Episode 6: Torment: Tides of Numenera

Ben had us play a CRPG of questionable fame, Torment: Tides of Numenera.

Episode Transcript

(00:01):
All right, shall we begin? Yeah, I'm good.
It's an official introduction. Hello, everybody.
Today we're going to be talking about Torment Tides of Newman
Era, a Kickstarter game that wasreleased back in 2016 and was
developed by Inexile Entertainment, a company that is

(00:22):
comprised of a lot of CRPG industry veterans.
And it's also most recently one of the companies that's been
bought by Microsoft like every other company, and they are
currently developing a game called Clockwork Rebellion.
But in any case, we are here to talk about Torment, the CRPG and
spiritual successor to Plane Scape Torment.

(00:43):
It's Clockwork. Revolution, by the way.
Fuck you are correct, I apologize.
Luckily we are not officially sponsored so it's not a big
deal. Been a long time fan of CRPGS,
Plane scape torment in particular.
I have a plane scape torment tattoo that I talk about every

(01:04):
time that I think about it and that's how much I love the game.
But I I forever reason I never beat Tormentize's Newman era.
I bought into the Kickstarter, never played it until it
released and then when I did play it, I got close to the end
and my save corrupted. So I was just like, this is just

(01:29):
a divine intervention telling methat I'll never beat this game.
But then then this came around. So then I had an excuse to play
it. And the funniest part is that
when I finally did beat it, I realized in that first
playthrough I basically my save got corrupted basically at the
very end of the game. Like if I played for like 40

(01:50):
more minutes I would have beat the game.
How did it? How did it compare to Plane
Skate 4? You know that you've beaten it.
I highly recommend that you should play Plane Scape
tournament. Yeah, yeah, Ben and I are the
residents here. PG nerds.
Especially especially if you liked this game that the

(02:11):
original in my opinion is just it's so much better in like
every respect and I don't want to like bury the lead too much,
so I'll just leave it at that. Yeah, I was going to try to
avoid comparing this game to that game like too much because
I just don't know how productiveof a conversation that is just
because like, it's like, it's like comparing Empire Strikes

(02:33):
Back to The Last Jedi. Like, what's the fucking point?
But there are sections where I think drawing some of the
comparisons pretty important. I mean, there's like, as I start
talking about stuff, I'm probably going to make some
Baldur's Gate 3 comparisons. Not to be like, Baldur's Gate 3
did it this way. Therefore, this game needs to do
it that way Just to like, show or illustrate my point I guess.

(02:57):
I think that's fair because I mean, they're both CRPGS and
they're both like, as far as CRPGS go, Torment is closer to
Baldur's Gate 3 than it is to like, Wrath of the Righteous,
you know? What?
I mean, yeah, for sure. Well, is there anything you want
to start us off specifically with gameplay?

(03:19):
Let's see, I guess we could juststart off because I didn't make
it a question and it is under gameplay.
We could just start off with like I guess just have something
to start with. Let's just start with combat.
How did you guys feel about it? The fact that it's turn based,
would you have preferred it to be real time with Paws?

(03:41):
As people that are super fans ofthe genre, some of them would
have preferred. My opinion is that I always
prefer turn based, but I'm open to like whatever is best for any
particular game. Yeah, actually, no, that's not
true. I can't lie, that's not true.

(04:01):
Turn base is just always better.But I will play like I like.
I will replay like the original Baldur's Gate, even though it's
real time with the pause. But really, those games that I
tolerate were grandfathered in. Yeah, I feel like I, I mean, I
like it when games give you the best of both worlds, like Wrath
of the Righteous Kingmaker, whatever, where you can switch

(04:23):
between the two. But like if it has to be like a
binary choice between 1:00 or the other like turn based all
day every day, not close. Now it's it's weird because I do
think that the actual maybe one and only exception that exists
is the old AD and D games like the old Infinity engine games,

(04:44):
just because those games have such like a a core like time
based component to them. Like I feel like more so than
later versions of dungeons and Dragons.
So I I I'm not saying that like Ballers gate 1:00 and 2:00 and
all the other IE games couldn't have function inside of a term
based system, but I feel like thematically they play out

(05:06):
better as real time with pause. But that is maybe the one and
only exception on the entire history of the planet where
that's true. To be fair to those games,
specifically these Infinity Engine, when that engine was
being developed, it was being developed originally by BioWare
for a game called Project Infinity, which.

(05:26):
Was a real. Game yeah.
And then when when interplayed, the publisher got the rights to
Dungeons and Dragons, they were like, wherever that shit is that
you were making this call to scrap that and just make make
ADND game instead. So they were like, we're not
going to throw away this work. So they just repurpose the the
real time strategy engine to just make the DND game.

(05:47):
And that's how they invented Real Time with Paws.
Yeah, I think this game being turn based is is a very strong
point in its favour. Though personally I don't even
know I would have made this gamereal time with pause.
Yeah, and. It's it's very much like all
these gate 3 where it just wouldnot work if it wasn't turn
based. Yeah, because there's too many
like non combat interactions that you can do within combat to

(06:12):
the point where they actually goout of the way to not call them
combats. They call them crises because
like it's predecessor playing scape tournament, this game was
designed such that you could play it fully pacifist, not deal
with single point of damage if you wanted to and you made like
the right choices. I did want to like go back very

(06:33):
briefly to Infinity engine in that like even though I trash
talk a real time with paws, a lot those games, specifically
Infinity engine games stick out.They they actually play
differently from non Infinity engine games that also use real
time with paws, and that's because they do stuff that's
much more in line with real withreal time strategy.

(06:54):
Because like the later games, especially like the revival
games like Pillars of Eternity and stuff like that.
They have like turn speed, you know what I mean?
Kind of like a MOBA and it just doesn't feel right.
Where is when you play somethinglike Baldur's game one and two
and playing skate tournament. The characters are just fucking
super zippy, Like very arcady, very responsive if that makes

(07:19):
sense. Yeah, no, I agree.
That's why I like specifically call out Infinity Engine is
because I feel like it's it's like the perfect confluence both
of having to scrap their original project, but also the
fact that that original project sort of like blended into the

(07:40):
dungeon and the Dragons second edition AD and D like rule set
really well. So it just kind of blends
together really nicely, whereas if Boulders gate one and two
were like 3.5, it would have been a clusterfuck.
Yeah, for sure. And I think a part of why they
chose new Manera outside the fact that it's obviously the

(08:05):
closest thing that could get to the Planescape IP without
infringing on IPI think the simplicity of the system of like
how it operates like in tabletopis part of the reason why they
chose it. And that is not just combat
with, but that's also to do witheverything.
So to bring it out to like the broader gameplay design

(08:27):
perspective, how did you guys feel about like the overall
gameplay loop, like the proportion between exploration,
dialogue, questing, crises or combat and all that jazz?
You know what I mean? How you have like the different
stat pools and they're both usedfor both combat and for your

(08:49):
skill checks and it's kind of like a, a resource mini game of
sorts. How did you guys feel about all
that as like a as a whole? My feelings on it are kind of A
Tale of Two Cities. On one hand, as I was playing
it, I, I kind of like felt that maybe the developers realized

(09:12):
that there were flaws in the system they were making or like
they, they felt like it wasn't adapting into the game very well
and they purposefully kept everything very simple.
This is me not knowing at all how the like if like if there's
a TTRPG version, how that actually plays compared to this.
But it felt very watered down. And I felt that as I was

(09:33):
playing. But the more I played, the more
I actually liked that it was watered down because this isn't
like your Baldersgate 3 style ofcombat where it's like highly
tactical. The the crises are like what Ben
was describing, where they are more about the narrative of
what's happening in the individual crises, whether or
not those are good or not. That is what it's going for.

(09:55):
I'm thinking of the ending of Acts 2 in particular when you're
leaving me L fast. And for that reason, I, I liked
it as I was playing it. But as I've kind of sat and
thought on it, it it has only grown forgettable to me.
It functioned for the game and it serviced the narrative.
And that's about where it stops and ends for me, I think.

(10:16):
Yeah, So really quick Newman Erais actually the name of the
TTRPG like that. That's actually what it's
called. I forget the name of the guy who
developed it. He's.
In Monty Cook. Yeah, Monty Cook.
And I'm not intimately familiar with the rule set.
The only like major difference Iknow between the tabletop rules
and the game rules is that in tabletop, when you go down to

(10:39):
like one in one might 1, whatever agility or whatever it
is, you, you die, unlike in the game.
But that's the only big difference I know of.
What do you think, Jordan? I thought kind of all the stop
points were like kind of a wasteof time because of how easy it
was to refill everything and younever really needed to use a

(10:59):
lot. And I was never really like
stressed on resources. So it felt kind of more like an
illusion of resource management than actually having to manage
resources. Yeah, the only for sure, the
only point where I didn't feel that was like the start of the
game where I didn't know where ends and whatnot were that they
would be readily available. And like there were a couple
times. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

(11:20):
And like there were a couple times in the bloom where it like
it like there's that one quest that unlocks the rest point.
But I don't think you know that until you actually do it.
And you know, if you do that first, I guess you're just going
to have a great time in the balloon.
But if you don't do that first then it seems like it could be
pretty rough. Or maybe if there's another one
you can just pick rest, I don't remember.
Yeah, I did that first, like unintentionally, and it was just

(11:42):
like trivial because I would just go do something, spent stat
points, go back and rest, go do something, expense back points,
go back and rest. So I didn't even need to use the
consumables, and the consumableswere abundant as well.
Yeah, and it's really funny to me that they offer the the free
resting so readily after doing quests when you get like
infinite money anyway. Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, so the way you're supposedto min Max it is because there

(12:05):
are exactly 3 quests that are like quote UN quote like time or
like rest based where like if you rest too many times, it
progresses to the point where you get locked out.
There aren't too many of them. Like I said, I think there's
exactly 3. There's two at the beginning.
One of them is there's like there was like aliens

(12:25):
underground. They're like burying into the
walls and it's causing the floorabove them to collapse.
So if you don't do that quest fast enough, then everyone above
them kind of like dies because the floor like disintegrates
below them. So you can't do those quests
anymore. And then when you get into the
bloom, there's the, there's likea, a conflict between like that

(12:47):
guy in his house. That's like doing experiments in
the, the cultists. And if you don't, if you don't
resolve that quickly enough within like within enough rest
and like, it can go poorly. But outside those 3 requests you
guys are completely correct where you could just rest spam
everything do. You know if what you were

(13:09):
describing can happen if you like, never walk into the area
where that happens, if that makes sense.
I am not sure because I've neverdone that.
I've never gone to the point where it did collapse.
I just know it can happen from like researching it.
Because the only reason I ask isbecause I I like that if and

(13:31):
only if it can happen before youactually find them.
Because, yeah, otherwise you'll get to it and you're probably
going to have the resources because you've been abusing the
rest and you'll just solve it anyway.
Yeah, I imagine. Just look, I look.
I don't have any evidence that Ihaven't looked it up, but my gut
feeling is that it starts right away when you enter Sagus

(13:55):
Cliffs. That's when the top quote UN
quote rest count timer starts probably.
If true, then good. Sorry, go ahead Thomas.
Yeah, no, I was just going to say that I actually agree with
what you guys are have been saying and that like resting
feels to like the resource management side of this game was

(14:17):
way too trivial outside of like maybe the 1st, I don't know, two
rests of the entire game because, and that's mostly just
because they were expensive. And as you guys were talking
about that, I was going to bringup the same thing that Ben was,
which was that there are like a couple of quests that do have
some kind of like like backwardspressure.

(14:38):
Like they're standing behind yousaying, you know, like if you
rest too many times, you don't be able to do this.
And I actually think that if they had included like more of
that, or at least like more what's what's the word I want to
use here, like unpredictable reactivity, if you were resting

(14:58):
too much, I think that would have made a lot of the quests
way better. But that would have required
them to put effort into the narrative of this game.
So. I I think a better solution is
just make it so the rest like only restores like HP or
something like make it so you actually have to manage the
resources. I don't know, I think locking
out content because you put in asystem that made it so that the
game was too trivial by using itis kind of counter intuitive.

(15:21):
I feel like even with the amountof like friction that was given
with those like 3 times sensitive quotes, I feel like if
you just never provided free resting ever and you just always
have to pay for it, I feel like the the problem the problem
would just solve itself. There's so many ways to solve it
that I think is better than justmaking it so you lose content if
you like, use it too many times and you don't even really know

(15:44):
that that's a thing, right? Like you could just get screwed
so. I would also just like like,
like just generally I think kindof agreeing with Sash, I would
just rather completely remove the resource management as an
aspect of the game. And yeah, just add a little bit
more strategy outside of that. Like if like it's fine to me if

(16:06):
I get into like a role play situation and I only have like a
75% chance to pass this check because that's how I built my
character. I'm playing in RPG.
That's fine. And I don't need like a resource
management on top of that. So you can just make the actual
stat pools more complex or interesting.
If you're not going to have the resource management, I think
it's back in what Tom said, though that would require a

(16:27):
little bit more thought into theoverall design.
Yeah. Also the things that you were
describing I believe were like core to the new Manera table
service. And so I think for like they
kind of have their hands tied for that.
I think like, like obviously like an ideal world.
I bet that they wish they could have just used DND and
Platescape, but you know, they're just playing with the

(16:50):
hand that they were dealt. What?
Who? I mean, there's also the I'm
gonna, I'm gonna try not to maketoo many golds get 3
comparisons, but balds get 3. Also did the thing where like
you can buy your camp resources with gold, but your ability to
buy those is very limited. Like there's a fixed amount in
the world that you can get. So like, yeah, you can rest a
lot if you want to in that game and just use all your resources

(17:13):
every single combat. But there is like an actual time
limit on that, even if you have a million camp resources, Yeah.
Who put a limitation on why theyneeded to use new and arrow?
Planescape is a Wizards IP so they couldn't use that or
dungeons and Dragons so they hadto go to fucking multi cook.

(17:35):
Yeah, but why can't they just kind of tweak a system?
Is that like against the rules? I mean, they did, right?
Like I was. Saying, yeah, they they did like
a monitor tweak, like they addedin HP, but but I'm willing to
bet like it's part of like marketing for Newman era as like
a brand. They probably have to like like
in a broadly like fit the rule set.

(17:56):
You know what I mean? Yeah, I think that sucks, but I
get it. Yeah, I mean, like, if they're
going to go to this guy and they're going to talk to Monty,
Mr. Monty Cook, and be like, hey, we want to use your rule
set for our game. And he says, all right, awesome.
You know, like give me X amount of dollars and six months later
they come back, they're like, Ohyeah, we totally like gutted

(18:18):
this rule set. We changed everything, but we're
going to keep the name on it. He'd be like, what the fuck?
Unless you guys have more to sayabout the stats and resource
management stuff. I'm curious what you thought
about the combat because for me,I actually, if if I were to go

(18:40):
back and play this game again, which I don't think I'll do, but
if I were to, I actually think Iwould play through it as like
the the opposite of an 18 whiz 18 end character.
I would be like the biggest fucking like might infused
murder hobo on the planet 'causeI actually thought that the

(19:02):
combat of this game was like reasonably fun.
It was way too blindingly easy, but like in terms of like builds
and like stuff you could do and like all the different skills
and the way you can level those skills.
Like it seemed like there was a lot of possibilities for the
combat, even though you don't really engage with it all that

(19:22):
much by design. But what's in the game I
actually thought is like quite possibly my favorite part of the
game. I mean, I'll say like I I did
enjoy the combat. So I really only have one, maybe
not even a real criticism. But the feeling I got as I was
playing and as I thought about it is I feel like, and I again,

(19:43):
I don't know how much of this isfrom the TTRPG versus not, but I
got the feeling that whoever designed the combat in this game
just really, really, really liked casting fireball and D&D
and made every single spell in the game fireball for that
reason. That's fair.
I also like casting fireball. Yeah.
It's like, it's a it's not a real criticism.

(20:03):
It's just, you know, I felt likeevery.
Spell or even like my mic characters they're all I'll just
doing big AOE attacks which is fun but.
Yeah. So when it comes to the combat,
it's this is the reason why likeI'm not like a really a fan of
making like a pacifist playthrough, especially in

(20:26):
CRPGS, because like generally the way that they're implemented
is that they're not, it's not really gameplay all, all a
pacifist play style is in CRPGS.It's just a mechanism to skip
content. Because like if you, if you take
another game like Undertale, where like there's a pacifist
playthrough, but like it requires like actively being a

(20:49):
pacifist, you know what I mean? Where?
Yeah. Good at not killing things,
yeah. Yeah, exactly like you have to
work for it at all. As example.
It's a puzzle, yeah. Yeah, it's like baked into the
gameplay loop of being a pacifist.
Whereas in CRBGS it's it's just a knowledge check.
You you're basically like, I need these stat points to skip

(21:10):
all the all this shit. And it's a shame because like
this playthrough that I did for Tash, like I actually went out
of my way not to avoid combat, not that I sought it out, but
like if I failed like a skill check and like we had to throw
down, I was like, fucking I'm not reloading.
I'm just going to, I'm just going to like just lay him down,
lay him out. And I thought it was pretty fun.

(21:33):
It was very simple. And I feel like they just
there's just like an obvious slam dunk that you can do with
any like turn based RPG system like this that plays like this.
And that is just that add like later on, like a milestone for
leveling up is just to add a second action point.
It's like a no brainer. But I don't know if it's not in

(21:54):
the game but I never saw it. And it's not like you can't do
multiple attacks in a turn, it'sjust that they instead of adding
an extra action point they went through all these weird
convoluted means. Like they added certain
abilities that count as movements, but they dealt
damage. Yeah.
And then so that was like one way where you can get your extra

(22:14):
attack, a very convoluted way. And then the other way was like
this feat where like if you killed something, you
automatically get to do a free attack with whatever your quiz
weapon is, which meant you want to use a range weapon because
that means you just always get an extra attack.
And those are like the only two ways I saw that you could kind
of like, emulate having an extraaction point.

(22:36):
And I just feel like just even without the extraction point,
just having those like small little things, optimizations you
can do. And they're like also like a lot
of cool abilities where you can like relocate your party members
and your enemies. And sometimes like the one where
you could relocate your teammates, like you could
teleport them, you could use them in like kind of like for

(22:58):
the pacifist place where you like move characters you like
facilitate them around the maps,like do the pacifist objectives
like turning off like the Shields or like the devices that
you need to. And I feel like they could have
just the fact that there is a pacifist playthrough means all
the work that they like went into like designing all those

(23:21):
cool interactions. Like they're basically just
saying like none of that's important.
And you can really just skip it entirely, which if you want to,
you can. Yeah, so I have like 2 two
things in response to that. So like, yeah, I actually do
think that using dialogue to skip the content actually.

(23:43):
Like, like that's why I was saying if I played this game
again, I'd be a murder hobo and just fucking kill everything.
Because I thought it was like I enjoyed that way more than just
bypassing everything through dialogue.
And I can think of 1 incredibly specific instance of that.
So I, I was going like the 18 was 18, like avoiding all combat

(24:06):
play style up until the very endof the game where you literally
can't, right? And so I was like way under
geared. And I like didn't really know
much about the combat systems because I just, I just didn't, I
hadn't engaged with them up to that point.
And so I remember in the final conversation with whatever the

(24:28):
fucking name of like the facsimile of the Changing God
character's name was, I forget what it was, but you can talk to
him and there's like a bunch of branching dialogues and within
them, you know, eventually most of those roads lead to combat.
So the first time I fought him, but because I was so weak and I
couldn't figure out how the raised lower platform shit

(24:50):
worked, like I died. And I was like, I'm just going
to reload and try and figure this out with like the new
knowledge that I have. And so I selected different
dialogue options and it just bypassed the ending fight.
And I was like, well, what the fuck?
I like actually wanted to kill this dude, but instead all it
does is just totally bypass it and not even allow you to do the

(25:11):
final fight, which I actually wanted to do.
So that was one thing that is definitely contributing to your
point and the action economy. Shit is definitely very, very
like silly in this game. But one thing I would say is
that like utilizing movement instead of like your action
point or whatever the hell. Like, yes, that is confusing.

