WoW: Midnight, Screamer, Grim Dawn | Noclip Crewcast

Thank you, hello friends and welcome to episode 274 of the noclip podcast.

Here we all are, folks.

Uh, four of us here, four lads.

It's a real sausage fest this week.

Um, we're gonna be fixing that soon with some no caps.

In the next uh, couple of weeks, she's going to be tagging in for one of us, so look forward to that.

We'll have even more insight from her.

Um, if you haven't already already been enjoying it over on noclip2 uh, today we're going to talk about a nice little mix of games feels like.

Uh, i was trying to think what was coming out.

Super meat boy 3d comes out today.

What do we think of that?

How do we feel about Super Meat Boy 3D?

I reject it as a premise, having never played it.

On a spiritual and philosophical level.

It's a weird one, isn't this?

Uh today today sorry, go on.

I was just gonna say i feel like it's the.

It's antithetical to what makes super it's.

Also it's weird that it's like without edmund mcmillan and whatever, but games get made without people who are involved in them.

That happens all the time, even if it feels weird.

But i feel like zero parades for dead spies trailer launch trailer went up today as well.

Oh really yeah, obviously there are, you know, half dozen people who did work on the original disco elysium.

Uh, still working on that, but uh yeah, it's coming out soon, it's coming out may.

Wow, zero parades is which i'm Yeah.

For some reason, I thought it was further away.

I guess with a demo, which you should assume it's sooner.

But Yeah, and it felt pretty finished all things considered.

It's nice of them to line up the release date trailer with the last episode of the documentary going live.

I didn't know that was happening.

I wouldn't have done that.

Not that it matters, I'm sure you know, i'm sure people will.

You know, i've been trying to get that thing out.

I mean, it's already a few days late and i i wanted to get it up on friday but we had some other stuff getting knocked around.

The legend of california video on um, on noclip2, was supposed to go up on thursday but then We had a bunch of like early assets from the studio and I needed Jeff Kaplan from the Overwatch team to give it a look.

And of course, Thursday is the day the alpha started.

So it was like no chance he was going to have time for it.

So it just knocked everything down.

So, yeah, I do feel a little bit like probably shouldn't have gotten that out.

But I'm sure, you know, I'm sure.

The audience for that game, I'm sure, will be bigger.

We'll see the trailer, then we'll watch our rinky-dink final episode of that one.

Sorry, Jeremy, I cut you off about your deep thought about Super Meat Boy 3D.

No, I just feel like 3D platformers.

It would have to be the tightest 3D platformer in history of 3D platformers.

Because I feel like Super Meat Boy was so about like micro level precision and these little things.

And 3D platformers to me are often more sprawling.

And I don't know.

I mean, there's some tight ones, but it's kind of a different genre.

Just because they're both called platformers doesn't mean you can automatically make the transition.

Yeah, platforming's... I've been playing a lot of Ultimate Drummer recently.

That's a 3D platformer.

So the genre is alive and well.

But yeah, it's a weird one.

The reviews that I saw on the Reddit reviews thread seemed pretty positive, but...

Yeah, it's it's it's there's some games.

I mean, you know, Zero Brains falls into this regardless of the the the backstory and whatnot.

There are some games that are just like hard to follow up on.

You know what I mean?

Like that's a that's a tricky, especially when you keep the name.

That's a that's a tricky one.

Like Meat Boy has this sort of it's like an icon, you know.

It's like Sonic 3D, you know?

Yeah, that didn't work out.

It didn't work, that's true.

It's the jump to 3D, it's cursed, you know?

Hey man, there's always Grand Theft Auto and I have a soft spot for Worms 3D.

That's it.

Yeah, but is Worms 3D like you turn the camera around?

This is a Worms 3D podcast now.

Or is it just flat?

No, it's you turn the camera around.

All right.

I love Worms, and I've played a bunch of the 2D titles.

I've never played Worms 3D.

Frank, have you played?

I bet you've played that.

That seems like it's in your wheelhouse.

Worms 3d i think i played one round of it on xbox 360.

I feel like it was like a games with gold thing, but i i have barely any memory.

But i do want to defend sonic events.

So you guys just said sonic 3d is not good.

Sonic adventure is good.

I know there was like, oh yeah, was it sonic?

There was like a 3d blast.

Yeah, there's a weird in-between period, but they got it right eventually.

Yeah, Sonic Adventure is fine.

But like early 3D Sonic was, you know, not for me.

Do not besmirch the name of Sonic R, please.

It's got some great music in it.

Sonic Racing, Sonic R. oh that's what the r stands for yeah what do you think it sounded for racism whoa come on now jesse going there again unbelievable classic um i feel like every time i mention worms 3d on this podcast i have to make a reference to hogs of war um which uh Some of you might have, Frank's smiling.

Do you remember Hogs of War, Frank?

I feel like you've mentioned, I feel like we've had this like conversation like five times.

You mentioned it and I look at the screenshots and then I smile.

So I've never played it, but it looks awesome.

Episode 274, baby.

All the hits are coming back.

This is the.

This is the end game of all you know podcasts with gamer boys.

Is that we just older, aging gamer boys?

Is that we just keep going back to the hits?

Yeah.

The audience is like hogs of war.

Yay.

They said it again.

There's 88 different retro achievements for it.

So it's good stuff.

I'd love to play.

On that note, have you guys ever heard of Heroes of Might and Magic 3?

It's quite a... Is that a video game?

Let me tell you.

How much time do we have?

Five minutes.

That video is done.

Quite a lot of views on noclip too, that harm video.

I thought you said that hog video and i was like oh, he's not talking about it, we all call it harm.

Right, It's an hog video.

Yeah, no, it's done weirdly well.

Eastern Europe really came out for that one.

It was like a sleeper hit.

It had like normal numbers.

And then Eastern Europe was like, oh, no, some American has discovered our favorite game.

I think it takes a few months for Eastern Europe to get the YouTube videos you know to get over there.

Yeah, it is like a it's like a logistics problem or whatever.

Hogs of War may be coming to America soon.

Who knows?

Maybe it'll cross the sea.

You should like it.

It's about war.

It's about World War II.

I think it's World War II.

Could be World War I now that I think about it.

I'm not sure.

It's got a lot of like old ass.

You know it's like it's Rick Mayall from the Young Ones doing voices in it.

That's a reference no one outside of the British Isles is going to know.

Yeah, it's great.

It's a good time.

Also, I'm on the Wikipedia page right now, and apparently the lead artist is called Ricky Martin.

Oh, okay.

That's an unfortunate one, especially if you're an adult.

If you're an adult and then Ricky Martin turns up, you know you'll always be the other Ricky Martin.

Yeah.

Even if you were there first being displaced as the original Ricky Martin is.

I imagine somebody being pissed watching the Super Bowl like dude.

I thought it was going to be the artist from Hogs of War.

Oh, my God.

Their Hogs of War T-shirt on with the helmet.

Wait, which one of you wanted to know about the plot of Hogs of War?

Okay.

A pig-shaped collection of islands located in the South Pacific Ocean known as Sostralia.

That doesn't even make any sense.

Have been found to be rich source of swill, depicted like oil being harvested that is described as the lifeblood of pigs.

So this is sort of, you know, whoever controls the swill controls the world.

Wow, it's like a Dune reference here.

Thus leading to all nations engaging in all-out war to conquer the region.

The Chosen Nations squadron battles through each of South Australia's five main regions.

Do you want to know the five main regions of South Australia?

I feel like you're going to tell us anyway.

Hogshead.

South Australia.

I guess that's again.

Oh, wait, was the original.

Oh, the original was Sostralasia.

Oh, like Australasia, Sostralasia.

Sorry.

Hogshead, Sostralia, Trotsville, Beliopolis and Arstria, which I think is like an Arsters.

I went to Arstria and everybody there knew you arstria.

Yeah, isn't that crazy.

Your favorite's there.

Yeah, everyone's talking about arstria.

It's the county in ireland i'm from.

Yeah anyway, there you go uh, set your clocks.

Folks see how many podcasts it takes for hogs of war to come up.

I know many of you at your bingo cards are still waiting for the latest soccer kid reference.

But you will have to wait.

They are working on a Hogs of War remaster.

Excuse me?

Yeah, they just launched their TikTok last week.

Last week?

Jesus.

Yeah, they're updating their Twitter regularly.

There's electricity in the air.

You sense that Hogs of War is back.

We can cover it in the future.

There's a community Discord, official community website, hogsofwar.org.

There's a YouTube.

All right, Frank, Japanese cars move over.

We got some fucking hogs to cover.

They literally posted a video last month called how is development progressing for hogs of war?

Large core.

And so it's a.

Yeah, they're legitimately working on a remaster.

I can drop the link in the in the staff chat.

But oh my god yeah, i mean danny, like reach it dude, but this is it.

This is the dream.

Make it happen, we can make it happen.

Do you think there is any other publication?

We're not the biggest publication in the world of video games, but we might be the biggest when it comes to talking about Hogs of War.

So yeah, this is a soft flop.

I feel like we should, we should get in on that.

Um, they also have a Hogs of War league that they're running.

It's in its sixth season.

Um and uh, you can just download isos, it looks like, from their this website here.

I don't know, i don't want to blow up their spot but um yeah, there you go.

Hogs of war, oh my god, this merch esports, merch for hogs of war, the pro jersey for howl esports, howly sports?

How yeah, you should get one of these man.

Get in there.

How these sports, have we run?

Have i run dry on the hog?

Okay no, you got more.

Keep going, no.

I think there's one more missing piece of this puzzle, and i think it's that the youtube video.

Danny devotes himself to becoming a esports hogs of war player.

Yeah, okay.

Also, should I be Danny DeVotes sounded like Danny DeVito.

Yeah, we can Photoshop you to be three feet tall.

We could do that.

Danny DeVoto.

I can do like you know.

I could do like rock the vote ads, you know, for the, for the Democratic Party.

Danny DeVoto is like your like your alias.

That's like your drag name.

Yeah.

Yeah. yeah exactly yeah i'd have a better drag name than danny devoto what would it be that's the first draft that's it's pretty good but danny da daniel love i feel like that's pretty it would have to be like a ireland pun obviously oh yeah right yeah true danny oh oh oh darling danny oh there you go danny oh dear maybe oh dear i like oh dear danny oh dear and i have like a sort of a british affect maybe yeah yeah imagine rupaul saying it would it sound funny that's the i don't want to say it in rupaul's accent that's crossing a that's crossing a line if you're right do that welcome to no club podcast everyone Uh, we've got a bunch of games to talk about this week that unfortunately do not involve Australia.

Uh, we're going to talk about the last epoch season four and grim dawn.

It looks like Jesse had a little bit of a dabble like, um, a week this week.

Jeremy has played more of WoW Midnight, in fact, all of the campaign.

So we had his thoughts last week on sort of the general feeling of playing WoW Midnight after being a sort of vanilla expat.

So I'm interested in that.

I have a little bit more Legend California Alpha.

I played another 20-something hours over the weekend in that Alpha.

I got on something in that game.

Alpha's gone now, and I'm very sad about it.

The Alpha Discord is very funny.

It's just people posting memes of being bored and sad and stuff.

And Frank played and finished Biohazard Requiem and some other stuff, so we'll jump into that.

We've also got some emails to talk about as well.

And yeah, updates on everything Noclip.

A bunch of stuff hitting both channels which we'll fill you all in on as well.

But first of all massive thanks to all of our patrons over at patreoncom slash noclip and patreoncom slash noclip2 who are helping us try and make a difference out there in the world of games coverage, game preservation and videos to watch on the toilet.

Massive shout-out to all of our Battle Pass holders, though.

Brian Baru, Little Toast, Yacht, Dwayne the Rock Lobster, Anthony Thomas, Nico Passateri, It's-a-me, Ferrario, Senator Armstrong, Reed Reg, Harry Flanagan, Joosh, Arno, Matt Pearson, Mark Ross.

