January 13, 2021 • 42 mins
Video game stories keep getting longer and more involved. Is there a point when a video game has too much content, too many quests, and to vast a world? The sidequest burnout is real. Then we create a glitch in The Mushroom Kingdom.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:07):
The Large nerdron Collider Podcast is a production of I
Heart Radio. Hi everybody, Welcome to the Large nerdron Co
Ladder Podcast, the podcast that's all about the geeky things
happening in the world around us and how excited we
(00:29):
are about them. I'm Ariel casting and with me as
always is my wonderful friend and co host Jonathan Strictline. Hi, Ariel,
guess what. Hi, I got a question for you. You
got a question for me? Okay, what is what is
(00:49):
your question? You know what the question is. Here's the
question for everybody. Because this is the big one. This
is one that requires preparation, which is why Ariel already
knows the question. This is not one you can just
drop on somebody, because it requires real thought. Ariel, I'm
glad to be the one to get to tell you this.
You're a professional wrestler. What's your entrance theme? It would
(01:12):
be the Wake of Magellan by Sabotage. Who there. Now,
we're gonna make our our listeners look stuff up, which
is awesome because I'm also going to do that because
my answer for this is that it would be cash
Money by Prince Charles and the City Beat Band. So
let me ask you, Ariel, what is it about the
(01:33):
song that makes me think, okay, this is my entrance theme. Well,
it's sabotage for people who don't know. Uh. They were
the group that Trans Siberian Orchestra is now. Uh. They
used to be a metal band and they did a
few rock operas. One of them was called The Wake
of Magellan, which is all c shanty ish but also
(01:55):
rock opera and I they won't allow anybody to perform
their pieces. So since w w E is kind of
a performance art um, I I think that would be
a great way to bring life to these little known
rock operas without upsetting the creator's wishes. Yeah. See, I
(02:17):
don't care about the creators, which is but that's that's
very kind of you to spare that kind of thought. Yeah.
In my case, it's cash money. The way it goes.
That starts with a sort of chant that goes pennies, nickels,
doms Corda's dollar bills, hundred dollar bills, and you know,
it's all about money, and to me, like it's it's
(02:38):
right in line with some great entrance themes that Classic
Heels have used, like the million Dollar Man or Shane McMahon,
who does here comes the Money is his um and
that's just sort of that kind of persona that I
think would be a lot of fun to play. I've
always kind of gravitated more towards the heels the bad
guys in wrestling, of has found them more interesting. But
(03:02):
um yeah, I was just one of those things where
I thought, this is one of those geeky conversations I
used to have all the time with like my fellow
wrestling buddies, just like, wouldn't it be awesome if every
time you walked into a room you had entrance music
to announce your arrival. And if so, what would it be?
I mean, I I like w W E. I I
(03:23):
don't follow it nearly as closely as you, but I
do enjoy watching it. It's been a while since I've
watched it too. I mean, there's still some great entrance
themes out there, you know. There's like Bobby Rude or
Robert Rude has one called Glorious that I absolutely love,
and Bray Wyatt has well used to do Broken Out
(03:43):
with Love, but now it's like a remixed version of
that that's super creepy and really fits his character. Um
A lot of them end up sounding very generic, especially
like in the late nineties period you had you had
an arrow where it was almost impossible to tell them
apart because they were all just that chunky rock guitar
sound and that was it. But yeah, and I'm curious
(04:05):
about what our listeners think. So at the end of
the episode, when we get to telling you all the
ways to get in contact with us, one of the
things you need to tell us is what's your entrance theme?
Because that's important. Yes, oh, I do have an exit
theme too, because if I'm going to come in all
business on on wake of the Magellan, I'm going to
go out on one last drink by entering the Oh wow.
Now see that's awesome because there's not that many wrestlers
(04:25):
who do that where they have two different themes where
they have one for the entrance and one for when
they when they the match is over and they've won.
But there are some who do so that's pretty awesome. Yeah,
because you gotta go in serious and you gotta go
out fun people. Remember you, are you saying it's business
in the front and party in the back? Are you
a mullet? Yes? I would be the mullet of the
(04:45):
w W e res Okay, alright, well, now that we
have established our level of class, it's time for us
to tackle this week's news. Well, I'm glad you said class,
because our first topic is very very classy. Jonathan, it's
uh that Deadpool three is it? Go? Yeah, it's gonna happen.
(05:06):
And this is one of those things that you know,
sometimes people might say that's a no brainer, but it's
a total brainer because since Deadpool to Disney actually purchased
Fox right, and so there was a lot of hope
that there would be another Deadpool, but everyone was wondering
what would a Deadpool look like when Disney is the
(05:28):
owner of the property, and especially if they want to
incorporate it into the m c U, which is very
much not in the style of Deadpool. But from what
we're hearing, it sounds like they're they're dedicated to making
this stay kind of that R rated edge that we've
come to expect they are, And they've got Ryan Reynolds
still attached to the project. He's working on the script.
(05:50):
We're not going to get it this year, um, because
Ryan Reynolds is busy, and because it's still kind of
a crazy year, especially with all those announcements that Marvel made,
like there's just not there's just not room for yet
another project right in the immediate future. But I mean
it is coming. And you know, as as much as
they say is this within the m c I can
(06:12):
see people wondering if if Deadpool would stay rid at
are But Disney does put out more adult content. You know,
they also own Effects and Hulu, so you know we're
getting that Aliens show that we talked about and things
like that. So I don't think it's it's unusual. I
just you know, they may not put it on Disney
plus well, and and some of the m c U
(06:33):
films get pretty get edgy is probably the wrong word,
but they push the limit. Yeah, they get dark. They
get dark. That's a good way of putting it. I
don't think of them as necessarily edgy, but they definitely
get a little darker. Also, they announced that there's entirely
the possibility that Deadpool could show up in other titles,
not just his own movie, which now granted this would
(06:57):
require Sony signing on as well. But it really makes
me wish that we get a Deadpool cameo in Spiderman three,
because we already know a ton of other characters are
showing up in Spiderman three, so having having and and
Deadpool and Spider Man in the comics have a long
history with one another, so you know, and I've played
(07:19):
enough Marvel games that I know that Deadpool can still
be snarky and funny without being R rated, which he'd
probably have to be if he were in Spider Yes. Well, yeah,
pretty much anything that would be beyond the the series.
I think they I think Marvel like the serialized, episodic
TV type stuff. I think Marvel tends to get a
little more edgy with that. I mean, you look at
(07:41):
things like Jessica Jones and Daredevil. Those are definitely got
a harder edge to them than the films do. Uh.
But moving on to something else that might also be
pretty edgy is Moonnight. Now, Moonnight is one of those
Marvel characters that I don't think a lot of people
know much about. No, when you describe mood Night at
(08:04):
face value, it sounds like he could be problematic to portray.
He is h a gentleman with dissociative identity disorder that
manifests different personalities. You know, I just started watching Toom Patrol.
Jonathan so similar to Crazy Jane, except for I don't
think all of his personalities have their own powers. One
(08:24):
of those personalities is Moonnight. It's also it also reminds
me of Oh and I can't remember the character's name.
All the comic book fans are gonna hate me. But
the the mutant who also has multiple personalities. That mutant
has a different power for each of those personalities. Legion,
thank you, yes, Ariel with the rescue, so Legion so
(08:45):
similar in that respect, but in this case, yeah, Moonnight
is the personality that has the powers. H And also
I think a lot of people compare Moonnight sort of
to Batman, like that's kind of the yield to it. Well,
we now know that Justin Benson and Aaron Moorehead, both
known for independent horror movies, are going to be directing
(09:08):
Moon Night, So that's interesting. It is. It's very interesting
to me because it's not the first time that the
m c U has leaned on horror directors for their movies.
The original director for the Second Doctor Strange was also
a horror director who just left because he wanted to
tell a different story than the m c U wanted,
(09:29):
but which which we've seen happen a couple of times before. Yeah,
but it it does post the question of are they
going to make this next round of m CU a
lot more adult and less friendly for children because it's
all going to be so much darker. I will say
I have not seen any of their movies, but I
(09:51):
have seen a segment of VHS viral that they did.
