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Welcome to another episode of Acts of the Blood God and Independent RPG Podcast. I'm your host, Kat Bailey. Joining me as always, my lovely co-host, Nod. Hello, Cat. I'm going to make an admission here while you were tinkering with everything.
was looking looking at blue sky we're looking at they just had all the final fantasy uh magic card drops and i'm just at the moment you started it was like holy shit kane hiwin like our friend she even put that up on the on the thing and i'm like jesus christ i had to take a moment to like or do we need to live react to the the so the magic cards are dropping right now they're dropping right now or at least like i'm seeing them on blue sky and uh yeah just looking at
They dropped Cane at the same time we started. Even though I looked very calm and reserved, I was just typing AHHHH on the keyboard. Now you know how I act in real life versus how I act online. It's a, I'm a land of contrast. And joining us because Eric Van Allen is currently at PAX East. We have our old pal from the editing bay is Victor Hunter. Kat, I'm drawing a mini map of your eyes.
Because I often catch myself getting lost in them. Is this the nicest thing anybody's ever said to me? No, it's not. This week on Acts of the Plugout, we are going to be talking about Friction! It's Victor Hunter's favorite topic, and the impetus for that is Expedition 33 not having a minimap. I'm going to talk a little bit about why that's okay. We'll be talking about a lot of other ways in which friction... informed. rpgs and some of the biggest rpgs of the year actually
And a little later in the podcast, I guess we'll be live reacting to the Magic the Gathering cards in Final Fantasy. We'll be talking about Sakura Tyson 2 in English. Tokimeki Memorial on Nintendo Switch. and lots more topics as well. We are live here on twitch.tv slash bloodgodpod. And if you're listening to this on the audio, consider checking us out on Saturdays at 9.30 a.m. Pacific. 12 30 p.m eastern like and subscribe we've got a huge month of streaming coming up
We were doing our pre-show with our beloved Stars of Destiny a little earlier. We were joined by Anthrax Bees, Criminal Justice, Drew RWX, Laguna Matata124, Manga Alls, Victor. Hunter. Oh, wait. That's Victor. Lol. And Zoo Batman. Sorry, I was reading a list. You're like a star. You're a star. You're a star, Victor. Victor, you're a star. In nobody's eyes but mine. If you like Acts of the Blood God, please consider subscribing to us on patreon.com slash bloodgodpod.
your generous donations allow us to keep doing this we do this as a full-time job nadia eric and i and victor gets a substantial amount of money as well so you uh put food we put food on our table you allow us to keep playing rpgs and talking about them we're very grateful for your support and in return you get access to our discord you get to vote on things you get to hang out and be part of our all of our bonus content
For example, we did a book club, the first entry of our book club yesterday for the fifth season. That's part of our next side quest. Nadia and I were talking about the fifth season, our initial impressions of the prologue and chapters one through two. We talked a lot about second-person writing and the apocalypse.
Yeah, that was a really fun discussion. And the way I understand that it's going to work from here on out is that every Friday, you and I, and I guess Eric, will be gathering with whomever on the Discord wants to join us. and
Those discussions will not be recorded to answer questions from going around, but we will have, if I'm not mistaken, an actual episode to talk about the whole book. But I would encourage you, if you're in the Discord, to come in and join the discussion, because I find that I...
It's kind of nice to talk without being recorded for evidence that the police can use against me later. So Yeah, I just love talking books and I would absolutely love for you to join the discord and hang out with us on Friday I can't go back to jail. I can't go back to jail, man. I'm tube-shaped. Other content that you can access, we did our side quest for free run, because we finished that just recently. We talked all the way through it. We did a Pantheon-style episode, and we asked
Would Freerun potentially be in the pantheon of anime? And that was a really fun episode. We're currently doing our next pantheon episode for Vagrant Story, and there's a huge backlog. of episodes to go lesson. In addition, please consider subscribing to our newsletter. That goes out every Tuesday and Thursday. You can subscribe to that at bloodgodpod.com. newsletter. And Victor Hunter has returned to doing a Charlene dropouts. How's that been going, Victor?
fantastic every other monday right here on the twitch channel and then that episode is sent out to all of your podcatchers on wednesday morning so Yeah, two episodes a month. It's lovely. We've just had a major patch in 14, 7.2. Lots of new stuff in there, including what we covered on our last episode, which is the cosmic exploration. field operation, which is a major... bit of content for crafters and gathers. Yeah. Yeah, I'm not the movie with the rabbits. Yeah.
Drilling Way was one of the naming ways. He just did a tunnel or something. All the low barrettes are kind of like a joke on naming way. So you have like sleeping way and drilling way. And yeah, I was hoping they should call them boring way. But what do I know? Might bring things too close to another boring entity that is associated with space travel. Again. But yeah, it's a lot of fun. A lot of FF4 stuff in there for people who like that kind of thing. Chip tune.
But yeah, we have actually, as this episode comes out, we will have either recorded this morning or I will have done something else and there'll be an episode. Don't you worry about it. Hey, calm down. We'll make sure you're fed. And finally, if you want Axe of the Bloodgon merch like this really cool... Okay, you can't really see it. This really cool hoodie.
Sorry, it's not a great... It's an awesome hoodie. It's very comfy. It's a really cool hoodie. Among other things. And mugs and desktop mats. Or you can use the mat for Magic the Gathering. Whatever you want to do. So much stuff. Shop.bluguppod.com for 10th anniversary merch and lots more. Okay, that's all of the promotions. Thanks for listening to all of that. Let's get to the main topic, Expedition 33.
Minimap, friction. Let's talk about what friction means for RPGs. Victor is rubbing his hands. The impetus, some of the impetus was, so Nadia put out her newsletter on Thursday and you talked about the minimap. Yes. With Expedition 33. It's been a bit of discourse, I think. And that prompted me to... create a blue a skate i did a skate a skate that's right
I didn't mean to throw you under the bus or the airship or whatever, Nadia. I apologize. No, no, no, you absolutely didn't. I think it's a great discussion because, um... As I said to you on Discord that day when you kind of mentioned you wanted to tweet about my newsletter, I said, well, I like Minimap.
Sometimes, usually, because I am someone who is not good with directions. My grandfather literally almost drove my family off the California mountain. They were all in L.A., and he didn't know whether to go north or south, so he tried to go in the center. Anyway. with Claire Obscure.
It's a great game. God knows we're not here to insult it or anything like that. It's a great game, but I still feel like it has its flaws, and I think one of those flaws is... a lack of an option for a minimap also a very big flaw that i'm very annoyed with is the option the lack of an option to lock your compass
I can't deal with spinny compasses. Please stop. See, the thing about Claire Obscure is that it's an indie game by a smaller... studio that's perfectly fine it makes great uses of its assets by how big is their studio actually because it wasn't there are people saying it was actually made by 30 people which is not i'm not saying it's 30 people i'm saying that it's still a studio that was probably working with a bunch
And it reuses assets for that reason. That's how these places are made. And there's the fact that you're in this world where the paintress has purposely made everything a jumble. and I find that even though a lot of the dungeon areas are pretty straightforward... You still have a lot of opportunities to get lost. It kind of reminds me of a lot of Falcom games are like that too, but they always give you a mini-map that you can turn off anytime you want.
And the comparison I made on my newsletter was of a game that would be harmed by a minimap was Elden Ring. Because at first I was like, what is wrong with this game? Screw you, where's my mini map? But then I realized as I looked at the map itself, it gives you clues on what you should do and where you should go because there are small... indentations and cave mouths and just vague hints that you might want to go here, you might want to try that.
And then as the game progresses, you get better at realizing a lot of stuff isn't on the map and you map as you go. And I feel like that was a huge part of the danger and discovery of Elden Ring is I am a naked babe in the woods. I have to power myself up. Where do I go? What do I do? And that's how you find these places, like the ashes and the souls and everything you need to get strong.
