1Upsmanship - Elden Ring

A new day has dawned, and that means it's time for Michael Swaim and Adam Ganser to level up and present 1Upsmanship to you afresh with a very special Elden Ring ep! Our intrepid heroes have a new theme song, a whole new attitude, and even a new format that's been re-tooled so slightly as to confuse both old fans and new listeners alike. What hasn't changed is the topic, so let's get to it (it's video games, by the way)! 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, whoa, whoa, whoa. I'm cart wheeling in for no reason,

(00:27):
which you must mean. It's our Elden Ring episode Bump
bump bum. Welcome to one ups man Ship, our inaugural
voyage on the I Heart Radio Network. We're so happy
to be here. I'm one of your regular voices, Mr
Michael Swain, and then the other of your regular voices,
Adam Cancer, pleased to be here on the I Heart Network.

(00:50):
That's right, some sixty or seventy episodes in. We've always
called ourselves hosts or co host but now I guess
we're just regular voices, just disembodied voices hunting your hunting,
your drive to your work, or whatever's right. This is
an ongoing show about two friends who've loved video games
their whole lives and sit around and argue about them,

(01:12):
specifically through the lens of dare I say it art history, um,
but sort of the broader picture. We think video games
is a really important artistic medium with a lot to
say and uh yields a lot of great insights into
humanity and this crazy thing we call it living. So

(01:32):
that's the show, I guess. You know. We talked about
the games and today we're talking about elden Ring. We
have no guests. We thought for our first venture, we'd
let you get to know us, your Siskel's and Ebert's
as it were. Um, so you can sort of decide
who you vibe with and pick a favorite. That's the
main reason side which of us dies suddenly and which

(01:54):
one long and much later. Yeah, you gotta pick who
you consider the protagonists, who you consider the anti is
moving forward in your one opsmanship experience. But big, thanks
to heart. We're excited to be here and try out
this new format, which is a slight reconjiggering of our
old format. So forgive us if we go slightly off
the rails. But I believe it's time to pass a checkpoint.

(02:17):
Is that right at? Indeed it is to our new
and improved first segment? Tell me like made so in
order to bank our progress thus far, I want to
touch your grace. I want to touch you graces. Get
that big? Yeah? Um, so we touched some grace. It

(02:39):
exploded all over us, and that puts us into tell
me like I made bit? Who's gonna take tell me
like I made bit? Can see it? Sounds like okay,
sounds all right, So please explain what the hell elden
Ring is to me. If I am a filthy casual
and I have never heard of it and don't know
what you're talking about, go what a what a daunting task?

(03:01):
This is? Really? Because elden Ring is the latest game
released by From Software, a franchise that's now become famous
for extremely difficult action role playing games. Uh, most of
which are sort of medieval or Gothic in vibe. It's
very it's a sword based kind of combat. Uh. And

(03:22):
it is third person and uh they sort of created
a formula where you are laboring your way through an
interconnected three dimensional world to find a way to restore
the world, typically to its pre magic or disorder I
guess destroyed states. Usually it's some some form of trouble

(03:44):
and your job is to bring it back to a
stasis of sorts. Um. Elden Ring is the latest and uh.
This game was famously hyped as being a collaboration between
the Dark Souls Guru Huda who who they taka me
Zaki give me for a butchering his name, and George R.
Martin of Game of Thrones fame, and that alone provided

(04:08):
a lot of high plus. The Dark Souls franchise in
general is a hardcore gamer uh delight. They really get
excited about it, and it was released to extraordinary acclaim. Um.
It's the first of these games that features what you
might call an actually open world, um, where you navigate
a large a huge map. Uh. You can actually use

(04:32):
a horse so you can summon it your will to
find out a what's going on with this gigantic tree
in the middle and all the sort of less gigantic
trees spotted throughout the map, and then be what is
going on in the world period, and then see what's
all this cool stuff I can collect? And that's about
as much guidance as this game gives you. Um. It
is interactive. It features extremely difficult boss fights, which is

(04:55):
sort of a staple of this franchise in general. Um.
It has combat raging from arrows and swords to magic uh,
to summoning, and then it has some mild crafting, which
is kind of a new addition. And uh, if you
haven't played a Souls game, then all I can say
is the formula is basically, when you die, all the
progress that you made in the form of runes or

(05:17):
souls that you need to bank to level up. They
are placed at the spot where you die, but you
revive at one of these sites of grace, which again
explode all over you, and you're forced to navigate the
terrain back to reclaim those runs or souls or lose
them forever, which is as you'll find, a very daunting task.
And uh, I think that's it for my explanation. Did

(05:41):
you were you educated? I was fully enlightened. Do you
feel like you know? Which means we get to pass
another checkpoint? Bank said progress, which means we walk through
an archway for the first time, and some fucking Google
pops out Jack in a box like like god, and
we're like, I'll never fall for that again, only nuts
later to have the exact same thing happen again and go,

(06:02):
that's right, that guy's right there. Fuck. Uh. That brings
us to a second called rants. That's right the game.
That's the first of many times you'll get ganked in
this game. This game loves ganging. You absolutely shived, You
will be stomped, you will be gangs. Think you are dead.

(06:25):
I think it's you are dead. Okay, yeah, I'll rant.
First player one randon the ranswer where we generally give
our sort of more emotional personal impressions, not just uh,
you know, neutrally is the word I was searching for
describing the facts on the ground, but actually talking about
our experience of the game. So here's where I'm at

(06:48):
with Eldon Ring. Forty nine hours in, which is not
nearly enough to finish Eldon Ring. I don't believe. Although
you can go online right now and see a YouTuber
completed in eight and a half minutes or whatever, it's
it's insane. Yeah, and that also involves a glitch where

(07:11):
they'll just like wiggle, wiggle, wiggle, and then shoot over
into a new realm and be like there's the final
boss and you're like, well, what is this? Are you
neo in the matrix? Did your elder Ring character becomes sentient?
But uh, if you've followed us, and by the way,
there's more than sixty episodes of one Upsmanship available in
our illustrious backlog. But if you've followed us, you know

(07:32):
a bit about my deal from games have not traditionally
gotten me. They have not snatched my fancy, and I
want to use my rant space to say that this
one did so the most of all, we have a
new one in terms of the amount of interest from
me raised by the game, and that has to do

(07:53):
with a lot of small tweaks they made to the
loop that will unpack in game on and I'm very
excited to discuss. But emotionally I'm pretty positive on eld
and Ring. Forty nine hours for me is not nearly
enough to beat it. I just have big chunks of
the map unlocked, but I can tell by the shape
of it I don't even have the full map unlocked. Um,

(08:13):
probably a way is from that. I have no idea
how far through I am like relatively speaking, but I'm
coming at it from that place. I have played a
fair amount of elden Ring, but I just want you
to know, dear intrepid listeners, I have not completed elden Ring.
It is indeed quite hard. Um. Usually I do finish
the games that we cover on one upsmanship, but I
actually find from games so difficult and yet so important

(08:36):
to the medium that we've suspended that rule. So I
cover from games when I feel like I have enough
cogent insight to fill an hour, but not necessarily having
rolled credits, which I haven't in this case. It really
really hard, and um, I don't want to put much
of a finer point on it until we get to
game on because I like to construct these little emotional

(08:58):
arcs in these episodes. So I'm just gonna say that
I have more of a positive take on this than
you might have expected. Passing the Torch, thank you so much,
uh player two Adam Ganza ranting at you, Hey, this
is one of my favorite games I've ever played. Uh,

(09:18):
And I that's not me being facetious. I loved it
from minute one to minute finish. I did finish it.
I probably put in about a hundred and twenty hours, um,
most of which I streamed, and um, yeah, it was
just exactly the right cocktail. Now my history is from
soft games, because I feel like everybody needs to hear this.
You're gonna get invested in this podcast. So like neither

(09:41):
of us liked from software games about a year and
a half ago, and then I picked up Blood Born
and finally finished it, and I was hooked and basically
played through every Dark Souls and Demon Souls and a
little bit of Second Row, which is the only one
I've not finished, and then this, and I think this
is unquestionably the best of that entire series of games.