It's called bone Storm, has to do with uh skateboar orders,
and I hated it. But to be fair, I pretty
much hated everything in the HS viral. It was not
a good entry in the series in my opinion. But
(10:12):
you know, I don't watch horror movies, so I didn't
see it. But I will say, you know, I'm I'm
willing to give him a chance because I wouldn't have
necessarily had said that James Gunn was going to make
an amazing Guardians of the Galaxy movie. But it's one
of my favorite MCU movies. Honestly, I don't think at
the time, I didn't think anyone would be able to
make a good Guardians of the Galaxy movie. It's just
(10:33):
so weird, uh, something that is not weird, something that
I think is completely expected. But you know, now we've
got word of it is that Galaxy's Edge, the the
Star Wars themed area of the Disney Parks, may soon
have some new characters from a familiar Disney Plus series. Yeah,
(10:54):
we'll be possibly getting the Mandalorian characters. Uh and also
possibly the Razor Crest, which they're saying may replace Kylo
wren ship. This is all right now, but um, I
don't know. I don't want them to replace Kyler Ren's ship.
He's actually quite an intimidating character when you run into
(11:14):
him at Galaxy. I haven't even seen it yet because
I haven't been to I haven't been to Hollywood Studios
since they built Galaxy's Edge, so I have not even
seen Kyler Ren's ship. Um. I mean obviously, like this
is such a big hit for Disney. I think it
would be ridiculous if they did not bring those characters
(11:35):
into the park. Especially you know, you know that grow
Goo a k A Baby Yoda is gonna be everywhere
every T shirt, on every cup. You know you can
you can already meet Groot, you can already meet Baby Grout.
So now if you can meet grow Goo, and then
if you can meet them together having a dance off.
(11:56):
I didn't know you can meet baby Groot. I met
adult grout is the land. He was. He was about
eight feet tall. I have not met baby group personally,
but I know that he has been a Hollywood studios. Um,
some of our mutual friends have pictures with baby grouten startlers.
So we hate you, friends, but we love you. Also,
(12:19):
something else I love is Doctor Who. But you also
like h Richard Iowati, Yes, did I say that? Yeah?
He's He's the he was Moss on the I T
crowd And when when I guess the BBC someone asked
(12:45):
fans who they thought should play the next doctor because
the rumor is, of course that uh that our our
current doctor will be leaving after this season, which makes
sense that three seasons and Doctor is out. That's something
that's happened several times now. Um heck eccleston only got
one season. But yeah, but he he chose. Yeah, we
(13:07):
won't get into that this episode. So, so, Ariels, you're
the Doctor Who fan? Really? I mean, I I've watched
a fair number of episodes, but I don't consider myself
a fan. What is your reaction to the idea of
Richard Iowa Day playing the doctor. I think he would
(13:27):
be amazing because I like Jody Whittaker, our current doctor.
I think she has done a fantastic job with it.
But I really like you know I I My first
doctor was Baker, Tom Baker, and um, so I always
associate doctor who is kind of a curmudgeon ly, dry
(13:50):
sense of humor, kind of cranky person, and Jody Whittaker
is far from that. She's I think the biggest fault
with her doctor, and albeit I haven't watched the latest
season and is that she doesn't have enough faults for me. Uh,
she's a little too perfect. So I think Richard, especially
after watching his travel Man series where he's just the
(14:12):
crankiest person in the world, affably cranky, I think he
would be a perfect doctor. I think my other favorite
on the list of people to play the doctor would
be Phoebe waller Bridge. On this point, see for me,
I wat a. I wouldn't want him to be the doctor,
but the reason for that is because I would never
(14:33):
ever be able to see him as the doctor and
not think Moss from I T because that was such
such a definitive character, and I know that's not who
Iowa da Is. I know that was a character, but
it was such a definitive character and that voice is
just so distinctive that I don't I think I would
just be thinking like, oh, this is like a weird
I t crowed parody of doctor Who. I mean, you know,
(14:56):
I'm I'm not opposed to that, Okay, fair enough. And
then and then Roy could be his companion, and he
could constantly get stuck in the tardest and need help,
need assistance. You need Jen in there too to really
be a total pain in the butt as well. Listen,
(15:16):
Jodie Whittaker started off with three or four companions, so
I think you can have to companions. So you can
get was it is his name, Matt Barry, the guy
who played the guy who played the Boss, and he's
also the toast of London. Get him as the doctor. Yes,
that would be amazing. I you know, he's a great
actor and I would not be able to stand the
(15:37):
doctor at that point, phenomenal. Get clim Fan Dango as
his companion. Yes, I know, clim Fan Dango. That would
be amazing. Well, we've got other stories we should cover
really quickly before we move on one is that uh,
I didn't I wasn't aware of this until after it
had happened that the NFL played their wild card game
on Nickelodeon and there were total like on screen effects
(16:01):
that were Nickelodeon related, and that to me is phenomenal. Yes,
I like, you know, kids play football's kids play sports,
So I like that. Um, they made it a little
bit more entertaining. I mean, it also makes it more
entertaining for me. Well, I had had like Young Sheldon
pop up and explain specific things that happened with um, uh,
(16:27):
you know, when things happened in the game, like if
there was a false start, Young Sheldon popped up to
explain what a false start was. When they were going
for a field goal, you would see SpongeBob in between
the uprights. It was really weird, and a touchdown would
result in on screen slime cannons, virtual slime cannons. It
(16:49):
would have been you know, I was about to say
it would have been better if they were real life
slime caannons, because that would be hilarious, but that would
also probably lead to a lot of slippery injurys, and
I don't think like you would have a lot of
people on the on the injured list after that game.
If I want to see people get hurt, I'll watch
either M M A or hockey. Yeah, alright, Well in
our final story for this episode, for this section is
(17:13):
that there's an interesting trend on TikTok. There always are,
they're always interesting trends on TikTok, but this is one
that I think Aerial feels a particular kinship with because
the trend is people singing sea shanties a specific one,
the Wellerman. Yes, now there are lots of sea shanties
(17:36):
happening on TikTok right now, but specifically the Wellerman, which
is a song that my band covers and has for
quite a few years. Uh in a slightly different way.
It's it's basically this this guy named Nathan Evans who
sings the Wellerman, and then other TikTokers are adding in
their harmonies and it's fantastic. It sounds beautiful and there's
(17:58):
so many different renditions of it, and it makes me
sit there going one, I wish I came up with
those harmonies, and two I wish it weren't COVID times
because my band would one put our version up on
on the TikTok's. Yeah, that would be a lot of fun.
I think it's a it's a neat thing, you know.
To me, the thing that brought sea shanties back was
(18:20):
was Assassin's Creed Black Flag, because you would go around
collecting sea shanties, and every time you collected one, it
would be added to your cruise repertoire to the point
where I wouldn't use fast travel in that game, just
because I wanted to hear what song they were going
to sing, and the fact that I was familiar with
probably about eighty percent of the songs, because sea shanties
(18:43):
and renaissance festival music have a very heavy overlap in
the Venn diagram, even if even though the sea shanties
are usually about two hundred years too late for renaissance festivals. Um. Yeah,
so I'm on board with this one. I am the
grumpy old man who shakes I fisted TikTok typically, but
in this case, I'm on on board, so to speak.
(19:05):
And I and if you all want to hear the
sea shanties, I got forward on board. If you all
want to hear the sea shanties and ignore that uh
con you can search for the hashtag sea Shanty on TikTok. Yeah,
it's really fantastic. I look forward to seeing once where
(19:26):
they do Barret's Privateers because that song hits hard. All right, Well,
that wraps up our news items for this section. When
we come back, we're going to have an epic discussion
about epic games. But first, let's take a quick break. Okay,
(19:53):
we're back, and we were we were talking about different
things that we could uh apple as a discussion topic
for our second segment, and this is one of those
topics that was always at the top of our minds
when we were making out lists of things that we
wanted to talk about on this show, and it is
the tendency for games to get more and more epic
(20:18):
and whether or not that is in general a good
thing or a bad thing, both from a game experience
perspective and maybe even like from a developer perspective. Yeah. Yeah,
so we're talking stuff like Fallout, sky Rim, Assassin's Creed.
