DGC Ep 448: Deadly Premonition (part three)

and welcome back to Dev Game Club. weekly podcast in which two veteran game developers look at games from the past to discuss their relevance and impact today. I'm Brett Duvill, and I'm joined as always by my co-host, a man whose personality is totally different before and after the crime. Tim Longo. Yep, that's a stumper. The crime of recording this podcast for 448 episodes, I guess. which is kind of a lot.

Before we get to the game at hand, just want to remind folks of our schedule here for the rest of October, which includes an update on the game we're playing. We are releasing this on October 22nd, and that night... the night that this comes out if you're listening to it when it comes out i will be streaming portal 2 with tim on tim's twitch channel at twitch.tv slash tim longer jr with the jr at the end there's a link in the show notes

On October 28th, which is six days hence from when this releases, we will be doing a live stream on that same Twitch channel, a live share recording. We will discuss Portal 2. both the single player and the co-op. We've been playing co-op together.

We will record that and interact with the audience with questions. We have an email already. If you have others, by all means, get them in so that we have them. But we can also try to pull it from the chat, but be warned that it will be juggling. So we'll do our best.

um and we shall see how that all goes this is our first time ever that is a reward of course for our uh for our communities defeating games for charity event which was last january their next one is january 24th and 25th and there are applications available now uh so if you look at defeating games uh, for charity.com. I believe, uh, you can get an application there or we can go to the discord. There's a link in the show notes.

And finally, we will actually not be finishing Deadly Premonition tonight as we originally considered. It is a longer and deeper game and Tim has not played it before. So we're going to instead. plow through and return to it the week following Halloween. Whew. Those are all the announcements. We're good. Well done. You have any questions on that, sir? Or are you just going to assume I'm going to send you an email at the appropriate time? No, that sounds good. I think I get it. Yep. Okay.

All right. Well, then let us return to Deadly Premonition. We are, of course, playing the director's cut, which is, you know, perfectly ported. Right, Tim? It's a... precise exacting perfect in every way port i'm technically playing deadly premonition origins oh title of the port for for the Switch. So yeah, a little bit of a PSA on that. I wanted to hit the ports topic.

In a way to not necessarily throw shade at anybody, but maybe more to celebrate the ports that are out there that are very, very good. I think we take them for granted. yeah uh and a game like this always reminds me of that so if you are playing this game or ever seek to play this game uh you heard already probably my steam woes doesn't work on steam deck at all

And there is a way to get it to work, but it's pretty difficult and might even not work after all of the work. I know Lost Lake and some others and myself, there's frame rate issues on the Steam, even if you're playing on a desktop PC. So I swapped to the switch. That port is also not wonderful. I've crashed multiple times. The performance is actually even bad.

Not as bad as it is on the PC, but just a warning. So it's definitely playable, but I definitely hit 20 frames or so every now and then. And I just feel like... It shouldn't do that. I will say performance was not its strong suit to begin with. Especially when you're out and about in the open world. Or when the red raincoat killer is in the sawmill with you with the two cameras, that also feels sluggish that we talked about last week.

And even when you're like running around, I guess when you're running from him as well, he's, you also have the picture in picture and it's not great in those locations either. But I was outside the milk barn.

and just walked around back and i was like whoa what just happened there like just just suddenly chugging you know and uh yeah granted that's a you know a ps3 which is i don't i mean it was natively ported to that i don't you know i don't know there's not yeah so the first i'm not gonna i'm not gonna throw stones i've you know i've worked on plenty of projects where

Frame rate was not our top concern. So, you know, it is. Yeah, no, it's not. I'm not definitely not saying it's easy. And like I said, I don't want to throw shade because porting is hard as well, especially. In the PS3, Xbox 360 era, you can speak better than on that. Yeah, they're just very divergent hardware. Those infrastructures or architectures, rather, are totally different or very different.

