Episode 16: Hollow Knight: Silksong

This week we discuss Team Cherry's sequel to its hit metroidvania Hollow Knight - the long wait for Silksong is over.

Episode Transcript

(00:10):
Welcome back, friends to the Adventure Starts Here podcast.
This week we'll be discussing Team Cherries magnum opus Holla
Knight Silk Song. This is an open spoiler
discussion. We'll discuss narrative bosses
and zones in detail, and we'll also have some spoilers for
Clear Obscure, Expedition 33, and Holla Knight.
One discussion topics will include the Rosary system, the

(00:33):
decision to lock significant content behind game percent
completion, and the game's inspirations.
But anyway, you're here to listen to us, yap, So enjoy the
episode. Would you rather live in Far
Loom, Lord Ron, which is the world of Dark Souls, or the

(00:54):
Lands Between an Elden Ring? Which of those three would you
love to live in? So this is what I was thinking.
I was thinking Far Loom for but I need clarification.
Are we living there as ourselvesor as like denizens of the
world? Like they're racist?
Because like, if I'm there as a human, wouldn't I be like a
fucking giant? Yeah, you would be like furry

(01:16):
personified morphed into like whatever bug makes.
The most sense Don't people justlive in Farling like normally?
Like in those towns, they're just kind of chilling.
Yeah, I know. I mean, as long as, you know,
like if you're going to live in Bellhardt, as long as you're OK
with Widow possessing you, you know?
It's not the worst. At least I'm not dead, right?

(01:40):
I feel like Hollow Nest would bea lot worse because there you're
like getting actively like possessed or corrupted or
whatever. I think I'm doing far.
I think I'm going to be one of the like a Belle Beast creatures
so that I can get some Belle Beast pussy and I can have those
little kids run around with me alittle.
Belle Bussy. Yeah, so here's what I'm
thinking now that you guys brought that up.

(02:01):
Like getting mind controlled andshit, is that better or worse
than being like torched and scared for your life?
Like literally every second, mind.
Controls way better, yeah. That's what I'm thinking too.
It depends on what I mean. It depends on what happens,
right? Like if it's like a sleep then
aren't you just dying once you get mind control?
That's still fine. That's better than being

(02:21):
tortured. True.
I think I'm just I'm also gonna choose Far Loom since Yarnham
isn't an option anymore and I'm just gonna chill in the the
halfway house the whole time or whatever it's called.
I feel like Far Loom is the answer as long as you don't have
to be like one of the like pilgrims that is stuck in the
citadel or whatever. Like if I'm in bone bottom,

(02:43):
other than a skull tyrant comingby every now and then, I I feel
like I'm chilling, you know the.People are pretty fucking chill.
Yeah, being a Pilgrim is like the fate that seems worse than
death because it just leads to death most of the time.
When I say the people mean the denizens because obviously
they're bugs. Yeah, that's a follow up

(03:03):
question. You said I would turn into like
whatever anthropomorphized bug makes sense.
So what makes sense for me? What bug would Thomas be?
Probably a dung beetle. I think that makes the most
sense. What's the name of the boss of
Bio Water? Grohl.
Yeah, he'd be that. I'm a, I'm a That's tight.
That guy's powerful as fuck. Yeah, that guy's been there

(03:26):
since before, like all of grandmother's silk and
everything. That's why he's so fucking
salty. He's like, get out of my swamp.
Yeah, I wasn't saying it as likean insult, I just think that's
what you'd be. I just wanna be I forget the
title but like lost chef Lugivoli or whatever her name is
cuz she got a fat ass which I. Have no idea who you just said.

(03:48):
Yeah, lost Chef Lugoli. Yeah, the the one in Center's
road, She's she literally just has a butt blast at you, which
is part of the next discussion topic, which is dude, team
Cherry. OK, it's a team of three people.
Plus, like, you know, the composer, the fucking Matthew,

(04:10):
whatever, who does their PR or whatever.
But one person in Team Cherry atleast is definitely an ass man.
Because you got that lost Chef Lugovoli.
They got the fat ass. You got fucking lace, You got
grandmother's silk. Have you guys looked at her
fucking dumpy. Oh my God.
OK, I don't understand the like insane levels of horniness for

(04:32):
this game. Like what is wrong with you and
everyone else? And I'm going to back this up
with data. How many tagged posts on the
Rule 34 website do you think there are for Hollow Knight?
At a guess, Jesus Christ. Hollow Knight or Silk Song?
The Hollow Knight. The all-encompassing umbrella of

(04:54):
Hollow Knight, which includes Silk Song.
That's really tough. Can we just guess digits?
That's what I'm asking you to guess.
Is digits A number? 4 digits.
Yeah, I'm going to guess the lowend of 5 digits like.
Wait, that's the low end. 33,000No the low end of the hell of of

(05:17):
5 digits 30. 3000 is like DragonBall Z bro.
How many posts? I don't know.
How many posts does this shit get?
I have no frame of reference. Hollow Knight has 11 1/2
thousand posts on Rule 30. Four out of how many?
That that's 11 1/2 thousand photographs of Polo Knight.

(05:38):
That's the only. That's the only frame of
reference you need. No, it's not.
What if there's 50 million that's posted in there?
Then that's a drop in the bucket.
It doesn't matter. This is of course there's like
50 million. Yeah, I mean, that's that's what
Rule 34 is. It collects everything in
theory. Like Rule 34 is the the the
website is the conglomeration ofeverything in theory.

(05:59):
Yeah, but the point I'm making is like, what if 11,000 is like
nothing? What if Tetris has 50,000?
I'm pretty sure they're a. 194. I'm pretty sure they're.
All Tetris does. Tetris 2. 194.
Period. That's how we're.
On the Rule 34 website as we're talking.
About this well, how do you think he got the?
Numbers back in your pants. What is, what's that shit

(06:21):
called? He's like on the street
journalism or whatever. Yeah, very true.
I'm I'm. People are I've seen Hornet
cosplays already and it's like what the fucks going?
On Yeah, dude. The fuck out.
People are mad horny for Silk song and that shit is fucking
strange to me. Like enough said.

(06:43):
I mean, I, I think it goes alongsimilar lines is what happened
with the Undertale community, a game of which I think we all
love, but is similarly plagued by people that are obsessed with
turning it sexual. Like if you're going to, if
you're going to focus on the sexuality of the game, like
Automata, you know, there's better things to focus on, but
it's at least a prominent part of the game.

(07:04):
Sexualism is not part of Silksong or Undertale.
Like fucking relax people. I don't know, I like that it's
in Silk Song as like, just like it's not like a focal point,
like it's not trying to make youhard, but it's trying to make
the denizens of the world hard. Because then since they're
anthropomorphized bugs anyway, so why not?

(07:24):
Why wouldn't they be a little sexy?
Yeah, that's, there's definitelylike some level of catering
going on to like, I don't, I don't know what the bug version
of furries is. You know, like how scalies are
into lizards and all that shit. I don't know what the bug
version is, but wouldn't it? Just be normal for the.
Time to shut up for fur for them.
Oh no, I thought we were talkingabout the people that live in

(07:46):
the universe so far. That's what I'm that's what I'm
saying. That's why I like it in the
game, because it's kind of like,since they're anthropomorphized
anyways, then they should have like anthropomorphized features.
And it's also not like goonery. That's why I think it's.
Cool. Yeah, I I do like the outside
of. You could probably make an
argument for lace. Nothing's really gooned up.
I, I mean, I think even lace, like like, yeah, it's pretty

(08:09):
easy to look at her and think with her pee pee, but like it,
it's clearly supposed to be thatlike elegant, like fucking 1700s
poofy dress style, you know? Yeah.
I mean, that's like. I think the the air is the red
lady. What's her name?
Kakarita. Carmelita.
So yeah, there it is. I think Lace, the thing with

(08:32):
Lace is that she doesn't really have like a bug body.
She kind of just looks like likefucking humanoid, but she's
like, yeah, 1700s got like a corset that makes her have like
an 8 inch waist and like a fucking 50 inch ass.
It's just like Carmelita. I think it's like a dial down
version of Carmelita really. Yeah, I think it's probably like

(08:55):
a stylistic choice on ironicallythat they went with for this
game because I mean, look at an arachnid It it has a small like
I don't know what you call it, but it has a small like center
body and then a large thorax. Yeah.
Exactly. That's not an hourglass, dude.
That's like a bell. That's like one of those little
bells you ring to like ring for your fucking bellhop at the

(09:16):
hotel. Even more fitting.
No wonder they went with the bell motif in this game.
Well, you can look. Like bells, now that I think
about it. Also, I know that like that a
lot of the lineage of grandmother silk is meant to be
like weavers slash arachnids, but why do none of them actually

(09:39):
look like spiders other than Weaver and kind of maybe first
Sinner? Because spiders is gross.
Yeah, I mean, I feel like that'spussying out.
They pussied out. I.
Mean, are you actually asking like lore reason or like a
stylistic reason? Start with well, let's just go

(09:59):
with Lore because stylistically the answer is just they don't
want to make things that look gross.
Yeah, I mean, I I think lore reason, it's like it has
explanations like the only things that are directly related
to what are arachnids in this games are the phasmids, which
are those like bugs that hug theceiling and swoop down on you

(10:20):
and slash at you a couple times.And the weavers in this game,
lore wise were made into what they are.
Excuse me, let me back up. The weavers are phasmids.
They were like forcefully evolved by grandmother silk to
that like up quote UN quote divine being.

(10:42):
Grandmother silk told the weavers that they were divine
and they didn't really have any children.
I think the only the only one that I'm aware of that is like
directly related to a Weaver by like procreation is Hornet.
That's the only one I'm aware of.
I mean I, I, I I understand that, but they spin silk.

(11:05):
They are based on the deep nest.Well, they lived in deep nest in
hollow night, but none of them look like spiders.
Hornet I understand 'cause she'shalf Weaver half worm, that
makes sense. But why do none of the rest of
them except Weaver look or act like spiders other than the far
loads which you kept calling phasmids?

(11:28):
I mean, I that that just sounds like a stylistic choice from
that point. Like wrote, the roaches in this
game don't look like actual roaches, really.
They kind of do. Beetles look like beetles.
Birds look like birds. They pussied out for the
spiders. That's all I'm saying.

(11:50):
I guess they just didn't want tohit people without erectophobia,
otherwise they would have neededto.
They wouldn't need to do the Wowapproach and make a
accessibility option where you can turn all the spiders into
crabs. Yeah, like grounded.
Or just turn all the spiders into the word spider.
Oh true. And then it's like like text
twist the game. Yeah, but that's, I mean, that's

(12:11):
just never going to happen for agame like this because they
didn't have to draw separate artassets for every single thing
they have to change. You think that six years is
long? This shouldn't be coming out to
like 2035. Well in any case, to pivot to a

(12:31):
perhaps non extremely toxic topic, it's been 6 years.
Was Silk Song worth the wait? I feel like this is kind of
front loading the rest of the content.
But yeah, I mean, I said earlier, I think if this was not
the year where Expedition 33 came out, this is my easy front

(12:55):
runner for game of the year. Like not close really.
Like there's other extremely good games this year, but so far
Silk Song has stood above the rest.
Other than the fucking Titan that is clear obscure.
I don't really have any like connection to Hollow Knight.
Like I played it when it first released for like a couple

(13:17):
hours, but I would say that thisgame was actually pretty
awesome. Like I have a lot of issues with
it which I'll talk about later, but like overall I actually
really enjoyed my time in this game.
Yeah. I mean, I think it's a pretty

(13:38):
like dance game and the world feels super alive with
everything. Like there's a bunch of
different surfaces that you can hit and it kind of reacts with
like different sounds and everything.
And it really doesn't feel like any part of the game that's not
polished. And I think you get that via
just like a we took all the timethat we needed to make the game.
So yeah, I don't, I don't think that it should have been a

(13:59):
disappointment to anybody if youhad properly aligned
expectations. Yeah.
And I'm I'm the same in as Ben, where I did not have high
expectations for this game because I was not a big Hollow
Knight fan. Like to me, to me, Hollow
Knight's like a 7 out of 10 game.
Like it's fine, it's above average, it's good even.
But it's not like the like lose my mind game that it is for so

(14:22):
many other people. So I went into this game with
like kind of mid expectations. I thought I would like it, but I
didn't think I was going to loveit.
And I actually did end up lovingit.
Yeah, I mean, like I, I played the original Hollow Knight.
I liked it a lot. I only played it with the, I
think it was the Colosseum of Fools DLC.
That's the only DLC that I actually played with.

(14:43):
And they were like like 3 or 4 after that.
And I really like Hollow Knight.It was kind of at the peak of my
personal Dark Souls enjoyment. Like, yeah, I would have started
playing this only a couple of years after I played Bloodborne,
which is then only a year or twoafter I played Dark Souls 1.
And then Dark Souls 3 came out. And then after Dark Souls 3 came

(15:03):
out, I played Hollow Knight, andI liked it a lot.
It wasn't like a crazy, insane standout game for me, but it was
very enjoyable. I probably enjoyed it a little
bit less than Dark Souls 1 because they, you know, they're
both kind of frustratingly challenging at times, but both
very good games. I had like mixed feelings on

(15:26):
Silksong in general. I wasn't following it like the,
the development. I wasn't following super closely
like I feel like a lot of other people were.
So it was a nice surprise when you know, it was just announced
to be coming out in like 2 weeks.
But I, I do kind of want to jumpback to Ben because I think I
could be wrong, but I think thatBen is probably going to have

(15:47):
the most negative opinion out ofall of us.
And Ben, I'm just really curiousfor you to hit us with like your
most surface level, like what was you downloaded a couple of
mods for the game to take some of the issues you had away?
What was the tipping point for some of that?
OK. So First off, like Full
disclosure and you guys already know about this, but this is

(16:08):
just for the benefit of anyone listening after the fact.
I did not play act three, everyone else did.
So if I say anything that's ignorant or wrong, that might be
why. As far as like the tipping
point, like it was there were two things that happened.
Well, no, there was 1 tipping point which where I left the
negative review on Steam and that does that is not indicative

(16:31):
of like how I feel about the game.
I just I treat Steam reviews kind of like a, an extension of
trolling essentially. So the actual breaking point in
why I installed mods was the runback to the apparently the first
savage beast flywear. Every time you do that run back,

(16:52):
there's like this one very specific section where if you
forget to jump, you trigger thislike bone trap that traps that
physically keeps you in place where this like little ninja bug
comes out and he will always geta free tackle on you.
And every time that happened, I would just run back to the left
and just rest on the bench again.
I would just do that over and over again because I would just

(17:14):
keep forgetting to jump. So that got me to install this
mod called Boss Retry mod, whichI chose.
There was another one called Stakes America, but I didn't
choose that one because the bossretry mod was more like
immersive for lack of a better term than that.
It used like in game UI and it just looked it.

(17:36):
The motor made it designed like it.
They tried to make it fit withinthe game.
Like it felt like it could just be part of the game.
So that's why I really liked that mod.
The other mods that I used were kind of like rebalancing certain
numbers. I reduced contact damage to be
capped to 1. All all other damage sources

(17:57):
were made the same I made I madeHornet originally do 2 times as
much damage but that was way toomuch.
So through like a little trial and error I narrowed it down to
like a 1.3 X or 30% more damage and just stuff like that.
And I increased the drop rate ofrosaries and shards.

(18:21):
So those are like I don't think that was necessary though by the
end of it. But I also didn't do Act 3,
which I heard from Thomas. You need the farm, not rosaries,
but shards. So those were all the mods I
installed, and with my modifications I felt like I had
a really great time playing thisgame.
Kind of funny that outside of the run back modification that

(18:43):
you had, a lot of those changes just turned it into some of the
standards of Hollow Knight one. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, like 1 mask damage and I forget the other one.
You said there are a couple in there that just sounded like
that. More damage.
I think you do a lot more damagein the first half.
There were there were still issues like like the mods that I

(19:05):
used and this is on me for mod to get in the 1st place.
But for stuff like increasing the rosary and charge drop rate,
it increased it from all sources.
And this is something I didn't like because it moved from the
realm of like rebalancing to exploiting and cheating
essentially, where one of the sources of getting rosaries in

(19:25):
charge is using like those thoseitems that you use to like kind
of store them kind of like as emergencies.
So basically you would spend like, what is it like 140
rosaries to make one of those 120 ones?
But then it would run through the mod code and when you, when
you used one of those consumables, you'd get twice

(19:46):
that much back. So you'd get 240.
So essentially you could just get infinite rosaries.
So I so I kept myself from doingthat, but but in the back of my
mind I knew it was there. And that was like a flaw of my
rebalancing that, you know, I couldn't really reconcile.
I feel like I would love to knowif if you had bit the bullet and

(20:09):
played through act three, what that damage modifier would have
risen to from one point. 3X. More dude I'm it'd be more he
would have gotten. Carmelita And I think it would
have been 4X. I'll kind of leave it up to you
guys. I, I want to talk about both run

(20:31):
backs and whether or not you guys think they are problematic
and like maybe a broader discussion about how to play
other games. And I also kind of want to talk
about rosaries and then necessitation of farming them in
this game because that one's a particularly hot topic.
Which one do you guys want to gofor first?
I think rosaries are easy to talk about because I think

(20:52):
anyone who complaints about rosaries is cringe.
I think rosaries suck. Rosaries are so, so easy to
farm. They.
That's why they suck. It takes no time to farm all the
rosaries that you will need for the entire game.
I think I spent maybe 15 minutestotal the entire game farming

(21:12):
rosaries to basically never haveany problems with them ever
again, and I didn't. Yeah, I don't think that.
I I think it's like old school JRPGS.
Like is it fun to walk back and forth in the hallway while you
have a second TV set up watchingNickelodeon cartoons and you

(21:35):
just farm up to be level 35 whenyou were level 20 when you
started the grind? Like.
I mean, I love doing that shit though.
I love like, mindless tasks to like grind stuff out and I see
no problem with any of that. Like I see no problem with
farming coins in La Milana and that's like infinitely more
annoying than it is in this game.
Well I think there's a pretty important distinction, which is

(21:55):
that like maybe you boot up the game and you just do the King of
Hearts 1 strategy of getting level 99 when you're on the 1st
starting island. But if you do that in this game
and you farm 20,000 rosaries, you can still run into the issue
where you lose all of them because of your cocoon.
You turn them in. Just turn them in.
You turn them in the necklace. Oh, OK, yeah, I do.
Like 130 minute grind, turn themall into necklaces and then it's

(22:18):
a trivial thing past. That I just farmed.
I just farmed them as needed as well.
It was like if I got to a new zone and I ran into Shakira and
I couldn't afford every map is like OK, I'll just like teleport
over to Greymore or high halls and farm for like 2 minutes and
now I've got 500 rosaries and I'm good to go.