(10:04):
And I'll tell you why. Um. The first reason is
that it's it's finally structured in a way that makes
it easier for an average game or to understand what
to do, and it is more forgiving. So what I
mean by that, So you're gonna run into bosses all
the time in this game, and this is the first
time that I remember where you can really easily get
away from a boss and face it later if you

(10:26):
want to. Right, like the rest of the Dark Souls games,
you really couldn't do that. Uh, it was very difficult
to backtrack. And in the first Dark Souls it's like
takes you forever just to warp anywhere. Um. So like
they're much more punitive about you gotta beat this guy
before you can move on, which leads to more of
the man I've been stuck here for three hours trying

(10:47):
to beat this guy experiences, and I think that is
the worst thing about this friend. Like these games period,
is that you will have a time where you are
stuck on a boss for a long extended period of
time and you will face it's true despair. That is
a thing these games do, and this one is no exception,
but it gives you a lot of tools to help

(11:08):
mitigate those experiences. Escaping is one at which they do
via open world UM. The second one is they gave
you just more powerful tools like summons um or like
really powerful spells and stuff, so that you could really
make short work of most of the boss is once
you get properly leveled UM, and it's not as much
of a flail fest like a lot of these other

(11:28):
Dark Souls games are, where you're just dodging and trying
not to get hit. UM. I did a lot of
the bosses and blood Born, for instance, I beat on
one or two tries without really understanding the mechanic of
the boss. I just kind of was good at dodging,
so I was able to get in my hits and
survive this game. UM. Some of the bosses, because of
the tools they gave me, I just melted them. And

(11:49):
then some bosses were so challenging that it was like,
no tool is going to get me out of this.
I'm gonna have to learn how to beat it. UM.
Bosses like Millennia and certainly the Elder and Beast, who's
kind of the final boss, which is a two phase
boss and some others. Um, there's one dragon I haven't
beaten yet in the Crumbling Ruin. That's name just flew
out of my head. Um, Crumbling fair A, Mizzoula. I

(12:11):
think it's called I haven't There's a dragon there that's
a secret dragon I haven't beaten yet, but I have
seen him and I will take him down. Um. In general,
I just liked being in the world. I was sad
the minute I finished this game. UM. I liked writing
around with no agenda and just being like, Okay, let's
see what's in this cave. All right, let's see what's
in that behind that tree. Oh there's a dragon. Let's
try to kill that dragon. Oh can't kill that dragon yet. Okay,

(12:34):
I'll come back to it. Um. That the freedom of
it and the lack of sort of a to do list,
which makes a lot of games feel anxiety inducing for me, UM,
was just kind of a revelation. UM. I also want
to say, this is the first game I've played in
five years that felt like it took up the mantle
of the challenge of Breath the Wild, which is my

(12:54):
favorite game ever, and said we're going to do that.
We are going to make a world as free and
open as that, and we're going to iterate on that,
and they did, and uh, I think it's proving that
if you're willing to take up the mantle and do
the best work you can do as a designer, you're
gonna make an experience the gamers cherish like right now,

(13:16):
that's still a cherishable, like, very valuable game experience, because
most of these open worlds are really just a gigantic
to do list and that's not what elden Ring is.
And it's not a breath of wild is either. They're
mostly just like, you can do as much or as
little as this as you want. Um, just go check
it out, man, have a good time. It's a big
giant sandbox. Have a good time. That's what this is.

(13:37):
And it's just so pleasing. Um. The story is gobbledegook.
I've read summaries of it. Don't care. Uh. They it
doesn't make sense, or if it does make sense, it
doesn't transmit to a person who's playing the game actively
and paying attention. I still don't understand the story, but
I understood it better than any of the other games. UM.

(13:58):
I also like that they gave view quests that you
kind of had to figure out that you were on
a quest, and once you did, you're like, oh shit,
I I need to go I gotta go here to
see that guy. Okay, and you realize like, oh, I'm
on the trail of some larger story piece that just
sort of organically popped out, you know, start of the
way that open world games used to feel when we
weren't saturated with him. That's what this game feels like.

(14:20):
And uh, they feel really really great. And that's my rant,
fabulous rant couldn't be more compelling. Stay tuned after the break,
when I will dismantle everything at him. Just I hope
you do all right, and we're back. This is still

(14:43):
one upsmanship. I'm Michael Swain and I'm Adam Ganzer, and
apparently I'm in for the fight of my life now
the true boss has revealed himself. That's right, I already
I already put you on the back foot by throwing
another name drop at yourise. I dodged very quickly. Um,
we've passed another checkpoint, which means you are dead flashed

(15:06):
on screen and at least yeah, and we wandered into
storm veil Hold and did not survive. I'm surprised we
made it this far into the podcast, but without dying, frankly,
metaphysical the metaphorical loss. Um. And this is game on,
which is when we get to just talk, smack and

(15:26):
interrupt each other. And it's fine. We don't have any
of the respect that we had during the rant portion. Yeah,
and so uh here's the big twice at UM, I
still don't like it that much. Really okay, yeah, I
still I went on a long emotional journey, really long

(15:52):
dark night of the Soul involved the whole three acts
structure to arrive at the place of from games are
not for me, and uh, that's where I started. But
there was this brilliant part in the middle where I
was into it for a second and I think I
understood what you're talking about. So I'm here to learn
and hear more. I'm interested in the things that people

(16:15):
that like these games get out of them. I think
I have. I think I'm able to bring some insight
to bear onto why. For example, this got a ten
out of ten at my old outfit I g n
and uh, great great reviews across the board, Like I
see what's good about it? Um, But I think I
can also be a bit of a critical voice in
the sense that I like it better than other from

(16:37):
soft games. Um, I guess. I guess the thing to
say is I don't true. It still feels like homework
more of the time than I would like. The open
world element for me basically boiled down to okay, so
there's two big caveats, or there's one big caveat and
then a statement the caveat is all. This applies to souling,

(17:00):
which is the way I like to play games traditionally. Um.
And I still find the difficulty curve too high. And
yet the difficulty is a feature, not a bug. And
if there was a difficulty toggle, I don't know that
that would address what I'm talking about because the game
is inherently built around the difficulty, Like you said, the
way that the ruins are acquired in the banking of it.