Quote.

Tucker Morgan.

David McGarry.

Goddison.

Sven Huster.

Pez.

Bone Malt.

John Akers.

Ewan Nate.

Tim Robinson.

Forrest Pruitt.

Dark Insanities.

It's a bit too early to talk about ricicles again, isn't it?

Yeah, you got to get all the hits in this.

There's a buffer.

You got to wait at least 10 days.

Yeah, you got to do that.

Thank you all so much for your incredible support.

Let's talk about some video games.

Okay, first up, how about jeremy jane?

Let's do it.

Wow midnight, it's the latest expansion.

Here's a question for you.

If you get this right, if you get this right, i'll get i'll i'll, i'll give you, i'll give you a little little, little little internet smooch here.

Okay okay, internet smooch okay, real incentive on the line.

Which number expansion pack do you think this is?

Oh, that's a great question.

So i dropped off during wrath of the lich king.

So it was vanilla tbc tbc wrath, uh.

And then the panda pandaria, which is like really, when they fucking fell off um, and then was it warlords of draenor.

And then cataclysm dragonflight.

Midnight, is this eight?

Am i missing?

I think i'm missing.

One was cataclysm, an event or a thing.

So there's warlords of draenor legion ah, legion.

Then Battle for Azeroth.

Oh.

Then Shadowlands.

Oh, I missed a few.

Then Dragonflight.

I thought Cataclysm was one as well, but apparently it's not.

Is that true?

No, Cataclysm was one.

Why is it not on this Wikipedia page?

Come on, Wikipedia.

You've won jobs.

That's ridiculous.

Update it.

You there right now?

Okay.

Wrath of the Lich King.

Cataclysm.

I edited a Wikipedia the other day for the first time.

Terrence McKenna's Wikipedia had someone advertising their YouTube channel on it.

And I was like, that's fucking egregious.

And I had to edit it out.

Not cool.

Yeah cataclysm, wrath of the lit wait, was cataclysm after wrath of the lichkin.

It was okay, that's what i got wrong.

Sorry then, then you're right.

Then pandas drain, or legion balafras or a shuttle of dragonfly where i haven't touched anything since cataclysm maybe, wait?

Yeah god, i can't believe that was before pandas.

Yeah, me neither.

I thought pandaria was right after wrath, but yeah, so did i.

I was working in stores selling copies of Wrath of the Lich King and Quark.

It was fun.

We did a midnight launch.

All right.

So you played what?

You were like vanilla to this?

So I played a little bit of wrath of the lich king.

I don't think i finished the uh, the campaign or whatever they called it back in the day.

Back in the day we just called it playing the game um, but i uh, i think i just like tbc i had fun with, but then i was kind of losing steam and then i think i just like went to college and didn't play video games for like a year.

But yeah, so I'm.

I have played a lot back in the day obviously, like we talked about last week, and came back to retail just to kind of try it out on the free trial recently because my friends were begging me to play midnight with them.

And I also just like, It's like morbid curiosity.

I just want to see what it felt like to fire it up.

Take the old jalopy around the block again.

And I had mixed feelings.

I won't rehash my feelings from last week.

But in short, if you miss that, it's just it's weird to play a game that has changed so much.

It has all the same sort of like visuals and spell bar and like mechanically is very similar.

But the talent trees are different.

The spells are different.

The classes are different.

The structure is different.

It has a weird tutorial island now, etc.

So a friend of mine bought Midnight for me very kindly, I think, like the day before we did the last podcast, but I had not touched it at all.

And I spent about 14 hours playing the entire campaign this week.

And I did not really like it.

Fair enough.

So where does it take place?

Is it just in Azeroth regular, or is it on its own weird little island place?

It's uh, it's like this.

It takes place in like a little pocket of the north end of uh, it's not like i was gonna say the north end of boston, because that's yeah boston, it's yeah.

It ranges from southie to the north.

There's a dorchester chapter.

You got to go down there and do some quests um.

The kobolds and southie are are a nightmare.

Yeah, you won't take their candle, I'll tell you that much.

It's like the northern end of the Eastern Kingdoms.

I think it's Silvermoon is the city.

I don't know.

Here's the thing is, I could tell you anecdotes about places from playing World of Warcraft from 2004 that are still seared into my mind tangible textural visceral, like sense, memories of being in these places, of getting to lakeshire and cresting the hill and seeing the little town down there and all that shit i there there is.

I feel like there was no texture in this at all.

I was just.

I would just do a an arbitrary task and which, to be fair, most World of Warcraft quests are arbitrary tasks.

Like I'm not.

I'm not going to say that.

There is like an incredible amount of complexity, because I've also played a bunch of classic this week for contrast, and I'll get into that.

But you kind of just like You just fly everywhere.

I feel like a huge part of the problem is flying mounts.

Yeah, it does not.

Like I played about five hours of classic as well this week because after playing midnight I was kind of like do I hate?

Do I just hate World of Warcraft now?

Like, did I ever like this game or was I just a fool of a 15 year old?

And classic is fucking it's still just as good.

Like it's still equally as good.

Um, and I think a big part of that is that everything in classic feels so slow and frictional and drawn out that it really forces you to sit with these places and with these things.

The quest text doesn't all appear at once and you just skip it automatically.

Like you have to get a mod for that.

If I recall correctly, it slowly unfolds.

And so I didn't do this as a kid, but I was like reading the quest text and And it's so, it's just like it's, it's like folksy and it's very simple.

Everything in World of Warcraft classic is very simple and like grounded.

It's like, oh, you need this mug is hot, but only for five minutes.

And like my buddy up at Anvil Mar needs it before it's cold.

You're like all right, those are.

Those are stakes that I can comprehend and the the drink is hot, i gotta get it to the place uh, but then you do.

You undergo the, the formality of actually having to fucking walk there in the world and like experience a place and see creatures, and like dodge agra ranges and see the different types of trees pop in when you enter a new biome.

Um, And I, just throughout midnight it was just 14 hours of I would land my mount, I would run, they tell you on the mini map where everything is.

So it's not even like like I'd play classic and it would be like oh, you know, you have to get my supplies.

It's down at one of the camps to the southeast.

And it's like you would go to the Southeast and you would look around and you would.

It forced you to immerse.

Do you remember looking for the right shop in a, in a city?

You know what I mean?

You're like, where's that?

Where do I buy linen again?

Well, obviously auction house.

But you know where do I get the?

You know where's the, where's the class trainer for this, or the job trainer for this, or yeah?

And it feels significant when those little things happen because of the friction involved in them.

So finding the first rogue trainer in Coldridge or whatever it's called, the first little dwarf area, when you go up to Anvilmar and you see the guy and you're like holy shit, now I have new abilities.

I've expanded my very simple repertoire slightly and it feels revelatory because it's so, it's so restrained, um same with like getting the first dagger upgrade as a rogue and i got like a you know 04 dps upgrade and it was like holy fuck, like this is a new world for me, because they hold you back from that progress for so long that when it finally happens just getting the fucking slightly sharper butter knife, you're like, oh my god, i'm fucking.

It's a new game for me.

Whereas midnight was like when I logged on to midnight for the first time since I had turned, since I hit 90, like last night or the night before I logged on, and my backpacks were just full of like, just like purples and blues that I don't even remember getting and I don't know what they.

How did you level up?

Did you auto level up or what?

So I uh the, my friend who purchased, I think all versions of midnight come with one level, 80 boost.

So um, it is the the.

The road from one to 80 is much shorter than it would be in um.

Whenever 80 wrath or whatever.

Whenever 80 was the level cap.

Um, Like it used to take whatever, like 150 to 300 hours to hit 60 in, in vanilla.

Um, I think now it's probably about like 20 hours or something to level cap.

Um, but yeah, no, you just skip most of the quests then you just, you mean like before like the midnight quest or pre-midnight no like if i started a new character and wow retail now yeah and it took me that long do you just end up skipping a bunch of quests oh i see you know you just get to the next area faster yeah you must i don't know i just kind of like i played the the the tutorial island before i signed on to play midnight and uh it kind of sucks so bad it's like okay if you if you're listening to me and you haven't played world of warcraft in a long fucking time just download download all 140 gigs of this weird decayed version of the game you remember and do the tutorial island and you will get a sense of the entirety of midnight i asked my friend one of my friends who wants me to play with them um i was like OK, so I hated the tutorial island.

Is that if I play midnight, is it going to be just that for 14 hours?

And he was like, oh, like, yes.

And now the answer is yes.

The answer is 100 percent.

Yes, it is like it's.

The tutorial island is the encapsulation of this new sort of game design ethos that this game has, which is like they're trying to make things feel grandiose.

But it falls flat for me because the fun of WoW back in the day was sort of like the humbleness of it.

It was like The kind of nothing specialness that Kenshi has where it's like you're not always the hero of Azeroth.

You're just like the guy who delivers the fucking candles or whatever.

And you do kind of ascend, but it's over the course of such a long period of time.

But even so, like, I feel like most of the main characters are you are supporting them.

You know what I mean?

Like you're. you're never the focus of the world or anything.

And also you never have like.

There's never really a like.

I guess there isn't so many expansions and probably a lot more of the latter ones that I've not done but, like you know, it's not like you enter world of warcraft at the start or even in like i guess in bc to a certain extent, but it felt different.

You know that there's like this mission to go on.

You know what i mean.

But it wasn't like you weren't playing wow because you were trying to, you know, defeat the big bad.

It was like no, i want to get a mount.

You know, that's why i'm playing, because i want to get to level 40 or whatever.

Yeah, it was very self-directed.

It feels like a lot of the new uh, quest design and story design is much more sort of on rails and it makes the whole thing feel more like a theme park ride and less like a sort of open-ended sandbox rpg experience um, Whereas in classic I would get like a bunch of quests that sort of give you excuses to explore the area.

And then, as you're sort of exploring the area for its own reasons, because it's interesting to see a new place, and fill out your map and get experience from that and all these things, you're like, oh there's, you know, a kobold over there.

I need to kill eight of those and take their candles or whatever.

Um, it felt like midnight was like, okay, I have to go get the like eight things there.

Here's where all eight of them are on my map demarcated very specifically.

Uh, let me fly there and not look at anything and then land there and kill eight of them and then fly away.

Like in a fucking one of those vertical takeoff planes, the army has, um, and Yeah, I don't know.

It just felt like I think I died twice, and one of them was because I got a phone call.

And I just didn't care.

Like, it doesn't matter if you die.

So I just stepped away, maybe mid-combat.

A frictionless experience, it sounds like.

Yeah, I just, I don't know.

And it's trying very hard to do like story related things and i i won't fault it for doing that, because i i think that um, some blizzard games that i've really loved have done story heavy things, like diablo 2 is a very story heavy game and it's one of my favorites, but it just i just feel like it didn't really have the the chops to do it and it felt like sort of disjointed where, if you want me to have this open-ended experience where I'm exploring the world and that's what world of Warcraft is about, for me it's like a, it's like it's in the name.

It's a fucking, it's a world.

You know what I mean?

It's not like standing in line at Disney world of Warcraft.

Um I it's hard for me to go from that to these like okay, now you're in the quest and like run down the hallway.

And then Jaina Proudmoore is there.

Then you can only go like this one way and then hop on the like gyro copter and do the little I don't know.

I just felt like I was on a theme park ride the whole time.

Um, and it just, it, I, I, I gather that people really do like it.

So I think that maybe it's just for a different audience.

Now it's catering to a different type of audience.

But it felt to me more like a single player game with the sort of like genre conventions of an MMORPG.

And I feel like that's where a lot of MMOs are at now.

We talked about 14 Final Fantasy 14 a little bit last week.

And I think that's a little less egregious than some of these things.

It feels Jesse was saying, especially once you get past the initial, you know however many hours it becomes more party oriented.

A little bit, yeah.

