1Upsmanship: Diablo 2 (Feat. Abe Epperson)

Slap on your controversy armor Ship Heads, because this episode’s got some scorching hot takes that are gonna do some real AoE damage to looter fans. Joined by longtime pal, collaborator and Dia-bro Abe Epperson (Small Beans), our journey takes some twists and turns as we talk about the growth of the looter genre, Diablo 2’s historical significance, the role of internet communities in game development and whether the destination IS the journey for one of the most beloved PC games in video game history. Don’t miss it!

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Oh, nothing, Abe. How many hours would you say you

(00:25):
and I have played Diablo the franchise together? Is it?
Is it a hundred? No? Right? Oh, it could be
played all the way through Diablo three together. Now No,
that's wrong. No, we did, didn't We we played all une.
I don't know. I'm making up a number day. I
would say over fifty, but between fifteen Yeah, yeah, that's right.

(00:49):
That's a lot. This is that is a lot. I
was gonna say, like, this might be like our game,
like if we right, like uh like, is this a
rocket League? This is the game you and I play most, right,
But we usually just talk about other stuff because it's
one of those mindless grinds, you know exactly. That's a
key ingredient for this thing that we're going to talk
about on today's one ups Friendship. Welcome ship heads to

(01:12):
a glorious episode, a highly anticipated episode of your favorite
and best video game podcast on the Internet. This is
one of your hosts, Adam Ganzer. Our pal Mike is
out this week and with us his glorious partner on
the sister network, Small Beans, and great friend and co
director of mine. Introduce yourself, sir, Hey, this is Ave Epperson.

(01:33):
Thanks for the kind of words, and I'm happy to
be here. That's right. You you brought all your all
your accolades and shoulder pads and like all the things
you put on your breastplate every day. With my shoulder
pads that everyone immediately recognized and says, look, that's a
man with shoulder pads, my respect. That's how it works.

(01:54):
That deserves respect because look how shiny his shoulders are.
Fathers will tell their die you need to find a
man bring them home. Then I'll finally bless you. Yeah,
that's right. I mentioned that only because aside from being
an illustrious and esteemed guest, Abe and I have a

(02:14):
lot of time invested in this game, which I know
is a fan favorite and probably one of the most
beloved games and franchises in PC gaming at least. Yeah,
it's safe to say, wouldn't you. And that is Diablo two.
Diablo two we are going to be talking about today.
We're gonna get into all the dungeons, go through all

(02:37):
the layers, every act until we finally decide should we
keep or delete the precious Diablo two, which means we're
gonna snap right away into format and pass our very
first checkpoint and do the new and improved segment on
one upsmanship. Tell me like I'm a bit in which
our illustrious guests will explain to someone who's never heard

(02:59):
of Diablo too what it is. Take it away, sir,
all right, all right, let's go. Let's go. All right,
let's go. So Diablo two resurrected, which is what I
assumed this we're talking about, you know, yeah, we're talking
about the update, right, Okay, that's twenty twenty one. It
came out. It's an action RPG based off the two
thousand game Diablo two. It's a remake. Uh it's it's

(03:23):
not a reboot or anything like that. It's just straight
up remastering really with quality of life in it. It's
an action RPG, Hack and slash one of the ogs,
but mainly it's a looter um. That's really what it
brought to the table. And you play as one of
seven classes. There's Paladin, barb source, Sorcerer, there's necro manswer. Yeah,

(03:46):
there's a Amazon you can tell how much I play
this game, Druid and an assassin, and you're the hero
of the story. And there's five acts and each act
follows a series of linear quests in a procedurally generated
area maps in easy. Each act has a town that
acts as your hub for your stash shops, quest givers

(04:06):
while you reach way points to further your journey deeper
into the acts. And then an Act four you killed
Diablo the Devil. And then there's an Act five, which
originally was a DLC for Diablo two called lords of
or Lord of Destruction? Were you killing other prime evil
named Ball or Bail depending on when you've played this game,

(04:27):
who's the brother of Diablo and the Fisto? And it's
all about killing monsters and looting bosses for top tier
loot to create alongside your skill tree builds and make
you more powerful and progress you through the game. And
the fun of the game comes from getting unique loot
and creating builds. You can just decimate mops. That's it. Yeah,
I think you're I think that's spot on ya. That's

(04:50):
absolutely what this game is. If you've never heard of it,
you probably haven't played much in this genre because as
far as I can tell, never having played the original
in its heyday. But it seems like Diablo two kind
of is the is the benchmark for this genre of
dungeon crawling looters, you know, which there are many. Yeah,

(05:11):
it was the earliest big title that you know, there's
always that combination. There's maybe a few that are earlier.
I don't remember when, like Balder's Gate came out, but
it's like in terms of Bal's Gate, yeah, it like
it made it a franchise. It was like, oh, they
did it. They we just opened up, we got we
leveled up in terms of our you know, is this

(05:31):
how how many people will play this? I think that's right. Um,
for a little while it held the title of like
fastest selling game of all time on a like PC. Yeah. Yeah,
and uh look there's other there were other little details
about where it falls in this timeline. It is after
Balder's Gate. Um. It is sort of I think the

(05:52):
most beloved of the D and D adaptation series, you know,
because there's a bunch of them that have sort of
took all the premise, like not just premise, but a
lot of the mechanics of D and D and then
gamifight it and this is sort of one of the
most important of those. According to you know, game game Thinks.
According to the game Thinks around the internet. Uh so

(06:13):
you know, Uh, that's that's all the stuff that we've
inherited when we talk about Diablo two. So let's pass
our next checkpoint and uh, let's get right into how
you and I feel in our rants about this game. Uh.
Either one of us can go first. Typically I would
go first, but Abe, since we're both hosts, we can

(06:33):
do whatever we want. Do you want to go first?
That's right, you're a host name I thought, mindset na, no,
no you Since I talked for a while, great, okay, great,
all right, Adam Ganzer plugging in Diablo two is just fine.
It's not incredible, It's fine. Um. I think a lot

(06:56):
of people who love this game love it for nostalgic reasons,
and I can't far be it from me to take
that away from anybody. I can see why it's fun.
I have gotten my talents in several looters over the years.
This is not my favorite one, but I understand that
it's a formative one in this arc. Like, so, I'm

(07:16):
not here to say that it isn't. And I think
for me, the question of it is this game seminal
will come down to how important is is the mechanics
that it's bringing to bear and how important are those
for games in general? I would say in general, this
game is not the type of game that gets me
super excited, though I do like Looters. We all know