(17:22):
It's about difficulty and gating. And whereas in Secroro or
blood Borne or Dark Souls, there's only one path forward
or sometimes two to three, and I would get stuck
at that at the end point of that path, and
I would play twenty times and go I can't do this. Um,

(17:44):
Now there's ten to twenty different paths I can pursue,
and I get stuck down all twenty of them, and
then I go, Okay, that's as far as I can go. Um,
there's just more of them. And I do you agree
that it alleviates the problem, But I guess I'm like, well,
the game shouldn't be a problem. It should be something

(18:06):
I want to do, and I have to admit. And
now that we're done covering it, I won't play this
again because I dreve. I drew. I dread playing it
because rather than look forward to playing it because it
doesn't dispense any story, which is my main thing about
playing Adeo games. And um, I have this acute sense

(18:27):
of I just spent four hours of my precious game time,
which is limited, and all I did was die to
the same handful of batties over and over and over
and over and I failed to progress anywhere. Well, that
was a real waste of an entire evening. Like that
really takes the wind out of my salesman, But I

(18:51):
see that that makes perfect sense to me. But I
cannot tell you how fun it was to play this
game with my good friend Adam Ganzer when we had
a grand old time when Adam would pop in through
the notoriously complex Oh man, I'm getting grat here as
the episode goes on, because here's another thing there are

(19:12):
there are there are aspects of from games that are
arcane and weird and obfuscating and like intentionally dense and obscure,
and people take it as like a quirky personality affect.
It doesn't work on me. I think it's annoying, needless,
like wall between me and the experience. So like, I

(19:34):
don't like that. In order to play co op, you
have to turn earthly flower into furled finger remedy, which
you snore, and your friend puts a summoning sign on
the ground using the tarnished furled finger, and that's how
you do co op. There should just be and I
don't think it ruins the mystique and I don't think

(19:54):
it's a unique cute affectation. There should just be something
in the pose menu that says CoA up and you join.
And furthermore, there should be a pause menu. I don't
understand why there's no pause right right now, That's what
I mean. These are the critiques. I have a dog
that runs and I have to pause the game. I know,

(20:14):
I got a I got a phone call a couple
of times when I was like nearing something important and
it was like, oh, like you know, it was very stressful.
I I get it. Um, that makes sense to me.
I also think that we could dispense with the nonsense
a little bit with from Soft games, Like I like,
I think it's like, yeah, man, we should just be
able to join a party through like party chat, you

(20:37):
know what I mean, like the way you can in Destiny.
Destiny has made that very easy. Um. And like a
lot of games make this harder than it needs to be,
like for instance, war Zone, a game that we covered
on this uh podcast. Um, I think it's even that
as a little bit trickier than it needs to be.
Like I think this should be a simple system. I
don't know what why from Soft is guarding this co

(20:58):
ops feature, like like it's Fort Knox or something, you know.
I mean, it's like the precious like integrity of the game,
Like come on, now, just let us join each other's
games and stop gaining it arbitrarily. I feel like no
one they aren't fully clear on and nor could you be,
because life is a highway. I'm gonna ride it all

(21:18):
night long. Um, life's mysterious and fuzzy. But I feel
like from knows we've hit on an amazing formula, right,
some aspect of this in our entire product is some
aspect of this formula. And there are some parts of
the formula that I legitimately think they don't need, but
they are too. They're like, yeah, but we don't want

(21:38):
to funk with the formula's work. Can't get rid of it,
so like, for example, you have way too many stats
and the stat's menu is more complicated than it needs
to be. And I think they think that's part of
it that we're all really obsessed with and if they
lost that, we would But I don't know. I question that,
but again it's not for me. I'm out the key demos,

(22:01):
So please, I would love you to speak to like
people for whom this is hands down easily. I just
saw zach Ryant Sweet like this is so obviously game
of the year. It might be one of the best
video games ever made. Like I think you're talking about
explain that. Well. One thing I want to say is
they do mess with the formula, but not the parts

(22:23):
of the formula that I think the gamers are constantly
graping about UM. They mess with the parts of the
formula that people aren't graping about, usually and sometimes to
really great effect and sometimes not, like in this game.
And I think the reason it works so well is
because they decided we're going to make it easier for
you to do like to do this game, like you

(22:48):
could always summon your friends to help you out, but
like one thing that is more present in this game
than any other previous game, and I don't know if
you could do it at all, if I remember correctly,
I never did it before. But you can basically clone
yourself in this game and have two of you fighting
a boss, which dramatically changes what boss fights are like.
See now, I never summoned a friend to help in

(23:08):
a boss fight in a from Soft game before. I
never did that, and I didn't this time either, and
I don't. It's not because I'm some hardass. It's just
because I was, like, I don't want to have to
arrange all that. I just want to beat the boss,
you know, so mostly I powered through. UM. This game
gave you features in case you don't have friends who
are ready to go whenever to give you the same effect,

(23:31):
and I think that was a huge boon for an
average gamer to get into it, you know, like you
can get a thing called a mimic tier that really
changes how you fight boss fights. But I hate that
I'm now average gamer, which is fair in that statement,
but it's very well. I host a video games podcast

(23:52):
for I Art Radio and Video games every night a lot,
and uh, it burns my asks that I can't games. Yeah,
they're literally no, I literally cannot complete it. So what right?
Why not? What's wrong with Well? Nothing, nothing's wrong with you,

(24:12):
because I think the one thing that's clear is that
it's not because you're a baby, you know. I mean, like,
it's not that it's so hard that you're like I
can't deal with this, f you No, no. I I
think the reason these games get such a claim is
because they appeal to the people who have played a
lot of video games and who have allowed platforms about

(24:33):
video games, and so they when it when one of
these comes out, and when it is even marginally better
than the games that came before, it gets a lot
of acclaim because it's based on it's targeted to the
right audience, you know what I mean. It's like it's
it's like the viral video of video games, if that
makes sense to you. This one is definitely broken through

(24:53):
to the mainstream. It was just like the best selling
game of the last twelve months, which would just awesome
from the hand that he ever achieved anything like that before.
And I believe that they and they wear that on
their sleeve that people are people like me look at

(25:15):
them from Afar and go, oh, well, have fun with that.
I'm sure it's good, but they weren't actually buying them.
This is the first one people are like, because the
basic narrative around it is this is the accessible one,
and people are like, oh, then I'll pick that up
because I heard those are super good and they were
just too hard. I'm here to say it's still very
very hard. It say like, they're never not gonna be hard.

(25:39):
I just think that the genius of this particular outing
on that on the difficulty front is that it gave
you more tools to mitigate the difficulty if you want to.
And I think that's I think that from Soft is
smart for knowing that we need to be able to
give tools to people to make it easier, but we
can't change the difficulty, because that's who likes our games,

(26:01):
like people who are looking for the challenge, that's who
likes a from Soft. True. But I do think there's
weird artifacts they hang onto that they probably could change
that they just aren't aware that they could change, and
no one would care having dived into like the like
you said, the stats, right, So I just kind of
want to counterpoint the stats. I believe that people would

(26:22):
be into keeping because that actually affects the gameplay. But
I'm talking about things like do you think it's or
do you think it's absolutely core to everyone's even the
people who love from games. Would they riot if if
you could pause the game? Does that destroy the balance
of the skill composed? I don't. I don't understand it all.

