardian.

The whole economy runs on guardians.

Guardians.

Apparently.

Yeah.

Isn't there a fucking guy who makes bread there?

Rice?

Who's making the fucking bullets? my experience with destiny was just that I tried it way too late.

I tried it.

Like when destiny one came out, I was like, this could be cool.

And then years later I tried destiny too.

And I booted up and it was, uh, like booting into an MMO that had existed too long.

And there was like people had like Christmas event cosmetics that were like, but it was like January.

And I was like, the tinsel was still on the floor from a party I missed.

And I just couldn't get into it.

Man.

Oh man.

Any interest in high guard, Frank?

No, absolutely.

I hate it.

Why do you hate it?

I don't like competitive.

I don't have fucking friends to play it with.

I don't, there's no like PV.

I hate the small PVP shit.

It's too sweaty.

If like one person goes AFK for a minute, the whole thing implodes.

I like battlefield.

It's like 30 on 30.

People can be fucking go do their taxes and come back and still win. so like when it's like too small i hate it it's like i don't like that at all 1v1 stuff like street fighter is because it's like your sole responsibility but like when it's like too it's just like i like it reminds me of like world of warcraft battlegrounds like that's the closest and even that was too sweaty competitive you don't play like dota and stuff like that yeah i'm just not interested like if there was a pve element it's like great you're riding horses and killing goblins sure that's i don't care that's like i like braindead stuff like that but i don't like the the like multiplayer competitive stuff at all so That's interesting to me because I feel sort of like the inverse about fighting games where it feels like sharing the burden of competitive responsibility with other people feels like like I can still take it seriously, but it's not as scary as just having a guy beat me up.

Frank is more like I either want all of the responsibility or none.

Yeah.

That's fair.

It's weird because like the middle ground is kind of what I like.

But then the bad thing is, if you're, if it's like 3v3 or 5v5, I just had to stop playing those games, for the most part because I just like I hate getting called racial slurs by like a 17 year old.

Right.

Tell me about it.

Yeah, I think high guard, especially the, the burden of responsibility is so much higher because it's not just like oh, if I die here, I'll respond somewhere nearby and get right back into the fight.

This is like if you die and drop the shield breaker.

Now they've got the shield.

Right.

If you make one mistake, these guys are getting on their horse.

They're teabagging you and then they're running over to your base and breaking it with a big shield breaker siege thing.

Like it is 100 percent too much.

I found myself getting more mad losing, or like dying and watching my teammates not revive me, which is really easy and free, by the way.

It was driving me crazy, man.

It was making me.

I was yelling at the screen in a way that I haven't in a multiplayer game in a really long time.

Very frustrating experience.

So if you're going to play High Guard at all, play it with absolutely a dedicated team of people.

Do not play this with randoms.

It will make you more angry than it should.

That's if you're going to play it at all, which I think if you're going to talk shit on it, you should at least give it a try.

All right.

My thoughts on it.

That was High Guard.

Bye, Guard.

Let's talk about something else.

Let's talk about the game on everyone's lips this week ace combat 7, frank howley.

I've seen a lot of people.

I don't know what's going on.

Is this a tiktok thing or something?

But no ace combat stuff it'd be cool to talk about.

Yeah, so a game that did get announced at summer games fest, winter games fest, whatever was ace combat 8.

The trailer came out and like everyone was super stoked on it.

I have a lot of friends super into ace combat and it like i've never i played the demo for ace combat 2 back in like 96 or whenever it was um, but i never played any of the other ace combat games.

But the trailer for ace combat 8 looks cool and i was like, oh shit, i should probably like play 748 comes out.

Um, i finished beating metal gear solid snake eater over the holiday break and i wanted something with like similar feeling.

I almost thought about going deeper and replaying another metal gear game, but i had friends encouraged me.

Like ace combat is pretty similar and like both games kind of have like that military with like a layer of like sci-fi mumbo jumbo on top.

So eight days combat series takes place in like a near future.

It's all like, it's like Oceania versus Eurasia.

It's like fake countries, fake, fake nations fighting each other.

Um, But yeah, it's incredibly, incredibly slick.

So I played Ace Combat 7 on PS4, running on PS5.

I think there's VR stuff too, but I don't have the headset or whatever.

But yeah, I played the entire game, and it was a really, really thrilling experience.

The key thing with Ace Combat is you're in the sky.

So it's that rush of it's not Sega but that Sega blue, that you're just in the sky, the UI's super slick and it's kind of like a more intense Star Fox basically.

So every battle...

You'll have like objectives, either like protect this base, protect your teammates, or just go hunt down these different ships and kill them, kill ground targets.

And like your loadout is super, super important and it changes from mission to mission.

So you pick your different planes.

Some planes are going to be too big because some missions you have to go through like tunnels, like Mission Impossible 1 style.

Oh my God.

So, like, every mission has so many different strategies and ways you can do it.

So, like, when you're looking, like, for trophies or on Reddit, there's 6,000 different variations.

So everyone is, like, people have their favorite planes, their favorite weapons.

There are some weapons that are super good for shooting other planes in the sky.

Some that are good for ground.

Some air missiles can't shoot at the ground.

So some you have to, like, focus on bombs.

Like, there's so many variations of playing.

And it's also, like, hard.

So, like, when you die, you can reload your checkpoint.

But like it's almost like like a dark souls boss encounter, where it's like there's phases at this at this time this stuff will run in.

And like I think I mentioned this, like Jesse and Jeremy, we were at before after a pub.

It was like I had time over the holiday break to focus on, as opposed to like every week.

Okay.

New game, new game.

And just frying my brain.

I spent like a month or two months playing this game and actually beating it.

And so I felt accomplished.

Um, But like, yeah, it's super hard, but you just keep retrying, retrying, and then you get so good.

And there's so many things to focus on as you're playing.

Because one, you're trying to find the targets.

There's missiles constantly coming at you.

So maybe it is almost like a rhythm thing too, because you'll hear a beeping of missiles coming at you.

And so at that point you can either pop off flare missiles, you can either like quickly try to do a barrel roll or just duck the missiles, but you're also trying to fight.

Sometimes there's like gesturing, where two planes are rushing at each other and you guys both fire missiles at each other.

Sometimes you'll be so focused on trying to hit your target that like I'll slow down to try to hit the target and then your plane will stall and just fall down and crash and you have to do the whole mission over and over. so it's like every there's 20 missions every mission is so different and unique and like you you just as you spend like two hours beating one mission it's so like as soon as that blue mission accomplished there's also the cool thing with like color theory like the entire mission you have red missiles incoming missiles incoming so you always have this red danger thing on the middle of your screen flashing and at the end of the mission when you finally kill the last plane It's like blue, mission accomplished.

And it's like the most like, oh, it's like seeing light at the end of the tunnel.

It's so relieving.

So having that experience 20 times over the course of a month was insane.

And yeah, because of Ace Combat 8 trailer getting announced, the game was on sale over the holidays.

I think I got it for like seven bucks or something.

It crossed seven million players or downloads.

So this game came out like seven or nine years ago.

2019.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's 60 bucks right now on Steam.

So it's, like, the, like, fandom.

And, like even on Reddit, the Ace Combat thing it's like to this day people still debate what best play is for what mission.

So it's a super dedicated fan base.

And, like, now I want to get Ace Combat 6 for, like, Xbox 360.

I went back.

Ace Combat 3 is, like... interesting because the japanese version has like five different routes five different endings there's anime cut scenes like it's so cool to play a game with ps1 anime cut scenes and like it's it's like super compressed like 240p but it's really well animated and the american version cut all of that out instead it's just like tech stuff but there's there's fan patches so you can play the japanese version so i was playing that a bit and it's The gameplay is so much more simple.