That's just my opinion. I feel like Claire Obscure... I don't know. There's no reason for it not to have a minimap. It has a minimap on the main... on the main... map. I don't understand why it wouldn't have one. Or at least let me lock the compass. Please. Victor, you haven't played expedition 33 yet. No, no. Do you plan to play it? Possibly. There's absolutely, I can see a future where I play some of, if not all of this video.
I'm going to be really curious for your thoughts on this because you're so independent in your takes. That's a good way to put it. Well, we're an independent outlet. We do independent journalism around here. Yeah. We have some opinions that sometimes just go off the beaten path. And you know what? I respect that. I think it's good. We're out. I appreciate that. We handle it. You're right. I am a bit of an iconoclast, aren't I? You're a rebel. Yeah, I mean, I'm...
I've obviously been keeping up with some trailers and watching people's reactions and seeing people play it, and I have no doubt that it is an excellent game for what it is doing, and I really appreciate that. Something that is brought up here in the notes is that Francois Maurice says this is intentional. There won't be minimaps in the levels. When there's a minimap, you can end up relying on it and we want players to discover the world as the expedition does it. That makes perfect sense. Um,
There's nothing to discover except for repetitive backgrounds. I'm sorry. What you said, Nadia, was there's too many opportunities to get lost. Who's the hater now? It's Nadia now. You said opportunities to get lost That is music to my ear. I love an opportunity to get lost. And I'm an FF11 lover and a Final Fantasy XIV 1.0 apologist. So I know a thing or two about getting lost in zones that reuse apps. that's fair And I know from looking at as much of this game as I have that...
They reuse a lot less than games like 11 and 14 1.0 do. This is a problem that was solved all the way back... by a little-known creator of the Tokimeki Memorial Drama series, Hideo Kojima, for his little game called Metal Gear Solid 3. So what happens? And this is what Francois is saying. And I fall into this all the time. I fall into this regularly in 14. A minimap, especially if that minimap has way markers of any kind.
can often just reduce what is a lush beautiful world into a tiny little mini you might as well be playing pacman It's what happens. You can play Metal Gear Solid 1 and 2 just using the mini-map if you wanted. I could play through those games if you cropped the screen to the top right corner. because
they make so much of the rest of the world redundant. And when you want to show off that world and you want to allow for opportunities to get lost and you want people to... discover their own ways to orient themselves and to decide on their own waypoints and waymarkers. I think getting rid of a minimap is an important part of that. And they didn't solve that until MGS3, where he decided, I'm going to put a little ring around the guy and...
and you deal with it. It had the mini-map, but it ran out of batteries, so then you'd have to go to the sonar pulse. and you'd hit the little stick in. That's kind of cool, though. That's like a really good implementation of a limited map system. I can deal with that.
sure it doesn't it doesn't give you a map though it just tells you where that's perfectly fine like it's something it's something like there's a comment we have here uh about how um Basically, these battles are pretty long, they can be pretty tough, and there's a lot of them, or there can be, and when you come out of them...
You're like, which direction was I going in? Where am I? I find that's a big problem with me. I backtrack a lot. And things like, okay, here's the flag. You go to the entrance. No, it doesn't. LOL. You're going somewhere else. You got to run to the entrance, but you might get turned around on the way. So this is what I'll say. I remember playing Mass Effect Remastered a while ago and getting really disoriented because I didn't have a waypoint to slavishly follow.
And in the moment, I was annoyed. And then I thought, well, this is okay, because I spend so much time in video games just going toward wherever the little dot is. And it's just like... Hi! It can really take you out of the game. It can break immersion, I think. And I think... RPGs are all about immersion. They're all about the exploration. They're all about... in some ways using mechanics to simulate a world and create a world they want you to feel
Part of that world. Part of that world. Is that how it is? Part of this world? Part of your world. I was slamming together a whole new world. With the Little Mermaid song, so I apologize. A whole new world. There we go. There's a lot of songs about worlds out there. They are. Yeah, exactly. That's not why I don't mistake. Yes. so yeah rpgs are about creating a world and i think that comes with some friction and They say in that quote that in Expedition 33, the people who came before you...
were doing their best to create things and, you know, they were putting ladders down and whatnot. There's not going to be a mini-map. In this game, it doesn't make sense to have a mini-map from a storytelling standpoint. So I respect that decision. At the same time... When I'm flying around in the overworld and I'm trying to find an optional dungeon and I keep flipping back and forth.
to the big map and the overworld and i'm like where the heck am i going where are the actual dungeons which are not clearly the actual map is not very well implemented See, I think having optional dungeons that are difficult to find is lovely. I think that's fantastic. I can't tell the difference between an optional dungeon and a regular dungeon. Oh, is there any sort of... They kind of blend together. They all have interesting names.
sometimes you'll come up to an area that'll say danger don't go in and i'll go oh i probably shouldn't go in there i will die in one shot i will get one shot i'm trying to grind at the moment You said something really interesting there, where it's like, okay, there have been previous expeditions, they have mapped the way, and obviously it's not a full map. You could work with that. You could have a really good map system with that. I like that idea. It's not complete, of course.
but you are mapping for the ones who come after. I think that's a lot more interesting and effective than... you know, okay, no map at all because you're in the world, F you. It's just, I think it's a better artistic statement. The problem, and this has been brought up in the chat as well, is that
It comes down to you. How do you feel? How is your sense of direction? How much time do you want to spend stumbling from point A to point B? Victor loves his friction. Erotica lovers like their friction. Are we going to get demonetized? Sorry. Yeah, so it comes down to personal preference. It's actually an interesting divide.
what makes gaming a different art form than movies, music, television, because you have to have an interactive element, and that's where everything can go either incredibly well or kind of wrong. And in this case, it's like, well... It depends on your outlook, and I suppose that's art. Yeah, I think it's another branch of the argument I think I have against prescriptive versus descriptive experience.
If you're going into a game or gallery or a theater experience or a performance and you're deciding what it should have as opposed to what is there. And whether that works or not is a very different kind of conversation. I think it's perfectly reasonable to be critical of the fact that there are no mini maps if that is not one's personal jam. But I think the fact that...
You know, we can talk about death of the author as much as we want, but also when the guy comes out and says, oh yeah, we purposely left out Minnie Mouse. It's not an oversight. It's a feature. No, it's not an oversight. Yeah. But it's a good feature. That's the conversation. Well, that's prescriptive. I like the minimalism of the screen. I like that there aren't UI elements on it unless you decide to hit a button.
And could they have put a minimap on that screen? Maybe it might have cluttered it up a little bit. Might have kind of broken the immersion a little bit. It makes not having a mini map in the bottom right corner allows me to focus on the world itself and really take in the details. A couple episodes ago I was A little bit critical of the art style in Act 1. I was saying, I don't know, it kind of makes me think of Unreal Engine 5 tech demo as it were. People were mad.
Now that I've gone considerably farther in Claire Obscure Expedition 33, I can say that there are reasons for all of this and the very abstract painterly quality of the world is worth taking in i suppose so i think that maybe um i don't see any harm in say making the option there and even starting people with no minimap if you want them to like
get into it for a little while and you know then they either hear on the internet or who knows maybe some in-game thing oh there is a mini-map if you want it But if you've already kept it shut off until that point, you might continue playing like they intended. And if you're like me and you're an idiot, then you can find your way to the exit and get on life. Sure, I think that- That seems very in the same type of conversation as difficulty modes from soft games. It is.
You are playing a game and this game expects you to flex a muscle that maybe you don't in a lot of other games. And as I'm playing through Vagrant Story, I have come to appreciate a game where you go in expecting... certain guardrails or certain bumpers in your bowling alley and it's saying no those actually aren't here and you Maybe you're a person who is good at bowling or not, and that means you have to adapt to the fact that It's just not an option. as an FF11 player.