(26:42):
Why they why you can't pause? I don't know. Like
I think that's uh. I think that's just about making
probably their boss fight an air of difficult, an air
of hey, you's right, they want their boss. I think
that's a specifically boss fight thing to me, because you'd
pause and like look up a strategy you or whatever,
and you do better. That's to me, that's the only

(27:02):
reason not to have it, or is it? Is it
crucial to your experience and your joy as someone who
does love these games, do you think a key component
of it is that the items all have weird names
that do not imply what they're function that no, I
don't like, Okay, okay, So I'm saying I think there's
parts of the formula that they could improve that they

(27:23):
just can't be bothered too because they're like, why fix it,
it ain't broke, it's selling. I just I guess my
argument is, I think they love that piece, like that
sort of maccab diffuse thing. I think that's a thing
that really really appeals to the designer. Like I think
Miyazaki specifically really likes telling stories to the up to

(27:44):
layered like sort of distant connecting story points. I think
he loves that um and that that's how he that's
the way he wants to tell stories. And my argument is, yeah,
I just don't think most people experience any story from that,
like if story is a way of creating shared emotional
experience and not like if that's what it is, which

(28:05):
I think that is what it is. You're not having
that like, what you're having is more of a realization
based on a connection of facts like a detective putting
this narrative together. But that's a secondary aspect to everything
you're doing in the game, so you don't have an
emotional experience there. And I don't think that's really what
storytelling should be. I think storytelling should be evocative of

(28:28):
emotions because that's why we like it, um, you know,
And that's I don't know. That might be my history
as a filmmaker talking, but no, I don't care about that.
But I do love I feel like something that came
through in elden Ring more than any other from game,
but it made me realize retroactively that from games do have.
This is the really weird indie esque sense of humor. Like, yeah,

(28:52):
it's a little funny. If you're listening to this and
you're not playing elden Ring yourself or probably won't, it's
actually worth getting into the memes a bit or looking
up funny elden Ring videos because the idea of the
game as punishing yields some very hilarious moments, and the
designers this time are like aware of that, like there's
uh the classic example is there's this bear you get

(29:13):
to and you kill it, and then there's a bear
that immediately spring loaded comes out of nowhere, who's five
times is large. It's just the same bear, but it's
five times bigger kills you instantly. And that's the joke.
Get it, And like I love the situational humor. Like,
for example, I love that in this game. There's no

(29:37):
in most fantasy games or even most games now, Like
in God of War, for example, you'll see the elves,
which are these flying in that universe? They can fly,
they have like dragonfly wings, and you'll kill them, and
then you'll see another one that has like thicker armor
that's a different color, right, and you'll go in your head,
that guy is going to fight like that other guy,

(29:57):
but take more damage. And that's accurate in this. In
Elden Ring, you'll be like, oh, see that troll. Just
hit him in the foot and then do a crid
on his head and then laser's app him. You'll be fine,
see that crawdad, Do not ever walk up approach it.

(30:17):
Don't even look at him. Don't even look at him.
People fuck you up. There's like no connection the monster design.
They must have so much fun. The monster's design will
just be like what about a line of balls? And
then sometimes it will be like a very well thought
out you know, like Godrick the Grafted or whatever, some
full nightmare. But then sometimes it'll just be like, I

(30:42):
don't know, a sheep that rolls like all the sheep
in this game roll double. Yeah, there's a bunch of
people cart wheeling in this game and it's very funny.
And you're like why, and they're like, I don't know.
There's a there's an item somewhere that you'll find that
explains it, probably like I'm not going to learn that.
Then you mentioned the story, is there any can you

(31:07):
bring that gonna try? I'm sorry to those of you
who are much more you know, passionate and informed. So
this is what I took from the story. So you
play as a character called a tarnished, one of many tarnished,
which I take to mean sort of an outsider who

(31:29):
may have sort of a nebulous, shameful past for why
you were cast out of this realm. The realm itself
is called the Lands Between, which has a kind of
uh like a Middle Earth vibe, right, like, sort of
a land between literally Middle Earth land right right exactly.
You're seeking a ring. I mean, it's pretty obvious. It's

(31:51):
pretty clear. There's a lot of there's a lot of
medieval and Christian metaphors that are being done through this,
like sort of a creepy horror lens year that I liked, um,
including the Elder Tree or the Irror Tree. Excuse me.
Uh So, Okay, there used to be an elden Ring,
which I take to be sort of a divine object

(32:13):
or symbol that was destroyed, and from its destructed pieces
were formed great ruins, and the great Rooms were sort
of taken up by a series of champions who were
demigods born of a sort of queen god called Queen Marica.
Queen Marica, I want to say she she got rid

(32:39):
of death or something, and then it was like exiled.
I'm now I'm just looking at the Wikipedia. Uh. And
and then like you know, she became I want to
say that she became the Error Tree or or was
like the irror Tree is symbolic of her in some way, um,
And that these demigod are all sort of lunatics who
are her offspring, and you have to sort of bring

(32:59):
them heels so that you can restore the kingdom by
reforging the Elden Ring. And becoming an elden Lord, which
presumably makes you the champion of this world and king
of it, and then you know the Restorer. And my
question is, will then like a population of normal type
people come back, because like all from games, you're wandering
around and you only interact with a few people. The

(33:23):
creatures you interact with our monsters, like the entire Earth
is populated solely by monsters. There's a bunch of endings
and I haven't I have not read them all. I
did not understand my ending, to be quite frank with you,
there's six. I believe at least one of them. The
one that I got is that the so the Fractured Age,

(33:48):
which is the one you're in, is uh, you mend
the elden Ring and then you're the elden Lord and
you sit on a throne. That's the ending. Um, I think, yeah,
and I did that. I think there's one where you
I don't know, man, I don't know. It's like I don't.
I guess I should say I didn't follow the story
enough because there like it was all sort of dispensed

(34:10):
through literally just standing at an NPC talking in very
vague metaphors and you're like okay, uh. And then after
a certain point, like I have with every from software game,
I was like, you know what, I don't care that much.
It's really just more fun some people do. There I
there's a I don't mean to be dismissive yet, No, no, no.

(34:31):
Every time I stream it, every there's always one or two.
There are one or two people who show up for
every single stream because they love this stuff, and they
will fill in the lore for me as I'm playing,
and I'll tell them all and I tell them the
same thing, which is, you know what, man, I don't
really care like I I. You know, go ahead and
say whatever you want, but don't tell me that it
means something, because like, no, it doesn't. You know, it doesn't.

(34:54):
Even if they say that it means something in this lore,
no it doesn't because it's not accessible enough for an
above average game to get it without a lot of
work that's not storytelling. So the core of the joy
for you, am I wrong is the moment that you
dodge out of the way of a giant boss's sword,
hit them for a final time, and just barely defeat that.

(35:15):
It's like you tried six times and you finally beat
them right joy of the formula, Like it took me
three hours to beeet Millennia. Um, and I gotta tell
you them. Low moments are very low, Like I had
a low moment with Millennia where I was like, this
isn't fun. Why do I play these games? I hate this.
I hate that feeling. I don't like it either. Other

(35:36):
games don't give me that feeling. That's right. I mean,
although increasingly games are giving us that feeling. It's kind
of a trend. Yeah, older and worse at gaming relative,
I guess. I guess I want to say that. That's
the thing I think about sometimes when the game, when
something's hard, and then I realized, like when I go
on like read it or something and read how people

(35:58):
are responding to elden Ring and be people like I've
been on this boss for four days, like five hours
a day, and I'm like, there's no game I would
play that much. I would not do that. Like, so
it's not hard enough to keep me from doing it,
because I'm gonna put in at most three to four
hours on a thing and be defeated and just be like,
you know what. I have a video game podcast where

(36:19):
I have to cover more games, so I just don't
have the time for this, you know, like, or you
know what, this isn't fun enough for me to keep going.
And that's my opinion on it. Um this is like
right on the edge of that. And so I like
it because when you win, the inhuman roar of victory
comes spurting out of your mouth. Man, it's just like, oh,
I can't believe it. It's a great feeling. And they've

(36:41):
really refined the formula for sure. It's like a case
in point that comes to mind is like these poison
pods that exude poison that incentivizes rolling. There's just this
magic triangle of rolling slashing, but while you're slashing, the
time it takes to slash makes you vulnerable to enemy
attacks that they know, they know what the bread and

(37:03):
butter of their deal is and they just stick to it.
I find it compelling that you compare it to Breath
of the Wild. I've heard you multiple times only because
it seems so much simpler to me. Breath of the
Wild actually has way more systems in place, and it's
it's interesting I say that because I know that it
actually has I mean, elden rings, no slouch. There's a