I'd probably say cyberpunk, cyberpunk if if it had if
(20:42):
it had measured up to the vision that they had
when they started working on it, yes, which which goes
into that conversation of whether or not you can get
too epic in your game design. So, um, do you
enjoy playing games that are epic long stories with a
ton of side missions in open world sandboxy games. All Right,
(21:04):
I'm gonna I'm gonna couch this because the initial answer
is yes. The initial answer is I do. I mean,
I love the Fallout games, even even as I have
problems with the Fallout games. The biggest problem I have
with Fallout, besides the sprawling nature that we'll get to,
is the tonal inconsistency, because you get very weird uh
(21:29):
satire and parody and fall Out, and then you get
like super grim dark nastiness and Fallout and and if
if it were one or the other, it would be
easier to kind of grock, but the fact that you
have both is really weird. Um. But that being said,
I always love the beginning of those games. I love
(21:52):
the discovery, I love building up the character to a
certain point. But inevitably I start to run out of
steam and I hit fatigue, and uh often it will
take me five or six tries to play through one
of these games. And even then it's on that fifth
or six try where I'm just like trying to be
(22:14):
laser focused. I'm like, no, I'm not gonna go do
that side mission. I'm just going to focus on the
main story because I need to see how this ends.
Because having all those options and having all those avenues
to explore, I kept feeling the need to explore them
because I worried that if I continue the main story,
I might shut off an avenue and I wouldn't be
(22:36):
able to go back and see it. Yeah. So I
had that same problem when I was playing Mass Effect,
which is at least the first couple were not as
much of an open world as as let's say Fallout
or sky rim are Um. But there you know, I
would play. I would play, and they would have side missions,
(22:57):
and it was a matter of I don't really want
to do this ad mission. I don't really want to,
as they say in the mm O world, go shoot
snow bears in the snow. I want to. I want
to continue the storyline, but if I don't do this
side mission, I won't get the options in the storyline
I want. Um. That being said, for me, it's it's
much better than a sandbox game Sandbox World Skyrim, which
(23:19):
I loved. I also loved the beginning of that, because
there was ton of discovery and it walked you through
and there was a storyline where I could interact with it,
but my hand was kind of being held. But once
I got out into the world of Skyrim, like, I
got incredibly lost. Everything was crafting. There were so many
little side missions that it took me too far away
from the main storyline to find my way back to it.
(23:41):
That's fairy um. And another thing that that kind of
reminds me of Ariel the whole crafting part that you
mentioned is that a lot of these epic games seemed
to be filled with what I would call busy work.
Like even the side missions can frequently be busy work
where you're you realize you're doing something that's taking up time,
(24:04):
but it's not really necessarily adding that much of an
enjoyable or entertaining experience, and you're playing a game ostensibly
you're playing a game in order to be entertained, right,
So I mean there's some games that are more like
this is more about art or more about making a statement.
(24:24):
And I'm not trying to invalidate that, but I am
saying that if you've got a game that is huge
for the purposes of being huge, or because you feel
like you have a an obligation to make the game
bigger than the last game that was in your series.
That seems to be an unhealthy cycle, and it leads
(24:44):
to these enormous games that that lose their way where
you either don't even like you There would be times
where I'd be playing some of these games where I
wouldn't even remember what the story was anymore because I
had been going on so many side missions that I
had lost track of what the thread was for the
overall narrative. And then I wouldn't feel like like I
(25:07):
feel like, oh man, I don't even want to do
the story because I don't find the story is interesting anymore,
or I don't really know who's who anymore, And the
time I would need to spend to learn of all
that just seems like it would be, you know, treading
over ground I've already been on. Yeah, yeah, And you can.
You can do that in an MMO because you've got
other people to share the experience with. But when you're
(25:28):
doing it by yourself, uh, it can be tedious, like
you said, especially if it's a game that has been
rushed out like like we saw in Cyberpunk um where
you know and I say it was rushed. They delayed
releasing that game repeatedly. Yeah, uh, in an effort to
(25:50):
make it better, but still they tried to do too much.
And so now and the actual storyline is really short,
Like you can may in line the storyline of Cyberpunk.
If you were to just do that and not do
any exploration or any side missions, you can complete that
pretty quickly. Uh. So it means that you've got even
(26:14):
more busy work filling up all the rest of the stuff. Yeah,
I will say whenever I play an epic game and
I get further along in the storyline and I see
that little progress bar I do get I do get
upset that the if it's a good story, that it's
going to be over as soon as it is, even
though I don't really want to do the side missions
(26:34):
to extend it, because I don't, I oftentimes don't feel
that that resource gathering or that crafting adds to the
story at all. If if I want to play a
resource management game, I'll just play for resource management well.
And the and the other issue here is that so
one making games bigger does not necessarily make them better.
So that's a I think that's a terrible metric. So
(26:56):
whenever I hear when a new game is coming out
and they'll say it's larger than the map of the
last game, to me, I'm thinking, well, that doesn't mean
it's good. There might also be more empty space, which
just means you're taking more time to get from point
A to point B and there's nothing interesting to look at. Like,
that's not good either. Or you could have filled it
(27:17):
with so much stuff that it just is overwhelming and
you don't you know, you quickly get fatigued. Like I
had said, on top of that, by adding this, let's
make the game bigger and bigger and bigger every single time,
it adds to the pressure of the development team to
make that a reality and requires more crunch. It requires,
(27:40):
uh you know, more more delays, often because you have
to test everything, and as you're making it bigger, there
are more opportunities for stuff to go wrong. So in
many ways, I am starting to prefer smaller scale games
that have a more focused story. Uh you know, it's
(28:03):
not that I want there to be you know, a
straight on the rails approach through the game. I'm not
saying that I don't want to be like a walking
simulator for everything. I don't want it to be, you know,
one of the Walking Dead games from tail Tale or
anything like that. Those are interesting stories, but I feel
like we there's gotta be a happy medium between ginormous
(28:26):
game where you'll never see everything and a game where
you don't have any real choices. So I think there is,
and I think, well, it's a little too early to say,
but I think Final Fantasy seven would be a good
example of how I think that should go, because they
made a much bigger world they in recreating Fun Fantasy seven.
They made it much larger, but now it's spread out
(28:49):
through a few games, so they can focus on each
chunk of that story that they've expanded out a little
bit at a time. Yeah, so then then becomes like
a series of games as opposed to this, Like I've
just loaded up Skyrim. The entire world is open to
me once I finished the tutorial and I'm stuck on
the side of a mountain because I got lost because
(29:11):
or or or I turned a corner and there was
a dragon and it ate me and I'm a level
two character. Um, yeah, it's it's a. It's not to
tell game designers how to do their jobs. They know
way better than I do. But it's a trend that
I have found particularly frustrating. Even as I'm enjoying a game,
(29:33):
like if I, if I sit there and think about it,
I often come to the realization of I'm not likely
to ever finish this. I have read Dead Redemption too.
I have never finished that game, like it's just sitting there,
like I don't think I even got out of the
early tutorial parts because that lasts like two hours. Um,
(29:53):
yeah I did. I haven't finished Skyrim, I haven't finished
Mass Effect in Dromeda, and the number of games my
husband hasn't finished his much much larger. I fired up
Borderlands three the other day, just out of curiosity, because
I bought that when it first came out, and I
was I was thinking, you know, I never finished that game.
I should go ahead and finish it out. See see
what that game is like, because I enjoyed the earlier
(30:15):
Borderlands games, and that's that's a shooter, right, It's not.
It's not like an RPG or anything. So I thought,
I'll just fire this up. See how far I've got
to go to get to the end, started up, realized
my character in Borderlands three was level four. I hadn't
gone anywhere, I hadn't done anything in that game. So
(30:36):
they just showed how how quickly I will give up
when it starts. Of course, Borderlands three also had the
problem of being more Borderlands, right, it didn't add a
whole lot of new stuff to it. But you know
that's this is when you need. Yeah, this is when
you need to start playing roguelike games where you can
just have like a play through and then you're doing
(30:57):
and then you have a next play through and it's
a little different. Yeah, I haven't really gotten into roguelikes
and and it's one of those where I feel like
I do need to do that. I hear that Hades
is the game to get into. Um I haven't played Hades.
I know that FTL has has been fun for some
of my friends. Well, Hades is the one that all
(31:18):
the people I know have gone gaga for. For one thing,
they say, all the all the all the gods and
goddesses in that game are sexy, SCHMEXI as I'll get out,
So yeah, I mean it's it is, Yeah, you know,
it's those Greeks they knew how to party. All right, Well,
(31:40):
I guess that kind of wraps up our conversational topic.