It's so simple compared to the number seven.

But yeah, it's such a hardcore, dedicated series.

And now I'm extremely excited for Ace Combat 8.

I feel like I did my homework and now I'm ready for Ace Combat 8.

Excellent.

It will be harder.

But yeah, Ace Combat 7 was like really, really good.

The kind of thing I always talk about with games I like is like I call arcade instruction.

It might not be the right word, but I just like the whole thing, like level select, pick your thing, do it and then back to the menu.

It's no open world crap.

There's no, like, I skipped all the cut scenes.

I played it in Japanese.

So during...

Like Metal Gear, during the... There's a lot of cut scenes in these games.

And so I just skipped it.

But during the fights, the storytelling is going on during the missions.

They're talking about what's happening with the planes and stuff.

And like, okay, so it's pretty good.

And yeah, just being in the sky, focusing on planes, shooting them down, trying to dodge.

Again, just like Souls boss battles, having to constantly duck roll.

I don't know.

It was just a really, really fun experience.

And yeah, you mentioned earlier when we were talking about High Guard how it's like...

Yeah, like we'll gravitate towards things we might not know is for us.

I was so skeptical of Ace Combat but because I just came off Metal Gear Solid 3, which Snake Eater was really challenging, finally going back and playing it.

Like I used to play Metal Gear games on like very easy.

I played it on normal, but like the boss fights were hard.

But then after that, like, all right, let me do Ace Combat.

And yeah, I found it to be a very, very rewarding experience.

And yeah.

Hell yeah.

Ace Combat 7, Skies Unknown.

What's the Ace Combat 8's Wings of Thief?

Thief?

That's the... I think it's a city in the world.

Oh, yeah, Wings of Thief.

Yeah, Wings of Thief.

Apparently coming out this year.

Yeah, these are few and far between, these games.

They remind me of uh shit, what was it?

What's the name of the mech game that then armored core yeah, they remind me of armor core where they've had like a similar sort of like long-standing hardcore community steel battalion.

A little bit too um, people really like these games, but they definitely sit in a in a strange you know venn diagram intersection point of like sim, kind of sim, arcade flight and and and people who really like strange narratives like sort of um manga, like anime, like um, uh narrative.

So yeah, it's cool, it's.

I'm excited to see what uh, what people think of eight.

If it feels like the ace combat renaissance is uh, is Among Us because yeah, I don't know, I might, I don't know, maybe it's my own feed or something, but I keep seeing Ace Combat 7 shit and I was wondering what was going on.

So it's got to be everyone doing that homework.

Because that trailer for Ace Combat 8 was just stellar.

I saw that and I was like finally they made Top Gun, Maverick the video game.

Finally, the thing I've been waiting for, where's the volleyball scene?

Uh Frank, it sounds like the part of it that you're liking is the thing that I like about sort of dog fighting style games not that I play that many of them anymore, but like twin stick shooters, I think are sort of zoomed out version of this.

How long are the matches or the rounds levels in Ace Combat 7?

Do they like vary or is it sort of like a?

They usually will give you like a 30.

That's the other special thing too.

Sometimes they'll give you like a 30 minute timer, 15 minute timer, I think they're all meant to be completed within 30 minutes, maybe 20.

I feel like the timer is always 20 minutes, but it will take me an hour.

And they'll be, like, usually three checkpoints.

But it's, like, some you'll do – very few for me you'll beat in your first try.

But I feel like it's, like, a mission is maybe 20 minutes max because you'll have a timer go down.

There's some missions that are, like, okay, you're going to be flying over these bases.

You have to kill, like – literally, it's, like, get 75,000 points in, like, 15 minutes.

And so that's the thing where you have to, like –

You can drop all your bombs and you go back to your base to reload.

But like, yeah, mission realistic is maybe like half an hour on average.

But it can take a long time if you get stuck on stuff.

So it's, yeah, bite-sized.

You can sit down and do a mission.

Oh, do I want to do more?

And then, like again this happened to me i i spent like an hour trying to beat one mission because it was so hard.

I kept retrying retrying, retrying and then every time you replay you get tighter at the control you, you kind of like get warmed up.

So i beat that mission and then the next one i beat on my first try.

So it was like, oh crap, so so yeah so, hell yeah, love it.

Ace combat seven And hopefully a new one coming out this calendar year.

Seven years since that one.

Pretty crazy.

I briefly played Brazilian Drug Dealer 3.

I opened a portal to hell in the favela trying to revive mid-AIA.

I need to close it.

This is a Steam game that I saw Dave Oshry talking about last year.

And one of our listeners was like you did Game of the Year, but you didn't play Brazilian Drug Dealer 3.

So I played it.

It's a weird-ass Quake fucking reskin that I spend a lot of time playing.

It's very silly.

It's only like seven bucks or something, I think.

Yeah, if you like Quake, if you want to play some Quake, but it's in the Brazilian favela, then this is the game for you.

But the game I think a lot of us have been playing and looking forward to playing for a number of weeks.

Oh, that was it?

Sorry.

No, that's all I have to say about it.

Okay.

Do you have any questions about it?

No, no, no.

Your setup was like I thought we were going somewhere but you were just like yeah, this is Quake, but we're It's Quake.

It's Quake in the favela.

It makes me want to play Max Payne 3 again.

Hey, that's the best compliment you could give to a video game.

I wanted to ask, by the way, recently, because you're playing Quake stuff anyway.

Did you check out the Brutalist Jam at all?

The Quake Brutalist Jam?

No.

Please tell me about it.

Jeremy, you know what this is, yeah?

I haven't checked it out.

Yeah, you could explain it.

I didn't play any of it myself.

I've just seen people working on it like devs I follow.

Yeah, same.

There's a bunch of level designers I know who are working on it.

It's like a bunch of brutalist, like, quake mods, right?

Mod levels.

So like architecture?

Yes, like building large megastructures made out of concrete that you're just running around killing enemies in.

Sometimes they have different mechanics and stuff.

That's funny.

It just seemed cool.

I thought if anyone was going to check that out, it would be Danny.

But you were too busy in Brazil shooting down drug dealers.

Which engine did they use, do you know?

I have no idea.

Some version of Quake.

Is it Quake 1, 2, or 3?

Because they all have their own sort of.

It looks like it's Quake 1 because you have to have Quake 1 to download them.

Okay.

Yeah.

That sounds about right.

You don't need Quake.

They're free.

There you go.

I don't know.

Yeah, is that open source now?

Because that's what I was playing when I was playing Brazilian Truck Theater 3.

I was like, is this literally a Quaker-y skin?

I think it might be.

Did they steal this?

Are you allowed to do this?

Also, it's Brazil, so they don't give a fuck.

They can do whatever they want down there.

I do have to read a quote from Robert Yang about the Quake Brutalist Jam.

It's the underground Met Gala of concrete murder zone design.

The biggest event on the Quake calendar.

Shout out to Robert Yang.

Yeah, i love that.

Been a long time since we interviewed him for that half-life doc.

It's been like yeah, it was a long, long time ago.

I want to do a documentary on his game about the uh, the gay lad smashing the chair off the back of his friend.

Oh yes, all of his queer games are so cool.

He's got that new one about rugby.

That's like not trying to be really you know so good.

I hope the guys i want to interview the guys from that video and see if they've played that game.

They must know about it.

Like, there's no way they don't know about it.

I forget the name of the game, though.

I forget it, too.

I watched that video literally yesterday.

Oh, really?

For the first time in, like, a decade.

It's very weird that we're discussing it now.

I'm going to write in game smashing chair over naked, over topless.