(37:23):
lot of systems um in terms of like you can
upgrade your weapons, you can get spells, there's different classes
of spells, there's different summons, there's all this stuff. Um,
you can add plus one plus two to your weapons
while you're upgrading yourself, upgrading yourself upgrades the arc at
which your weapon upgrades based on the status tied to

(37:44):
all this ship. But my question is what shoot that
I lose it now? Not the Breath of Wild compared
is there the Breath of the Wild systems were additional
layers of gamemification. Does that make sense? Yeah? I feel
like Ring really. I feel like in elden Ring, all

(38:07):
the systems funnel toward the experience of combat, one on
one combat, slashing and counter slashing and parrying, using spells,
what have you? Um. In Breath of the Wild, combat
almost felt like maybe third or fourth priority, exploration being
number one, and then puzzle solving being number two in

(38:30):
the temples, and then eventually like combat being probably fourth.
And I just find that as a very in that
feels like a very rich experience to me, whereas I
have to say, elden Ring's world feels funny and interesting
but sterile, like a weird artist's sketchbook. Like I'm just

(38:54):
flipping pages in a sketchbook and going think, oh, that's
a cool monster. I'm pretty sure. I'm pretty sure that's
what you said about Breath of the Wild too. I'm
pretty sure you said exactly those words. If I'm not
mistaken about that, I do. I do feel the Breath
of the Wild is even is sterile compared to some
other game universes, but at least it has a variety

(39:14):
of variety of tasks. That's right. Um. Whereas I was,
I'm just wondering how you feel about the fact that
Elden Ring is essentially explore combat or am I missing?
Are there other key components that you're like, No, I
feel like blah blah blah, I would say, no. I
think you're right. I think puzzling is a there isn't

(39:36):
this very minor puzzling and there's not a lot of puzzling. Yeah,
And I think, quite frankly, from software is iterative and
in some ways a narrowing of what Zelda is. Like.
I think that's what they do. They make uh, slightly
more combat driven and much more punitive versions of Zelda. Um,
you know, like I don't, and I don't. I'm sure

(39:57):
somebody's like, oh, it's totally different, is it? Is it
really that different? I don't think so. I think that
Zelda is sort of the prime game here and that
these from software games are important and now distinct iterations,
but their relationship is pretty clear, you know, Like, and
that's why this is such a thrill, because I mean,
breath wild, and I've said this a bunch of different places,

(40:19):
is I think one of the maybe the best game
ever made. It's it's fantastic, and the things that make
it so good that sort of sense of loneliness and
wandering and exploring and figuring things out, and they're being
all kinds of like very gamy but very uh delightful
little encounters and active puzzles and yeah, to do this

(40:41):
game has that same experience. Um, it doesn't have puzzles,
and it's like, so, yes, there's less things. I totally agree,
and that makes it less in some ways. I agree
with that too. Like I didn't think the crafting was
particularly compelling in elden Ring. Somebody probably does. Um. I
enjoyed the idea of getting a build and make and
like building a character to be powerful, a thing that

(41:03):
isn't in Zelda. Um, and I think that has it's
there's something to be said for that, but really it's
the same experience. You're wandering around, like, okay, so there's
a cave. What's in the cave? Oh ship, it's a
bunch of goblin trolls, or oh shit, it's a puzzle
like that whole the wonder of it and the feeling
of freedom of it. This game captured that, and we've

(41:24):
been waiting for games to capture that like that's that
was such a joyous thing about Breath of the Wild.
It was like, holy sh it, we're back to the
original legend of Zelda, but in the most beautiful open
place you can imagine. You remember, you have to stop
being mad at me about that, because we had an
episode where I took it back and we kept Breath
of the while. No, you kept it the first time too, Okay, good,

(41:46):
Then where do you get off? I believe you're right
that I did use the word stare all about it,
you know well, And I think what you're describing actually
is a thing that is a a pro for both
of those games, and that is that it's extremely gamy,
like they're these are both very video game conscious video games.

(42:07):
And what I mean by that is everybody attacks you.
Why should they attack you because it's a video game? Man? Well,
where elden Ring does not ask questions like well is
it a living ecosystem? Where did this zombie come from? There?
Like there are nine zombies in the room. Their sole
purposes to wait around for you to get there and
then and they will and they will do that and

(42:27):
it's like if that bothers you, and sort of a
meta narrative, this isn't the game for you, Like, if
you want a living, breathing world, go over and try
Red Dead Redemption to Buddy, that's for you. I really
like those bosses that are boatmen who some skeletons out
of the water, like none of it makes their moves
sets will be even wilder than that. There's like um

(42:48):
eagles with feet that are swords to lunge, right, Like,
how does that thing survive? How does it feed itself?
Don't question it. It's the It's Castlevania. It's Castlevania. It's
forget it and forget about it. Jake's Castlemania Town. No,
it's it is that it's the joy and the exuberance
of the creativity and the video gameness of it. And

(43:11):
there's they have no they don't feel any need to
justify anything, and if they do, justify it because they
all tie it together in the Lord they're like sea,
you know what I mean, And like it's the exact
opposite of what most open world experiences are, which are
they're trying to create immersion by like my god, look
at that deer. It doesn't even know you're here. Man,
It's living independent of you, even though it isn't uh

(43:33):
you know what I mean. Like that kind of stuff
that you see all the time done perfectly in Red
Dead two, and to a lesser degree in all the
Rock Star games, which are sort of the prime game
of that idea. Uh, this game is like no, no, no,
it's not that. It's this is a curated experience with
nooks and crannies, like a pinata that you've got to
open up and take out each little piece. It's like

(43:56):
an advent calendar, you hear exactly, and it's and and
like it's like inception level version where it's like, holy
sh it, there's more in this There's more layers of
this Piniana. It's like an endless Piniona. It's so good,
you know, like, and it's like, who cares? Why if
you care? Why this is the wrong game for you?
I I think, and like if you if you need

(44:17):
to justify it with the lord the lords there, But
really it's about, hey, man, are you having fun like
running around on the like is it fun for you
that you're up in the snow filled mountaintop and then
a giant the size of ten houses with an eyeballs
stomach comes out and swings at you like in an
undodgeable arc. Because this is the right game for you
if you're like that. And I'm like, I do like that?

(44:38):
What if? My what is wrong with me that? My
answer is that sounds fun and I love video games,
but no, I'm not having fun? So can I posit something? Like?
Can I posit something? Well, first of all, there is
nothing wrong with you, um, so let's take let's take
that out. No, no, come on, you know that. So

(44:59):
I would say it takes a certain kind of ferocious
competitiveness to want to beat a boss enough to suffer
through them in this game, and you're not very competitive,
you know what. I mean, like that's not really your thing,
like your achievement oriented but not competitive. I am competitive
and therefore I am not going to lose to this

(45:19):
fucking boss, you know what I mean, Like I'm not
having that. I am going to kill this thing. Um.
And that's enough for me to spend two hours until
I finally beat Millennia, you know. And then in the hindsight,
even though it's been painful, in hindsight, I'm like, man,
what a great competitor. Like that's how I feel the
minute I beat it. Good, she was good, you know,

(45:43):
like she had that her. No, no, I haven't seen that.
Oh there's a player whose player name is let me
solo her, who if you summon them, were lucky enough
to get them on your server. Um, they will usually are,
as far as I'm aware, always defeat Millennial one on one. Well,