I was going into it, and I assumed that, oh, well, I'm going to want to download some of the third-party mods, give myself a mini-map, things like that, just to smooth the experience over a little bit. But I said, I'm going to play the first. chunk, just vanilla. I'm going to use just whatever's in the games client. And I realized that it is very deliberately designed and I learned to
Remember landmarks. I learned to navigate. I learned this geography, like going to any town or going to a new hiking trail or whatever. I learned to figure out how to navigate. space, like a person who doesn't have a map. Like our ancestors have done for... Clare Obscura doesn't really have those landmarks. Like, if those areas did have more landmarks. It always has a monolith. It points you to the north basically. Most of the time it does a typical hub and spokes design in a level.
where you get to an area, and then you can go left or right, and then you can come back to the main area. It circles you around. I think it's very deliberate in the way that it actually, especially at levels. It was actually kind of rare that I got full-on lost in a level in Expedition 33. No, I'm always lost. I lost. Then, then, then, uh, go to, uh, uh, uh, tutorial on orienteering. Go to...
learn something about how people navigate spaces that they are unfamiliar with. Dude, I just want to play the French video game. I just want to go... Right, but that French video game doesn't have the thing in it, so like...
Learn, adapt, grow! Here's the thing. I'm a person who really loves to learn. And that's something I'm discovering about myself. I love to learn. But if I'm not interested in learning something, I will not learn it. I am not interested in orientering in the least. I never have. That's probably why I can't find my way out of a paper bag. Eczema isn't always obvious, but it's real. And so is the relief from everyone.
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I did orienteering when I was in middle school, actually. So I guess somewhere deep inside me, I learned how to use a compass. Yeah, my mom once asked me if I wanted to go to, we have a, I don't know, the Girl Guides in Canada set of Girl Scout. She said, do you want to go? And I'm like, no.
I wanna play Nintendo, and that's why I don't know anything, that's why I can't go anywhere. I only North, East, South, West live in Toronto, and the streets, whichever direction they go in, that's North, East, South, West. Very, very easy city to navigate. In real life, I was thinking recently, how in God's name did I live in Japan without Google Maps? How did I find anything? And I thought back to it, and it was like, people gave me directions.
and I knew to go to X train station and find my way there. In a way, in a weird way. If Google Maps went away tomorrow, mass chaos, mass hysteria. Sure. Everybody would be like, where am I? How do I get to places? What do I do? When I first got married and my husband drove from North Carolina up to here, we printed out directions on MapQuest.
except he screwed it up and he's put down street instead of avenue for our home address and it led us right into toronto rush hour traffic on 5 p.m and we wanted to kill ourselves and my father to this day says how did you went to the 401 on a friday on on at 5 o'clock, wow, how are you not dead? How did that happen? That's my direction story. When I went skiing, I was driving toward Mammoth. And Google Maps did not know that a stretch of the highway existed. So it directed us off road.
And we were literally going This doesn't seem right we got to a dead end Somebody had actually gone into a ravine and totaled their car because they had been following Google Maps. And then they tried to do a three-point turn and accidentally went into the ravine. We were able to get back out, get back on the road, and lo and behold, the highway existed. But Google Maps didn't know it.
And that's why we need mini-maps. Conversation over. No, mini-maps lied to you. They lied to you. I got boogers on me now. Yeah, go ahead. Go ahead, Victor. I was just going to say, this is something I was inspired many years ago to do by Jeremy Parrish. is when he went back and he was playing, I think, Metal Gear on NES and Metroid, and he was mapping them out as he was going, and he was tweeting about it as he was doing. And I thought, ah, Metal Gear on NES is a game that I love.
And I thought, I really don't understand it spatially. And I would like to. So I took a cue from him, and I started mapping out my experience of playing Metal Gear. And all of a sudden, I understood so much more about the construction of Outer Heaven itself and the surrounding area. I made all my little markers for where items are and where I could come back to later.
Truly, it's analog Etrian Odyssey. I am understanding a key difference between us here. Kat, did you like to draw maps? Did you like to map your way through your game? I didn't like it, but it is part of the heritage of the genre. Yes, absolutely. We were playing wizardry. There were quality of life improvements, but it was practically essential.
to map your way through that game by the way wizardry on the phone is brilliant i'm just saying it i can't play on my phone because it makes it burn but i do want to play on pc even though it's gotcha or not it's a great game and i'm not a wizardy fan but it does look like it when i was a kid it's like okay of course i played the same game as y'all did i loved simon's quest because i loved get lost and i didn't really want to map where i was going
and it was just a fun experience for me. Getting lost is fun. Yeah. When it's fun, though, sometimes it's not fun. Simon's Quest, you were always finding weird shit, and I was still new to video games, so I was like, oh, holy shit, is that vampire zombie? It was fun, but generally...
When a game, it requires, if I saw grid paper, I'd be triggered because I think, oh god, math. Now I'm expected to do homework. Whereas someone like Victor or Jeremy Parrish is like, oh boy, grid paper, I'm going to make a map. I don't think like that. You don't have to think like that, though. You can think like you'd... Look, Simon's Quest doesn't always have cool shit around every corner. Sometimes it just has something that kills you and you wasted time. That's cool. Yeah!
Here's the thing, though. Here's a big caveat. Wait a second. No, big caveat. When you die in Simon's Quest, you are put exactly where you died. And that was a huge thing for me because I sucked at video games and just being able to... start or I die.
You lose your hearts, but big deal. Like, that was a huge thing for me. That made me want to explore because I could keep going without being sent back to start, which I get frustrated very easily. Hearts can be very important in Simon's Quest. They can. That's a penalty. If you don't need them, then, like, that's fine. Who cares? You bought your whip, you upgraded, you're good. If you haven't, though, that's... You gotta go grind for hearts in Simon's Quest. But at...
If you're new to video games, it was a fun experience for me. Not perfect by any means. Okay. There was friction, but it was the friction I liked. It was friction when you were a kid. Channel some of that kid Nadia back into your soul. Find that joy. Find that thrill of exploration. I don't know. I'm just asking Claire. I'm scared. I can't see a goddamn thing. There's no landmarks that are sussable. I'm sorry. I just invented a word, I guess. No, I like it.
It's just, I don't know if I don't have that knack for seeing things like Kat, you just pointed out, hey, look at the monolith, that points north. Holy shit, you just gave me something to work with. I never thought about that, you know, I don't, it's just. See, we're learning, we're growing.
He does a great job of utilizing the horizon to direct you. I think a lot of the best games have a marker far out that you want to walk toward i think god of war interestingly enough kind of did that with uh the mountain that you're heading toward for example yeah but i so This has been a very non-RPG week. A lot of the biggest games that have been talked about, GTA 6, Death Stranding 2, Doom the Dark Ages, very not-RPGs.
And the reason I bring them up is I think it makes me think a lot about why I like RPGs. And I think one of the biggest reasons I like RPGs is that... They're not streamlined within an inch of their life. They're not this very curated experience. They're not an amusement park ride. where I just go to the next sign. It's not playing an interactive Disneyland experience. It is a game that invites me into its story. And so that necessarily comes with friction, I think, sometimes and inconveniences.
And I think RPGs are the only genre, the side of strategy, which I consider a cousin to RPGs, where streamlining is a bad word. You gotta come play FF11 with me. Just give it a try. Everything you're saying. Dude, I gotta play Final Fantasy XIV first. In fact, I think I'm going to play it tonight. Hell yeah.
Cool. I'll play it too. I'm going to play FFXIV tonight. Oh, I can't play tonight. That's what I'm going to do. I'll be on tonight. I'll be on tonight. You want to play together, Victor? My heart flutters. I would love to. Wanna play Blizzball? Wanna play Blizzball? Wanna play Blizzball? Wanna play Blizzball? Honestly, Kat, you should at least take up triple try.
Then you'll never leave the game. I love that game. I have been obsessed with... I'm still obsessed with Pokemon TCG Pocket as the problem. I keep forgetting to draw. Thanks for reminding me. We were talking about Elder Ring earlier. I think the FromSoftware games are another great example of A series that just throws you into a world and says, well, figure it out. They do it so well. I have no complaints about how FromSoft does their thing.