Hard Lads.

That is right.

What a name for a game.

Oh my God.

Yeah.

Hard Lads is a great, it's perfect.

It's the double entendre that works as a colloquialism and everything.

It's perfect.

Unbelievable.

Hard lads.

Anyway, we're not here to talk about hard lads.

We're here to talk about hard things to climb.

Cairn is out.

Cairn?

I believe it's cairn, like a cairn stone.

Yeah, that reads right to me.

This is a the climbing game there was a demo came out for.

We've talked about it a good bit since last year um, sort of the big indie pop of the first one of the year at least.

Uh, sort of a climbing game that uh isn't quite full quap but is very much a you need to put your feet and hands in the right place, as opposed to hold x and push forward assassin's creed style or whatever.

Um, I've played maybe a couple of hours, but honestly I don't know if what I've played is past what the demo was, because I didn't play the demo.

How much have you guys played?

Jeremy, you've played a decent amount, have you?

Yeah, I played probably, if you played a couple hours, I'm about the same.

But I had played the demo two or three times start to finish.

So I may have made a little faster progress just because I was warmed up on it.

Is the demo that first area?

Yes.

When you mount up to the top of the first sort of like mountain area and you see the big mountain in the distance.

That was the end of the demo.

Okay, okay, okay.

So I'm still just at the end of that part.

Oh, cool.

No worries.

Yeah, it is an interesting element of this game that it's I wonder how long to beat range on this game.

I feel like we'll be like five to a thousand hours or something, because even just trying different strategies, I was so methodical in playing the demo.

And then I was cruising so quickly through the intro area because I was warmed up on this game that I was like

I wonder how forgiving is this game?

Can I just spam?

I'll explain the mechanics and this will make more sense in five seconds.

But I just tried spamming up the mountain and, holy fuck, it's disturbing when you fall off the mountain and your character Ava, screams and ragdolls backwards.

I felt like right on the lip of another cliff below me and she bent over backwards like a jackknife and screamed.

Oh boy.

And I was clenching in real life.

So and Karen, like Danny said, it has this sort of a Foddy Foddy and characteristic to it where you move individual limbs to climb.

So it's more about climbing, looking at the rock and envisioning what's a good handhold, what's a good foothold?

Where can I get good leverage?

And the game does not directly telegraph this.

If you hover your hand over a big jug that you can grab very easily, it doesn't turn green and go oh, this is 100 grip or anything.

It's more that you just have to visually read the rock and then, when you grab it, there's haptic feedback on how sort of stable you are.

There's auditory feedback.

Your character will sort of grunt and groan.

You'll shake.

The controller will vibrate.

And you're basically just like.

It is the most one-to-one simulation of rock climbing I've ever seen in a video game of like traditional rock climbing.

And I think that's so fucking interesting because it's like usually the way climbing goes is in games.

It's either so simplified, like Breath of the Wild, where you just stick, or like peak, or you just stick to the wall and have like a stamina bar, or you had things like white knuckle that are sort of more you know, like like breaking it down into different elements to grab right hand, grab left hand, but but simplifying it so much so that it is more recognizably gamey.

I think Karen is so interesting because it really is just like.

I mean, if you've ever watched Free Solo, you understand that there is real strategy to to footholds and handholds, that there are like places, there are types of places and angles and stuff that make for good grip and good angle and good momentum, and that there are certain moves that are like, more or less exposed to certain angles of the rock.

This game really just like commits to making that a game experience.

And I think that that's so cool because it is a very inherently gamey thing to just like to climb stuff.

It's like climbing things is like a game mechanic in real life climbing like trees, climbing rocks, bouldering uh, bouldering is like a puzzle game.

Um, right.

The way that people who are into bouldering refer to it are their Boulder problems.

So when you look at a bouldering wall uh, this is something i did not realize, because i climbed a lot as a kid.

But just in, like you know, like my uh, my public school had like a shitty rock climbing wall.

I don't know why rock climbing was huge in america in the 90s, but for some reason, even my shitty public school had a rock climbing wall um, and it was just sort of like oh, you just throw your hands up and you just grab whatever you can, but the more difficult walls are like you really have to analyze.

All right, i'm gonna go here and then i'll have to cross my leg over to reach here, but when it lands there, i'll be in a position where i'll need to like uncross very tactically and spring up and grab this.

So bouldering is as much an athletic thing as it is like a puzzle game.

And I haven't really seen many games try to tackle that.

So it's interesting.

Sorry.

Yeah, I was interested if Karn does that.

Because there was a couple of times where I like sort of put my foot somewhere, knowing that okay, that's kind of a stretch, but I'm going to bring my other arm over here and that's going to compress the knee on that one.

And then maybe it'll help me get higher up.

But I wasn't doing it like...

Like you know, in like bouldering competitions, often people will like, as you just explained, kind of almost do a really quick thing so they can jump and grab something.

Yeah.

Is that, does that level?

Because the thing about the hands is like, is it random which limb they give you in this?

I don't think it's random.

I think that it is.

Well, not random, but it's not, you can't choose.

It's kind of, it's kind of intuitive.

Right yeah yeah i, i think it's like some exactly, it's somewhere between.

It's not that you go like left right left right left, you know hand hand foot, foot.

It's more that, if i think it takes the one, that is sort of maybe some calculus between like the the lowest and the least stable is what i would guess.

Yeah, I think they talked about it on on Blue Sky or something.

I think it's based on stability.

It's whatever hand or foot is the most stable or the most like free to move and not.

Oh, wow.

I would love to fucking interview these people about, about this game and about the procedural animation and stuff too, because i have i've made a climbing prototype and it gets so complex so fast to calculate like the angle of rock and stuff uh, because there's no way they manually went through and like assigned a value to every crevice on the mountain.

You should interview them.

Yeah, i'll hit them up and see if they're interested.

Um, But anyway yeah, it has some more trad climbing stuff like placing pitons and going off belay to like rest your hands and stuff.

Those are more sort of insurance measures so that if you fall off the rock you won't fall as far, just like in real climbing.

But yeah, But yeah, it's just really interesting.

And it has... The story is a little bit light touch.

It's not like a game where you're getting these super big, long cutscenes or whatever.

But I think the light touch story stuff is interesting.

The protagonist is sort of balancing the like, the financial responsibility of like.

Like you can't just go climb mountains and no one pays you for it.

So there there is mention of sponsors uh, but she clearly like resents kind of having to have that situation and there's tension.

She never answers her phone and the guy who like, manages her is like the sponsors are like they need photographs of what's happening and she's like i like the camera's broken or whatever.

So all this is established very early on and i think that that is an interesting narrative angle for it as well the tension between what is essentially performance art, like where sport meets performance art.

Uh, these sort of big climbing feats and um yeah, we just had it this past weekend yeah yeah, any guys watch that arnold doing?

No, I can't.

It's the same with, like the Felix, What's his name?

Baumgartner or whatever?

The guy who jumped out of the... Oh, the Red Bull thing?

The Red Bull balloon.

I just Whenever, Like I watch racing and like I don't enjoy the fact that somebody might die when I'm watching.

I've seen people die in watching Formula 1 and other races live and, like...

That's not a fun experience for anyone.

And so yeah, I couldn't watch the Alex Allen one because all you're watching is going.

I hope this person is okay.

I couldn't give a fuck if he got to the top.

I just wanted him to be okay.

You just don't want him to get to the bottom in the wrong way.

Yes, exactly.

First, I want to get to the top before he gets to the bottom.

And also hopefully, because then when he got to the top, I was like, how is this motherfucker getting down?

Is he climbing back down?

Maybe.

I don't know.