(46:04):
wearing nothing but pot on her head and wielding nothing
but like a stick. That's great. And like I there's
things about this that I wanted to segue into, Like
we can't navigate the whole episode without mentioning that the
game combines universe is there's these very clever social mechanics
that I think actually butt up against sort of the

(46:27):
kinds of areas death Stranding was exploring. And I know
you don't like the Stranding and I don't like elden Ring,
and vice versa about liking those, but uh, they both
have a meta game that plays at the social level
that I think is really smart that honestly I expect
more games to continue to do. But uh is really

(46:48):
well implemented in elden Ring, where if you, I know,
people who have not heard like, have not checked in
with gaming and fifteen years, don't care about video games,
don't own video games, don't know about video games, who know,
try finger butt hole like if you know what I'm
talking about. Um, the social component of elden Ring has

(47:09):
elevated it as well. And I am remiss and bring
not bringing that up because that is a system. It's
a valid system. I kept the messages and the blood
stains that show people's previous runs and things like that.
I left seek Rump at every major event or every
major event or a great find or fun place to be.
I left seek Rump because I felt that's what other

(47:32):
players needed to know. Seek it, my friend, you shall
find it, I think. My favorite tweet on elden Ring
was someone said, you know, I love it because it's
the only game where I can be about to die
in a boss fight, and then because someone else in
the world likes the fact that I called a turtle
a dog, I get a health boost and end up

(47:53):
winning the boss. Yeah, yeah, that happens weird, and I
love that you get like a sudden message appraisal or
they hated it, but they hated it enough to say
I didn't like that, Like you get health from that too,
Oh you get it from negative appraisals. I didn't really, Yeah,
I think so. I'm pretty sure. Yeah, it's great. I
think that outside of the game itself, and I do

(48:13):
like that aspect of the game and I and I
liked it and Death Stranding too. Um. Outside of that,
I think the community in elden Ring this time, I
think it's improving slightly, because normally the from Soft community
is extremely punitive the way that a boss in one
of their games might be just sort of like, hey,
if you don't get good, that's your bro, that's on you.

(48:35):
And I think this time, because so many more people
got invested, there was a lot more sharing of tactics
and like communal like sort of like laughing at ourselves
and and appreciating the weird quirks of the game. Like
I saw some some streamer who posted a Jurassic Park
meme but instead of Jurassic Park, it just said Kaled

(48:56):
and it showed one of those dogs skeletons looked exactly
like a t Rex. And it's like, yeah, that's right,
those weird ass t rex dogs. What's going on with
that ship? You know? And it's uh and I and
I laughed, right because it's you know, I love that
stuff on the Internet, and there's so few things that
get the creativity of a meme generating audience excited. And

(49:16):
elden Ring did and uh, I think that's awesome, you know,
like it's the right tone for all the Internet, all
the things I like about the Internet to be lifted
the top. And I really appreciated that. Um and that's
a cool moment that you know, in ten years we
probably won't remember it, but it was. But it was
neat man, you know. Uh. It was I would say

(49:38):
as significant in some ways as animal crossing was to
the pandemic when it started, you know, like it was
that that kind of response and I, and it was like, yeah, man,
this game deserves that, you know. Ye. Also, can I
just say, like there was a lot of argument about graphics,
you know, like this game doesn't look the next gen

(49:58):
is the thing that I heard a lot. I think
I think it looks great. I think it looks great too.
And I think specifically it's not about how like the
fidelity or the resolution or whatever. It's about the design,
like the way the world is designed and the look
of it. Through design and just from Soft are masters
at that. They are the amount of imagination pouring through

(50:21):
outshines whether yes, I mean I've seen it, the grass
will pop into existence, or he cares cares like my gun.
Some gaming purists care. But I understand that talking pot.
That talking pot was emotional, you know what I mean,
Like that tree at the center of the map is like,
what is that? It's so cool? Um and maybe it's

(50:44):
just like hits me so my I wore very evocative
one eyed mask enjoyed. Yeah, that was very made on
the iron mask. Yeah, everything is evocative. I gotta say,
for my money, Secro is the best that I think
I've heard. It was cohesively themed, but the character design
and Secorro is just unstoppable, really cool for me. This

(51:10):
for me, this one is the elden Rings world is
super cool too. I still think I might like the
maccab vibe of blood Born a little more because it's
a little bit more gothic vibe. Yeah. Yeah, it's a
little bit more contained, and I like how creepy it always.
Elden Ring almost verges on pastiche. It's like multiple vibes
at the wall who cares. Yeah, but they do still

(51:32):
feel like one world. Like the elden Ring dares at
times to be beautiful, like just overtly beautiful, and like
blood Born really doesn't um and it's pretty grim dark
the whole time. Yeah, it's sort of a twisted beauty,
like a Tim Burtney kind of beauty. Elden Ring at
times is just breathtaking. Well, I mean yeah, torrent Or,
like your horned horse reminded me very much of uh,

(51:56):
Princess Monon, Okay, they I mean not just because the horn,
but I feel like there's some obviously, when you're going
with an open world, picturesque like vistas of sweeping land
that previous from soft games literally don't do because that's
not how their maps are designed, but also because it
would detract from the claustrophobic, horrible you're about to die

(52:20):
always feeling that they're going for. Whereas the open world,
it's it's cool because it's something that's unique to the
video gaming medium. Form inherently follows function, right. The open
world makes the game more accessible by virtue of the
fact that it is an open world, which implies you
can run away from fights, but that also implies beautiful vistas,

(52:40):
which is a sort of cinematography that pairs very well
with the tone of a more accessible from game. I
love video games. Yeah, this Bluto narrative is cool. This
game capitalizes on that feature of video games, like the
most that I've ever seen. Um other other cool things

(53:01):
like the game rewards systems that you don't think about
as systems, but like, for instance, the day night system. Right,
there's a day night system in this game, and you're like,
why is it there just because things look cool? No,
there's just some stuff you can only find at night
and some stuff you can find a day. The game
never discusses it with you. It just encouraged you, like, Oh,
what happens if I go here at night. Oh ship,
there's a bird cannibal boss. Oh you know, like uh,

(53:25):
and that stuff happens all the time and that's also
very cool. And uh. There were one or two character
stories that I found pretty compelling. Um, there was one
called There was like a wolfman called Blade I don't
want to say was. His name was B L A
A I D D. Who is sort of like loyal
to I think that's right. Uh, he's an NPC. He

(53:47):
was loyal to Ronnie, who has a great quest, and
his story was interesting Ronnie. Ronnie is a great guy. Ronnie,
she excellent try though appreciated it. She leads, she leads
to some cool loot. But his quest was cool. And
then there was a guy who was sort of like

(54:08):
the head of the round table hold who you end
up having to fight and killing him felt very sad,
uh and sad in a good way. I was like, man,
really you need this this bad because you're gonna lose
bro and he did. Um. Yeah, there's a little there
are a little emotional moments, so I kind of want
to give it some credit, uh, but not enough to
be like, oh, what a great narrative, like saying like

(54:30):
it doesn't compare with Ghosts of Tsushima when you take
out your own not even such a good moment, no
or or it's contemporary Horizon Forbidden West, which is I
would say, character, we shouldn't spoil that game since it's
not that episode. But yeah, but you do, but vastly
superior for storytelling, like actually giving you a narrative way better.