(25:34):
But I think my biggest criticismof the combat in this game is
probably the fact that for a lotof the characters that I had, I
actually clicked skip turn like very often just because they had
nothing to do. Like they didn't have any useful
skills. They don't have any might, so
they can't really do anything with punching.
So it's like, well, skip turn. I mean, Rin is the most

(25:57):
egregious example where you'll just skip that dirt click that
button 95% of the time. But even if I had a section
second action, it would have still just resulted in me
skipping their turns a lot of the time.
I also experienced that a lot. And I, I understand why they do
this, but there are a couple crises where like your entire
party had to be with you in order to like do the thing that

(26:17):
you need to do to go into the next room.
And so it happened pretty regularly where I had to skip a
a character or two or three turns, 5 turns in a row just
because I was waiting for slow ass machina to get over to the
Crucible or whatever the fuck itwas in the LMS.
Yeah, I got tired of skipping turns, so I actually did very

(26:38):
little. And the reason the way I did it
was I basically equipped everyone with ranged weapons so
that they could always at least do something.
Oh I forgot I had this in my notes.
So one thing that the the crisesor the combat does, that has
actually quickly become a cardinal sin for me.
And this is something that Baldur's Gate 3 does as.

(27:01):
Well. Divinity definitely does it,
which is like imprecise movementaround the battlefield.
Like if you don't have grid based movement, then trying to
find like the absolute maximum distance where you can like run
to without having to use that second action is a fucking
tedious exercise of just like slowly moving your mouse until

(27:23):
OK, it's purple here, purple here, OK, it's blue.
I can click now and that's really, really annoying to me.
I. Mean, I think that's Doo Doo.
Yeah, there's easy ways to fix that, including literally just
having like a warning of like you're about to use your action
for movement. Are you sure?
So technically the color changing is that warning witch
is dog shit. I feel like they just just need

(27:46):
to show like the field, like on the floor, like I feel like
that's all. No brainer.
Like there's. No brainer way to solve it for
sure. This this is kind of AUI
question but are are there accessibility options in this
game? Because who the fuck chose light
blue and like light purple for the the two movement lines?
Who? Who was in charge of this?

(28:08):
I mean, I think it's cool like thematically, like they're cool
like conflicting colors, like it's fucking like Vice City
style shit. But I don't think you can change
shit in this game. I remember the options being
terrible. Yeah.
Yeah. I don't think they had the
budget for that kind of that kind of extra.
Development, which, which is actually funny because I don't
know, I don't know if you guys knew this, but this game

(28:30):
actually set like insane recordson Kickstarter.
Like it was the fastest Kickstarter of all time up to
that point, which was like what,2013 or something?
Ben makes sense. So yeah, this this game fucking
popped off hard on Kickstarter but it still feels so cheap.
Yeah, it's some. I mean, I wrote it under like

(28:52):
the art, audio and UI section, but I just, I only wrote one
sentence and it just says something about the UI just
feels cheaply made. But like it's kind of like the
vibe I get around like the wholegame.
Like every aspect of it feels a little cheaply made, didn't you
say? The guy who funded this is the
Wells Fargo Fortunaire. Well, he didn't fund it.

(29:15):
That's why we went to Kickstarter.
But I just think it's amusing that Brian Fargo, the CEO of In
Exile Entertainment is the heir of like the Wells Fargo
financial empire. And he's he's a very
controversial figure, but he is responsible for like a lot of
these CRBGS existing like a he was a big player.

(29:38):
Like during like Interplay. He basically Greenwood fallout
from Tim, Tim Kaine, who was just like Tim Kaine, just like
worked in like a break room and got pizza and just like worked
on the game by himself. And for a while, he did that.
And then Brian Fargo was like, why don't we just make this a
real thing? And then like, yeah, that's how

(29:59):
it happened. So he's like a really important
player. He's just like a really strange
but very important guy. Like you would never expect like
like, Oh no, it's just so weird.It's like like a Saudi, like oil
Prince being like the CEO of like Bungie or something.
You know what? I mean.

(30:21):
Oh, yeah. Like, no, no, that's true.
That's real. You don't even, you have to.
You don't even have to make thatup.
This real. Yeah.
So, yeah, I forgot why we brought up Brian Fargo, but
yeah, that's, and I, I hope thatlike a lot of that is kind of
just me, like winging it. Like I don't actually remember,
like the facts behind everything.

(30:41):
So like if I accidentally defendBrian Fargo, I'm sorry.
I love you. I think he'll live.
And I, I bought every Kickstarter, every Kickstarter
game you guys did under it in exile.
And I love you guys. And I met George Zitz in real
life and yeah, we're like, I have worked with Brian Fargo.

(31:02):
As a spoiler to the narrative part, George Zietz is the only
person who put in work for this game, by the way.
He fucking killed it. Just one of my favorite.
Modes, yeah, he's awesome. As a, as a brief thing, I, I
kind of wanted to talk about reactivity, but do you guys feel
like that's gameplay or do you feel like it's narrative?

(31:22):
I think that's gameplay, yeah, it can be both, but it it
definitely can be argued to be gameplay.
Zooming in, I'm sure that we're going to talk about the actual
narrative a lot more, so I'll just go ahead and bring up the
reactivity here. How did you guys feel about it?
Because I felt like it was dog water.
I felt like it was very bad. There's reactivity.

(31:44):
In the individual, in the individual quests, I thought
they were like cool things, coolideas that they came up with.
But reactivity, I assume you want like consequences from that
or like outcomes. And I'm not gonna lie, when when
the credits started rolling and they did like the ending slides

(32:05):
and each ending slide was basically for like each
individual side quests that likeI had already forgotten about, I
kind of like just laughed. Yeah, yeah, it was very gloss
over. The only real like reactivity
moment of any real consequence in this game was literally the
last choice that you make, I think.
I mean, yeah. There's a bunch of like, you

(32:26):
can't get fucking companions andshit, right?
I don't even know. Two of the companions I didn't
get ran and I don't even know what the other guy is.
Yeah, there's, I mean, technically you could miss all
of them and I think. Except like the first one,
right? You need either Calaisthesia or
whatever name is. Or Oh yeah, Well yeah, I guess
miss is not the right word. You could avoid using them you.

(32:46):
Said yeah, I never used OK, what's the pronunciation?
Because in my head it's been Calista gay this whole time.
But saying. That's Calista.
Calista. Yeah.
But I, I kind of wanted to bringit up because one of my goals I
think with this game was to not save scum, which I was pretty

(33:08):
successful in. Which meant that I also died in
the 1st combat, which resulted in some pretty funny events that
happened after that, which I didn't expect, but it was cool.
But the worst example of it was it wasn't the final, it wasn't
like the very final bit, but it's when you confront the Memo
Vera, like after doing everything in the bloom and

(33:29):
you're about to like, it's afteryou find out that she's the
first cast off and you're about to use the pod or whatever.
And there's that whole dialogue tree where you can either fight
them or you can like protect them and the sorrow shows up or
whatever other options. I misclicked the dialogue
option. I wanted to fight the first cast
off and all those other guys, but I accidentally sided with

(33:52):
them. I think to like power on the
machine or something like that. And when you get sucked into the
machine or whatever, it like thevery first dialogue that you get
in there is a very all roads look lead to Rome thing where it
it just straight up tells you that like I wish I could

(34:13):
remember specifically, but it just says something where it's
like, yeah, none of this actually mattered.
This is what was actually going on and I just immediately
realized that even though I misclicked that it didn't
actually matter because everything was going to end up
here anyway. Yeah, the game definitely felt
like that as a whole for sure. Yeah.
Like there was small things thatcould happen, but like you're

(34:35):
basically always following the same path and like by and large.
Yeah. So that I only strongly feel
that way only about the criticalpath, and that that feeds more
inflicted narrative section. But it does, at least as far as
the critical path is concerned. I do feel like it was a bit
railroaded. Yeah, for sure.
Yep, I agree guys. We'll move on to our audio UI.

(34:59):
You got anything else you want to talk about here?
I mean just a comment on a gameplay.
I thought the combat was so blisteringly slow that I started
using cheat engine to speed hackafter you got to the combat of
that wasn't a combat where you just basically activated the
fucking like horn things and allthe underground guys would just
there would be 8 turns of them just walking up to it and then
doing nothing and I was like no fuck just go fuck yourself and

(35:20):
use. A cheat engine there needed to
be like a combat speed option because like waiting for like
all the NPCS to have their turns.
Like do you, if you played Baldur's Gate 3, you guys
remember, like when you get to that, that, that first big
combat at the Grove and you see like all the, the, all the
characters pop up in like the combat timeline and you're just

(35:43):
like, oh God, and somehow this game, every combat is or every
crisis. Is but there's a critical
difference of boulders Gate 3 where I I don't know the exact
number, but if there's like 3 or4 NPCS in a row, like hostile
NPCS or friendly NPCS, it'll do all of their turns at the same
time. Yeah, like something these

(36:05):
terms. I just don't think they had the
technical development powers to like code something like that
and that's why it wasn't in the game.
You could just speed it up. Like use a like.
Literally just make sure. It's faster because they're
slow. Yeah, that's why I mentioned the
speed up, because like, if I wasa developer, I wouldn't want to
code that system either. Sounds complicated.
So what is the fucking Fast forward button?

(36:27):
Called it a day, it's good enough.
Yeah, that's a good shot though Jordan, I totally like because I
didn't do enough of the combat. I like totally forgot about
that, but like that one at towards the end of the game
where you've got to like go intothe heart of the bloom or
whatever and all the shit keeps responding.
Oh my God it was every turn tookso fucking long.

(36:50):
Oh yeah, I was. I played the all the combats on
3X because I was like this is non negotiable.
This. They're just wasting my fucking
time for no reason. I got nothing else gameplay
wise, and this may serve as a preface to later topics, but I

(37:11):
actually think the gameplay was the best part of this game.
Agree. Yeah.
I mean, I agree. Actually.
I have. Not too much bad to say, but
other than too simple and too easy, yeah, it's kind of like an
overarching criticism. I.
Think there's one thing I liked more than the gameplay, but
we'll probably get them to. Real.
Yeah, I mean to to talk on that,like if I felt like I was a God

(37:33):
but not like a God, like I just felt like the game was really
easy. Like so it's like a kind, it's
like a weird power fantasy and that I didn't feel just like
objectively strong. It's just everything it felt
everything else felt super weak.So that that was like, weird.
Yeah, I agree. Well, who wants?
Who wants to kick us off with the art, audio, UI stuff?

(37:57):
Oh, I got one, I got one. I want to get your guys's vibes
on this. I had a very strong feeling like
right out of the gate when you get to Sagus and I, I don't know
if I'm crazy or if my eyes are fucked up, but did you guys feel
like all of the objects that youinteract with stand out in like
a a very bad way compared to allof the other background assets?

(38:23):
Me personally, not at all. And one thing I'll actually say
is a is a side note to that is Iplayed the first maybe 15 hours
of this game either at an airport or on an airplane.
And so if a fucking objects would have stood out more that I

(38:43):
could highlight and click, that actually would have been much,
much nicer for me and my experience.
I don't necessarily mean there was like a weird outline around
them or anything. I just mean like it.
It felt like nothing fit in the setting.
Like it just felt like like likeI'm doing like an eye spy and
there's just random objects thatgot tossed on the screen at

(39:04):
certain points. Oh.
You're talking about like especially at the very beginning
when there's just like floating,Yeah, chronicle shapes.
And that's, so this is my issue with this actually reminds me of
a like a, a YouTube video essay that I watched on this game
where the guy was talking about like the development history.
And he, he did, I'm going to very much paraphrase, put words

(39:28):
in this guy's mouth and he didn't really mean it this way
at all. But I'm not taking it to an
extreme. But basically he was like the
moment they revealed that they were going to use the new manera
rule set in like world building was the moment that they knew
the game was going to suck. Because because like my, my

(39:48):
understanding of like how new new manera works is based like
in a very broad internal sense, is that it's like the postmodern
version of Dungeons and Dragons were like if you are a dungeon
master for new Manera, you couldbasically make up whatever the
fuck you want. With the justification that like
some kind of ancient civilization on Earth had the

(40:12):
the whatever Mac Guffin you need, they they made it because
like the the way new manera works in its world building is
that you are on planet Earth. But it's so far in the future
that like the surface of the planet is covered with the
detritus of every like subsequent civilization that
rose and fell. So that like there's just like
an infinite number of like things you can make up with your

(40:35):
creative DM And you just say like, oh, that fucking fart
sense civilization made this device.
And that's why we can make the story go this way.
And because it's all made of postmodern bullshit, It's hard.
It it's really hard to like get attached to anything, especially
at the very beginning when it's in media rest And they like, I

(40:58):
understand what they're going for because you have amnesia.
So technically you're learning of everything along with the
main character, but like holy fuck like.
That it also never stops. Yeah, yeah, like when Kala Siege
at the beginning is arguing withthe dude whose name I can't even
remember because I kicked him out of my party.
They're like going on and on andon with all their vocabulary.

(41:21):
And I'm just like, I understand that.
Like I have amnesia so I'm learning everything for the
first time but this still is like off putting.
Yes, I think that I don't know if Jordan has read this book,
but Thomas, the feeling I got was like, I was reading Dune,
but it wasn't good. Yeah, very true.
Let's not get off on too much ofA tangent about like, world
building and narrative because Ihave a lot to say about that.

(41:44):
But that that is still relevant to what I was getting at.
Where it's like, OK, now I'm in the courtyard and there's a
giant transdimensional clock forsome reason.
OK, so it's funny. Yeah.
Go ahead, George. I was just going to say I think
the environmental design of thisgame was like fucking terrible.
Like the only part where like wasn't terrible was like the
very, very, very, very beginningwhere like it's kind of like the

(42:05):
cool, I don't know, like the cubes that form paths and stuff,
which isn't like a novel idea, but it's still like cool to see.
But like after that, I think allthe environments just suck in
general to kind of just add on to what Seth said.
Man, that's crazy. I actually feel the the complete
opposite of you guys. I think in in like everything
that's been said in the last five minutes, because I actually

(42:26):
really liked when you first get in the game and you wake up in
the resonance chamber and there's all this like broken
machinery bullshit around. And then you are forced into a
very tedious conversation with two dip shits you don't care
about. But then you walk outside and
you're like in the midst of thislike strange alien looking reef

(42:46):
thing. And then you progress through
there and you step foot into like this weird looking like
almost Renaissance era town. And there's this giant alien
like butting its head up againstits cage.
And I don't know, I thought all that shit was actually really
fucking sweet. Like I really liked the entire
like actual visit visual presentation of sagus cliffs and

(43:10):
the bloom. The middle part fucking sucked.
But sagus cliffs and the bloom AKA what George Zetz contributed
to this game I thought were fucking awesome.
Also the bloom. I also did not feel how I
thought I misspeaking. I did not feel the same way
about the bloom with my earlier critine.

(43:31):
The bloom is good. I will sweep for Saga's Cliffs
only because I I love anything to do with Kowloon Walled City
if that's what it was inspired by.
So even if the execution was off, when you look at the like
the concept art for the game andyou see like Saga's cliffs from
like a cinematic angle, it lookscool as shit.

(43:54):
Yeah, it's literally what we base Little Haven on for Project
Disco this. Was the point where it was kind
of like almost like plagiarism, but yeah.
I guess like if I were to draw acomparison and it's going to
sound a lot worse than I mean it, but it it felt a lot like
the Star Wars Episode 4 remake, not the original, the remake

(44:19):
where they added all of the CGI.Like you're just watching and
there's a couple of cool aliens that they made with like cool
practical effects, and then there's a giant CGI elephant in
your face. And then like it's just all this
stuff that just doesn't feel like it meshes together, but it
individually is still kind of cool.
It just I I don't see the visionof how it's all meshing

(44:42):
together. Yeah, that's, that's a symptom
of something I'll talk about in very in depth later on.
But I do think that there there there's a lot of imagination in
this game. Like it's mostly with regards to
the world building and I guess if, if if someone looked at it
and they were like, this is justa bunch of mishmash of bullshit,
I would definitely get that. But for me, I actually enjoyed

(45:04):
it a lot. And and like in Sagis Sagis
Sagis especially, it felt very dreamlike I guess, which is also
cool. I just don't feel like if that
was the intention, it was communicated very well.
And when I say everything looks like shit I just mean like like
literally looks like shit. I don't mean like the vibes of
it or any like. Yeah, you mean the fidelity?

(45:25):
Yeah, exactly. Like I think the yard assets
look like almost like they look worse than like the original
Neverwinter Nights. I think like which is crazy.
I'm partial to them because likeI don't know, it just reminds me
of the Infinity engine games andit's actually I feel like it's
the most faithful because it uses the pre rendered graphics I
guess. Also Pillars of Eternity does

(45:46):
that as well but yeah like thosegames where they they use the
pre rendered backgrounds I feel like Oh no I like those for some
reason. I love, I mean.
They could have been better for sure, like because like even
pills of eternity I think looks way better overall.
And I feel like that's not just like tentacle issues because

(46:07):
like they're both made in unity.It is in our direction as well,
I think. And the big part to do with it
is because I feel like new Manera is just so free form.
And like, here's the thing, how many of you guys even knew what
Newman Air was before you playedthis game?
I knew what they told me in gaming.

(46:28):
Yeah, before this game I had no idea what the fuck it was.
Yeah, there's a reason why everyone knows about Dunzers and
Dragons and does not know about new Monero.
Let's just say that. And people know about
Pathfinder, but they don't know about new Monero I think.
There's, there's going to be like a one random boomer that
listens to this podcast and getsreally fucking mad, but it's
only going to be the one guy I don't give, I don't give a fuck

(46:51):
about CRPG boomers, do you? They are the worst fucking
people. The worst goddamn people.
I think Seth is talking about tabletop boomers, right?
You talk about like the one likeMonty Cook.
Favorite. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
OK. Like someone that plays Numenera
TTRPG. Yeah, yeah.
That person's probably even moreinsufferable than the CRPG.
There's a lot of bitterness whenno one likes your particular

(47:14):
tabletop. So here's one thing that this
game was really, really, really,really missing that at first I
wasn't going to knock it for because I was like, yeah, this
game's like old enough that it wasn't a staple of the genre
yet. But then I installed Tyranny and
Tyranny has a fuck load of it. And I think that game came out

(47:36):
before this one. I think either that or it's very
close, but regardless, that is hovering over text to highlight
like Active Time War, basically like with Wrath of the
Righteous, when you've got all of these big exposition dumps
and they're dumping all of thesenames of characters and towns.
But you can hover over them and it'll give you like a few like
paragraphs to give you some background information.

(47:58):
This game needed that so fuckingbad.
And I know that it's got like the codecs or whatever, but
that's so much more annoying to go into and break up your
gameplay loop than it is to justinclude it in the text boxes
like Tyranny did, like Breath the Righteous did, like like all
CRPGS do now. And like I said, I wasn't going
to knock it, but the shit existed back then.