He didn't have a parachute.

Fucking crazy.

I did not watch it.

I heard the color commentary was unbearable in it.

Oh, really?

I watched the highlight, and they kept some of the color commentary on it.

It's like, shut up.

He's a showman.

He's doing showmanship.

Look at him go.

You're hanging out with me too much.

Shut up.

I mean, that is kind of what Karen's story is about.

Is that like there is this weird tension between the purity of things like this and the sort of capital needed to sustain human beings doing literally anything?

And it is funny to see that, like color commentary, the people who do it are very like, gregarious and personable.

Like you get into that because you're like a little bit of a performer and you're good at like talking and stuff.

But to to sort of like force the act around something that like, really you should just, it should have just been.

If Netflix had any balls, they would have just broadcast this in fucking silence with, like the sound of the wind blowing past him.

And it would have been harrowing.

Uh, but of course they're like, who will watch that?

What if somebody looks at their phone for too long and then they forget to?

What if we don't restate the plot three times?

Exactly.

What's he, where's he climbing?

Where's he?

In the country of Taiwan.

Uh, you know, Yeah.

Yeah.

Also for anyone who has not seen Free Solo go watch Free Solo and I feel like it'll make you want to play Karen.

It is, in my opinion, maybe like top 20, top 10 documentaries ever made.

I think it's truly fantastic.

It's pretty amazing.

Not just for the climbing.

Yeah.

And not just because it's not just about, hey, isn't this guy amazing?

Like it's like guy kind of sucks.

It's wrong.

Yeah exactly, it's wrong with this guy's brain.

Yeah yeah, for sure, he's a very polarizing and i mean that that is also the other interesting thing about it.

And karen does touch about a touch upon that a little bit.

That like taking life threatening risk for for glory, for personal expression.

This is like there is a real weight to this.

And now that i in free solo alex hondled has like he gets a girlfriend in the movie and it's like, Oh no, what if he dies?

His girlfriend will be alone.

And now he has two fucking kids and a wife, right?

So it's, you know, I don't know.

On one hand, it's like, wow, you shouldn't be climbing a skyscraper.

You have two kids at home.

But on the other hand, it's like, if a person... If the thing that your whole life has been about is this thing that risks your life, then it's like... i don't know i don't i if my dad climbed skyscrapers i would want him to do it as much as he wanted if that's what made him happy and feel if he felt like i don't think it's right to deprive people of self-actualization and so it's like on one level it's i think it's as selfish to tell them not to do it as it is to do it or something it all depends on how we feel about the thing if my dad was an alcoholic his whole life and i didn't want to stop him from doing the thing he loves doing which which of these is more damaging i don't know yeah i guess it's like yeah i guess there is like a weight to the the the sort of like net positive value we assign to things that is the that like because people value like painting if painting was a life-threatening activity right be like i still think you should paint yeah yeah Yeah, exactly.

That's a good point.

And, and like, I don't know how much, like, it's funny.

I mentioned alcohol, probably because when I think about Alex Honnold, I think about somebody who has an addiction problem.

I think about someone who can't stop doing that because I don't know like even in the, even in the doc it's there's never a sense that like he gets this amazing joy at the end of them.

You know what I mean?

It's more like, okay, I did it.

Okay.

Yeah.

He's like satisfied.

It's like like he like his highs he.

He strikes me as somebody who probably finds life incredibly boring.

You know what I mean?

It needs these highs to sort of feel things.

I don't know if that's the case or not, but yeah.

To me, he seems like an addict.

I totally agree.

There is a weird addictive, But I think that that kind of goes for people who are great at a lot of things.

Even super mundane shit.

Some of the people I know who have made YouTube videos that I think are quite good are like We talk about it.

Working on a doc that docs were really proud of.

It's like, I couldn't sleep.

I was thinking about it all the time.

I stayed up all night editing it.

I was so close to the end.

I just wanted to get it across the finish line.

There is a level of self-sacrifice that I think uh, that that, like you know, I was going to say greatness, but now I'm talking about our documentary.

So I wasn't going to assign greatness to our documentary.

People are often hurting themselves for sure.

Yeah.

Or, like, Tim Cain recently did a video talking about working on Fallout.

And he was saying he worked seven days a week.

He would get into work at, like, five in the morning.

He'd work 60-plus hours a week for two fucking years.

And the interesting thing about it is he's like I.

Both believe that crunch in contemporary games is a bad thing that we should avoid and not do.

But he also said, like, I don't regret it.

It was one of the greatest periods of my life.

Because I was working, I was pouring myself wholeheartedly into something that i believed would be great and that i truly believed in and had ownership over, and i think that that i i do think that that is a core, fundamental difference of these things is the the larger the project scales, the larger the team, the less control you have, i feel like, the more inherently destructive it is to self-sacrifice for something.

If you're like sculpting rocks on a triple, a game that you're not getting stake in, that you don't have employee ownership over, it's way more harmful.

True, but I also, I completely agree with that, but I also think that there is an over-delineation that people have between I mean crunch.

When someone else is telling you to crunch, obviously bad.

Crunch for yourself.

You know people, we still have that sexualization or the.

You know the sort of like oh, that's like, it's like a sexy concept is killing yourself for it.

Now that we're coming to the end of this Disco Elysium project, it's like it's obvious that, like all of these, people also killed themselves putting this game out and also didn't feel external pressure.

I mean, they felt some external pressure, but it was, they were devoting themselves.

And ultimately, i think the reason why the whole thing fell apart is because of that because, like three of them or four of them or five of them basically had fucking ptsd for three years and couldn't work.

So yeah, i agree.

It is interesting though, because it's like you have to put that.

You have to set that against the, the the backdrop of their situation going into disco elysium, which is that like they were a bunch of like broke artists in estonia, and i think that if the alternative is they didn't pour themselves into this thing, it didn't pop off and it was like a wasted opportunity, they might still be in that situation, and so i'm not saying that it's like oh yeah no, it's better to be burnt out for four years and have money and be financially stable and have uh clout or whatever, like the ability to leverage that success into further uh projects.

But um, But yeah, I don't know.

If you presented those two to me broke Estonian artists with no notability and no prospects versus like guy who struggled with burnout but has the potential to work on more interesting projects, I would definitely take the latter.

Totally.

And I think my what I'm saying is that, like the problem is is that we split these things into those two.

Of course.

And like ultimately, they went so far in the other direction that that, not only that, killed any sequel, all their friendships.

You know what i mean.

Like so like, the price was pretty high in the end?

Yeah, no for sure.

Yeah, the the middle, i feel like a huge missing piece of the equation is just that uh, it's very expensive to exist in the world and if you look back at a lot of great artists, like Like in the 70s in New York City, you could get a loft for like 500, a huge loft, and be like a painter and, you know, make big bread in the morning and pay your rent and then come home and paint all day.

And that just doesn't really exist.

You cannot exist in sort of like a lot of these cultural hubs without paying a sufficient amount of cost of living that you can't be a full time artist.

Yeah, without in most places in Ireland.

Obviously, we now have that new.

Oh, yeah.

And obviously in Estonia, cost of living at the time for those guys was enough that they were able to kind of be bon vivants for a number of years.

It also looked like they were working out of a shack, like obviously a nicer version of it, but the building wasn't.

It didn't look particularly sound.

No, their office was not.

It's a hippie commune.

Yeah, fuck man, when we were interviewing them, like a bunch of like hippie kids walked into the room at one state.

The whole thing was i was like are those kids?

I was like talking to helen about it.

I was like are those kids okay?

Like, was that kuno?

Was that right, kinda?

And she she yeah, she kind of explains the, the weird little subculture thing that was going on.