Yeah, pretty much totally different. Yeah, so I get it for sure. I just mainly wanted to celebrate those ports out there that you play and don't even realize they're ports, you know, because it's a lot of hard work. a lot goes into making them feel pretty seamless, especially for porting forward. And credit to the engineers who work on some of these big teams that do engines that port.

whole engines to, you know, to support multiple games on multiple platforms, you know, Unreal and Unity and Godot and what have you. You know, that's a lot of work too, especially supporting a... you know, a huge client base, you know, of, of creators using those engines to, to have to, to have to also deal with that. You know.

the nice thing about using those engines that work is done is hopefully done for you, you know, some probably better than others, but, you know, and not that there's no work for any individual, um, team to then go in and test.

and make sure it all works we did have some feedback in the discord that this this director's cut or origins i'm pretty sure origins is from the director's cut uh is um is has problems in this regard and um They did mention as well that there was actually a difficulty mode, an easier difficulty on the original game, which...

i thought i had remembered and then didn't see it in the director's cut i was like i must be misremembering because i remember the sawmill being pretty difficult or maybe some point later in the game i don't recall and being like i guess i'll just bump the difficulty down um

But then, you know, when I didn't see it, I was like, oh, I must have that wrong. But apparently they did tweak that as well. I mean, I'm fine with games being on the easy side. That's not a, these days, not a... an issue i care about much but i used to play games on the harder difficulty all the time so so you're saying that the director's cut is the easy mode or i suspect it's been rebalanced but it is it is apparently easier than the default difficulty on the original game. That's good. Yeah.

Yeah, because it would be bad to remove it and then just have it be too hard. That would be a poor director's cut choice, I think. I don't think this is a game which benefits a lot from... difficulty necessarily especially when there are performance issues the aimings you know a lot of the mechanics are pretty janky and um

you know don't have a little a lot of support that that would have been there you know when this game came out you know halo 2 you know halo and halo 2 were you know had already been well established by this point you know and and showed you how to do aiming and things like that even you know granted first person versus third but a lot of the fundamentals are very similar in those two things and it's especially if you've got a reticle on screen most of the most of that stuff just

tracks right over so it's it's kind of unforgivable that the the aiming is as bad as it is well and and re4 which you mentioned i think last one of the episodes yeah yeah being in the same relative genre right yeah so yeah anyway plenty of examples it just wasn't a priority i feel like it is a bummer i know we're going to probably talk about the sawmill next or soon but it is a bummer to me as a player

So I'm ahead of you now and in the next day, and there was a section when I got to the gallery that I was a little bit suspicious might turn into combat, but it didn't end up. the tone you know like the kind of the mood and the tone was starting and i was like oh here comes and and i had this feeling at that moment of like not looking forward to it yeah that's not what you want in the middle of your game to be like not looking forward to a certain

sequence you know so yeah well we should i mean we can probably switch to talk about the enemies in the sawmill because i think that that's so far the place where uh and then we'll talk about the sawmill more broadly but where all of the the survival horror combat stuff actually i think works pretty well um and showcases a lot of the things i really like about the enemies in this game i mean there's only a handful of types shown at this point

I don't really remember if there are kind of more types. They're mostly these sort of, you know, they look like townspeople, you know, or ghosts of townspeople that have had.

you know that are that are dead or something you know crossed over into some kind of shadow realm but what i really appreciate about them is that they they emerge um in most cases some cases they're just kind of placed but they sort of emerge from these shadowy spaces on the walls and the floors they make a certain sound as this is happening and they

You know, and there's another sound that happens when these entrances, often these entrances close up, close up so that you know that another one's not going to come through. There's extra entrances in there. So you're like, oh, are there going to be more? So there's always kind of this edge of terror. There's a whole loop.

survival horror enemy goodness that I think, other than the shooting itself, is actually pretty good in that whole section. There's a little bit of that in the sort of other...

places we've seen combat but this this one i think actually all the pieces kind of come together really really well you even have a sort of infinite spawning area as well where you're like oh they're going to come out of these places and then they're going to come after me if i go down these steps and like you're kind of like

have to balance a lot of stuff um i think the you know it's not a highly polished combat system but i actually think they spent a lot of time on the creepiness of the enemies and and they're sort of You know, we talked in Republic Commando a lot about, you know, how the first time you saw an enemy or how enemies were introduced to the player was a huge thing. I wonder if you can talk a little bit about that.

as well from a sort of design standpoint but just as a pure play experience i really i really enjoy all the support that that that sort of cycle of uh of enemies works yeah

Yeah, I agree. I think you put it well in the whole loop of it. Yeah, and I guess from a design perspective, what I also appreciate... And I think we would always try to strive for and don't, you know, sometimes achieve, sometimes we don't achieve. But enemies aren't just about being an obstacle to shoot or to be an obstacle to, you know, fight. And to get past, they are kind of their own little mini stories. And it comes down to the first time you see them, which...