(48:20):
Well. I could tell you why they didn't
do it 'cause that shit's hard 'cause I actually did it.
It was at that company that worked for an Indianapolis
Vision Three. We actually had a feature like
that where we needed to generatelike a, a, like a box collision
on top of specific text. You know what I mean?

(48:42):
And I didn't implement it 'causeI'm way too stupid for that
shit. Like there's, there's a guy that
I worked for that was like a super genius that figured that
shit out, used a lot of math that I didn't understand.
But like that's like when something like that is missing,
I just think it's because they had developers like me that are
like, I don't want to do this. Well, I don't know if you get if
you get out developed by the guys who made tyranny, then I

(49:04):
don't know, go fuck yourself. I mean, I don't know.
That's a pretty hard feature to implement in my opinion.
I, I willingly admit that I, I could just be like completely
wrong in this opinion, but I feel like every game I've played
that has the active or I guess I'm thinking specifically

(49:25):
Pillars of Eternity. I won't bring like Final Fantasy
16 or anything into it. Especially with Pillars of
Eternity, I felt like all the dialogue and such in that game
heavily relied on me reading every single block of text that
it decided to highlight. And like, yeah, it's good that
it's there I guess. But this might just be a Pillars
of Eternity thing, so I won't get too into it.

(49:47):
But like, I don't know, I I don't mind if the dialogue if
I'm not saying it's true with this game, but if the dialogue
and the pros is written around the fact that they don't have
it, I think it's fine. Like, introduce things to your
readers and make them understandit.
It could be fine. Yeah, no.
And I mean I agree with that butthe the thing that makes it

(50:10):
important for me is when these things come from a pre
established cannon. Like tyranny doesn't come from a
pre established cannon yet it still has those highlightable
thingamajigs because they built like a pretty deep world with
pretty deep lore. Whereas same thing for pillars
like it doesn't come from an established cannon but I don't

(50:32):
think. But it's got a lot of that shit
too. But games like Pathfinder
especially and like the Warhammer game, like both alcat
games, like there's just so much, so many names of cities
and people and gods and like allthis bullshit that like if they
don't have a way to quickly define those things, like it's
really easy to get lost in the sauce real fucking quick.

(50:55):
And so this game needed that coming from an established
cannon, even though I mean I know Newman era is like whoopty
Doo hand WAVY bullshit but I don't know, I feel like it would
have helped me in a lot of fucking scenarios without having
to go back and reference the fucking codecs.
Yeah, for sure. Because like even if like a lot
of this stuff was made-up just for this game, like they still

(51:18):
did the work of like making the factions and you could like they
definitely wrote all that stuff out somewhere.
And like the blurbs could have been there, if even if not as
like in line, like in line citations like as you would
like. No, maybe it does have to go
that far because the codex is inthere.
And that thing I didn't open even one time, like literally

(51:39):
even one time. I don't even know what the codex
looks like. I read the whole thing more than
once because I mean I don't know, maybe it's just me.
I just, I really like that like extraneous world building shit.
Like it helps pull me into it. So like I read the entire codex
for this game but I wish I didn't have to.
I wish it was just included in the fucking boxes.

(51:59):
Yeah, I sure. I won't engage with any of that
stuff unless I think that you make something that's really
interesting enough to want to engage with it.
Well, to me, that's that's part of what makes it interesting.
Now was this game interesting? Fuck no.
But yeah, I have. I have multiple other things
with the UI that I would like totalk about.

(52:23):
So I had to alter game files to finish the side quest.
That's not good. That's that's really bad.
Yeah, that was that, the ghostlywoman quest.
No. Did you have to do with that
one? I I didn't actually do it, but
when I read fixes for a bug I was having, one of the fixes

(52:45):
involved editing the files. And that's also why I just
didn't do the quest. And I didn't miss out because
when I the first time I played the game, I did the quest
successfully. So I actually knew what
happened, so it didn't really matter.
If if it's a bug that happens with the other side quests,
that's even worse. It's definitely getting a full
letter grade down for it. But yeah, that that is

(53:08):
egregiously bad. Did you guys, I don't know
exact? I couldn't figure out exactly
what caused it, but sometimes I would hover over stuff and the
like description box wouldn't goaway, it would stay on my
screen. Forever.
Yeah, that would happen very often on, especially if you play
on controller but you accidentally like move the

(53:31):
mouse, but then you go back to controller and the shit just
stays on the screen. I thought, I thought that was a
Cheat engine thing for me, so I didn't hold it against the game.
I didn't know that that was happening for you guys too.
No, no. And that never happened to me.
I'm. Not sure.
It happened to me like a lot to the point of where once one was
stuck on the screen and I was like oh like it wasn't going
away. It stuck through saves and I was

(53:53):
like, uh. Oh yeah exactly.
If you save scummed you probablynoticed it as well.
Like if you save scummed a lot because that's another place
where you could just stick on the screen is in between loading
save files. I don't even know what triggered
it because I again, I just thought it was cheat engine.
So I was just like, whatever, that this is a me problem
because that's like a cheat engine style.

(54:13):
My gut feeling is it's just tracking the last point where
your mouse cursor was. Yeah, none of them thinking
about it might have been happening when I was all tabbing
or clicking out of the screen orsomething like that.
Well, the, the only reason I bring up those two in particular
is because especially after someof the stuff Jordan brought up

(54:37):
with life lessons, I've realizedthat I can forgive, I think a
lot of UI issues. Like I actually have one more
that I wrote down here, but I won't get into it just because
it's kind of nitpicky, maybe kind of a me thing.
But when it's something that's like very clearly and obviously
in your face, that's when it loses a lot of points because I
don't understand how this could have become a finished product,

(54:57):
you know? Yeah, I would be really like, I
didn't bother doing this, but itwould be fun to go back and look
at like the patch history of this game to see like, is this,
did they just release this game as one point O?
And then they were like, all right, wipe our hands.
We're done. We'll see you guys in the next
one because that's what it feelslike.
So I don't know about the patch history.

(55:18):
I'm sure that they've made patches, but what I will say is
that as someone who played the game on release and played it
again with you guys now, I didn't really notice anything
different. It just seemed like it was the
same thing I played all those years ago.
Yeah, same here. I mean, I played this game for
like 3 or 4 hours when it first came out and it was like Nah and

(55:38):
yeah, it feels the same. Seth, you bringing that up made
me realize that did all of us have that bug that Jordan had
where the text was scrolling at like a fucking heinously slow?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you didn't cap it at 60, that
would just happen over time whenthe text box yeah populated.

(56:01):
So I, I, I didn't know what you guys were talking about.
Like when you were trying to, to, to debug all that shit and I
was like, I don't know what the fuck they're talking about.
I haven't had this bug, but thenI managed to get it once and I
was like, oh this is what they were talking about.
But I only ever had it the one time until the very, very, very

(56:22):
fucking end of the game. I'm talking like 3 dialogue,
like pressing spacebar 3 times away from seeing the credits and
I just had to sit there for minutes 'cause I was like, I'm
not gonna restart the fucking game and go through this entire
goddamn conversation again. I'm just gonna wait.
And Oh my God, did it paint the ending in a negative light.

(56:45):
Yeah, I think it was frame rate related and it was weird too,
because I think I fixed it by using Cheat engine and just
speeding the game up. Like I think that literally
resolved the bug because it never happened to me again.
And I didn't do like the lock frame rate thing Ben did because
I because Ben said like, oh, I can't replicate it like in the
middle of the game because the dialogues weren't learning long
enough. So I was like fuck it, I'll just
keep playing the 240 FPS. And so yeah, it's some weird
frame rate type thing. And also I posted the amount of

(57:12):
bills that they have, they haven't touched the game since
July 2017. Yikes.
Yeah, sounds about right. And when I when I was like
troubleshooting how to fix that Psych Fest issue, there were a
lot of people in that thread that were having that issue.
Yeah, that's bad. Like to this?
Day like CRBGS are just notoriously buggy like yeah so

(57:34):
like obviously you guys played stuff like wrath of the
righteous like years after release, but like that game and
especially kingmaker, both thosegames were literally unplayable
on release like embarrassingly. I mean if if alders gave 3 was
in such a good fucking game I would not have made it through
act three. That shit was a mess.

(57:57):
That's honestly like probably one of the least buggy CRPG
releases I've ever played to like that that Yeah, that yeah,
exactly. Like that game had a lot of like
performance issues, but it didn't have like game breaking
like totally fuck you over bugs like or, or even fuck over your

(58:20):
computer bugs cause Oh my God, Ben, do you remember the Witcher
3 on release when every time youwould save was it Witcher?
Yeah, no it. Is Witcher 2 the Witcher?
Yeah, every time. Like a 200 megabyte fucking PNG
file or something. Yeah, for every single save file
and the number of saves you could have was unbounded and you

(58:40):
could not turn off auto saves. So like every like every couple
of days that you would play thisgame, you would have to go to
like this the the the save file folder and just delete a bunch
of old saves. So so you could save up all that
hard drive. Yeah, and it was, it was just
because it had this like uncompressed bitmap picture in

(59:02):
it or some shit. I mean, and I'm sure everyone
remembers how bad the Cyberbunk 2077 release was too, yeah.
So fun fact about that game, I played that game on release on
the regular PS4 and I actually did a lot I think.
That game is sick. Yeah, and I hear it's a lot
better now, but I've never played it again.

(59:23):
I get that game is sick. I'm a little biased because I'm
a little biased because Edge Runners is awesome, but I think
that game is great. But yeah, before we go off on a
huge tangent, like, yeah, this game was buggy as shit.
Not too far outside the realm ofnormal for CRPGS.
Cause like one thing to keep in mind is that like when you see
these like Baldur's Gate enhanced edition, Baldur's Gate

(59:45):
2 enhanced edition, everyone tonight's enhanced edition,
blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Like a lot of what those are are
literally just beam Dog taking the game, repackaging it, adding
widescreen support, adding a couple companions, and then
basically dumping in a fuck loadof third party community bug fix

(01:00:06):
mods and then wrapping it up andputting it on Steam.
Jesus Christ. I don't think this game is going
to get any points for it, but that does make me
recontextualize it a little bit because I think.
Well, no, I because I was thinking like, I mean, I'm not
I'm not playing this game on release.

(01:00:28):
The the difference between this game and those games is but that
it actually got yes, they fixed it.
It did not get matched. Yeah, yeah.
So yeah, no, you can definitely knock this game for that because
yeah, it literally never got fixed.
I just don't think it would everhappen because it didn't exactly
have any pull like yeah after release at all.

(01:00:50):
Like just it's kind of just the a game and a property that no
one cares about. It was a game that was
constructed, constructed for a niche and that niche didn't even
like it. So last thing I have for art
audio UII was going to mention was like, I actually wish that
this game had 0 voice acting, just 0.

(01:01:12):
Like, and it's not even because the voice acting was bad because
like the few times where someonedoes speak up and say something
like I, I don't remember it standing out in memory as like
being like egregiously terrible.But it was really annoying how
it would just randomly decide every so often that you would
get one line of spoken dialogue and then just be like, all

(01:01:35):
right, that's it. That's all you get.
I like it as movement marks, but.
Yeah for, yeah, for the. Actual weird stuff like you
said, they just random lines that they're like, oh, we know
what this is going to be in the game.
Recorder I, I feel like, so that's, that's also the thing
like in the older Infinity Engine games.
But I feel like I can forgive itthere for two reasons #1 like

(01:01:55):
budget constraints were different back then.
And I'm sure that for this game,it was like 100% budget
constraints. But also like when you're
developing Baldur's Gate in 1997to 1998, like you have to worry
about all of these voice acting files taking up a bunch of disk
space on some guy's fucking 4 gigabyte hard drive.

(01:02:17):
Yeah, for sure. You brought the movies arcs.
I hated them in this game. They felt so weird, like 'cause
they're yeah, they're BGS, but like this game in particular,
something was off about them. Like there was like a weird
delay. It just felt unnatural.
Like when because they're all, they all involve 2 of the party
members talking to each other, but like the way that like the

(01:02:39):
conversations play out. Maybe it has to do with like a
delay between like 1 character talking and another, but like it
just never felt right like it atall.
No, I agree. Yeah, I do too is.
I was thoroughly unimpressed about all of the voice.
All of them. Like it clears chaos wars but

(01:03:01):
it's not good. Yeah, it's, it's like a
defendant of five for me. Like nothing truly stands out as
bad to me. It's all just like, yeah, that's
that is a human with a voice. I mean, that's that's the
problem, right? Like Chaos Wars is better
because it's worse. This game is just nothing, kind
of. Yeah, because Chaos Wars is
memorable at least. Yeah, exactly.

(01:03:21):
It's like fucking hilarious. This game was just like, yeah,
it's just like the worst thing to be.
Yeah, I guess that's true 'causelike I was trying to say that
like, I'm not knocking it for its quality, but I'm also saying
that without any recollection atall, it's quality.
It's it's also like, 'cause thismight be something that Thomas
and I disagree on in narrative, but actually felt like the like

(01:03:46):
pros of the spoken dialogue typically was pretty good.
Like waveforms collapse into a single reality.
That's a cool line. Not performed very well though.
I don't think we'll disagree there and we'll talk about why
that is probably right now if you guys don't have anything

(01:04:08):
else you want to. I just want to say the portraits
are the worst fucking part of the game in terms of like looks.
That shit was so fucking. Bad.
They could have made such. They could have made such
fucking cool ones. Like Calisteege could have had
the coolest fucking portrait of all time, of all time, and it's
just like a zoomed in face and that's it.

(01:04:29):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. They were so bad.
They're all terrible. The main character so.
Egregious. So yeah, before we get into the
the next section, which I seem is the biggest 1, you just
reminded me about the portraits.I think Thomas, you might be the
only one that knows about this. But Remember, Remember when Ren
comes back to your party and yousee her new portrait for the

(01:04:53):
first time? Yeah, don't.
Even that shit made me laugh so hard.
Don't. Even don't even, dude.
I laughed so hard. Dude, that picture appeared on
my. Screen.
I'm pissed. I don't know what you guys I'm
talking about. This sounds awesome.
I'm looking up all of the portraits.
Well, did. You guys, if you guys didn't

(01:05:16):
like go deep in like the whole Rin storyline.
We'll, we'll get, we'll get. I don't want.
Yeah, I don't want to talk aboutit right now because I'm sure
it's like, I'm actually excited about this next section, which
is narrative and themes for the listeners, because I actually
don't have that much to say about it.
I'm more excited about listeningwhat everyone else, specifically

(01:05:36):
Thomas, has to say about it, which I assume there's like a
diatribe. So I'm all I'm, I'm like the
popcorn guy. Yeah, I'm going to get some
popcorn and listen to Thomas 10 minute rant.
I'm just trying to find the fucking portrait that you guys
were talking about. I never even had rent so I had
like nothing. So here's the.
I jettisoned about it. Immediately, actually, no, I
can't talk about it because thenit spoils you know what let's

(01:05:59):
just I'm just let's just drop itand just.
Also, I don't know about you guys, but music and sound and
shit, I can't name anything fromthis game.
Nothing. Was was was there a song in
this? Game.
I have no idea. I I I thought some of the combat
music. Was pretty cool.
I I must have like had cloud saved options from like 8 years

(01:06:20):
ago that muted the music so I literally don't remember a song.
I the I there was definitely music.
I cannot I couldn't even right now.
Nothing 0. Don't remember the songs, but I
do know that there was combat music and I do remember liking
at least that one. I don't just don't remember
anything else to be honest. I put most of this game at work

(01:06:44):
so I didn't actually have. It on from this, I, I, I truly
think it's like extremely forgettable.
I think, I think, I think that'skind of like the summary of
everything in this section is like everything's in the middle,
which is like the worst place tobe because I can't remember it
one way or the other. It's definitely hitting negative
territory for me because of the very bad bugs.
Oh, well, yeah, I mean, bugs arealways inexcusable.

(01:07:05):
You don't want to have any of those.
Yeah, but I mean like if I have to go into the fucking game
files to debug your code, right?But that's pretty bad.
Yeah, I mean that's game breaking shit.
They should have, actually. Fixed at some point.
Yeah, and also depends on like the rest of the game, like you
can forgive that kind of stuff because like even with Alder's
Gate 3, like there was like thatone bug with the guy that is

(01:07:28):
related to Carl X romance that would just die at the beginning
of Act 2 because like this, because like somebody would just
kill him. And the fix for the longest time
was to like go into like the thesave file and to like edit
something. So it's like a similar thing.
But like people will forgive that because Baldur's Gate 3 is
just something that people are willing, is a hill that people

(01:07:50):
are willing to design on. I mean it's human error.
I feel like it's, it's differentthough, because like, I, I'm not
forgiving that bug for existing,but Bouldersgate 3's scope is so
much bigger. Like not only like, yeah, I
could I I mean, yes, but the point of that is that not as
many people are going to see that compared to this side quest

(01:08:12):
that's like one of the first quests that you get in the game.
Yeah. Like in Boulder's Gate 3, like
the potential of that game is like the fucking number of
possible moves in a game of chess, whereas suck in.
Whereas Torment Tides of new Monera is like the number of
possible moves and fucking shoots and ladders.
Yeah. And like, like this particular.

(01:08:33):
And again, I'm not forgiving that bug.
It's like, yeah, it shouldn't bein the game, especially if
you're like a main character thing.
But like the the side quest thatI did it, it wasn't even like a
big branching possibility thing.It was like a binary option.
And if you choose one option, itgets stuck.
It's again, it's a it's a question of how did this become
a finished product? Because someone played us to

(01:08:55):
this game and someone saw this and it didn't get fixed.
Yeah. I think a lot of that has to do
with kind of like the context ofits development.
But obviously I don't know, it was like one of the first like
Kickstarter RPGs. So that was kind of like unknown
territory at the time, not to like run too much defense for

(01:09:18):
the game because like, I don't know, maybe I'm just, I'm
feeling lenient about the bugs because it feels like it's just
the same level of like bugginessthat every other CRPG has.
Yeah, it's like better than some.
Yeah, I feel like like this gamedoesn't have any, like it
wasn't, how do I word this? Like I feel like it wasn't

(01:09:41):
novelty more buggy than any other CRPG I've ever played.
Like it. I didn't feel like I was playing
a fucking like Bethesda game on launch or some shit.
I mean it's also possible for methat just because the rest of
the game was so unimpressive that the the outlier bad moments
are standing out way more as well.

(01:10:02):
No, that makes sense. They're ranting.
About shoots and ladders in the.Text.
Yeah, sorry, I was just based onthe tongue that shoots and
ladders has more permutations than chess.
Yeah, how is that possible? Yeah, because, yeah, it's
because you can go. A game could apparently go
infinitely if you get like infinitely unlucky.
A game of shoots and ladders cantheoretically never end.

(01:10:23):
It's also just like more squareson shoots and ladders than
chess, right? Yeah, it's, it's very funny
where I was like, how many are there?
And yeah, it's it's estimatedly higher.
I I was trying to just like think of the first game that was
like mind numbingly simple and Isomehow chose one that was like
the opposite. Yeah, I think we're good with.

(01:10:47):
I think we talked about everything we can for our UI and
audio. Tom wants to take the floor.
Yeah. OK, so I'll start with the bad,
the less bad and then I'll get into the ugly, mostly because
the ugly is where the very long winded stuff happens.