It was very, the whole thing was very strange.

Yeah, i was like Yeah, weird spot.

Everything about it's weird.

Weird documentary to put together.

But you know what's not weird?

Karen.

I don't know why I can't fucking say it.

Karen.

Like, okay, Karen.

That's the problem is that they want to say, I want to say Karen.

I want to say Karen.

It's hitting the Irishness in the back of your head, it sounds like.

I feel like Cairn probably is etymologically an Irish word.

Probably, but I feel like Dane's hitting it really hard.

I know what a Cairn is, yeah, yeah.

A Cairn or a Corry or a Coom.

There's all these different sort of words for, you know, fucking old shit.

I mean, they're all fucking, whatever those those lakes you get up in the mountains.

What a cairn?

A cairn is a what?

What is it?

It's like a, a rock stack um, or it's like a, a rock that commemorates something, i believe.

Yeah yeah, like a tombstone.

Yeah, i feel like we what would we call that?

Like a natural one.

Uh, the word cairn is a late middle english word derived from the scottish gaelic word carn.

Okay, there you go.

So that's probably what my brain is going weird about it.

So I think we pronounce it Cairn.

That's C-A-I-R-N.

Oh yeah, the Wikipedia says from the Irish Cairn.

Yeah, so I think that's why I'm getting weird with it.

I'm trying to wrap my mouth around the A-I, like Cairn.

And it's pushing up against the, if I say Cairn, That's how I say it in Ireland.

But in America, you'd say cairn.

You know what I mean?

You do have to say a little southern twang to it.

Cairn.

I'm a southern belle now.

I'm just a humble southern rock climber.

Where's your little fan to keep yourself cool in the hot summer?

I do declare.

Dear Lord.

Yeah, so do we like it?

It's out, I think, the day after this podcast goes up, so we did get code for this.

I really like it.

I think...

I mean, it looks great as well.

I think it's the stripped back design is really really cool, but it actually has like really good production value.

Like the game looks great.

Like it doesn't look like an indie thing.

One of the game bakers baked Fury.

They made Fury.

Yep.

And also Haven.

Is that their other game?

I believe the like couples adventure game and some squid game or something.

Not that one.

Squid game.

Not that one.

No, not that one.

Oh squids odyssey yeah, that was like not anything close to what they've made, but they've always made really good looking, really great sounding video games.

I think fury is like a fantastic boss rush game.

It's good to hear too, that they focus not on telling a story, like i don't think there's anything wrong with doing that, but my strength, their strengths rather that i always uh appreciated, especially from fury and haven was like what they're able to do on a technical level of like gameplay mechanics and seeing them go all out with climbing and like showing you you can get really good at this and not just like good at traversing a world, but getting good at the physical action of climbing in a video game is cool.

It, it does seem, it does look a lot better than those games you mentioned.

Oh, totally.

Yeah.

But they've always like, they've only gotten better every time.

Right.

So it makes perfect sense that they've gotten so good.

Like Karen looks amazing especially, like Jeremy was saying, with the procedural animation, like there are times where it looks a little funky and the character's legs

Like a bent leg or something.

I had like a leg, like shoot inside the rock one time.

And I was like, I can't, this might be an exposed foothold.

I can't tell.

Shit.

Yeah.

That's, that's just how.

That's how Alex Honnold does it clips through the mountain phase.

He's with the no clip through the mountain and like grab the yeah cheater.

He's just like a floating gmod character.

When the camera's set um yeah no it's, it's amazing.

There's a i won't describe it and spoil it but there's a really amazing camera move and sort of like title drop moment early in the game and uh, it's just, it's just gorgeous.

I will be curious to see how the game feels towards the end, because it is a very meditative game.

Loop um, this is, i would say this is a game to just like play in silence.

It's not like a podcast game.

There's a game where you're like alone with your thoughts um, and it's very slow and methodical and sometimes punishing.

When you fall off the fucking wall and smash your head on a cliff uh, it's like now i gotta.

You know that's why i said foddy and like it has that uh, baby steps characteristic to it, where it's like now i have to do the exact same thing again or find a different route.

Um yeah, so i think it's meditative.

I'll be curious how much fun i'm having with it towards the end, or if it's more of a sort of type two fun where i feel more like satisfied than i do, delighted or whatever right uh, let's hope they add the character model from baby steps.

That'll be great.

That is something they're missing.

Nate's fat ass going up the wall.

Not calling him fat.

His literal ass is fat.

PH.

And on the way up you keep running into donkeys with massive penises that are asking you for cigarettes.

Fuck, I need to play more Baby Steps.

I saw an interview.

It's something that we said on the Game of the Year thing.

We were like, this must have been partially improvised.

It feels so off the cuff.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

But we were like, it had to have been scripted.

The whole thing was improvised.

Oh, my God.

Perfect.

They Rick and Morty'd that shit.

Oh, my God.

Complimentary.

Sorry.

Yeah, yeah.

Yes.

That's great.

Oh, my God.

That's so stupid.

What a stupid game. great brilliant love it all right well there's our games for this week high guard ace combat seven karen or karen depending on where you're from and of course brazilian drug dealer three opened the portal to hell in the favela trying to revive mid i need to close it uh we have an email frank howley who's it from Yeah, I was going to say, if people do want to send us emails, please write to us, podcast at noclip.video or on our Patreon Discord in the podcast chat channel.

Feel free to at me so I can get your emails in here.

Thank you so much, Cartooner wrote in.

Have you ever found yourselves re-evaluating a game you admire after learning more about its creator?

I'm curious where you draw the line between appreciating the craft and grappling with the person behind it.

Ooh, this can go either way, I guess.

I think you can find out about a dev and go oh, they seem really cool, and then go back and play some of their older stuff as well.

Although I suspect the opposite happens more often.

Do you guys have any you can think of?

I was going to say Kojima talked about how Death Stranding 1 was made in response to the death of one of his parents.

So that's why during last year I was like, oh crap, I can't stop crying about my dad.

So that's why I played Death Stranding 1.

So that was the thing where it was like, oh shit, there's more to Death Stranding.

It's about grief.

And it clicked for me.

Again, playing it before I experienced grief, I didn't care.

After, I was like, Hartman, I feel so sad for you.

I want you to see your family too.

So that was an inversion of...

Oh, God, I like this game more learning about the creation of it.

Frank, can I say.

By the way, I watched Jacob Geller's new video where he talks about, like the concept of loneliness and being inside and everything.

It's a very, very good video.

I love that video.

Part of it, he spoils and this is not a dig at him.

It's just he spoils the opening of Death Stranding and like explains it.

I know that doesn't you hate that shit.

I need that sometimes for someone to just tell me what happens so I can get into it.

Oh, yeah.

Knowing.

When he said what happens at the start of Death Stranding 1 and I thought, holy shit, you played that game and then went on a walk for six hours or whatever.

Yeah, I believe it.

What a depressing.

Oh, my God.

I was thinking of you in that moment.

Like I just want you to know that.

I saw that and I was like holy shit Frank, I was.

I was like weeping for you.

And then he talked about Death Stranding 2 and I was like, oh, my God.

Yeah, very cool.

I want to play that now so badly.

I want to mention one also Celeste.

I think, going back to that, after Maddie Thorson came out as trans and like talked about the experience of coming to that,

It was a very interesting experience because there was always some element of like.

Is the main character in Celeste?

Is Celeste, I guess, a transgender character?

Like, is that the situation going on there?

There was a lot of people sort of saying this was a good moment for them of representation.

So to see that sort of come back and for Maddie to be like, this is a really cool thing.

Look what I did of figuring this out for myself.