But there were a lot of moments in 14, like I said last week, where you get.

I was quite.

Chelsea was helping me, like accompanying me.

And then I'd be like oh, excuse me, I have to go like, do an instanced boss fight that I can't do with you.

And then I went back and played classic for five hours and I like made friends because there was like it was.

I was like this is too hard for me.

And even in a low population classic server, because it's not that popular right now.

Uh, you know, there's just like one wizard in the tavern uh, at kerenos, and i was like you want to go like do this thing, and he's like, yeah sure, i haven't played this game in like 10 years.

This is awesome uh, and literally in midnight, the entire fucking campaign, not one single person said hello back to me.

Wow, not one person.

It was like uh, it was like moving from the bay back to boston.

It's like writing the T and being like what's up, dude.

It's the rent's cheaper, you know?

Yeah.

Not really, but.

Oh, yeah, good point.

Is it Boston, like the most expensive place to live in America or something like that?

It's up there.

It's pretty high up there uh, but anyway yeah, it's i, i will be.

I haven't done any of the end game stuff except for like a couple dungeons that i queued into um, which i also don't like, the party finder, and i just have not had any.

I don't think i've had a minute of fun in all 16 hours of playing.

Damn man that's, that's a bar.

Yeah, it's.

It's what we talked about last week, about the sort of life cycles of mmos and You know who they, I guess, have to design the game.

Well, they don't have to, but like they're probably designing the game for the captive audience that they have on that sort of vertical of World of Warcraft,

I think it's telling that they have WoW Classic.

I think the fact that they have a separate vertical for this, this franchise, is very indicative of probably the design corner that they're stuck in with the other one.

Maybe

I don't know, but it's cool at least that you can do that, you know?

I guess it's sort of a reaction to some of the private classic servers that people were doing before.

Blizzard sort of took it on.

You know, did their own commercial version of it.

But, Yeah, it's really interesting.

I don't want to do too much like pre-release propaganda for The Legend of California.

You can check out the video that's on Noclip2.

We interviewed Jeff Kaplan and a bunch of folks at Kintsugiyama.

There we go, Kintsugiyama.

Yeah, about that game's design and you know development and and the what they want to get in when the game eventually hits early access over on noclip2.

Um, i talked last week about it a good bit as well, so i'm not going to get too too much into it, but i did the alpha so i had, You know, the vast majority.

Actually, by the time I talked last week I had basically hardly ever played with any other people, right.

Like I had been on my own server, a couple of the you know devs came in to help with some logistical issues on some and bugs and stuff during different moments.

But I did play the alpha over the weekend.

I probably played another 25 hours.

I could not put this thing down.

The alpha was very interesting.

The server I was on, Wolf, was having trouble.

So we had a lot of like...

You know, somebody would go in a city and do something and the whole server, like frame rate, would just immediately tank.

It felt like the stories I heard about like GameSpot people in the WoW alphas, you know what I mean?

Where they like played the game before it came out.

We're like, whoa, this is crazy.

Um, but yeah, it was interesting to watch.

Uh, the the california land grab happen in real time.

Or like you're like ah, beautiful yosemite, and suddenly there's a bunch of ranches in it um uh, you know camps all around the outposts and stuff like that.

Um, but the community feel of it was absolutely pristine.

Like people in general chat like barons, chat helping each other out, like god, i can't find this recipe.

Or like can somebody give me like a hundred steel?

I need to do this.

And like i'll find you here.

And they're like i was.

You know, people were like looking for legendary trees and other people would jump in every you know here it is.

Every time somebody got to like level two or level three or level four um, with their outposts, there was just grasses the whole way through.

Like it, like And man.

The reason I think I want to bring it up is that one of the things that people were talking about because they were just chatting about people were just chatting about the game as well.

It was a real mix of folks in there.

I think it was probably you know folks my age who played a lot of these games, played WoW in the past, played.

You know there's probably a bunch of Rust people.

Saw people in there, younger people, a decent mix of folks, and you can kind of see the different ways they were coming from it.

But one of the conversations that happened in the chat at one stage was people talking about the travel system and being like wow, this game has shown me how much flying mounts broke world of warcraft.

That, like that, was the thing that gamers i mean because i remember back in the day that's all everyone was asking for was like let us do flying mounts, and i think it was cataclysm, was it?

Or or i think it was earlier than that, because i remember them But they had to do so much work because they had to basically build entire sections of the map that never needed to exist before, because you couldn't see them.

Yeah, if you go on noclipwebsite and no affiliation to this noclip, you can look at the vanilla WoW map and it is very funny.

As someone who's building a game using a texture tool, it's very funny to see that they'll have these big blossomed up hills and then between zones it'll just be like a hard cut from like rock to snow, with nothing up there.

It's just like a flat, repeating texture.

That's amazing.

Yeah, the places you weren't supposed to ever see, that like Even on even the flight paths, never went over them, you know.

Yeah, yeah.

I was thinking about that actually, because the flight paths, once you realize that, you realize that the flight paths are not like, because you're like, oh well, how do you decide where the griffin goes?

Is it just like what is cool looking?

And it literally is just like, how can we hide the seams of this world while traveling?

Oh, that's funny.

Like these are places you can go.

Yeah, exactly.

Because there are probably more direct like as the crow fly routes between some of these places.

But having it be like, oh, you got to catch a connecting flight and wherever the fuck.

Yeah.

It's so you don't fly over the seams of the world.

That's so good.

I wonder if it's also why like?

Because there's certain times where the griffin gets pretty low.

You know where you're like going over the forests and stuff.

I wonder if that's That's a good point.

Yeah.

Some of the trees look fucking weird when you go on noclip.website and go above.

Like if you go to Booty Bay, the trees all look like weird, like pointed hexagons, because they're not supposed to be viewed from that angle.

Right.

Yeah.

Was there, there was a flight path.

There must've been a flight path in Booty Bay you could take from like Duskwater somewhere or.

Yeah, probably.

Yeah.

Flying mounts were added in TBC, it looks like.

What is?

Flying mounts were added in Burning Crusade, it looks like.

Oh, they were?

Okay.

Oh, wow.

Really?

Got that soon?

That early?

That's crazy.

I agree with you 100%, by the way.

I think the flying mounts is would have been fine if the game, if it was level cap and the game wasn't going to expand beyond there, because presumably by the time you play 300 hours of this game you've seen enough of the world.

That now it's like you get to fucking no clip around the map um, but uh yeah, it just, it ruins all sense of of place even on.

You know, like a regular mount on the ground you're still traveling from place to place, it's just at a faster rate but um, you're still kind of taking it in.

Uh, but the flying mount, you just, i don't know, i don't even i couldn't draw you a map of the area that midnight takes place in.

It's funny.

Final fantasy 14 does something similar in that the uh, the flying mounts i.

I've heard complaints about it from players.

I didn't play it too early on, you know, i jumped in with the free trial a couple of years ago.

And every zone that you get to, you can just like ride your chocobo normally.

And then eventually you unlock the ability to fly, but you have to finish like leave quests or something to unlock the flying ability in a new area.

So you do still have to move around it normally.

And then eventually you can fly around not too late into the expansion or anything.

But it does sort of alleviate that problem of like not seeing what the world actually looks like before you're just zooming over all of it.

And it's just passing you by.

I don't know if it's a perfect solution, but it certainly helped with that problem that I had of like early on.

It felt like every area in Final Fantasy 14 was just a blur once you get the flying ability.

But in the new expansions because it does that it was like oh, now i know where this building is, i can sort of map it out in my head, and it felt more like a place as opposed to just like like a you know a park that i'm zooming around to do quests in.

Yeah, it's funny how sort of both of those aspects come into play with my time doing the alpha and legend california as well, where you know the in-development version that I played.

That was from fall of last year.

I don't think it had any cooldown on the ability to travel to your tent or your ranch.

So you could just sort of zip between the two of them ad hoc and then sort of go somewhere else and then use, you know, because the strategy to travel, you know, it's the same in World of Warcraft.

You're like, oh, I kind of need to go here.

And that's like halfway to the next fast travel point.

So if I just like go there and then keep going.

I can fly back.

You know you start to like, do your roots and plan your adventures in a way that feels like you know cause it was.

It feels like important because, like you, can run into mobs.

Like when you're flying around, you don't run into mobs.

Right.

Unless, I guess, the flying mobs in certain sections.

But, like You know, there's no, there's no hazard there.

You're not going to run into a quest floating in the sky.

You're not going to run into another player character and have a conversation with them.

So it's such a, it's such a like, even in games, like you know, fallout and oblivion, like the, you know 3d, fallouts and oblivion, like that space in between is where possibility is, you know, it's where like, things can happen.

Often they do often they don't, but they can.

Yeah.

It's the, it's the potential.

They're like pregnant with potential, even if they are empty sometimes.

Yeah.

100%.

Um, I think that that's what's missing is not just the potential but like, I think that friction is what makes memories and i think like um, memorable things happen, because you were sort of like they hold your feet to the fire.

You have to experience this thing playing classic.

There were moments where i was like oh, my god, i cannot fucking believe i have to corpse run that far back.

Yeah right, yeah.

But then you get over the initial shock and you're like oh, you know what, like who fucking cares, i'll run as a ghost through this area i haven't gone to because like, i don't know what it's like there and i can scout it out and see what it looks like.

Um, and i think that that is there.

There is a weird thing that happens as a, as a, as like a genre or like a piece of media, or like a medium gets more popular where, like i was never a comic books guy, but i see people who were into comics back in the day be like oh, it's like such a different culture now that it's popular, and i think it's very easy to write that off as like that's gatekeepy, it's like hipstery, it's whatever.

Um, but i legitimately do feel that way about world of warcraft and i think part of it is just that the Types of frictional experiences that made it memorable are the exact types of things that, if you were trying to bring new people in, you would either have to remove those obstacles or convince people that they were worthwhile.

And I think it is easier to make something less frictional than it is to convince a wide swath of people that the frictional things are not only justified but like where the magic is derived from in those experiences.

Yeah, exactly.

I think that by its very nature, that type of friction is pushed up against.

And I think, like cause, I do remember like the thing that everyone was asking for was flying mounts and it's like You know, be careful.

What you wish for, I guess, is sort of the you know the lesson, perhaps in some of these situations.

But then also when a game's been out for 20 something years, how can you avoid it?

You know what I mean?

If they still did not fly amounts in World of Warcraft 22 years later.

Yeah.

So like they're kind of it's.

It's a really sticky situation, tricky design spot to be in, and i think one of the cool things i've enjoyed about the legend of california is because it's like a, a new uh, you know, franchise or whatever it is like.

It's just doing a lot of really simple things and that's enough for me.

I and i had loads of those moments like i was playing um, there was a you know uh, there's a lot of like oh, i need to run into like a level three area to find a vendor because i need to find the recipe for biscuits so i can make five meals on my stove and level up that part of the challenge menu.

You know, it's like a lot of this shit.

And I was running through and a wolf saw me, two wolves saw me and I was still on my donkey.

I think then I didn't have my horse where I could pretty much outrun almost anything.

Um and yeah, i was like shitting it and i was in the pvp area as well and i saw somebody else.

They went past me and it was the first time i had seen someone else in a pvp zone and i'm like, oh shit, i wonder if they're gonna get me.

So i was like okay, i'll go this way, then away from them and the wolf will be slightly closer, or whatever.

Um and uh, the wolf, I think.

I think what happened was the wolf hit me.

I fell off my horse.

And as I got up, the other player trampled me with their horse.

And I was like no, I was like I went into chat, general chat immediately, because we've all been like hanging out.

Like no, some people know which others ranches are, but generally we're all just chatting in there and bumping into people and stuff.

And I was like, oh man, somebody ganked me in the PvP area.

And they came on, their name was McCree.

So obviously an Overwatch fan.

And he was like, oh yeah, sorry, I did that by accident.

I was trying to help.