(07:39):
that I love Destiny to trust me that some stuff
will come up from Destiny to in this episode, because
that's my favorite of the looters genre. But it's not
the only one. I like the Division two. I like
that recent I like Borderlands that franchise, and even Tiny
Tina's Wonderlands, which we talked about on this podcast last year.
So there's a lot of them that I like. I

(08:00):
also tend to like stuff the Blizzard has made, like
I like StarCraft, and I've played a little bit of
World of Warcraft. Not enough to comment on it yet, sadly,
but I get it. I get the Blizzard and this
game matter for the history of it. But that said,
it's not that great of a game. Here's what I
mean by that. There's a lot of reused assets. The

(08:22):
game loop itself is pretty flat, like, there's really not
a lot to this. It's very much like, you know,
you build one of the two or three skill trees
that you get for your character, and by the way
the game sort of inadvertently incentivizes you to max out
one skill tree before you start another one, because progress
is very incremental and you don't start seeing the real

(08:44):
powers of this skill tree till later in the tree. So, like,
you know, the game turns out to be kind of
the same for a long stretch of it. Loot itself,
while it has tears and there's lots of different things
it can do, is a fundamentally same experience. Now, I
don't want to say that it's h I don't want
to say that it's entirely bland. It has a kind

(09:06):
of there's an escalation in how much damage you can do,
and there's there's very little in gaming that's more fun
than taking a couple of friends through a dungeon and
like hanging out and blazing through a series of like
you know, wolfmen or whatever, or like sent up heede
guys with sticks or whatever, you know, and like all
those assets and all that, like you know, creepy gothic

(09:27):
stuff is fun, and it's fun to do with friends,
but ultimately it's sort of like clicking a button and
like you know, the animation happens, and then you're just
sort of scanning through your stuff and your inventory and
warping back to town. And there's some things even in
this remaster that should have been fixed for quality of
life reasons that aren't like the idea of having to
identify objects, or the idea of having a scroll that

(09:50):
you need to use in order to go back to town,
just like stuff that they didn't want to mess with
what Diablo two was when it came out, so they
didn't fix it. And it's like, yeah, but that just
makes the game more encumbersome. So like, on a core level,
there's nothing wrong with this if you like it, Like
I'm not here to say no, you don't le sure, Okay,
I get it, you like it, But it's it's not

(10:11):
the most complicated loop. It feels like it sort of
reduces all the endorphins I get out of an action
sequence to the click of a mouse or I played
this particular one on console for the second time, and
on console it's even less directed than that, I would say,
like because you can't really aim as much with the buttons,
like you're sort of at the mercy of the auto
aim of your character, and it's even worse there, So

(10:34):
it's not as good as on a console in my opinion.
So there's that's my mechanic conversation. As a story, this
story feels the way a lot of video games feel,
which is they sort of have gated the sequences with bosses,
and every story is ultimately about how do you finally
get to beat Mephisto or beat Ball or beat Diablo,

(10:55):
and the journey is a little bit arbitrary, and the
defeating diabload is not the most satisfying thing in gaming
because there's not a lot of personal stakes. It's all
kind of lower stakes. And I think if you're the
kind of person that gets invested in a narrative like
you would in Dungeons and Dragons because you want to

(11:16):
see what happens, like if you enjoyed on sort of
a pulp comicy kind of way, you might like it.
Like there's nothing wrong with it, it's just that it's
not a very personalized or emotionally evocative story. It's just
kind of cruising through a wacky, spiritual D and D
type world and killing a lot of enemies that are

(11:36):
kind of the same and then repeating it. And hey, man,
far be it for me to say you didn't like that.
But to me, I don't see how this game matters
in twenty twenty three when so many things have improved
upon it in meaningful ways. That's my rant. I know,
I know it, jessup. Uh oh man, Yeah, I just disagree. Okay, great,

(12:05):
that's how I want. That's how it goes. Do I
respond to you or do I just how much of
my ranch should be me talking about what I want
to talk about and the nonsense that you just mentioned.
You know, buddy, that's up to you. It's all your decision,
all right, cool? Yea too strapping, strapping in, blowing the cartridge,

(12:30):
plugging it in, all that stuff. Uh yeah. So there's
a few games, not many, but I'll claim that I
am probably a victim of nostalgia goggles. For sure. I'm
probably in love with the time more than the merits
of the game. But there's something that still kind of
nags em. And I don't think that's the complete story.

(12:50):
So I don't entirely accept that criticism of my like like,
I mean, of my take. Criticize my take all you want,
but I mean, like I it's I don't think it's
just that. So my hot take is ultimately and It
kind of goes into what you were saying, is the
statement Polish is overrated in terms of story to gameplay balance,

(13:13):
the idea of loop pools and how they're constructed in
this game, grind difficulty, stuff that to me actually matters
in this genre. This game was has never been beat
by any of the clones like Torchlight, Balder's Gate, Path
of Exile, even like Demon Souls, like not even touching

(13:34):
it to me, and it is simply the best dungeon
crawler I mean Diablo two. I mean, I think Diablo
two Resurrected is now the premier way to play Diablo
two because I think there's quality of life stuff that. Honestly,
since you never even played the first one, you don't
even know it was. It was even worse. I looked
it up. I looked it up. Diablo two Resurrected is

(13:56):
a very minimally changed Yeah. I think it's. Uh, it's
it's how they interpreted. Well, if we're going to remake
this game and it was popular for so many years
and so many die hard fans, we kind of catering
to them. But anyway, um, it's a game that takes
time and it definitely needs a grind, yes, but the

(14:19):
grind is surprisingly easy and quick if you know what
you're doing and you kind of have the right builds
in your mindset. So it makes getting top tier loot
fun in a way that I don't think modern looters do.
They just don't have that component. It just doesn't exist
because they think the grind is something too that I

(14:42):
think modern games think that the grind is something that
they need to make simplified, and I don't think that
that truly is the fun of the game. Uniqueness is
a feature, not a bug, and the world is big enough,
but it's not too big, so the things don't really
get bogged down buy things like travel that I think
have modern problems like I'm basically talking about, like it ignores.