And like, I didn't realize this, but it is true that there's so much there.

That was a cool re-examination, going back to that game and coming to that, seeing that direction from the person who did most of the work on it.

Well, it was the lead, rather, on the game.

Yeah, good shout.

I hadn't thought about that one.

Any for you, Jeremy?

I have a positive one.

I initially jumped in because I thought these were mostly going to be like.

Oh, then I found out he was racist.

I think we're trying really hard to say nice ones.

I'm like, who's going to mention Jonathan Blow?

We're all waiting to do it.

Yeah yeah, we'll.

We'll get to him in a minute.

Um no, i was gonna say another positive one was uh, edmund mcmillan.

When i was editing the edmund mcmillan documentary we did it was very interesting because i was very familiar with a lot of his work, like dead baby dress up and like a lot of his really early work.

Um, and i it's not that i disliked any of it before getting to know him, but having the context that he was this like broke uh artist illustrator, aspiring game maker uh, that he was like worked with the fucking the what was it the?

Like people who clean up dead animals off the street.

His job used to be uh, doing roadkill uh, cleanup for, like the local, whatever the fuck, whatever It contextualized to me games that I think, if you don't have that context of character, can be read as this person is trying to be provocative, just to like, just like it's like a kid throwing eggs at their neighbor's house or something.

It made me realize that it's like, oh, no, this it is trying to be provocative.

But this dude like lives in a world of of like struggle and of like a literal actual gore.

And I was like, oh wow, that that being reflected in it elevates the art.

So much for me to understand.

And all the religious stuff in his games.

When you talk about his relationship with his mom and like yeah, it's like yeah, totally.

You're totally right.

It like does change.

You go, oh, this is just normal shit to this person.

Yeah, yeah.

Like Binding of Isaac isn't just like it's it's not like a satire of like, oh, an American family.

It's like a deep personal reflection of his relationship to his family.

Yeah.

And like, and Mugenics is now about basically him and his wife.

They were.

I mean, we talked about it in the video but like they were looking at getting one.

But they have a bunch of cats and they've had a bunch of weird cats over the years.

And then they were looking to like get this cat that's like a purebred of something.

And then like they got a message from the cat breeder a couple of days later.

It was like, yeah, it just died.

It just like, it just got born wrong.

Yeah, you know, and he was like what the fuck are we doing here?

Like what is this cat breeding eugenics, shit that we're doing and then turned into a real-time strategy game.

I'm interested in what you think though though, because the john blow stuff is really interesting, right?

Because, like um, thekla just announced order of the sinking star i think it's called the newest game From Thecla.

Obviously, in the years since kind of The Witness, I feel like he's had a lot of negative attention online due to some thoughts that he has about, I don't know progressives, I just said, which is weird because he is a very progressive person, I feel like, but he sort of he does a lot of blue on blue attacks, I feel like.

I don't know if that's an accurate characterization.

To call him progressive is to like call Jeff Bezos, you know, a socialist.

Not even, because it hasn't, am I wrong in remembering that John Blow is like quite a pro-Trump guy?

That's what I'm saying.

Like, that doesn't make sense.

Is he?

I don't know if he is.

I don't think he is.

I never saw that.

So let's see.

Trump was my preferred president in the last election cycle, but nothing will make me hate him faster than this banana republic shit.

This is a Jonathan Blow tweet.

It's still critical of him.

Yeah, sure.

Progressive.

Why not?

I just know I'm like, I'm yeah, no, I know you're joking.

I know you're joking.

I'm just saying that, like the, I could see, like if he was like a Jim Carrey who's like.

Oh I, like you know, I'm like a Democrat, but I don't know about these vaccines.

Right.

Like, was it that was his wife's fault?

That was his ex-wife's fault.

That was yeah, who is that?

I can't remember her name, but she was like jim carrey's ex-wife jenny no, i think it was.

I think it was covid stuff, which is where people were.

See, this is the problems.

I can't even fucking remember, right.

So but like so, people can let us know or we can.

I'll look it up afterwards.

But like yeah, i think i think it was around covid stuff.

Was it like vaccine related stuff, where he was like you know, we've closed down too much, or something like that?

Or I think he was saying stuff like that and it made people sort of observe other things he had said regarding non-COVID or vaccine-related subjects.

I think at one point he made a comment about – and I mean this could all be out of context.

I haven't gone and searched the full context of it, but something of him saying that black women – are worse in STEM or not capable of handling the programming angle of it.

I've just heard that brought up a bunch again.

So don't quote me on the misquote that I might've just done.

Um, but definitely I.

I've seen some of the things he said and been like that.

That is exactly what every STEM guy I know who like thinks, cause they understand chemistry, they understand sociology.

Like that's always what happens.

Yes.

It's the.

It's the the thing we've talked about many times over people who are very um capable with mathematics than trying to apply that to society and coming up with all the strangest conclusions as a result.

But I am, it's, yeah, I think for some people, for a lot of people, I think Order of the Sinking Saur might end up being a difficult game for them to get into. because of his public persona, let's say.

I don't know.

Hey, you want to divvy it up?

And I think an element of that is because I find his previous two games to be artistic expressions.

Like Braid and The Witness are both games where... Man, Braid ain't got nothing going on, man.

Dude, Soulja Boy broke John Blow.

Soulja Boy is who we really have to blame for this whole situation.

He destroyed that.

No, I'm joking.

It's just going on, man.

I'm a hundred percent joking.

I just think it's funny to imagine that that was the inciting event, where it was like at the heel turn.

Well, yeah, it's funny.

And I think I've always had a, I've talked to people privately about him as well.

And the vast majority of what people have said is actually you know, there's a lot of stuff that I think that he's done is quite nice that isn't in the public, which I think is hard for me to square some of what he says on Twitter when I think they'll go.

Why not do the nice things in public then?

Why do the shitty things in public and the nice things in private?

And also isn't that kind of like the philanthropy thing where, like I did it, I did a fucking filming gig years ago, like so long ago?

And I don't even know if I should say the name of the foundation.

I feel like a sniper is going to come in the trees in my backyard and mass at one of the biggest world's biggest philanthropy organizations, a documentary production house I was working for.

We're filming the like puff piece promo where all the rich people come in and sit down and they're like I just felt like I had to give back, you know.

And I was the fucking camera guy, like groaning.

That's why you don't do it publicly.

Well, because it comes off terrible.

But also I mean any of, not any, but a number of these people are.

Maybe the majority of them were people who were like exploiting their workers.

People who were like we're not creating a livable wage.

People who were like even if you espouse in your ideology.

Oh, I'm like, I believe in this.

But then in your personal conduct, you go against it.

I think that there is.

I don't know.

I'm not saying that's what he did.

And I, you don't know what I'm talking about, so you can't either.

So you're coming up with a conclusion that's may have nothing to do with what I'm saying.

This is the problem I think is that you often run into this sort of stuff.

Look, ultimately he said what he said on Twitter and I think it's gonna it's gonna cost him on them in some in some way for sure.

I just to be clear, i was not ascribing that exact dynamic to john blow.

I was just saying that i think it's important to recognize that if somebody says, like donald trump is the best president in my lifetime and i don't believe in vaccines, and that like, black women can't code, and then it's like going around shitting on indie devs uh, who are doing good work, it it is like to me if if, then it's like oh, but he was like really nice to this guy, i know, to me it rings hollow.

I don't know what you're talking about.

I don't disagree.

I'm saying that it's just like there is a holistic view to these things where you know every, every villain in history is probably pretty nice to their dog.

So it's like, I don't know.

Yeah, no, I, I, I'm, I'm not disagreeing.

I, I.