(01:11:07):
So if if at any time you guys want to take the floor, feel
free because there's a lot here.But so here's where I was
disagreeing with you guys earlier actually, is that I
actually do think that the worldbuilding of this game is like
it. It's maybe it's singular strong

(01:11:28):
point, mostly because I think that like the Numenera, like the
9th world or whatever, like it could lend itself to some
extremely cool ideas and implementations of those ideas.
Now does it do that? Not really.
But like, the idea that this game is on Earth like a billion

(01:11:49):
years in the future, like they could have harnessed so much
more of that. And one thing that was really
disappointing for me with the world building in that aspect
was I actually, so I'm one of those like fucking idiots who
will read all of the item descriptions.
So I read every single one of the new Monera item descriptions

(01:12:10):
just like hoping to scrape the pond scum at the bottom of this
game to like get something cool out of it, like some sort of
like reference to modern day Earth, like something that
justifies the fact that this game takes place on Earth.
But there's fucking nothing. There's absolutely fucking
nothing. It's all just like these single
paragraph, like wouldn't this becool ideas?

(01:12:33):
But they're not that cool. So even though the world
building in theory, I think could have been really fucking
sweet, it kind of falls on its face a little bit outside of
like some cool set pieces. Cuz like I think the bloom's
really cool. I think Sagus Glyphs is really
cool. I think the the idea that this

(01:12:56):
game takes place on Earth is cool, it's just the execution of
those things inside of its own world are what like really kind
of fucks this game up in my. Opinion.
Yeah. So you brought up something that
I was just thinking about. So I was just thinking about
like the things that did interest me versus the things
that didn't. So like the things that interest
me, it's in terms of world building because like the world,

(01:13:19):
the like the lore is so alien and kind of like made-up.
We're like it was really off putting at the very beginning of
like Coliseus and Allegren, likewhen you first meet them and
you're like a fish out of water and they're just going on and on
and it's just so hard to keep up.
And you. And to the games credit, I did
eventually get used to it over time to the point where like I
started like appreciating like the actual like unique like

(01:13:43):
heritage of like the cultures inthe game.
But like the things were like it's set out the most are are
when the when the new manera lore like intersected with like
the way I interacted with the game.
Because like even if it was likesomething was like completely
made-up and nonsensical, like inthe bloom, for example, like the
way that you like moved around was through the like the mob

(01:14:06):
portals and the ways that they worked were just like completely
bullshit and random. But there was like a rule to it
all. And like, it also actively
affected the way that I played the game because like, I mean,
it's just a weird lore thing that like the way that the malls
work is that they like it. It requires something, it needs

(01:14:27):
to eat something. And that like blends itself into
the gameplay loop where like youhave quests to like solve like
these malls and like find out what they need to eat, for
example. Whereas at the in Sagus Cliffs,
this is a big problem where likeyou would like talk to these
NPCS and they they might not even necessarily give a quest,
but like you will have like thatkid who came from all the way in

(01:14:50):
the past and like his crazy story.
But like it doesn't affect the player in any way.
It's just like this weird, like fan fiction that I just read
about, you know what I mean? Yeah.
That fan fiction begins and endswhen I stopped talking to the
NPC and I go to the next map andthat guy is no longer important.
Yeah, there are way too many of those MPCS in this game.

(01:15:13):
I agree I. Mean, I I just want to continue
to highlight, I think point Thomas was making, which is just
that nothing feels connected. Everything feels like darts
thrown at a dart board. And they decided to keep what's
stuck. It's like a like bipolar

(01:15:33):
nightmare girl decided to write this world.
Like, yeah, you're going to havea, you know, a couple good ideas
in there, but it's not going to make any sense.
You're going to love the end of this rant that's going to be
coming up here shortly. And if there is any like this is
a weird thing that I'm thinking now that you're saying it, I, I

(01:15:56):
don't know how to describe this,but I'm just going to go full on
Baldur's Gate 3 comparison. But Catherick Thorm is a fucking
incredible character in Baldur'sGate 3 'cause that dude connects
everything probably in more waysthan you guys even know.
Like there's a lot of Lord of that dude and he's connected to
fucking everything. Like he went he's, he's just a

(01:16:17):
dude that went from Selenite to Sharon to fucking Merkel.
And it connects all three acts of the game.
And it's fucking beautiful. And it feels like this game
tried to do that with the changing God like as the
connecting factor between all three acts.
But it just falls so flat to me.It just doesn't work.
There's a very concrete and discrete reason for why you feel

(01:16:42):
that way that I will talk about.I hope I don't let me think
because like I have to do so I do have something to say on
that. I hope it's just not a rehash of
what you want to say later, later, because I think you'll do
it like way more eloquently thanI will.
But and also it requires contextthat Seth and Seth won't have
because they didn't play Planescape tournament.

(01:17:04):
But a lot of like the main narrative, like the critical
pass, like if you would like to steal it down to like the
template of like all the necessary like characters, like
the protagonist, the villain, like these factions and why they
exist. And you like wrote them all out
in the list. Like there's they basically took

(01:17:25):
the original Planescape tournament.
Like everything about the narrative.
They're like, all right, we havea character for this role.
We need one in this game too. And that's basically what they
did for every single aspect. And every time like the a
character would get introduced in Torment tides in Newman era
and they would like say what their name is and like what they
do in the world. The moment I found I found out

(01:17:46):
like, like what it is that they do in the world, like what their
job is or why, like why they're they're interacting with you.
I'm like, I know why they made this character.
It's to be this other character from plane scape tournament.
Like, yeah, like. It's it's it's, it's hilarious.
So that's not actually part of my rant at all, but kind of a

(01:18:07):
spoiler for one of your awards. My answer to the worst NPC was
there's too many to choose from,so I'm just going to say
whatever that innkeeper was was named who was supposed to
represent Fall from Grace according to Ben.
Yeah, that's all I'll say, 'cause like, Oh yeah, I remember
why we, we were talking about her and I was just, I mentioned

(01:18:28):
the fact that the fact that you didn't remember who she was says
everything you need to know about her.
'Cause she's like, outside of the nameless one, like the best
character in that game. So yeah.
OK, so moving on from the world building aspect, the one other
thing I wanted to talk about before I get into the ugly
aspects is something that you guys will probably disagree with

(01:18:53):
me on. I'm actually curious about your
takes. But the actual like meat and
potatoes story of this game, I actually thought it was pretty
like good, which I think goes against like the prevailing
narrative of this game. But like it it it it gets better
when you zoom out a little bit. Like it was all of the problems
of this game come when you zoom in.
But like the tension between thechanging God and the sorrow I

(01:19:17):
thought was actually really interesting concept for like why
everything's happening and each other's like inherent
motivations. And I know a lot of people like
commonly say that the story of this game wasn't good, but I I
actually disagree there because like by the time that the sorrow
attacks the the cast off hideout, I forget it's mirror

(01:19:38):
whatever the fuck. Yeah, I actually at that point
felt like I was pretty invested into the story because I thought
it was a total mess prior to that.
Like everything in saga's cliffs.
Oh my God, it is fucking flatulence.
But everything from Mira vests on as far as like the, the, the

(01:19:58):
cast off lore, the changing God,the sorrow.
I actually really, really enjoyed like the basic outline,
like the the the skeleton of that story, even if like I said,
once you zoom in it kind of falls apart a little bit.
Yeah, so here's the thing. I actually agree with everything
you said. I think you just encapsulated
everything how I feel about it because it really is like the

(01:20:20):
broad strokes of the story. Like I might offend you guys by
saying this, but like the whole oh God, OK, hold on the whole
thing with like the changing Godin yourself.
And it's kind of like that family squabble.
I felt like this was the Disandra's story being told

(01:20:41):
correctly. But, but I say that like I say
that in the grand scheme of things, because the execution as
Thomas was describing, the actual execution of like the
writing of like the dialogue wasnot done, was not done well at
all. Yeah, the the idea was there.
Exactly like, like the like the like that, like the the Sondra

(01:21:06):
style of conflict, but you beingin the de Sondra family as as
opposed to being outside of it. That's the part that I thought
was cool. You know what I mean?
I, I think I, I see what you're getting AT and I think that
would have really hit home if there was like, I don't know,

(01:21:26):
like a lot of the stuff with whothe changing got is and what he
was trying to do felt tacked on at the end, even though it was
good, like, because that stuff was good.
I wish more time was spent on itbecause the the idea is there
like you're saying. And I think a lot of that has to
do with the fact that it was trying to ape the original

(01:21:47):
Planescape Torment because like there were so many characters
were like when they introduced the characters and I understood
the role, I was like, OK, I see how this fits in because I
understood Planescape Torment. But like, I don't know without
that like historical context of knowing Planescape Torment, like
if the amount of information they gave you in tights was
sufficient to like have players like resonate and really connect

(01:22:12):
with the story. I felt like that's where it fell
short because it felt like it was kind of like paint by
numbers, like a plane scape tournament coloring book, you
know what I mean? And if you didn't have the
context of Plane Scape Tournament, then it felt like
they were just introducing characters that like a rapid
pace and they play out the roleslike really super fast and you

(01:22:34):
just move on to the next thing without like connecting with
those characters. They kind of just like come and
go. I mean that's definitely my
problem. I didn't give a fuck about
literally anyone or anything in this game at all.
The only thing I cared about wasthe sorrow and then once I once
it was like I'm a defense mechanism for the tides.
I was like, this shit sucks. I don't give a.
Fuck. Yeah, that sucks.

(01:22:54):
I really. So yes, broad strokes, I agree.
But it's there's like one line of dialogue in there that I
think could have redeemed that entire character, which was
like, ah, man, I'm going to, I'mgoing to, I'm going to butcher
it because I can't remember it exactly.
But it's literally at the end ofthe game when you are talking to
the sorrow and it mentions how it was like a defense mechanism

(01:23:18):
built by people who were no longer able to protect the tides
or whatever. But it it, it words it in such a
like intentionally mortal combatlore vague kind of way where it
was just like, well, well, why you didn't say that?
Like why? Why hint at something cool
instead of just telling me the cool thing?
Because there's so much fucking exposition in this game.

(01:23:40):
And this is the, this is where you draw the line.
So yeah, like 100% agreed. So oddly enough, I'm, I'm sorry
to interrupt, but oddly enough, I felt a little bit similarly to
what you're describing when you talk to the genocide NPC in
Sagus. But that NPC actually has like a
lot of dialogue describing like who he is and what he did and

(01:24:02):
why he's there. And like, I'm not saying that
NPC is incredible, but it's justit's kind of funny to me that I
feel like that guy got more timeof day than the force of nature
villain of the game. Yeah, that dude was cool
actually. The genocide like, like I think
you, you had like mentioned something about this earlier,
Thomasville, like they're like specific like individual ideas
that are like really, really cool when it comes to like the

(01:24:23):
world building. Like the genocide is like a cool
bit of world building. Like when you understand like
why he's standing there. Yeah, there's, there's a lot of
that in this game, in my opinion.
So OK, let me get into the ugly shit, and I'm going to go,
rather than read this like massive wall of text that's in
front of me, I'm going to break it up into three parts.

(01:24:46):
And so the ugly parts of the narrative and theming of this
game #1 the characters #2 the theming and #3 just the overall
writing, just period. And so I will start with the
characters and then we can shit on this game because my God does

(01:25:09):
this game have some of the worstcharacters I've ever seen in a
video game, just period. Real, real quick.
Is this the section where you'regoing to talk?
I've been. This is the part I want to
listen to the most because I actually don't know much about
the author, Patrick Rothfuss. Is that famous?
Yeah, but what I do know about him is basically what you guys
have like told me or like I've heard about from you guys, like

(01:25:32):
in passing conversation. And yeah, I'm very curious.
I'm like, I'm not Rin. I'm.
Gonna I'm gonna say a lot of shit that could probably get me
sued. Does he write?
Does he write all this? Game No, he just no, no, no, no,
no. He wrote only.
Rin. Yeah, He wrote, specifically the
character Rin. Oh, no.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right.

(01:25:53):
So let's talk about the characters.
So not a single character in this game has a remotely
satisfying or well thought out arc.
Not a single one of them. And so I'm just going to focus
in on the three companions that I carried through the game.
And I'll I'll be curious to hearabout your guys's companions and
your experiences. But for me, for me a very very

(01:26:16):
like critical thing in any CRPG is how well thought out and how
well built the characters and their quests are.
Like this is the one that I always point back to is Divinity
Original Sin 2 where I think that the story and the world
building of Divinity Original Sin 2 is a fucking train wreck

(01:26:37):
nightmare of a shit show. But what pushed me to continue
playing that game all the way until I beat it was the fact
that I really like the characters and I really like
their the the way that they interact with the world and I
like their they, they have like growth and really good emotional
arts. This game though, Oh boy.

(01:26:58):
So the three companions that I selected, and I kind of selected
them two of them at least for kind of meta reasons.
So one of them I picked was Aretis, because Aretis was
written by Chris Avalone, who was primarily responsible for
Planescape Torment. Like he wrote basically the game

(01:27:18):
Ren, who was written by Patrick Rothfuss, who if he ever listens
to this is probably going to sueme and Matt Kenna or Matt Keena,
however you want to say it. And I only picked her because I
don't know, she was she had ruleof cool factor.
But so with Aretis, like let me summarize Aretis's entire story.
So you find him at the airship in Sagas Cliffs.

(01:27:40):
He's got this like really brash,brazen, kind of no holds barred,
satirical, heroic attitude. Like he's, he's just a giant
himbo basically. And so once you get to act 2,
you find a cave that has a jar that he's afraid of.
Like he does not want to go nearthis jar.
He doesn't want you to open thisjar.
He doesn't want you to go in TheCave.
And so you learn from that that he was kind of a shepherd before

(01:28:03):
this and he lost his flock. And like, basically this jar
kind of subsumed his entire soul.
And so you find out that that's because that jar contained these
nanos, these little nanobots called the audience.
And the audience are basically just a bunch of like very
malicious nanobots who are just observing Aretus and suck out

(01:28:27):
all of his like fear and anxietybecause they just want to
observe him being a hero. But they are very, again,
malicious and like want nothing good for Aretus.
And so you learn all of this andthen you go into the labyrinth
where you can speak to the real Aretus and he, he kind of tells
you about what's going on. He tells you about his back

(01:28:48):
story when he was a shepherd andhow he's all scared now and
shit. And then you learn all of this
and then you can finally confront the audience and you're
presented 2 choices. You can either leave the
nanobots in there and they will like help you out with your
quest and but you know, Aretis is, is possessed for all intents

(01:29:10):
and purposes, or you can remove the nanobots and he dies.
That's it. Those are two choices.
You can either leave them possessed or you can kill him
The there there's absolutely no other option than those two.
And the way that it presents it is exactly what I'm saying,
where it's like you speak to Aeritus, you learn about the
audience, and then you get to speak directly to the audience

(01:29:32):
afterwards. And it's like, OK, how do we
solve this problem? Well, you can kill him or we can
just sit here and fuck him up until he's dead.
So that's one character that is not very satisfying.
And also I think he's the best character in the game.
Yeah, go ahead. Did you play as a Nano?
Yes. How did you feel in relation to

(01:29:55):
that with the like weird eye ingredient dialogue that you get
from me? I hate it.
That's actually one thing that Iwas mentioning in the chat.
I actually forgot to mention this in my notes, but it really
drives me crazy when people write and like the way that they
want to demonstrate that a character is speaking in like an

(01:30:15):
erratic or weird way is just by writing in a weird and erratic
way. Now it doesn't bug me, just
period. Like if it was just the way that
Erinus does it where when it's the audience it's the I forget
exactly what the the the the twolike halves of the audience are
called, but one of them types inall caps and one of them types

(01:30:35):
in all lowercase. And I think that's fine, but
there's so many other characterswhere their inner voice is
depicted in a different weird and erratic way.
Like with UMM he talks between like 2 colons and then there's
another character who I can't even fucking remember who types
in a or who's typed out in a different way and that that shit
bothers me when it's not consistent at all.

(01:31:00):
I didn't even put UMM in my party.
I didn't either. I just talked to.
I just wanted to, I just wanted to ask since you you didn't
mention it when you're describing like the A to B of
his plots. I just wanted to see how you
felt on it. Yeah, no, like I said, like if
it was consistent across all of the characters, I think it would
be fine. But the fact that all of them

(01:31:21):
are different is a symptom of ofwhat I'll talk about in closing
here. And then so Matt Keenan, the
second character that I'll that I'll brush on here.
So she's the closest to having agood character arc, but it just
ends up being so fucking boring.So she's an elderly cast off

(01:31:43):
who's mad that she got lied to and manipulated and some of the
other cast offs ended up murdering her village in order
to serve the changing God and the whatever whims he had at the
time. And so she ended up getting her
memories wiped after that because she's trying to rebel
against the changing God. And then after that she just
lives in exile as an assassin. And then you find her and you go

(01:32:05):
through the whole Mira sphere thing and you can like restore
her memories or like even changereality.
But then after that, at least insofar as like how she
interacted with me and my story,she does nothing.
Like even when she is faced up against the first cast off, who

(01:32:25):
was responsible for like all this shit and some of the first
cast offs like goons, all she does is just kind of get
indignant and and yell at them, but she doesn't actually do
anything. And then at the very end, the
choice that I made, so I made the with the sorrow, the choice
that I made that seemed like maybe the least bad outcome was

(01:32:47):
to merge all of the cast offs into the the the first cast off
because I don't know, she seemedlike she had like good
intentions and the ending kind of corroborated that.
But the only time between the Mira sphere with Matt Kina and
the very end of the game, when Idecided to put all the cast offs
into the first cast off, that's the only time she interacted

(01:33:09):
with me because she got really fucking pissed and wanted to
kill me. And then the sorrow was like,
Nope, ZAP. So once again, just like an
inordinately unsatisfying endingto a character who does nothing,
did nothing, is nothing. Oh, so you brought up Machina
real quick. You brought up the fact that
like you, she was kind of like the tutorial for like how you do

(01:33:31):
mirrors and you use that to likequote UN quote change the past,
right? And it was part of her character
development. I just want to see if your guys
interpretation of this match is mine.
But and you made me think of it when you said the like she ended
up like doing fucking nothing and nothing came out of it.
And I just thought about the fact that like near the end when

(01:33:54):
you're fighting against the memoVera after she reveals herself
as the first cast off and a bunch of the other cast offs
appeared, including Tash, who isthe person you like possess in
the mirror, right? And him being there and like
kind of re traumatizing mad Kena.
Doesn't that kind of just like completely eliminate her only

(01:34:17):
character development in the story?
Like, isn't that basically what?It did.
I mean, I, I was gonna say like I, I, I liked having Machina in
my party. Like I just thought in terms of
the dialogue that she put into conversations, it was like
generally pretty good. My issue with her as a character
though is that like the everything that was interesting

(01:34:38):
about her happened fucking eons ago and everything after the
fact has no real relevance to the plot in my opinion.
Like it's a cool idea to have your memories altered in yada
yada yada but like all that already happened.
It's how she's introduced. So she has this weird backwards
character development that you're kind of describing with

(01:35:00):
Tasha with. Echo.
Yeah, no, like I agree, because that was why I kept her in my
party as well, because she just seemed like the like generic
badass rogue like, right? Because, I mean, that's kind of
what she is. And also she's a cast off, so
she's like automatically like somehow a little bit more

(01:35:22):
interesting than everyone else just by virtue of.
That, yeah. And that was the other reason
too, is I thought that like she would, she would like, provide
enough interesting dialogue and background into, like, who you
are and who the world is at large.
She felt like who was supposed to be this game of Shadow Heart?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I'm not saying it

(01:35:45):
succeeded, but it felt like no, no kind of idea they wanted.
All. Right.
So Ren. So for those of you who never
interacted or picked up Ren, I can't remember the the name of

(01:36:06):
the character in Sagus Clis. It's like Tor Tor Tor Magor.
Is that what it is? Told Magoria.
Told Magor. So it's the slaver who gives you
a quest and wants you to go findsomebody.
And that somebody is Ren. And so like you find her is this
little slave girl and you come to find out that she's with Krav

(01:36:28):
Maga or whatever the fuck his name is or her name is.
Because when she uses tides because you learn that she's a
cast off like Ren provides some level of like mental comfort to
her that is an otherwise like painful thing.
So basically Ren is just like anemotional sync for this for this
woman. And that is the beginning and
end of her entire character development.