(22:41):
Like the only time past the first I'll say 4 hours maybe.
Where I ran into an issue where I did not have the rosaries that
I needed and it was going to be annoying was I did not have the
rosaries to buy the putrefied ducks, Beltway and bench and

(23:04):
that was annoying. But other than that, rosaries
never an issue. I guess like maybe ask the
question that Sasha's alluding to.
If they're easy to farm then what is the point of including
them in this game? What's the point of making you
do Quest? What's the point of making you
do anything? It's to engage with the game.

(23:26):
Well, I, I mean, keep in mind I actually have a positive view on
rosaries. I'm not trying to be combative,
but like, all I'm trying to say is if you just have to spend
half an hour like killing the same mob over and over and over
again, are you really engaging with the game?
Yeah, because it's the same theory as like run backs for
bosses. You die, you get punished, you

(23:49):
die. You like, reap the consequences
of that death. If you lose all of your rosaries
because you died, that is a consequence.
If you died to the boss, now youhave to run back to it.
That is a consequence. Like these games are all
predicated on struggle and consequence, and those are
aspects of that struggle and consequence.
I guess so I'm going to tie it back to, I guess some of the

(24:12):
language using the question where use the word problematic.
And I guess this goes for both rosaries and run backs where I
don't think they're problematic.But I guess I'm just kind of
disappointed where there's, it feels like in games, especially
the ones that copy from slop, there's like no exploration in

(24:34):
the design space between like like for instance, for run
backs, there's no real exploration between like instant
respawn and just whatever they use in the original Dark Souls.
Like it's just one or the other.And I just feel like there's so
many knobs that can be like turned like yeah, I guess it's

(24:57):
more for run back. So I won't get into it unless we
talk but start talking about runbacks I guess.
I I don't really have a problem with the rosaries I guess but I
didn't experience any of the issues because I quote UN quote
cheated basically. I think, I think there's a a
conflict of what Tom said between it's trivia.
Rosaries are trivial, and then there's consequences for losing

(25:20):
rosaries. So if rosaries are trivial, then
there's no consequence for losing them.
The consequences you having to spend time like the consequence
is your time, much like a run back is just a consequence of
your time. I don't agree with the run back
as a consequence of time becauseI think it's also a period of
reflection that you can use thatmakes it that breaks up the
monotony of like smashing your head against the wall.

(25:40):
No, yeah, no, I 100% agree. I think run backs are like
extremely important. I think if you're fighting a
super hard boss that's beating your ass and all you're doing is
hitting retry over and over, it's it's going to lead to you
getting tilted. Whereas the run backs force you
to like think about it and somewhat they they, they make
you want to learn the fight faster because you want to avoid

(26:02):
the run back. Oh, no, I guess for me it's
about the pressure. I just don't feel that when I
used the mod just to just basically retry over and over
again. I felt like that was the main
reason why I even kept playing. Yeah, but I mean, you, you did
like DIY journalist mode. So you're like entire experience

(26:22):
is very different. Yeah, but even then, like I like
when you guys were talking aboutthe game and Discord and how
like you guys would beat bosses in like 3 to four tries.
Like every boss in this game other than like the very first
one took me like at least ten tries.
So if I had to do the run backs I would have uninstalled far
before I got to the end of Act 2.

(26:44):
I think, I think it's a an extension of what Tom is getting
at, but it then it's the flip side, instead of it being a
positive, it's a negative, right?
So the consequence is time. And if you have deemed that my
time with this game is frustrating and the payouts
aren't high enough, then I don'tenjoy this game.
And I think a lot of people kindof had that experience.
Yeah, and my argument against that is sort of the holistic

(27:06):
argument about difficulty that Iwas alluding to earlier in the
Discord, which might be out of scope of our current discussion,
but I'm sure we'll get into thatat some point.
But I think I, I think the difficulty of this game is very
fine-tuned and I think it is like damn near perfect.

(27:27):
There are certain things that I would change.
I would delete every enemy gauntlet in the game other than
High Halls. But other than that, I think the
difficulty of this game is perfectly calibrated.
Maybe. I, I do want to just submit one
thing before we move to that about the rosaries and why I'm
positive on them. Like why?

(27:48):
Why I'm positive on the rosary system because in games, in
games like, like your typical from games, you know, more so
the the souls games, Bloodborne,Elden Ring, there's not really
any reason for the currencies inthose games to exist as they are

(28:08):
or from a narrative perspective.And as I was playing through
Silksong, I was, I was pretty negative on rosaries for
probably the entirety of the first act.
And the moment that I actually grew to really like them is
probably like a what the fuck moment that a lot of other

(28:29):
people would have. And it's when you get to the
Citadel in Act 2 and you're in the underworks and there are the
benches that are the one time use for 15 rosaries.
And that's when I realized, oh, OK, they are using rosaries in
this game for the opposite of Ludo narrative dissonance.

(28:49):
Ludo narrative resonance, which is a term that I saw in Reddit
that I'm now stealing. So I I don't know, I don't know
if I want to go so far as to sayis those currencies and other
souls games are Ludo narrativelydissonant, but I think that the
way that the rosaries are used in this game is Ludo narratively
resonant. You are in an external land.

(29:10):
This isn't hollow Knight one where you are like in the
Kingdom that you are from and it's more about the infestation
and dealing with the rot from within.
You are in a new land. It is meant to feel imposing.
You are literally being taxed and dimed by the by the ruling
class above you. And that's what those benches in
Act 2 made me realize is that I,I, I, I just think that's a

(29:33):
really good use of currency narratively.
Do you guys agree with that? Yeah, I do actually.
I the exact bench you're talkingabout is that one that's in?
Oh man, I can't remember the name of the zone, the the big
light, the under or something I think.
Underworks. Yeah, Underworks.
I loved that bench that like temporary bench because it's

(29:55):
like it's a piece of diegetic world building where you're
running around this like factorybasically that is keeping Far
Loom running. And you can tell that like the
working conditions of this placewere like dog shit.
And for you to even get a rest at work, you have to pony up 15

(30:16):
rosaries and then it goes away. Like, I think that that's
fucking great. Yeah.
Oh, sorry. Oh, the only other thing I was
going to say is I think the the way that this game improves on
Hollow Knight in terms of rosaries versus Geo is I don't
remember. I there's I'm sure that there is
at least one, but in Hollow Knight I remember constantly

(30:38):
having to save up fuck tons of Geo for huge purchases for like
keys, maps, whatever. And there again, to my
knowledge, I haven't played thatgame in almost 10 years, but I
don't remember there being like the bead necklace sink where you
could like protect your Geo. Like if you were trying to save
up 2000 Geo to go buy a key and you died twice.

(30:59):
You're starting over with that shit.
Whereas in this game, the primary spending on rosaries is
like 50 here, 70 here. You're not like saving up like a
shit ton at one time for major purchases unless you want to go
like farm rosaries for some of the like tools or the mask

(31:19):
shards or anything else which are not required when they were
required in Hollow Knight. Hollow Knight didn't have a
necklace. Kind of like conservation for no
either did it? Not that I don't think so.
I think that's the big, big difference.
Like regardless of price tags oranything, being able to just
reserve them is huge. Yeah, sorry.
What were you going to say, Ben?I just want to bring up that

(31:42):
bench area in the Underworks. Actually, that was one of my
favorite parts of the game is seeing that and mostly because
the environment environment, because I love anything that's
like Kowloon Walled City coded. And that's what that whole area
was to be was kind of like the slummy area.
And then when you got into like an Orlando proper and there were
still like rosary purchases, butthey were like more sparse and

(32:06):
more expensive. And I, I kind of like that
storytelling, I guess environmental storytelling that
they use. And I think that's like one of
the biggest strengths of Team Chair is that attention to
detail with the world, as long as they aren't writing words
with it, at least in my opinion.A little curious on that last
part because I actually think atleast the character writing in

(32:29):
this game, maybe specifically for Hornet, is actually pretty
good. I guess for me, it actually like
physically hurt me to read the dialogue.
And I don't mean that the writing was bad, but like the
panel placement where I'm alwayslooking up and the characters
are at the bottom. Like it actually literally hurt
my eyes. And it was hard for me to know

(32:50):
who was talking for like the first six hours because it
didn't show like the speaker's name.
It just shows like a small icon.So when it was Hornet, she would
have like a little like verbal bark and it would show Hornet's
head. And I didn't even notice that
for like the first six hours. So when two people were talking
to each other in this game, I honestly didn't even know who

(33:10):
was speaking at the time. Yeah, I think that's a really
good point. I think that's that should be
pretty common between people because, yeah, they do a pretty
bad job. Especially like if you weren't
exactly paying attention to who's talking or you don't
recognize the voices yet. Like you're going to get lost
really quick. Yeah, definitely.
It's definitely unintuitive and I had the maybe unintuitive is

(33:33):
the wrong word, but I definitelyhad the same experience when I
first started playing because I was playing at work where I
couldn't have sound for like thefirst hour or two ish of me
playing. And yeah, I had that exact same
experience where I like, I'm like, I have no idea who's
talking here. But I mean, you did bring up
that the sounds they make, I feel as well like very

(33:54):
appropriately communicate who was talking at that time.
Oh yeah, I agree. I I agree with Ben and I agree
with that and that that icon is not enough to like really spell
out to you who's talking. And even though I actually think
the the actual written dialogue of this game is actually pretty
good by and large, like I can't think of anything that I hated.

(34:17):
I actually think it was pretty good, but the I'll be honest, I
skipped through so much of the dialogue.
Either I skipped it or I just like very kind of skimmed over
it and read a few words here andthere because of the way it's
presented is very annoying. Yeah, I kind of wonder what the

(34:39):
decision behind not including portraits like a Haiti style, or
kind of just how any other game with back and forth dialogue
without voice acting does it. I think it's, I think it's
probably just because so much ofthe like narrative, both in
spoken dialogue and just the story in general is portrayed in
like such a minimalistic way that I think if they had these

(35:02):
like big massive Haiti style portraits, it's drawing
importance to something that they're not really trying to
draw all that much attention to necessarily.
Yeah, I don't think Haiti's portraits would really work for
this game because of this. Literally the art style we're
like, and I guess this I am going to talk a little bit about

(35:25):
the environment, but it's in context of the characters where
the environments are so elaborate and beautiful.
We're like, it was actually kindof like mind blowing how good
the shit was. And in contrast, like the
characters have to be like theselike cartoony, like thick
outlined characters, because if they weren't, if they were also
detailed and elaborate, no one would know what's going on in

(35:46):
the combat. It would just be so hard to
parse. So extending that to what you
guys were talking about with thedialogue, if you did like
Haiti's style blow UPS of those character models, Well, now I
kind of want like reverse my decision because like, because
in that, in those portraits thatthey blow up the sizes, they
could like make detailed rendered versions of those

(36:08):
characters. And I, I, I kind of want to see
what that looks like that what their artists would come up with
for those like bloated portraits.
I think, I think it would be, I think it would be fucking
awesome. I just think it would be kind of
at odds with the way that they tell the story.
Mostly, yeah, Yeah. Exactly like I, I, my, my
feeling is that like the character and even like enemy

(36:28):
design and such in this game arevery intentionally minimalist.
And I think that that's used to emphasize the environment.
Yeah, like, Can you imagine, right, 'cause like, obviously
this game in Hollow Knight crib a lot off of Souls games.
Can you imagine being your fucking Dark Souls character and
like walking up to any Dark Souls character and you click on

(36:52):
them and there's this massive cartoony Hades portrait that
pops up? That shit would look like
nonsense. I, I, I have to ask though, I
have to ask because all of this is like very stylistically
consistent, I think with what they are going for.
But then why do they have this meme shit like the lost Chef
Lugoli with the big ass? Like what?

(37:13):
What's going on here? Were they just having fun?
That character's dope dude. That guy got thrown in Sinner's
room because he was committing quote food related crimes.
I want to know what that means. I mean, I think that they were
just having fun really. I guess that's acceptable even.

(37:38):
Even souls games gets to put in patches I suppose.
Yeah, I mean, you can't, I thinkif you don't have some level, if
you don't have like some levity in a game like this and it's
just all serious all the time, the mood kind of like wears you
down in a way that's not like particularly enjoyable,
especially for a game that's like, as stylistically kind of

(38:02):
like cartoony and silly like this game is.
Yeah. And I'm, I'm kind of curious
while we're broaching kind of the narrative subjects right
now, Ben, just to be clear, you don't know like anything
narrative wise that happens in Act 3, right?
I read an AI overview and I knowenough to know that it was cool.

(38:28):
OK, I, I'm more so curious if you like, don't look at it with
the context of Act 3 because I'm, I'm going to ask you like
what your general vibes on the like your feelings on the
narrative were. Because when I just did the like
regular ending, the Act 2 endingwhere you just beat grandmother
Silk. No, no flair.
I, I felt very dissatisfied withthe narrative so but then that

(38:52):
kind of flipped on its head withAct 3.
How did you feel? So here's how I felt about it,
and again, this is the context of like knowing extremely little
about Act 3 and not experiencingit at all.
When I got to the end of Act 2 and I saw the ending, it didn't
really bother me that much because I kind of knew
beforehand from what people weresaying and what you guys were
saying that the ending was lackluster and I wasn't really

(39:15):
that keyed into the narrative tobegin with.
I didn't really care all that much, so it being a good or bad
ending was kind of, I was kind of indifferent to it.
Or your vibe sesh, especially asit pivots into act 3.
I mean, I probably know the least of the narrative out of
any of us. Kind of like Tom said, I kind of

(39:36):
glazed over a lot of the just the dialogue that was in the
game. I thought of the cutscenes and
everything was super cool and the fact that there was no
dialogue in them, but they stillconveyed a lot of information.
I think it's a really cool way to do it.
I would have been, I think it would have been cool if the Act
2 ending was like the only ending.
This is like a fuck it, you're owned.
But it kind of seems like an obvious, this isn't the end.

(39:59):
This is just one of the possibleends and there's a better way to
end this. But I think with how it went
into act three, I thought, I thought I thought Act 3 was
nice. It was a little quick.
It was like quicker than I was expecting it to be.
I thought I was going to kind ofsit there a little bit longer,
but I think the end with. Your boy Hollow night showing

(40:20):
back up is super cool. Yeah, I mean, Act 2 is the
ending of Act 2 is very obviously supposed to feel and
be unsatisfying. Like, I don't think that there's
any sort of like pretense. Like I feel like the game is
very much spelling out to you that, hey, this sucked.
And if you can't extrapolate that there's more from that,

(40:42):
then I don't really know what totell you.
Because to me, it's like, it's like the first ending I got in
Baldur's Gate 3 versus the ending I got as Evil Dark urge.
Where in my first playthrough I didn't know how to put in the
time or where to put in the timeto get good endings.
And so the ending was really unsatisfying and shitty.

(41:05):
Whereas an Evil Dark urge, I worked towards the ending that I
wanted and it felt like immensely more satisfying
because I worked for it. So it's like the difference
between Act 2 and Act 3 is just having to work.
For it, yeah, I, I think I want to do like kind of a deep dive

(41:26):
into like the way they gated Act3 and everything.
Before we do that, do you guys want to like touch on and finish
anything of what we've already talked about?
What was the other thing you'd brought up?
It was rosaries and something run.
Backs. Yeah.
I think the run backs are great,but I also had some fairly

(41:47):
unique experiences I think with the run backs that people
complain the most about, so I don't know how much my opinion
here is really valuable. I have one, so even with my mod
there was one specific thing andthis is actually the reason why
I decided not to do act three. It pissed me off so much and
it's also completely my fault, but it's because of that mod I

(42:11):
used called the boss Retry 1. So here's the problem with Lace
2 specifically. Her code starts running the
instant that area loads up. So when you use the mod, you
load up in that arena and she starts attacking you immediately
and you can't move yet you're you're stuck your inputs taken
away for like the first 5 seconds because the cutscenes

(42:32):
supposed to be playing. So she gets to hit you.
And like I basically started offeach each retry at like 3 hearts
or whatever because you were just hitting me a bunch of
times. So then I was like, well I can't
use the mod anymore. So I would just go back to the
bench and like literally just that tiny little run back where

(42:53):
there is no combat at all, but Ijust have to sit there watching
that elevator go up. It pissed me off so much every
single time I saw it that I justknew I didn't want it to act 3.
But again, that's completely my fault.
Like 100% my fault. That that was kind of a question
that I wanted to ask. Like, like I have my own
feelings on this. You know, I played I, I played

(43:17):
Bloodborne and it took me two weeks to beat the first boss
that has like a pretty brutal run back.
It was similar for me when I didOrnstein and Samoa and Dark
Souls 1. Like I, I just got extremely
scarred and inundated by that. So run backs don't really bother
me personally anymore. But like the question I want to
ask kind of encompassing rosaries and run backs and

(43:39):
whatever else that you think this makes sense for, Do you
guys get the sense that this game respects your time?
Like now that I'm, you know, approaching being a middle-aged
gamer, a game respecting my timeis very important for me.
And at times I kind of got the sense that it wasn't.

(43:59):
But it was never so bad to like,make me want to stop playing.
I agree, I think the like the one Ben is talking about
specifically, having to sit there at the elevator like that
one was a little annoying. But that exact screen is
actually one I was going to bring up for how beautiful the
environments are in that game and how detailed everything is.

(44:20):
Because you guys should go back and look at that elevator
because holy shit. But outside of that, there's
definitely some instances similar to that that like drove
me crazy. Like why do I have to sit
through Hornet diving into the void with the ever bloom every
single time? Because I'm dying to Lost Lace

(44:42):
like once every 30 seconds and 15 of those seconds are having
to watch that cut scene. Like that shit is definitely
annoying. And same thing with enemy
gauntlets. Enemy gauntlets are basically
just another form of having to watch a cutscene IMO.
So that that that aspect does annoy me, but it didn't annoy me
so much that I was like losing my mind.

(45:04):
There's one last thing I wanted to bring up about run back.
So earlier I had mentioned that I was, I don't think that run
backs are problematic. I just wish that developers
would explore the space in between instant respond and just
doing exactly what Dark Souls does.
And I was just thinking about like the different resources you
have as Hornets. So you have your tools and your

(45:26):
life. That's basically it.
So what I was thinking is that you could have like a stakes of
America system, but you, you have to think about like, what
does it mean to go back to the bench?
You get to heal and you get to restore your tools.
So what if there was like maybe a different system where like
you could have your instant retry, but you do not get to
regenerate your tools or, and also because another thing is

(45:49):
when you go back to the bench that lets you change your Crest.
So basically you could just choose between running back
immediately, getting your salty run back, your instant retry or
going back to the bench to like redraw up your your battle plans
essentially, and then the cost. And then you would have like the
regular run back. And I'm, and I know that I know
that like very few people that love this game will agree with

(46:10):
what I just said, Bob. What I'm saying is that there's
plenty of design space in between the two extremes that I
wish developers would try out. No, I mean, I think that I think
of the very few people that agree with you, Team Cherry
agree with you because there area few examples in this game that
do exactly that. I don't know if you did the
first Sinner boss but that one responds you directly outside of

(46:33):
her chamber where like there's no bench.
I I never really used tools. No, I have.
No, I don't know what that boss is.
Yeah, so so like my whole thing is all of the hardest bosses in
this game respawn you right outside of their arena.
So I was thinking about this very separately.
I was thinking about the run backs being different from what

(46:54):
I was interpreting. Seth is asking because like I
said, all of the hardest encounters in this game, the
high halls encounter, lost Lace Lace 2 point O, all of the act 3
bosses you there is no run back.The run back is having to sit
through a cutscene and that's fucking annoying to me.
But I actually like the actual run backs like last judge where
you have to actually do some platforming.