But when we come back, we'll have our mash up,
which makes an iconic science fiction action film meet up
with an iconic video game. But we'll explain more after
we take this quick break. Okay, So, like you said,
(32:18):
we're taking an iconic video game and an iconic movie.
We've already talked about movies and video games and we're
mashing them up. So how we're doing that is we
are mashing up the Matrix with Super Mario Brothers. Yeah,
so this was this was kind of a last minute
decision to mash these up. And uh, we have each
(32:42):
taken our time to craft our mash up, and once
again we are individually convinced that we have managed independently
to come up with the exact same plot. We have
proven ourselves wrong in every episode so far, but maybe
this is the one where we since we have carbon
copies of one another serial. Do you want to go first?
(33:04):
Do you want me to go first? You know what,
you get to decide this time. I get to choose everything.
I'll tell you what I will go first, because I
think you've gone first with every episode so far, and
and uh unless that puts too much pressure, are you
cool with me going first? Okay, groovy, I'm fine with
you all right. Here we go enter the Mario Thomas Anderson,
(33:28):
a seemingly mundane computer programmer in the Mushroom Kingdom, is
secretly a hacker. His hacker code name Mario. Anderson suspects
there's something going on in the world at large, but
can't quite put his finger on it. In hacker circles,
there's talk of this thing called the Matrix. Anderson is
close to finding out what the Matrix actually is. Meanwhile,
(33:51):
a group of other hackers who have already learned about
what the world is spoiler alert it's a video game
or try to get in contact with Anderson. Anderson receives
a message from Peach, a woman with superhuman jumping abilities.
She tells Anderson that a man known only as Luigi
wants to meet with him. But before Anderson can make
(34:13):
a decision, a bunch of agents or a goombus bust
into his workplace, led by the intimidating agent Bowser, played
by a digital recreation of Dennis Hopper. Anderson is chased
by the agents and must trust Peach when she tells
him to jump down a big green sewer pipe. He does,
and next thing he knows, he wakes up in a
(34:34):
dingy basement holding an old S and E S controller
in his hands. Anderson, now known simply as Mario, discovers
that long ago video game consoles took over the world
and that humanity has now been reduced to becoming bio
batteries connected to these consoles, like the PS twenty seven
and the Xbox series Pumpkin. But a group of gamers
(34:56):
led by Luigi are working to free people from this captivity.
Only one of them, known by the code name Warrio,
is secretly working with the consoles in return for being
able to live out the rest of his life in
burger time because he really likes burgers. Luigi offers Mario
a choice. He can go back to living his fictional
life within the matrix of the Mushroom Kingdom by eating
(35:17):
the Blue Mushroom, or he can choose the Red Mushroom.
Mario goes for the Red Mushroom and soon begins a
training montage on how to do stuff like wheeled a
big hammer, or jump really high or occasionally shootout fireballs
or turned into a tanuki. Because of Warrio, Luigi is
captured within the matrix, and so Peach and Mario must
(35:39):
go on a rescue mission. After jumping on top of
Warrio's head to squish him, they go through this really
cool action scene in which they take out tons of
gumbas in a bank lobby using fireballs all over the place.
This eventually leads to Mario facing off against Agent Bowser.
Bowser manages to beat up Mario a bit until Mario
can clearly see the code where you Ponti jumps up
(36:00):
and he hits a star. Now immune from damage, Mario
absolutely whales on Bowser until Bowser is defeated temporarily. At least,
Mario rescues Luigi that finds out sadly, the solution to
freeing all of humanity is in another castle. Setting up
the sequel the end that was wonderful, And I think
(36:21):
this might be the closest we've ever gotten to having
the same mash up, So it's it's not exactly the same,
but it's kind of close. So uh, instead of pivoting
and trying to come up with something completely different, I'm
just gonna read money. It's a me Marnio. So Marnio
(36:41):
is a plumber for a respectable plumbing company Rotor Ruter.
One day, his girlfriend ghosts him like totally gone, and
he starts searching for her. But before he can even
leave his house, he gets a knock on his door,
and there's a guy who introduces himself as Toad, who
says he has the answers Marnio is looking for to
find his girl. So see, I'm similar already, But first
you must choose whether to eat the red mushroom or
(37:03):
green mushroom. Marnio chooses a green mushroom mushroom, and all
of a sudden, a pipe opens up in the middle
of his living room. Toad beckons Mario to follow him,
and Marnio does. Once he gets to the other side,
he finds out that the world he's was living in
was a sham, and that the real world is being
turned into items and ponds by a bunch of turtle
machines called kupa's KOPA stands for Kinetically Optimized Operational Programs
(37:27):
Assimilation Subset UH, and they've kidnapped his girlfriend, Peach, who
discovered the toadstool protocol, which will free everyone from their
imprisonment and stop the Coupa machines. You see, everybody's been
like stuffed into boxes and basically they're being used as
as human objects to make the Coupa world more comfortable.
The Kupas have really laid waste to the real world,
(37:50):
putting lava pits in and vast waste of ocean where
once there was civilization, and people have gone crazy. Uh.
And so these these items that are in inhabited by
people are attacking Marnio uh like on site. So you know,
everything is coming at him and he has to dodge
and weave and and try to get around it. And
every time he thinks he's found his girlfriend, she's not there. Uh.
(38:15):
She's in a different castle or pylon or whatever it's
called in this real world. But soon he finally makes
it to the final castle pylon thing uh to where
the Bowser core is is housed, which is an AI
controlling all the Kupa machines. He breaks the bows A
core off uh and it falls into the law one
(38:36):
of the lava pits that is conveniently nearby, and rescues
his girlfriend. She inserts the toadstool protocol into the Koopa
Bowser infrastructure and releases everyone in trapped in the real world. Uh.
They are so thrilled. They make her the Princess of
the real world because for some reason, monarchy still exists
even though they've been freed from machines, and she and
Marnio start to rebuild humanity one gumba at a time.
(38:59):
I don't think they were that similar. I mean, granted,
we both are dealing with the story structure of the
matrix and then working in the Mario references wherever we can,
so I mean that's understandable, But no, I think I
think we both had a very fun little take on that.
Uh you went with a very much more in world fiction,
whereas I got a little more meta with the video
(39:21):
game consoles thing. But I think you know, just again
shows how we think differently about these pitches, and again
proves that we don't share them with each other before
we record. We certainly don't one of these days, though, yeah,
we'll get we'll get one that's just be exactly well,
then whoever goes first, when the second person goes, they'll
(39:41):
just say ditto, and then I'll be the end, which
also will tell you one of two things. Either we
really did create the exact same pitch, or the person
who went second was lazy and didn't bother. Yeah. Yeah,
but that's um all we have for today. If you
have ideas how the Matrix and Mario should have been
(40:01):
mashed up, or opinions on epic video games, or what
Roguelike game Jonathan should try, or you want to talk
about your pretend w w E character, please right out
and reach reach out and write to us. Yes, reach
out right to us. It's smooth and uh. We've got
(40:25):
a couple of different ways for you to do that,
including a brand new one. We have an email address,
it just took a little bit for us to get it.
L n C at I Heart Media dot com that
will get right to the email and box of yours. Truly, actually,
I will see it and we'll be glad to reach
(40:45):
you that way. If you have specific things you want
to say, they're in long form, or you can reach
out to us on Twitter where we are ll n
C Underscore podcast, or on Facebook or Instagram. We are
large nerdron Collider there and we have a new old
website's yeah, it's it's our old website. It's New again.
Uh large enow John Collider dot com. You can go
(41:08):
to there and find our episodes. You can leave us
a no. You can also find all of the show
notes for this episode in every episode going forward. So
if that way you want to look a little bit
more into one of the stories we've talked about, you
can go out and read it now. We will link
to all the stories we covered and we look forward
to hearing from you. We are really excited. We've received
(41:29):
some some cool interactions so far and we're just getting started. Remember,
if you enjoyed this episode, then give us a review,
recommend us to some of your friends. Word of mouth
really does help. We're seeing growth week over week. That's
largely because of you, guys, and we are very thankful
for you. Yes, and so until next time. I'm Ariel Casting,
(41:50):
I'm Mario Jonathan Strickland. It's a name. M h m
hm hm h m hm. The Large New Drunk Collider
(42:18):
is a production of I Heart Radio and was created
by Aerial Casting. Jonathan Strickland is the executive producer. This
show is produced, edited, and published by Tory Harrison. For
more podcasts on my heart Radio, visit the I Heart
Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows. M
The Large nerdron Collider Podcast is a production of I
Heart Radio. Hi everybody, Welcome to the Large nerdron Co
Ladder Podcast, the podcast that's all about the geeky things
happening in the world around us and how excited we
(00:29):
are about them. I'm Ariel casting and with me as
always is my wonderful friend and co host Jonathan Strictline. Hi, Ariel,
guess what. Hi, I got a question for you. You
got a question for me? Okay, what is what is
(00:49):
your question? You know what the question is. Here's the
question for everybody. Because this is the big one. This
is one that requires preparation, which is why Ariel already
knows the question. This is not one you can just
drop on somebody, because it requires real thought. Ariel, I'm
glad to be the one to get to tell you this.