And then you fell off your horse and I just ran over you instead.

And so I was watching on my camera and he didn't come back and loot my stuff for me.

So I was like, okay, I ran, did my corpse run, got my stuff.

And then I jumped in chat and was like, thanks McCree for not taking my stuff.

Um and like.

It's just a simple little interaction, but I remember it.

You know it was a memorable thing that happened.

And yeah, it's, It's funny.

It's funny how that stuff works.

It'll be interesting to see how interesting you know what the different levels and layers of mechanism they can add to that game and how it'll add to it.

I really like it.

I still feel a bit uncomfortable about the indigenous thing in it, the question.

We talked about it last week.

Yeah, and I think there We sort of skimmed it, I feel like, because we were just like We haven't seen much of the game, so it's hard to comment on it.

Yeah, I mean there's a pragmatic argument that I understand that Jeremy sort of touched on as well where, if you're talking about a game about dominating the land, you know what I mean.

The Manifest Destiny simulator... then sticking Native Americans in there is only going to probably produce one thing.

But I think there's probably like an artful way that you can like.

We talked about that magic realism aspect last week.

Like I wonder if you could not to again get very tropey with how you put a native you know native culture within a video game.

But I would like to see you know them between now and whenever the game comes out.

Try and come up with an appropriate nuanced, like way to reflect in some way.

I know it's not the game they're making.

They're not making, like, a narrative game.

But, like, the game is Tomahawks, man.

You know what I mean?

Like, you can't... Yeah.

Who made those Tomahawks?

Where'd those come from?

Exactly.

Yeah, you know?

No, it's... They weren't invented by a guy called fucking Tom.

You know what I mean?

They're Tommy Hawks.

It's Tommy Hawk.

Thomas Hawk invented them.

Wasn't that the name of a character in... Was Tommy Hawk...

He wasn't a wooden prey, was he that's?

I hope not.

That's awful.

Tommy hawk is the official mascot of the chicago blackhawks.

Oh, jesus christ, that's what it was.

That's what it was.

Yeah uh yeah yeah, it's better than chief wahoo, wasn't that the name of the cleveland indians?

One is that their probably shouldn't have gotten cleveland indians to begin with, but yeah well, they've changed it now, i think.

But yeah, I think.

I mean.

Yeah.

Fuck.

That's actually why it was the former logo last year in 2018.

Wow.

That's recent.

That's not long enough ago.

That's.

Especially when you look at the logo.

Like the logo is like... No, I know.

I can picture someone being like, listen, we got it.

It was forever ago.

And you check the date.

It's like, it was eight years ago.

And we're coming up on eight soon.

Yeah, it's a...

I don't know how you solve the native representation thing in a game like that.

You either you make them as like target practice or like victims of this thing, or I don't know, because the to do justice to the history is to put them in a position where they're being dominated in horrible ways.

And to so that is like the historical representation.

And then the revisionist sort of like, like liberal nicety version of that is like and they're invincible.

It's like, what the fuck is that?

That doesn't make sense either.

You know, I feel like you could just have the player characters all be from different tribes.

Like, obviously, there's ways that could be offensive, too.

But like at that point, just don't make the video game in California.

But like if you're going to do it.

Have the player be the one that's reclaiming the land back from the people taking over their land.

Like there's ways to do that, that it's like I feel it would be more acceptable.

I guess then you'd be like, oh, we're making, you know, tents, you know, or I don't know.

I think one of the terms we use in Europe is not is frowned upon over here.

So I'm just going to say Native American tents.

But there's like a – yeah, I guess then you're making – a different game, but i yeah i, i hear it's, but you're like you make the sort of original.

Sin is that you're making a game about like yeah, expansionist western cal, just don't call it california and don't have it set during the gold rush.

That is such the heart of the game, though you know what i mean, like for sure, but like couldn't it just be on an island with like places that are inspired by california?

No, it wouldn't be this.

Like I, maybe it doesn't, I get your point that it's, it's, you've never been here.

You don't know that.

You know what I mean?

I understand.

But also I watched the video.

I get it.

Like I get the point of of the things that he loves and that you love and that you guys all love about California being a place, but like I think to accept that I love the beauty of California it is such a touching place that has all these interesting things about it and then ignore the people who made those beautiful things is a bit like a counter to the point.

That's the – I mean that's the point I'm making.

I just don't think that the solution is you don't – you just make it not kind of – I mean, that would fix the problem.

But like – it doesn't.

It doesn't in the same way that like, pulling flying mounts out of wow fixes one problem but it doesn't address.

It's like the, not the most.

You know, there's the i.

I hope there's a sharper solution to it.

When you start the game, there should be an unskippable cut scene where you have to watch killers of the flower moon.

That's pretty good all four hours and then you can enjoy the game.

It doesn't take place in california, but otherwise.

Yeah yeah yeah yeah, yeah.

It's is a very difficult problem to solve.

I also feel like if you did the solution where the player characters were native, it gets into a weird sort of like cultural mirror where i feel like this is.

I may be speaking from bias as a as a white person raised in america, i feel like The fantasy of the game is like being like a cowboy.

You know what I mean?

Right.

I feel like if you're constructing longhouses and stuff, it becomes I.

That sounds like a cool fucking game to me.

I think a lot of people who want this like cowboy Wild West fantasy would see that as somehow like a you know, like edutainment in some way or something like.

Oh, now I got to learn about like the Iroquois tribe.

And it's like, I think that would appeal to some people.

But I think that it's like a cowboy game.

Yeah, it does.

When you see like words like Tehachapi come up though, you know what I mean?

Like it's very like... What's that in reference to?

We're really picking our... Yeah.

I had somebody on Blue Sky ask me about this last week about, like you know, kind of what Jesse's very good point, which is that like you could make a game about being in a native tribe, or make a reclamation game you take it back from the people who stole it from you and there is a, a game called this land is my land, which was i think it might have been an early access steam game, but then i remember being like feeling a little bit weird about that because i think it's made in eastern europe or something like like it's, it's i yes, Ukrainian game yeah, yeah.

So there are a lot.

Well, you know what I mean.

Like maybe they are in a position to talk somewhat about at least colonial overreach, but yeah it's, it's you, you know, because you're like, have you played never alone?

Like there are some games that are like you know, you know um, made by people who are associated with those, with those peoples.

And then Umaragi generations is a similar kind of situation, right?

Where it's New Zealand, right?

Yeah.

Maori kind of them.

And I think what was the, what's the game with the penguin?

Penguin colony.

Is that the next game?

Yeah.

Their next game, which I think is also perhaps, is commenting on some sort of stuff like that.

So like there is, these places exist, these games exist, but like, who made them is clearly important as well.

So like do I want a bunch of So you know, Orange County ex-Blizzard people making my Native American

That's a bit like, you know, you can go to a Chinese restaurant.

It's not all you know.

It's like oh, I don't want to eat at this Chinese restaurant if all the people who work here aren't from this specific part of China.

You got to check in the back before you order.

You're like, who made my Chinese fried rice?

What province?

Exactly.

Mileage varies on this stuff so much, depending on where you're from and what you think about.

And you know it's.

You know Californians.

You know even mileage varies here on how much they give a fuck at all about any of this.

You know because tribal land in this state is fucking where even.

Where is it?

I know where the most local tribal land is because there's a casino there, but it's not a reservation.

You know what I mean?

It's just southern Santa Rosa or Rohnert Park or whatever.

Yeah, so it's tricky stuff.

Yeah, it's hard to project yourself into the position of the people most impacted by a thing if you're not part of that group.

Even this is like the most low stakes version of that, but this is the closest I can come, as a white person, to this.

Experience is like When you see a movie about Boston and the people doing the Boston accents are faking it.

That's like the lowest stakes possible version of cultural representation being done wrong.

And even that I'm like, fuck this.

And it's zero stakes.

It's like a fucking, you know, a patriarchal white fucking, like call it a society that rolled in here and set up shop.

And I'm still like, they can't talk like us.

What the fuck is going on?

Hey, we drop our R's, not you.

You're not even doing it right.

Yeah, that's not a non-rhotic accent.

Yeah, it's who knows.

But yeah, I think the fact that it does make all of us feel a little bit shows that there's there could be something done.

You know what I mean?

But I don't know what that is.

I don't know what that is.

Jeff said in the interview, you know. make a point of of encouraging people to read about his native history but like yeah i think you know if you're making a piece of art or at a place it's it's just yeah it's it's even if you're not intentionally doing erasure you can't you know if you passively erase something you're still erasing how you passively or actively do something when you're saying we're just not going to do it that's not a passive yeah it's like a political like i'm not political it's like no that that is a political move to like abstain from the discussion because it cedes power to the person who holds power in that dynamic yeah yeah i i wonder i think it would probably not align with the time period they're depicting but also like they're removing all native people from the area anyway so historical accuracy clearly isn't the priority anyway but i wonder if maybe it is they nailed it they took out all the aboriginal people that's you know finally finally did it i wonder if there could have been an approach where they had some sort of like like this took place later in history and there had already been sort of like erasure of indigenous people and there could have been some uh reflection upon that i just think again it's hard to do in like a sandboxy game like this because this isn't like a narrative game where you're uh i mean i don't know are there like quests in this there is basically no like yeah there is essentially no story in this thing like the i would say the only story you get is like do you remember when you completed a quest in wow and you got like your gold came in a letterbox in a letter and there was like a note that said thanks for killing the kobold you know what i mean that that's that's it like there's i'm like i didn't read 99 of them i just got my fucking shit and kept going yeah there's no yeah there's no story there's no npcs really except for the you know the generated characters that are that run the stores and they are from what i understand procedurally made up in each store and each server from a subset of faces and like the character creator jumbles they take a bunch of names that are jumbled um and then you get them and there's people from like all walks of life it could be anyone is the thing but like yeah there's no there's no narrative I can see why they ended up doing what they ended up doing, even if I don't love aspects of it, because it is kind of like, we talk a lot about how games are this sort of spectrum between like, you know, oil painting and like a, like a bop it.

And I feel like the closer you get to the bop, it it's like if there's a plat, if you're on the playground and at the top of the slide.

It's like here the battle of whatever happened here.

And 45 men were killed and like 23 of them were indigenous.

You're like, I'm, I'm just trying to go down the slide, man.

You know what I mean?

Like it's, it feels like it's like unsanctimonious to put it on a playground, you know? yeah i don't know it's that's the thing you can you can make the pragmatic argument for it but it's still we've all got that little bad taste in our man right yeah it's weird anyway you just like the fact that we've talked about it this much and we're like yeah this kind of it is yeah it's fucking i don't know like other than just being like maybe we make not a game about california it's like how do you fucking fix yeah which is jesse's point and you know I wonder if that was, yeah, ever considered or yeah.

But I will say the game is so bereft of like the character of this game is clearly California.

Like if I don't, I'm sure for people who've never been here, maybe that wouldn't matter you know what i mean like if it was because if they don't have any understanding of the geography of the state or you know what i mean you could just you know mad lib the whole fucking thing um but i don't know if i would be as interested in that game like to me what's cool about this is like the starting zone on the alpha server was literally sonoma it was like my where i live so that was like you know crazy cool then going to such and such place or blah blah blah blah but um yeah yeah it's a it's a funny one it's a it's a it's there's no simple answer to that one it seems like but i would like to see them i'd like to see them take a swing at A swing with like you would, for instance, with a tomahawk.

You know what I mean?

Which I believe was invented by Thomas.

Thomas Hawk.

Let's get away from the world of Warcraft and the world of California.

Weirdly connected there in both designers and what we played this week.

And talked to Jesse about The Last Epoch and Grim Dawn.

Season 4 of The Last Epoch is new.

Grim Dawn's obviously, when did that come out?

That's a while back.

It's like 2010, 11, something like that.

Is it really that old?

I feel like it is.

Let me check on Steam.

It was made in...