It's another game where they use landmarks really well as sort of the herb tree. Is that what it is? Yeah. I think it's in the center of the world. And it's just, like I said, the map has so many little... The thing I love about the map in Elden Ring is that it looks like it was drawn by someone in trouble, someone who was really rushing. So you go to those weird spots they left and see what they are, and I think that's just great game design.
i thought breath of the wild did a great job of balancing it out where they had a map but A lot of it was covered up. And so you are encouraged to explore. Zelda, though, is really interesting because when you think about it, we all have these kind of ingrained instincts about where things should be in Zelda. Death Mountain's always to the north. Hylia's always to the... east um south is whatever most of the time um yeah but southwest is a desert
Southwest is the desert. Yeah, you're right. Lost Woods to the west. Kakariko Village to the west. Unless they flip it like they did in Twilight Princess. Oh god, did they do that? as an affront to their left-handed players everywhere. We exist. We exist. You're left-handed, Victor? I am, yeah. I got some Victor Hunter lore right here. My father and my sister are also left-handed. You're not left-handed, you're right-handed. I'm a righty. And I'm mixed. We've covered the perspective.
I'm ambidextrous when it comes to racket sports. and that's the only facts of the blood god is on the spectrum totally is very on the spectrum as as as it gets as much as it gets So, this is all to say that... Let's talk more about maps. To prove that we're not on the spectrum. I like maps. This is all to say that Expedition 33 is RPG heritage, right? Going all the way back to the most classical of dungeon crawlers, we were making our own map.
and it was okay that there was not a mini-map that was updating for us. Ideally... The elements that help you are diegetic. They are a tool that you have, an element, even your character opening up a map or something. That's cool. I'm into it. Could they have done it better in Expedition 33? Maybe.
I did find it kind of annoying to go back and forth, but I think it's a small inconvenience for what is otherwise, in my opinion, actually a very special experience. And oh my god, that world is so huge. Flying around on it. Oh my god. And I love its take on the airship. Sorry for the spoiler. I mean, it's a fucking Final Fantasy game. It gets an airship, okay? I think they showed us in the trailers. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So this is all...
This is all kind of our, I guess our final thoughts on Expedition 33 because it's been out for a few weeks now. of us have rolled credits. I actually went and did a spoiler cast over on Kind of Funny. If you didn't go check that out, you should go check that one out. There's plenty of other conversations to be had about it. I think we're going to do a spoiler cast.
I think Derek wants to do one. We'll get there. Maybe for the charity stream? That could be fun. That'd be a good incentive. That'd be kind of interesting. Any other thoughts on Expedition 33 before we move on? Magnific- Magnifique. Magnifique. I don't know. I like it. It's a good game. I'm going to finish it. I just think that the mini map situation does not really add to any kind of artistic statement.
Interesting. Or disagree. Because, well, I will say the other... RPG that released recently that is map-centric and is not afraid to be full of waypoints and things that I genuinely love is Xenoblade X. That is a game that is designed around its map and the fact that you see what's on the map and is...
But that is also diegetic too, because you are literally surveying the landscape and they have divided the landscape up into these compartmentalized zones so that they can further... expand the human colony on this planet so like That is the exact opposite of Expedition 33, but is still part of the world and makes it feel diegetic or like a very conscious decision that fits.
the circumstances. So there's room. There's room for all over the place, but it's just whether it's a deliberate choice or if you are like Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, just going through a checklist of things and waypoints. But Chadley. I love Chadley. I love Chadley. I would protect him with my life. He's the little brother I never had. Aww. Team Chadley. Talk about people on the spectrum who you just want to take such good care of.
I love him. I think we would be best friends. I think I could listen to him talk about the nature all day long. I only just met him, but if anything would happen to him, I would kill everybody in this room and then myself. 100%. all right that's it for our discussion of friction and rpgs i think this is a very rich conversation we were only talking about maps we could talk about friction and battle systems all day long oh god maybe that's a part two
For more of that, tune in to our future Pantheon of the Blood God episode of Vagrant Story. I thought you were going to say Final Fantasy 2, but sure. Yeah, I know. Yeah! Yeah! FF2 for the Pantheon! That's a pandemonium if I've ever heard one. I cast it down into the flames! You do go to pandemonium, but that is not a pandemonium game. Hear me lions, follow me. Okay, it's time now for a series of random encounters. Does it ever feel like you're a marketing professional just
Well, with LinkedIn ads, you can know you're reaching the right decision makers. You can even target buyers by job title, industry, vai trazer já Get started today and see how you can avoid the void and reach the right buyers with LinkedIn ads. credit on your next campaign get started at linkedin.com slash results terms and conditions apply It's the Smucker's Uncrustables podcast with your host, Uncrustables.
is rough around the edges please welcome crust thanks for having me today's topic he's round with soft pillowy bread hey filled with delicious pb and j are you talking about yourself And you can take them anywhere. Why'd you invite... And we are out of time. Are you really cutting me off? Uncrustables are the best part of this. Power all developers have removed the ability to summon via PALSphere as its lawsuit with Pokemon continues saying that
More disappointing removals like this will continue as litigation continues. Look forward to more removals. We'll remove features until morale improves. basically wow that sounds dark that's very 2025. Expedition 33 patch 1.2.3 is here. Nerfing, among other things, Myel's Stendhal move. People have been doing just the most insane damage in Expedition 33. That's pretty crazy. They're one-shotting super bosses with 70 million damage in one hit.
Somebody did two billion damage. That's how you know it's a good game. I gotta look that up. Now that's a game. Yeah. That's breaking. The break. Yeah. The director said that Final Fantasy VIII is one of their favorite RPGs, and I'm like, it all makes sense now. Oh, there's a problem right there. Oh, yeah. That's great.
it's a chef's kiss and when you think about like the way that you can move the pictos around to break that game it starts to make a lot heck of a lot of sense Elden Ring was successful at so successful! Over the last two years, at Katakawa, their parent company still expects a 60% profit decline in 2025, despite the release of Elden Ring Night Rain and the Nintendo Switch 2.
Level of 5 has announced a Switch 2 version of Fantasy Life, The Girl Who Steals Time, and will have an upgrade path. Speaking of which, Erica was playing Bravely Default over at PAX East and says that it's really good. Now that is a game where the mini-map kills it. That is a game, especially on, I don't know how they do it on the Switch 2 version.
But the 3DS version, that bottom screen as your minimap with the icons for treasures and stuff on it means you can just play that game from the bottom screen and then you would never even be looking at all of the beautiful artwork on the top. I can do both. I have two eyes. Yeah, but it diverts your focus so often. That is a game...
It has made the game superfluous because the mini-map is so detailed and full of information. Victor, I have a question for you quickly. Did you play Bravely Second? I did. I love Bravely Second. Tell me if I'm remembering this right or if I'm completely on crack or something. Yeah. Okay, so the character who speaks French, what's her name? Magnolia. Magnolia. You meet the French people on the ground. Did they speak Quebecois French? Am I right?
I feel like this might be a Berenstain Bears thing. I have to go back and play it. Because I also feel like I remember that. And I think it was mentioned in an interview somewhere. I thought that was brilliant. I think it's in there. And if it is, it's brilliant. But I also cannot remember. It's a French accent, but it's not that. Lance Hart is our friend from Quebec, so I'm gonna take his word for that. That's disappointing.