You're a professional wrestler. What's your entrance theme? It would
(01:12):
be the Wake of Magellan by Sabotage. Who there. Now,
we're gonna make our our listeners look stuff up, which
is awesome because I'm also going to do that because
my answer for this is that it would be cash
Money by Prince Charles and the City Beat Band. So
let me ask you, Ariel, what is it about the
(01:33):
song that makes me think, okay, this is my entrance theme. Well,
it's sabotage for people who don't know. Uh. They were
the group that Trans Siberian Orchestra is now. Uh. They
used to be a metal band and they did a
few rock operas. One of them was called The Wake
of Magellan, which is all c shanty ish but also
(01:55):
rock opera and I they won't allow anybody to perform
their pieces. So since w w E is kind of
a performance art um, I I think that would be
a great way to bring life to these little known
rock operas without upsetting the creator's wishes. Yeah. See, I
(02:17):
don't care about the creators, which is but that's that's
very kind of you to spare that kind of thought. Yeah.
In my case, it's cash money. The way it goes.
That starts with a sort of chant that goes pennies, nickels,
doms Corda's dollar bills, hundred dollar bills, and you know,
it's all about money, and to me, like it's it's
(02:38):
right in line with some great entrance themes that Classic
Heels have used, like the million Dollar Man or Shane McMahon,
who does here comes the Money is his um and
that's just sort of that kind of persona that I
think would be a lot of fun to play. I've
always kind of gravitated more towards the heels the bad
guys in wrestling, of has found them more interesting. But
(03:02):
um yeah, I was just one of those things where
I thought, this is one of those geeky conversations I
used to have all the time with like my fellow
wrestling buddies, just like, wouldn't it be awesome if every
time you walked into a room you had entrance music
to announce your arrival. And if so, what would it be?
I mean, I I like w W E. I I
(03:23):
don't follow it nearly as closely as you, but I
do enjoy watching it. It's been a while since I've
watched it too. I mean, there's still some great entrance
themes out there, you know. There's like Bobby Rude or
Robert Rude has one called Glorious that I absolutely love,
and Bray Wyatt has well used to do Broken Out
(03:43):
with Love, but now it's like a remixed version of
that that's super creepy and really fits his character. Um
A lot of them end up sounding very generic, especially
like in the late nineties period you had you had
an arrow where it was almost impossible to tell them
apart because they were all just that chunky rock guitar
sound and that was it. But yeah, and I'm curious
(04:05):
about what our listeners think. So at the end of
the episode, when we get to telling you all the
ways to get in contact with us, one of the
things you need to tell us is what's your entrance theme?
Because that's important. Yes, oh, I do have an exit
theme too, because if I'm going to come in all
business on on wake of the Magellan, I'm going to
go out on one last drink by entering the Oh wow.
Now see that's awesome because there's not that many wrestlers
(04:25):
who do that where they have two different themes where
they have one for the entrance and one for when
they when they the match is over and they've won.
But there are some who do so that's pretty awesome. Yeah,
because you gotta go in serious and you gotta go
out fun people. Remember you, are you saying it's business
in the front and party in the back? Are you
a mullet? Yes? I would be the mullet of the
(04:45):
w W e res Okay, alright, well, now that we
have established our level of class, it's time for us
to tackle this week's news. Well, I'm glad you said class,
because our first topic is very very classy. Jonathan, it's
uh that Deadpool three is it? Go? Yeah, it's gonna happen.
(05:06):
And this is one of those things that you know,
sometimes people might say that's a no brainer, but it's
a total brainer because since Deadpool to Disney actually purchased
Fox right, and so there was a lot of hope
that there would be another Deadpool, but everyone was wondering
what would a Deadpool look like when Disney is the
(05:28):
owner of the property, and especially if they want to
incorporate it into the m c U, which is very
much not in the style of Deadpool. But from what
we're hearing, it sounds like they're they're dedicated to making
this stay kind of that R rated edge that we've
come to expect they are, And they've got Ryan Reynolds
still attached to the project. He's working on the script.
(05:50):
We're not going to get it this year, um, because
Ryan Reynolds is busy, and because it's still kind of
a crazy year, especially with all those announcements that Marvel made,
like there's just not there's just not room for yet
another project right in the immediate future. But I mean
it is coming. And you know, as as much as
they say is this within the m c I can
(06:12):
see people wondering if if Deadpool would stay rid at
are But Disney does put out more adult content. You know,
they also own Effects and Hulu, so you know we're
getting that Aliens show that we talked about and things
like that. So I don't think it's it's unusual. I
just you know, they may not put it on Disney
plus well, and and some of the m c U
(06:33):
films get pretty get edgy is probably the wrong word,
but they push the limit. Yeah, they get dark. They
get dark. That's a good way of putting it. I
don't think of them as necessarily edgy, but they definitely
get a little darker. Also, they announced that there's entirely
the possibility that Deadpool could show up in other titles,
not just his own movie, which now granted this would
(06:57):
require Sony signing on as well. But it really makes
me wish that we get a Deadpool cameo in Spiderman three,
because we already know a ton of other characters are
showing up in Spiderman three, so having having and and
Deadpool and Spider Man in the comics have a long
history with one another, so you know, and I've played
(07:19):
enough Marvel games that I know that Deadpool can still
be snarky and funny without being R rated, which he'd
probably have to be if he were in Spider Yes. Well, yeah,
pretty much anything that would be beyond the the series.
I think they I think Marvel like the serialized, episodic
TV type stuff. I think Marvel tends to get a
little more edgy with that. I mean, you look at
(07:41):
things like Jessica Jones and Daredevil. Those are definitely got
a harder edge to them than the films do. Uh.
But moving on to something else that might also be
pretty edgy is Moonnight. Now, Moonnight is one of those
Marvel characters that I don't think a lot of people
know much about. No, when you describe mood Night at
(08:04):
face value, it sounds like he could be problematic to portray.
He is h a gentleman with dissociative identity disorder that
manifests different personalities. You know, I just started watching Toom Patrol.
Jonathan so similar to Crazy Jane, except for I don't
think all of his personalities have their own powers. One
(08:24):
of those personalities is Moonnight. It's also it also reminds
me of Oh and I can't remember the character's name.
All the comic book fans are gonna hate me. But
the the mutant who also has multiple personalities. That mutant
has a different power for each of those personalities. Legion,
thank you, yes, Ariel with the rescue, so Legion so
(08:45):
similar in that respect, but in this case, yeah, Moonnight
is the personality that has the powers. H And also
I think a lot of people compare Moonnight sort of
to Batman, like that's kind of the yield to it. Well,
we now know that Justin Benson and Aaron Moorehead, both
known for independent horror movies, are going to be directing
(09:08):
Moon Night, So that's interesting. It is. It's very interesting
to me because it's not the first time that the
m c U has leaned on horror directors for their movies.
The original director for the Second Doctor Strange was also
a horror director who just left because he wanted to
tell a different story than the m c U wanted,
(09:29):
but which which we've seen happen a couple of times before. Yeah,
but it it does post the question of are they
going to make this next round of m CU a
lot more adult and less friendly for children because it's
all going to be so much darker. I will say
I have not seen any of their movies, but I
(09:51):
have seen a segment of VHS viral that they did.