Since 2016 on Steam, I don't know if that's true.

It could be.

I wouldn't be too surprised.

But yeah, yeah.

Grim Dawn and Path of Exile, or not Path of Exile, Last Epoch.

Sorry, Path of Exile is a game I played a lot of.

So I really like action RPGs.

I've played a bunch of them throughout my time.

I think I've talked about Last Epoch on here probably two or three times at this point, with the various seasons that they've done in their original launch into 10 or Early Access, whatever it was.

It's your Hogs of War, some might say.

Some might say, yes.

My Hogs, they commit action RPG atrocities.

It's quite a good time.

I really like Last Epoch, but playing Season 4, it's funny.

I cannot...

I can't find it in myself to get to the end of this season.

And like, I haven't had this issue up until now.

Usually I get to end game.

I do a little bit of it and I'm like, all right, that's fine.

I'm bored of this.

Um, but this time around I think it's the structure, the stuff that they added.

Like they added a bunch of these like mid run whenever you're doing the campaign.

You got to go through all.

You know, if you've ever played an action RPG, you got to do the whole campaign.

Every time you start a new character.

And your goal is basically to minimize the amount of time you're spending doing the campaign to get to the end game.

Here they added this new thing where it's like it's Shattered Omen, I think it's called.

It's like these random encounters that you can run into.

You have to purposefully start them.

And once you finish the fight, you get these really high level items.

They're like corrupted items that give you these really good stat bonuses and stuff.

And I was playing a little bit of them with my buddy.

And I got this item that basically walked me all the way to the end of the game.

Like it was perfect for my build.

I tried a character I hadn't played before.

And something came over me and I think it's what Jeremy's been talking about for the last couple of weeks with MMO design and like the desire for friction.

And I realized I'm just not having fun playing this right now.

Uh, maybe not even just right now.

Was I ever really having fun with this?

Cause like, It's this treadmill of content and grinding and items.

And like, there's so many drops all at once.

It's very overwhelming in a way that like it sort of just feels like I'm playing the game.

To keep playing the game like that sounds stupid, like every inner box, you kind of like ticket percent doing the thing yeah, i'm pecking the button to get my little grains of rice or whatever.

I watched your video from uh, you're the point video danny, that you did like 14 years ago.

I mean that's still how i feel about destiny, you know.

I mean it's like to me.

I just didn't.

I understood why people played it, i thought.

But the reason why i thought they played it was because it was just It was doing a fun shooter.

No, no, no.

But it was doing all this progression stuff and dailies and, you know, come back in.

But then here I am playing art creators and it's very similar thing.

You fell for it.

New content.

Exactly.

Yeah.

No, but it just – it works.

Like there's parts of it – there's a reason it works.

It's not just inherently malicious.

You can use it to do good things or to just make something fun.

But it becomes malicious when you apply things to it that are bad for the player.

Dark patterns.

They block out all your abilities.

Yeah.

Man, last epoch, I just, I couldn't, I couldn't, it wasn't working for me, but I was in that action RPG mood.

I really wanted to play one.

And I was thinking, Jeremy has told me Diablo 2 is his favorite game of all time.

He keeps telling me to play it.

I'm going to play Grim Dawn, a game that I've already played.

Son of a bitch.

Here's the thing.

I am on a timer, right?

I'm not going to start playing a game that I actually want to play when in two weeks I might need to, you know, stay up until 3 am every single night.

So I decided to jump back to Grim Dawn, a game that I have played before but like maybe six to seven.

Fuck me.

I haven't done that.

Perfect.

I know.

I'm sorry.

Years ago, this was developed by Crate Entertainment Studio out of Massachusetts.

I think Boston.

Oh, really?

Yes.

And they were using the same engine as Titan Quest, another action RPG that I had played.

I also developed in Massachusetts.

I think I think northern, a little more north from Boston, but like two teams from a pretty like close area.

It was really interesting to see that game grimmed on in.

Like in comparison to what's going on with Last Epoch and how I'm feeling about action RPGs in general, like I went to play some Path of Exile 2 not too long ago and Path of Exile 1 and they all feel very like focused and devoted to you getting a lot of drops whenever you kill an enemy, constantly replacing your equipment and if not constantly replacing your equipment, at least like thinking ahead and like looking for unique, trying to find stuff to get the perfect build.

Going back to Grim Dawn feels like.

It felt like getting on the lazy river at a water park and just chilling and just like ah, because the game opens with you.

All you have is your weapon and a single attack, and that's it.

And like for the next 10 hours, you're doing side quests.

It's like a grim, dark world.

There's a reason it's called that.

And you're just like killing enemies, killing zombies, doing like quests for people, in a similar way to what it sounds like you guys were enjoying about World of Warcraft, a game I've never really had the chance to play.

But I got so much out of it.

It felt so much like it felt like so slow paced in comparison to the other games.

And it made me like. think about what I like about action RPGs.

Cause it's not just getting the equipment.

It's like I like being in a world and I like exploring and doing quests and like watching myself progress in a way that feels more linear and less exponential.

Because these other games.

It's like okay, now you're shooting magic fireballs that break into other fireballs and you can see, in the next 10 hours from now, you're going to be picking up items from the web weaver chronicles or whatever the fuck like.

It's such a weird thing to play these new age action RPGs.

You guys don't really play a lot of these, right?

Like these newer action RPGs.

No, I do vicariously through you.

You're always telling us.

I mean, Jeremy obviously has priors and diablo and stuff.

But yeah, it is the question i actually had for you is like yeah, does this feel like the type of game that you're enjoying?

Because it's a reaction to those more complicated, more sort of what's the word?

It sounds like the same thing jeremy was talking about with wow midnight where like, these games at a certain point become so top heavy with with sort of expectation from the consumer that they They end up sort of being so many things that they're kind of they don't have a central thesis anymore.

Is it a game that like does it feel good because it's easy and simple, and not particularly you know not to overuse the word but like frictiony?

It's not a word.

I think Grim Dawn.

Or is it more that it's like from a simpler time?

Grim Dawn probably has a little bit of nostalgia to it, for sure.

I did play through the whole thing not too long ago, so it was.

It was a bit like going back to.

You know, come back to your old park and everything feels bigger now because it was smaller when you were younger, that kind of thing.

This I think Grim Dawn has a lot of designed to it that is more frictional, that like, because you start without uh, major abilities, you sort of like get used to the act of moving your character, you get used to the act of exploration, like exploration in that game, and grim dawn feels a lot more earned as opposed to just like You know exactly where to go.

Here's the pin on the map.

Run to the pin.

This is like, you got to look for items in an area.

You got to like, you got to read the map.

This was actually the thing that I think made me go.

Oh, this is why I like Grim Dawn so much, in comparison to like Last Epoch and these other like Diablo 4, a little bit, has a little bit of this, but more more.

In grim dawn you read these notes for quests and i had to, like open the journal, read the journal entry to see where i needed to go, find the place on the map, go to the point and then find the character that was mentioned.

We had the exact same experience.

We were talking about it and i was like that's exactly what happened to me in grim dawn.

That's fucking crazy, Like that shit.

That is what makes me like these video games, like action RPGs.

It felt like I was chasing this nostalgia high of like oh, it was fun to pick up the items and like make a cool build.

But when I went back and actually played the thing I was nostalgic for, it was that realization.

And maybe it's because I'm 30 and I can like have nostalgia now.

But like I got to play this game and I was like, oh, shit.

Now, the thing I liked about this was like the worlds that they were in and overcoming challenges that I couldn't beat prior.

It wasn't like everything I walk up to in these newer action RPGs.

You can just you can mop them until you get to the end game and then end game.

You die in half a second if you stop looking at the screen.

If you blink, you're dead.

Um, whereas these older games, it's like, so the pace is so different.

It's like the action RPG combat.

You're doing it not to get new items, but like to see new things, to interact with these characters, to learn more about the world and the lore.

And like, I'm not building out a spreadsheet.

I'm sure there are people who are for Grim Dawn.

I know the end game gets a little ridiculous and there's all these new expansions.

But Just going back to that, or even like I watched a little bit of Titan Quest after I heard about the Grim Dawn being made in the same engine,

And I was like, oh, my God, this is.

It's like a different universe, these games.

They're not live services.

They're making them for people who, you know, have jobs.

Let's go do other things.

So I would love to like interview somebody who works in an MMO today and ask like is that the schism?

Like is the problem that the people who will play your game to a certain amount, that you can like, Bank on them for a while but ultimately they will.

You know they have, they don't play that much because they have jobs and they, they want to do whatever.

You know, it's those people.

So they're obviously not as profitable for like running an MMO for years and years and years.

And then over here, you've got the sickos, right.

Who are just like.

They're like the the, the people who are into the the, the day job people, let's call them, are like, maybe a bit, maybe just conflating two separate actual things.

But like, bear with me for a second.

Maybe they're more into like that slow paced methodical, you know, figure it out.

The sickos that, like hardcore people, are maybe more numbers orientated and more like sort of min maxing orientated.

And ultimately, because they're playing the game.

So much are more about the meta, more about like builds, more about that stuff.

And then and then like, you know.

You open a restaurant and everyone's buying the dumplings.

You know let's use the Chinese restaurant thing for murder.

Everyone's buying the fucking dumplings.

No one's buying the noodles.

What are you going to make in the kitchen?

You know, like you sort of you're stuck with the audience you have that's engaged the most.

And then you start. going in that direction.

Like I wonder, is that the thing?

Like the eventual, like heat debt of any MMO is to become so fucking you know It's numbersy and ultimately lose its sort of identity in all of that complexity.

I don't know.

It seems to be the problem in general.

Yeah.

Like when you have these games that you said are like top heavy, where you've got so much content in the late game, you have to keep appealing to the people who are already there.

Like if they go away, no one's going to get there.

They certainly not in the numbers that the players already are.

I think Final Fantasy XIV is going through something like that.

World of Warcraft, obviously, but even Destiny, right?

Like that, or Destiny 2 specifically.

That game was, it's still impenetrable.

I tried to play it and I couldn't because there's so many expansions.

To the point that they're cutting content and players are like, don't cut the content.

People need that stuff to know what's going on.

But it's like if they play through all that, they're never going to get to the end where you guys are.

So it's this problem, I think, of like, how do you make a game?

Actually Chris Wilson and developer from Create Entertainment.

Chris Wilson from Grinding Gear Games, who did Path of Exile.

They had a I guess it's a podcast, but like an interview conversation where they're talking about their approaches to design and because one of them is free to play and one of them is a paid premium experience with with Grim Dawn.

So it's like, how do you make these games work?

And it was really interesting.

But I felt like.

I felt like when I think about Path of Exile.

It's a game that's free, that runs on microtransactions.

If you're a player who's already invested in those microtransactions and you're reading guides for the new content as it comes out with all these seasons, you have to have like stash tabs you got to pay for.

So you have to have the inventory set up to be ready for this content.

If you're a new player coming in and you want to jump to that late stuff, you kind of got to work your way up to having the resources before you can do that.

It's just such a weird, weird problem to solve of like, how do you get people into the game when the thing that's appealing about it at this point for the remaining player base is the end game stuff?

Here's a question for all you guys.

Is the solution to this in some respect, with these sort of like And I'm going to get really broad with this but like, let's call them live games, like games that are sort of around for Ace?

And I mean in this, let's say, you know, Last Epoch, World of Warcraft Fortnite, Ark Raiders, The Legend of California, whatever Rust.

Is the solution to this, these like. like seasons or server resets.

The fact that like okay, there is a point at which the old version is gone, either in the season's case for fortnight, here we go new map, new items.

It is 90, the same game.

But the progression you're going to have is going to feel similar to the one you had last time where like, you were learning the new map, you're learning the new weapons, all that sort of stuff.

So it's like It's like Vanilla WoW 1 to 40.

You know what I mean?

Because I remember the thing I loved about Vanilla WoW.