(47:15):
What was annoying to me was having to sit through cutscenes
for shit like lost lace. That's so fucking hard and
you're just going to have to watch the same like 10:15 second
cutscene over and over and over again.
But I think run backs in a vacuum are great because they
are a knob to turn where you canbalance the game around two
different things. You can balance it around the

(47:35):
run back and you can balance it around the boss.
Like if you have a hard run backand a hard boss that's
miserable, that sucks, but it's pretty rare.
But if you have a hard run back and an easier boss, that's fine.
And like I said, this game does a good job of knowing what it's
hard encounters are and not forcing you into a long arduous
run back. Outside of Grohl, who I killed

(47:55):
on the first try, which is the unique and experience that
people complain about that one alot, But yeah, it was not an
issue for me. I mean, you, Jordan, anchoring
it to what Thomas said and the original question of whether or
not you feel that Team Cherry respects your time with this
game. I think the main issue with the

(48:16):
time disrespect is the rosary thing because of the basic what
was mentioned before of so if they're easy to get and the only
punishment is like your time, why don't we just why don't we
just like skip all that bullshitand just yeah, I think that's
the only real time disrespect. I don't like I don't mind like
the I think trading off a cutscene for a run back is like

(48:37):
is fine. That's kind of like the penalty
in and of itself. I think an issue with this game
of difficulty is that I think the normal enemies are too hard
and I think the bosses are too easy.
And I think there should be either less of the normal
enemies or like more of a platforming focus on run backs
because then I think that that'sa little more interesting.
Having to do combat to get back to combat doesn't feel as good

(49:00):
as if you were have to like justmaster like an obstacle course.
And then once you do that, then you feel like your hands are
warm and you're ready to go versus like half your health
missing and you want to go back to the bench and then you got to
do like another run back. And and yeah, I think just the,
and it's not that the normal enemies are too hard.
They just like, avoid you too much and they're too like
annoying to also deal with in the arenas.

(49:21):
So I have 44.3 hours in this game and 30 minutes of that
being generous. Was farming rosaries just for
the record, but. If it wasn't an issue for
everybody else, no one would complain about it.
You need to know how to farm them for it to become trivial.
I will say I probably got kind of lucky running into the vendor

(49:42):
that sells the thing that gives you plus 60% rosaries, but I
don't know, get good and exploremore.
But I do agree in the sense thathaving to go through combat to
get to combat sucks, which is why every enemy gauntlet in this
game is a fucking chore, especially when they're tied to
bosses. Because I don't think the rosary

(50:04):
system is an issue of time once you know how to interface with
it. But when you don't, and if
you're not trying to look something up, like it's going to
be a real like grading experience for most of the
players. I didn't look anything up, but
there's, it's just like pretty easy to tell that when you go to
high halls, there's two guys that drop 40 rosaries right
outside the screen and you can run back and forth there in 20

(50:26):
seconds. Yeah, I mean, I I still go back
to the point of what's the pointthen?
Like, if the grind's easy, why are we wasting my time?
It's a true just time. I mean, what's the point of
grinding mounts and Wow? What's the point of grinding
experience in an RPG? Massive difference.

(50:46):
There is a power level or a flexthat's related to that.
It's not integral. It's like, hey, do you want to
press up in this game? You got to spend 25 minutes
running left. And right, it's the exact same.
It's the exact same thing in Silksong.
Like I said before, there's nothing in this game that
requires you to bank thousands of rosaries.
If you just want to like run through the game and have like
100 at a time, you're going to be able to do 90% of the things

(51:10):
that you run into. It's if you want to like go
through the task of farming every tool and every simple key
and everything that the vendors have where, yeah, you'll need to
farm thousands, but you don't have to.
You have to farm some level amount, especially if you die a
lot. And if you don't like don't
realize the whole like where therosary guys are, like if you

(51:31):
didn't mark that down, where thewhere you swap necklaces out,
there's like a lot of pitfalls that you could run into if
you're trying to run this game on your.
Own and. You're like pro gamer.
Like I said, after four hours ofthis game, there were many times
where I lost like 600 rosaries somewhere and I just didn't give
a fuck because it's just not important.

(51:53):
I mean, I, I will say from one end, like there, there were
probably two or three different vendors that when I got to them,
I was like, I'm never farming like the 2500 rosaries that I
need to purchase this entire guy's inventory.
I'm just not doing that. And that is kind of an element

(52:13):
where it feels like Team Cherry is pushing me away from that,
from using the content that theyput in the game.
Yeah, I mean, I felt the same way with many of the vendors
because a lot of those big purchases are related to tools
and the actual resource in this game that sucks is the shells or
the shards, whatever they're called that that sucks.

(52:36):
You would think that that doesn't suck when you're playing
act one, but by mid act 2 on to act three.
If you are like in any way shapeor form relying on tools and
you're dying a bunch to bosses, you're fucked.
You are. You are not farming those back
up. You better get comfortable
without your tools. That resource sucks way more

(52:56):
than rosaries in my opinion. Yeah, I don't even know if
there's a good way to farm that stuff, 'cause I like I, I get
what the what are they called? Not Geo shards or what?
Are they? I keep calling, I keep calling
them shells. I don't know, I shell shards.
Oh yeah, they're shells. They're shells.
Are they shells or shards? Shell shards.
They're both. They're shell shards.
No, yeah, I I feel similarly about those as I feel about

(53:20):
runbacks again, because my firstSouls game was blood borne and
you had to farm blood vials in that game 'cause it didn't have
an S system. But I think the difference in
this game, because I, I never used a ton of tools, I don't
think that this game really has great farming points for the
shell shards. That or I just never had to do
it so I never looked for it. I mean there has to be some
because like a lot of people I've seen who like melt bosses

(53:44):
do like the, I forget what the Crest is called, the one that is
related to items, artificer or something like that.
And that's probably the strongest shit in the whole
game, but God help you if you are trying a boss for the first
time and you keep dying. Because like, like I don't know
if if you were that build and you were trying to do like Lost

(54:05):
Lace, I don't know where the fuck you would go to farm up
those shards. Like you would have to run out
of the abyss and shit. And that would fucking suck.
Like rosaries aren't shit. That's the fucking resource that
sucks. It actually made me realize that
the entire reason why I never used souls equivalent of tools
is again, because I played Bloodborne first and that game

(54:27):
has the exact issue that you're describing.
Like yeah, I might want to go out and farm some fire paper to
help me kill blood starved beast, but if I don't kill it on
that attempt and now I'm out of fire paper, well now I just have
to learn the fight anyway. So why not just learn the fight
every single time? What were you going to say,
Sesh? I think you can buy shell shores
with rosaries at some vendor, can't you?

(54:47):
You can buy. You can buy the like the neck.
Well, they're not necklaces, butthey're like the same purpose
but for shards, right? Yeah, I know that at least for
sure. The little blacksmith dudes in
deep docks sell them. I never bought them one time so
I don't know if they're like replenishable.
Yeah, I don't know if they're infinite there.
That was going to be my only question because I didn't use
tools. This is like a self-inflicted

(55:08):
difficulty thing because I like to experience bosses like as
they're designed rather than trying to find like T strats.
So I never use the red tool once.
They they stopped being useful. They were insane in Act 2, but
by Act three they were kind of like whatever.
I mean, I will say I do think that the power level of some of

(55:28):
the tools does really help mitigate the bosses that have
enemy gauntlets to an extent. It almost felt like that's what
its purpose was, or at least it felt so strongly inclined
towards that for me personally that it felt like it was
designed for me. Like just completely choosing
certain gauntlets and getting back to the boss by using the
flying ladybug guys like that felt pretty.

(55:49):
Good dude. I don't know if I would have
beat Skarsinger Carmelita if it weren't for the fact that all of
those Act 3 bosses, since you'rein like the dream world or
whatever, it doesn't actually use your supply of tools.
So like you basically, yeah, you'd never use tools.
So I don't know if I would have beat that boss if I couldn't
just like cast 8 cog flies everytime I fought her.

(56:13):
OK. See, so that's interesting.
Like when I was bringing it up earlier, I kind of thought like
when I was talking to Ben about Team Cherry agreeing with him
because of those bosses where itdoes that.
I thought that was an example where you would like have to
choose to run back to the bench in order to get your tools back.
But I guess that's not actually true.
But one area where that is true is I'm not sure.

(56:35):
I think Jordan might be the onlyperson that did this zone, but
there's the lost Verdania. But yeah, it gives the story of
the cogwork dancers by going into, I forget his name, the
Lost Prince's Past by using the needle in to play the song.
And it teleports you there, but your map doesn't update unless
you go to a bench which is not located in the zone.

(56:58):
So it was an example where like you did have to actively choose
to go to the bench, even though it was kind of just annoying.
Yeah, this game definitely has some annoying aspects, there is
no doubt about that. And I think I lost Rodania Zone
fucking sucks but I think the boss is super cool.
I thought the platforming was good enough and the story it's

(57:18):
trying to tell. I was, yeah, OK with it.
I think just having an interfacewith the enemies like sucks, but
I think everything else is. Cool.
That's something that's unique to that area.
Or is that I? Think it's the whole game.
Yeah, I think that's what I'm alluding to.
Yeah, no, I, I guess like part of my difference it sounds like
with Jordan is that I'm OK with a lot of the annoyances that

(57:39):
this game imposes on you. Because I feel like that's part
of the tone narratively that they're going for.
And, you know, it's kind of in line with like Dark Souls 1,
which is rare to see. Yeah, I think like you and I,
Seth, are like Souls coded nerds, whereas Jordan fucking
hates Souls games. I think if you hate Souls games,
you are gonna have a rough time with this game.

(58:00):
Like, not from like a difficultyperspective, just from like a
design the way it chooses to do things perspective.
I, I just to clarify, I do specifically mean Dark Souls 1
because I don't think two or three or probably not even
Bloodborne apply that level of like being very intentionally
frustrating to the player to draw a point.

(58:24):
Yeah, but I like that. I think that like, I've made
this argument before that I, I am I, it annoys me so bad when I
see the, the Souls like tag on Steam because like, in my mind,
it's just like they're going to miss the point.
Because so, so much of what's important about Souls games is
that like the difficulty is not just difficulty for difficulties

(58:48):
sake, it's that it's baked into the themes of the game and the
themes of those games is struggle.
Everything about those games is about the struggle and like the
upwards climb towards like achieving some goal and like the
fucking Sisyphician fucking likepitfalls that will happen in
between that and Silksong I think is one of the only games

(59:09):
outside of Fromsoft that I thinkactually managed to like evoke
that same sort of feeling in me.Yeah, no, I, I agree 100%.
Sorry, what were you going to say earlier, Jordan?
Is it still saving? Yeah, it's kind of like a spin
off point of like, I don't have an issue with Dark Souls games
because I like that the enemies are hard and the bosses are

(59:30):
harder. This game I think the enemies
are hard and the bosses are easybecause I think the bosses are
too fair and too not bullshit. So it's feels really shitty to
try to get to a boss, but then fighting a boss doesn't feel
shitty because when you fuck up it's your fault.
What's an example of that? Because the the only like
there's only like a handful of enemy normal enemies in this
game that I thought were like really annoying, which is a

(59:53):
little mosquito dudes and bio water and no, those mosquito
dudes and putrefied ducks and the like bushmen dagger throwing
dudes in bio water. Other than that, it's like none
of them really bothered me that much.
It's the the main yellow area. I can't remember the name of it
because it all blends together in my head, But the guys that
like parry, the flying guys thatparry and kind of like move a

(01:00:13):
little bit back from you. Like there's not a lot of
windows when you can hit them and the the kind of secret to
fighting a lot of the bullshit enemies up until basically the
end of the game is the it's the silk sphere thing.
I don't remember what the name of the attack is.
The one that has the silk attackaround you in like a circle?
Yeah. So that's it's basically like

(01:00:34):
use that or get fucked. And yeah, cuz I and also like
when you beat a boss, it's like a good feeling.
The boss doesn't come back and you don't have to deal with it
anymore. When you sit at a bench, all of
those fuckers come back and you have to fucking deal with them
again. And they don't really give you
anything when you kill them. Like you don't get the good
feedback like you do from beating a boss.
So it feels even worse to interact with difficult enemies.

(01:00:54):
Yeah, but for me like 99% of them are just trivial to just
run past and not have to deal with.
It's when you have to do platforming and then they get in
your way and then you have to kill them and then you don't
know if it's your first time in a room if you need to kill them
because you're going to need to do platforming.
Like there's a lot of decisions and like I ran by 97% of things
and the most annoying enemies tome are the ones that you can't
really run by. And that's really like Act

(01:01:15):
three, late Act 2 stuff. I, I also want to use this
opportunity because I think it'sfitting to lambast the claw line
a little bit because I think that the claw line is kind of
designed for a lot of these likeannoying evasive enemies that
are like difficult to hit by normal means because like the
claw line goes out so far, for example.

(01:01:36):
The problem is it's just so fucking clunky to use.
Like I, I feel like I should, I should be able to not
omnidirectional aim, aim it, butwhatever.
Like the 8 directional, I shouldbe able to do that.
And why does it use silk to use?I understand if you had an enemy
then you're gaining silk or whatever, but like when it comes
to the platforming, it's incredibly awkward.

(01:01:58):
Like Mount Faye, the claw line just feels awful when you're not
using it on one of the enemy bounce points and on one of the
rings because you just lose yoursilk doing that.
And like, I I feel like I'm being disincentivized from using
it to move fastly in the overworld because it uses silk.
And yeah, I don't know, I feel like the claw line is a great

(01:02:19):
idea. Terrible execution.
My issue with the claw line, it's not necessarily just the
claw line, but it's kind of likejust like the button mapping in
general is that like I was thinking about ways to like, I
don't want to say something. All right, let me just stick to
the claw line. I wish that, and maybe this is a

(01:02:40):
hot take, I wish it was just an upgrade to the dash and it was
just one button instead of two separate buttons because like,
to me, they're basically the same thing except one does
damage. I think the claw line for me,
the main issue is there's two. There's two main issues.
Number one, it doesn't have likea what's the word I wanna use

(01:03:04):
like a friendly enough, like radius for when it's gonna pick
targets up. Like you have to be a box.
Yeah, kind of like a hit box, but like it'll track.
I guess hit box is the right word.
But like, I think you have to beway too precise with like the
rings and shit that you need to hit for like no good reason

(01:03:25):
really. And any time I hit an enemy with
the claw line was a nightmare because I felt like I was just
going to get hit immediately after that, unless it was like a
little platforming bug that was designed to be hit by the claw
line. I want to talk about this more
later, but I think that I don't know if all of you in here have
played Ori in the Blind Forest, but if you want to see like

(01:03:48):
exactly what Thomas is talking about, done well, Oh my God,
display Ori. That game does all of its
mechanics so fucking well. Yeah, that game is a master of
Metroidvania platforming. I just wish it was like, more
past that. I wish that this game had stolen
more platforming sections from Ori, But other than that, Ori's
kind of me. I had an issue with the claw

(01:04:10):
line. I have a lot of issues in this
game when the mechanics are introduced.
But then the more you use them, the more accustomed you get to
them and then the more fine theyare.
So I thought the movement portion of the claw line using
silk sucked at first, but then you just kind of have to realize
like the cadence. And I think the real failure is
not be it, it slows you down. So when you when it's trivial

(01:04:32):
platforming and you just need togo from circle to circle to
circle and you can't just go circle, circle, circle.
You have to go circle, wait, circle, wait.
That's when it feels the worst. But when they use it near the
top of Mount Fay where it's like, OK, you can't do it too
early. So you have to like stall your
jump a little bit more. That's when I think it's a good
thing. Yeah, that I'm fine with, but
like, yeah, that specific feeling you're describing where

(01:04:54):
you go onto one of the rings andyou have to wait a minute, like,
like, let's compare the platforming in this game and
Halo Night 12 Celeste, and I think it's like pretty accurate,
like those. They do platforming very well in
the way that Celeste did. And I think when you have things
like the claw line that are clunky in that way, it just gets

(01:05:15):
in its own way so bad when it could have been so much better
very easily. Yeah, and I think to build on
the Celeste analogy, the thing with Celeste is like when you
dash into the ground and then you jump, you get that big jump.
But in this game when you the dash jump has a built in delay,
so you cannot dash jump immediately.

(01:05:37):
And there's no coyote frames which are the frames of if you
run off of a platform, you can then still jump that.
There's none of that either. So they created this balance
state where they don't want you to do quick dashes and jumps off
short platforms. But I don't know what the

(01:05:57):
gameplay benefit of that is, because it never seems like that
broke anything. Yeah agreed.
Also I will say the aspect of the clawline where using silk
was annoying. It never really bothered me but
I think it became like it becamea total non issue after you get

(01:06:19):
a few of, I forget what they're called, the items that let you
region silk more. Like once you're up to like 3 or
4 region, it's like you'd never even really have to think about
that claw line region ever again.
Yeah, for sure. Yeah, maybe that was maybe that
was like kind of their answer towhat I'm describing.
So I never, I, I don't think I ever got enough region to make
it not an issue. While we're kind of talking

(01:06:41):
about the platforming, I do justwant to quickly shout out the
very short version of Path of Pain in this game.
I'm not sure if you did it, but the hidden area up above
Grandmother Silk's boss room where it has really nice
platforming segments, really fucking good.
It's like there's like one otherarea in the game that does this,
but it has these jumping sequences where you have to use

(01:07:02):
your double jump before you likego into a fall and you have to,
I'm sorry, you have to use your double jump in order to get up
to a platform that is like opposite you and wall bounce off
of it. So it has these really nice
segments where you have to like jump in a very precise way, save
your double jump, use your claw line and use your double jump in

(01:07:23):
order to get up to that wall. And it was one of the only times
in this game where I truly felt like the platforming was using
every resource that it had givenme throughout the entire game.
But in addition to that, I don'tknow if this is going to be a
broader topic that you guys really want to go into, But like
Ben mentioned, the button mapping issues, it's definitely
present. Specifically, I think the button
mapping for Ben, you had mentioned the double jump slash

(01:07:48):
float in the channel. And yes, you can use the float
without using the double jump byholding down, but that sucks.
It's awkward. No, I did.
That and it didn't work. Well that would have been so
nice to know so many times. I'm I'm about to log on the game
and confer to that. I'm sure you're right. 9% sure
it's. True, I'm sure you're right, but

(01:08:08):
it's if it's in there, it's definitely not told.
Yeah, I never, I never thought to try it.
I'm not doubting that it's true.It's it's it's not told to you
and it's also pretty clunky whenyou all The only reason I'm
thinking this is 'cause I'm pretty sure a couple times like
while I was trying to Pogo an enemy, I ended up floating
instead, which is the issue. Yeah, that's the issue that the

(01:08:33):
button mapping is creating, assuming I'm not spreading
misinformation right now, but also I think that the ways that
the tools are bound to what up and down.
Oh, that's. Oh my God, Oh my.
OK, so that's the main reason why I wanted to do this like
thought exercise of like how to consolidate buttons.
That's why I was thinking about like just making the call line

(01:08:54):
an upgrade to the air dash. And it's also I was thinking
like why the fuck is there a button for the needle in like
like I didn't play act 3 so I know that you use it so I'm
there, but is there a reason foryou to like have a dedicated
needle in button? No, theoretically, no.
Yes, I'm going to say yes. It's because.
Fast travel. I'm going to say yes because if

(01:09:16):
you give a shit about the lore you will be using it constantly.
Also you can you can use it to like mesmerize every enemy.
Like if you play the needle in in front of any enemy they'll
stop and talk to you. Oh.
OK so it actually has a function.
I thought it was literally just to like trigger certain points
to proceed in the game and nothing else.