It's called bone Storm, has to do with uh skateboar orders,
and I hated it. But to be fair, I pretty
much hated everything in the HS viral. It was not
a good entry in the series in my opinion. But
(10:12):
you know, I don't watch horror movies, so I didn't
see it. But I will say, you know, I'm I'm
willing to give him a chance because I wouldn't have
necessarily had said that James Gunn was going to make
an amazing Guardians of the Galaxy movie. But it's one
of my favorite MCU movies. Honestly, I don't think at
the time, I didn't think anyone would be able to
make a good Guardians of the Galaxy movie. It's just
(10:33):
so weird, uh, something that is not weird, something that
I think is completely expected. But you know, now we've
got word of it is that Galaxy's Edge, the the
Star Wars themed area of the Disney Parks, may soon
have some new characters from a familiar Disney Plus series. Yeah,
(10:54):
we'll be possibly getting the Mandalorian characters. Uh and also
possibly the Razor Crest, which they're saying may replace Kylo
wren ship. This is all right now, but um, I
don't know. I don't want them to replace Kyler Ren's ship.
He's actually quite an intimidating character when you run into
(11:14):
him at Galaxy. I haven't even seen it yet because
I haven't been to I haven't been to Hollywood Studios
since they built Galaxy's Edge, so I have not even
seen Kyler Ren's ship. Um. I mean obviously, like this
is such a big hit for Disney. I think it
would be ridiculous if they did not bring those characters
(11:35):
into the park. Especially you know, you know that grow
Goo a k A Baby Yoda is gonna be everywhere
every T shirt, on every cup. You know you can
you can already meet Groot, you can already meet Baby Grout.
So now if you can meet grow Goo, and then
if you can meet them together having a dance off.
(11:56):
I didn't know you can meet baby Groot. I met
adult grout is the land. He was. He was about
eight feet tall. I have not met baby group personally,
but I know that he has been a Hollywood studios. Um,
some of our mutual friends have pictures with baby grouten startlers.
So we hate you, friends, but we love you. Also,
(12:19):
something else I love is Doctor Who. But you also
like h Richard Iowati, Yes, did I say that? Yeah?
He's He's the he was Moss on the I T
crowd And when when I guess the BBC someone asked
(12:45):
fans who they thought should play the next doctor because
the rumor is, of course that uh that our our
current doctor will be leaving after this season, which makes
sense that three seasons and Doctor is out. That's something
that's happened several times now. Um heck eccleston only got
one season. But yeah, but he he chose. Yeah, we
(13:07):
won't get into that this episode. So, so, Ariels, you're
the Doctor Who fan? Really? I mean, I I've watched
a fair number of episodes, but I don't consider myself
a fan. What is your reaction to the idea of
Richard Iowa Day playing the doctor. I think he would
(13:27):
be amazing because I like Jody Whittaker, our current doctor.
I think she has done a fantastic job with it.
But I really like you know I I My first
doctor was Baker, Tom Baker, and um, so I always
associate doctor who is kind of a curmudgeon ly, dry
(13:50):
sense of humor, kind of cranky person, and Jody Whittaker
is far from that. She's I think the biggest fault
with her doctor, and albeit I haven't watched the latest
season and is that she doesn't have enough faults for me. Uh,
she's a little too perfect. So I think Richard, especially
after watching his travel Man series where he's just the
(14:12):
crankiest person in the world, affably cranky, I think he
would be a perfect doctor. I think my other favorite
on the list of people to play the doctor would
be Phoebe waller Bridge. On this point, see for me,
I wat a. I wouldn't want him to be the doctor,
but the reason for that is because I would never
(14:33):
ever be able to see him as the doctor and
not think Moss from I T because that was such
such a definitive character, and I know that's not who
Iowa da Is. I know that was a character, but
it was such a definitive character and that voice is
just so distinctive that I don't I think I would
just be thinking like, oh, this is like a weird
I t crowed parody of doctor Who. I mean, you know,
(14:56):
I'm I'm not opposed to that, Okay, fair enough. And
then and then Roy could be his companion, and he
could constantly get stuck in the tardest and need help,
need assistance. You need Jen in there too to really
be a total pain in the butt as well. Listen,
(15:16):
Jodie Whittaker started off with three or four companions, so
I think you can have to companions. So you can
get was it is his name, Matt Barry, the guy
who played the guy who played the Boss, and he's
also the toast of London. Get him as the doctor. Yes,
that would be amazing. I you know, he's a great
actor and I would not be able to stand the
(15:37):
doctor at that point, phenomenal. Get clim Fan Dango as
his companion. Yes, I know, clim Fan Dango. That would
be amazing. Well, we've got other stories we should cover
really quickly before we move on one is that uh,
I didn't I wasn't aware of this until after it
had happened that the NFL played their wild card game
on Nickelodeon and there were total like on screen effects
(16:01):
that were Nickelodeon related, and that to me is phenomenal. Yes,
I like, you know, kids play football's kids play sports,
So I like that. Um, they made it a little
bit more entertaining. I mean, it also makes it more
entertaining for me. Well, I had had like Young Sheldon
pop up and explain specific things that happened with um, uh,
(16:27):
you know, when things happened in the game, like if
there was a false start, Young Sheldon popped up to
explain what a false start was. When they were going
for a field goal, you would see SpongeBob in between
the uprights. It was really weird, and a touchdown would
result in on screen slime cannons, virtual slime cannons. It
(16:49):
would have been you know, I was about to say
it would have been better if they were real life
slime caannons, because that would be hilarious, but that would
also probably lead to a lot of slippery injurys, and
I don't think like you would have a lot of
people on the on the injured list after that game.
If I want to see people get hurt, I'll watch
either M M A or hockey. Yeah, alright, Well in
our final story for this episode, for this section is
(17:13):
that there's an interesting trend on TikTok. There always are,
they're always interesting trends on TikTok, but this is one
that I think Aerial feels a particular kinship with because
the trend is people singing sea shanties a specific one,
the Wellerman. Yes, now there are lots of sea shanties
(17:36):
happening on TikTok right now, but specifically the Wellerman, which
is a song that my band covers and has for
quite a few years. Uh in a slightly different way.
It's it's basically this this guy named Nathan Evans who
sings the Wellerman, and then other TikTokers are adding in
their harmonies and it's fantastic. It sounds beautiful and there's
(17:58):
so many different renditions of it, and it makes me
sit there going one, I wish I came up with
those harmonies, and two I wish it weren't COVID times
because my band would one put our version up on
on the TikTok's. Yeah, that would be a lot of fun.
I think it's a it's a neat thing, you know.
To me, the thing that brought sea shanties back was
(18:20):
was Assassin's Creed Black Flag, because you would go around
collecting sea shanties, and every time you collected one, it
would be added to your cruise repertoire to the point
where I wouldn't use fast travel in that game, just
because I wanted to hear what song they were going
to sing, and the fact that I was familiar with
probably about eighty percent of the songs, because sea shanties
(18:43):
and renaissance festival music have a very heavy overlap in
the Venn diagram, even if even though the sea shanties
are usually about two hundred years too late for renaissance festivals. Um. Yeah,
so I'm on board with this one. I am the
grumpy old man who shakes I fisted TikTok typically, but
in this case, I'm on on board, so to speak.
(19:05):
And I and if you all want to hear the
sea shanties, I got forward on board. If you all
want to hear the sea shanties and ignore that uh
con you can search for the hashtag sea Shanty on TikTok. Yeah,
it's really fantastic. I look forward to seeing once where
(19:26):
they do Barret's Privateers because that song hits hard. All right, Well,
that wraps up our news items for this section. When
we come back, we're going to have an epic discussion
about epic games. But first, let's take a quick break. Okay,
(19:53):
we're back, and we were we were talking about different
things that we could uh apple as a discussion topic
for our second segment, and this is one of those
topics that was always at the top of our minds
when we were making out lists of things that we
wanted to talk about on this show, and it is
the tendency for games to get more and more epic
(20:18):
and whether or not that is in general a good
thing or a bad thing, both from a game experience
perspective and maybe even like from a developer perspective. Yeah. Yeah,
so we're talking stuff like Fallout, sky Rim, Assassin's Creed.