(15:07):
You are correct that it ignores twenty years of evolution
in game design, because it didn't really it existed before that,
and then when they redid it, they readied it for
a different purpose. And my one knock against D two,
which by the way, when you say D two, you
think it's Destiny too, but it's actually not. That it's

(15:29):
catered to the die hard fans because it's a classic game,
so it didn't change much. But I love the retro
aspect of this game through and through. I don't think
it's broke, so I don't want to fix it. And
even with like some of the clunkiness that you mentioned
from things like the isometric view and like how like
you were mentioning clicking on it like or like clicking

(15:51):
on a screen to walk around in a way you
played with controller. I don't stand for that shit. I
do not find that twenty years of game design makes
this better. I don't need it to be a Kingdom
Hearts or some shit. That's fine. It's a different game.
This is about menus and loots, loot baby, So I

(16:12):
don't care honestly about like the like the gripes of
some of the cosmetics and the gripes about some of
the clunkiness. If you're into this type of thing, I
think it's ultimately more rewarding than any game that you
pour into like now, if you're looking for a looter experience.

(16:34):
That's my opinion. So yeah, Like because you mentioned like idea,
like there's there's some aspects like the identification, like using
a scroll to get back to town and stuff, and
that cumbersome element you're totally right about that. I don't
think it hurts or breaks the game. It's just a
small little but what what games don't have that? Um?

(16:54):
I think it's also one of those games that you
really do need to pour hours into because you were
mentioning like hanging out and like in a dungeon and
stuff like that, which is really fun. But the way
I played this game is different than I think the
way you played the game, no doubt, because part why
I wanted you on this episode because so we can

(17:14):
contrast those because I think that there is a casual
way in which you play this game that is fun
and Diabo three catered too because more people play that
way but really want to unlock what the game has
to offer, and so we're really evaluating a game on
its merit. I really do think that there's a way

(17:35):
in which you play, and it's kind of more of
a power user. It's knowing the builds, knowing what things
to go for, and ignoring stuff that doesn't. Now, games,
there's a huge philosophy about and conversation about should games
ask that of their audience? Well, I mean, I think
it's the type of audience that that's what they want.
They're already into the concept like loot tables and organizing information,

(18:00):
being like, oh, I'm excited that I'm going to go
to this specific area now because then you know, they'll
be mefesto and I'll get a like a Shaco drop
or something like that. And like the exhilaration that you
get when you when that happens, that's what it's for.
That moment. That and all other moments are building to
that moment, and it's perfectly well done. So I guess

(18:20):
that's end of rain. I could go on, but like, no,
and we're going to you raise a lot of really
key points. That is it's perfect exactly what I want
to talk about with this game, um, and we're going
to get into that once we walk back to town,
identify some objects, talk to Deckard Cane, and decide who
we're bringing along on the next wing of our journey
after these awhile and listen, I have no idea you're

(18:51):
going to bring out your Deckard Cane and pressure and
there's so many good ones. Yeah I forget I actually
forget his name, but an act four there's like another one,
Hey to you, Champion, which is one of my bits,
like every time he says it, I say it to
myself and like in lowly in my breath, like, hell
do you champion? Like I say it back to the game.
The voice acting is very silly in this game, but

(19:13):
in a very win winsome way, I would say, like,
it's very charming. By the way, We're back all that
staying in. So I hope you liked it everyone heard
it because I love ab impressions. They're my favorite thing. Um. Okay,
let's pass our biggest checkpoint to date, the one that
really gets us into the meat of the episode, and

(19:33):
get right into game on where you and I will
argue to the death, probably where one of us finally
drops all of our gold over whether or not we
have who is right about this game and who is not.
Let me ask you a real quick question right off
the top, and that is how do you play this game? Like?
What do you think the ideal way to play this
game that makes it fun? And explain that to me

(19:57):
on the ladder. Shortly on the ladder, playing with a
group of friends, um ideally more than like four, ideally
like eight, um, and you're working together to maximize the
seven builds, so you have one of each in your party,

(20:18):
you have one of each of uh those um classes
and builds that there's nothing there's no area you can
go where immunities matter, so you can destroy anything. Um. Now,
obviously not everyone has a group of seven friends, so
the game does next seven or seven friends. My mom

(20:42):
thinks I have more than seven friends. She's also hardcore
D two by the way, I could see it and
part uh no, but like I think that they they
give it to you right there is like you do
you have a specific purpose, like I want to do

(21:03):
bail a ball run right, Okay, I want to just grind.
I want to kill him forty five times tonight. Uh
And let's have let's have a group of players come in.
Ideally your friends, but they also can just be randos
that are of the same level of your and you
just go and demolish him, right, and then do it
again every minute, every two minutes, you know, and then

(21:25):
you and then you race and grab the loot, race
and grab the loot, and then by the end of
the night, maybe you've gotten something that changes an entire
build for a different character. Right. So, so the idea
is that you're sort of partnering with a couple of
people to it, either conctrant on one person's build, or
maybe you all benefit from this like dungeon crawl. But

(21:46):
it's a great like the grind is the thing. It's
not the story. It's it's a it's the we finally
get this one cool piece of loot, or we get
enough XP that our characters, you know, skill tree opens
up a little bit, right, that's the basic idea. Yeah, yeah, okay,
all right, yeah, yeah, no, no, no, that makes sense.
I do think the story. I'll say there's something funny,

(22:06):
which is when you play a game or like a
game loop that you really like, I think the story
starts to become fun. Like even I can't even see
the story objectively, I agree, because it's just a series
of actions that I must do. But like, yes, over time,
as I played, you know, the story is actually pretty good.
I's like, that is what fucking happens, man, Like, Like
I completely agree. As you know, I played Destiny two,

(22:29):
which I will for the purpose of this episode not
reference too many times also not called d two. But
des two has the same phenomenon where you get a
bunch of people together and over time they start being
like you know, the story is actually really d and
it's like, no, it's not like it's it's simple and
it does the job, that's right. Like Desty two has
the advantage of being later and having a little bit

(22:51):
more capability of cinematics and therefore, you know, to the
degree that it wants to accomplishes it. But ultimately, what
it's selling is the same experience as what you just said,
which is, get your friends together, go grind for this
one particular thing or this like you know, for the
xp of it all where you expand your character and
you know, open up some you know, new builds or whatever,

(23:13):
and that's the joy of it, right, that's the joy
of it. So to me, that means that this game
needs to be structured around a few key things for
it to be worth it. The first is interesting or
unique weapons. And that's where I don't get it with
Diablo too, because to me, the weapons are not that
interesting or game changing. The skill sets, I'm will I'm

(23:36):
open to that, I like, I can maybe even stipulate
that they get interesting later on, but like the weapons
seem pretty disposable to me, you know, whereas you play.
I mean a lot of these other games right, Well,
see that's the thing. It's like, well, if the armor
and weapons are disposable, then what am I really doing
this for? Because the rarity of an amazing thing the