(01:09:37):
It it actually has like a prettyshocking amount of reactivity
and what Thomas is describing like I actually didn't know
about the enemy thing. That's awesome.
But there are a ton of areas in the game where you can just get
extra lore details. Like one of my favorite areas in
the zone in the game is the mistarea into the phantom boss.
And if you play the needle in then one of the areas there

(01:09:57):
you'll find out the phantom is actually Lace's sister.
And like stuff like that is just.
So cool. Like is that really worth having
a dedicated button instead of just like going up to those
triggers and having a little button problem that says use the
needle in? I mean, yeah, because it does a
lot. I mean you use it the most
probably in Act 3. Yeah, yeah, that's why I asked
about ACT. Three, because I like how do.

(01:10:18):
You do it. You can use it at literally
every NPC in the game and they'll like sing to you and
like give you words and story background and shit.
Like my favorite reactivity withit is an act 3 after Silk
plunges into the abyss and all of her like little silk strands
become void touched. And every time you play the

(01:10:39):
needle in any of that, like voidtouch Silk in the background or
foreground will like react to itand it'll like pulsate and shit
looks fucking cool as hell. Yeah, I think you don't need to
put it on your own button, but Ithink the fact that they did is
cool because of all the reactivity in the world from it.

(01:11:00):
Yeah. Like could it could it have been
bound to something more important?
Yes. But does the needle in need to
have its own button? Also yes.
Yeah, yeah, mostly I was just thinking about ways to
consolidate buttons so that you wouldn't have to use up and down
on the D pad plus another input to do shit.
But I mean, it does sound prettycool.
So. Oh no, I guess they did the best

(01:11:21):
they could. OK, I I have very important
information. Yes, that's the lawyer.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I opened Silk Song and I
couldn't do it. I did quick research on the fly.
They patched it out. Oh, that's funny.
I was sitting here just doing itand I was like, I can't do it.

(01:11:41):
That's the liar. Yeah, I feel like, I feel like I
would have absolutely done that at least once or twice, like on
accident and kind of figured it out from there.
It's the first thing I tried when I got, when I got the
double jump. The first thing I tried when I
was like, Oh no, I can't float anymore was hold down and do it
because I think that's kind of the convention.
So like, I got there, the comment I'm looking at says it

(01:12:03):
was passed out today, and that was 17 days ago.
So that was like, yeah. That.
Was That's crazy. Yeah, that would have been after
I started or before I started playing too, so.
Sorry I hijacked what you guys were talking about.
I thought that was funny. I was gonna say, is there
anything that's bound to L3 and R3?
No, the stupid taunt thing is one of them.

(01:12:24):
Those absolutely should have been used better.
Absolutely like. If anything, those should have
been used as the tool buttons. Yeah, I was going to say.
The funny thing is that taunt button is actually like critical
in the speed run, funny enough. But outside of that it was just
an annoying button for me to press on accident every now and
again. Yeah, I think to get Nick picky

(01:12:46):
with like this game in your time, I think playing the needle
in for things and it taking like15 seconds to show you one line
of dialogue and then doing it again is like Ocarina Time
levels of wasting my fucking time.
The only. Silk.
What? It use silk.
Why does it use silk? Does it use silk?
The needle in Yeah. Yeah.
I mean, you can play it. It'll drain you down to like

(01:13:06):
one, but you can play it forever.
Oh, OK, that's silly too. It's it's like, it's kind of
like the fucking claw line wherelike you'll, you can use it
functionally Infinity times, butif you are trying to bank a
heel, you better if you can remember.
Yeah, that that feels like an instance of being over designed.

(01:13:26):
Yeah, I was actually thinking towards the end of the game that
with things like the needle in and the claw line, like once
you're late into the game and you have like 1 1/2 two silk
bars, it should just use it as like a checkpoint where the
needle in and the claw line won't let you go below 1 full
bar. Yeah, that would be nice.

(01:13:47):
But I also understand like especially in Mount Fay, when
you first get the claw line, I think there is a like for the
like quote UN quote puzzle of platforming that area there.
There is a reason to have that kind of like recharge where they
can space out the specific timing you need to regenerate

(01:14:09):
that one silk to use the claw line again.
So you kind of get used to that timing and it kind of forces you
because you literally can't clawline until it comes back.
Yeah. Yeah, actually, I actually
didn't mind that mechanic at all, personally.
I thought, I thought it was finebecause I think if it, if it
didn't cost any silk, it's all you would do.

(01:14:29):
You would just jump and you would just mash claw line over
and over and over again to just like travel horizontally through
every zone. Yeah, you would have like a.
Built in cool down or. Something yeah, exactly like
exactly. So if you do, they could do that
big. You'd have to just put in like a
literal like time based cool down.
How's that? Half a second.
How's that different though? Other.
Than it wouldn't. It would just, it would just be
the same thing, but I guess it wouldn't deplete silk for your

(01:14:51):
healing in like a future combat scenario I guess.
I don't know, I think I think silk is like it's a important
resource to manage, although like the amount of times I would
claw, line around and then forget that I needed to heal was
definitely more than once. I think just my main issue is
anything you platform off of what the claw line should give

(01:15:13):
you back silk so that you can just put claw line again.
Yeah, you should. I, I don't think you should ever
be punished for correctly using it in a spot where they designed
it for. That's the weird thing for me.
Like I, I don't care if they remove the silk cost or if they
just make it so that when you hit a ring you get silk there.
I think there's just an issue. With it.

(01:15:34):
Yeah, I I actually agree with that.
I think it would have been a lotbetter if they had just made it
so like if you make contact withsomething it refunds it.
Whether that's a wall, an enemy,a ring, anything.
Yeah. And cause like when you hit a
wall with it, it's actually like, really satisfying.
It makes that kind of funky sound and zoops you into it like
you're Spider man. But then yeah, you just don't

(01:15:57):
get that. Like you feel punished because
you didn't specifically hit an enemy with it and that sucks.
I will say though, in my opinion, like just overall like
factoring in the claw line, factoring in everything, even
the controls to some extent, I think that this game might
honestly have the best movement in any metroidvania.

(01:16:18):
I feel like this game is schmoove as.
Thick, yeah, I agree for sure. I would agree with.
You if and only if or you didn'texist.
This is like an easy second for me.
Yeah, I guess. Yeah, Ori.
Ori is a good show. I didn't really play Ori, so I
don't. Yeah, but I'm sure you guys are
right. Actually, if I play it, I own
it. It's the first game is good.

(01:16:38):
The second game is kind of meh, but I would recommend the first
game. It it actually shares a pretty
similar DNA with Hollow Knight in my opinion.
It's like, yeah, it's it's like the the baby's version of Hollow
Knight. I would say they're very
similar. Hot Ori is just very, very easy.
Yeah, I I, I can't think of likea very specific game to compare
Ori to, but it is it. It is a metroidvania that just

(01:17:02):
hyper focuses on platforming. The first game doesn't even have
combat or like it's there but they clearly didn't design for
it in any way. Should not be there.
Yeah, it shouldn't be there. And all the quote UN quote
bosses of this game, of that game of Ori and the Blind Forest
are literally identical to when you're escaping the abyss and
the lava is chasing. After you, those are the boss.

(01:17:24):
In that game, and it's fucking. Yeah.
Ori's like Meat Boy, but a metroidvania.
Yeah, I agree with that. And actually, I think I'd have
to go back and look and refresh my memory a little bit, but I
actually remember my fondness for the art of Ori being more
than it is for this game or Hollow Night.
And that doesn't detract from these games cuz they look
fucking incredible. But Ori is in a class of its

(01:17:46):
own. Yeah, I think.
Go ahead. I was just gonna say I think
this game is borderline unbeatable.
I think Ori's, it's aged a little bit.
They do really well with bloom and colors.
But I mean I think this game is unageable.
I think this game will look goodin the year 3000.
The thing I remember liking about Ori a lot is the way that
they used the foreground. I thought the way Ori uses the

(01:18:08):
foreground was fucking amazing. But yeah, I think you're right.
Like Silk Song, I'm gonna be honest, like I literally was the
thought was running through my head the last couple days of is
this just the best looking game ever made?
Cuz like it's kind of hard to talk me out of it honestly.

(01:18:28):
Cuz there's just like there's just so much detail in all the
environments and everything likethey're, they did not half ass a
pixel of this game. And to me that's fucking
amazing. And it just looks so good.
I just really like the style honestly.
I'm going to ask one question, and I think it's going to sound

(01:18:52):
a little bit more incendiary than I mean it.
I wrote down in our group notes for this game that I felt this
sense of claustrophobia as I wasplaying this game.
Because even though what you guys are saying is absolutely
true, environments are fucking beautiful.
The game never really like zoomsout and lets you absorb it.
I like, I can't think of a single time where the camera

(01:19:14):
like pans out a little bit to let you see something like like
something like Ori does when youget to the big tree in the
center of the game or whatever. And the incendiary question that
I'm going to ask is, did do you guys feel like this game was
presented with confidence in theway that you guys are
describing? Yes, I can continue, but let's

(01:19:35):
go let someone else talk. So you mean like, do you think
that the game's like, I'm prettyand I know it?
I, I mean, yeah, like this is something I think about a lot
where like take the soundtracks for Near Automata or the
soundtrack for Clarex, Clare, Obscure, Expedition 33.
Those games clearly fucking knowthat they have amazing

(01:19:57):
soundtracks. And so they make like 5
different variants of the song and they go on all of these like
symphonies and shit to present all of their music because they
knew, they knew at launch that they had an incredible
soundtrack. And I I don't get the sense
that. This game knew that it had
incredible assets, and because of that, I don't think it lets

(01:20:21):
you absorb them as well. It's almost like when you're
watching a horror movie and the monster is like, obscured by
darkness so you can't see it. Yeah, I just don't feel like
there's very many moments that let you absorb their beautiful
creation. I think that that design is
lined up with a design that theymight have in mind of gameplay

(01:20:43):
first, where like you're playinga game first and foremost.
So at the focus should be on thegame.
Because I think there's a prettyreasonable disconnect in a game
like Hades 2 when you walk up toa Cliff and then the whole
camera pans over and like, and then it's like, oh, look how
fucking beautiful this is. But that's not gameplay.
This game is always beautiful and it's always gameplay outside

(01:21:03):
of like the 2% of time that you're in actual cutscenes.
I think it's also important to not conflate style in detail
with spectacle. If you zoom out, it's because
you want to convey some level ofspectacle, whereas the beauty of
silk song is in the details. And if you zoom out, you're

(01:21:24):
going to lose some level of thatdetail because like I said
before, like every single pixel,every single frame of every
animation. Like like even though like
having to sit through the animations to like go up and
down elevators and shit is really annoying.
Like the next time you play thiscan just look at them just
fucking watch how gorgeous everyanimation is when you step in an

(01:21:46):
elevator and it the door like creaks closed and you go up or
down. Like there is no wasted space.
There is no half assed frame. Like everything is just like the
detail and soul is just poured into it and it all just looks so
fucking good to me. Oh, I just think the game looks

(01:22:07):
pretty good as far as like the cost claustrophobia thing, I
don't know, I guess I just don'treally feel that because like it
doesn't, it's not like La Mulanawhere it's like locked into like
1 screen, you know what I mean? It kind of like follows you
around like a camera just with your character.
So to me, like that, like continuity of seeing the

(01:22:28):
environment move with me, I don't know, I just thought the
game just was very consistently good looking.
I didn't. And I guess to answer your
question directly, I do think that they were confident that
they knew this shit was God like.
I think that's just the feeling I got.
OK, I'll I'll accept all of this.

(01:22:50):
I it doesn't remove my desire tohave those like Haiti style pan
out moments but I will accept the fact or the thought that
they did it for like tonal or thematic consistency.
There are times that they could have done that where instead of

(01:23:10):
having those like pre rendered cutscenes, they could have done
something that would like show the scale of like in Orlando
when you first get there and stuff like that.
But other than that, I think, I think that they did know that
they had some like visual gold here.
So they do that. They absolutely do that.
It's just a lot of it is obscured in the backgrounds and

(01:23:33):
you have to pay a lot of attention to the backgrounds.
Like how many of you noticed as you were platforming around
that? At some point, I forget what
zone it is, but at some point early on in the game, in the
background, there is just a massive pile of corpses.
And that is all of the old pilgrims who died on their way

(01:23:55):
up. And it's just like this whole
fucking thing. Or like the foundation of the
entire citadel is like built on these like really rickety
foundations. And you can tell that like, what
the fuck, if one of these columns breaks, the entire
citadel is coming down. Like they represent scale.
It's just you have to look for it in the background and it's

(01:24:16):
not always like super obvious. I, I will say like, as I've been
thinking about this, the one like for sure counterexample I
can think of is immediately after last judge.
And they're like the like littlesteps that you go up and you can
see like the immensity of the citadel behind you and

(01:24:37):
everything. I think that's for me personally
the strongest example of like a counterexample of what I'm
thinking. But again, I'll I'll accept what
you guys are saying it it makes sense to me.
I don't know if the game is better off for not having it in
the way that I'm describing, butI will accept their vision as
being good regardless. Well I will at least support you

(01:25:00):
somewhat in that I would, at least in this specific example I
used. I wish they would have used
something like that instead of the pre rendered cutscenes.
And this is a this is an issue that's more specific to me as an
ultra wide user. But anytime any game uses pre
rendered cutscenes they're usually for 16 by 9 aspect
ratio. So I'm always going to get

(01:25:21):
litter boxing whenever a game uses pre rendered cutscenes.
So I would always choose not to fight.
If I was a developer making a game for specifically me I'd I'd
always prefer like an engine stuff.
I agree and it's it's not even from a six or like a aspect
ratio thing. I think just the pre rented
cutscenes have a level of like it's going to look worse.

(01:25:42):
And it's a jarring experience from how the gameplay looks and
how the cutscenes look. And I think that there's like a
whole philosophy behind that of like air quotes, immersion
breaking, where like, you know, I'm in a cutscene now and I'm in
gameplay now where if if you do everything in engine, you don't
have that. Yeah, it's pretty funny.

(01:26:02):
Like I'm thinking about it. I've never really, I've never
really thought about it until now, but a lot of games really
have gone away from pre renderedcutscenes.
Huh? Like this is the first game I
can remember doing in a while. I, I actually don't think that's
the case. I think there are a lot of games
do it now to the point of where like it's even more jarring now
because of like high frame rates.
Like it's even more of a disparity even for something

(01:26:26):
like Hades when you have like the whatever's going on with the
animations where they run at like 15 frames per second.
But I'm playing the game at 240.Like I think that that's a
common thing even like Claire obscure where they with their
cutscenes they're not pre rendered but they might as well
be pre rendered because they addweird filters and turn the frame
rate way. Down.
Yeah, I was. I was going to ask if we were
going to count clear obscure as pre rendered because I know that

(01:26:46):
they do like all the vignetting and all that stupid shit that
made the the cutscenes in that game look kind of stupid.
Yeah, I think. I think it might as well be pre
rendered because it looks like. Yeah, when I was thinking of pre
rendered, I was thinking like literally the stuff in Silksong,
right. Like you reach a checkpoint and
it plays like a video that is like outside the scope of the

(01:27:07):
what the engine renders, you know?
Yeah. I mean I thought Claire was pre
rendered until I was like wait asecond all the all your costumes
changed. It's not pre rendered.
Yeah, no, I had the same thing because I went through, I went
through so many pains to fuckinglike change the way that they
render those cutscenes because they looked so shit.
How is that? What were you gonna say?

(01:27:28):
I think I do still really like all of the prerendered cutscenes
in this game. I'm not saying you guys dislike
them, but some of them actually reminded me of Control a little
bit. I don't know if you guys have
played that game, but Control has these like really beautiful.
I don't think they're pre rendered but they are these like
cutscenes that show the environment of the next place

(01:27:49):
that you're going to go to and when it uses that for places
like when you go into the cradleto fight Lace 2, when you get to
the citadel for the first time. I think those are really good
ways of mitigating what I was describing earlier with the
claustrophobia and being able topresent something that they
otherwise couldn't have, I think.