(01:36:50):
So you rescue her from that situation and from then on she
does absolutely fuck all. Like her entire gimmick, I guess
if you want to call it that, is that she's a 10 year old girl.
So when you get into any kind oflike combat scenarios with her,
all you can do is skip turn. That's not literally all you can
do, but functionally that's all you can do.

(01:37:13):
And so the one time in the entire 25 to 30 hour experience
with Torment Tides of Newman erathat I had where she actually
did something or had any level of reactivity was inside of the
bloom. When you talk to the slaver
who's like right there in the very beginning and you can, you

(01:37:34):
can free the the one slave that he'll let you free and she like
tugs on your arm and she says, can we do that, please?
That's it. That that's all she does.
That is literally all she does the entire game until you get to
the infamous shit show part of the game where you have like a
back and forth with these two NPCS in the in the in the bloom.

(01:37:57):
And one of them basically is like subsisting off of a maw or
something and needs to feed the maw.
And so the maw is actually like in his stomach or some shit.
And so you can actually send Renquote home.
And so basically you open up this mall, Rin can go in and
then she's just gone. She's she's out of your party at

(01:38:19):
that point. Like you were playing the game
with, with three characters fromthat point on.
But then once you get to the labyrinth part of the end game
where you have to like go into those 3 portals, like the Oasis
portal and all that shit, she comes back and she's like this
like Tier 4 badass leveled up warrior goddess or some shit.

(01:38:43):
Just just completely out of fucking nowhere.
Oh my God. She just shows up.
She says yeah, she just shows upand she's like, look, I'm a
badass now after being a useless10 year old girl.
She has absolutely no like functionally useful dialogue.
She doesn't tell you how she became a badass.
She doesn't tell you what she's doing.
It's just the fact that when sheleft, she left you a sword

(01:39:05):
called the the Finding God. I'm going to say it was called.
And I guess it's like a beacon that she can use because she's
some sort of consort with like aGod of hiding or some shit.
So she leaves, she comes back, she's like this badass character
now. And you go through those 3
portals and then you go through towards the end of the game and

(01:39:26):
then she kisses you on the cheekand leaves and she's gone.
And that's it. That's her whole character.
She is quite possibly the worst character in in a video game
like her. Like it's not that she's just
like lazily written, it's that like Patrick Rothfuss strikes me
as a fucking coward cause like her entire presence just feels

(01:39:50):
like a rough draft that he forgot to like delete and
backspace. And she just shows up as this
like Deus Ex machina fucking glow up to trick you into
thinking that her entire story arc mattered when it fucking
didn't and so. To me, like I've always thought
Patrick Rothfuss is kind of a fucking hack, to be honest with

(01:40:10):
you. And so there's always been.
So for those of you that don't know, Patrick Rothfuss has been
writing these, this book series called The King Killer
Chronicles. And he wrote 2 1/2 books because
one's like a novella or whatever.
And the third book is like taking George RR Martin levels
of like length of time for him to write.

(01:40:30):
And there's been like these fun rumors about him to where he's
got like an actual writer chained up in his basement and
was ghostwriting all of his books.
And now there he's dead. And Patrick Rothfuss doesn't
know what to do. And this is probably the first
bit of evidence I've seen to where I feel like that might be
true. Because if he actually had to
write Wren, I don't know how thefuck he ever contributed a

(01:40:52):
single, like, piece of written prose to paper.
Because this is is she is like the most embarrassing fucking
character I've ever, ever seen. There's one thing I want to say
or two things I want to say before I forget. 1 I don't know
if this is the case anymore, butI remember back on release when
I first played the game and I was reading discussion about the

(01:41:15):
game. I remember the prevailing
sentiment being that Ridden was the best character in the game.
Like best ridden character. Hilarious.
Oh that sounds like a Reddit take.
Oh no RPG. Codex take, if you could believe
that. That's an RPG codex take.
Well, maybe some people thought that, but enough where I
remember reading people having to take.

(01:41:36):
And the other thing is that whenyou sent Ridden back, you never
you just played the rest of the game with three people.
Yep. OK, so this is this is more
going back to like UI and UX. And I actually mentioned this
way back in in the game channel,but I didn't actually I didn't

(01:41:56):
want mention why I was talking about it because it'd be kind of
spoilers. But they really needed like a
more obvious like retard proof tutorial for this one thing,
which is the bronze sphere. It is a key item that you just
randomly get in the middle of the game and you never get told
these at once. But if you use it, you can

(01:42:17):
summon any party member whereverthey are to you and fill in that
empty party spot. But they they never, they never
told. You that's.
How to do that ever? That's why, that's why there's a
quest in the bloom asking you tobring Alliger in to talk to some
of those guys, 'cause you can. I just, I just thought I was

(01:42:38):
fucked out of that quest becauseI couldn't.
I didn't know if I could go backand get them.
Wait, how do you do that? It's it's this key item called
the bronze sphere that you get in the middle of the game.
It's can you miss? It.
No, it's part of the main quest.I forget like where do you get?
I think I think it's right before you get Machina to join
your party. It's also just a big like fan

(01:43:00):
service thing because one of themost important items in original
Paintscape tournament was an item called the bronze Sphere.
And it's literally, I mean it's the same fucking thing, but in
this game as a it doesn't serve an important narrative purpose.
It's literally just a way to summon characters into your
party. But you never pulled that ever.
I. Mean the one thing, one thing I

(01:43:22):
will say is there there is some level of reactivity to that
because I just straight up booted written out of my party
immediately because I wanted Machina and I tried to summon
her back at one point and she just straight up didn't respond.
So there's at least that. Look like a cell phone they
choose to pick up or not. Yeah, she put me on block.
She she depending on your tithesit she'll like silently leave

(01:43:45):
your party if your tithes are not to whatever she finds
agreeable. Yeah, what you were describing
with Rin that that just sounds like every bad part about
Patrick Rothfuss's writing put into a single hour long.
Yeah, lots of texts. And so I think the the lore goes

(01:44:08):
that Patrick Rothfuss met Macombat like a convention or
something and they bonded over Planescape Torment.
And at some point, I don't know who pitched the idea, but
Patrick Rothfuss like got loopedinto being a Kickstarter reward
like as a stretch goal. Then Patrick Rothfuss will write

(01:44:31):
a character. And so yeah, they met the
stretch goal. Patrick Rothfuss wrote a
character. It ended up being Ren, and you
can tell that he he either had no idea what he was doing or he
didn't give a shit. Not sure which, but I leaned
towards the former. So one thing I will say, like, I
don't know if it's even possibleto find this, maybe the Wayback

(01:44:53):
Machine. But like when the game first
came out, I do know that PatrickRothfuss streamed himself
playing the game, and I feel like that footage might be
fascinating for you specifically.
Can you imagine him reading his own dialogue out to a Twitch
audience? Jesus, I don't know if so, this
is just my gut feeling, but I don't know if he got far enough

(01:45:14):
into the game to recruit. Some more some other fun Patrick
Rothfuss lore. He held a live stream event for
people to donate to his nonprofit and like there was
some amount of millions of dollars that were raised.
And the goal was that if they ifthey reach a certain like

(01:45:37):
threshold of donations, he wouldrelease a written chapter of
Doors of Stone, which is the third book that people have been
waiting on for like 10 years. That was, I want to say like
COVID. And he's he never released this
chapter of the book. He just pocketed all the money
from his nonprofit and never released a chapter.
We're definitely getting some very cool.

(01:46:01):
But yeah. Anyway, so literally none of the
characters in this game have anysort of satisfying emotional
arc. Like there's no growth, there's
no payoff. There's just a whole lot of
like. And then this happened, which
feels like their stories end somewhere in the middle of their
arc rather than at the end of it.
But it's very like endemic to the overall problem of this

(01:46:24):
game, which is just a completelyand utterly fractionalized
narrative. So tell me about your guys's
characters, because if you used any of the other characters, I'm
like, I'm very curious about Kalis, Tea, Aragorn or whatever
the fuck and umm, I don't know if you guys used either of them.

(01:46:45):
No, I use the same exact characters you did for the same
exact reasons, because they were, in my mind, the most
important, or maybe not the mostimportant, but like the most.
I don't know if intriguing is the right word, but like, maybe
intriguing is the right word because even as plain as they
are, you have to compare them toCalisthasian Aliger.

(01:47:09):
Also I I had Calisteege in my party for the entire game.
I debated not doing it because if she is a nano and I was a
nano. So I I felt like I don't want to
overlap with my main character. But I decided to do it for two
reasons. Number one, I died in the 1st
combat and that automatically locks Calisteege to your party
and Alagorn gets mad at you because you get taken to the

(01:47:32):
order of truth immediately. I don't know what other
permutations happened there, butthat's how that happened for me.
But I also kept Calastasia in myparty because I just thought the
concept of her character was cool.
Like all of these, like, transdimensional copies of
herself that, like, shape who she is as a person.
She sees them as her sisters andall this.

(01:47:52):
Like, it was interesting. It was cool.
It's a good idea. Yeah, I agree.
I like the idea of her for sure.Yeah, Now I I need to describe
how I play these games because Iplay pretty much all of them in
the same way. And it is out of respect for my
own time and because I feel likeit's the only way I can play

(01:48:13):
these games without going insane.
And let me be clear, this is notholding W.
It's kind of holding W, but I only I, I hold W but only for
things that interest me. If there is a side quest
presented to me like was when I got shunted to the order of

(01:48:33):
truth and you had to do the anorexic labyrinth, whatever the
fuck it's called as a side quest, I'll I'll do that.
If it's cool, I'm going to do itand I'm going to hold W and I'm
just going to keep holding W forthings that I find interesting.
I did the same thing in Baldur'sGate 3 that resulted in me
kicking a Starean off of my party within 5 minutes of the
game, thus losing one of the best characters in the game.

(01:48:56):
But that's how I play these games, so I didn't do much with
any of the side content for any characters, if it was even there
for some of them. So I don't know.
My perception of Calisteeg is you get about two lines of
dialogue from her at different events in the game.
One of them, I believe it's, it's sometime in Act 2, I think

(01:49:20):
it's when you're about to go into the gate and she says she
like explains that her goal is to like learn about all of
realities and merge into one by absorbing information in the
data sphere or something like that, which is like the ambient
air of data that is around everyone at all times.
Like the atmosphere I guess would be another word for it,

(01:49:41):
but more tech and sci-fi cool never comes up again until the
end of the game when you're sucked into the labyrinth and
you find her and she says 0. The the data sphere is all
around me. I find I feel powerful enough I
feel at one with it I can join it.
And you choose between letting her go into the data sphere or

(01:50:06):
staying with you to kill a sorrow.
I let her go into the data sphere and now she's gone from
my party for the rest of me. And that was pretty much it
pretty there. There were no, there were no
bells and whistles to it. She's pretty much just gone and
that's it, even though I let herdo her character thing.
Does she have like an ending slide?

(01:50:29):
I think so, but I mean it's goodan.
Achievement. I know, I know, you get an
achievement. It says like I uploaded her to
the data sphere because I got that too.
But like I thought, so here's the thing, I never had her in my
party at all. And I was able to get that
achievement, which means I was able to do her companion quest
even though I very minimally interacted with her.

(01:50:50):
So I thought that was kind of weird because she was she was
the only that happened with except Eretus, where I was kind
of confused with the way you were describing the the
conclusion to his quest. Because from what I understood,
he had two, I guess maybe 3 possible endings because I know
that he because what I did was Ikind of did like an about face

(01:51:13):
in the middle of the game and I started playing kind of evil
because I was like, I don't likeany of these guys.
I can be better changing gods than the actual change.
You got all do your fucking job,right?
You know what I mean? So when when I was doing the
Airtis Airtis quest, I talked tothe audience.
I was like, no, you're not goingfree supercharged that bitch.
So he got powered up. And then so at the end of the

(01:51:33):
game when you go into like those3 portals, he's like kind of
like having a nightmare in one of them.
And you could choose to power him up again, which adds him
back into your party and he becomes like super powerful.
Or you could told the audience to fuck off there then and
there. And then he goes back to being a
farmer. And that's why I was confused

(01:51:56):
when you said like the only two outcomes was like the first one
or he dies because I didn't evenknow that he could die.
Well, shit, Because the binary choice that I got when you talk
to the audience is, yeah, you can supercharge them, but they
like very clearly state that like if you do this, he's going
to die in the next few months oryou can just like let it rock

(01:52:19):
and he'll live for like another year or so.
So I, I, to that point, I didn'tgive a fuck about combat, which
is why I thought that was mostlygoing to effect.
So no, I didn't. I didn't choose the supercharger
because why would I want to killthe character faster?
Yeah, exactly. That's.
The fact that the fact that thatleads to the only good end is

(01:52:40):
fucking stupid. Yeah, that's why I think that
maybe there's a disconnect. So I think there was definitely
a way to get to where I was without being evil.
Maybe I just have to like reallylook into the question like the
different permutations because Ithink I think it should be more
logical than what's what I have to reconcile in my mind right

(01:53:00):
now. All I know is that every time
that the game told me that I could get rid of the nanobots
inside of him, it went to painstaking lengths to tell me
that he will die. And I think I actually save
scummed once to test that theory.
And he did fucking die. Oh, in that case, that is

(01:53:21):
interesting. Huh?
I guess I have to look into it because again, I only like did
the choices I did and anything Iknow outside of my choices is
just what I googled, you know what I mean?
Yeah. And I will say that like, I'm
sure that there are like momentsof these characters that I
missed, like with I had to, I had to have missed some level of

(01:53:45):
interactivity with the characterRen because otherwise I don't
understand why she even exists. But the fact that like none of
that is on anything even remotely touching the critical
path is absurd. Yeah, So about Ren, I guess this
is technically like gameplay andnot narrative.
She's actually technically I don't, I don't know if she's the
most broken character, but she'sgot like a very unique play

(01:54:08):
style that you wouldn't know unless like you googled it
because that's how I found out about it.
Basically she's a cipher user. She's really the only one in the
game because she has an ability that's.
Oh yeah. The next yeah.
So what you do is that you just,you just find the few ciphers
you like, ones that like stun all enemies and shit like that,

(01:54:30):
or stuff that like restores all pools of stats.
And then you just use that with her.
And you could just reuse the same one over and over again if
it's an effect you like. Yeah, but remember, I never
engaged with combat, so I didn'teven know what ciphers did until
the very. End of the game.
When I clicked when I clicked 1 and I was like wait, where'd it
go? Yeah, and that's another issue

(01:54:52):
with the game and why I think that there shouldn't have been a
pacifist like focus because likeI actually went out on my way to
like get into like a lot of combat.
So I think I got into like 10 total in the whole game, like
ten period. That's like 1010 opportunities
to actually engage with the combat.

(01:55:12):
Yeah. However, however many combats
are required in the last part ofthe game is however many.
I did, Yeah. What'd you?
What'd you think, Jordan? Of the characters, I mean, I
didn't even engage with it nearly as much as as you guys
did. I gave away Erdos like
immediately when that guy was like, yo, this guy owes me
money. I like failed a skill check and
then was like, Oh, well, they gowork for him and then I just

(01:55:34):
gave him away. Ren.
I don't even know was that is Ren the character that you get
when you if you don't rat out the the guy who's like digging
in the corner? Like I don't even know how to
get no. Ren is a part of the slaver
quest and she's like hiding inside of a house or something.
She's trapped under rubble in one of the Sagus Plus area, the

(01:55:56):
same one where you get Aeritus. Yeah, I basically only engage
with quests that either were on like the very direct path or
seemed interesting and none of them seemed interesting.
Yeah, the quest, yeah, that's, yeah, that's a much more
succinct way of how I play. It's actually funny because the
side quests, each individual side quest had like really cool

(01:56:18):
ideas. I thought like were really
novel, like ways that they designed like how you get the
solution. I thought that they were really
cool and novel, but the story that he was told were.
I don't know, I feel like. They were just things that
happened. Well, finish up, finish up,
Jordan, I've got. Thoughts on that?
I mean, yeah, just to respond tothat, I felt like the whole game

(01:56:40):
is just kind of things that happened.
I mean that's like the whole point of like the mirrors even
to an extent. Like it just felt like things
like kind of stories that you engaged in an individual things.
But yeah, I don't know, I think I didn't like any of the
characters at all. Like Calisthesia I thought was
OK, but like, well, how you guyssaid like up to uploading her
mind to the data sphere is like seems to be like the right thing
to do, but I'm like fuck no. They're like I it's basically

(01:57:03):
what Ben would do with Expedition 33, right?
Like spent the whole game with this character.
I fucking want this character sofuck off bitch.
I'm gonna. Be you better that because the
expedition 33 reason. The thing is why I chose the
uploader because I hated her. I was like get rid of this, be a
bitch. Yeah, I was the opposite where I
was like, whatever, I've been with her the whole time, let's

(01:57:23):
just finish up since we're at the end, so.
I felt. Like the wrong thing to do, but
I was like fuck you, come on. I thought that uploading her to
the. I didn't realize uploading her
to the data sphere was just gonna remove her from my party.
I thought she was gonna become asuper God.
This is all she wants to do. Like, I'm not going to get
anything for this. She couldn't even, like, send
out a Kamehameha and like, one of those final little battles.

(01:57:45):
Like, yeah, if you, I'm sorry, if you wanted to get the Super
God, you had to throw Rin into some guy's stomach.
Oh, and real quick, before you respond to like what I said
about the quality of cyclist, let me give an example of one
that I thought was really cool, but I'm not sure that you guys
did because it was kind of like out of the way.

(01:58:05):
It was one in the bloom. Did you guys get to the Lost
Anchorage? I did every question.
I did 100% of them. So yeah, I think I did all one
too. OK, I thought that quest was
really cool in the Lost Anchorage, where like, it was
the only crisis where like, it was obvious where you're not
supposed to fight. So are you talking about like

(01:58:26):
the one where you're trying to send the guys back to this Star
Trek world? I'm talking because because no,
I'm talking about this where? You're trying to take their
helmet. OK, yeah, because I was going to
say there's multiple quests thatkind of converge it lost
Anchorage. Yeah, I'm talking about the one
with the crisis where, like the way that that was handled I
thought was really cool because like, you could do combat if you

(01:58:47):
wanted. I'm pretty sure it just killed
everybody. But like, the way you're
supposed to do is that you're supposed to split your party
into like two groups. One of them is supposed to like
go along with this guy who really wants to be a tour guide
and you just distract him. And then the other people like
like break into like this like mainframe area where you like

(01:59:07):
you like kind of like hack into the system and you like download
this violin from this helmet. And I thought that that was
like, if there were more crises like that were it was more
obvious that you were supposed to do something that isn't just
fight. I thought like that would have
been way more interesting. They, they kind of do it a

(01:59:28):
little bit with like Neil Leves with the crisis where you're,
you're like kind of evacuating and it's, it feels obvious that
you're supposed to evacuate is supposed to fight.
But like I, I feel like there just wasn't enough of that.
But like those few ones are the ones that I point to you when I
say that some of the side questshave like cool design ideas and

(01:59:49):
executions. Yeah, I actually do feel like
the side quests and the bloom specifically are probably the
high point of the game 'cause like there are some, there's
some good ones in there. I just feel like they're so, so
generic, like the, the freeing the two guys from the prison

(02:00:10):
cell, like. Cool quest gives you a sense of
how fucked up those like mutant,not mutant the the whatever the
hell, the bird people, whatever the fuck they're called Merdens.
Yeah, the merdens. It gives you a sense of how
fucked up they are. But like, it doesn't, it doesn't
matter because after you free those guys, you'd never have to
think about a merdin again. Yeah, like commenting on that.