It's going to be so funny when the Switch 2 comes out and I'm playing a frickin' Nintendo 3DS game from 15 years ago or whatever on it. I was just thinking, I'm going to get the Switch 2 and that's when I'm going to get Xenoblade Chronicles X because I got an upgrade. Yeah! Old games are great, guys! Yeah, I mean, if they stopped making games right now... I would have a backlog to literally last a lifetime. So I'd probably be okay. I could finally play through Final Fantasy XIV in its entirety.
i'd still be angry though i'd bang my heels against the floor sorry we did get expedition 33 this year so i can't complain too much there's always a good surprise there's always a surprise right here speaking of old games and nintendo switch final fantasy 7 rebirth appears to set to follow remake onto the switch 2 based on comments from director naoki hamaguchi And filming has wrapped on Fallout Season 2. But as we are recording this podcast, we are getting tons of new cars.
In the Magic the Gathering set for Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth. Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth. For the Magic the Gathering Final Fantasy collab. And let's react right now to some of them. Okay. Hey, Edit Bay Victor here. If you're sensitive to Magic the Gathering spoilers, head to the one hour and two minute mark to start the tavern. Okay, bye. So we have Cain Highwind, Traitorous Dragoon. Hell yeah. He's better. He did better. He's better. Three mana. Black.
And here's his description. Jump. During your turn, Cain has flying. Okay, I'm already ready to play. That's pretty good. Pretty fun. No, that's good. That's good. Being flying is good. Whenever Cain deals combat damage to a player, that player gains control of Cain. If they do, you draw that many cards, create that many tapped treasure tokens, then lose that much life. Wow. I don't know what that means in magic language. Is he a good card?
Whenever Cain deals combat damage to a player, that player gains control of Cain. So they're using flavor. to kind of be like well kane you never know which side he's gonna be on yeah yeah that's so in magic parlance they would say that there's a lot of flavor to this card But on the flip side... Don't talk to Nadia about Kane's flavor. But you...
But if they control Cain, you get to draw cards, create tapped treasure tokens, and lose life. I don't really understand this card, actually. Somebody break it down for me! I'm looking at the court retweets and everyone's just like, my boy Kane gets to betray me, even an MTG sad face. Yeah, it's true. This is a cool one. Yoshitaka Amano is back for Magic the Gathering. and he is doing the art for Kafka.
So I pre-ordered the Terra set because I wanted all the Final Fantasy 6 cards and because Celeste is the backup commander for that set. And she actually looks pretty good. Here's Kefka's text. So he is blue, black, and red. There are terms for this, but I don't know all these terms. I just started playing magic. Blue, black, red, and also two additional colorless mana.
Whenever Kafka enters or attacks, each player discards a card. Then you draw a card for each card type among cards discarded this way. And then for eight mana, each opponent sacrifices a permanent of their choice. Transform Kefka, activate only as a sorcerer. And then you can transform him into one-winged angel Kefka. A six-winged angel. I was conflating Sephiroth with Kevka, just like I conflated a whole new world and a part of this world. A lot of angels in Final Fantasy.
As God Kefka, he's flying, and whenever an opponent loses life during your turn, you draw that many cards. Oh, that's kind of fun, actually. Interesting. It's expensive, but I'm into it. And I also, big fan of this art, actually. That's lovely. Big fan of the Amano art.
oh man they've got like uh valley garbond the full art is gorgeous i really want that oh god yeah valley garondia aka tritok from final fantasy 6 a gorgeous gorgeous card one of my favorite estrus slash summons i just always loved his design He's there. This Terra art is so good too. They have an Asperterra. Naked. Asperterra is an enchantment. That's a lot of fun. Create a token that's a copy of a target non-legendary enchantment you control.
Gains haste if it's a saga put up to three lower counters on it sacrifice it at the beginning of your next end step This the set is looking so overpowered. It's already did you know that it's already the most successful Magic the Gathering set ever. Yeah, already. Final Fantasy is back, baby. Final Fantasy is cool now.
I hope so. Well, it's not just for us nerds. They have a card for Angelo. That's the dog, isn't it? The Angelo token is so cute. Thank God. That's very, very good. Commune with beavers. Yes, I speak beaver. Everyone. Don't confuse that. Don't confuse her beavers. I'm talking about the beavers that like... I love that they have a fishing card, honestly. Oh, they have Zanarkand? Zanarkand is a land. Now that's cool.
Sorcery. Create a 1-1 colorless hero creature token. Put a plus 1 plus 1 counter on it for each land you control. This land enters tapped and it can add forest. Very cool. The rule is if you play Xanarkand, you have to start playing the piano theme from Final Fantasy X to Xanarkand.
Oh, that's such a nice... On your phone, so... You gotta, like, play it and put it in the middle. It'd be like, wait, wait, pull up a YouTube video and put it there in the middle of this table. Just let it play. Titting at your speakers. There's Bahamut as a summon that will just straight up destroy a Creature Oh man, it has Mega Flare. This creature deals damage equal to the total mana value of other permanents you control to each opponent. Oh my god. So...
If you have a board that's absolutely flooded, you can do crazy damage. So yeah, this sounds extremely OP, but funny. Yeah, I have some questions. So why do you think people are... buying this and what is the chicken and egg scenario of did they make it strong so people would buy it Are people buying it and it also happens to be strong? And are these magic players who are buying it because it's strong? Or are these Final Fantasy fans coming out of the woodwork to buy Final Fantasy? Why not both?
It looks awesome. I would buy that card. I would buy them all, but I don't play Magic. Well, here's my thing. There has been a Final Fantasy trading card game around for about 10 years now. also has tons of original art from Final Fantasy illustrators and people outside of Square that have beautiful full art cards that every once in a while, I'll, I don't know, I'll drop 20 or 30 bucks.
and pick up some of the cards that I think are really pretty from a set. I don't plan on playing. I just like picking up a full art card every once in a while that has a character I love. And it's relatively cheap, even for like... I mean, there are some cloud cards that are $200 or a Tifa that's $200, whatever. You'll get that in any trading card game scene. For most of the cards that I want, even the full art cards are maybe four, seven. I think the most I spent on one was $12.
So... Is this going to cannibalize the pre-existing Final Fantasy trading card game, or do you think this might bring people who... play final fantasy into the card game world or or will it raise awareness of I think a lot of people are getting into magic because of Final Fantasy. And earlier, Bloomberg got a lot of people into magic. It got me into magic.
Where I was like, wow, these cute animals. I want to make a deck around them. Right. And now I'm... Go ahead, Nadia. Oh, I lost my train of thought. Never mind. Oh, okay. I remember. I was just going to say, I completely forgot that the Final Fantasy card game... Me too, actually. I just remember it starting. I saw it at Experience Share, and I was like, oh, yeah, that exists. Yeah. When it started, it had a lot of...
regular key art, and I just wasn't enthralled. Yeah, the first few sets, I think that did it a disservice in the early years. It would recycle a lot of pre-existing assets. And then once they got a few years in, they realized, oh, the original art is going to bring people in and the full art cards of that original art is going to bring people in. Just like a Pokemon, man.
Yeah, yeah, or full art cards of pre-existing art. Like, there's some beautiful Amano stuff. There's Gen Kobayashi, who's the... designer for The World Ends With You and Paranormacite. He does a ton of those cards. Akira Oguro, who did the FF4 novelization and the DS remake. After Years and Final Fantasy Dimensions. It's time to Final Fantasy Dimensions reference. There's our reference. I'll put that in post.
Cat, we have a running joke. We're on Charlie and Dropouts. We always bring up Final Fantasy. She's looking at the phone. I see. I'm reading all the cards. I was reading about Una and Zidane. I was reading about the fire magic instant Vivi's in this one. He's a red-blue. Also, that was a very cat thing to be like looking at my phone going, ah. No, but to your question earlier, I, oh, Kucha's in this one. Yeah, Kucha's great. So Final Fantasy IX love.
so you can so i guess if you want to do uh but kuja's red black Sure. Um... I think that, to your earlier point, I think that a lot of people have been getting into Magic over the past year. Certainly, anecdotally, a huge number of my friends have not played Magic ever, including me. have picked it up and it wasn't just that magic the gathering was going to be in final fantasy it was just I don't know. It's a big game. It's very popular. The arts are really gorgeous. and
So yeah, I finished my Squirrel deck the other day, and now I'm going, I want to make a Karlak deck. I can make a Karlak deck from Baldur's Gate 3, and I can put dragons in it? That's sick. I'm going to do that. I need to come up with a deck for Final Fantasy. I kind of want to do Celeste. I think that is the way. Commander is really fun at parties to play with your friends.