(01:28:12):
To so for me, I can't. So whenever someone says they
have a feeling of claustrophobiain the game, I don't ever, I've
never ever gotten that in the game.
So that doesn't like resonate with me.
Did Ben and Tom, do you guys getlike, ever get a sense of
claustrophobia in games? I would say the only time I
really felt claustrophobic in this game was in like gauntlets

(01:28:34):
and enclosed spaces, but not like the actual feeling of
claustrophobia, more like I'm restricted in where and how I
can move. That how it is for you, Seth, or
does it? Does it actually like it?
Like a feeling of panic via that?
Well, keep in mind when I, when I'm describing it in this game,
it's like a much, much lesser example than like I, I'm just

(01:29:00):
describing that feeling where I want to look at the broader
field, but the game won't let me.
But there are like specific moments even in like Hollow
Knight one less so in this game,but more in Hollow Knight one
where you go to, I think it's called Deep Nest in that game.
And it's this like really, really dark area.
You don't even have a Lantern. It's like fucking the tunnels

(01:29:22):
that you're in are the height ofyour character.
Like you hear the skittering of all the arachnids and bugs
around you. And it's just supposed to make
you like very, very on edge and have that claustrophobic, phobic
feel. What I'm describing with this
game is not the same as that. But if you're asking if I do
feel claustrophobia and games generally, then yeah, when

(01:29:44):
they're going for it for sure. Ben, do you have any interests
of claustrophobia? Not that I can think of.
I guess I've never, if there areany games that do that for me, I
just probably tend to avoid themto begin with.
So I don't know, I can't really relate to that, what that meant
exactly. So I kind of just tried to
recontextualize it in something that I understand, which is when

(01:30:05):
Stefan brought up the stuff about like this zoomed out, like
spec or like I guess Thomas brought the word spectacles.
That's what I was thinking, where it's not really
claustrophobia, it's just the sense of scale.
Yeah. And like, I, I guess to use a
more apt description than just calling it claustrophobia,

(01:30:27):
specifically with the zooming thing, it is the feeling when
I'm looking at my screen and I have the desire to just like
take my hands to my monitor and stretch out my screen so that I
can see more. Like when you go into a game and
you increase your field of view.And when a game doesn't let me
do that, it feels claustrophobic.
So you want the camera to just be further back so that you can

(01:30:48):
see more of the screen? I'm just saying it's like a
specific feeling that I have in certain moments that makes me
want to do that. Sure.
Do you have specific screens that you can recall the way that
happened? When you first get to that like
really lush green area right before bone bottom at the start
of the game and you can, that's a good one.
See the yeah, the like very hugebackground behind you and you

(01:31:12):
can't like stretch out and see it.
That that would be the peak example of where I feel like the
game should zoom out. Another one would yeah.
Even though I think it's really good in this game, when you're
stepping up to the Citadel and those steps that I was talking
about earlier, even though I think it does it well, that's
another area where I think it could stretch out the screen.
Yeah, I think those are those are great examples.
That's interesting because I think it definitely could too

(01:31:34):
because there's no combat or anything there.
So there's no downside to reallydoing like a pan out shot.
Yeah, like I'm trying to remember, have you guys played
Paper Mario Thousand Year Door? This game has been on my mind
lately. Yes, but not recently.
Yeah, it's been forever for me. I, I can't remember, but there's

(01:31:55):
a particular part in that game where you're just like walking
along a hallway or something andthe farther you walk, the
farther out the camera gets. That is what I would want from
those areas I'm describing. I think it's a good effect.
I, I, I feel like we've, I feel like we've been on this topic
for a little bit and I didn't intend to if you guys want to

(01:32:16):
move on. Yeah, sure.
I said like over an hour ago that we were going to talk about
the the ACT act, act three beinglocked behind completing side
content. Are you guys ready to go into
that? I think you all are, yeah.

(01:32:39):
I'm good. I'm I'm hoping that we actually
have some like conflicting viewshere.
I don't have like a strong pivotinto this topic, but I I mean,
what are what are the vibes? How do you guys feel?
It sounded like Thomas liked it.You know, there was some discord
chatting going on between Thomasand sesh about it.
I'm a little bit mixed myself, but I guess like the main issue

(01:33:01):
I have is what I was talking about earlier where the main
ending feels, I don't want to say half baked, but it feels
narratively unsatisfying for sure for me.
Even if it's hinting at the factthat there is more past this.
Like if I just didn't care aboutthis game and I was just kind of
like playing it casually and I'mlike, Oh yeah, that was a fun

(01:33:22):
game. I would not be satisfied by that
ending. So here's the thing, you're
thinking of it as an ending. Like OK, sure, it shows the
credits, but is that really whatmakes an ending in my eyes?
No. You are in a story with a three
act structure and we're calling the end of Act 2 the ending.
That doesn't make any sense. So.
So here's the thing, yes, the ending of Act 2 is absolutely

(01:33:46):
unsatisfying. But if you watched the original
Star Wars trilogy and you didn'tknow Return of the Jedi existed
and you just watched Luke get his hand cut off, you'd be like
what the fuck? But there's a whole other like
third movie to watch. And here's the thing, to me,
unlocking Act 3 isn't about being a puzzle to be solved.

(01:34:07):
It's more so that it's a challenge to be met.
And so it's not that it's about discovering the solution that's
important, but it's about demonstrating dedication to the
world in the game. And I mean, it's not like this
is an unprecedented feature in games, right?
Like you have to demonstrate a whole fuck load of dedication to

(01:34:28):
get Undertale's true ending right.
Like, I've never even done it. And like, you have to go through
the game in a way that you are ahero to everyone.
You're not just like the foil tothe villain.
You are the hero of the story tothe entire world, and that's
what Silksong is asking you to do in order to unlock Act three.

(01:34:50):
It's saying you have to fulfill these requirements and you have
to help so many people in order to like get yourself into a
position where you can reach thesatisfying ending.
It's just, it's in a Metroidvania format rather than
like an RPG or whatever other format.
And so like all of the quests are representing the game's

(01:35:10):
characters, their plights, and by completing those, you are
proving your dedication to the world and its inhabitants.
The same thing like with the fleas too, right?
And so like, I don't see that asa flaw.
I see it as like an intentional design decision that's
contributing to the game's like just overall level of mystique
and thematic consequence. So the game's not just asking

(01:35:35):
you to go through the motions and do the minimum possible to
reach your desired conclusion. It wants you to be so invested
in the world that you are willing to go to great lengths
to search for its ultimate truthand resolution.
And to me that's that's like peak Metroidvania.
So I, I agree with you 10,000% II I just want to ask a quick

(01:36:00):
clarification because it might answer it for other people.
I, I 10,000 agree with everything you said and I think
that Undertale was a like perfect example.
At the end of Undertale, Flowey pops in and says why don't you
try to beat this game again and try to save everyone?
Why does this game obfuscate theexistence of Act three behind

(01:36:21):
doing that stuff without having a flat week come in and tell you
sorry? Go ahead, Ben.
Yeah, so I don't know about likehaving it that explicitly told.
But, and, and this is echoing something that I saw Jordan
talking about when you guys are talking about this in the
Discord channel where like, and I'm really loath to bring up
this game as an example, becausethe game's dog shit, but Mass
Effect 3 for like, for like the ending resolution, there was

(01:36:43):
like a, a war assets meter that would build up.
And I'm not saying that this game needed something like that.
In fact, it would go against like their design sensibilities.
But, and again, I didn't do act three or unlock it.
But was there any kind of like indication that you were working
towards something? Like when you completed more and
worthy side quests, were there more villagers showing up that

(01:37:04):
you could talk to you? And they were appreciative.
They were. And they were like, I'm so glad
you keep helping us and like, you know, like more of those
guys, like just appearing so that it seems so.
So they did do that. Caretaker specifically mentions
Wow, you are going around helping a lot of people.
Like Caretaker is the one who, what's the word I'm looking for

(01:37:25):
like broadcasts that like there is gonna be extra stuff,
particularly being the guy in the High halls village.
What is that called? Song grave is.
That the name of that Yeah song.Grave like evolves little by
little. OK, So in that case, I do agree
with the Thomas. I think that because I don't

(01:37:46):
actually have a problem with like the arbitrary like do this
many side quests to get this many points, as long as there is
some kind of like indication that you're not just spinning
your wheels. Is it like obvious there is an
act three? No.
Is it like extremely fucking opaque how you even unlock act
three? Also yes.

(01:38:08):
I don't see that as a flaw though, myself, because I just,
I like these like super opaque, stupid, circuitous psycho
puzzles that like aren't really going to be solved unless
there's like a community effort,which I mean, doesn't

(01:38:28):
necessarily apply to this so much as a game.
Like, I don't know, fucking animal well, but I, I, I just, I
like when games make you work for it and they don't make it
obvious that you have to work for it.
Like I, I appreciate that sort of design.
And I think that that's just like an old Metroidvania trope
where it's not as much about thereward.

(01:38:50):
It's about the journey and the exploration and asking you to
like earn it through effort and dedication.
Yeah, I agree. With about 85% of that I I think
that just hiding the arbitrarilyhidden amount of quests that you
also need to do on top of thingsthat should be pivotal pivotally

(01:39:13):
important to unlocking Act 3 is the stupid part.
I don't like that part at all. Everything else is cool.
So I think the only the only quest that's not super obvious
is the one with what's his name,Mario Chalmers.
What the hell is his fucking name?
The guy with the hat new do Reyfy, Masolatido or whatever.
Oh, Sharma. Sharma.

(01:39:33):
Yeah, thank you. That's the only one that's like
kind of like random because all of the other quests are just the
quest board things that lead to you like finalizing the village,
like getting the statue in Bone Town, getting your house in
Belfast, and I just don't remember how Song Grave ends,

(01:39:54):
but it's all like the contributing to the village
quest. Plus, Sherma and Sherma's the
only one that's just kind of like out there.
Yeah, I, I, and again, I have noissue with anything you just
said. It's needing to do all of that
+2 or three of the extra stupid ones.
Yeah, I think if it was only doing those like finalized
things because these are characters that show up in Act

(01:40:15):
3, even if while I'm finalizing Act 2, I don't know that there's
at least the feeling of like, like as you were talking, I was
like, is the fleet caravan a counterexample of what he's
saying? No, because they are constantly
talking about how they need to find like a safe place to like
sit, you know, take rests or whatever and build their
fleetopia. Like examples like that are

(01:40:37):
perfect because it's a very obvious side quest.
You know, you need to do it. Like if you care about the
characters, that's bonus incentive to do it.
But I, yeah, I think even thoughI, I, I do agree with a lot of
what you're saying, Thomas, and that I, I think that this
decision was built for a very good artistic purpose.

(01:40:58):
I think such does have a point in that those bonus side pieces
of content aren't really necessary to achieve that
artistic vision. How would you change it?
Like what would you do? I mean, I could, I could use an
analogy to Undertale. So for Undertale, you just need
to like hit certain checkpoints of things that you need to do,
right? What if every time that you

(01:41:18):
spared an enemy, you got a friend point and you needed to
get 27 friend points to get to the pacifist ending?
That's what I kind of think thatthis game does where it's like,
I did all of your pivotal things, but I didn't do these
little, I didn't bring 3 Moss berries to this fucking asshole.
So I'm only at 14 quest points out of seven, but out of 17.
But I did all of the other majorpivotal things.
Like you're making me just kind of do stuff that's unimportant

(01:41:39):
to get there. Yeah, like what if, like what if
hypothetically, you saved all ofyour wishes until the end of the
game, but you did all of the other big ones.
So like, you decided to follow up on everything with Chakra
'cause you know, you wanted mapsand you thought she was cool.
You decide to do the Fleetopia 'cause it's like, OK, they're,
they're friendly people, they gave me some cool stuff.
But then at the end of the game you do like 10 wishes in a row.

(01:42:02):
You did all of the other finalization things, but you're
not getting Act 3 because. Why?
I mean, you're literally describing my experience, right?
Which is, I mean that's what happened.
And I mean, my answer to that was Googling how do I unlock act
3, which I mean, sure is not satisfying in the sense that

(01:42:24):
you're getting like rewarded forexploration.
But also at the same time, I knew that the answer was going
to be do more wishes. But what I wanted to avoid was
the answer of I need to do thesespecific wishes.
So I guess at the end of the if they had made some like, I don't

(01:42:50):
know, obvious Telegraph system for like you were progressing
towards the because, because to me, the dumbest part of
unlocking Act 3 isn't like you need to do like whatever, 17 out
of 25 quests or whatever. Like, I don't know, let's say 2
thirds 2/3 of the side quests. The dumb part is knowing that

(01:43:11):
you have to go talk to caretakerafter that.
And the only way that he broadcast anything is he's like
doing the like little fucking hand waggle when the trigger is
hit. So if there was some like
obvious Telegraph from somethingsomewhere, probably in Song
Grave or from Caretaker or whatever, like, would that
alleviate every like criticism you guys have?

(01:43:35):
Probably. Yes.
If every time you went to him and he was like, Oh my God,
we're almost there. Or if it was like even vague
dialogue, like if it was like almost there, we're right there,
we're at the precipice or whatever.
When you kept doing wishes, thenyeah, I think that that's like,
way better, at least from like aconvenient standpoint.
Then I can just be like, I don'twant to do these anymore.
But then that's not even like what I'm complaining about.
I'm complaining about not knowing what the prerequisites

(01:43:57):
are. Yeah.
I mean, that's you can even, I'msaying like if there was some
way to Telegraph those like, andI think like there's a number of
ways you could Telegraph that for me, if if I were to change
anything, I would change it so that so like when you talk to
caretaker while you're trying tounlock act three, he just says

(01:44:17):
like this is the land of the destitute pilgrims or whatever.
Like he doesn't allude to anything that he may have like
extra content in the future. I think if he like if you if the
repeating dialogue that he has. So like once you exhaust all the
dialogue options, if the last thing that he had was like, hey,
by the way, if you go help people, I'll build a trap.

(01:44:41):
Yeah, I think that that I think would fix literally every issue.
Yeah, yeah, like obviously I don't think that a like counter
like what Seschel's describing with Undertale would be the
ideal kind of solve for this is very ham fisted.
It's not, it's not like resonantwith the rest of the game.
But yeah, something in universe to indicate that you are doing

(01:45:02):
something to that end. Yeah, I don't mean display a
counter, for the record. I mean, if anything, like he
would just give you more leadingdialogue of like when you're at
12, then he says like this placeis still pretty empty when
you're at 15. He's like, wow, we're building
up an army or whatever the fuck,you know?
Yeah, I guess. Like some level of change
regularly as you're doing it to indicate that you're making an

(01:45:22):
impact, like impact towards the caravan.
And impact towards something that's going to get you
something rather than just like it's doing impact.
But is this all going to be for not?
Are you doing the wrong shit? Yeah, I mean, again, I can agree
that they could have done more there, but I guess it's just

(01:45:42):
like a personal hill I'm willingto die on that I just really
love, like, obtuse, opaque puzzles in games that are in no
way, shape or form easy. I mean like, that's literally
why La Mulana is like one of my favorite games of all time,
because it's just nothing but obtuse puzzles everywhere as far
as the eye can see. I mean, I would love it an

(01:46:03):
indescribable amount more if allof those monuments that you went
and talked around had some crazycryptic puzzle that no, still no
one knows how to get to act 3 because they spent two years
working on encryption so that you couldn't data mine it.
I think that would this would belike the great.
This would be an unprecedented 11 out of 10 for me if they did
something like. That there is an ending cut
scene that is in the files that no one's got yet gotten.
Yeah, see. But that's the other thing where

(01:46:24):
it's like once I wanted it to beundata minable.
I want it to. Be so that's that's not possible
are. You.
Well, I mean, you think you're not thinking of the mushroom
guy, are you? Mushroom Guy.
Yeah, it's like one of the like super hidden endings.
Are you talking about like the Cursed Child or whatever Twisted
Sister, whatever the fuck it's called?
No, it's, it's different. It's a, it's a big mushroom guy.

(01:46:45):
You find him in like 7 differentlocations and he gives you like
cryptic hints as to where his next location will be.
And that gives you like an alternate ending where it's just
the main true ending, but you like see him flying off into
fucking space at the end. That's definitely not what I'm
talking about. The one I'm talking about is
like an alternative act 2 ending.

(01:47:06):
I forget exactly what happens. You like turn into a no, no, I'm
thinking of the Twisted Sister one where you like turn into a
piece of wood. I, I know that there there is an
ending cut scene in the data files that no one has gotten
yet. And I think the lead, the
prevailing theory right now is that it's just cut content that
they never like fully added, butit is there and that could be

(01:47:28):
wrong. Well, Sash, I'm going to ask you
to put your money on the line right now if that secret ending
that no one has found is relatedto all those hints.
Well, if there's an act for. Real, real quick, real quick,
I'm just going to say this as a Unity developer, the way that
assets work when you build the game is that if you don't use
it, it doesn't get packaged up. So to me, knowing nothing else,

(01:47:51):
I do think that you should, thatyou can get that ending.
It's that it's not cut, otherwise it just wouldn't be in
the package files to be data mined.
That's because it's a Unity gamespecifically.
Well, there you go. Like 0% chance that they just
forgot to take it out somehow. If it's referenced somewhere as

(01:48:13):
like as a like as if someone like dragged it somewhere like,
I assume it's a video file, right?
So if it's like dragged into a field and it's just never used
India, I guess it would be packaged up.
But yeah, so I guess that is possible.
The mystery deepens. Yeah, I mean, if it's an act for
and it's like a crazy thing, that's what I that's what I'm

(01:48:34):
saying. Like that I would want when it's
like this weird obtuse, like thedata miners found the lost in
the Binding of Isaac or something.
I think that that's that's stillcool, but it's not what I wish
this would be like. I like kind of like how they did
one of the character reveals in Isaac if they're, if you only
got act 3 via, they did like an Arg and then they pushed a patch
that unlocked act three or something.

(01:48:55):
That's when I think that's just super cool because that's how
you get around data mining. And I would appreciate that much
more than just being than just having like a fucking hidden and
unfun way to unlocked Act 3. And again, that's only for the
specific amount of quest requirements, not for the
pivotal quest requirements. Yeah, I don't know.
For me, I just, I still a like it doesn't bother me and BI

(01:49:20):
don't think of it as 17 out of 25.
I just think of it as do 2/3 of the quests and you're good to
go. Which I don't know for me like
softens the blow for whatever arbitrary reason.
It's better now that you also know.
Like if you didn't know, it would just be annoying because
that's what that's what it was until literally that article got
updated. When you found it, Tom, like
everyone was just like, I did this and I got it.

(01:49:42):
I did this and I got it and no one really knew.
I mean, again, like I can, I can, I can speak first hand on
that experience, which was like doing, I think I was at 14 out
of 17 and I had done everything else.
And so I was like, well, what the fuck do I need to do?
And that was when I found that Wiki article.
And my, my, my gut reaction was not, oh, that's so fucking
stupid. It was OK.

(01:50:03):
What are the three easiest quests I can knock out right
now? I mean, I, I will say this
because again, I, I said earlierthat I was pretty mixed on the
whole act three thing. But like generally I'm, I'm just
positive on it generally. But I will say this, I think
that our experience of it where like we had to go out of our way

(01:50:25):
to do these wishes and we knew about the existence of Act
three, Therefore, whatever, whatever.
I think that's actually the worst case in terms of this
design. But I don't think it's going to
be the most common case because I feel like Team Cherry, I think
in a way, my feeling is that they kind of wanted to push away

(01:50:47):
the people that just didn't careenough to do any of the side
content and they just wanted to focus on the people that cared a
lot about the game. And so either you're gonna be
doing like all of the side content and doing all of the
wishes and you're gonna get rewarded with act three, or
you're just gonna get an, an unsatisfying ending.
And I if if that was like one oftheir goals, then I respect the
hell out of that. Yeah, I mean, like I said, I I

(01:51:12):
just. I just love that kind of stuff,
you know? Like here's my thoughts on it.
To kind of summarize, like in myeyes, like I think Expedition 33
would actually be an improved game.
If you get to the end of act 2, everyone dies, you get this
horrific ending. It shows you the credits and

(01:51:34):
then you have to like wander around and like complete some
like random objectives around the world in order to then get
to act three. I would actually like that kind
of thing. I think you guys would fucking
hate it based on this discussion.
But that's just the. Kind of thing that I would
actually like. I would actually like that if I
didn't know how Exhibition 33 ended because that's just more

(01:51:56):
work that I invest in the characters I get fucked in the
ass. That's a spoiler for for
Exhibition 33, so we can put that into disclaimer.
I mean I I mean. Go ahead, I was just going to
say a lot of the details of thismatter because I don't mind.
Like I said, like 85% of the things that this game did it

(01:52:17):
just like there's certain annoying because the other one
that I think is annoying is thatyou can get to the ACT 2 ending
way before you get to like before you do all of the other
content. So you might be in this like 10
hour hole where something like Undertale is like it's your
decisions along the way. So you can't get put into like a
content hole. It's just a gradual like
experience. Yeah, that's.