(23:59):
journey to getting to the thing, because you're gonna need
the lame drop to get you to the next lame
drop next, so you can effectively grind a specific boss.
And then once you got into the point where you're
doing enough DPS, you get that, you get that room
to drop, you know, and now you're a rum word.
And now the room word is insane because it's plus

(24:22):
three two bone skill and it's just like, you mean
all of that whole tree is now plus three yes,
And it's like, well now everything I do is like
eight times as good. Um. And it's like suddenly the
game opens up and they have and so the weapons
are more specific and and you know that's the concepts
of legendaries like in Borderlands and Dimbo three and you

(24:46):
know all of these there's unique weapons that are just
not only unique in that they are rare, but they
uh they have to change attribute and it changes the
way you play. Again. Yeah, so I just think that, yeah,
maybe you're experience, I would say, and honestly, like thirty
you know, with D two with probably like thirty hours

(25:07):
down or however many you had. Um, you're getting a
similar feeling. You're saying, you're getting a similar feeling, but
you're not getting the good stuff. See never, I think
I gotta argue with that, like never went to nightmare
you and never went to Hell you? Never? You didn't
really play it, like you played a third of the game.
Maybe I well I did. I did finish the campaign,
but I didn't play it on nightmare mode. If that's

(25:28):
what you're saying, Yeah, nightmare mode in hell is where
she gets good God. Well okay, sure, So like that
means and im and I'm not disparaging the game. I'm
just I'm just like qualifying what you're saying is how
I'm hearing it, which is that means this game requires
fifty sixty hours to get to the thing that makes
it addictive and fund right right right. And I get

(25:49):
the I get the appeal of that. I really do.
I'm the guy who you remember this last year, I
like I wasn't going to any of our movie nights
because instead of doing that, I was coupling up with
six and trying to get Vexsmith a class from the
which is a gun in Destiny too, And I didn't
one hundred and twenty times before I finally got it.

(26:10):
So like the key emotional experience, I get it. But
the thing that seems punitive to me is that it
doesn't take me that long to get to a place
where I can get Vexsmith a class. It's just an
R and G question, like in your case, like where
the real sweet loot is. It feels like, man, you've
got to really already like this grind to start liking

(26:31):
this grind for run for like ruins and ruin words,
there are early level run words that are fucking slap um.
There are ways to play the game. I think I
gave okay, you gave me forget what it was that,
here's the thing you play Druid and Drew it isn't
There are some pretty good or well you and I

(26:53):
had at argument about should I be a Druid or
not we started this run and I was like, I
was like, nah, aware Wolf, and I was like, great,
I'd like to be Awarewolf and you're like you could
be aware of bear and I said even better. See,
so like now we know the kind of commitment you're
getting to this. It's like a joke to you. You

(27:16):
could have a joke. No, no, no, I love this
technique that you have pioneered. Of undermining my credibility here,
but I put him plenty of time on Diablo two,
and I've played the franchise enough that's fair to say. Like,
I'm not saying this is bad. Please, nobody hear me
saying that. I'm just saying that unless you played it
in its heyday where you really had that addiction experience

(27:37):
before there were these iterations on it, If you didn't
have that experience, it's hard to go back and see
why this particular outing is the one that people are
stoked about, other than somebody explaining it to you like
on a spreadsheet. Well, in two thousand, this didn't exist,
and like and because I feel like in every aspect
of gameplay and the actual addict thing, the addiction loop,

(28:02):
lots of games are better than this now, right, lots
and lots of games. Now, there's a lot of looters
that we aren't talking about that seemed to also have
iterated on this formula that I haven't even played enough
to comment on, Like path of Exile. Have you played that?
I played Path of Exile, and I find that too much.
That's that's too much war die Hard. Yeah, that's for

(28:22):
my brother, who was like, okay two thousand and one
actually globally ranked like on Diablo. You know, like he
put in so much time yea, like destroyed his college,
you know. Like that's and so I got ushered into
like the highest highs because he would be like take
this character, like I don't want it in anymore. Ye

(28:44):
get it away from me, and I want to talk
about the character, you know. So I got access to
like what the game could be early on without being
good at it. That's awesome though, because that's another thing
that's actually really fun about Diablo is that there was
a period of time I don't know if it's still happening,
because I didn't look into this where like there was
an actual off mark, like a black market of selling
items and stuff, yes, you know, where like like people

(29:07):
got so into this game and like so into finding
the rare and unique clue that people could like actually
make money by doing this grind and then selling the
items to people. One of the first forums, I think
that's two JSP I remember that shit. And I remember
my brother would sell like p gems and runs and
literally make hundreds of dollars, right, and that's like, that's incredible,

(29:31):
And also what's wrong with video games? Like yeah, for real,
for real? Yeah, but like and there there's a yeah
because there there's still always going to be that kind
of thing because of the just the rarity of the items.
But also there's a market because like you can just
like there would be benchmark runs like an IST run

(29:52):
that would like one IST run for you know, a
Shako helmet, or one is run for YadA YadA, or
and then there were be like so they would have
like benchmarks for the cost of these things. So all
you do is you just go and farm those rooms.
Right of course, now you just have money. You know.
It wasn't even getting unique items. It was just like

(30:14):
someone has a drop or I just need a bunch
of Stones of Jordan, and I would be I would
be offended by that because that seems so predatory as
a thing. But the truth of the matter is video
games in general have created more ancillary jobs, not less
since that time, not necessarily paying for items, which seems
very mercenary. But like again to go back to most

(30:35):
of these looters. Almost every looter has an economy of
people who play it and then tell you these are
the things that you can get, like here's how you
get them, like sort of give you like they're serpas.
If you will, you know, you're kind of paying for serpas.
Every game economy seems to have that. So, like, even
though I think the idea of selling an item that
you grinded for to a less like a less accomplished

(30:59):
player seems little dubious to me, it's clear there's a
market for it that's not going to be denied. It's
only for like the hardcore people. That's you know, that's
who all these games are ultimately for. All these games
are ultimately for people who they got on the sweet
sweet addiction train. And like, hey man, as as an

(31:20):
addict of one of these type of games, Um, I
get it. I think they're fun and I don't think
they're necessarily immortal wrong for doing that. You know, it's
just a question of like, so like does this one
get you? And why? You know, And I'm and this
is why I come back to I'm having a hard
time with Diablo too, because the weapons and the grind
are both a little bland to me. You know, yeah,

(31:43):
I mean I think I think there's a blandness anytime.
I don't know that blandness is highly subjective, so I
it right. But like there's something that you said in
your rant that stuck with me about like I think
the key to you're like you you're hesitance to not
seeing pain past, like like what you think is blandness.