I'm actually going to get together with some friends tomorrow and play some commander and try out the squirrel decks. Now what? For the layperson. What does that mean? What is a commander? What is a squirrel deck? What are squirrels? Commander is a variant of Magic the Gathering. Actually, our friend Shivam. was involved in its popularization. It is a subtype. So normally you play cards with your friends, right? It's just one-on-one with the pre-constructed deck. Commander is a four-player game.
and you have one car that is called a Commander. that is always on the table and you can summon them and so what you do so that means that you don't have to draw into your commander they're always there one way or another and so you summon them in and instead of having like i think it's like 30 cards per deck you have 100. And instead of being able to have doubles, you have only singles. So every card is unique. That's pretty...
Yeah, so you can create and one of the defining characteristics of Commander is that you just have these absurdly powerful decks And by turn three, you can be doing crazy things with your cars, but so is everybody else. So a defining feature, I think, of Commander is sitting there and watching. It's like, and I played this card, and I played this card, and I played this card.
then everybody has their board wiped except for me and then I played this card and everybody takes 20 damage and I draw 10 cards and I played this card and you're like oh cool anyway i'm drinking my cider and having a good time so uh my squirrel deck is their commander it's chatterfang squirrel general and it is a token deck And it's just about creating a billion squirrels and swarming my opponents underneath them. I like that. I approve.
Just more squirrels. More and more and more squirrels. Squirrels for days. Squirrels forever. Also, peregrine toque is in there for some reason. So that's fun. Sometimes dragons show up. Sure. And sometimes there are dragons. I'm going to say, if someone out there is listening, And their main purpose for getting into Magic the Gathering Final Fantasy trading card game expansion extravaganza is to find cards of characters they like. And we already know there is a premium on this set. Maybe.
Go check out eBay for some Final Fantasy TCG cards that might have those characters on them and might be cheaper for you. This is just a public service announcement to people who like looking at pictures of their favorite video game guys. Yeah, I mean, I'm playing with friends, and I'm very casual about it. I have... You can spend so much money on a Magic the Gathering deck. I'm talking thousands of dollars. It's horrifying. I'm not willing to spend that much money on Magic.
I am very choosy about which sets and which characters I am going to build around. And at the end of the day, I'm going to build a fairly good casual deck. and play with some friends and have a good time and not worry too much about it. And I think... And it's cool that I can do that around a Final Fantasy character of my choice that I really like. And I like all the nostalgia around it. I like that there's literally a fishing card from Final Fantasy XV.
I need to see more Final Fantasy 8 decks, actually. That'd be really great. They're all over the place in terms of actual... Oh, Fangs! Yay, there's a Fang card. I need a lightning card, too. Fang is black with two mana. Oh, here's the lightning card. Red and white. So she's kind of aggro. And first strike, trample, and lifelink. So first strike means that you can...
When you're attacking a card, you get to deal damage first and potentially kill them. Lifelink restores your health and Trample just runs over enemies. Whenever lightning deals combat damage to a player, until your next turn, if a source would deal damage to that player or a permanent that player controls, it deals double that damage instead. So it's very, like, very aggro. i'm into that it's very oh oh and that full art is gorgeous really gorgeous
Anyway, this is me reacting to all the Magic the Gathering cards. I'm excited. I can't wait. We're going to be doing a bunch of coverage here on Axe of Blood God. We might even be playing it a little bit. We'll see. But I think it'll be available in Arena, so I'll definitely be playing there too. But I really want to make... It would be so fun to make a deck around Lightning. She's...
Particularly my favorite Final Fantasy character. She's great! That's it for me geeking out about magic. Let's talk a little bit about things that Victor is geeking out about. Soccer Awards 2. Being out in English. Hey. Okay. It's been a big and change I'm gonna say look all three of these games fall under an umbrella. They are not gameplay.
centric umbrellas however all of these all three of these games play very very differently they have roots in rpgs um but they are all simply a shoujo game This has been an ode to the PC-98 because we got Doku say in English, which is the dating adventure game that created the genre. This is a big one. We've had the 18 plus version in English on PCs for a couple years now, but the fact that they have now made a home console port...
much in the same way they did back in the 90s. Originally came out in 92, I believe, PC-98. Obviously, the Arrowgate version. If you want to learn more about that, hey, go listen to the console RPG quest episode with Audi all about the PC-98. That was great. That was great. I love to have him back. It's really great. Please, honestly, pause this, go give it a listen. Wonderful episode. One of my favorites. So then, of course,
The dating sim explodes in popularity. Doku Say becomes incredibly popular, incredibly influential. We wouldn't have the other two games on this list if Doku Say had not been created. um because of that popularity it gets ports to home consoles The censorship rules and regulations are very different. So it is an all-ages version. It's, for all intents and purposes, the PG-13 version of DocuSync. Of Robocop. Yeah, yeah. Still a great game.
Well, I say great game. Your mileage may vary. It is an influential and important game in the history of adventure games. dating sims, and some RPG stuff in general when we talk about games with romance. So that is out in English, on the Switch, and PS4. huge news because there's also a Dokusei 2 remake in the works and then hopefully they'll reach the third game Kakusei which is also excellent then
This one is Japan only for now, unfortunately, but Tokimeki Memorial 1. Tokimeki Memorial Forever with you, specifically. The sort of Saturn NPS1 version. That, if you have... watched Tim Rogers' Action Button review of Tokimeki Memorial, which everyone should, you will know is the best version of Tokimeki Memorial. Now. I take umbrage with this Tokimeki Memorial also got two versions on the Game Boy Color.
This is Tokimeki Memorial Pocket. And they crushed those games, every single aspect of those games, into two Game Boy Color games. Cool. It's incredible. Brilliant. Absolutely astounding. Now, because of data limitations, they split up the roster. So they took half of the girls and put them in the culture version, and the other half of the girls put them in the sports version. And if you know Tokimeki Memorial...
Its difficulty is predicated on how many girls you meet and how many of those relationships you have to juggle. So, to balance out these games, they added new exclusive girls. to the Game Boy Color version, that have never been seen anywhere else. They have their own unique stories, they have their own unique personalities, including a character named Patricia McGrath, who you can only start to romance if your English is good enough. because she's from Australia. Well that leaves me out.
These... These girls unfortunately are not in this remake, which is understandable. This would introduce balance issues. I get it. However, they have done me personally the kindness of including these girls in some of the background art in specific locations. They did that just for me. There's also a really good art gallery in the game that has a bunch of art from the Game Boy Color versions. Truly, just Go look
go to Spriter's resource or wherever and go look at some of the art from this Game Boy Color game. It's beautiful. It's up there with the Sakura Wars Game Boy games. And there is also, there's a docusay Mahjong game on Game Boy Color that is also upsettingly beautiful. I'm Suddenly Beautiful describes a lot of Game Boy Color games, I find. Yeah. Just incredible work.
Pixel art from the absolute ma- I'm not going to go too far into it, but I'm dabbling in GB Studio, which is the software that is making... programming games for Game Boy readily available. And I will say I am learning the intricacies of color and pixel limit. on the Game Boy Color and seeing what they did in some of these games, specifically with these big portraits and anything that has a visual novel style presentation.
is actually incredible so i yeah so what you're saying is that we need to do pantheon episodes for all of these games I almost made these my selects when I had my month last. they... If you could pick one, which one would you pick? Would it be Sakura Wars 2 so that you could find redemption? In what world do you think I want to put myself through? Oh, Victor, I'm sorry we broke your heart. And Radical Defect, yes, Karakaro Cowboy does roll. It's a great game.