They sort of introduced, they had some pretty good introduction moments in the very opening section, you know, when you're in the forest, like on that trail, you know, where they introduced the zombies originally. And so, and there was that dog moment, right. Which was like a foreshadowing. And so they actually, you know, they, they did some, you know, not, not on the silent Hills.

you know, quality level, but like in the silent hill space of how to introduce some of these characters, you, you know, you, everyone had seen zombies by then. So it's not like that was a new trope, but they were thoughtful about it. And then to your point on repeating that, uh, you know,

I'm trying to think of like the shadow thing was sort of a thing in Alan Wake 2, ironically, in the same year. But Eco had come out earlier. You know, there was some concept of shadow. I think enemies coming out of shadows, it just gives them a lot of flexibility to make.

uh you know hallways a lot scarier because you can just any surface can be a a spawner so i agree the other like little thing i mentioned i think last episode that um It's hard to say where it came from because you could see it coming from a certain horror genre in film and I guess mythology. But the way that the enemies, a lot of them bend over backwards. Yeah. And then just conveniently place their head in the middle, in their center mass. Yeah. Which is sort of like creepy, but also...

uh, nicely mechanically better for you if you're doing lock ons. So it's kind of helps the player out a little bit there too, you know, give them, giving them the benefit of the doubt that they wanted to help the player in that way. But yeah, I agree. I think the sawmill section is very spooky. It's the most extended so far that I think we've seen. It's definitely the most elaborate and extended combat sequence. And it felt very Resident Evil in that.

Because it was so long, you had multiple rooms. And then I'm sure we'll get to some of the sort of set piece moments of it in a bit. But there was just a lot. And as we talked about last time, it's integrated in the... story collectibles system. So as you're going through the combat, you're picking up another one of the clues.

Right, right. You have to go through the whole sawmill to get each of the three clues, and the whole sawmill is combat. Yeah, I agree. Yeah, it's a very extended sequence that way. I like the... I like to, this was a later Resident Evil, but the baby sounds, the audio design is also quite good in the sawmill, but there's a...

at several points there's like a crying baby oh yeah right and i kept thinking oh no i hope it's not going to be the baby and i think that's village maybe i think that's village where there's the baby oh that's right oh yikes yeah that was right And I kept thinking about it. I was like, I hope I'm not confusing what game that baby was in because I don't want to fight the baby. Yeah, man.

RE8, that is a damn good game. Yeah. Damn fine Kappa game. Kappa game? Yeah, I mean, there also is just like so many... quirky things in this game that like one of the interacts throughout the sawmill uh are toilets full of blood yeah and then also if you flush them you might get a collectible yeah it's like what the although red i guess blood and red i'm not sure if all of the red you know um thematically all of the red is meant to be blood or not but but red is definitely thematic

with the with the the leaves and the vine yeah with the leaves the seeds the vines the raincoat um raincoat yeah there's a there's a hand in there this is a yeah that's the leaves yeah

That was a Kojima moment, I feel like, where they're like, we're going to make the hand a doorknob. Yeah. Or the doorknob a hand, and then it's going to grab your hand when you... Yeah, that's... It's a great moment, and you have to... you have to shoot the hands off the the tree oh yeah the tree right yeah so there's like a tree

It's a puzzle. Yeah, it's like a little puzzle, a little combat puzzle where you have to shoot these hands until you get the right one or maybe just shoot a certain number of them. No, there's one. If you shoot the right one first, you only have to shoot one. Oh, okay. I shot two, but there was no negative to that. Although there was a timer, I believe. But I remember I got the hand symbol from someplace and it told me which one to shoot, but I don't remember what.

oh huh i wonder if i was i might have just i might have missed that clue and just not done it and like not pick that out like it might have been when you look at the door or something and i wonder if i didn't do that now i can't even remember what it was but yeah there was there was a clue that told you which one to shoot and so i got it

on the first try. I guess I got lucky there. I'm sure you're right. Their puzzles generally are not too punitive, right? It's just like you just have to find, yeah, they're pretty simple.