I'd probably say cyberpunk, cyberpunk if if it had if
(20:42):
it had measured up to the vision that they had
when they started working on it, yes, which which goes
into that conversation of whether or not you can get
too epic in your game design. So, um, do you
enjoy playing games that are epic long stories with a
ton of side missions in open world sandboxy games. All Right,
(21:04):
I'm gonna I'm gonna couch this because the initial answer
is yes. The initial answer is I do. I mean,
I love the Fallout games, even even as I have
problems with the Fallout games. The biggest problem I have
with Fallout, besides the sprawling nature that we'll get to,
is the tonal inconsistency, because you get very weird uh
(21:29):
satire and parody and fall Out, and then you get
like super grim dark nastiness and Fallout and and if
if it were one or the other, it would be
easier to kind of grock, but the fact that you
have both is really weird. Um. But that being said,
I always love the beginning of those games. I love
(21:52):
the discovery, I love building up the character to a
certain point. But inevitably I start to run out of
steam and I hit fatigue, and uh often it will
take me five or six tries to play through one
of these games. And even then it's on that fifth
or six try where I'm just like trying to be
(22:14):
laser focused. I'm like, no, I'm not gonna go do
that side mission. I'm just going to focus on the
main story because I need to see how this ends.
Because having all those options and having all those avenues
to explore, I kept feeling the need to explore them
because I worried that if I continue the main story,
I might shut off an avenue and I wouldn't be
(22:36):
able to go back and see it. Yeah. So I
had that same problem when I was playing Mass Effect,
which is at least the first couple were not as
much of an open world as as let's say Fallout
or sky rim are Um. But there you know, I
would play. I would play, and they would have side missions,
(22:57):
and it was a matter of I don't really want
to do this ad mission. I don't really want to,
as they say in the mm O world, go shoot
snow bears in the snow. I want to. I want
to continue the storyline, but if I don't do this
side mission, I won't get the options in the storyline
I want. Um. That being said, for me, it's it's
much better than a sandbox game Sandbox World Skyrim, which
(23:19):
I loved. I also loved the beginning of that, because
there was ton of discovery and it walked you through
and there was a storyline where I could interact with it,
but my hand was kind of being held. But once
I got out into the world of Skyrim, like, I
got incredibly lost. Everything was crafting. There were so many
little side missions that it took me too far away
from the main storyline to find my way back to it.
(23:41):
That's fairy um. And another thing that that kind of
reminds me of Ariel the whole crafting part that you
mentioned is that a lot of these epic games seemed
to be filled with what I would call busy work.
Like even the side missions can frequently be busy work
where you're you realize you're doing something that's taking up time,
(24:04):
but it's not really necessarily adding that much of an
enjoyable or entertaining experience, and you're playing a game ostensibly
you're playing a game in order to be entertained, right,
So I mean there's some games that are more like
this is more about art or more about making a statement.
(24:24):
And I'm not trying to invalidate that, but I am
saying that if you've got a game that is huge
for the purposes of being huge, or because you feel
like you have a an obligation to make the game
bigger than the last game that was in your series.
That seems to be an unhealthy cycle, and it leads
(24:44):
to these enormous games that that lose their way where
you either don't even like you There would be times
where I'd be playing some of these games where I
wouldn't even remember what the story was anymore because I
had been going on so many side missions that I
had lost track of what the thread was for the
overall narrative. And then I wouldn't feel like like I
(25:07):
feel like, oh man, I don't even want to do
the story because I don't find the story is interesting anymore,
or I don't really know who's who anymore, And the
time I would need to spend to learn of all
that just seems like it would be, you know, treading
over ground I've already been on. Yeah, yeah, And you can.
You can do that in an MMO because you've got
other people to share the experience with. But when you're
(25:28):
doing it by yourself, uh, it can be tedious, like
you said, especially if it's a game that has been
rushed out like like we saw in Cyberpunk um where
you know and I say it was rushed. They delayed
releasing that game repeatedly. Yeah, uh, in an effort to
(25:50):
make it better, but still they tried to do too much.
And so now and the actual storyline is really short,
Like you can may in line the storyline of Cyberpunk.
If you were to just do that and not do
any exploration or any side missions, you can complete that
pretty quickly. Uh. So it means that you've got even
(26:14):
more busy work filling up all the rest of the stuff. Yeah,
I will say whenever I play an epic game and
I get further along in the storyline and I see
that little progress bar I do get I do get
upset that the if it's a good story, that it's
going to be over as soon as it is, even
though I don't really want to do the side missions
(26:34):
to extend it, because I don't, I oftentimes don't feel
that that resource gathering or that crafting adds to the
story at all. If if I want to play a
resource management game, I'll just play for resource management well.
And the and the other issue here is that so
one making games bigger does not necessarily make them better.
So that's a I think that's a terrible metric. So
(26:56):
whenever I hear when a new game is coming out
and they'll say it's larger than the map of the
last game, to me, I'm thinking, well, that doesn't mean
it's good. There might also be more empty space, which
just means you're taking more time to get from point
A to point B and there's nothing interesting to look at. Like,
that's not good either. Or you could have filled it
(27:17):
with so much stuff that it just is overwhelming and
you don't you know, you quickly get fatigued. Like I
had said, on top of that, by adding this, let's
make the game bigger and bigger and bigger every single time,
it adds to the pressure of the development team to
make that a reality and requires more crunch. It requires,
(27:40):
uh you know, more more delays, often because you have
to test everything, and as you're making it bigger, there
are more opportunities for stuff to go wrong. So in
many ways, I am starting to prefer smaller scale games
that have a more focused story. Uh you know, it's
(28:03):
not that I want there to be you know, a
straight on the rails approach through the game. I'm not
saying that I don't want to be like a walking
simulator for everything. I don't want it to be, you know,
one of the Walking Dead games from tail Tale or
anything like that. Those are interesting stories, but I feel
like we there's gotta be a happy medium between ginormous
(28:26):
game where you'll never see everything and a game where
you don't have any real choices. So I think there is,
and I think, well, it's a little too early to say,
but I think Final Fantasy seven would be a good
example of how I think that should go, because they
made a much bigger world they in recreating Fun Fantasy seven.
They made it much larger, but now it's spread out
(28:49):
through a few games, so they can focus on each
chunk of that story that they've expanded out a little
bit at a time. Yeah, so then then becomes like
a series of games as opposed to this, Like I've
just loaded up Skyrim. The entire world is open to
me once I finished the tutorial and I'm stuck on
the side of a mountain because I got lost because
(29:11):
or or or I turned a corner and there was
a dragon and it ate me and I'm a level
two character. Um, yeah, it's it's a. It's not to
tell game designers how to do their jobs. They know
way better than I do. But it's a trend that
I have found particularly frustrating. Even as I'm enjoying a game,
(29:33):
like if I, if I sit there and think about it,
I often come to the realization of I'm not likely
to ever finish this. I have read Dead Redemption too.
I have never finished that game, like it's just sitting there,
like I don't think I even got out of the
early tutorial parts because that lasts like two hours. Um,
(29:53):
yeah I did. I haven't finished Skyrim, I haven't finished
Mass Effect in Dromeda, and the number of games my
husband hasn't finished his much much larger. I fired up
Borderlands three the other day, just out of curiosity, because
I bought that when it first came out, and I
was I was thinking, you know, I never finished that game.
I should go ahead and finish it out. See see
what that game is like, because I enjoyed the earlier
(30:15):
Borderlands games, and that's that's a shooter, right, It's not.
It's not like an RPG or anything. So I thought,
I'll just fire this up. See how far I've got
to go to get to the end, started up, realized
my character in Borderlands three was level four. I hadn't
gone anywhere, I hadn't done anything in that game. So
(30:36):
they just showed how how quickly I will give up
when it starts. Of course, Borderlands three also had the
problem of being more Borderlands, right, it didn't add a
whole lot of new stuff to it. But you know
that's this is when you need. Yeah, this is when
you need to start playing roguelike games where you can
just have like a play through and then you're doing
(30:57):
and then you have a next play through and it's
a little different. Yeah, I haven't really gotten into roguelikes
and and it's one of those where I feel like
I do need to do that. I hear that Hades
is the game to get into. Um I haven't played Hades.
I know that FTL has has been fun for some
of my friends. Well, Hades is the one that all
(31:18):
the people I know have gone gaga for. For one thing,
they say, all the all the all the gods and
goddesses in that game are sexy, SCHMEXI as I'll get out,
So yeah, I mean it's it is, Yeah, you know,
it's those Greeks they knew how to party. All right, Well,
(31:40):
I guess that kind of wraps up our conversational topic.
But when we come back, we'll have our mash up,
which makes an iconic science fiction action film meet up
with an iconic video game. But we'll explain more after
we take this quick break. Okay, So, like you said,
(32:18):
we're taking an iconic video game and an iconic movie.