(02:00:34):
The bloom was definitely the like as a whole, the highlight
for me. There's a lot of good story
moments that happened there. It's very memorable, very
creative, but I, I, I think thatspecific zone that you're
referring to definitely felt outof place for the reasons you're
describing with those guys. And also the one right after
that where there's like the murder Dick head that you let

(02:00:57):
out of the room and you can choose to push him back in and
he's actually a big old, like murderous asshole.
All of those felt like act one side quests to me.
Those feel like the kind of things you want to present early
to like show what kind of character you are.
And then I also, I don't know ifI missed something, but I really
wanted to free the translator, like the girl that the murdens

(02:01:21):
speak through. And I I don't think you.
Can. I miss you, can you just kill
them all if you I guess the I. Guess I didn't go murder.
Oh well. I assume she would aggro too.
Yeah, I'm, I'm sure there's, I'msure there's a way to do it with
like a skill check, but I didn't, I didn't do it myself.

(02:01:43):
Well, either way, like that, yeah, that entire area just felt
like it should have been an act one.
Yeah, I agree. Like I think the point that they
feel like Act one quest is true because the ACT 1 quest feel
like tutorialized like nothing nothingness there.
Was a bunch of a. Bunch of fetch quests.
There were still a few. Like even as simple as they

(02:02:04):
were, there were still few cool moments that you you just
reminded me of. I like the I like the digging
dudes quests like interacting with them that that was.
Yeah, I thought, yeah, that was like a kind of like a longer
quest that was like it had longer like told stories.
So like it was a little more invested in you.
You actually connect with that like Digger dude.
But there was like 1 moment thatlike I thought was like a, when

(02:02:29):
I, when I saw it happened, it started, it started making me
think about like different possibilities that you can get
with a gameplay loop where it was one of the first quests in
Sagus close where there's like this dude that's like doing like
he's like doing karate, right? Like just in the middle of the
street basically. Yeah.

(02:02:50):
And there's like a quest where you have to like, you have to
fight him and win, right? You have to prove that you're a
better fighter than him. And I was really in this
playthrough, I was trying reallyhard not to say scum and just if
it if there's like a failure, then I fail, right.
So I talked to that guy and I dothe skill check where I fight

(02:03:11):
him and he fucking one punches one punch man's me into the
afterlife, literally. And that's how I like that was
the first time I actually died and went to the labyrinth.
I was like, oh, the game isn't over.
So then I, I died and I came back to life and then I just ran
back to him and he was like, oh,you actually survived that.

(02:03:32):
You're better than me. So here's the reward basically.
And I thought that was really cool that like, I, I technically
failed, but he was like, oh, wait, that's you're alive.
Yeah, I mean survive the one Pike Man Punch.
I, I wanted to kind of talk about it if we had time, but I,
I really like how this game handled death because of the,

(02:03:56):
the way that it kind of skirts around saves scumming.
Like there, there is no point where dying.
Well, OK, that's not true. There are many moments where you
can die in a crisis and it advances the story and an
interesting way. Like I said, I died in the very
first combat and it just took meto the order of truth because
that's where those guys are taking you anyway.

(02:04:17):
And you can't die like literallybecause you heal.
So it just advances the story And that happened like two or
three times to me throughout thegame, and I felt like compared
to other CRPGS, that was actually really cool.
Yeah, so not to like put a big damper on that, but that aspects
of the game is something that they just stole from Plainscape
tournament. I think something that they did

(02:04:39):
that's really good, I think it was this game.
I hope I'm not complaining with another game, but they didn't
like early on in this game they were like, hey, don't be afraid
to fail because sometimes failing is more interesting.
And it told the player that directly.
I think that's like a really good thing to to tell people if
that's like part of. Your game, yeah, and this might
get Thomas mad at me, but I feellike this game did that aspect
better than the school Elysium. Yes and no.

(02:05:05):
I feel like, because that's actually what I was going to
say. Like once you play Disco
Elysium, that's the game that like makes you not afraid to
fail because when you fail in that game, it leads to like very
interesting. Outcomes.
It depends because there are sometimes that I so this is 100%
skill issue. But when I played the Disco
Elysium I saved scums beating upthe racist dude because I didn't

(02:05:28):
have enough dexterity to do the one other method of getting
through that part that I knew about.
So my only way forward was to just kick his ass and I had to
save scum it because otherwise Iwould have to keep leveling up
to reset the white check. And I felt like something like
that situation never happened inTides of Newman era.

(02:05:50):
I just played straight through. And if I fucked up the game in a
very immersive way, would just keep going in a way that would
make sense. Like like there was like that
that Tavern in Sagus Cliffs where there is like a very
involved question there. And at the end of it, it's
possible to get into this reallyhard boss fight.
And I died in that boss fight, and I just ran back and everyone

(02:06:13):
else, like, they subdued the badguy, but they also all died,
too, so I didn't get a reward. Yeah.
I mean, I thought that was really cool.
Yeah. I'll I'll agree with your point
for a different game. I think this game does failure
better than Boulder's Gate 3. Like compared compared the
absolute shit show that can happen if you fuck up the end of
act 2 accidentally by the way because Shadowheart is a cold

(02:06:35):
mistress. Like oh I selected the wrong
dialogue and now everyone is dead.
Uh oh. See, but my problem with this
line of thought and, and why I disagree is that in, in a game
like Disco Elysium, when you fail a skill check, I mean,
outside of specifically the one you're talking about and a

(02:07:00):
couple of others that I can think of, like when you fail a
skill check and Disco Elysium, odds are it's like it's, it's,
it's not missing content, it's seeing different content.
Again, there are like exceptionsto that, but in Disco, it never
felt bad to fail a skill check because you're still going to

(02:07:21):
see something that like interests you or makes you laugh
or whatever. Whereas in this game, if you
fail a skill check, it's just going to lead you to the same
fucking results. So it's still just like the same
laziness that permeates this entire game.
Yeah, I guess so. It depends because like I don't
know about like all the different permutations, but I do

(02:07:41):
know that I remember at least even to that one quest, I felt
like the reward that I got was something unique to like me
doing that, if that makes sense.So it was like unique content.
Yeah, I mean, I I agree with you, Ben.
I think, I think like even though you might get to the same
thing, like, you know, like all roads leave their own thing, I

(02:08:03):
think that it's interesting enough that you get there in
like a different path that kind of makes it feel good.
Yeah. And I, and I will admit, the one
example I used for Discolezium is it's just like a very
specific example where that it was really just that one time
where I felt really locked into that one.
Because the only other method that I could find to get further

(02:08:24):
into the game was like a dexterity check where he had
like jumper rail. And I, I couldn't find any other
way to progress outside those two things.
But that's probably skill issue.I'm sure there was another way
and I just didn't. Yeah, I mean, honestly, the only
thing in disk release him that like if if if like I was if I

(02:08:45):
told someone to like play that game and they were playing it
and they were going to get to the end.
I think the only thing in that whole game I would tell them to
save scum until they got the desired result would be the
insulin D and Phasmid. Like that's that's that's a that
is a critical component of of that game.
I know I wish they actually didn't put it behind skill
checks, but everything else I feel like in that game you can

(02:09:06):
just kind of let it rock and like as I was sitting here
thinking about it, I I realize why I can't really like contest
the point because I don't know how many times I actually failed
any skill checks in this game because.
They are like, hard to do. They're like.
Mind numbingly easy or difficultto fail and so now I'm just

(02:09:29):
sitting like when did I ever actually like fail in this game
it. Really only ever happened at the
beginning. Yeah, in the beginning the the
quest to save the guy from the executioner, I failed a couple
of skill checks there, so I justlet the guy fucking die.
But it can happen in the mirror casters too, Like unavoidably
without skill checks. Oh yeah, I died in a mirror

(02:09:49):
caster. More than one such.
I don't think I successfully ever completed one of those and
I did every single one. But how do you I assume that
something good should happen with them because they're like
quest rewards that replace like actual rewards.
But every single time I did 1 and I I tried, I read every
single one. I tried to like resolve them in
a way that like would be successful, but I always ended

(02:10:12):
up dying, you know what I mean? Like every single one, I died.
I think you do die like period. And wait, that's what's supposed
to happen? I thought you were supposed to
like. No, Yeah.
I don't think you live in all ofthem.
Yeah, it depends. Yeah, it just depends on the 1
like. Oh well.
I. Died in the very last one and I
think that was a game over. Screen well, I think I died in

(02:10:32):
every single one. So I've I've never seen what it
looks like when you I didn't like the fact that you can
succeed. I don't even know is a fact
because I've never seen it. I mean, I don't know.
If succeeding is the right way to think of it.
Yeah, like with like if you diedin the one where you are Tash, I
think like the very first one with Matt Kina like that should

(02:10:56):
kill him. That might be considered.
Yeah, but I feel like there's a reward where something happens,
like. You, I did, I, I did the, I got
the good outcome from that. And you like, restore some of
Matt Kina's memories. And like you it it, it alters
reality in a way that was favorable to Machina.
And it it did nothing. Yeah.

(02:11:16):
No, no, that's. Basically her her memory was
never. Racist.
No, no, I did. I did that one successfully.
That's like the the tutorial one.
That's the one that set the expectation in my mind that you
could succeed at them. So when I did everywhere, I was
the one after that and they all ended up with me dying.
I felt like I fucked all of themup.
That's funny. I can't remember if I died.

(02:11:38):
There's there's one that you getin the All right, let me get on
to the second ugly part of this game, which is the theming.
So up to this point, I've kind of made it a point to avoid too
many Planescape comparisons because like I said, I don't

(02:11:59):
know how like beneficial or productive it is to to compare
this game to that, especially given that it's only that Ben
and I that have played it. But I do think that the one like
sector that's important to note in the difference between this
game and and Planescape is the theming.
So in Planescape Torment, it hasa very, very rigid narrative

(02:12:24):
spine and the central question to the entire story, the plot,
the characters, like literally the entire game bleeds the
question what can change the nature of a man, right?
Like that's that is the backboneof that entire game.
The entire narrative orbits around that one single question
about like what can alter human nature in order to make yourself

(02:12:46):
a better person or a worse person, the same person, or if
it's even possible to change it all like that is that is what
that game is written around. It is a very, very, very, very
important question. And then Torment tries to riff
off of that a little bit where it asks you what does one life
matter? And it's similar like in in in

(02:13:10):
Planescape, they will they directly ask you the question,
what can change the nature of a man?
And in this game, they also directly ask you what does one
life matter? But it seems like it wants to
have that be like the IT seems like it wants to have that
question be it central philosophical thread.
But like in practice it never really commits to exploring that

(02:13:32):
idea. Like it doesn't very kind of
vague general terms like the thegame gestures at it through the
nature of the cast offs being like like accidental byproducts
of someone elses quest for immortality despite the fact
that they do have consciousness and self determination and blah
blah blah. But it never really explores the

(02:13:55):
question past that point outsideof like very, very, very vague
things. And so in this game, as opposed
to Planescape, it doesn't like the question that it's asking,
doesn't permeate the narrative in any kind of like meaningful
or even a consistent way. It like it's not embedded into
the world building the plot arcs.
There's no real like moral dilemmas that I can think of

(02:14:17):
that have any real like depth orlevel of engagement that's
necessary to even make asking that question compelling.
Like it just kind of hangs out there as like this, this cosmic
background radiation, like static and it occasionally
references it, but it it never engages with it past its
surface. So like, rather than living and

(02:14:37):
breathing that theme like it does in in Planescape, like
through branching outcomes or meaningful moral dilemmas or
sustained character development,whatever.
Like this game treats it like it's just like a fucking
tagline. Like it's it's it's literally
like Torment tides of Newman erain size 18 font and then in size
12 font underneath that. It's like, what does one life

(02:15:00):
matter? But it never really engages it,
it it asked the question point blank.
And to me when the game did that, it just landed really like
in a really fucking hollow way because it never really bothered
to like make you think about that question before it gets to
that part in fucking Ministerithor whatever the fuck that place

(02:15:21):
is called. So like it, to me, it just felt
like it wore that question like a fucking like a like a suit
that fits badly, like it's present, it's there, you can see
it, but it's it's never really comfortable and it never
integrates it well. Yo, that's like this whole
fucking game. It's like tormentizes new
Monero's wearing their dad's suit.

(02:15:43):
It's like, Yep, big. Yeah, exactly, Exactly.
I mean, I I just want to say like I'm pretty much fully in
agreement. I disagree with one part.
You said effectively something like there is not really any
dramatic tension moments that demonstrate the question.
And I disagree with that only because the the final question

(02:16:07):
at the very end of the game is asking you that are you going to
put everyone's life into the first cast off?
Are you going to absorb everyone?
Are you going to put it into hisdaughter or whatever.
And that's an interesting question, especially with that
or that's an interesting scenario, especially with that
question in mind. My problem with that is still
twofold though. Number one, that entire quote UN

(02:16:29):
quote act of the game needed to be extrapolated out and given
time to breathe because that wasnarratively some of the better
parts of the game. And #2 it's still not like
bringing it back to that question.
Like, you don't really, if you're thinking about it, then
you'll get the sense that that'swhat it's getting at, but it
doesn't really explore it in a tangible way.

(02:16:54):
So I I get what you're saying for sure.
But the problem for me is derived from the fact that the
game really only asks you the question once at like the
halfway point and then once at the end.
And by the time that it's askingyou that question at the end,
like for me, like it was really obvious that the, the, the

(02:17:17):
question that this or well, the scenario that the sorrow
presents to you at the end was kind of the, the, the peak of
asking that question. But to me, it didn't really feel
like what's it's not asking me what does one life matter?
Because I just sat there trying to figure out what the like most

(02:17:37):
benevolent outcome would be. And so it wasn't, it wasn't what
does one life matter. It was, what can I decide here
that will include the best outcome for everybody?
So it's not what does one life matter?
It's how how do I make the decision that best affects the
whole, which is the exact opposite question that they're
asking. Yeah.

(02:17:59):
And again, I think that's just why that entire section needed
to be extrapolated out. So they actually had room to
explore all of that because I think it's what they had in
mind. I just don't think they did it
very well. Yeah.
And now there's. Oh, go ahead, Jane.
I was gonna say I think they didit fucking terribly.
Like I'd, yeah, I'd I think they, they try to just ask an
interesting question because Planescape tormented but did

(02:18:21):
like absolutely didn't expand onanything.
Like if you want to do like a how, how much does one life
matter? You need to like really build up
characters and like relationships with the
characters and then present an ultimatum of this character or
not. Like, and for me, I didn't give
a fuck about any of the characters.
So I was like, let's just do what sounds cool, which is what
Tom did, which is put everythingin the first cast off.
And you know, what bugs me aboutthat too, is that they have the

(02:18:41):
perfect fucking member of your party to demonstrate that
question too with Calisteege. Like, Oh my God, you could have
had a million questions in that where you're like absorbing
other realities for her or whatever the fuck.
And they they never do that, butit's right there.
Yeah. So that's the issue with like
the whole the way that they approach the theme in this game

(02:19:01):
is like the way that they introduced it is they didn't
build any connections with like the characters that you'd want
to like learn these lessons from, But they just all they do
was just like introduce contrived ideas about like how
life is used in this world. It's like the cast offs like get
souls created with them as a part of like the changing gods

(02:19:24):
like like he basically burst them, right?
It's just the concept of him creating those lives.
But like, I don't actually care about the cast of.
I actually hate all of them, youknow what I mean?
Oh yeah. Exactly.
Can I also just briefly say thatlike, and you guys are feel feel
free to disagree with us becauseI'm just thinking about this in

(02:19:44):
a moment, but I I have trouble engaging with that question at
all when this game feels as misanthropic as it does.
Yeah, I actually thought that too.
Like it's, it was, it was wild to me how.
It's presenting that question, but it it is like, inside of a
very, very cynical, like, snow globe.

(02:20:08):
Yeah. Like, like, people just get
fucking torn apart in this game.Like, viciously, Like,
everything in the bloom is fucked up.
And like, one of the ways you progress in the bloom is by
sending a dude to fucking die just so that you can get to your
next quest marker. Like man, it feels dirty.
I don't know. I thought that she was awesome.

(02:20:29):
It was awesome. I had a question.
Yeah. But it is.
But it doesn't vibe with the question.
Exactly it it. It's it's cool in a vacuum, but
again, it's, it's just like self-evident of the, yeah, the
themes of this game being a shitshow.
Yeah, I have a question real quick that only sesh might be
able to answer. I need basically someone that
held W. That's me I.

(02:20:50):
Need I need to know, did you even know that the changing God
had a daughter? Yes.
So that so that so that happens no matter what, even if you
don't do the side quest with heras Axel 1.
I thought, yeah, 'cause once youget to the labyrinth in the last
part of the game, don't you haveto do that like that, that

(02:21:13):
section of the game, you have tocreate the light bridges or
whatever with the puzzles? Yeah, Yeah.
And I think that's where you I learned before that.
But I think at that point, if you hadn't learned, she just,
she just straight up tells you. I didn't learn until like
basically that point. Around that.
OK. So even if you don't use the
side quest in Act One, they basically force that whole story

(02:21:34):
on you. Yeah, I think it's very
interesting. I think the time it tells you is
through a mirror sphere. I think I might also be dumb,
but I didn't put together until the end of the game that that
quest in act one was the Changing God's Daughter.
Yeah, it's the same ghostly woman, the one that you meet at
a bar. What is the mirror caster?
Where like you are like the changing God, like trying to

(02:21:56):
save his daughter? That's at the very end, right?
Yeah, that's at the very end. I thought so, but I just wanted
to clarify. Yeah, but it's just so weird to
me that like she's introduced inAct One as a side quest like
that. You can I'm.
Pretty sure you can miss her. That's that's you can't.
Very curious. Yeah, you can't.
Game like that. I did all of the quests in the
bloom, but I did not do all of the quests in the SAG is close

(02:22:18):
and I have no fucking clue what you're talking about.
Yeah, same. OK, so here's the thing about
that ghostly woman. She's in that bar with all the
psychics. And basically what's happening
is that there's random women allover the the city that are
transforming into this girl, like just out of some weird new
manera bullshit, right? And you do this whole side quest

(02:22:40):
inside of the labyrinth inside your head to find out that
basically what's happening is that her father, who you don't
know is the change of God yet, was he was using this like
probability machine to like try to like recreate her out of like
different realities. You know what I mean?
Trying to recreate his daughter,but he kept failing over and

(02:23:02):
over again. And that's the whole reason why
he was doing it. So like the fact that like you
can get to the end of the game and they just throw that
character on you and you could just not do that whole side
quest that explains why she exists, it was the first place
is kind of wild to me. It was the IT was the loss of
self quest line if you guys. Did, yes, Yeah.