Yeah, and I think that that's another thing that I appreciate about this game is that not all of their systems are... you know, are, are, are polished. Many, many of them are not polished, but they're also not demanding. Um, so there's nothing worse than, than having a system that is like both not really responsive to the player's input, but then also demands a high amount of skill.

you know, of like, got to pull off this, you know, perfect timing of some window of something or whatever, you know, I mean, the QTEs, I think here are probably the one example where I'm like, that goes a little too fast for me. And it also feels like it's rendering a frame behind. So even though it looks like I hit it, there might be... I think we're missing frames, yeah. Yeah, so it definitely feels like...

That is probably the one case where I'm like, I think I hit that one, guys. I don't know. Maybe be a little more generous. Because I also got killed by the raincoat killer in the... in the sawmill once because i you know i i was like oh i have to hit r1 like i wasn't expecting that um and uh i thought i had but it didn't think i had so yeah right it is what it is it's fine um But yeah, I mean, I think the whole environment of the sawmill is really...

you know is really fun it's it's meant to be a shuttered sawmill and abandoned so it is one of those kind of liminal spaces they're like it should have been torn down years ago as you're driving over there and it's like well it's kind of too late now anna was already murdered there you know leave it to york to say something totally like okay thanks york got it you know if we had done responsibly torn down the sawmill this young girl wouldn't have died um

He's quite a piece of work. Yeah. Well, how about that escape or that sort of ending sequence, though, with the raincoat murder? The raincoat killer, yeah. Raincoat killer. with the um yeah so we talked a little bit last week about how he there's a point at which you you basically get to a room where there's a save you can save there's a phone and i actually like the double duty that the phone is playing there because earlier you have a similar situation where there's a phone

And I don't think you can save at it. It's just ringing. There's other stuff in that. But it looks like a safe room in a Resident Evil game, for example. There's your, I forget what they call it, but your sort of backup inventory, right? What do they call it? Yeah, I forget. Your case or something? Yeah, something. Yeah, you can send stuff to your deeper inventory if you don't have space to carry it around.

And then there's like a bed and you can shave there, oddly. But there's no save point at that spot. There is one that comes not too long after that. But the phone is ringing. So you don't have to answer the phone. It's just going to keep ringing.

although if you're of a certain age um you know a ringing phone like that just is like cuts to you like i gotta answer the phone um nowadays the phone rings i'm like i don't want to look at it but when i was growing up you know a phone ringing was like a big deal um and you had you had to answer it so and it's a similar kind of ring tone um But then you get to this later room and it's very similar, except that the phone here is now a safe spot.

you know the the sort of in the fiction he's calling into the office from the phones and that's that's your save um so they're they're kind of sprinkled throughout town there's like pay phones um kids ask your parents um there's you know phones and there's a phone in the hospital you know whatever there's phones all over the place you can just save in any one of them um but after you've saved in this one

uh the phone then turns into an interact to advance the the murderer he's like where are you like or i can see you i guess he says um or they say we don't we don't actually know gender yet um There's a sliding viewport in the door. That's right, yeah. As well, yeah. Yeah, which I remember coming up to and being like, well, why would you make a different door?

But because I forgot that he was going to look through it. I don't remember a lot of details like that. So, yeah. So, you know, then, you know, oh, my God. And they do a really good.

job of framing that because you can't miss because of the way he interacts with doors um you can't miss that it's got a you know a hole that you can look through you know so it's it's really nicely all of that really ties together really well it's almost like they said well this is how he always opens a door and they're like well what can we do with that you know um right when you establish those systems

early you then try to like well what can we you know how can we change what the doors you know how the doors look to to play on that it feels like a an opportunity they might have found in play um or in development i think that's a good we must have talked about that with some of the other survival horror we've played but that's i feel like that's the one of the bread and butter aspects of survival horror games is like you have to pray you have to

not prey upon. You have to play on the expectations of the player to create those moments of uncertainty, you know, whether it's a jump scare or whether it's just a...

silence. It's like, oh, I expected this to happen because it normally does and then it didn't. I think that they learned some good lessons from some of the other classics about that. Yeah, and I feel that way too about the... um you know about the the phone that is first the same yeah really and then you know and then it's then a you know a menacing object in the same in the same place um

You know, it would be like if a Resident Evil typewriter suddenly turned into a mimic the second time you went to use it or something. You're like, oh, my God. That is terrifying. Now I'm thinking of Mimics and Dark Souls. I went there already, but I didn't want to say it, so you would be the one. It's just its mouth opens. Yeah, that first one you hit and you're like, no! Because it takes you a long time to get to that one, as I recall. It's in Sen's Fortress.