When I got to a certain stage I was like I'm going to roll a character and do this as a fucking tauren, or do it.

You know what I mean?

Do it as a, do it as a as a night elf or whatever.

You know like that was.

The fun was going back and doing that.

And what I found as well with our creators is that like.

I mean talk about simplistic fetch quests that you have to do, but like the process of doing them again, I like, I like the, you know it's like weirdly nostalgic.

It's like now I come in with a bit more expertise maybe on how to do them or that type of thing.

And similar with The Legend of California, it's like.

The loop of the game is good.

I like that part.

I like the part and I'm sort of imagining that as the World of Warcraft, you know, 1 to 60 or 1 to 40 or whatever you know, and that was the part I liked.

So construct a methodology that allows me to do that again.

Is that what like server resets and seasons are effectively doing?

I think that's the idea behind the server resets and seasons and stuff.

I personally, I don't like that approach like seasons in general.

I'm kind of against because I feel like it.

It creates a.

It undercuts the feeling of perpetuity of these worlds, which I think is an important ingredient in the the feeling of it being a world is if at the end of the season it's like art and everyone's like wiped and we're all starting from zero.

It's at that point, it's like, it just a long tail extraction shooter.

You know what I mean?

Where it's like everything, if I'm just going to lose everything, why get everything?

Um, I like the feeling that what I accrue is sort of permanent in some sense.

And I think seasonal cadence erases that.

I think in my mind, the ideal solution is if you have a game like World of Warcraft and you have one to 60 and you have the Calibdor in the Eastern Kingdoms, you just add a, do what they did with like TBC and like some of these expansions, just add like a new continent or whatever.

Or the expansion that arguably, I think a lot of most and I could be wrong a lot of most OG WoW people came back to, which was Cataclysm.

Which they redid the entire world, right?

Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, it is interesting.

I'd be curious.

It may be total placebo.

I felt like when I went to Elwynn Forest in retail, it felt smaller.

And then I fired up Classic and it felt big again.

And I wonder if it is...

I wonder if they changed the scale of it or if it's the move speed.

I was not on a flying mount, so it was not that it could have.

Just I don't.

I genuinely don't know what it was.

OK, here I'm going to now I heard what you said about the progress stuff.

And I am I think especially six months ago, I would have said the same thing.

And maybe because of recent games I've played, I feel slightly differently about it.

Is that the, okay, so World of Warcraft, I'm with you.

I still have access to my character that I had in 2004 that I started, right?

Fugani, he's a little dwarf paladin.

He's living on some fucking server somewhere.

He still exists.

I haven't touched him in a decade probably, but he's somewhere, right?

If I could open that account again, he'll be there, right?

But I've not fucking touched it.

So is server resets or these like seasonal resets?

Are they the?

Don't put flying mounts into World of Warcraft of these games.

It's something that some players don't want, but is ultimately good for them.

Maybe.

I feel like it's the opposite.

I feel like seasons are sort of the giving into player demand that flying mounts are where it's like the Soren Johnson quote of if you give players the opportunity to min-max all the fun out of a game, they will.

And so the job of the game designer is to protect game players from themselves.

Essentially um, i think that that is something that i resonate incredibly strongly with.

I think that um, there were moments when i was playing wild classic this week where i was like fuck, can i?

I wish i could just like teleport to my corpse.

And i think that the job of the game designer is to not listen to the sort of base impulses of the game player always and be like okay well no there's, there's like friction happening and the guy's gonna like quit the game.

It's like you need to.

You need to ride that line.

You need to push me up to that line of my comfort zone where I'm like Oh, this is like fucking.

I'm stuck in the trog cave getting my ass kicked over and over.

But then when you emerge from those frictional experiences, that's what makes you feel something.

And I think that like, I don't know.

To me, the season stuff feels like it's a it's a cheap fix to a harder design problem.

I think the perpetuity creates a sense of a world.

And I think resetting everything is just like, oh, we'll just like do it again.

Everyone just like does it again.

And it wipes away this feeling of perpetuity that makes MMOs feel like worlds.

Yeah, it pushes MMOs closer to, sorry, I just, I was thinking about this too.

That element pushes all these games closer to being like action RPG, like Diablo style action RPGs, more than anything else.

Because the way that you play those games avoiding the seasons is if you play on hardcore and you die.

You have to start from the beginning.

You play the whole campaign over again.

And, like I said, it's your goal to minimize the amount of time you're spending doing the campaign shit so you can get to the thing you want to do.

And I feel, like all these games, like our creators, a game that I'm not playing anymore.

Because of that, I've run out of stuff to do.

And my choice is go do it all again in a way that like doesn't excite me.

I know it works for some people, but it doesn't work for me.

I think that approach of like resetting things.

Is is yeah, it's a bandaid basically on a problem of like there is a limited amount of content.

We have so many players going through all of it.

How do you appeal to the people who beat everything this week?

And how do you not alienate the people who you know are only able to play for like five, six hours a week it's?

It's a impossible problem to solve without making two different versions of the game, which i mean while classic exists, but i don't know necessarily if it's a perfect solution to the problem, because now, if you want to get into the community, how you know, the main wow community is probably playing retail.

It's like there's a whole new set of people that you can't interact with.

And i think that's where like, i kind of half agree with you on that because, like And I definitely agree with both of you that it is an imperfect solution to a problem, like a bandit.

One of you guys said bandit.

Like I remember and you know, and this is obviously genre by genre, game by game, but just like, because you mentioned Dark Raiders, I even remember when they were talking about what their server reset extraction extraction, as I was called.

I think extraction thing would be expeditions.

Expedition.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Their expedition thing would be.

You could even tell that like they weren't quite sure if this is the right way to do it, but like we think it might work, but like one of the benefits of us is that, especially on the PVP stuff, that it stops the top heavy player base thing as well.

That's kind of that it like resets people, right?

Like all of our gear goes down to zero.

You don't have to do it, but like, it'll pull you back down and then you're, you're like a level. level five scrub and there are some bonuses that you get you know your fucking chicken finds stuff faster and your xp go go you've got like rested xp basically for that more skill points or whatever right yeah um but uh but yeah i i'm yeah i'm with you that it's it's but it's funny how it's a similar problem it's like the same problem with casual players and the hardcore and how do we find a solution that means that we're not just constantly listening to the hardcore that we're not making it unfair for the casual um yeah it's it's it's weird in our creators and sorry last thing jeremy because this was your point in our creators at least and i don't know about other games fortnite maybe less so fortnight literally changes the world.

So that feels dynamic and interesting.

I think our creators, it's your character.

So it kind of feels like the world continued and you have decided cause you send off your character.

You know, you know one minute cut scene and they're gone and then you start a new one.

Um, It feels like the world is permanent when I play that game, but it feels like my character has gone back.

But there is this like, there is this also this, and this is the last thing I say, and this is actually a massive non sequitur, but I'm also fascinated by the crazy dissonance that exists in extraction shooters where like, yeah, sure.

I'm going again and I'm starting a new character and all these quests are happening, but for some reason temporarily, it feels like this is somebody who came before, the person who already did these quests, like a Neo.

And also just like, no, nothing makes sense in an extraction game.

Why does stuff keep reappearing?

Who's filling the lockers?

It's so fun.

I just like I remember playing the game for like 10 hours and going like, wait a second.

It doesn't make any sense.

What the fuck's going on here?

But like, you know, when you're playing the game, you're like, oh, going back up to the surface.

You know, same with like fucking marathon or anything.

You're like why do I keep invading the same part of this planet over and over again?

Like, how often can i keep coming down here and getting technology?

But he's just like just whatever, don't think about it, it's fine, it's video game.

Here's my ultimate take on the wow thing.

I think that this is this is the solution.

Is that?

I think that what happened was World of Warcraft, the end game became this special, rarefied thing.

And it was so special and interesting and different that it was like, holy fuck, like someday I'll be 60 and then I can be a part of that.

And it took you 150 to 300 hours.

You'd see these people outside like fucking auction house with like crazy glowing shields and be like whoa and it would be like cool and interesting, and i think that.

Here's the thing is.

I think that the mentality has shifted in blizzard's design ethos in diablo 4 as well though i have much less experience with that where it is this sort of showering of specialness, undeserved specialness, upon people.

And I think that that is the problem, is that it decays both ends of the spectrum.

If you are a casual player, It makes the specialness feel less special.

And if you're a hardcore player, it makes it feel less special.

And I think the solution to this is having like classic.

If you have this, you know up to 300 hour road to 60, you can play World of Warcraft and have like 200 hours of experience and never hit 60 and be like that's like one of my favorite games ever.

I had like a crazy good experience with it.

And the existence of this mythical end game that people are doing.

Even if you never access it, it still imbues your experience with specialness.

I played World of Warcraft for endless numbers of hours.

I never have done a raid once in my entire fucking life.

And it is one of my favorite games of all time.

I've done countless five man dungeons.

I've never done a raid.

Me too.

Never.

But the existence of raids, it enhanced both of our experiences.

And I was talking to a friend of mine about Vanilla WoW and he was telling me about a part of the map that has like lower implications.

But you might not realize what it is unless you understand what it is.

And he was telling me he came across this.

It's not telegraphed.

It's just like sitting in the Plaguelands.

It's like Uther's tomb or whatever.

And I had no idea what the significance of it was.

And he was like, I understood the lore.

I came across it.

And I was like, holy fuck, this thing is just like out here.

Just like out here.

And there's no like quest.

There's nothing.

It's just a building.

And he had this like amazing...

Experience that's like a narrative that stuck with him, this sort of like environmental storytelling moment.

I never had that experience.

But here's the thing is him having that experience is it tells me that I'm in a world where these types of experiences are possible?

And so the excessive.

The direct personal experience of those types of things is not a prerequisite for them enhancing the world.

I think uh, that just those being possible for some people, even if you miss them, just knowing that they exist, is enough.

And so the dichotomy I think that needs to exist is there needs to be this rarefied special thing, but it doesn't need to be accessible for everyone.

I think having special stuff that only some people will get to experience, only the hardcore will get to experience, is not gatekeeping.

It is recognizing that there is a spectrum of relationships that people have to games and some people will be fucking hardcore and you should not level the playing field.

The goal of a game world is not total parity and equity.

The goal of a game world is to have like a spectrum of types of experiences you can have and to not sort of like impoverish one to make the other more or less special.

I wonder if that is also where some of these specifically extraction shooters run into tension with their player bases, where they spend so much time in those worlds.

But they're not really part of that world.

They're just tourists for 20 minutes, you know, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of times.

And they're thriving, or they're craving this connection with Tau Ceti or with Speranza, or with fucking twisted towers or whatever.

I'm trying to think of a fortnight.

Tomato Town.

Tomato Town, but they can't just by because that's not the game they're playing.

They're not playing a game where they hang out there, they're playing a game where they jump in and they jump out.

That's a really good point, because i do feel like, even though i have enjoyed brs before, they're like.

It doesn't feel like a work like pub g, doesn't feel like i'm going into a world.

It feels like i'm going into like a you know being dropped into epcot and fist fighting people there, But I still feel like I crave that connection.

You know, we're dropping in Pachinki.

You know what I mean?

Like, oh, man, Pachinki is my city.

I want I want to have that relationship with that world.

But the game by its genre and everything, you kind of can't you know unless, unless you start making it a fucking crafting game, you know, in between rounds, i don't know, i don't know.

Yeah, i going back to iron, for i won't go on and on about wow anymore, but going into iron fortune classic the other day was like what, seeing it in the distance and walking up the hill to it and walking in and the fucking dwarf music hits, i was like it was just as special as it was, you know whatever, 20 some years ago, 22 years ago almost um, And I think that that says something.

And it felt special because it was like I had built up to it.

I died a bunch of fucking times being a solo rogue out in the world.

And then someone was like, hey, can you take this letter to Ironforge for me?

And then like, it's not even like special.