I'm basically just trying to say put, put it out there that like I wonder what the math is on this stuff.

Like cause I know people there.

I have friends who are boring people and then when they're on twitter they are fucking crazy.

You know what i mean?

Like they're just it's something about and i'm like what the fuck are you doing?

Like what's the adrenaline it's like when you're driving the nicest people.

Yeah, i don't know.

You're just like.

You have this like very smiley friend who just like will never say anything.

Rude, she couldn't hurt a fly, even if she wanted to.

Soon as she's behind the wheel, forget about it.

She's yelling at people like she's Like she hates them with every fiber of her being.

My dad's crazy.

Yeah.

In the car.

He's like so soft spoken and whatever.

And then he'll like, he'll like speed up so we can slam on the brakes.

Like he did this once to one of our fucking neighbors pulling into their house.

Well, that's what he gets for taking so damn long.

What are you doing?

He was like, Jesus.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Sure.

I didn't know they were pulling in.

Dad, it's our fucking next door neighbor.

Like.

Of course he was pulling in, and now he knows that you did that.

They've been living next door to us for 15 years.

What are you fucking psych about?

That's what you get the fruitcake for Christmas for, so they can't get mad at you for doing any of that.

Yeah, the John Blow situation is so, I mean, just even devoid from any specificity.

Which can you even really do that?

Looking at the Order of the Sinking Star in particular...

The developers who helped work on that game, who supplied their ideas, their design.

Alan Hazelden has talked about them on Blue Sky.

And I think a couple of them have come out and talked about their process.

Order of the Sinking Stars, like based on a bunch of other games.

Some of those people were or still are working on the game.

Some of them were paid in advance for licensing of the project.

They've talked about this at length of being like, it's really cool.

I didn't talk about it.

Unbelievable.

Sky and there's been some interviews done as well.

I can't remember what outlet.

I'll put a link in the description which I once I find it myself for listeners.

But um yeah, they've talked about it at this point quite a bit and you can play some of those games.

Even now I think some of them are free and available to play.

But they've come out and been like hey, our games are included in this.

I don't agree with anything Jonathan Blow has said or done in the last couple of years.

So it's even outside of the discourse surrounding the game.

It's like people involved with making it are like not happy with his persona affecting the reception to it.

I mean, they were happy enough to...

Take the money.

None of this shit's new.

I don't know how far back the development goes.

It has been in development for a decade.

It's funny because when I was reading about this the other day, I reopened our John Blow interview from like eight something years ago eight, nine years ago.

And I was sorted by newest comments just out of curiosity.

And people were pointing out the fact that you were like we'll see you in 10 years when your next game comes out, as a joke.

That's so funny.

And the game took 10 years to make.

That's so funny.

Like Apollo's gift of prophecy to the exact timeline.

Oh my God.

Curse of the commentator.

Yeah.

So I know who knows like how long it's actually been.

You know cause?

The witness was a similar thing.

It was an idea that you'd come up with a long, long time ago.

All right, that's cool.

I have to look that stuff up.

That was one that came up to me for sure, because I don't know.

Yeah, I don't know how to feel about it.

I have to re-familiarize myself with some of the social media posts.

I do have a quote from Alan Hazelden, who Jesse was talking about.

In recent years, it has become increasingly clear that John's beliefs and priorities and mine are not aligned, says Alan Hazelden, developer of two of the games that Order of Sinking Star was built from.

Quote he's adversarial to people talking about privilege and representation, is dismissive of diversity efforts, has dabbled in COVID trutherism and is pro MAGA.

So I mean, if someone who's who's working with them is willing to come out and say that I mean there can always be, you know, bad blood there or something.

I don't know the specificity of that, but I don't know.

That sounds big to come out and say that for sure.

I just wanted to put a primary source out there.

Thank you.

Appreciate it.

Yeah, weird situation.

Hard to square, right?

Because The Witness is a great game.

I think it's a fantastic puzzle game.

I will not ever walk back on saying that.

Special ass game.

John Blow, some of the shit he says sucks.

I hate it.

I hate being positive about a game that benefits him in some regard.

It's the same thing with like everyone has their own level of what they're willing to support.

It's like J.K.

Rowling with you know, are you going to buy and talk about Hogwarts Legacy or be excited for the new Harry Potter show?

It's up to the individual.

But, like death of the order, etc etc.

And in games, i mean, that's all we do here at noclip right is talk about how games aren't made by one person.

There's a lot of people involved in the development of order of the sinking star, people who have disagreed with john blow.

Does that mean that they also should be dismissed?

They also got paid already, like it's.

There's so many factors to it.

Everyone's going to come to their own conclusion, but the important thing is that we know as much as we can and come to those conclusions on our own, instead of just you know, signing off on.

Yes, i agree, i'll boycott this because that's my check mark on the board.

Yeah Yeah, very true.

And you know we put in decent work over on this side to not platform people who don't deserve to be platformed.

You know, I think we've got a pretty good reputation in that regard on Noclip, and that hasn't come for free.

That's come from us doing due diligence with who we're talking to as much as we can.

You can't ever... you know, fully do it.

But like, I don't know if there's any people that I change.

We've had a couple of people who have transitioned since we interviewed them.

That's the only ever thing that comes into my head of like, oh fuck, I wish we could go back and you know wait, or or you know, cause that's obviously- yeah yeah, it's what it's.

It comes up because like, you are sort of dead naming them.

You know what i mean, like in in the videos and the videos can disappear.

You know what i mean.

So we've reached out to people and had those conversations because we're like like, do you want us?

Like we can, we can put up a different version and pull this out down, or you know, because it's ultimately someone else's identity.

But um Yeah anyway, all part of the fun of documenting the world of video juegos.

Does anyone else come to mind?

Anyone?

I'm trying to think, like, was there any big Two Human fans here before Dennis Dyack went a bit mad?

Or Legacy of Kane, I guess, back in the day?

I had to smash my Oculus after I found out about Palmer Lucky, stuff like that, right?

I fucking, I interviewed that guy twice.

He was a...

He showed me the first time I ever used VR.

It was just me and him in a room.

Did he say anything weird about the military industrial complex?

Did he say we need to protect the West from falling?

For me, all he did was the same thing that content creators do when they get cancelled.

They go, well, fucking everyone hates me.

I might as well just become a right-wing shill.

And he was like, well, everyone hates me.

I might as well just sell weapons.

The government fuck it.

Um yeah, i mean he's.

He's another one of these sort of hyper intelligent engineering types who you should not ask advice on, like dating people or voting you know what i mean.

Like It just keeps happening, man.

It's always weirdly programmers are like very technical people.

Yeah.

Who?

There was someone I was watching like 15, 20 years ago at this point when I started to learn how to program.

I won't say his name because I don't want him to find out about this.

He gets mad about this shit.

He somehow name searches himself in podcasts all the time.

But he was like.

Jesus.

He was he was a big time on the indie coding scene of like learning.

He got me to learn C like real C when I was like 11 years old because I was so inspired.

And I went back and checked on him like five years ago.

And during covid, he was talking about like the fact the vaccine doesn't work, blah, blah, blah.

And I'm like, dude, you taught me how to like code an engine.

Like, what do you talk like?

I wear a sheer mask to the to the gym.

So they let me in.

I'm like, just don't go to the gym.

Just stay.

You have so much money.

Just buy weights.

You're also already wearing a mask.

Why not just wear like a real one?

Yeah right yeah, it lowers your thetans or something.

I'm sure he's like one step away from that.

They escape through the mouth.

Exactly, everyone knows this.

I mean, it makes sense.

It's like i wouldn't ask, you know, i wouldn't ask science stuff.

You know the doctor knows the doctor stuff.