(02:23:22):
Yeah, I had it. I didn't do it, though.
That's too bad. I think that was highlighted
back home for me. Yeah, it's probably the best
question. That's the quest I didn't do
because it bugged out. That's the one where I would
need to fix the file, but I already knew what happened
because when I played the game the first time I did the quest
correctly, so I remember what happened.

(02:23:43):
All right, let me let me wrap this up and then we can talk
about like the rest of the narrative as a whole, because I
think that this is this is kind of a good summary of my entire
critique about the narrative of this game.
So this game got me thinking about a lot of stuff that will
become self-evident here in justa second.

(02:24:04):
But I want you guys to like in your head, think about what you
think makes a successful solo developer game like Stardew or
Overton or Undertale. Like what makes those games so
impressive to you? Like just think about it for a
second. And so for me, it's not only

(02:24:27):
that like one person managed to pull that off or pull something
off that, you know, would usually take an entire studio of
like multiple like dozens or even hundreds of people at
times. It's that games like that when
they, when they work, they have such a clear, singular creative
voice. Like every detail, every little

(02:24:48):
bit of flavor, every weird idea or moment of sincerity is all
filtered through exactly 1 individual's perspective.
And so when you get that, you, you have this level of cohesion
that makes the experience just feel super razor focused and
intentional and oftentimes very deeply personal.

(02:25:09):
So like, even the quirks can feel like part of the charm
because they come from a very, very, very, very consistent
place. Like in for all of Undertales,
like weirdness, like all of the random goofy shit that can
happen in that game. Like you, you give it a pass and
don't really think about it 'cause it's just like, yeah,
yeah, Toby Fox must be a fuckingweirdo or whatever.
But now in contrast, think abouthow that compares to Torment

(02:25:35):
Tides of Newman era. Because that game has a double
digit amount of credited writers, I think.
And so to to provide some some context there, Expedition 33 had
one lead writer, the lady who basically wrote the entire game

(02:25:55):
and then had a couple other people help her.
Near Automata was written primarily by Yoko Taro, had a
couple other people helping him.Like usually you have 3 writers
on a game that is like a big narrative focus.
And so of these like dozen accredited writers, like some of
them were added as Kickstarter rewards rather than like being

(02:26:17):
people who had any like level ofreal alignment with the game
score vision. Like off the top of my head, the
only two that I know for sure were Kickstarter rewards are
Patrick Rothfuss and Chris Avalone.
So it's like, I don't I don't know what their thought.
I mean I'm sure that they agreedto it before they put their name
on the Kickstarter, but it's it to me it just feels like Chris
Avalone just fucking rolled his eyes and was like OK, I guess

(02:26:39):
I'll do this. So like the game because of how
many writers there were on the staff of this game, like we've
all said that it feels like there's too many cooks in the
kitchen, but in thinking about it more like it doesn't feel
like there's too many cooks in the kitchen.

(02:26:59):
This game feels like it's a kitchen running a fucking open
mic night because the game has like 1,000,000 words that feel
like a ton of wholly disconnected ideas that are just
very loosely like duct taped together.
So like, you have a lot of cool ideas, you have a lot of strange
imagery, cryptic monologues, butlike none of it coheres to any

(02:27:24):
kind of strong thematic spine ornarrative spine.
And so like, to me, it feels like Macomb just didn't develop
any kind of like, strong narrative guardrails, Like he
didn't really develop a style guide.
He didn't really have too much editorial oversight or like firm
creative leadership and authority over the script or
whatever. But like every single writer

(02:27:45):
brought their own tone and theirown ideas and their own
priorities, and no one bothered to do a good job of stitching
all of that together 'cause like, to me, none of the quests
in this game feel like they contribute to the overall vision
or narrative of the game. Like, they just felt like really
goofy, boring fetch quests that don't contribute much.

(02:28:06):
And like, everything felt like it stopped feeling like a single
story and began feeling like this collection of elevator
pitches derived from a fucking Reddit writing prompt.
And so to me, it was like it it read like an anthology novel
that was just like tucked away in the fucking entrails of a
dusty basement bookstore in HydePark.
And it didn't have any like singular novelistic vision.

(02:28:31):
And so like, to me, it wasn't that this game lacked
imagination because like I was saying that earlier, like I feel
like this game is chock full of imagination and good ideas, but
there's there's a plethora of imagination, good ideas, like
interesting, interesting ideas. But what this game lacks is

(02:28:51):
discipline because it talks a lot, but it doesn't always know
what it's trying to say. And when it's trying to wrestle
with a question that is as like philosophically large as just
saying what does one life matter?
Like you cannot have that kind of aimlessness because it
undercuts the impact of what they're trying to explore.

(02:29:11):
And so like, the tagline that I constructed for my notes was
that Torment Tides of New Monerais a game constructed of a
script with 1,000,000 words, butnot a single one of them manages
to say anything meaningful. And that I think that that that
issue just permeates the whole game.
Just way too many people contributing an individual

(02:29:35):
vision with everyone just kind of like, I imagine just a dozen
people sitting around a big table.
There's like whiteboards with interconnected, like,
brainstorming ideas. And no one ever bothered to say,
Nah, I don't think we should do that.
Everyone was just kind of like, yeah, dude, yeah, yeah, keep
going with that. Yeah, I didn't even.
Feel like it was that. I feel like it was just 12

(02:29:56):
people in 12 different rooms andthen they submitted their shit
and the lead writer was like, sure.
Yeah, that was stuff. On your toes because.
This is actually exactly what I was going to say, which is I, I
would not at all be surprised. I, I would actually bet, I would
literally bet money that this isthe case, especially for the
Patreon ones, Chris Abalone and Patrick Rothfuss.

(02:30:17):
I bet that all that was told to them is, hey, here's this Tides
of Numenera system, here's how it works.
We want you to make a character for it like you're playing the
TTRPG and just, like, write their character art from
beginning to end. Yeah, I, I I think that was
literally exactly what happened.Agreed.
And Patrick Rothfuss, for the record, had not had a single

(02:30:38):
iota of experience in writing for a video game before, just
FYI. Yeah, it tracks.
It's he he literally just wrote quote.
That's literally just what he wrote.
Who's the Who's the lead? Rider for this game, Colin
McComb. Yeah, that got fucked up.
That put it all out of him and no one.
Else Oh yeah, yeah, it it felt like they were, they were told

(02:31:00):
to do that with a tabletop character.
And then they had a DM that was saying yes to everything.
Yeah, exactly. He didn't want to like be like,
hey, Chris, can you, can we likework it this way?
It said it was just like, bring it out in.
Just don't keep dumping the shitin.
Yeah. Exactly, like inside the Newman
there, we'll figure out how to put it in.
Yeah. And and that's what I was saying
with like the 12 people sitting around a table and everyone just

(02:31:21):
being yes men like that. It just felt like there was
never any pushback on the ideas.It was just Colin McComb going
Oh yes, yes, because. He's just.
Stroking himself. Yeah.
Yeah, I think it all just boils back down to that vision not
being super clear, Sargos. Yeah, I'm, I'm just curious as
to how much of this game was like either the column or

(02:31:42):
someone else like the game director was like I, I really
have this vision and this is thevision we want to come together
because I think that that's another that's kind of like
playing into what Tom said of like the thing that makes like
the good games great is that they have like 1 cohesive vision
either through one person or a small amount of people.
And at this game doesn't feel like it really had like a
vision, even with like the question it asked.
It just felt like it was a dump truck, everything in.

(02:32:03):
Yep. Not at all.
And there's actually, I think Ben linked it.
I don't, I don't remember if he linked it in the game thread or
if he linked it to me in APM or something, because both of us
were very aligned in how we thought about this game and we
were trying not to talk too muchin the game thread about it.
Yeah. Like when I would spoiler things
and I would say it was a meta spoiler.
That's the kind of shit we were talking about.
So he linked me a Reddit AMA thread about this game and

(02:32:27):
inside of it, I believe it was Colin McComb.
Yeah. Said something to the effect of
like, yeah, we're we're going toexplore the question of what
does one life matter? And this was like two or three
years before the game came out. And he was like, but yeah, we're
not going to make it as important as as as the question
wasn't playing escape torment. And to me it's just like, well,
why the fuck not? Like why?

(02:32:48):
Why explored at all? Real quick, just for fact
checking, that was not Colin McComb, that was Kevin Saunders.
Yeah, the. Pocket.
Director I. Was gonna say, I didn't think
that was the writer. But I also just wanted to say,
when you're asking a question about what makes those other
games like Over Din and Undertale good, the the word

(02:33:11):
that repeatedly sprang to mind was cohesion.
So 10,000% of the agreement. Yeah, I mean, you're not going
to have one person come up with conflicting ideas unless they're
just like absolutely terrible atit because they're they will
have one clear vision of what they want to do and then be able
to implement it. It's just going to take them a
lot of time. That's that's like the downside,
right? To make a blueprint, it takes
that motherfucker 11 years of doing nothing but blueprints.

(02:33:37):
Yeah, to me, like, the only person who was involved, like,
heavily in the narrative of thisgame, who should ever get
gainful employment ever again was George Zeetz, because George
Zeetz, I believe was. It's really hard to find who is
responsible for what, but I believe George Zeetz was mostly

(02:33:59):
responsible for primarily everything in Sega's Cliffs and
the bloom, which are, in my opinion, much better than the
rest of the game. And I think the bloom, if you're
going to have a setting like this where you're just, like,
tossing shit at a wall and seeing if it sticks, the bloom
is the kind of place to do that,where you can easily justify an

(02:34:19):
episodic type of nature. Yeah, because the bloom's
fucking cool, man. Like the way that it's set up to
have like this transactional, like relationship with all of
the humans where that transaction is like, I'm going
to feed on these aspects of you and you are going to die a
horrible fucking death. Because I thought it was fucking

(02:34:39):
horrific to explore the innards of that thing.
But the actual concept is awesome.
Yeah, so about the Bloom and George Zitz specifically.
So remember when I showed you guys my notes on George Zitz's
game development speech about, yeah, how to construct choice
and consequence? So in those notes, like I, I

(02:35:04):
kind of wrote down the way that he kind of like designs his
systems and his stories. And there's like a big part of
the bloom where it's like a, it's like textbook zeets where
basically there's like this overarching quest, kind of like
a funnel for quests where like you need to progress in the

(02:35:24):
critical path. I can't remember why you need
this in the bloom, but you need something that is a predator,
right? It needs to open a mall.
I think you need something that is a predator.
And if you held W, the only thing that is a predator is like
yourself or like a party member because you guys killed people.
So you could like sacrifice yourself for a party member and

(02:35:46):
that that meets the most requirement of wanting to eat a
predator. But if you did like any of the
side quests in the bloom, all ofthem, or I think pretty much all
of them awarded you with something that could be
considered a predator. Like there was one where you
could like there was like this like plague called the Iron Wind

(02:36:08):
and you could like ball it up ina in like a jar and you could
use that. That thing is a predator.
And there were like a. Couple other things.
And that's like in in those notes I took on George Zeet,
like stuff like that, like designing things like that, like
systems and quests like that. That's like his, that's kind of
like his MO, you know what I mean?

(02:36:30):
So whenever I saw stuff like that in this game was like,
yeah, that he did that even. And I I did that to the point
where it might have been unfair,where like maybe it's stuff he
didn't come up with was like, but I liked it so much I was
like, yeah, he did that. He did it.
Is it is it? Is it possible to get to that
particular mall somewhat early or is it gated buying some
stuff? I, I don't, I think it's just

(02:36:53):
part of the main question. I think like if you just don't
do any of the side quests like. Yeah, you just, I only asked
because I only asked because there was something that Day
Nine said a while back in one ofhis videos, which is like if
you're playing like a Zelda dungeon, for example.
But it can be a lot of games, not just Zelda.
It's a lot more interesting to, if you have a key and a locked

(02:37:17):
door, you really want to show the locked door first.
Yeah. Because if you just have the
key, then you have the key when you get to the door and there's
nothing special about it. So although I do very much like
that particular moth for that reason, I I think that's
something that should be locatedearly.
And then you can go through the bloom thinking, oh, I need to

(02:37:40):
find a predator. OK, that's interesting.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or am I going to go for that?
I, I definitely don't think theydid it that way, Seth.
I think it was more just kind oflike it was there.
Yeah. And I see.
Literally. Yeah, I think he really.
Tried to pitch like another way,right?
It was basically just like, hey,you have a predator.
And then like Ben said, if you don't do the side quests, then
it's either like yourself or a party member.

(02:38:00):
And for me, like if you have a calisteege, then she can like
sacrifice like one of her like all like one of her alternate
dimension ones or some shit. And that's what I did.
So you basically don't lose anything, but you still get
through. Yeah, I use the jar.
I too use the jar. We're getting up towards 3

(02:38:21):
hours. You guys.
What? Where do you guys want to go
from? Here I'm going to be completely
honest, like I wrote some questions, but I feel like we
kind of already covered them because they're so like deeply
entrenched that I think that we've kind of at least in one
way or another, like covered every single thing in.

(02:38:41):
My is the third one. Yeah, I was going to say the
third one would be interesting to talk about.
I, I think we just, I think we just asked Ben directly, like do
you want to dig any deeper into any of these questions?
The 1818 Whiz 1. OK, so yeah, let's get into this
one because you guys want to actually, I'm just very curious.
This is something that I was just wondering the entire time.

(02:39:06):
Did everyone pick a nano or did someone actually not pick a
nano? I was a nano and I feel bad for
anyone that didn't pick it. Yep, same.
Yes, so. So everyone did do nano and did
everyone get scanned? Thoughts.
I mean, I had the Anna Meneses thing.
I don't remember. I don't remember if I was a nano
or not. I don't know how you did.

(02:39:27):
Did you have the mind reading text?
No. Yeah, I don't know how you could
play this game without scam thoughts.
I feel like it would be totally How the fuck?
How the fuck would Aridis ever? That tube would be infuriating.
Yeah, exactly. I gave the guy way in 2 minutes.
Yeah, that's what I started thinking about that.
I started thinking about the fact that you just tossed him

(02:39:48):
aside immediately, and I was really, that's what I started to
think about with scant thoughts is like, because you couldn't
read his mind. You just thought he was a
fucking retard. You're like, just get.
The fuck out of here. Eretus was definitely an
interesting side character and it's only because of scant
thoughts. Yeah, I know.
Yeah. Adam needs this thing, but I
didn't have scant thoughts. Yeah, that's that's some that's
why I wrote this question, because the original Planescape

(02:40:10):
Torment, this is my my personal criticism of it.
Is that the way that you're supposed to play the game is
that you're supposed to play like an 18 intelligence 18
wisdom 18 charisma character? Because if you don't you miss
out on like half the fucking game.
And in this game tied to new manera I feel like if you didn't

(02:40:32):
pick a nano or if you didn't getscanned.
Thoughts. You didn't play the same game
that we did basically as what I'm saying.
You just trade off. Just didn't played in.
Different games. There is a lot of like pretty
cool foreshadowing that happens when you can scam thoughts.
That's great. Yeah, I literally don't know.
Like Jesus, I can't imagine how like even more how much littler

(02:40:59):
I would have thought of this game if I didn't take scam
thoughts. I'm interested in what the
ratings are now. My rating is actually probably
higher than you guys are going to expect.
It won't. It's higher than mine then.
Yeah, I get this whole time search I get, I got the feeling
that yeah, I'm not just going. I'm just going to just guess.

(02:41:20):
I was thinking 2 out of 10. Good guess that is what it is.
Yeah, same as life lessons. Lifeless was 3 1/2.
Same as my Tears of the Kingdom rating.
I know it's the same as Tears ofthe Kingdom for me.
I gave them both to two. But yeah, I'd be lined for scan

(02:41:42):
thoughts. Like as soon as I saw it on
character creation I was like Yep I know how these games work,
click. I didn't know that's how the
games worked, so I was just kindof vibing out.
Yeah. And yeah, like I believe my
opinion is that anytime you playa CRPG, your first playthrough
should always be something that focuses on getting as much lower

(02:42:03):
as possible and will expand yourdialogue tree as much as
possible. Yeah, that is exactly how I play
these games and I think Planescape Torment is
responsible for that. I I tried to do that through
like a charisma style route, butlike it didn't really seem like
that did anything. And so, yeah, I think scan
thoughts is kind of what I should have done.

(02:42:23):
Yeah, and I that's why I think it's, I don't like that they did
that. I really don't.
I what I think this is just likemy director's cut.
But the way that I would have done it is that I would just
made it so that your character was just all three at the same
time. Yeah, yeah, just.
Just write scan thoughts into the character.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I agree with that.

(02:42:46):
It'd be like fillings of eternity, as you know, the
reason they shouldn't have done that.
Yeah. It's something.
Good, Ben. It's not like it's too like so
in the original plane scape tournament, you could be a
fighter of a wizard or a thief and you could only be one of
them at a time. So that restriction was there,
but you could swap in between them.
You you would have to find an NBC in the game that could teach

(02:43:07):
you that vocation. Essentially, like you need to
find someone who could like, oh,will not necessarily teach you
because the nameless one. Well, it's I mean, you guys play
torment. It's the same fucking story.
The dude's done everything. So you need someone to like
reignite the memories of you being a fighter.
You know what I mean? Like there's there's got to be

(02:43:28):
some way to make it so that likeyou can have the scanned
thoughts. It's your ability because it it
feel like if you obviously you. I mean it, it's a change in God.
He could have done whatever you wanted to that buddy, you know?
Yeah, there there's so many different ways, but like scan
thoughts for anyone that's experienced it, it feels like it
was like if it's like it's like being deaf and not being deaf,

(02:43:54):
you know what I mean? Scan thoughts felt like it was
like supposed to be the criticalpath to be honest.
Yeah, it literally just feels like playing Pillars of
Attorney. And I don't, I don't.
Whatever the fuck. Yeah, I just don't like that
session. Like, I don't know if it would
have improved his opinion of thegame, but yeah, the fact, the

(02:44:14):
fact that it was even possible for him to miss all this shit,
like, like, it's so much content.
Like so much. Yeah, like you, you literally
miss probably half the dialogue of this game, which again,
depending depending on your opinion of it, could be a good
or bad thing. Yeah, it's it's it's easily half
of erises. Like easily.
Yeah, I mean, I lost that motherfucker immediately, so I

(02:44:35):
don't know. I don't know if I would have
decided to. I don't know, like when you
first meet him is he a lot more charming if you could scan his
thoughts or something? Like, I mean, you just you're,
you're hearing as he's, you justknow that he's possessed by
something immediately. Oh, OK.
Yeah, you like immediately like it.
It spoils the game a little bit,I guess.
Just that he has something goingon, but it's also a reason to

(02:44:56):
keep him around. Like what the fuck is going on?
It's more interesting, yeah, because for me, like he would
just pompous asshole and I, he was gone immediately.
So when you guys were talking about like he's possessed or
something, I was like, I don't know.
What the fuck do you guys talk about?
I got a question as far as anemonesis goes cuz I I like
glossed over that I didn't read what the fuck it did cuz it just
looked like a stupid word. It's not that important.
So yeah, I didn't. I didn't.