The guy's just like, don't bother me with this fucking letter.

Like, give me the fucking letter.

Get out of here.

And I was like I'm just like a piece of shit on the bottom of someone's shoe being dragged through this amazing place.

And I think that the more we try to make everyone feel special, it's not just narrative.

It's not just the narrative tells you you're the hero.

It's also the way that the world relates to you, the amount of gear that is bestowed upon you, the way people talk to you and treat you, and not just NPCs, but the way the game designer treats you.

If the game designer is like, oh, yeah, no, you'll be an end game soon.

Don't worry about it.

You got it like a fucking marketing job 50 hours a week.

Don't worry about it.

You'll be end game by next week.

It's like that.

I don't think that should be the case.

And I think it makes it feel less special for everyone.

Oh.

Good chats, guys.

A lot of weirdly interweaving conversations about game design and whatnot between a lot of these games we talked about today.

I am very excited to hear.

I don't know if this is going to be able to connect in with any of those conversations we've had.

But this does feel like a sort of a bullseye direct hit on the current epoch of Frank Howley's interests.

Screamer, available on Steam, is a anime racing game.

So please.

Frank, tell us about Screamer.

Have you been enjoying it?

And when I first saw a trailer for this game, I considering that, like you are clearly like a, a big otaku and somebody who is currently working on a video for noclip2 about your recent love of japanese arcade racing games, this one just came out at the fucking perfect time uh, last thursday.

Um, what's it like?

Screamer, it's got.

It's got anime in it.

Yeah, so this is an Italian developed game.

Yeah, even when I reached out for a code, I'm like oh yeah, I'm also working on a game or a video about racing games.

I'd love to try it.

And they were immediately like, here you go.

Oh my God.

So I'm playing it on PS5.

I think it's multi-platform.

Um yeah, this is a game i want to put more time into because there's so many mechanics.

I mean this in the best way possible.

This feels like a racing game from like the ps2 360 era, very much like burnout, takedown.

It's got boost.

It's got like you can ko ram vehicles out of the way.

Uh, there's a tournament mode that's like an overarching story mode.

That feels like tekken, in the sense of every character speaks their own language.

So i think there's like dutch italian french uh english uh japanese, like.

So it's like i again i'm just skipping the cut scenes, i just want to race stuff, but it's a dense like visual novel of everyone competing for this.

It's like a death race thing.

There's a hundred million dollar prize or whatever, but um, and the cut scenes are like straight up, they look like you know tv quality anime.

So there's like there's like visual novel, like character box and it's all voice acted.

And then there was like actual flashy anime cut scenes.

So like there's, there's like the asking price is it's 60 bucks on steam and maybe it's 70 on PlayStation.

So it's, it's an actual, like you know double, a triple, a price game.

But yeah, The most important part is the racing is really, really cool.

So I've mostly been playing like sim games like Forza, Gran Turismo.

This feels a lot more like.

I would compare it to like Ridge Racer 6, like the Xbox 360 Ridge Racer that had a literal boost button.

It's very arcadey in a great way. um the one like criticism so far is the tournament mode has a very extended tutorial because it's because there's so many mechanics first it wants you to learn the driving and the driving in this is nuts because you you're steering with the left thumb stick um but to drift you're you're you're flicking the right stick left to swing your back wheels are right so if you it's so crazy but like once you get the handle of it it's like okay that's great the next thing even though i'm playing on automatic in order to boost your shift meter you have to like click you have to like click shift up and then that fills your boost so once you kind of shift up enough times you have your boost meter and then you can boost and then there's a timing window on how you can get a perfect boost it's like a little triangle you know almost like again like a rhythm game it's kind of like active reload it looks like in gears of war yeah it's exactly like that so it's like the whole time you're playing it it's and the other the the i'm only there's online i'm sure but the the ai opponents are also using boost you'll be doing really great all of a sudden you'll hear the fucking boost and someone will come up and so like And I've shifted the difficulty down just to kind of get through the story mode unlock stuff.

And it's challenging.

It's legitimately challenging.

And again, I'm so used to playing Forza and Gran Turismo where if you lose you get credits, you go to the tuning shop, you buy a better engine.

So I always will cheese my way.

This is like, no, you have to...

And doing the story mode is interesting because sometimes it'll be very specific objectives.

And I feel like I'm finally after like, God, I want to say like 30 to 40 races missions.

I'm on chapter two.

And now they're like, all right, now you can do takedowns.

All right.

Now you have a shield to counter takedowns.

And I've I've, I've gone off and done like the arcade mode, which is like here's everything up top and like different characters have different abilities, so it's like almost like a hero race.

It's crazy, but um, and that's why i want to like keep playing this and diving in.

But yeah, and then the aesthetic of it uh, almost honestly kind of like borderlands, it has that like faux cell, shaded look, but very, very bright.

The race cars are very bright.

The desert is very almost like Mad Max dismal, but like hyper contrast.

The cities are very like cyberpunk or Akira.

If you get first place, you'll literally do the Akira slide when you cross the finish line.

So I saw it in a trailer and I also saw a Corgi, uh, that looked conspicuously like like ein yeah yeah so yeah everything it's hitting is like oh this is really good but yeah i want to give it space to like learn the mechanics and there's a lot of achievements to do but yeah it's it's it's pretty cool and i like it yeah i might get this i like i think the thing that's making me sound that's making me the most interested is the like the mechanics of driving it feels like sort of a uh you know plate spinning pat your head rub your belly so like what i like about playing sim games is that you're fighting the car you're not really fighting the other drivers you know what i mean like arcade games it's all about the other drivers which is why there's rubber banding and all this sort of stuff whereas in all right sim games it's that this feels like it's sort of a cool little middle like an arcadey type of version of that where you're like trying to get the timing right on this upshift and trying to use a boost at the right time and trying to like i the drifting with the right stick sounds very cool it's nuts and it took me a while but like honestly playing today right before the podcast i was finally able to do like turns and curves without hitting the wall and like it's not that like there's not that much opinion if you hit the wall you almost like a gutter and a bolt like it kind of lets you like all right keep you you take a lot huge speed penalty and usually cars will overturn you but like yeah it's it's it's pretty it's pretty cool and like you don't have damage me like i've been playing like rally sports games now and your car will take damage of time if you hit the wall like you just get bumped down you don't have a damage meter but again an enemy car can ko you early on this tournament mode that doesn't happen but event like now again i'm finally getting deeper into it where there's where there's a combat involved and uh yeah and even even unlocking the takedown again it's a little it's not as like free archaic as burnout in order to earn your like i think it's called a strike you have to like again the race starts and your abilities are locked for like the first i don't know if it's like 30 seconds so it kind of gives everyone an even start to kind of get out of the opening and then once i don't know what again it feels very like mad max death wish like grindhouse like it's it's it's it's cool it's it's hitting it's it's it's like it's it's positive it's nailing it it's like then once it unlocks then it's like everyone is shifting up filling up their boost meter once you do a boost then doing a boost unlocks you essentially ammunition to ko people so i've done things where i'll like i'll boost i'll come up on someone and then do the ko thing and then there's also like an overdrive mode where you're i think it's almost the equivalent of like in mario kart where you get the like bullet bill that just pushes you forward so there's like or like the star in Mario Kart where all of a sudden you can just tap people and explode but I don't know how you unlock that every time and I was again thinking of this compared to Mario Kart where it's like this is better than Mario Kart I like Mario Kart it's fun with friends but single player it's such bullshit because like yeah it's just too many items here it's like okay anytime you're like disrupted it's like oh that was my fault i either slammed into the wall or i didn't parry or shield enough time so it's like there's no i haven't been like frustrated for the wrong reasons if i if i get stuck in the tournament mission it's like okay i just got to keep learning this route and then when you finally hit it it's like oh my gosh and i think like it's cool it has like letter rankings when you complete missions based on your lap times and stuff like that so yeah i've been playing so many different racing games and this is so crazy this came out as like oh this is a throwback like ps2 arcadey thing and like yeah yeah to make the the somewhat obvious comparison to anyone who played this era of racing games the anime level or the city levels remind me of grid and the outdoor levels where you're doing all the drifting remind me of split second like which are like the last two Like, I feel like new IPs in racing games that tried mechanically something different.

Grid was like a sort of a, was it grid?

It's called grid.

Was it blur?

Blur, sorry, blur.

You said grid and I was like, autosport?

Apologies.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Thank you.

Good, good, good catch.

Blur, which was sort of like Mario Kart for, you know, post-grads or whatever mario carper guys who watched need for speed or not need for speed sorry, fast and furious, need for speed like older people, you know.

Yeah, and then split second, which is obviously like sort of burnout in a way for, you know, for bombastic kind of stuff.

So yeah it's, this looks cool.

Screamer, i hear.

We're just saying about the price tag, though it seems and especially in the land of noclip too, where we're used to you know, mind-bending classic games you pick up for 758, you know, it seems like 60 bucks is.

Yeah, i will wait for this to go on sale.

I do want to play it.

I have a lot of friends who love playing racing games.

But 80 canadian dollars for a racing game, i'm no, no disrespect.

It sounds like it's great.

That's a lot of money.

It's a lot of money.

With these gas prices, they're going to get more expensive.

Driving in real life costs 80 Canadian dollars now, too.

Can't get it.

These fucking copies of Screamer just fucking filling up the Strait of Hormuz.

That was supposed to fucking... I like how you say it.

The Strait of Hormuz.

Hormuz.

It's made out of chocolate delicious, delicious.

It's gonna be made of fucking oil in the next fucking if any more of these kuwaiti and saudi tankers keep getting fucking hit bahrainians.

Um, uh yeah, cool screamer looks rad, looks right yeah come, come to come to the no club podcast for your updates on the middle eastern conflict.

Um Frank, pick another game out of these.

Biohazard, Requiem, I'm interested in.

Yume, Penguin, Mono... What the fuck?

What is this?

Okay, so no one else in the world is ever going to talk about this game.

There is a fan's translation that was released in like 1999 or 2000.

So every time I go to Japan, I spend a lot of my time in retro game shops, because they're all just like museums.

All the box art is there of these incredible games that have never been translated.

I've never heard about, never seen.

And I come back with a giant list of games and I'm like, I'm going to be like this, play this, this.

I played this game.

I beat it entirely in 47 minutes.

It's one of the funniest games I have ever played.

I've never heard anyone talk about it.

I don't know if anyone ever will, but maybe if one person goes out and plays this, oh my God, I'll be so happy.

So it's called Yume Penguin Monogatari.

Story of the Dream Penguin.

It's a Famicom game.

Nintendo, released by Konami in 1991.

The premise of this game, it's a platformer. in which you play a fat penguin.

Your girlfriend calls you on the phone that says, hey, you've gotten too fat.

I don't like you anymore.

I'm going out with this other penguin now.

And it's a penguin with a top hat and sunglasses.

He steals your girlfriend and and the girl's like well, if you can get to the end of this level, call me and maybe i'll change my mind.

So you start as a fat penguin and the game at the bottom.

What if this was made by a man?

No, it sounds like.

It sounds like the ultimate fear of every man.

Oh, my god, one of the items.

Boy like, How do I convince her to take me back?

I'll just fucking do better.

So in lieu of a health bar, you have like a fat meter.

It's like, again, this was translated, but I'm sure it's Google in Japanese.

It's like chunky, like, like Norfin and then skinny.

And like that affects your combat abilities.

So when you're fat, you're like a sumo.

You're very slow, but if you, you can like waddle and instant KO people, but you're slow.

And the game is like, you have like two minutes to get to the end and call your girlfriend.

So you don't want to be fat.

And this game completely inverts like everything about platformers because usually in platformers if you take damage or like final fight oh there's like a turkey leg on the ground or oh here's a here's a here's a pie let me eat that the game is filled with like food pickups but if you pick that up you get and enemies will throw food at you so if you so if you pick up the items you get fatter the only again this is so crazy it's especially in Japan, it's very anti-drug.