We've already talked about movies and video games and we're
mashing them up. So how we're doing that is we
are mashing up the Matrix with Super Mario Brothers. Yeah,
so this was this was kind of a last minute
decision to mash these up. And uh, we have each
(32:42):
taken our time to craft our mash up, and once
again we are individually convinced that we have managed independently
to come up with the exact same plot. We have
proven ourselves wrong in every episode so far, but maybe
this is the one where we since we have carbon
copies of one another serial. Do you want to go first?
(33:04):
Do you want me to go first? You know what,
you get to decide this time. I get to choose everything.
I'll tell you what I will go first, because I
think you've gone first with every episode so far, and
and uh unless that puts too much pressure, are you
cool with me going first? Okay, groovy, I'm fine with
you all right. Here we go enter the Mario Thomas Anderson,
(33:28):
a seemingly mundane computer programmer in the Mushroom Kingdom, is
secretly a hacker. His hacker code name Mario. Anderson suspects
there's something going on in the world at large, but
can't quite put his finger on it. In hacker circles,
there's talk of this thing called the Matrix. Anderson is
close to finding out what the Matrix actually is. Meanwhile,
(33:51):
a group of other hackers who have already learned about
what the world is spoiler alert it's a video game
or try to get in contact with Anderson. Anderson receives
a message from Peach, a woman with superhuman jumping abilities.
She tells Anderson that a man known only as Luigi
wants to meet with him. But before Anderson can make
(34:13):
a decision, a bunch of agents or a goombus bust
into his workplace, led by the intimidating agent Bowser, played
by a digital recreation of Dennis Hopper. Anderson is chased
by the agents and must trust Peach when she tells
him to jump down a big green sewer pipe. He does,
and next thing he knows, he wakes up in a
(34:34):
dingy basement holding an old S and E S controller
in his hands. Anderson, now known simply as Mario, discovers
that long ago video game consoles took over the world
and that humanity has now been reduced to becoming bio
batteries connected to these consoles, like the PS twenty seven
and the Xbox series Pumpkin. But a group of gamers
(34:56):
led by Luigi are working to free people from this captivity.
Only one of them, known by the code name Warrio,
is secretly working with the consoles in return for being
able to live out the rest of his life in
burger time because he really likes burgers. Luigi offers Mario
a choice. He can go back to living his fictional
life within the matrix of the Mushroom Kingdom by eating
(35:17):
the Blue Mushroom, or he can choose the Red Mushroom.
Mario goes for the Red Mushroom and soon begins a
training montage on how to do stuff like wheeled a
big hammer, or jump really high or occasionally shootout fireballs
or turned into a tanuki. Because of Warrio, Luigi is
captured within the matrix, and so Peach and Mario must
(35:39):
go on a rescue mission. After jumping on top of
Warrio's head to squish him, they go through this really
cool action scene in which they take out tons of
gumbas in a bank lobby using fireballs all over the place.
This eventually leads to Mario facing off against Agent Bowser.
Bowser manages to beat up Mario a bit until Mario
can clearly see the code where you Ponti jumps up
(36:00):
and he hits a star. Now immune from damage, Mario
absolutely whales on Bowser until Bowser is defeated temporarily. At least,
Mario rescues Luigi that finds out sadly, the solution to
freeing all of humanity is in another castle. Setting up
the sequel the end that was wonderful, And I think
(36:21):
this might be the closest we've ever gotten to having
the same mash up, So it's it's not exactly the same,
but it's kind of close. So uh, instead of pivoting
and trying to come up with something completely different, I'm
just gonna read money. It's a me Marnio. So Marnio
(36:41):
is a plumber for a respectable plumbing company Rotor Ruter.
One day, his girlfriend ghosts him like totally gone, and
he starts searching for her. But before he can even
leave his house, he gets a knock on his door,
and there's a guy who introduces himself as Toad, who
says he has the answers Marnio is looking for to
find his girl. So see, I'm similar already, But first
you must choose whether to eat the red mushroom or
(37:03):
green mushroom. Marnio chooses a green mushroom mushroom, and all
of a sudden, a pipe opens up in the middle
of his living room. Toad beckons Mario to follow him,
and Marnio does. Once he gets to the other side,
he finds out that the world he's was living in
was a sham, and that the real world is being
turned into items and ponds by a bunch of turtle
machines called kupa's KOPA stands for Kinetically Optimized Operational Programs
(37:27):
Assimilation Subset UH, and they've kidnapped his girlfriend, Peach, who
discovered the toadstool protocol, which will free everyone from their
imprisonment and stop the Coupa machines. You see, everybody's been
like stuffed into boxes and basically they're being used as
as human objects to make the Coupa world more comfortable.
The Kupas have really laid waste to the real world,
(37:50):
putting lava pits in and vast waste of ocean where
once there was civilization, and people have gone crazy. Uh.
And so these these items that are in inhabited by
people are attacking Marnio uh like on site. So you know,
everything is coming at him and he has to dodge
and weave and and try to get around it. And
every time he thinks he's found his girlfriend, she's not there. Uh.
(38:15):
She's in a different castle or pylon or whatever it's
called in this real world. But soon he finally makes
it to the final castle pylon thing uh to where
the Bowser core is is housed, which is an AI
controlling all the Kupa machines. He breaks the bows A
core off uh and it falls into the law one
(38:36):
of the lava pits that is conveniently nearby, and rescues
his girlfriend. She inserts the toadstool protocol into the Koopa
Bowser infrastructure and releases everyone in trapped in the real world. Uh.
They are so thrilled. They make her the Princess of
the real world because for some reason, monarchy still exists
even though they've been freed from machines, and she and
Marnio start to rebuild humanity one gumba at a time.
(38:59):
I don't think they were that similar. I mean, granted,
we both are dealing with the story structure of the
matrix and then working in the Mario references wherever we can,
so I mean that's understandable, But no, I think I
think we both had a very fun little take on that.
Uh you went with a very much more in world fiction,
whereas I got a little more meta with the video
(39:21):
game consoles thing. But I think you know, just again
shows how we think differently about these pitches, and again
proves that we don't share them with each other before
we record. We certainly don't one of these days, though, yeah,
we'll get we'll get one that's just be exactly well,
then whoever goes first, when the second person goes, they'll
(39:41):
just say ditto, and then I'll be the end, which
also will tell you one of two things. Either we
really did create the exact same pitch, or the person
who went second was lazy and didn't bother. Yeah. Yeah,
but that's um all we have for today. If you
have ideas how the Matrix and Mario should have been
(40:01):
mashed up, or opinions on epic video games, or what
Roguelike game Jonathan should try, or you want to talk
about your pretend w w E character, please right out
and reach reach out and write to us. Yes, reach
out right to us. It's smooth and uh. We've got
(40:25):
a couple of different ways for you to do that,
including a brand new one. We have an email address,
it just took a little bit for us to get it.
L n C at I Heart Media dot com that
will get right to the email and box of yours. Truly, actually,
I will see it and we'll be glad to reach
(40:45):
you that way. If you have specific things you want
to say, they're in long form, or you can reach
out to us on Twitter where we are ll n
C Underscore podcast, or on Facebook or Instagram. We are
large nerdron Collider there and we have a new old
website's yeah, it's it's our old website. It's New again.
Uh large enow John Collider dot com. You can go
(41:08):
to there and find our episodes. You can leave us
a no. You can also find all of the show
notes for this episode in every episode going forward. So
if that way you want to look a little bit
more into one of the stories we've talked about, you
can go out and read it now. We will link
to all the stories we covered and we look forward
to hearing from you. We are really excited. We've received
(41:29):
some some cool interactions so far and we're just getting started. Remember,
if you enjoyed this episode, then give us a review,
recommend us to some of your friends. Word of mouth
really does help. We're seeing growth week over week. That's
largely because of you, guys, and we are very thankful
for you. Yes, and so until next time. I'm Ariel Casting,
(41:50):
I'm Mario Jonathan Strickland. It's a name. M h m
hm hm h m hm. The Large New Drunk Collider
(42:18):
is a production of I Heart Radio and was created
by Aerial Casting. Jonathan Strickland is the executive producer. This
show is produced, edited, and published by Tory Harrison. For
more podcasts on my heart Radio, visit the I Heart
Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows. M
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