(32:07):
Like you said something where you're like, there's you only
have three skill trees. There's not a lot of skill
trees for each class, right, but like the but that's
the thing with this game, and that's what I was
kind of trying to say, is that, like a lot
of games, number goes up and there's some synergies that like,
oh yeah, two numbers go up, But this game truly

(32:28):
has unique builds where it's like you cast this thing
for twenty levels and you can put twenty uh you know,
like points into it, and then you get this other
synergy now that the utility of that one thing now
turns into an entirely different thing. And like this, so
like I think that the skill trees for the game

(32:50):
itself is a lot deeper than we give credit to
and I would say that in terms of modern game design,
they don't really break the bank in this way. They
don't try to make it so that the synergies are
like crazy revolutionary to your whole skill tree. The second
that you put like five points into it kind of

(33:11):
does and that's unique to this game and really satisfying
and changes the way in which the game is played.
And I think they balanced for it. So that's why
ad hoc or just like before anything you do, it
feels bland because you kind of get over the all right,
I go do the thing, you know, click the button,
click the button, click the button, which all games have.
But yeah, I understands a little bit of Yeah, it's

(33:33):
an older one, so it feels especially slow. But like
once you start playing with like oh because I have
this new armor, I can do this new thing, or
now we can teleport and I'm not even a source er.
Now your game is completely different. I want to support
some of what you're saying by contrasting it with like
a couple of a couple of game examples out there.

(33:54):
So like I would say Borderlands has a much shallower tree,
even though they have classes. I think so like Ultimately,
what you're able, like the powers you're able to unlock
and the specializing you're able to do is less meaningful
than Diablo two, And that game is, of course much
later on. Destiny too, has taken ten years to even

(34:15):
create working builds off of the three class types, and
that's because it's taken forever for them to like vary
up the light and specialties and stuff. So like that
game has way less class specialization than Diablo two for sure,
Like it's not even close. There's other games out there,

(34:37):
like I mean, obviously Division two basically doesn't have it,
and other games like that I'm wondering about. And this
is game I haven't played enough, so I'm kind of
asking if you've played it, have you played much war Frame?
I tried war Frame for a bit, and it really
does it feels like Borderlands because, like as you mentioned,
with Borderlands, the skill trees aren't really that influential because

(34:59):
it's about the gu war Frame seems to have seems
from what I can tell, I mean, I haven't played
it enough to say, but I the vibe I get
is that Warframe is a much more malleable experience when
it comes to the combat, Like the combat can really
be wide open in that game, compared to any of

(35:20):
the games we've listed so far where it really isn't
ye if Luter Shooter is your cup of the shooter
or an issymmetric view, like they're completely different things. Well,
I think that Warframe also has swords and melee stuff too,
and I think it has a pretty robust melee stuff.
I'm just saying that because all these game franchises, like

(35:41):
all these RPGs that have classes or specializations have to
sort of be accountable to like do they stack up
to different actual ways to play the game? Do they
become necessary in the endgame to like activities? Right, So,
like Swim and I get in these arguments all the
time about which or three, which or three have meaningful
class decisions with your girlds, Like if you specialize in this,

(36:04):
if you build up this tree, is it a different
play style? And it kind of that ends up kind
of being a little bit subjective where people are like, yeah,
it meant something to me, um, But the actual gameplay
doesn't change a whole bunch in most of those games,
even something like Cyberpunk where you can decide between uh,
you know, like, am I going to be a am
I going to be a terrorist? Or am I gonna

(36:25):
sort people suddenly turn into Kata Katamari Domacie but unfortunately,
uh you know, like like in Borderlands, there's guns that
are like, oh it does this, uh, it does this
thing where the ricochets do all of the damage, or
right in U Diablo, a great example would be like
you have like a sorcerer who can do an area

(36:47):
of effect or do a bolt or something like that.
But there's some unique classes, especially in Nightmare for the Druid,
there's a great class that's an elemental build, which is
has the spell Hurricane and she pump up those synergies
you literally cast in always have it on. It's so
usually have a baring tank. You just always have it
on and you run around and you kill everything. And
it's a boring build, but it's like a it's kind

(37:10):
of a like a transitive build or like a like
a liminal build, because it's like get me out of Nightmare,
might give me. There's a lot of me to the
end of the level. Like it's a it's an escape
of build. It's kind of like the builds are there
for utility, you also have builds that are like this
build just does one you kill, You go to the

(37:32):
pit and you kill everything, you know. I mean, so
I say this, like actually in support of your point,
I think Diablo two is actually better than people give
it credit for at creating fairly unique experiences with combat,
given the skill trees that you open up, even even
though like, ultimately it is sort of just like clicking

(37:53):
a button casting a spell and the spell looks like this. Yeah,
but like I don't know what else you're really expecting,
you know, you know what I mean, shooter like Destiny
or like warf. What are you gonna do? Roll around
and run up to them and smash them or shoot them?
You know, I mean you're ready to do that is
Ultimately they become sort of arbitrary distinctions if you get

(38:15):
to like to yeah, I think macro cosmic about it.
But one thing that I feel like Diablo two wasn't
yet sophisticated enough for that I do miss when I
play it is the idea of the campaign or even
just sort of like the inter emission stuff building to

(38:35):
more complex gameplay mechanics. Yeah, you know, like that just
really doesn't exist at all in Diablo. Like, it's true,
it's more stronger enemies, more of them. Right, Most games
that have had that have existed in the last like
I don't know, even fifteen years, which is not that
much that not that far away from Diablo two, have
a kind of, um, there's a sophisticated training sense in which,

(39:01):
like some of the missions there to train you on
these other mechanics which are then going to use in
the end game content or in the strikes or whatever
it is that are sort of the the ultimate experience
of this game. Um, Diablo doesn't really have that. And
I would say even other Blizzard games kind of have that,
Like if you play through like StarCraft's campaign or like

(39:21):
StarCraft two's campaign, they sort of give you a tutorial
like miniaturized experience of StarCraft to build up to the
actual real time strategy like full on combat that is
the final game, and so they've sort of structured their
campaign around that. Diablo doesn't have that. It's just the