People are like oh, this person runs a really successful company they need.

They obviously know about, like you know workers rights, or like you know how to find the clitoris.

Like you know.

It's like fucking why we just assume these people are like they know every well, they know that.

So they know everything.

I feel like it's, I feel like it's, I, I'm, I can't speak on like other cultures take on this.

I feel like it's such an American thing that it's like well, these Titans of industry, you know what I mean.

Like fucking like Oh, Stockholm knows where the clitoris is.

It's like i guarantee you, cobstock ain't no shit.

Henry ford didn't know where a goddamn thing was all right.

Yeah, henry ford couldn't make himself a fucking grilled cheese unless he built a machine and a bunch of people to put the grilled cheese machine.

And you know who he blamed for the sandwiches when they turned out.

That's right, it was the 1940s.

You could do it in your 20s.

You could do whatever you want.

So what we're saying is these people have existed throughout history.

If you wanted to buy a car in the 40s, you ran into the same problem.

Yeah, like a feudal lord, like they're like, oh you, surely the lord must know.

And then he's like can't even fucking.

You know, use a fork or whatever.

Yeah exactly man, oh man yeah, that is the the joy.

Great, great question.

Cartooner thanks, it was uh, it was a nice one to to go off on.

Thanks for pulling that one in.

Frank, that was a great little, little chatter piece.

I'm trying to think if anyone else has any, you know, people they want to dunk on, let us know.

Is there anyone else?

I'm trying to think.

I feel like there's, here's the thing.

There's a million of them, which is like they probably worked on something we don't give a shit about.

Probably don't know them or don't know.

Yeah.

There's definitely people who, if they turn up, I'd like to see new games from people who have disappeared and stuff like that.

What if Phil Fish just turned up again with something?

Cliffy B comes back with a Jackrabbit fucking sequel.

I don't know.

Don't ask me.

If you want some content to consume...

Well, the internet's there.

Enjoy it.

Open your eyeballs and feast away.

But if you want some Noclip-related ones, of course, make sure you caught up on all of our Game of the Year videos, our Game of the Year podcasts and

Our game of the year, noclip2 exclusive videos, which are dropping all this week.

We all played a game that was suggested to us by the rest of the crew.

So I played Angeline Era.

Jesse, what did you play?

I played Formless Star.

Jeremy, you played?

I played Aina Dream Barbecue, start to finish.

And Frank Howley played?

Consume me.

Love it.

So you can check those out over on patreon.com slash noclip2.

They should all be up by the time you are listening to this one.

Disco Elysium episodes four should be out.

Three, four, four, four, four, four.

Four should be out now.

And five is up in early access as well by the time you hear this one.

Patron show as well.

So loads of stuff going on as we drop into February already.

January kind of flew by for us.

Um yeah, we're gonna be mixing things up a decent amount on noclip2, kind of pushing towards more video essay, stuff.

Uh, we're gonna have a video that highlights all of the great indie games that came out in january.

Instead of putting out like six or seven indie recs every month, we're gonna pull back on them a little bit.

I just do a six seven, six or seven um, six or seven, um and uh, It's my fucking daughter's voice in my ear whenever I hear it.

Yeah.

And the podcast here, we're going to be doing some cool stuff over here on the feed.

So keep your eyes peeled to the patron show for that.

And in the meantime.

I guess have a good week.

What are you guys doing for the week?

Any other games coming out this week that you're interested in playing?

Arcade has just dropped another little update.

They gave me some fucking shit to do because I had no shit to do and I stopped playing it.

So I've got shit to do now.

What about you guys?

Art creators is the perfect game.

To wait for there to be shit to do uh, because it's just, it's a job, and then you stop working for a couple weeks.

It's nice, it's like freelance.

Um, i'm still catching up on the hundred line and uh, i'm going back and finishing up some stuff in big hops.

That's been a lot of fun.

Probably play more cairn, um.

And then there's a new thing that i don't know if we're allowed to talk about yet, that i got a code for, so i won't say anything, but it's pretty cool.

So okay, we'll see.

Very cool, frank.

What about you?

Don't Stop.

Girly Pop comes out.

There's Code Vein 2.

And I started playing Midnight Club Los Angeles, which is really good.

Oh, nice.

Midnight Club LA.

Was that PS2?

360 and then PSP.

Was?

Oh, PSP.

Jesus.

All right.

Nice work.

Jeremy, what about you?

How's the snow situation? it's, Oh my God, we got the snow drift next to my car.

I measured it.

It was 40 inches deep.

Um, and then the yard as a base level is about 27 inches deep.

Oh my gosh.

So I have been doing a lot of shoveling and hoping my heart does not explode.

Uh, but uh, I'm going to be doing some.

I've got some stuff on this week, but outside of that I'm going to be doing some game dev.

I took a break from the co-op game I was working on because netcode and multiplayer shit was just like destroying my brain.

It was turning into fucking toast.

So I was working on my single-player project for a while, for a break, but I came back to it this week.

And last night, I finally got my Steamworks integration functional.

I got a fucking Steam invite to have someone join my lobby.

So it was a moment of triumph and...

That was like the thing that I was like oh, I don't even want to like go work on it because I have to do Steamworks integration.

And now it's now fucking downhill from there.

Now it's easy.

Nice.

You've just like Karen, you've you've crested one mountain and now you have another one.

I fell seven times and cracked myself in half and now I'm over the hump.

Excellent.

Congrats.

What about you?

What are you doing? what am I doing?

I was just thinking, I'm definitely going to play some of that.

This art graders update came out.

It's only a small one.

Uh, I'm going to mess around with that for a little while.

I definitely want to play more Karen, uh, Karen.

I'll figure out a way of saying that without tripping over my tongue, uh, someday.

Um yeah, I have a couple of other little things that I'm not sure if I'm going to talk about to play.

And, uh, Yeah, of course, being Michael Scott to my wife's... Wife's Dwight.

My wife's Dwight.

Aw.

So cute.

It's usually Jim and Pam, but you found the real... Exactly.

The real Yuri couple.

There's a real subtext in the office a lot of people don't talk about between them.

There's an emote as well, which is that what's the name of the song?

You step to the left and you put your hand up and you step to the right and it's like from the office, it's like a silly joke.

So I do that emote and everyone likes it.

So I have no idea.

I've watched the office and I have no idea what that is.

Yeah, Maybe I made it up.

Parkour.

Exactly.

I should do that every time I jump up on a building in that game.

Oh, God.

That would be hell.

Oh.

Exactly.

Oh.

Six, seven.

This is the world I live in now.

We're killing this guy.

Fortnite dad.

I turned 40 and became even lamer than I was before.

Wherever you are in the world, we hope you're lame and enjoying this podcast.

And we'll be back again with another lame podcast next week.

Until then, bye.

[Noclip Podcast Episode 265: High Guard, Ace Combat 7, and the Ethics of Climbing]-[Highguard, Cairn, Ace Combat 7]

📋 Summary

The 'High Guard' Marketing Nightmare and Gameplay Loop

Ace Combat 7: A Rewarding Arcade Experience

The Meditative Challenge of 'Cairn'

Navigating the Creator-Art Divide

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript

[Noclip Podcast Episode 265: High Guard, Ace Combat 7, and the Ethics of Climbing]-[Highguard, Cairn, Ace Combat 7]

📋 Summary

The 'High Guard' Marketing Nightmare and Gameplay Loop

Ace Combat 7: A Rewarding Arcade Experience

The Meditative Challenge of 'Cairn'

Navigating the Creator-Art Divide

Deep Learning with ListenLeap

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript

ListenLeap Brings You Into Real Context Learning