(01:52:38):
But I don't mind that that much.Yeah, because I mean, that's
that just goes back to my original argument, because like,
that's how I played the game. I beelined for the Act 2 ending.
Like, yeah, by the time I got the High Halls, I had zero
tools. I had found literally I think
one tool in the High Halls gauntlet I had, I still had five
masks. I'd only had the first weapon

(01:52:59):
upgrade. Like I didn't have shit.
I was just beelining through thegame.
So you better believe by the time that I beat Grandmother
Silk, I had a lot of fucking work to do.
Yeah, but that just like circlesaround back to I didn't earn the
privilege to unlock Act 3 by virtue of not proving like my
worth and dedication to the gameand the thematics.

(01:53:22):
So like having for the game, forcing me to spend that extra
like 10 to 15 hours to do shit like doesn't bother me because
that's just tied into the work that you have to do.
I I think a very critical component in all of this too,
that we're not really talking about is how good that side

(01:53:45):
content that you need to do is. If exploring and finding the
fleas was miserable, if the wishes were unfun, if like you
had to do Great Taste of Harlem for example, and it was just
like fucking impossible and like1% of players could do it
because of how hard it was, all that shit would suck.
Like if you, if you had to, if you didn't like the content, you

(01:54:09):
would like that the game is forcing you to do it.
Yeah, well, no, because. I hate that it's trivial is what
I'm saying. When you said like if it was
super fucking hard, I would rather there be these ridiculous
bosses, ridiculous platforming. Stuff, Yeah.
But make it feel like an achievement.
I felt like I was doing busy work for seven fucking hours.
Speaking of busy work, there's like one type of quest that
pissed me off and that is collecting like 25 drops and

(01:54:31):
those So at the and this is likean act one thing where like I
needed to collect something these like glowing wide orbs and
if they fall into like love or spikes, they disappear and
usually just like, why did you put these enemies here?
I know the exact shit you're talking.
About I, I actually had that thought earlier in the game
where like all of those quests, I think you needed to get like

(01:54:52):
25 or something of them. And I'm like, whoever invented
the war the the number 25, I'm going to kill that dude because
fuck these quests. I mean, to be fair, like that
exact quest you can, you can getlike 6 at a time from one enemy.
But yeah, I mean, like, I don't think of it as busy work because
like, the whole purpose of Metroidvanias is to run around

(01:55:12):
and explore and like try and find like weird hidden little
hidden nooks and crannies and shit.
If you don't like that, then like, you're not even going to
bother going through the motionsto get to Act 3 because you
don't like what the game is at its core.
So, so for me, it's like a, it'sa, this is a personal preference
and obviously like people get like what you're describing.

(01:55:33):
But for me, I like all of that busy work to be rewarded via
items, via character power and things like that.
And I like the core progression to be you can hide it behind the
like the big quest and stuff like that.
Don't hide it behind fucking fine 3 Moss berries.
Don't hide it behind fine 7 purple polyps.
Like things that affect the village like very deeply.

(01:55:54):
Or hide it behind big bosses. Hide it behind big platforming
sections. Don't hide it behind just
arbitrary finding. Shit, I mean, you said that you
wanted character power. The two that you just described
were two of the best tools in the game, which is the polyp
pouch and the druid eyes. So I wanted to give you stuff.
I don't want it to be, I don't want it to be a quest that's

(01:56:15):
required for it and gives me that be like one of the other.
Like there should be the core progress quests that might give
you a core progress upgrade item, and there should be side
progress quests that aren't tiedto story progression that give
you that character. Power.
Isn't that what it is? I'm confused.
No, because they mix them together because of that one

(01:56:35):
requirement of do 17 out of 25 quest.
That's my main problem. I want to just keep reiterating.
That I see. What you're saying requirement.
That's the only requirement thatI think is stupid.
I, I mean, I also want to highlight the fact that there is
a required quest in the main game to get float where you have
to get 25 of those little needlethings.
And that one, that one also kindof pushes against Thomas, your

(01:56:57):
point about exploration, becausethe game hard locks you to being
in far fields until you completethat quest because you have to
have float to get out of there. I mean, does it hard lock you
until you get it? Like you can't just be like,
yeah, fuck it, I'm gonna go backto Moss fields or whatever.
Because I didn't. Work you are some of the.
Fucking map. OK, yeah.

(01:57:17):
Oh yeah, that's right. Cuz you need the the fucking
wind tunnel things. Whatever.
Yeah. Yeah, that.
That was the exact moment where I was thinking whoever invented
25, fuck you. Yeah, I don't know.
I guess I just finished that shit like I finished that quest
as I was progressing linearly through the map.
So I don't know, it didn't bug me that.

(01:57:38):
Much. It doesn't bother me that much.
I think it's a negative and but I'm not like fuck this game.
I wouldn't have uninstalled if we weren't playing for this
because of that. Yeah, it was just like, yeah, it
was just like part of the list of things and act one that kind
of rubbed me the wrong way that that eventually, yeah, that like
eventually in hindsight, I'd look on fondly, you know.

(01:58:01):
Yeah, I mean, I get that. Like I can understand why that
would be annoying. I'm I'm sure that honestly, I
had the same reaction of why thefuck do I need 25 of these
things when it happens? So I can't really, I can't
really argue. Yeah, I, I think there's just,
there's a lot of old game designconventions which like, I don't
fault them for and I'm glad thatthey did them, but it doesn't

(01:58:23):
mean that I like them. Well, unless you guys have some
like really big discussion topics, I kind of want to segue
with that into like one of our zooming out discussion topics.
Is there anything you guys want to keep going on with this stuff
or Are you ready to start winding down I'm.
Good. I feel like we should talk about
like some of the like more granular stuff like like what's

(01:58:48):
your guys favorite boss? Let's start there.
First center easy, not close. Why?
Well let me preface this by saying I think that First Center
by itself would be a better bossif Widow didn't exist.
Widow is also a pretty good boss, but the fact that First
Center has Widow's song which isalso titled Widow which is
unfortunate and shares some of her attacks does make First

(01:59:10):
Center a worse boss in my eyes. But Despite that, I think that
that is the peak example of a boss that I think Thomas was
describing earlier in the chat where it's like you just get
into this flow state and like, Iwasn't even thinking when I'm in
the like back half of that boss and everything is going super
fast. I'm just like acting purely on

(01:59:31):
instinct and like, oh, OK, big circle attack, I need to hide
here. OK, she's doing healing.
I need to zoop, bop, boop. OK, I interrupted her healing.
And it's just so fast. And a lot like with Carmelita
too, who is probably my second favorite boss.
It's a part of a boss designed in this game that I love.
Where let me back up a little bit.

(01:59:51):
I apologize. I'm I'm going into a broader
point that I had that I forgot to write down, so I'm going to
bring it up now. I had this like really strong
feeling and it's going to be incendiary.
I had this strong feeling in like Act one early Act 2 that
Team Cherry was super lazy with this game.
I'm being very incendiary here. I had a strong feeling that they
were being super fucking lazy because I started noticing a

(02:00:15):
bunch of these bosses only have like 3 or 4 attacks and they a
lot of them don't have a phase two where they get new attacks,
they just do the same attacks they had but faster.
Like Lace 2 is a good example ofthat.
I don't think she gets a single new attack in Lace 2.
That boss is great to be clear, but it just supported that
feeling where I felt like they were being lazy.

(02:00:36):
But by the end of the game, and especially once I got the first
Sinner, I realized like this shit is just fucking awesome.
Like this is the like epitome ofjust designing a really good
boss and you just make it harderby asking you to do what you
need to do in the base boss, butbetter and faster.
And to someone that raids Mythicand World of Warcraft, I love

(02:00:57):
that shit. And I think First Center is like
one of the first examples of a boss that highlights that really
well. That's a good pick.
Speaking of like games that are Speaking of bosses that remind
you of like rating. I think that's why my favorite
boss and my choices are very limited as some of that didn't
do X3. My favorite boss was the last
judge because it was just like Iprefer like just a bigger hitbox

(02:01:21):
boss and there's nothing againstlike lace one, which I like a
lot, But like I'm and it's not like I hate bosses like Artorius
like these, like even like quoteUN quote fair fights with like
similarly sized characters. But to me, like bosses like lace
2 specifically where it's like fucking input reading you it.

(02:01:43):
It gets me into like that headspace where I hate playing
fighting the games like the way they're meant to be played
against other people. And that's just like what lace 2
does to me. And that's why I like something
like last judge where it's more like a like a raid boss where
it's like very clear telegraphedattacks.
A lot of variety in the attacks that are like she's got like

(02:02:04):
lots of melee attacks and range attacks and attacks that fill
the screen with like safe spaces, kind of like if you're
doing an MMO raid. And yeah, that's why it's my
favorite boss. And I know that the run back is
like lengthy but because I modded that out I it was a non
factor for me. Yeah, Last Judge is a good

(02:02:27):
shout. I also think that Boss has an
underratedly good song that plays.
Yeah, Last Judge is awesome. I think if I think if Act 3
didn't exist, Last Judge might be my favorite too.
Yeah, that at least. 2.0. So I don't know if like she's if
lace 2 is actually coded to input read and according to you,

(02:02:49):
Tom, because I guess she's not, but she's still encroached on
that like David Serwin mindscapefor me, where I just I didn't
like the fact that I was being bested by an equal.
It was just frustrating. What's your favorite Jordan?
So like mechanically, I didn't think that any of the bosses did

(02:03:10):
anything that were like super stand out from one another.
Like the boss design felt very like similar to me.
And I think that's it's all really good.
But so my favorite bosses aren'trelated to mechanics.
It's more related to like kind of the theming of the boss.
And so the two of those would be, I think the cogwork dances
were super cool because. And a big reason for that is

(02:03:32):
after you kill the first one, you have the expectation of all
the fights about to get real now.
But it's kind of like a bizarro Orenstein and Smo situation
where instead of it's real, thisis just sad now.
And then he just kind of leaves because he doesn't want to fight
you anymore because his partner's dead.
And I think that that kind of subversion of expectation is
super fucking cool. And then the other obvious one
for presentation of a boss is just Trobio just, I mean, like

(02:03:54):
if you just like, yeah, he's just kind of spectacular and
just kind of like fun to fight and doesn't feel like he's kind
of this like insurmountable being.
He just kind of feels like a doofus that you're fighting for
reasons. Yeah.
So do you guys, have you guys seen the videos where like after
you beat Trobio and you go back into the room, he's like trying
to crawl away and he realizes you're in the room?

(02:04:15):
I love that shit. And that's funny.
Yeah, it's great. And I.
Actually stand out. But not a favorite one for me is
just the Act 2 gauntlet. But I think that's more of just
like a standout moment of like how radically different it is
from kind of every other fight and how annoying it is.
But I don't think it's good. I would I would consider that a
boss because it's got three enemies you don't fight anywhere
else but. I'm not saying it's not a boss,

(02:04:36):
I'm saying it's not stand out for good reasons.
I see. I actually I actually like the
High Halls gauntlet. I like I I will stand on
business when I say that this would be a vastly better game if
you deleted every enemy gauntletexcept that one.
I agree. I agree like 1000%.
Keep that one, Remove literally every single other one if you

(02:04:57):
want to crank up the health on some of the bosses to like,
compensate or whatever, but yeah.
Yeah, I would agree, because it would be like a really cool
contrast between the rest of thegame, and then suddenly you get
to this gauntlet and then it's just like, oh shit, there's a
gauntlet. Yeah, like, like when I got
there, I, I think it was the last of the three that I did.
So I was actually expecting a like a boss either after it,

(02:05:19):
after it, or like part of it at the very end.
And so because of that, I was almost disappointed that I
didn't get a real boss, even though I did enjoy it, if for
nothing else but difficulty. Yeah, so.
I actually agree that so I don'tagree that with your take about
the bosses because I think all the bosses in this game feel

(02:05:40):
fairly unique and pretty cool. By and large.
There's, there's some stinkers for sure, but my favorite is
also because of the theming. And that is Scarsinger
Carmelita. Because like when you first get
to act 3 and you talk to the shamans and you have to, and
they tell you like that you can go into the dream world and get

(02:06:01):
the ever bloom. And that the way that you have
to do that is to go get 3 warrior hearts or whatever.
And so you walk into Scarsing orCarmelita's Hut and you can't
even like see all of her. She's like old and fat and can't
move and she's like, I ain't shit anymore.
And Hornets, like, don't worry, we're going to fight in a dream
because I want to take you on asyou were.

(02:06:23):
And you get in that arena and it's a gauntlet.
It's an annoying gay gauntlet like all of them are.
But I think if there was one other I had to choose to pick,
it would be that one. Just because like she's in the
background and singing and shit.And then you get through the
gauntlet and you fight her and she's just like fucking
psychotically hard and fast by the third phase.

(02:06:46):
Everything about it is fucking dope.
I have two comments on Carmelitabecause like I said earlier,
she's my second favorite. Number one, I think she might be
one of the best examples of environmental storytelling like
you were describing in the entire game, if not just the
actual pinnacle of it. And #2 she was like again, next

(02:07:11):
to 1st Sinner. But the only feeling in this
game where I had that feeling I had in Bloodborne, which is very
nostalgic for me, for Souls gameand everything is very nostalgic
for me. Because you get to that end
point where you're panicking because she's going so fucking
fast and you just keep hitting her.
And you like you take the iframes from getting hit and you
just keep hitting her and you'relike, why the fuck isn't she

(02:07:32):
dying? And that feeling is just so, so
fun in these kind of games. Yeah, I love that fight so much.
I think I think Lost Lace would actually be really close to my
favorite boss in the game because like the Carmelita
fights like that, where it's just nothing but like flow and
rhythm and like finding your opening and reading the

(02:07:54):
telegraphs, like those are my favorite fights in this game.
Like just those one-on-one, likefast-paced duels and lost lace
is like the actual pinnacle of that.
But the problem is her third phase is just so fucking crazy
and psychotic and it's like impossible to fucking parse
what's going on that it like loses a lot of that rhythm.
But that one, that one would be pretty close to my favorite

(02:08:17):
otherwise. I think the worst part about
lost lace is how you get the like junk in the foreground that
starts blocking your vision on the edges.
Yeah, but that fight is also just super fucking cool for
theming reasons. Yeah, for sure.
I I think like narratively that that end boss is fantastic, even

(02:08:40):
if I wish that Grandmother Silk was a little bit more involved.
I was going to say just for clarification sake, I don't
think that the game is like thatthe bosses are mechanically
boring or anything. I think that they're just too
fair for me at least to be like stand outish, like mechanically
from one another. The only boss that I really
think is like stand outish is one that I think only
Southwault, which is the green dancers or whatever, and boss

(02:09:02):
for Dania because I think they have like the really cool like
go around the screen to dodge like the cyclone and shit.
I think that that's like platforming that really only
Niles brings out, But I think Niles platforming is kind of a
little bit flatter than that. More just stay on the wall
transition walls than it is likehey interact with this attack
that she's doing to move around.Well, I mean that that fight,

(02:09:23):
that fight is also just like cogwork dancers, but like more
complicated, so it makes sense. I do agree with you, Jordan, in
the sense that like, I feel likethis game gives you so many
tools that they could have afforded to make some unfair.
Yeah. Like like I said, the only time
where I feel like I was truly asked to use my entire move set

(02:09:44):
in the game was the Path of Painplatforming of Grandmother
Silken. Like unfortunately that kind of
was it. Yeah, honestly, I think like,
Jordan's fault here is that he'sjust a fucking God gamer.
So like, and I mean that ironically.
I, I, I think, I think it's coolthat they designed everything

(02:10:05):
fair. Like surprisingly, I was
surprised that it was just crazyto see like, oh wow, there's no
bullshit. There's no like telegraphed
attack followed by like on telegraphed or like telegraphed
attack followed by like 3 different branches that could go
in. Like everything was like a
sequence basically. Yeah, see, I I like those fights
though, because to me that's like it's almost like a puzzle,

(02:10:26):
right? Like I think Lace 2 point O is
like the best example of that maybe where like the first time
you fight it, it feels just so fucking obnoxious.
But by like the 5th or 6th and like, you know exactly what
she's going to do and when she'sgoing to do it.
And you just have like that likesplit second, like time to make
the decision based on what you see.
Those those are just my favoritefights.

(02:10:47):
Yeah. Even though I really like place
two point O, she might even be in like my top three or top
five. To be clear, as I say this, I I
have a sense of like almost rockpaper scissors when I was
fighting her though, because shehas like 3 primary telegraphs
for her stuff and you just need to either like jump or jump or

(02:11:09):
move through her. And I don't know somewhat
binary. I mean, I felt like that's kind
of what I'm alluding to with most of the bosses are kind of
just that, like you just have toknow the four things they're
going to do and you know what your responses are to those four
things, and then it's just executing those four things.
Like it didn't feel dynamic. No, yeah.
And, and yeah, I mean, that's kind of what I'm saying is that
like I like that design to some extent.

(02:11:30):
I think like the reason why I said I don't like lost laces
because in that well, I do like lost lace.
It just like kind of falls out of like my super top tier
favorite spots because the thirdphase just loses that aspect of
it where it just becomes way toomuch fucking chaos.

(02:11:50):
Like, 'cause I, I like the that feeling of like, feeling like
I'm in a controlled rhythmic dance with the boss, you know?
Yeah, I. Think that's what the game does
super well, 'cause I mean, I think it just does that and just
does it over and over again and builds on it and all of that,
so. Anti shout out.
I thought the grandmother silk was way too fucking easy.
Like way too. The same, I think she needed

(02:12:11):
another phase or something. I agree.
It is really cool when you get hit by that three mask attack
though. That thing looks dope.
Yeah, don't get me wrong, visually she's fucking stunning.
Like maybe the best in the game,but yeah, just.
Way too easy. Incredibly, incredibly easy to
hit. Her attack pattern is easier
than like fucking every other boss I swear.

(02:12:34):
But I know, cool boss. She's like a watered down
version of Radiance. You don't even have to like jump
to hit her. Which I think was intentional,
but yeah. And I think, I think all the
bosses are super satisfying because of how fair they are.
Like even though it's easy, it was still fun to fight the
bosses and take the bosses down.Yeah, I agree.

(02:12:55):
I don't want to make it sound like it was a bad experience.
Yeah, I know. I, I get what you're saying and
even like in spite of that, likeI can get what you're saying
because like, honestly, the onlybosses I, I, I struggled with
three bosses in this game, the high halls gauntlet, which
again, I'm counting as a boss that took me fucking forever.