(39:42):
campaign is all that it is. Is that. Do you
think that's a knock against the game or you're like, Noah,
they're a specialist. I think that's just an aspect about
being early, early in gaming like because I mean pac
Man also didn't have a tutorial, you know, like it
we're just like talk out. We're talking about like the
age in which the game was made and what was

(40:04):
like the kind of pre eminent zeitgeist in which people
were talking about and what they wanted out of games.
It wasn't really on the top of the list. And
then once it started becoming the top of list because
there's a games that would fail because of it and
et cetera, et cetera, like it became a conversation, and
then the conversation was ended and we all have tutorials
for every game now. And it's true. So I think
tutorial is, like it's a total issue. Like you, I

(40:26):
think it's a preference, and I think that's one of
the aspects of game evolution that have just improved over time.
But I don't think it can be a knock against
something that exists out of like in the past, like
they didn't have the knowledge. It can't be a knock
like this game is bad because it's not this. But
I do think that when you're talking about where a
game belongs in in the larger conversation, it not having

(40:51):
that is detrimental to its long term legacy, right like,
not that that makes the game itself intrinsically bad, but
that means the game's legacy itself is somewhat less important
because it's less sophisticated. And we may guess My question
to you is, like stuff like the warp skip and
Super Mario Brothers three yea, the warp whistle yep h

(41:13):
does that game worse because that it doesn't tell you
to even think outside of the box in that way?
Say that to me a different way, Ask me that
question a different way. If a game ultimately doesn't teach
you to think in the way that benefits or like
allows you to hack around a part of the game,

(41:35):
and it doesn't teach you that that mindset or that
skill set, does that make the game worse? Always like,
So in this case, I think you're saying in the
analogy because Mario didn't train you to look for the
warp whistle, but it's in the even think about jump
on top of the thing and run to the next
round secret room, Right like, if if a game has

(41:58):
a kind of like a hidden sort of trapdoor that
it's not training you for but is in the game,
and some people find it. Is that a knock against
the game. I'm gonna say increasingly no, And I say
increasingly no, because now game designers can lean on the
Internet to expose it. That for them true, right, Like

(42:18):
I mean, very famously, Destiny one had had a raid.
I want to say it was a raid where like
they had they had a fucking room that was operating
in binary code, where like all the guardians had to
execute a binary code and there's no fucking way one
person could have ever executed that. Oh they did. And
now that now they're actually generals of our space harmony.

(42:42):
They got promoted to space General. They are Finder Wigan.
But again there's like the average gamer, the above average gamer,
the hardcore gamer, the Destiny fiend. None of those people
are going to get that that is for one person
out there to crack and share on the internet. So
we all get to be like yeah, yeah, and then
you do it and you get the delicious to it,

(43:02):
and you get the delicious meat, right exactly once the
lot of the crab has finally been broken, open meat.
It's exactly. So like do I count that against the game?
I don't know, Like that's clearly designed with that purpose
in mind, Mario three wasn't Mario three unless it was
unless we believe that, uh, this was designed so that

(43:23):
people can sell books like sell guides. Yeah, I mean
Mario three, is I intentionally chose an outdated term? Your
right to point out the Internet, right, Diablo did exist
with the Internet there one the same way. Yeah. Like
I remember like pulling up essentially like ruin words, the
list of the ruin words, you know, like the existed

(43:44):
and forums was like a huge That's how it used
to be done, which is crazy, which is there wasn't
a Weekia. There wasn't a Wikipedia for it. It was
just like you go onto the Diablo like battle dot net.
You there's a forum and it's like what you guys
do when you play a necro you know, like, but
this is what I do. A forum into their interface,

(44:07):
which means they did intend for this to be a
communal experience. Yeah, exact, and like so in my mind, uh,
that just that addition to the game as the way
to interface with it says that they wanted this to
be a fundamentally communal experience exactly. I mean, it's the community.
It's really good. I think the community of Diable two

(44:28):
was awesome back in the day. It was wholesome, It
was full of that true people and guilds. The game
wasn't toxic really that much. I mean, there was a
concept of muling where back in the day before they
like improve the stash with Diable two resurrected, you would
run around and find like a spot on a map
and a random server where you'd be like, no one's

(44:48):
ever going to look, think to look here, and you
drop all your shit so you could like to ferry
it to another character like this is old days, this
is two thousand, you know. I love that. And remember
one time I came, I ran around and I didn't
do it enough job because I wanted to go quick
and some dude was just grabbing all my ship and
I was like, God, damn it, God damn it. And

(45:11):
so there's moments like that, But there was no incentive
to be an asshole in this game. Only help other people.
There are PvP servers and there exist for that purpose,
which is another aspect of like how this game. If
you think about Dia Blue two, just like old school,
how it really paved a way to guide the hand
of the community. One that's still used in games today.

(45:33):
Look at Rust. They knew to separate pvee versus PvP servers.
There's a legacy to finding like different servers with different rules,
and that didn't exist before. Really, I mean, I guess
it didn't. Like if you consider like deathmatch in like
Quake or something like that, But that's not the same thing.
That's competitive, it's not the same thing. It's not a
community building solution really the same. It's just different game modes.

(45:55):
But this is like, this predates Wow. And I'm not
saying it's the first game develop the concept, but they
nailed it early on, and a lot of developers just
learned to mimic all of its concepts. That might be
one of the most enduring things about it is that
it happened to sort of be or and maybe not
happened to. It came out at a time where internet
communities were a sort of fledgling thing that people were

(46:16):
in good faith building, like they were really trying to
create a community that existed only online, and Diablo was
a great facilitator of that, sort of like Mystery Box.
Things were really cool when Lost came out and people
watched Lost that it was a communal event and everybody
lost their fucking minds. But once we've gone through the portal,
it's a little hard to go back. And it's not

(46:38):
hard to go back and see why it's good or important.
It's just like it's not an experience that's going to
exist in the same way. Ever. Again, no, you know
it's not. And that's cool though. That is the thing
that bears remembering about this game and about this franchise.
It's about paving the way and it's also about like
nostalgia for a particular time in a way in which
it was done. I'm not going to fall for that, Like,

(46:58):
I don't think it's necessarily like that time was a
better time or anything like that, but it's I give
it to this game for being one of the first
to really nail it, and then everyone mimicked it and
here we are now. You know, it's like it's in
the DNA of how we do this kind of stuff.
I agree that that does matter when we talk about Also,
one thing I want to say, just real quick, yeah, sure,

(47:21):
because I still I find it kind of profound honestly. Okay,
Blizzard supported this game in its servers like D two,
the classic and updates for new seasons and ladders. They
never changed. There wasn't new content for like twenty years, right,
twenty years, and I think it still does like D