(54:52):
You know, um because it wants to be olden rings
like that doesn't matter, and I agree with it. I
don't think it matters. Gonna ask some nipicky question since
I'm happy to the negatives and just see what you
think as someone who's positive. Do you think the hood is?
Do you need more HUD? Is the HUD perfect? Is
the HUD bad? Nothing about it bothers? I mean at

(55:15):
this point, really I'm really used to it, so I
find it almost too minimal. Oh I sometimes I never
want more. I never want more, not really in any game.
I'm always like, what's the least amount we can? Like friends,
I just replayed Cyberpunk, and it's just there's times where
it's like, man, there's like eight things going on, Like

(55:35):
I love what Horizon did, which is a thing swipe
appear and disappear. I wish every game had that. I think, yeah,
I think that from stuff could afford to be daring
if they could find new ideas with that stuff. But
I think the reason they don't mess with it is
it works, you know, And I'm okay with that, all right?
Speaking of Horizon, now, I do I have leveled this

(55:59):
criticism at Horizon, and I need to level at elden
Ring as well, because I really don't want it to
become a video game trend or trope the thing where
and they're known for it and they've done so many
games now it is a thing for them, But I
hope it doesn't spread. Where you press down on the
deep pad to cycle through items and then you press
a button to use the item that's currently equipped. That's

(56:23):
a good thing. It's too because that means if you're
on like Cerulean Tears and you want Crimson Tears, basically
what my brain is doing is telling me pressed down
on the deep pad four times to get because I
know that's how many it takes to cycle. Right, Um,
that's a clunky that shouldn't be a like ergonomically or whatever. Semiotically,

(56:49):
that's too much. It leads to a lot of panicking
in a game that's already from It just feels like
the odds are the decks already stacked against you. You
don't need to be pressing down four times to get
to your healing potion, and there should be some simpler
way to do that, but I don't have. I cam
not sitting here with the solution. I don't know if
it's hold l one to open a potion wheel or whatever. Well,

(57:09):
they seem very to me. I think from software enjoys making,
the making the player have to panic and execute a
thing correctly in time or they die. I think they
like that experience for the player. I mean, that's why
you're locked into combat annimation. That's why there's no pause,
like whereas in Horizon you can slow time way down
to do stuff, and you in this game is like, no,

(57:32):
you can't, like, yeah, you gotta get to that potion
and drink it in time, or that guy's in a club,
you to death. That's the that's the game. And in
many ways Horizon is more egregious because at least in
elden Ring, I think the max you'll get his four
or five things in that deep had slot, whereas I
still find the inventory so freaking laborious and elden Ring,

(57:52):
And to be honest, you can see. One thing I
appreciated about elden Ring's menu, although it is tedious in
some ways, is that you can you can put as
many or few things as you want in those quick keys.
So like if you don't want to cycle through eight
things at once and you only want to cycle through three,
it can be just three, um, and you can decide

(58:15):
your surili in tears in your slant, in your quick
item slot. I never tried that. Actually, yeah, you can,
and you can put your h yeah, that's I only
had the three flasks in my item slot. That's it
because it was like, I don't want to deal with
the rest of it, and if I really needed another item,
I put it on the other like the holding triangle down,
the holding triangle thing. Yeah, and then I'm holding triangle thing.

(58:39):
I don't know. Did you find yourself once you had
pretty decent slashers and magic and summons. I imagine you
didn't use like the bone darts and ship did you know?
And I'm saying, why have needless? And Horizon has it too.
I think there's needless you don't have to have everything.

(59:00):
Don't have that if no one's going to use it, Well,
if I guess people aren't going to use it in
this case, my counterpoint would be that elden Ring, I
believe is built around the idea of giving every type
of player away to combat the boss that feels good
to them. I really think that's why it's there. So
do you think there's a player who uses thrown and

(59:20):
projectiles as their man absolutely well as a main deal. No,
but but constantly absolutely I do. Um. I think that's
why they got in. That's so excited about this Ash
of War system where you can customize your weapon to
do all kinds of you know, special moves and get
and get the bill that you want. So it's like,
I want to I want to make dragons bleed to

(59:41):
death and then rot from the inside. Well you can
do that, bro. I want to throw magic and then
use the sword that shoots flame dragon rot inside e mate,
get the dragon rolled inside the ash and approbably it
to your shield. Uh No, But like I think that
that's the idea why there's so many things in the game,
is to give people the perfect tool that fits their

(01:00:03):
play style to take on these bosses that are extremely challenging. Um,
it does make for the weeding out of stuff that
tends to be very tedious, and you do spend a
lot of time in the menu because of it. But
I found basically, once I settled on a build that
I knew was good, Like, for instance, I got the
moon veil and uh I believe it was the meteorite

(01:00:26):
or staff pretty early. And once I had those, I
was like, Okay, this is gonna be a perfect build
for me. I'm just gonna I'm gonna stack up intelligence.
I'm gonna hurl magic out of my sword at every beast.
And you saw how effective it was, you know, like
you can club dudes so quickly. And it was like, okay,
so I don't need to worry about all these other weapons.
I can just focus on leveling this up and all

(01:00:47):
the rest of the stuff I can sell it, um,
you know, to level up and it and the game
became a lot simpler, you know. Um, Whereas if I
was still trying out every weapon and figuring stuff out,
the game would have taken forever for me, you know.
And I was at level like one sixty by time
I ended. So I played the ship out of this game,
you know, But I think that's they just have to
let games do what they are. Different games be different.

(01:01:09):
But I am so much more pleased by a game
where virtue of picking up bigger and bigger weapons, know,
like weapons that you know, scale up in stats. I'm
constantly changing, like, oh now I have a shotgun. Oh
now my main is a sniper, right, so you want

(01:01:30):
to adapt, adapt, just like variety throughout the loop, I guess.
I feel like in games like elden Ring and Horizon
also felt this way to me to sound degree, where
within of the way through the game, I have the
weapon that I'm never going to change, that I will
use for the rest of the game. I'm like, then,

(01:01:52):
then why even have thousands of weapons? This one's the best?
One counterpoint? Uh, Like, I that is the experience of Skyroom,
for instance, what you just described, I agree, where good enough?
You're like, my sword is good enough. Now I'm done this.
So the nice thing about elden Ring is that about

(01:02:14):
a third of the way through the game, or maybe
halfway through the game, you beat a boss who gives
you a very cheap respect option, So like it's you
know that you get a you get a so that
does provide you can try ship like. And I did
try ship like. I tried the sort of night and
Flame to see if I like that, and I was like,

(01:02:34):
you know, moon veils a little bit better. And the
next time I play this game, and I definitely won't
play it again, I'm gonna try a lead build with
two katanas because that seems really fun. Um, you know,
because I try to magic building next time, I want
to see can I melee my way through this? That
seems really fun to me? Um, So it is. Actually
it is more flexible than a lot of these rpg
s are. Um, it doesn't. It's not. When you first

(01:02:57):
look at it. If you've never played one of these games,
it seems very overwhelm ming. But once you get your
bearings under it, you'll discover this game has more range
and flexibility than any game of its type before. And
I think that's really why so many people played it,
you know, because it was more accommodating for that. And
I can't stress this enough. If we didn't even mention

(01:03:19):
there's bows and arrows as well. Yeah, there's way to
the combat, right, And I can't stress this enough. Building
an open world that retains the idea of anything can
happen here and you never know what you're gonna find
and just go um. It takes a certain like not
everybody can do it. It's not just a matter of

(01:03:40):
removing stuff from the map. It takes a very careful
thought through. I think slow design like that's comfortable, spending
time and energy getting it just perfect. And I think
that's why we're not going to see so many of them.
But they're very special, and I hope that somebody else
takes on the mantel here Um because we've gotten two

(01:04:01):
great games like that to my to my taste, and
I'd love to see more. It's a really great experience.
I was fine with it. That brings us to um
another quick break, but we'll be right back with our
ultimate segment, where we will decide whether this game makes
it onto our celestial hard drive. That is the definitive

(01:04:21):
goal and explicit goal of all video game development teams
ever since we started the show. I believe that's all
they do. They put it on the board, they put
it on the board. I had to make it on
the celestial hard drive. We'll find out if elden Ring
makes the cut right after this. Hey, now we're bad.