(02:13:15):
Carmelita took me fucking forever and lost Lace, which
took me slightly less than fucking forever.
I also just want to mention herebecause it's like mostly related
to bosses. I've said a million times
tonight that like Bloodborne wasmy first Souls game and it might
be like my second or third favorite game of all time,

(02:13:36):
something like that. I think that if Silksong was my
first like Souls, like Metroid Mania style game, it's very
possible it would be my favoritegame of all time.
I think that like a lot of thesequote UN quote issues we're
having are because most of us are fucking God gamers and if we
just didn't have the experience that we did, I think that all of
this would feel a lot more challenging than it is.

(02:13:59):
Yeah, no, 110% agreed. Like I've, I've talked up and
down how much I can't stand how games steal design philosophy
aspects from Fromsoft. Like the next time someone adds
a dodge roll with iframes in a game, I'm just going to
uninstall it immediately. But I think this game is maybe

(02:14:20):
one of, if not the only example of a game that did it really,
really, really well, Which I guess I've already said so.
I do also want to shout this game out for not giving you a
dash with iframes like. All I wanted.
I thought that was really cool. True.
I mean, I love dashes and I hatedodge rolls so I don't really

(02:14:42):
care if the dash has invincibility, but yeah, just
give me a quick movement option that doesn't slow down in the
middle of it. I think the only like redeemable
version of that is if the dash is also like obscenely powerful
like it is in Hades. Like I, I like the Hades version
of it where you just fucking spam it by virtue of having to,

(02:15:03):
but it doesn't feel like something you really have to
time like all the time, you knowwhat I mean?
And Hades, I think it's also thefact that I'm only finding this
in some of these, like, like, game builds I'm doing.
But like, your dash becomes a pretty important component to
your damage. Like, because you can, yeah.

(02:15:26):
I don't want to like belabor it since it's Hades, but dash?
Do you mean sprinting or like just dash?
But just pressing and just pressing a, OK, yeah, I mean
really both. But yeah, I'm mostly just
talking about the dash. Yeah, I just don't want my dash
to slow down in the middle of it, which is what makes it a
dodge roll. I just want to go fast.
I don't care if it has iframes or not, just don't cumber me.

(02:15:48):
All right, I want to ask you guys what your favorite songs
were in the soundtrack, and I also want to ask Thomas if he
thought that this game soundtrack was better than Hall
Night 1. I can tell you my my favorite
song, and because it's probably the most memorable one because
it's like pretty stand outy is the cogwort.
I don't remember what it's called anymore.
I want to say cogwort downs, butI don't think that's right.

(02:16:08):
Core cogwort dancers. Cogwort Core cogwort.
Core cogwort. Core.
Yeah, yeah, because of like it'sit's pretty like stand out and
kinda has like a nice groove compared to like the other songs
that like cuz it's very atmospheric.
And I think to not be Tom, but answer your question that was
directed towards him. I think Hollow Knight 1 is more
memorable, but I think Silksong is more atmospheric and for the

(02:16:32):
game rather than a stand alone soundtrack.
I would agree with that. So I actually my favorite part
of Hollow Knight is the soundtrack.
Like I actually own the fucking vinyl of it even though I'm not
like the biggest fan of that game.
And I think I would agree with Jordan in that Hollow Knight has
higher highs but I think the average of Silk song is better.

(02:16:55):
I would say my biggest criticismof the Silk song soundtrack is
that there's not enough like banger anger, fucking boss
themes. My favorite song is probably is
the one that plays in Coral Chambers.
I think that song is great. Yeah, that's a good one.
And if not that funny enough my second favorite would be a boss

(02:17:18):
song which is the Carmelita songbut that's mostly for theming
than it is like the actual song being amazing.
But I do like the song. But I don't know I would have to
go back and re listen to the hollow night soundtrack because
I haven't done that in a little while and I would want to have
to listen to the entire silk song soundtrack through as well.
I'm going to buy the vinyl for this fucking game too, I'll tell
you that right now. I can tell you, while climbing

(02:17:41):
Out of the Abyss, I was thinkingof the Celeste song, which I I
don't know. Yeah, there's something about
the Hollow Knight song reminded me of that.
And then I was just sitting there just thinking.
I was climbing the Lena rain towards the top of the abyss.
That's funny. How many you been I'm.
Going to be honest, the only song I know is Lace 1 and that's

(02:18:03):
because I was just re watching that video for when I was
constructing the B roll for the video we're going to put
together for this. So I guess by default I have to
say that song. And it's not that the songs are
bad, like I really do like the lace one song, but it's just
that I couldn't really listen tothe music because unlike you
guys, I'm not a God gamer and I was stressed the fuck out

(02:18:24):
playing this game. So I didn't, I didn't have the
mental bandwidth like listen to the fucking music.
I will say I do love all of the lace themes, like the way that
the lace themes build on themselves from the first,
second and third fight is is really good.
Those those are all really good songs.
And also just to kind of reiterate this, because I feel
like I say this every time a game has a soundtrack, I, I have

(02:18:45):
a little bit of like orchestral fatigue from every fucking game
sounding basically the same. Yeah, I was kind of feeling that
a little bit in this game, but II felt like there was like
enough of a unique kind of like the word I would use to describe
the soundtrack is like ethereal.Like it's got this like kind of

(02:19:07):
dreamy feel to it that separatesitself from something like an
orchestral soul soundtrack whereit's just like really loud
chanting and drums and strings everywhere.
I mostly mean that from like a boss perspective.
I feel like all the boss themes in my head are the is the same
theme because I think it just kind of that kind of orchestral
fatigue. But that's why I think.

(02:19:29):
There's really good atmospheric songs and that's why I think my
favorite song the most stand outto me is the cog work core song,
because it sounds like a song. It's not like something I've
heard before. Yeah, that's that song.
If that's the song I'm thinking of, I remember thinking it
sounds like a song from Automata.
Oh yeah, like the. Factories.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, for sure.

(02:19:49):
Yeah. I think that's probably the most
like thematic one for sure. I I see where you're coming from
with the orchestral fatigue. I I do want to shout out that I
feel like the use or the overabundance of strings in this
game was very like intentional and thematic.
So I kind of gave it a pass fromthat sense.
Like and a lot of other games, it could be kind of cringe that

(02:20:10):
like everything is doing these like epic violin solos, you
know, fucking Lindsay Sterling bullshit in here.
But I gave this game the pass for that reason.
As for mine, I'm kind of curiousif you count this under.
Orchestra, but I'm going to cheat and choose two songs
because you can very much tell that they are compositionally
intertwined if you listen to them back-to-back in the

(02:20:31):
soundtrack and that is the back-to-back of the mist
environment into phantom. Oh my God, go and listen to the
soundtrack because that that flow is incredible.
I almost. Did the exact same thing for the
record. Yeah I agree that the that combo
is fucking awesome. That those zones are awesome for
sure. OK, Last question before we can

(02:20:56):
wind down. Were any of your guys's favorite
crests not the Wanderer? I just only used hunter because
I was just so used to the this the the specific like Pogo angle
that I couldn't use any other Crest.
That's fair. That's kind of why I suppose to

(02:21:16):
wander because I'll hold on thatone.
My favorite was not the one thatI used, which was Wanderer.
My favorite doesn't is Beast. Beast reminded me of Bloodborne
and I thought that shit was sick.

(02:21:37):
But I think my actual favorite was Reaper.
The Beast would have been so much cooler if the heel didn't
work the way the heel does if because if you could just you
activate the heel and just heal based on the duration, it'd be
fucking a beast Would be awesome.
Beast might be overpowered or something if you could do that,
but the fact that you have to activate the heel and then hit

(02:21:58):
something three times just to get the same heel that all of
the other crests do is is fucking cringe.
Wait, is the hell worse? Because I I never used it
because I thought it'd be hard to use.
I thought I thought it'd be likea vamp like a vampire type
effect where you got healed every hit you did, but
apparently that's not how it is.Yeah, it it is pitch on that.

(02:22:19):
Yeah, that is how it works. You you you activate the bind
and it like activates like a life steal thing but it's still
only heals up to three. Which just.
Makes it feel stupid. So the way that I heard you say
it, I thought it was like the worst thing in the world where
like you didn't get any heal at all until you hit something
three times. Yeah, yeah.
No, it's just you hit something,you you heal up to three masks

(02:22:43):
if you hit something three times.
I mean that's super lame. I wish it was like overpowered
actually, because it'd be. Cool the move.
Set is, I mean the, yeah, the, Imean the one trade off and the
reason I like it so much, I meannumber one blood borne weapon.
It's just a blood borne weapon haha but the the trade off there
is the fact that it gives you all the attack speed for the
duration of the rage which I think it's.

(02:23:04):
Yeah, I mean, it is. You pair it with the short, like
the short silk heel, whatever the hell it's called, and you do
it really fast. And I have a lot of attack speed
console. Yeah, I really wanted to try
that in combination with the, I forget what it's called, the
thing that makes you move and attack faster.
I thought that would be a fun build to try.

(02:23:27):
Yeah, I, I think that that build, like if I did a new
playthrough, that's what I woulddo it as cuz I think it would be
really fun. It the only reason it loses some
points for me is because it doesn't have a Pogo, but I think
it's Pogo is the most unique outof all of them.
So I give it credit for that. What was your favorite Jordan?
Just just say the Wanderer. Yeah, I mean, it's Wanderer and
I kind of was really let down bythe fact that they didn't

(02:23:50):
combine all the quests into basically like a skill tree in
act three. Cuz I thought that's kind of
what we were leading towards. Like whenever Hornet got
whatever, what became the ever bloom, I thought when that would
happen would be when it would belike, holy shit, she's
transcended now. You're not tied to this bullshit
system that's has things tied together and you can do whatever
you want, which I thought would have been cool.
Yeah, it's really sad when I went out of my way to get all

(02:24:11):
the crests to talk to Eva and itdidn't like do anything.
It didn't do that, yeah. Yeah, that was a big
disappointment. So I'm gonna pair my answer with
a story. I was thinking about this
yesterday as I was driving down the Interstate and I was driving

(02:24:33):
home a certain route that will make this story make sense.
So my favorite Crest is the Reaper, and even though the
Reaper is by far the lowest DPS,like Wanderer is literally 34%
higher DPS than Reaper, which iscrazy.

(02:24:53):
Or wait, it might be even more than that, I can't remember.
But regardless, I really like the Reaper because it plays into
my play style that I was describing earlier, where I
really like being in those controlled, rhythmic like
scenarios because I thrive really well under chaos and I
can just keep my mind clear. And what was making me think

(02:25:16):
this was I thought back to a story of when I was in college
and my degree is in environmental science.
Well, I double majored in environmental science and
geology because there's six credit hours between having to
get both of them. But regardless, when you get an
earth science degree, that meansthat you take a lot of field
trips. And so I took one such field

(02:25:38):
trip somewhere and I rode in thecar with my ex-girlfriend and a
guy named Tom Zerloi in the front passenger seat.
Me and my ex were in the back seat and a guy named Johnny was
driving in the front seat. And so we're driving back to
Indianapolis, back to IUPY, and we get stuck in some traffic in

(02:26:00):
I-70 and Johnny looks over to Tom, different Tom, who's like
this really straight laced guy, like kind of no nonsense sort of
anxious guy. Like you can tell would not be
like a very big risk taker sort of dude, you know what I mean?
And he looks over at Tom and he just goes, you want to he, you
want to see why they call me Johnny Tsunami.

(02:26:22):
And Tom just looks at him and goes, no.
And So what Johnny does is he fucking guns his Mitsubishi
Lancer into 5th gear and drives in the emergency lane past all
of this traffic at like 95 mph. And then he gets off on the
exit, starts weaving through like 5 lanes of traffic just to

(02:26:43):
get like 2 miles back to school.And the entire time Toms or Loy
is just like white knuckle gripping the armrests on his
seat. My ex is like slapping me on the
shoulder, like do something, tell him to stop.
Like what is this? And I'm just sitting there with
a smile on my face because it's just like, I ain't going to
bother this dude. Like if whatever happens happens

(02:27:04):
in this motherfucker. But God knows I'm not going to
interrupt this guy while he is doing this shit because then we
will definitely die. So I was just thinking I was
like, man, that's like really analogous to why I like the
Reaper. Because in like chaos scenarios
like Lost Lace and fucking Carmelita, I just want all
reliable that I can just poke. I can be calm, I can stay in

(02:27:27):
that flow state in the middle ofchaos and I can just think about
fucking Johnny Tsunami driving 95 miles an hour down fucking
I-70 in the emergency lane. And that's my story.
That is not at all the the metaphor that I thought you were
going to compare those two things.

(02:27:49):
Johnny Reliable. Me.
I wonder what that dude's up to now sounds.
Like he's dead. I know he dropped out.
Want to call? Want to know if they call me
Johnny Tsunami? No, just cracks me up.
Just Tom in his fucking baseballcap, just looking him straight
in the eyes, just going no, I'm fucking Lindsay smacking my

(02:28:16):
shoulder, freaking the fuck out.Oh.
Jesus. All right.
We are approaching 3 hours. I have, I have a question that
we can touch on. It might be a long one, but I'll
I'll kind of leave it in your guys's core for how long you
want to go with it, but just be mindful.

(02:28:37):
We're almost approaching 3 hours.
It's kind of got brought up earlier with sesh a little bit
where this game feels a little bit stuck in the past.
I think with some of its design choices is basically what you
said and the question I want to ask you guys as we zoom out.
Did this game become more than its inspirations, that being

(02:29:03):
Shark Souls or in the Blind Forest Metroidvanias that have
become more than those inspirations?
Or is it stuck in the past and adhering to what worked 10 plus
years ago? I mean, I guess I just have to
by default say no because I had to mod the game extensively to
my liking, but maybe that's not fair.
But I guess that's just my gut feeling that it's just, at least

(02:29:25):
when it comes to the Dark Souls inspiration specifically, I do
think it's just like just stuck there and there's just no reason
other than they wanted to make it like Dark Souls.
When it comes to stuff like Metroidvanis, I think this is
like strictly just a Metroidvania mechanics and like
combat, exploration and stuff like that.
I think this is probably the best Metroidvania I've ever

(02:29:47):
played in my fucking life. We do need to play La Mulana for
Tash. Ben's going to hate that game.
I have I've, I mean, I've playedboth La Mulana one and two I've
just never beat them for but youguys could probably think of it
as obvious. Didn't didn't you get decently
far into? I got far into, I got pretty far

(02:30:09):
into, but I did not beat it. I don't.
I don't think it's a bad thing that this game is like an old
game in its design. I think it's just a little too
committed to old game design because I know one of the
inspirations for Hollow Night 1 is Fazanadu, which you guys
probably don't even know what that is.
It's a game. It's like an adventure game from

(02:30:29):
like 1991 or something for the NES might be 1989, but like it's
like a super old game. Think of like kind of
Castlevania, Simon's Quest stylegame, but a little bit less bad.
So I think it does those games good justice, especially keeping
them in like a modern lens. But I think it's kind of if this
game came out in like 1997, likeSymphony of the Night Time, it

(02:30:49):
probably be like one of the bestgames of all time.
And like, they would probably belike insurmountable.
But I think it's kind of a little too old game pilled to
kind of crack into like the Hallof Fame, at least for me.
Yeah, I would agree that I thinkthat this game does like stop

(02:31:11):
short of like being in the pantheon.
I think it's probably it's probably my third favorite
Metroidvania, I'm gonna say. But like the distance between
3rd to 2nd to 1st is all very fucking large and.
A lot of one and two, one and two.

(02:31:33):
I'm, well, honestly, I like a lot of one more than two, but I
guess I was kind of considering those a package deal in my head,
which is probably not right, but.
What's the other 1 then? Super Metroid.
I don't I don't know if I necessarily agree that this game
is too rooted in like when we say old games, right.

(02:31:54):
I'm when I when I think of old game design, I am thinking of
like I actually am familiar withthe Xanadu.
I actually played that fucking game.
So I'm thinking of like that. I'm thinking of like the old
metroids. I'm not thinking of like Dark
Souls, which obviously this gameagainst steal some inspiration
from, but like from that perspective, I don't think that

(02:32:19):
this game sharing some level of DNA with old games is.
I don't I don't even know how true that feels to be honest
with you. I feel like it's more rooted and
like more modern conventions 'cause I consider all of the
firm soft shit to be very modern, like game design
philosophy, so I guess I'm more.I disagree with that very

(02:32:40):
strongly because the whole Dark Souls like design motif is all
from wizardry which is ancient history.
I guess I've never played those games like From.
Wizardry past the Kingsfield, past the Dark Souls.
Yeah, I never played Wizardry, so if that's true then yeah, I
just didn't know that. But I guess like I don't feel

(02:33:03):
like it's stuck in the past because again, like with my
frame of reference at least, I don't feel like it is in the
past at all, at least in so far as like early metroidvanias and
stuff. So I guess I'm throwing this
question back at you guys and asking you what is it that makes
it feel so old game pilled? I think that it the lack of the
ability to get to a fast travel point until Act 3 is extremely

(02:33:24):
weird because that should just be a convention that's there all
the time because they basically have that be a save and quit.
So it almost seems like an oversight in arbitrary design.
I think you should get it after you beat grandmother so.
Again, I I I do agree with that for the record, but again when I
think of From Soft games and Dark Souls game specifically as

(02:33:45):
being more modern like that's how that first game worked.
Like you did not get fast traveluntil you beat Ornstein and SMO?
But that, yeah, not, yeah, I don't necessarily think that
that like it's an old pill thing.
I think that's like Jordan's pill.
But I was thinking about like the fact that I didn't even see
that fast travel thing, which I know is like analogous to kind

(02:34:06):
of like how you get to Anne Orlando, then you suddenly get
fast travel and Dark Souls 1. And to me, that's just another
example of them just copying dark slop and just for the sake
of it. And maybe that's again, unfair
for me to say, but it's just, I don't know.
I'm just calling it how I see it.
I don't think that's unfair because I think that that's true
by and large. But like I'm just saying, I

(02:34:26):
don't I don't consider those games old.
I guess like Dark Dark Souls 1 is like what, 2011 games?
19 yeah. And that's why I say that it's
not being old tilt specifically,because like that wouldn't be in
wizardry. In wizardry you just don't have
fast travel, period. Yeah, I think like the rosary

(02:34:47):
system is another one that's very old game style currency
from it's like a Zelda 2 style currency of when I think of what
the rosaries are. And then also all the breakable
walls is a fairly old game convention.
No one really does that anymore in Metroidvanias.
I do hate that shit. Like a lot of Hollow Knight,

(02:35:08):
Silk Song specifically feels like the games that inspired La
Molana, the MSX version. And are we calling that a bad
thing? No.
No, no, I'm just saying that that's why it's old.
That's why it's old game pilled,because it takes inspiration
from games from late 90s or late80s, early 90s style.
And then I'll it's, it mixes that with a lot of new game

(02:35:30):
conventions, but it's still veryrooted in old style design.
I think. Again, I liked hitting every
wall. Just for the record.
I thought that was sick. I like that.
I like that aspect. I hate that shit.
I like it in Super, I like it inSuper Metroid because they give
me a gun to do it, but I don't like it when I have a fucking
melee weapon. I think there should be a
convention at some point to reveal the walls for when you

(02:35:52):
don't want to do that anymore, which I don't think this game
has. But that'd be cool if they gave
you if they gave you fast travelafter you beat Grandmother Silk
and then after you unlock act 3,they're just like, here's a
fucking like shell horn or. X-ray vision or whatever it is.
From. Metroid.
I think Metroid Prime has X-ray vision or whatever that is one

(02:36:13):
of the game. One of the Metroid games started
doing that and they all did after it.
Yeah, that's like one of the weird things and I I I didn't
know those existed in the old games.
But like what you're getting at is part of the reason I asked
the question where like this game kind of feels like it's
taking a lot of what made those older games iconic and it's it's

(02:36:36):
not evolving it. And I never expected Silksong to
be like this revolutionary, innovative game that was going
to like change the entire landscape of Metroidvanias and
gaming. But I still would have expected
it to use more of that modern convention.
And like, I'm fine with things like the rosaries.
I think that they offer enough tools to make it OK.