Not a goddamn chance am I putting Soccer Wars 2 on that list for me to be slaughtered publicly the way I was. I'm sorry. It's fine, it's not, but it's fine. It's not, but it's fine. Um... Uh... This is a tricky thing, because Dokuse I don't think needs to be in a pantheon. It has aged poorly in a lot of ways culturally. I think gameplay-wise, it's perfectly fun. I think I would still recommend people check it out because it is interesting just from a genealogical perspective. I think...
Tokimeki Memorial, unfortunately the only English version is the Super Famicom version, which is truncated in a lot of ways. I do know that some people were looking at English fan translations of the pocket games, just because programming those is a lot easier than figuring out. how dialogue is handled in the Saturn and PS1 versions. However... There's also a fan translation of Tokimeki Memorial 2.
And Tokimeki Memorial 2 is maybe one of the greatest games of all time. That is a shoe-in for parents. I think... That's the one. That's the one. The fact that Tim Rogers, in his review of Tokimeki Memorial 1, mentions that it's not even the best one. He alludes to the fact that Tokimemo 2 is truly, truly one of the greatest games.
It's like Boku no Natsu Yasumi. A lot of people would say that the original is not the best one. It's the one on the PS2. 2 is fantastic. And 2 has an English fan translation. It's wonderful. Go play Boku no Natsu Yasumi 2. I think I will. Thank you. Now that I have your permission. Thank you for the invitation, Victor. That's to the wider audience. The biggest news is that Sakura Wars 2 fan translation has been released for the Sega Saturn. I am playing it. It's delightful.
If you liked Sakura Wars 1 and... If you didn't, I don't know how to help you. You're dead to me. Yeah. Well, I would play these games, but I'm sinking $2,000 into a lightning deck, so... $2,000? Is that what they're asking? No. Oh, good. That frightened me. But, yes. yeah well lucky for you the fan translation of soccer wars 2 is free And if you want to rip your own copy of a real disc, you can get it off of Yahoo Auctions Japan for like 10 bucks.
Yay! That's the joy of being a freak like me who's interested in all these Japanese games because the market has not found them yet. Yet. Yet. Yet. It's only a matter of time. I learned. I've been going to Experience Share a decent amount recently, and they've been getting into cards a lot, too. They have tons of magic sets now, like pre-cons and everything, because their owner just got obsessed with Pokemon cards and magic cards. And he said... that... The cost of Pokemon Black and White
is going up in the collector's market because the next set is about Pokemon Black and White. Wow. Yeah, so that's the power that cards can have on the collectability. of a game. So just pray that these games never get their own card games, is what I'm saying. I can't wait for the Tokimeki Memorial Magic the Gathering expansion. You know it's coming. I mean, I'm in.
I'm in. I would be there. I actually have, I have an order coming from Japan. I usually, I do like a little import once or twice a year. I do have an order coming in that has a bunch of TokiMemo and Dokusei trading cards. Unfortunately, it is only a matter of time before some stupid thing like SpongeBob SquarePants gets their own collection for Magic the Gathering, and we'll know that it's over. I also saw this reel. I was like, I play Godzilla.
And they're augmented by Megatron. And I also play 8 mana on Kefka to enter god mode. Uh-huh. everything's fortnight it's all everything's fortnight now i kind of hate that actually as much as uh i'm as cool as it is to play final fantasy match the gathering crossovers have lost Much of their appeal not all their appeal. I am sitting here going being excited about a lightning card
in a Final Fantasy match. You know what actually seems to be a great card game that I'll get into if I had the time? It's Teppan. the Capcom card game, the arcs and lore on that are really good. Yeah, that's super fun. That's the only place you're getting Mega Man lore these days. Do you know that Berserk had a collab with Diablo 4?
Yeah. I believe it. I totally believe it. Yeah. I think the problem is these games lose all sense of identity. I made a point. Yes, I am making a Karelac deck, and I am making a Final Fantasy deck. But I kind of made a point of having a squirrel deck in Magic because I wanted a deck. That was about magic, the world of magic. And I don't like when these games, Diablo, whatever, lose all sense of identity. because they have to cram in i don't know homer simpson
Has Homer Simpson been magic yet? Goku's not been magic yet, has he? No. I'm not saying that collabs aren't bad. They can be good. I was playing Rift of the Necrodancer on my Switch, and it has a Celeste soundtrack. I'm buying the Celeste soundtrack. The Zelda version of that game is brilliant. One of my favorites.
uh oh god i had like four million different things pop up in my head that i wanted to talk Oh, speaking of Celeste, go play Maddie's new ROM hack of Super Mario World called Masterpiece. It is where you play as Sonic. It's a Kaizo Mario game where you play as Sonic. And all of the bumper art and the intro cutscenes and the box art for it was done by our graphic designer, Darcy D, who has also done a lot of work for Acts of the Blood God.
She did great work, and Maddie is a wonderful human being. Already better than Brain. That's so cool. I've got to go play this. I'm not the biggest fan of Kaizo games, but I do enjoy watching them. I do love the concept. I was at a party with Maddie a month or so ago, and we were talking about... Oh, what a flex. Sorry. I was at a party with Maddie. It was a birthday party. Okay. We're close personal friends, you see. We are not, but we do have some similarities in games we like.
Actually, okay, this was a birthday party for Chevy Ray, creator of Eichenfell, who Darcy D also did the box art for. So there's their connection there. This is all in the Blood God family, baby. Everything is Blood God now. Just wait until Nadia is a character in Fortnite. It'll be...
No, that's terrifying. Holy shit. Can you imagine playing yourself in a video game? It'd just be like the most uncanny valley. I don't know how wrestlers go out and they're like, hey, everyone, look at my action figure. I do that all the time, actually. It's called playing an RPG. Yeah! The crossover, at least with magic,
You can see the mechanics of these cards and thought and effort was put into what these characters are and what they mean. It's not quite the same as Fortnite, where you are literally just putting on a skin and this character is doing... completely out of character things. It's just there so you can point at the screen and go, that's my guy.
Yeah, no, it's totally true. It's like something like FF14, which is all about the nostalgia of FF. It does such a good job of making it its own thing and taking the nostalgia and re-weight. remaking it into something that's completely different. Yeah, we talk about this on Dropouts a fair bit, that when XIV is at its best, when the crossovers are things that are worked into the backstory of FF4. All the evilest stuff.
isn't just, ah, we've been transported to the world of Final Fantasy Tactics. It is that, especially because some of the writers are shared between Tactics and XIV and Yasumi Matsuno's involvement. and all that, it is worked into the backstory of 14. It is all pre-existing stuff that is part of the cause and effect of 14's history. And it's kind of at its worst when they do just sort of staple it on.
And as much as I love things like the ex-death and Kefka fights in 14, they are stapled on because we know you recognize them. And they're presented in like... The most tournament arc sort of way where you can just kind of write them off as we put these here because we knew you guys. You're having a vision. you took bad mushrooms yeah all right that's it for the tavern i'm really proud of us for not talking about the gta 6 trailer even once
During this podcast. We can. I thought I think it looked good. We're not doing it. I'm going to play it. We'll talk about it in the post show. That's fine. But in the meantime, Nadia, take us home. So I want to talk about I was asking Victor. We already talked about... How much did I drink?
But anyway, yeah, when I was a child, of course, everyone has their local stations with their local clowns. Canada slash Toronto has Doodoo, the clown, who once stopped a sexual assault and processed in progress. and ended up on the news, and America was like, LOL, Doodoo the Clown, and Canada was like, don't talk shit about Doodoo the Clown, ironically. But anyway, this is about another clown, doesn't really dress up in makeup, his name was Uncle Bob.
and uncle bobby if you're in toronto like he was part of a really like he's as local as local show got and the thing about uncle bobby is that he clearly hated children and when you look at his his shows like there's clips on YouTube where it's just like you can see him participating in these in these events like birthdays and whatnot and all his props are horrible and
uncomfortable. And where the meat of this story ends up is that I didn't like Uncle Bobby. My brother didn't like Uncle Bobby. But for some reason, my parents got Uncle Bobby to do my brother's seventh birthday. And it was like the scariest thing because I can remember so much of it. Um, first of all, he does this party trick where he brings out a huge toy syringe and my brother runs under the fucking table.