The only thing that you're supposed to get are diet pills.

So you kill enemies, they drop diet pills.

And the more diet pills you get, you lose weight and then your abilities get better.

And then it becomes almost like the equivalent of like Mario getting like the cape.

Where like, if you're like, if you're like fit, you can like you have, you can like shoot enemies across the screen, you can like jump so high so it's like it becomes insane that you can almost like break the gate if you maintain it.

But the whole time I was playing it's like oh, there's like fruit in the trees, let me get it.

Why am I dying?

And like It was so weird to just kind of realize like, oh wait, if you eat fruit it still hurts you.

Like, yeah.

And the only thing you want to encourage people to eat fruit calories.

It's just our pills.

Oh, yeah.

And like if you fall in the water, it's like 10,000 calorie water.

So you gain all your weight back.

Oh my God.

You're swimming around in high energy fucking drink.

So it's like very standard platformer.

And again, I feel like maybe it's a kid's game or something.

It's easy.

I hope not.

I hope it's a really good lesson for children.

I'm always worried with like old school Nintendo games.

Cause it's like, it's hard.

They're hard and impossible.

I was able to beat this without like safe States.

Like it's very friendly.

But like yeah, there's always a boss fight, but if you beat the boss fight and still fat your girlfriend's like not good enough.

You're still fat.

So like you have to be a boss and I'd be fat and I'd have to restart.

And so like, there's like a, yeah.

So, so you can beat the entire game, kill the final boss.

And if you're still fat, she rejects you.

So like, yeah i just wanted to take a moment and say like yeah you made penguin magatari i've never heard anyone talk about it it's hilarious like again if there's if we keep doing a series of like japanese let's plays on patreon whatever i would love to like yeah i would love to show this game off at some point it's it is so funny you made penguin monogatari genuinely one of the funniest premises game i've ever heard of and uh yeah again that's also just the gem of like different conversation but like in lieu of like physical game stores disappearing like that's what's so rad about japan is like i'll go into mondorock or super potato or any store book off and just like look at the shelves and i and i always take pictures and b-roll of it but it's just like what is this game what is this game what is this game and i write it all down on my on my phone and then come home and just down all this so yeah you may penguin monogatari by konami now if i see it on my next trip if i just want to buy this because it's such an insane game never been like ported no virtual console some random person trans translated it like in 1999 i was wondering why i was seeing all these english language versions on youtube yeah oh my god yeah very cute and funny What a bizarre.

Thank you for bringing it to our attention.

What an absolutely shameful piece of our show.

Watching gameplay now and like a little text that says shape up falls onto your character and you're like yeah yeah good, normal thin dream penguins this is.

It's funny too, because kirby is like all food themed and he eats stuff, but it's good when he.

This is like the inverse kirby, where it's like what if he felt bad about going to, you know, cake world?

There's levels that are literally on top of it.

I think at level two is you're fighting your way up a cake.

Yeah, I'm looking at that one right now.

If Kirby ate this penguin, would he like you know?

You know he takes on the sort of traits of this.

Would he take on this penguin's shame?

Would it take on the penguin's eating disorder?

Yeah, that would be like this penguin needs to needs to like meet a new girl in his life.

It's really sad that he's a very toxic relationship.

The only person for me is someone who left me for a thinner guy with sunglasses.

And now I have to get fit.

Hey, at least she's being honest.

She's speaking her truth.

You know, you know, she's an asshole, but you know, Penguins made for life.

He doesn't have a choice.

Guy's got a pretty sick top hat.

You know what i mean.

It is a cool hat.

Maybe that's the well that's, maybe that's the vibe it's.

It's more about the peacocking.

You know what i mean?

Wait, at the end of the cake level there's like a little conversation with the boss and it says frosting man.

Now you'll have to face me.

It's frosting man, i'll make you creamy and smooth, just like me.

Oh wow, This is the cream corn bit from Nirvana the band, the show happening all over again.

Wonderful.

Thank you.

Yume Penguin Monogatari.

And what's that translate to?

Dream something?

Story of the dream penguin.

The dream penguin being your girlfriend.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

So it's her story really about motivating, about gaslighting her boyfriend into into losing weight.

Losing weight yeah, everyone wins she's.

She's just trying to get him healthy in the most toxic way possible, in the most.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, i love you.

I love you chubby.

My dad used to call me chubbles.

Oh my god, i'm sorry.

Yeah no, it was.

It was a term of endearment.

No, i told that to my daughter and she fucking burst out laughing for like a minute.

Yeah, i bet i mean it is funny, because we were going through nicknames and i was like nicknames for her and then i was like, what were my nicknames?

It was like Yeah, my dad used to call me ugly bitch.

My dad called me tan chap.

And then he called me chubbles sometimes.

Chubbles.

I was a fat kid.

I'm still a fat kid.

I don't care about my fucking.

I got rid of those penguins years ago, man.

I got myself a nice little penguin now.

Tell you that much.

Oh, man.

Good stuff.

Thanks, Frank.

Final thoughts on Requiem.

What did you make of it?

Yeah, without any spoilers.

Yeah, I really loved it.

So, like the gameplay hook of this one is like you're playing as two characters and it goes back and forth.

Grace is like by the default setting, first person.

That is the more like high tension survival horror, much like Resident Evil 7.

And then the Leon sections is like roundhouse kicks, baby.

I would almost even compare it to like resident evil 6, if they got it right.

It is so over the top but in like the best way it is like i, and i think like the reason i enjoyed the leon stuff is you're suppressed so much when you're playing as grace.

Yeah, ammo scarce, it's hard, it's so scary.

There's only like one part that was like tedious.

And then when you're Leon, it's like, oh my God.

And like, oh, it's so it's such a delight.

Like, yeah, it's it's like not a surprise.

It's Resident Evil.

Capcom's been killing it.

So I loved it.

Tons of Easter eggs.

And they basically reference every Resident Evil.

I don't think there's any direct reference to Resident Evil six, but every other game is completely like reference.

And just the whole time, it's like, oh, this is awesome.

Awesome.

They have announced they will do, like, story DLC additionally.

Cool.

Yeah, and my final play time was, like, 11 hours, but I want to do New Game Plus.

And, yeah, it was awesome.

Are you playing on a PS5 Pro?

Yeah, just PS5 default.

Default, okay, because the PSSR2 stuff came out last month.

The pisser.

The pisser. right it is pisser 2.0 hit the hit hit you in the face they updated my pisser yep um mark cerny's here to piss all over your playstation open your mouth for the cerny um he's on digital foundry pissing on resident evil new faces um the uh conflating two stories here yeah so they added this um uh i guess it's their pssr stuff so it's it's the similar type of resolution upscaling stuff we're seeing with machine learning i guess um but apparently if you have a ps5 pro when you're playing that game that game runs a lot better this is not to be confused with the ds uh dls5 i was about to call it dslr yes thank you cameras in the game fine is there a mirrorless cameras right is there a certain point in your life where you have reached sort of like acronym and italicism like over saturation yeah yeah yeah like i can't take any more like sorry that's too many letters i got running for a pisser and that's it that's why I don't go on TikTok is like, I've like capped off.

Like I'm good with like what I have.

I don't need to like, like keep up with stuff.

I'm like, all right, I'm, I'm, I'm, yeah, I'm happy with it.

That's great.

Yeah.

I think that's being old.

That's becoming old, right?

That's it.

With like, you know, I like my political position right now.

I'm going to hold onto this for the next 40 years and hopefully I'll be on the right side of history.

Um yeah, but yeah, pisser 20 if you want to check it out, if you got a ps5 pro and if you don't have a ps5 pro, fucking buy one today.

Yeah, or the price goes up to be a thousand economy tanks.

If you're in the market for one, buy it now or forever.

Hold your peace.

I love that.

The consoles are appreciating goods that you can keep in your home.

Now you got to register them on your taxes for capital gains at this point.

Exactly.

If you have a steam deck, man, you might as well own Gabe's boat.

It's just like, you know, absolutely.

Just, you're going to be paying fucking capital gains on that.

My Lord.

Um, good stuff.

All right.

That was a bunch of, uh, A bunch of great games.

When are we doing the email episode?

You said you wanted to do it today.

We don't have to.

We're going to do it today?

We're going to record today?

When's it going up, though?

When's it going up?

I mean, it would have been the Patreon episode for this month, so today?

Yeah, let's do it today.

We'll take a little break and we'll do it today.

Sure.

Perfect.

We're going to have an email episode up for everyone on the Noclip Patreon, so go check that out.

Noclip Patreon, Noclip 2 Patreon, Noclip Patreon.

Noclip Patreon, Noclip 1.

Noclip Patreon, Noclip 1, Noclip 1.

I should know that.

Yeah.

It's been a busy week.

So yeah, go check that out.

Otherwise, there is a bunch of cool videos on our various channels.

By the time you watch this, the final episode of our Computer Worlds.

Series will be up all about Ultimate Drummer, which is just a fucking great piece of weirdness.

I'm really into that game.

Uh, jesse's loading video as well, if you didn't miss.

If you missed that already, the big preview on the legend of california is also a no clip to the disco lesion series is done and dusted.

Episode six is up.

It went up about an hour and a half ago.

Massive thanks to everyone for helping on that one.

Jeremy obviously led the edit on that bad boy.

Frank howdy captured a bunch of gameplay um, and i was happy to get it out the door, get the whole thing done and dusted.

It took like four months to finish those episodes, for a variety of environmental reasons, i would say, more than anything else.

Thanksgivings and holidays and all these other bits and bobs, lots of other work that we were doing in the meantime um, But yeah, happy to have those out for sure.

And yeah, that's the story.

That's it.

I have no idea how people are reacting to it.

I don't know if people are going to be pissed off that we didn't fucking do a four hour video about how everyone is angry at their old friend.

But, you know, that's sort of the point of this, perhaps the point of the.

The video is to not conflate interpersonal office bullshit with... What's the word?

I shouldn't say supposed.

I'm trying to cover my arse legally here.

Alleged IP theft.

Yes, I think the more we spend talking about fucking who doesn't like who for what reason, the less uh, the more it takes uh, it takes the, you know, attention away from the actual problem, which is, i alleged ip theft.

So yeah patreon, bonus video though, where all those people fist fight each other on camera.

Yes, absolutely Yes.

And the winner gets the control of the intellectual property of Disco Elysium.

Argo would win.

That's the problem.

He looks tough.

Argo looks like he'd kick the fuck out of you.

I don't know how tall he is, but he looks like he's stocky.

He looks like the kind of guy who's very sensitive, and then you piss him off and he beats the fuck out of you.

And you just can't put him down.

He's a wild animal, that guy.

Yeah, he's just got that dog in him.

Yeah.

I don't know who else.

He's got that hog in him.

Hey, bring it back.

There you go.

Love it.

All right.

We'll wrap it up there.

Thanks everyone for listening to the podcast.

We'll see you next week.

Bye.

[Noclip Podcast Episode 274: From Hogs of War Nostalgia to the Friction of MMO Design]-[WoW: Midnight, Screamer, Grim Dawn]

📋 Summary

The Enduring Appeal of Retro Gaming and 'Hogs of War'

The "Frictionless" Problem in Modern MMOs

The Complexity of Representation in 'The Legend of California'

Action RPGs: Treadmills vs. Worlds

Niche Discoveries and Resident Evil

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript

[Noclip Podcast Episode 274: From Hogs of War Nostalgia to the Friction of MMO Design]-[WoW: Midnight, Screamer, Grim Dawn]

📋 Summary

The Enduring Appeal of Retro Gaming and 'Hogs of War'

The "Frictionless" Problem in Modern MMOs

The Complexity of Representation in 'The Legend of California'

Action RPGs: Treadmills vs. Worlds

Niche Discoveries and Resident Evil

Deep Learning with ListenLeap

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript

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