(02:36:59):
I think the platform is great, the bosses are good, but it uses
all of those old systems in a way that is narratively resonant
to me, but not in a way that outside of the narrative, I
think makes it a better game. And yeah, I'm getting it like

(02:37:21):
what you guys are alluding to with like the delayed fast
travel, the having to hit every wall, not offering, you know, a
global way of revealing them, all that stuff.
Just I don't know what the pointis after a certain point.
Yeah, and, and to me, the, I don't know what the point is.
That's the old game pill becausethey would just do shit and then
they would just stick to it because they didn't have enough

(02:37:42):
memory to change it. And then that was that.
That was the system. And that's that's why it feels
old game to me. OK, so I so there's like a very
specific example and I don't even know if you guys ran into
this, but I ran into this prettyearly because of my cheating.
So when I upped the rosary and Shard rate drop rates to 300%, I
found out that there's a maximumnumber of like, those necklaces

(02:38:04):
you can have and it's 20. So yeah.
And that's just like one of those like things where it
should like, I guess most developers would probably just
put like 99, but like, it just feels like 20 is just such a
weird stopping point that it like reminds me of like those
memory limitation days. I only got oh I got 8 bits, so

(02:38:25):
you get you get 8 of these things.
All right. Do you guys want to move on to
ratings? Yeah, sure.
I think who am I most curious about?
I think we'll start with Jordan.Yeah, so for like a hard rating

(02:38:48):
on this game, it's kind of like tough because of like how
annoying. There's like a lot of minor
annoyances for it. But I think overall, like I'm
super glad that it does exist and I definitely want more
developers to make games like this instead of just kind of
being more like dopamine feed ventroid manias, like actually
having some difficult design by behind them and like a healthy

(02:39:11):
amount of friction. I think with just the main
things for me that like kind of hold it back is just how
annoying the enemies themselves are, like the normal enemies,
not the bosses. And then just the amount of
gauntlets that kind of just feellike a time pattern more than
like an interesting design choice.
And I think that something that we didn't touch on, but just to

(02:39:32):
mention like I think the sound design in this game is like
probably as good as it can be. Like it never felt generic.
It felt like alive and it felt like they almost did their own
shit for it. And if not, they really like put
time into the sounds rather thanjust be like he's slashing use
slash dot MP3 like so I I really, really appreciate that.
And I think that they did like afucking great job and it's a

(02:39:54):
fucking great game. But I think there's just kind of
like core things that hold it back a little bit for me.
But I think I could still give an 8 regardless.
Oh, very nice. Oh yeah, on the money.
I did it. And why don't we do bend next?
Save Thomas for less and then me.

(02:40:16):
Sure. So let's see, how do I think
about this game? So to me, it's kind of like, OK,
So what I'm about to say might sound weird, but I swear I'll
clarify very shortly after. To me, I have to treat this game
kind of like I treated Claire Obscure because I had to mod
both games to beat them. Although for Clear Obscure, I

(02:40:39):
modded only one thing about it and that was just to make the
pairing more lenient and to be honest, completely with myself.
I didn't really need to mod it. I was just stubborn and I really
wanted to parry everything and Ididn't want to just do the right
thing and just dodge. So I really didn't need to mod
Clear Obscure. But this game, if I didn't mod

(02:41:01):
it, playing this game, I do, I do have to, I have to take away
points even though it's like notreflective of what I really felt
'cause like what I really felt when I played this game after my
modifications was honestly like 9.5 out of 10.

(02:41:23):
But I do have to take into consideration that I had to
modify pretty extensively. And so for me, it's actually an
8 out of 10, which, yeah, I guess that's still pretty good.
It's still very good. Yeah.
Bada, Bing, bada, boom. We all got it.
Hell yeah. I almost guessed 8 but.

(02:41:44):
I. Provided some bend padding.
I was close to A9. I'm glad I went with my gut.
All right, Thomas, you're up. Yeah.
So. I think.
For me. Like I said, this is probably.
My third favorite Metroid Vania game of all time and.

(02:42:05):
Those top two games? Are like.
Literally top five. Games ever for me.
So when I say that that's that is like a pretty like extensive
complement to this game. I think that first of all, this
game is gorgeous. The art in this game is second
to none, at least in the space that it's in.

(02:42:26):
And like, even zooming out further than that, I think that
the way that this game does its diegetics and its environmental
storytelling is fucking incredible.
And it makes me really upset that I didn't bother trying to
engage with the story until act three and then like going and

(02:42:46):
reading about it afterwards. I think if I would have done
that from the very beginning, I would have had an even higher
opinion of this game. And as far as the difficulty
goes, like I think that this, I think I said it at the top of
this thing, that I think the difficulty for this game is like
perfectly calibrated. And I understand, like I was
talking about it in the discord earlier where I understand that

(02:43:08):
the difficulty of a game like Silksong is going to be
exclusionary to some people. But like, again, so is trying to
play a fucking Rachmaninoff solo.
If you're like trying to learn piano, like if you want to do
the hard thing, you have to be able to demonstrate some level
of mastery over the hobby. And if you don't have that level
of mastery, then you got to fucking get good.

(02:43:29):
And I don't think that there's anything wrong with that.
So I love the difficulty of thisgame.
I think that in order to make a solid Metroidvania, you have to
knock it out of the park in three buckets.
And those are exploration, platforming, and difficulty.
This game pretty much crushes itin the exploration category.

(02:43:51):
I think they could have done a little bit more in the
platforming and included some more areas like escaping the
abyss and like a couple of the running from the lava type
scenes and shit. If they had like 3 or 4 more of
those, like literally again, that's another thing that would
have like knocked this game up with another notch.

(02:44:13):
I've already talked about the difficulty.
I think taking all these things into account, it's just a
fucking rock solid metroidvania.Does it reinvent the wheel?
Does it iterate on the design space?
Not really. But like, that was my main
criticism of Hollow Night is that it just felt like such a
fucking milquetoast Metroidvania.

(02:44:34):
Like it didn't do anything new. The platforming was kind of mad,
the expiration was good, the difficulty was OK, but it just
wasn't doing anything interesting.
Whereas this game, it's not necessarily that it's doing
anything interesting. It's just that it has precisely
honed in what the aspects that make a good Metroidvania are.

(02:44:54):
And again, I think it has just like just tuned it to a fine
edge. And for that reason, I'm going
to give this game a nine out of 10.
There are there are annoying aspects, like there are things
that hold it back from reaching 9.5, just like small little
annoyances that add up to like quite a bit over time.

(02:45:16):
The enemy gauntlets being the biggest factor for sure.
But it's still a fucking incredible game.
We all did it, I did it, we all did it.
Has anyone missed yet? I've been missed for Jordan.
All right. And when it comes?
To me my. Opinion on this game has

(02:45:40):
oscillated. Wildly since I started playing
it I think like. For the majority of.
My play time playing this game, I was somewhere around an 8 out
of 10. It would go all the way down to
6 1/2 at times that literally went all the way up to 10.
Like with certain bosses, like for Sinner the the the feelings
were very very polarizing throughout my entire playthrough
with this game. It was never negative, not even

(02:46:03):
close. And the more I thought about it
and like literally even as we'vebeen talking about it tonight,
I've, I've still been oscillating by like decimals of
point values to try and figure out where I am.
But like, ultimately, I think the real question that I have to
ask myself is where does this game lose points?

(02:46:25):
And it's not in the narrative. I actually really like the
narrative. I think the characterization is
good. I think the character designs
are good. I think that like the overall
story is really good. Like getting back story from
some of the details that Paul and I-1 left uncovered or left
covered rather was good. Like getting everything about

(02:46:46):
the weavers. I think all that works really
well. I don't think it loses any
points in the art department. I don't, I don't even think I
need to comment on the reason for that.
The character designs are Immaculate.
The environmental storytelling is Immaculate.
The soundtrack is really good. I I don't like I I think just in
terms of art design, in terms ofstyle like it, it has to be a 10

(02:47:07):
out of 10 in that direction. I think the combat is really
fun. I got a lot of what I wanted
coming into Silk Song. I think I had pretty reasonable
expectations for the game coming.
Into it. And I got what I wanted.
I got a much faster paced, intense but still reasonable
difficulty after Hollow Knight, one which felt a little bit more

(02:47:28):
stiff, a little bit to one note a little bit.
Too easily solved, granted. I only played with one DLC, but
this game has no DLC so whatever.
So and like some of the bosses II've said so many times, they're
just such standouts. I fucking love them, they're
incredible. And so I don't even know if it's
if it really loses any points when it comes to the the combat.

(02:47:50):
I got everything I wanted out ofit.
So what can I really hate for it?
And a lot of these things that I've been describing just get
even better once you or, or at least for me, they start getting
better once you take into account that I think all these
choices are deliberate, which you know.
I'm not one to say. That like just because it's an
artistic choice, that makes it better.

(02:48:12):
But I think that the particular vision that they had was very
good. I think that they had a complete
vision and they went for it. And I think that vision was
fulfilled through what they did.And honestly, even as I'm
talking, I don't know why I'm settling on this rating, but
it's, I, I, I can't justify why it isn't a 10 out of 10.

(02:48:35):
I'm really having a trouble saying why that is.
But regardless, my feeling afterthinking on it and talking about
it and deliberating is that it'sa pretty solid 9 out of 10.
Oh, we all got yeah, but nobody got it exactsies.
That's funny. Yeah, this .5 fucking.

(02:48:56):
Hedging. Guests meta.
I can't say you're going to be 91/2 to be honest.
Even when you said when. You said I'm not.
I can't say why I'm not a ten. I was like, oh, I nailed it.
So here's the thing. I I thought you were going to to
trick us. I thought you're just going to
say I can't justify why it's a 10 out of 10, but it's a 10 out
of. 10 That's what I thought youwere going to say.

(02:49:19):
Well, yeah, I, I, I definitely don't think it's a 10 out of 10.
Like what? What I had to do ultimately to
come to a nine out of. 10 was just comparing it to other games
we've played for this, comparingit to my favorite games and so
on and so on. And it's not out of 10, out of
10. I like clearance here better
than this game. It's not a nine out.

(02:49:40):
Of or it's. Excuse me, I rated Claire
Obscure a 9.5. Therefore it's not a 9.5 because
I like Claire Obscure more than I like this game and I like
Polish Gate 3 because it's a 10 out of 10.
You did. So ultimately, yeah, Yeah.
Ultimately I think I kind of have to settle it a nine out of
10, even though I can't figure out exactly why it's not a 10

(02:50:01):
out of 10. It's very tricky for me.
I think ultimately it's I, I, I think it's part of what Thomas
and I were talking about a whileback, where I, I got what I
wanted out of the game. My expectations were met, they
were not exceeded. And I think that's ultimately
why I arrive where I go. Yeah, 'cause like for me you can

(02:50:21):
still have a 10. Out of 10 game that.
You recognize is flawed like Balder's Gate 3 is that for me,
La Mulana is. That for me, fucking Final
Fantasy 8 is that for me. But I think at the end of the
day, like what makes a 10 out of10 game a 10 out of 10 is not
that it's flawless. It's just the way that it makes

(02:50:42):
you feel when you're playing it.It's like it's just like a pure
vibes thing. There's a lot of 99.5 games out
there that are fucking incredible that in some cases I
could make an argument for being10.
They just, they didn't pass the vibe check.
Yeah, I think a lot of times forme, I'm sorry, go ahead.
I was just going to say I think it's probably a reason why you

(02:51:05):
can't. Get to the 10 is because I think
that there's a lot of. Like annoyances in the game and
I think those just. Kind of like add up and they
like they're a retraction. So I think this game could is
like an evolution 10. I think if you give this game a
year and think about it again, it might be a 10 to you, but you
need to get removed from the minor annoyances that are just
like mounding up beneath your feet as you're actually playing.

(02:51:26):
Yeah, no, I agree. I think that this game we were,
we were mentioning earlier in the channel, once this game gets
a couple DLCS, it it's going to be.
Very easy for this game to become a 10.
Out of 10, Oh yeah, no contest. I was going to say the same
thing, but a lot of times when I'm thinking about how I'm going
to rate a. Game.
Sometimes it is as simple as. How much do I want to?

(02:51:49):
Continue playing the game. After I beat it, after I beat
this game, or at least after I beat act three, I really had no
desire to continue playing. When I beat Claire Obscur, I I
liked it and I did all the side content in act 3 after I beat
the game and I even like starteda new game plus but I didn't
really go anywhere with it. But my desire was that I wanted

(02:52:10):
to keep continue playing the game.
I didn't do a lot of it. Baldur's Gate 3 played the shout
out of the game over 600 hours easy.
Like fucking within the first few months.
But yeah, with Silk Song, I thought that like doing Steel
soul would be kind of fun, but then I thought of also how
infuriating it would be to die something to die to something
completely bullshit. So I ultimately didn't decide to

(02:52:32):
do it. So yeah, that's that's where I'm
at. I just don't think it gets past
a nine point O and it's not going to be a Outer Wild
situation where it was a 1010 out of 10 and then the DLC made
it an 11 out of 10. It's going to be a 10 out of 10
with DLC. Yeah.
Like La Mulana is a 10 out of 10Metroidvania for me, even though
it doesn't really have like, theschmovement aspect.

(02:52:53):
It doesn't have like the hard difficult.
Bosses, like the puzzles are alllike once you know, you know.
But like I just so much enjoyed replaying that game just to like
run around the world, like speedrun a little bit, do some goofy
shit, try and like do some new stuff, do challenge runs.
Like doing a sacred orbless gamein that run was so much fucking

(02:53:17):
fun. But yeah, I'm in the same boat
where like after I finished thisgame, I was like, do I want to
go back and beat the like 5-7 whatever bosses that I didn't
do? And I just kind of like, hey,
no, I'll just watch YouTube videos.
Yeah, that's even true for me. Like I did most of the bosses in
this game before I did Lost Lace, I think the only one I

(02:53:40):
did. After Lost Lace was Clover
Dancers, but I I saw later therewere a couple I didn't do like
Father of Flame. I never did him.
I just had no desire to go back and do them.
That I I enjoyed my experience and it was one of those things
where I felt like if I continuedto play, I would have a worse
experience. So I didn't.
Yeah. Even trying to get through the
last lost Rodagna, last Rodagna,whatever it is.

(02:54:02):
Like even trying to do that after you told me to do it.
Like getting through the area I was like I.
Want to die yeah, but then the boss I was like OK, this is
worth it but yeah like yeah that's that is the reason I told
you to do exactly yeah yeah honestly, if.
If you had. Gone and done like Father of
Flame in the. Associated zone You probably
would have rated this game an 8.5 instead I.

(02:54:24):
Don't know, man. You know my tolerance for
garbage. Yeah, honestly, it's not that
bad. The boss is just heinously
boring in the zone is. Tiny but like has a very high
annoying. Annoyance density for how small
it is. But yeah, like I I know I didn't
do, I didn't do brood mother. I didn't do what's that the

(02:54:46):
name, the guy who has the horse garment and Zond or whatever.
Yeah, I didn't do that fight. There's a few others I didn't
do. Those are the only thing on top
of my head. I didn't.
I didn't do that lost for Dania either, just because of how you
guys were talking about the platforming.
I highly recommend if you ever pull this game up again, just
going through that platforming section above Grandmother Silk

(02:55:08):
I. Thought it was pretty good.
Yeah, that sounds pretty sweet. I'm pretty sure I would love
that because those are like my favorite sections in the game.
I fucking loved Mount Faye. And I fucking loved the escape
from the abyss. Those are like highlights of the
game. I'm surprised they didn't do
more. Very true.
All right, next week Hades 2. Yep, hype.

(02:55:33):
Yeah, good vibes on. That game so far.
Not as big as this game though. Whoa, whoa, I think.
Hades 2 is insane I. Think it's better than?
This good thing, but I don't want to give away my rating.
I think it's hard for. Me to to not say that Haiti's
too is better. Because no, it's just.

(02:55:54):
Me. It's just my you.
You didn't have to DIY journalist mode it.
Yeah, exactly, exactly. There's the fucking checkbox.
The God Mode checkbox. Which I think is yeah, but I, I
I haven't needed to use that, fortunately.
I'm not that bad. And usually when I do journalist
mode, it's like. It's an it's an elective.

(02:56:14):
Like I didn't need to do a FinalFantasy 16.
That game is literally one of the easiest games I ever made.
I just did it for the memes and I ended up having a blast.
Ben's over there about to turn on God Mode and I'm doing like
24 years. Well, I did buy a copy.
Of Hades 2 for my. Sis and I told her she probably
should just use God Mode 'cause she's much.

(02:56:37):
She's very much like a a point and click type of player, so
action game's an Otter wheelhouse.
But I know that she'd really enjoy the story and characters,
so that's why God for I can alsoimagine getting really.
Frustrated if you're. Really tied to the story of the
game and you just fucking can't complete a run.
Ever. That would get.

(02:56:57):
Really annoying. Oh yeah, for sure.
It's super cool that it's there.I don't know what it does, but I
like. I'm interested if it just like
removes a bunch of attacks and like projectiles or something,
or if they just do trivial amounts of.
Damage or what the deal is? Yeah, I will say I'm like 5
hours into the game and I haven't completed a run so I'm
thinking about God Mode. Yeah, let's let's stop talking

(02:57:17):
about Hades. Good night, everyone.
I love you Silk songs. Great.
Play it, enjoy it, look at all the art in that.
Game particularly look at the elevator leading up to Lace 2
point O. It's fucking gorgeous and full
of unnecessary detail and Lace'sbadonk the the 33,000 rule 34
entries for this game. Look them up.

(02:57:39):
Don't do that.