(01:04:46):
Hey now, okay, but this isn't even continuing and uh,
specifically the Elden Ring episode, specifically the segment where we
just gus whether we shall include this game on our
celestial hard drive. We gotta pass that last checkpoint to
do that, right, that's true. Did you think of a

(01:05:09):
catchy Oh? I know exactly what Allergy and Elden right. Absolutely,
I set. I set the herd tree ablaze, my friend
and I made that far. I made my way into
the crumbling ruins just over here, slashing at the dung
of a giant golden dung beetle. I know that I'm
gonna have to pierce that veil and what lies behind
it only only fate will decide. Turns out it's a

(01:05:33):
giant space blub. But it's really cool. I assumed it
would be a spider or a blob. It's a space blob.
It's very cool. It's a space blub. Um. Great. Well,
that means it's time for the casting of the die,
and I think there will be more dramatic tension. As always,
we go and that provides the most dramatic tension if

(01:05:54):
you go first. This time I agree. I agree with that.
Then the question is whether I will do luck the
babe from your very arms and club it, dash it
on the rocks. So yeah, well that's too. Mccab death
references a brutal game. Yeah, it really is. It is
a brutal game. It is a brutal game. Um. Yeah,

(01:06:15):
this game belongs. I'm definitely keeping it. I don't mind
that I already have blood Born. I am comfortable to
from soft games. One day we're gonna get to some
of these dark souls and then it's gonna be tough
because having three or four or more on there. It's like,
I don't know about that. Elden Ring is a is
an incredible experience. I think it's essential to video games.

(01:06:37):
I think aliens one day will wonder did they have
talking pots if they play this game, and uh, you know,
hopefully they hopefully they really wonder that, maybe they come visit.
We're keeping this. Blood Born is already on the drive. Yeah,
we kept it, and I think we should have um
and I am definitely keeping elden Ring. You should not
have pointed that out, my friend. I think that changes

(01:06:58):
my vote better not better not Wait, I can't um
she h. I think only I think it's a grand
opening special where trying to be polite to our newest

(01:07:20):
we're on. iHeart now, um, this is total charity, because
I would only I believe that from the from Formula
deserves one, exactly one entry on the list, and that
it is incredibly seminal and important. But I don't see
any reason that it deserves to and I do not

(01:07:43):
think it's I do still think it's fundamentally the same loop.
It's just in an open world context, and they're so
far from having invented the idea of open world that
it's not even funny like they they're just combining it
with something that's long, long, you know. Established That said,
I would lose all credibility if I shot down elden

(01:08:03):
Ring in our very first episode on the new network.
But just so you assholes, no, I am usually the
kind of guy who would totally delete elden Ring. But
because it's our first episode, when everyone to go home
happy and keep listening to one upsmanship, I will let
elden Ring squeak by well being is on the drive

(01:08:24):
is too. There's another thing is that I actually I
legitimately question a lot of aspects of it. But uh,
see the whole previous hour of conversation for more on
but um, another reason it squeaks by is because we
haven't filled the drive yet. I do you think when
the drive is full, I will probably push for maybe

(01:08:48):
blood Born getting the act. Why don't think elden Ring
is superior? So we'll see, But for now, celebrate, enjoy
while they're both on there. Oh I do, Oh, I do?
I I've gotten both my ruins and my souls. I
didn't get to Sonic games on there and there, Well,
we've only talked about one. We can talk about it more.

(01:09:08):
I think Sonic too has a real show. If anything,
I'll get on at Sonic two. So we'll have to
discuss that at some point. Yeah, I think Sonic two
has got a real shot. There's only one Mario game
on there right now. I think it's Super Mario World's
the only game that's on there. I certainly can see
multiple Mario entrees. I just don't think I need multiple
from it. I don't know. A hundred is not a
lot of games will be so you know, when we

(01:09:29):
get to it, down to it and the question will
be some tough cuts that's true. And the question I
think is only fair to ask, is is that game
really better than blood Born or Elden Right, Like, that's like,
that's a question I'll put back because I really think
that those two games are that good. But you know, like,
but that's a debate and we'll have it when the
right time comes. It's impossible to be objective because it

(01:09:52):
is art. So it's also has to do with the
fact that I wish I could experience what your experience,
but I don't. I wish I do, but my brain
interprets it a different way. The feeling of being beaten
into submission and then finally eking out of victory. Uh,
feels too close to like punishment family trauma that I

(01:10:13):
had as a child. Like yeah, it's like it's the
negative feedback loop of emotions that I don't want and
I spend my whole life trying to avoid. Is like
not achieving my objective and then barely squeaking by and
being like I think that's thank God, I can move
on to the next thing because I finally stop fucking up.

(01:10:34):
I think most I mean, if I haven't said this,
let me say it now. I think most gamers will
not like elden Ring. Like in the large swath of
people that play video games, the vast majority of them
will not like it. Like everybody who's like main video
game is like Candy Crush and that's not you know,
or a game like that on their phone or something. Well,
let's go further than that, or you know, but that's

(01:10:56):
not Yeah, yeah, that's not a belittling thing. I'm saying.
That's a bunch of gamers in the world who's like
main video game. It's like something simple and mindless that
they do to, you know, while they wait for a
doctor's appointment or whatever, you know what I mean, Like
that's how they're spending their time. They're not they're gonna
hate Eldon right and and again, yeah, codboys like you
just said, people who mainly play first person shooters for

(01:11:17):
the competitive aspect, they probably won't like elden Ring. And
I think that's okay. You know, it doesn't have to
be universally appealing, Like it doesn't have to be Mickey
Mouse or or Mario. It doesn't have to be that
for it to be a fantastic It's interesting because it's
getting reviews and numbers as if it were universally appealing.
But I think it's an important reminder as we wrap
up here that it actually is a very distinct sub genre.

(01:11:39):
Absolutely genre, but sub genre like it's just heavily imitated,
you know. And also and it's having its moment right now,
and it's people are loving it. It's liked by the
right people. That has a lot to do with why
we're hearing something. It's, you know, like the loudest people
are not always the right people, um or don't represent
it the majority. And I in elden Rings case, and

(01:12:01):
I'm a person that loves it. That might be true. Fascinating.
We always leave them on a resonant note, so quick
turn the podcast off now before we start plugging. Oh
you're still here? Well, did you know? We do like
over a dozen other podcasts. You want to check them

(01:12:22):
out on myriad pop culture topics and topics like a
total you know, out of left field stuff like addiction, recovery, trauma, depression,
or dinosaurs. We do whatever we want, and we do
it over at patreon dot com slash small beans. Seriously,
there's a huge backlog tons of podcasts over there. So
if you like one Upsmanship and you want to find more,

(01:12:45):
check it out. Otherwise, if you're just interested in video
game chat, you know where to find us. One ups
Menship wherever you get podcasts, we got all our all
of our previous episodes available for your consumption. Have at
my friends feast up. That's right, Go listen to the
one about blood Borne and right in and tell me

(01:13:05):
which one we should keep. Yeah, I feel free to
do that and we'll see if that happens. Terrestrial mail only,
please work done.