(02:45:18):
I didn't take the same to your. OK, yeah, cuz I didn't take it
until like pretty late in the game when I actually did read
what it did. It's it was like a couple of
ways to skill check through things sometimes, but it it
didn't really seem like it gave me extra context where I was
like, holy shit, this is huge. Yeah, it it Honestly, most of
the time it came up, I didn't even choose it.
I chose it every time because I knew it was free experience

(02:45:39):
points. But yeah, I shouldn't have.
I shouldn't have put it in the same even breath as scan
thoughts. Scan thoughts is critical.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, I got no more.
I got no more thoughts on that. Yeah, same.
You guys want to do awards in the war?
I thought, Yep, sure. All right, Ben, you're up.

(02:45:59):
All right, the best and the worst companion.
I guess I'll have to go. I don't have much to say about
them other than just my gut feelings.
And I only played with there's there's a few companions I just
didn't play with at all at all, mostly just because I didn't
want to. Like I just didn't feel like
doing the actual action of like the mechanical action of like

(02:46:21):
dismissing a party member and getting a new one.
But out of the ones that I did play with, I think my favorite
was Aeratus. And my least favorite was I
guess by default was Alliger. Because I honestly just don't
know anything about him because I just didn't really have in my

(02:46:42):
party ever. Except one time I brought him
into the balloon to talk to one guy that wanted to talk to him
to see if that would make him interesting.
And then when he didn't make himinteresting, I kicked him back
out. And that's that's how I feel
about the companions. And yeah, that's about it.
Thomas yeah, I agree, best companion Aretis 'cause he was

(02:47:06):
the only character who had something of an actual story
arc. Like even if I felt like it
ended kind of pissed poorly. But his gimmick of like, having
every ounce of anxiety or fear like stripped out of him and
leaving just him behind was at least an interesting idea to
explore, even if the execution was kind of clunky.

(02:47:29):
So yeah, I thought he was the best and then worst companion I
wrote. Written by 1000 Miles.
She might be the worst characterin a video game possibly ever.
She barely interacts with the party.
She never interacts with the narrative writ large until she
becomes some astronomically stupid Deus Ex machina out of
nowhere. She has no interesting story
threads. She has no back story explained.

(02:47:50):
She just shows up like she's a fucking T1000 after a totally
emotionally unearned. Moment And the funniest thing is
that when she comes back, it's like her port.
So there's like a time skip right when you first have her
depart. She's 10 years old and she's
fully grown up. When she comes back, her
portrait, like, it's like the exact same.

(02:48:12):
Do they like, put a hat on her? Yeah, like, change their hair.
And I thought that was like the funniest, the uniquely funniest
and uniquely most lazy thing I've ever seen in a video game.
We got. Jordan for me, yeah, for me and
companions. I mean, I literally only had two

(02:48:33):
companions. I don't even count Eredis
because he was gone fucking immediately.
It was just between Makina and Kalasthige.
And I think I like Makina more just because I like kind of the
assassin rogue style archetype, not really because she's a good
character. And I didn't like the whole
Kalasthige thing of the end. Where like it felt like the good

(02:48:53):
thing was getting rid of her andit's like, I don't know, that
felt bad. So I don't know, I don't really
have strong feelings about it just because I think everything,
all the characters were so. As for me, I'm a little bit torn
between Aridis and Matt Kana forthat's best companion.
I'm going to go with Matt Kana for a couple of reasons #1 she's

(02:49:17):
the only companion I got where Iactively wanted to kick someone
out of my party to get her in. Side note that I was able to
rent out for that reason. Thank God she.
I thought her introduction through the mirror caster was
really fucking cool. Really cool concept for like a
like a story for a character period.

(02:49:39):
And I thought the way she contributed dialogue, especially
in the bloom was pretty good. It felt like a character that
was supposed to be in your partyon account being a cast off and
whatnot. Also she has a really cool title
of the White Death. Sick cool.
Where's companion? So I'm only going off of
companions that I actually put in my party, which was

(02:50:01):
Calisteege Matkuna Eridus. But I lost Calisteege at the end
of the game to the data sphere. But you know who was still
lurking in the labyrinth that I hadn't talked to the entire
game? Oh yeah, umm, level 1.
Your UMM has joined in me for the last encounters at level 1

(02:50:22):
and sucks. So I choose UMM, his worst
companion. He was just a little puppy.
He was just a little puppy that like the Sorrow, fucking
murderizes in the very final area for no fucking reason.
But yeah, whatever. It was very Rin level riding.
OK I actually have a question. So I at the end of the game I
played it like Planescape formatand I just chose all the skill

(02:50:45):
checks and options that would just skip all the combat right?
Did you guys do those boss fights?
I was just curious. Which boss fights like?
Literally at the very end. At the very end.
No, I did not. It's like the only one I had
pacifist out. Yeah, I tried to.
I tried to do it because the fight actually seemed kind of
interesting and I wanted to see what Raisin Lower platform did,

(02:51:08):
but I died the first time and reloaded and then accidentally
picked the pacifist through on the next dialogue checks because
I don't think there is any checks to actually like avoid
combat with the last boss. I think it's just a matter of
what you click. Yeah, I think that one was just
like a logic thing and I didn't,OK, so this is like a narrative

(02:51:28):
thing and I just forgot to bringit up.
But look. So they kind of did the thing in
a lot of CRPGS do this like our Canon plane escape tournament,
where like you can like argue with the final boss and have
them like be defeated by their own failed argument and
basically kill themselves. You know what I mean?
And the, the way that you get the changing God to like

(02:51:54):
contradict himself. I thought it was like the
dumbest thing. I don't know if you guys did it,
but basically you, you basicallyconvince him that he's not the
casting the the changing God anymore.
And the reason? Oh, wait, yeah.
This is what I did, yeah. The stupidest reason why he gets
convinced of this is because like a there was like a blip

(02:52:15):
where his like in between like his consciousness like switching
bodies. There's like a blip where the
consciousness is not like contiguous.
And because of that, he is technically a different entity
from the original changing God. And that like just it just like

(02:52:36):
sends his brain into OverDrive and he just admits suicide right
there. And I'm just like, this is the
dumbest reason I've ever seen. I mean, that's another thing
where I like the concept. It just didn't really work for
the situation at play. Cuz that's like, that's the soma
idea. Like your consciousness doesn't
continue when you move from one body to the next.
It's a little idea, just not great for that story.

(02:52:58):
Yeah, it's just one like totally.
It's just one shitty attempt at an emotional payoff that it
doesn't come anywhere close to earning.
Yeah, for sure. All right, what's the next one?
I feel like, I feel like we're good with the worst.
The next one is kind of the samething.

(02:53:19):
And yeah, it's just best and worst at DC, which I feel like,
I don't know. I feel like that's a lot less
interesting than the companions,which is.
Yeah, my, my answers for best isnone of them and worst is all of
them because like, literally I couldn't remember any of them
when I was trying to think I wasjust like, holy shit.
I like loss of self. Loss of self was was one I

(02:53:42):
consider putting his best. Mine is definitely like a like a
reductive answer and I wish I could give a better answer but
literally when I tried to answerthis question I was like I can't
remember any of them so I guess that's just my answer.
Yeah, I mean, I struggled with that for worst because like when
I was trying to think of the worst in PCs, it was like, none
of them are so egregiously bad that they stand out.

(02:54:04):
They're just all kind of bad. OK, Definitely one that's not up
for me. I guess in terms of like the
critical path, I thought the Memo Vera was a pretty lame
character. Like the first cast off?
Just like period you mean. Yeah.
Yeah, I agree. I agree that.
Kind of kind of anti climactic. I.

(02:54:25):
Think Miley's favorite character.
I can't remember his name, but he's one of the head honchos and
Miella Vaste he's got that eats people.
And he will never let you forgetthat he does, in fact, eat
people. Oh yeah, he will.
He will be saying, yeah, I'm going to, I'm going to go to the
park. You know, I'm going to go with
my date and we're going to have a good time and then I'm going

(02:54:47):
to eat her. And that was all of his
dialogue. Yeah.
For Best I put a cop out answer because it's an MPC that never
says a single word throughout the entire game which is the
bloom. And for worst this is a
character that would have. I mean I mentioned this earlier

(02:55:08):
but this is a character that would have never even entered
into my brain until Ben mentioned something.
Which is that the innkeeper in Sagus Cliffs was meant to
represent the character Fall from Grace from Planescape
Torment, and after he told me that, she immediately jumped to
the worst character in the game.Yeah, So, yeah, basically Fall

(02:55:33):
from Brace was one of the main characters from Virtual
Plainscape Torment. And what she was was she was
basically a succubus that subverted what being a succubus
was. So in Plainscape Torment, she
was the owner of a brothel, and this brothel was called the
Brothel of Slaking Intellectual Lusts where no sex was allowed.

(02:55:54):
The only thing you were allowed to do was just talk with the
whores and that's it. And so basically, the innkeeper
in Sagisklus was just a succubusthat was just all about not
having effects at all again. But in this game, instead of
being an important and interesting character, she was
just a convenient method for youto get killed so you can get

(02:56:18):
sent back to Labyrinth. Yep, useless.
Well then, what would you rate this game on a scale of 1 to 10?
Honestly I feel like I might be rating it higher than a lot of
you guys and honestly the value is oscillating as we were

(02:56:40):
discussing it I think. I think I'm going to settle on a
very mediocre 7 out of 10. I did enjoy playing the game for
what it's worth, but everything about it just felt cheaply made.
Like kind of like even like the UI literally looked plasticky to

(02:57:02):
me. The fonts they used didn't
really hit me and stuff like presentation can really like
elevate a score for me and that's why this one is stuck at
7:00. But like when I say, when you
guys say 7 out of 10, I get the impression that you guys think
that's a good score. But I'm just like the way that I

(02:57:23):
see 7 out of 10 is like I'm moreof like the Asian dad kind of
score, if that makes sense. That's that's my score.
It is 7 out of 10. I feel like it's impossible for
you to give a game a 3-4 or five.
It's either. It's like 12678910.
Yeah, specifically for game club.
Yeah, yeah, for sure it. But it to be fair, I really like

(02:57:48):
that. Whatever number I come up with
is what I feel in my heart. Is is Claire Obscure the lowest
rated game you've had for Game Club?
No, I gave player Obskewer 9.75.Oh yeah.
Oh. Lowest was.
It must be the Finch. Yes, I was trying to think of
the name. I was thought I was.

(02:58:08):
I was just about to say where the cold game was.
That was the lowest. That's funny.
Thomas So mechanically, I feel like this game actually holds up
pretty well. So like the Newman era system
itself is, in my estimation at least, kind of inventive and
refreshing in some ways. I legitimately think there's a

(02:58:31):
lot of room to do cool shit withthe Newman era system and the
crisis themselves, which I didn't really talk about as a
whole, but I felt like the crisis system is something that
I left kind of unexplored. That I if again, if I ever went
back and played this game, I would murder her on my way
through it just so that I could interact with the crises more.

(02:58:53):
But it loses some points on thatbecause it doesn't.
It never really required me to engage with the combat until the
late game where like my lack of prioritizing the gear economy
came really close to biting me in the ass.
But luckily Aeratus is like super fucking overpowered in
combat and I found some crazy hammer and he just one shot
enemies for the rest of the gameafter that.

(02:59:14):
But that's kind of where like the good parts of this game
stopped for me because like everything with the companions
is total dog shit. I mentioned before about
Divinity 2 like that game was carried on the back of good
companion quests and what was otherwise a pretty like mediocre
narrative. But in Torment tides of Newman

(02:59:37):
era they just kind of scratch this like conceptual interest
where there's like a one sentence elevator pitch for each
character that sounds kind of cool, but then everything after
that is totally underdeveloped. Like to the point where I'm
genuinely mad that some of thesecharacters were written into the
game and someone wrote off on them and deemed them acceptable.

(03:00:00):
Cuz I will never understand how someone could read the character
Ren and be like Yep this is goodto go ship it.
It just makes no fucking sense to me and so.
Like every companion felt like it shared the same amount of
depth as like the short end of the fucking kiddie pool.
And there was no growth, there was no earned emotional moments.
And frankly, just like some of the most embarrassingly shit

(03:00:23):
character building I've ever seen in a game ever.
Especially in a game that is so touted for its characterization
and well, in the original anyway, or the predecessor.
So the game really wanted to be like a philosophical treatise,
and they assembled like the who's who of legendary CRPG

(03:00:43):
writers. And you would expect that to
kind of coalesce into a showcaseof this like rich speculative
fiction as it relates to being aspiritual successor to what many
consider to be just the greatestgame of all time inside of its
space. Instead, what they produced was
a fucking soggy anthology of disjointed fanfiction that was

(03:01:06):
just duct taped together. And it's the the it's the
fucking narrative equivalent of some first year art student
trying to win the Turner Prize by like just grabbing a jar of
moths and whispering at you. Meaning is subjective while just
staring into your eyes. Like there's there's just
nothing here. There's no substance at all.

(03:01:26):
And so spending 25 hours while it just like, frustratingly
tries to refuse to answer its own question in any sort of
thoughtful, provocative, or but even mildly incidental way is
just an exercise in fucking frustration.
Like, there's no philosophical explanation, there's just kind
of this vague aesthetic of meaning, and it is absolutely

(03:01:50):
unworthy to be held up against its predecessor in any fucking
sense. The game is just totally trapped
underneath layers of overwroughtexposition, a bunch of
inconsistent tones, abandoned plot lines, half baked ideas
that the game just seemed terrified of executing on them.

(03:02:11):
But I did enjoy actually playingit, and the combat was
interesting enough to me that I didn't hate it, even if the
narrative was just a total trainwreck of dog shit.
I actually did enjoy like, interacting with the game
itself. So it is actually a very soft,
extremely soft fucking Charmin Ultra soft 6 out of 10.

(03:02:34):
It's not terrible, it has some occasionally good moments, but
it's mostly just incredibly frustrating.
Yeah, Tom kind of summed up a lot of how I feel about like the
narrative and stuff, but I thinkreally the game is just like

(03:02:58):
completely just like uninteresting as a whole.
Like kind of just everything. Like it's not bad, but I wish it
was bad cuz then I think it would be more interesting and
memorable. Like I feel like I forgot a lot
about this game from now compared to when I finished it
like a week and a half ago, which is kind of crazy.
But but yeah, I mean, Ben already spoiled my score and

(03:03:19):
that it's a, it's a 2 out of 10.Cuz yeah, like I did the combat
I thought was like fine. And it was only fine because it
was easy. I think if the combat was
challenging, the game would havebeen like hyper trash.
Like if I had to like actually think about combat, I would have
just like been really frustrated.
So I don't think it was really like a redeeming quality as much
as it's like a, hey, you needed this for me to not fucking pull

(03:03:41):
my hair out while trying to playthe game.
Yeah, so I get the feeling like the biggest problem with the
characters is that honestly, well, not just no, no, no,
sorry, I wasn't talking about yeah, typically.
But like, like just overall, I feel like these every single
character in the game is more interesting in their wiki
articles than they are like, Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

(03:04:05):
Yeah, it's it's not even fuckingclose.
And for me, like, I think the biggest problem with a lot of
the characters is that in a gamethat has so many fucking words,
it's crazy how few of them are actually, like, dedicated to
building the characters out as people.
It's basically mattering at all.Very true.

(03:04:27):
As for me, I feel like I'm oscillated a bit.
I actually started pretty high when I finished this game,
despite starting low because of the having to go into game files
to fix my game. But no, yeah, I agree with a lot
of what Thomas said. I agree with a lot of what Sesh
said. I enjoyed the game, I had a good

(03:04:53):
time, although a lot of the actual world building is pretty
forgettable. I'm going to remember the
balloon. I like the idea of the changing
God and I still remember like some of the individual decisions
that I've made. And like to me, having a
memorable, somewhat enjoyable experience is enough to at least
give it a positive rating, despite a number of other qualms

(03:05:17):
that I had, particularly on the UI side.
Also, we didn't really get into it, but I thought the pros was
pretty good. Like I'm almost bordering
fantastic. I I really like the pros.
I enjoyed reading it, even though the world building itself
wasn't very good. Even though I kind of want to

(03:05:37):
give this a 7 out of 10, I also want to give it a 5 out of 10.
So I'm just going to give it a six out of 10.
To the point about the purple pros, I actually felt the same
way where like I didn't, I'm notgoing to say that I thought it
was incredible, but like it was not as bad as like I remember.
Yeah, like making it out to. Be like it wasn't.
That purple, It was not that purple.

(03:05:59):
It really, it really wasn't likeit's funny you say that cuz I
actually had the exact same thought cuz I was like, did I
just like get smarter or like did I become a better reader?
Cuz like, this is not nearly as bad as I remembered it being
before. I, I feel like, like the
vocabulary is just like pretty refined and the actual sentence
structure is often quite good and evocative and filled with a

(03:06:21):
lot of imagery for very complex things that it's describing.
By the way, that's part of the reason I like the pros so much
is like, these are not easy things to describe what they're
describing. Yeah.
One thing I, one thing I neglected to mention is that my
actual favorite part of the prosof this game by like a degree of

(03:06:42):
magnitude is the the mirror spheres.
I actually think everything inside of those is insanely well
written. It's very, very good.
Those are definitely highlights for me.
But that's my score. That's 6 out of 10.
That's all of us. Thomas, for next week, would you
like to spin the wheel? You can go ahead and see the
result. Oh.

(03:07:06):
It's biased. Thomas has been selected.
The spinner himself has been spun.
You got a play button you. Got a You got a Oh, it's a play
button. Oh, it's a video, you fucking
goobers. Yeah, that was the.
Only one you guys were saying that I was like, what do you
mean I'm picking? OK, OK, hilarious.

(03:07:27):
That's funny. Well, Jordan has been picked.
Yeah, I mean, we already know. I mean, you should already know
what I'm picked and hopefully you picked it up on sale.
But yeah, it's going to be 1000 X resist, I think is how you say
it. 1000 times resist. I actually don't know how to say
it. I have it installed because I
bought it on sale after you requested.
I'm installing it right now. What actually is this game?
I never like bothered to look atwhat it is.

(03:07:49):
I think it's like almost like a visual novel adventure game.
I don't think there's gameplay, but I'm not really.
I really almost know almost nothing except like that.
It's supposed to be like a very good narrative game is.
This A1 weaker. Is it a what?
Oh yeah, A1 weaker. It's going to be at least 2 for
me because I basically can't play from Wednesday to Sunday

(03:08:11):
this week. Are you at?
Pennburg. So it's I think it's like 17
hours if I remember correctly onhow long to beat.
How long to beat Says 10 1/2 to 12 1/2 for main plus sides.
Maybe we can still make it 2 weeks if we need to do an
interim game. Yeah, No, I would say, I would
say 2 for me would be preferred and then I'll figure out

(03:08:33):
something to do as a quick interim thing.
We should do that. Fucking what was that game
called? The bending to their logic bombs
or whatever. I don't know how it's going by
Matthew Matosis. Two hours thing.
That game seems like it's gonna be long as fuck.
There's like 140 levels in, like, OK, he says.
They ramp the fuck up. I'll check it out too but if

(03:08:53):
it's just like a pic cross stylegame then 140 is a lot but.
It's P cross, but it's more complicated, like it's, if
you're good at P cross, like you'll kind of understand the
concept, but it's not the same. Basically it's just like the in
the line that is the number is just how many walls can be in
that line. It's not like 11111, it'll just
be 6 and then you're going to figure out where the six is.

(03:09:16):
In any case, sounds like next week we'll be doing Logic Bombs
by Matthew Matosis, and the weekafter that we'll be doing.
Jordan. 'S actual pick, which is 1000 X
resist.