And then he, like, does this, um, uh, he, sorry, I just thought about my brother running on the table. You pitted yourself. He gave my brother, like, as a present, this book called, I remember to this day, it was called Lizzie's Lion. And it's a terrible book. It's a child's book, yes, but it's about a lion who eats this guy alive as the guy's begging to be let go. And it's like, holy shit.
And it was a signed book, so I wasn't really allowed to read it. I had to kind of sneak to look at it as a fucking Uncle Bobby book is going to be worth something in the future. Anyway, he did have an R2DG robot in the show. I think that's the only thing anyone remembers about him. I don't know where he got it, but it was really cool. So to this day, my parents are like, why the fuck did we get Uncle Bobby to do this birthday party? We had no money. Nobody liked Uncle Bobby.
and the really the best thing about this story is that if you go on Victor you'll appreciate this if you look at up the YouTube like clip You see a lot of comments from people who are like, LOL, this guy drove my bus when I was in school and scarred the boat and he was always drunk.
Cool. And he was always angry and yelling at us. And it's like, that is the most Canadian thing to have an actor, performer, who has to drop a fucking school bus and be angry and drunk because you have no money. Canadian pit if I've ever heard one. but it's just thinking back it's like everything about that guy was horrible and if you look at his videos it's they're not fun they're not whimsy it's like
You know, I didn't like clown and stuff like that when I was a kid, but I could still look at one doing tricks and be like, oh, this is fun, this is cool. And this guy was just like, I have a syringe. I don't know. It was so weird. Did he have a spell over us? That's my question.
Why would he be invited to my brother's birthday party if I didn't like him? Do you ever actually like clowns? There's always something very uncanny valley about them. We like Duda the Clown. Duda the Clown is the only good clown. I've liked clowns. I've always kind of liked clowns. Want to talk about things we've inherited from the French? Yeah, I like clowns, yeah. Interesting. I like a lot of classic clown, even modern day clowning as an art form. I have a lot of respect for and quite enjoy.
I think I would have been a good clown. Maybe I wouldn't wear the makeup and be the John Wayne Gacy scary type of clown. There's a lot of jokes in the 90s about clown college. The Simpsons did a whole episode about it. The Simpsons episode was brilliant. The part where the guy, like, Homer, your sector's on fire, and he looks, and the clown's dancing, and then you see it's actually people on fire screaming and rolling around, and he sees a...
when Homer and Krusty are in an extended gag about how Homer and Krusty look the same and Krusty does a hoi hoi hoi hoi hoi hoi hoi hoi hoi hoi hoi hoi hoi hoi hoi hoi hoi hoi hoi hoi hoi hoi hoi hoi hoi hoi hoi hoi hoi hoi hoi hoi hoi hoi hoi hoi hoi hoi hoi hoi hoi hoi hoi hoi hoi hoi hoi hoi hoi hoi hoi hoi hoi hoi hoi hoi hoi hoi hoi hoi hoi hoi hoi hoi hoi hoi hoi hoi hoi hoi hoi hoi hoi hoi hoi hoi hoi hoi hoi hoi hoi hoi hoi hoi hoi hoi hoi hoi hoi hoi hoi hoi hoi hoi hoi hoi hoi hoi ho
Great job, Krusty. That was such a great episode. It's one of the best. Period. Yeah, for sure. There's a line from Tumblr that I remember, I'm going to paraphrase it, but... Someone was saying how their grandparents had one of those velvet paintings of a sad clown on their guest bedroom, and whenever they went over, they insisted that it be removed, and their grandparents didn't understand, because it was like, who doesn't love clowns?
And someone responded, you know, if I had lived through two world wars and the great flu and all of that, I would probably think that clowns were the iPhone of the day. Clowns for the iPhone of the day. The iPhone of the day. I don't think anybody in our generation liked clowns, but our parents grew up with clowns, so clowns continue to be a thing.
If you are in Southern Ontario slash Detroit area, you probably grew up with Oopsie Daisy, which if you did, it meant that you were somewhere with no cable and you had nothing else to do. Truly. Or you just played RPGs. Not when I was on vacation. All we had was this crappy-ass television that had a-
If I was really lucky, I'd get to a hotel that would have a Super Nintendo built into it that you could rent. Damn! Yeah. That would annoy the hell out of my parents until they actually let me play Super Mario World. for an hour of money. Honestly, it costs $5,000. And that's it for this week's episode of Acts of the Blood God. Thank you so much for listening. I've been your host, Kat Bailey. We're going to be going to the post-show.
with our delightful Stars of Destiny. Maybe we'll talk about the GTA 6 trailer there. Or maybe we'll talk about other things. Maybe we'll keep talking about crossovers and video games. We do get a little chaotic. in the post-show, but it's a lot of fun. We get to hang out there, and we post all of that exclusively on the feed for Stars of Destiny.
More Magic the Gathering cards keep getting announced. I like what they did with Sid. It's the same card, but each one has different art, apparently. So you can get a variation. Which Sid would you pick, Nadia, for your day? Oh, that's a good question. I've always had a weak spot for Final Fantasy VII, Sid, because he's such a bad dragoon. They're all bad, but he's the worst. I'm partial to Schoolmaster Sid from Final Fantasy VIII.
I like that one, too. When I saw that Sid, I'm like, that's a very different Sid from what I'm used to. Not very good at his job, but he does his best. He's very dad. Big dad energy with that one. Also, Final Fantasy IX's King Sid. That's a frog. How about you, Victor? I think just for my wife, I'm going to go with 16. That's her boyfriend. 14 is daddy. Sure, 14 is good, but 16 is Sid.
is an absolute hunk. Yeah, that's true. I've heard things. Yeah, or, well, if it's for me, 15 all the way. Yeah? Oh, yeah, that's fair. That's fair. I understand. We know which one I'm talking about. Clive. Booty Sharks. Clive is a pure red card. Not surprising. Daisy Dukes bikini on top. So, Ben Star gets to be on a card. Hell yeah. Wow, maybe someday I'll be on a card. Oh, Arden. I didn't hate Arden as a villain. It wasn't too bad.
Oh, Aqualung. Yeah, that guy. I've still got to finish that episode Arden DLC. I'm due for a 15 revisit pretty soon. I think I'm ready to re-evaluate it. I think the reason that Final Fantasy works for me in Magic is that they feel kind of adjacent to one another as universes. And so thematically they work a lot better than, same with Lord of the Rings. so thematically they just fit a lot better than i don't know fallout no offense to fallout
Family Guy. Family Guy cards. Let's go. Even Fallout's okay, I guess. Anyway, we'll discuss more of that. Make sure to like and subscribe to the Twitch channel, twitch.tv slash blogoppod. We do this every single week. saturday 9 30 a.m pacific eric will be back next week Make sure to check out, subscribe to the Patreon at patreon.com slash plugoutpod. You can go listen to our free Ren.
side quest you can go listen to our cyberpunk 2077 pantheon and lots more bonus content as well and join our discord and also show going for independent journalists over here. more than themes, media, to be, but independent game journalism is surviving and thriving, and Axel Blockout is part of that. be part of that. for, I don't know, just five bucks a month. That'll get you the show ad-free.
And my newsletter. And the newsletter. You know I'm good for it. Plugoutpod.com slash newsletters and Charlene Dropouts. That's right. That's right. Okay, that's it for the show. I've been your host, Kat Bailey. And for Nadia, Eric, and myself, thanks for listening. And happy. Strength comes from experience. That's true on any planet.