(47:41):
two Classic was playable. I probably have like ten thousand
players for twenty years consistently. That's crazy when you think
about like what like EA does, or you think about
Call of Duties, you know, like what it's not even
there's no micro payments, no fluff, just like, yeah, you
love the game, have a little space. It doesn't take

(48:02):
that much from us. That's true. That that is cool, Uh,
Blizzard is that is one of their good piece of
their legacy. There are some games that have, uh they've
been supported for a really long time, like I want
to say the Halos, we're supportive for a really long time. Yeah,
but this is like one of the best of that,
and that's also cool. I think that goes back to

(48:23):
the community that it built is infectious and the designers
felt like they wanted it to continue to exist. And
that's pretty rad. I mean, really it's pretty rad. Uh. Okay, Well,
I want to take us real quick back through the
portal back to town to get rid of some of
these axes that we picked up that are actually worthless,
and uh, prepare keeping money so you can roll, you

(48:46):
can gamble. That's that's all I want to do. It
was so it's so good. All right, gamble circuits, all circlets,
all day. That's all day. I'm gonna open my tongue.
We're passing through at the end of this word and

(49:08):
we're back. Uh finally, have you know we're not weighed
down by all that excess bullshit because we've shed it.
Uh hell yeah, I have one question for you, so like, uh,
this is not an entirely unstrategic timing for this conversation, Abe,
what do you want at a Diablo four in light like,

(49:29):
how does Diablo four contribute to the legacy of Diablo
two in your mind? Because it's more the same if
if like, because that's a two, that's a two type
of questions? Right, Yes, what's the what's the game I
want to be made for me? For Abe because Abe
is Abe's the hero of this story. But I think

(49:50):
or Abe is typologically the same as a lot of
people who like Diablo too. I sure, yeah, I agree,
And I think, uh, we got Diablo two resurrected. We're
are We're the weird ones in the in the group
that uh that were like they placated. They're like, all right,
there's there's dozens of us, and they were like, yes,

(50:10):
you get a game. So I have no I have
no like thought in my head that it's gonna go
this way. I would love it for just to be
more D two, but they're gonna go more D three. Honestly.
I mean, like it's just how it works now. Um
it's it's it just it's kind of like the same
thing of like I loved the golden era of JRPGs, right,

(50:34):
I like Lufia two and Final Fantasy and all that shit,
And like, I will always be sad when a new
Final Fantasy comes out because it's like, oh yeah, it's
just an action RPG. Now it's like Zelda to me.
You know, it has all the other Final Fantasy things,
but it's basically they didn't. Turn based was the ship one.

(50:57):
That was because I want to be able to say
action in your video games. But I mean that was
just how I preferred to play the game, you know, Like,
disagree with me, fine. I think turn based is one
of those things that it's now entirely unmobile and that's
that's fine, and we also have games on Kickstarter and
stuff like that. We can once again be our weird
little group in our weird little turn base is not dead,
it's just not the mainstream like it was. I don't

(51:20):
think that Blizzard's gonna go any direction towards D two. Okay,
so it's a it's a non point, you know, like
they're gonna, if anything, they're gonna make it more streamlined
for the casual players so that the number goes up,
but in a way that is more satisfying because they
learned when people got satisfied from D three, So there'll
be an improvement in that regard. And maybe there'll be

(51:41):
some cool builds and maybe there'll be some sweet looking action. Um,
and it will probably be a fun game to play casually. Um,
I don't play D two casually. It's also one of
the reasons I don't play D two that much anymore
because my progress. You see, I'm a grown man, and
I can't I need this to be D into Diablo

(52:03):
too right now. I remember a friend in college. Ye,
I had a friend in college, Raymond, who's this like
he was amazing. He was just this guy who we
had no, we didn't have very much in common, but
we're all very kind to each other. We were in
each other's friendship circles. And then one day and we'd
known each other for like three years, and it was
just like, we're just very kind to each other. We

(52:24):
loved being around each other. I love the way they
saw the world, but couldn't be two different people, and
one day the best casually just I don't even know
how it came up, but Diablo two. I think it
was like, oh, you know what's crazy is my brother
started playing Diablo Too again and so I'm thinking about
picking it up to like a room. He was like, wait,
you played Diablo two. And I met the only legitimately

(52:46):
other than my brother, like person who was more into
Diablo Too than I was. And he was just insane.
It's just like Raymond, So you want to play and
he's like yeah, yeah, And then like before I know it,
it's like day one of the server and he's just
like do you want this? This, this, this, this, And
I'm like, oh shit, paying for eighteen hours, haven't you.
That is a great experience, though, like as a person

(53:08):
who's been on the other end of it, like you
just were like playing with somebody who's really into it
and has cool stuff and like knows how to do it, uh,
like knows how to make the most of it. You see,
you see a lot of the thought that went into
what the game is, you know, and like also you
see why the crowd that loves it really loves it

(53:29):
because it requires a kind of like inside seasoned, intelligent,
reasoned process. They have to create a process that is
uh that that nobody told them. They figured it out
over time. And I think you know, a lot of
games want to take that kind of reasoning away from
their players so that it's a more passive experience because

(53:50):
you can just plug in and you're playing a lot
of people. A lot of people want to and I'm
gonna use this word gently relax when they play video games,
like like and relaxing means you know this, it's somewhere
between a movie and an interactive experience, right, or it's
or it's somewhere more toward a movie than Diablo Too.
It's probably a safer way to say it. And they're

(54:11):
not wrong, Like that's gonna sell more than Diablo Too.
Probably will. But there are people out there who like
they get fiendie for let me try to, let me
figure out a way to best manage this world. Like
I I honestly I feel like if my dad had
been a young man in two thousand and like, not
married or whatever, he might have loved this because it

(54:31):
like it just there's a curtain certain kind of brain,
like not an engineering brain, but a kind of a
process brain that really gets tickled by this, you know, um,
and I like it to s exist for them. Yeah, No,
you're a processed brain a little bit like I think so. Yeah,
Like Abe is a guy who for those of you
who don't know who, like created his own camera lenses
in film school. Why because he's got a little bit

(54:53):
of a process brain. You don't want to know what
it looked like, right. I think that kind of carry
it gets rewarded in this game. I think that's what
it's for. Yes, although again it's not it's not deep
emotionally like, it's not it's not narratively deep or like
you scratch at this little weird corner and you find
a cool story or whatever, like some I don't know,

(55:16):
like like Torment or something, you know, tides a newmanera
like something like that where there's just a lot of
layers to it. It's not like that, um and I
think that is a bit of a ding against it
for me. But I think we're ready to pass our
final checkpoint. Wouldn't you agree and get into whether we
will keep or delete Diablo two from our celestial hard drive? Abe,

(55:40):
you are a host, you get a full vote. What
say you? One of two? Of course? I mean Diablo
two Resurrected is the best way to play Diablo two
and Diablo two for not just the semo seminole reasons
and the foreignation of how we play action RPGs and
RPGs in general, or looters or MMOs, like, it's the

(56:02):
strands of its DNA extend all the way for twenty years,
and it's undeniable that you can look like, rarely do
you find games that have that kind of legacy. So
if you're going to put it on a hard drive,
this is the game to put it on put on
the hard drive from this genre, it's got to be

(56:23):
this one. So you know, I did mention that I
have nostalgia goggles for this time, but like, I just
don't see what other metric you can really beat when
it comes to putting it on the hard drive. That
means that my game that I love is saved. I
mean that's a good argument. So, like here's where I

(56:44):
am with this. It's hard to not acknowledge that historically
this is the one people feel matters of this entire genre.
Like if you put all the games we've mentioned today
that we're Looters against each other and let the internet vote,
they would hundred percent keep Diablo Too. I mean, I
think there's people who are even more hardcore, like some

(57:04):
people are going to put Path of Exile over. There
are people who would disagree. But I think that if
I feel pretty confident in saying that if we were
going to crowd crowdsource the answer to this question, Diablo
Too would win. Probably yeah, Because there are a lot
of the reasons that I think you accurately stated, Like
it did build up a community. It is sort of

(57:25):
the first of its kind. It is a satisfying progression
for hardcore fans, like it's built for those people. It
is a great communal experience. In fact, I remember when
I was twenty years old, a bunch of my friends
were doing land parties and this was the game they
were playing. You know, and it was and it seemed
really cool. I didn't have a computer, so I couldn't
do it. That is not why I'm so not as

(57:48):
up high on it, but maybe it factors in a
little bit. I can't say. All I can say is
that I'm trying to be as objective as I can
and acknowledge all of that, but also acknowledge that as
a video game experience, I don't think that anything about
it exists in its best form here. I really think

(58:13):
a lot of games are better, including Diablo three. I
think Diablo three is a better game. I get that
it's not as important to people who love Diablo, but
it's hard for me to see how the history outweighs
the fact that the game itself is a little bit
unenticing to a new gamer now, and most of the

(58:35):
ones that I want to keep or that is not true,
like you can play it and really get it. So
I'm going to delete this game. I do it with
a heavy heart because I get that some people are
going to be furious. This is always like, if Mike
feels very strong that I messed up, he can make
his pitch when we do the hard Drive episode. Maybe
you can write him a note abe and force him

(58:57):
to do it, say don't fix it, but it's important.
The aliens will know. Yeah, all I can that's right.
All I can say is, uh, I don't think that
looters is a genre deserve like a bunch of entries
on this hard drive. I feel like maybe one or two,
and my gut says that we may need to revisit

(59:18):
a border Lands. But I also still think Destiny Too
is a more interesting game than Diablo two for mechanics. Sorry,
I know, I'm sorry, but I do think that. Yeah,
I it comes down to I think it's highly subjective,
of course, and like this is the like, this is
my task as a person who's taken this on is

(59:38):
to use my subjectivity for what I hope is good.
But I no, I take absolutely no pleasure in eliminating
Diablo two or in the hate that I'm going to
get for it. But for me, it's just don't think
you're even going to get that much hate, dude, This
is not This is not two thousand and five. Yeah,
that's two twelve. This is two thousand and twenty three.
Most people are like, what that? Otherwise I'm have to

(59:59):
repair my lightning mace and throw my my lava ball
at them and hope that's good enough to get out
of this. I agree. I agree with you. You're like,
looters only get two. I'm like platformers get like two.
You know that's that's a good conversation. I know that
would fuck you up because that means you would get
one Mario. Probably, I don't know if that's what it means. Absolutely,

(01:00:22):
you need a different franchise. You need to go with
the Sonic. Not sure if I agree with that. If
I look, I'm just a humble co host doing my part.
I love that you're pushing on challenging. I love it. No,
it's great. I really think that. I'm glad that somebody's
super passion about looters on this episode. Uh. It was
not an accident that I asked you to be on
this because I want to. I want the conversation to

(01:00:45):
be fair and to be Uh. I don't want to
ever have a game on here where nobody loves it
or thinks it's any good, you know, like, because then
what are we telling? What are we doing? Like? This
is this? This podcast isn't just like here's a game,
let's chat about that. Um, so thank you for doing
your duty and defending a thing that you love, and
thank you for filling in admirably as a guest host

(01:01:09):
this this week. And Abe, if people like hearing your
melodious baritone voice, where can they hear more of that? Yeah,
so you head on over to patreon dot com slash
small Beans. As was alluded earlier in this podcast, Small
Beans is a group of podcasters who do several different

(01:01:30):
types of shows and it was co founded by myself
and Michael Swain of this podcast. And Adam Ganzer is there.
He's in a lot of our shows, and he's he's
in the brain Trust. It's like our main squeeze, and
it's how you get content from this group in addition
to one upsmanship, you know. So it's a Patreon does it.

(01:01:52):
But if you want the free feed, which is only
so much of our catalog, it's it's a certain percentage,
it's not everything doesn't have some of the special sweet
sweet sauce. You can just find that anywhere you check
out small Beans. I mean you should know that Abe
and I are directors. That's our trade and we have
a specific podcast on small Beans that's just him and I. Yes,

(01:02:13):
we do call if you like our bands, if you
like particulate it. It's called director piece theater where we
analyze and I guess you might say exposite the trade
secrets of directors for movies that you wouldn't think have
great filmmaking. But do we love doing that podcast. It's

(01:02:34):
hard work and we'd love for you to enjoy that.
If you had a good time listening to this, yes,
and yes indeed, ABE love you buddy, Thanks for coming on.
Hey man, this is a This is a blast, isn't it.
I can always chat with you about anything that matters
and uh and know that I'm in good at hand,
such good, good guy. Right, let's hear it for Adam Gancer. Everybody,

(01:02:58):
all of you should class. Thank you everyone, please call. Yeah,
I love you. I love you too. We gotta get
the hell out of here now. Work complete.