yeah but but uh memories uh memories yes uh yeah so i think that um yeah that whole section plays out really well because then as you as you pointed out last week there's a sort of um the hiding in some one of the hiding places in there and he also you know when he departs he throws the axe at your hiding space as well just just um so good and you have to hold your breath several times you're

your your pulse rate is going up there's a one of the indicators in the upper left of the screen there's a health and then there's there's sort of a heart monitor

which comes into play whenever you're doing stamina related things. So you can run and your heart rate monitor will go up. And I think there are some objects you can find that will like... you know keep your stamina low stabilizer yeah the stabilizer is great yes is one of them which will keep it artificially low for a while sort of like in a metal gear game where it's like i gotta stabilize so i can snipe or whatever um

But this will keep your heart rate down. Whenever you're holding your breath, that's one of those stressful moments. And actually just being in the close confines of one of those lockers. Because after he left, I was just in there for a while. and i'm like oh no i gotta get out because the the meter's still going up um which was which was also good so there's a lot of like start to see how some of these systems are coming together

and can create dread and drama throughout the sawmill. I feel like they've kind of stacked the pieces up to this point to get you there. Yeah, I really like... I still haven't finished it, but I'm probably about 20 hours into, and then I stopped because I just, my nerves couldn't take it anymore. So maybe I'll get back to it. But Alien Isolation, I just think about this room.

And I'm trying to think of any like Resident Evil or other survival horror games that have done it, but this room is so that game. Yeah. I just really am curious to know if that was just like coincidence or if there was any inspiration. from this game to extrapolate that out to basically a whole game about hiding in things when there's an undefeatable.

undefeatable is that a word undefeatable character you know and so yeah yeah and i don't remember if it really does it really happen in the films i don't remember something similar to that in the alien movies i mean people are hiding all the time yeah they're hiding but they don't like get in a space like that where they're

I don't think so. Not exactly. Yeah. But, but just the whole thing about vision. It's kind of a horror movie thing though. I feel like that I've probably seen that. Holding your breath. Yeah. Right. Is, is in both, you know, there's just a lot of similarities and, and, uh. So anyway, I just, I had no idea that that was in this. I wonder, do you remember if it happens again in this game or is this a one-off? I don't remember, but I feel like it does.

I feel like it happens again, but I, yeah, it's, it's a good, it's a good moment. Um, but it definitely makes the killer feel very powerful. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. The menace of the rainbow. of the raincoat killer killer is like really really heavy in this room um yeah you feel terrified you know and then then you as you pointed out last week and then you have to run away from him uh or them um

In that environment. Right. Before we get there, the interesting thing about this killer as a boss character is... York, and he talks about this many more times later in places I've gotten to. He's constantly talking about how he's going to catch the killer, right? Honest killer. The funny thing about that is like, yeah, but you've met the killer multiple times.

you can't there you have to run away so what do you mean by that like are you gonna like reveal you know so i'm just curious to see how that all plays out like is it a Is it like a moment in a dinner where you're like, and he's the killer, you know, or something. And, but it's like, if that's the case story, you're still going to be able to take everyone out. So it's just a funny juxtaposition of this.

you know, seemingly supernatural almost entity being this boss villain, but also the killer. But maybe it is a Twin Peaks kind of switcheroo, which I have an update on later.

as Jen and I are continuing to watch the show. And Bob is coming into it more. Spoiler for anyone who has never watched Twin Peaks, but it's too late for you. And there's sort of... supernatural like who did kill laura palmer and like how does that all work you know and so how do you catch somebody who isn't real you know like all that kind of stuff so obviously that show and you know goes

well many places by season three but anyway yeah and sadly the actor who played bob was no longer around by the time season three Came around. He had passed away, I think. That's right. I forgot about that. Yeah. So they had Judy. Anyway, we shouldn't go down that road. Yeah. So let's talk about the escape. Yeah.

Yeah, so the escape sequence, like you pointed out last week, was the running away from the killer. But it was, you know... it's fresh in my mind now i mean i when you mentioned i was like oh yeah that's right it has stuff like that but one of the things i really liked about it that i didn't remember and we didn't talk about last week was that there were points where you run up and

Like you said, you can't see what's ahead of you. So it's like, I've got to climb up on something, but he's also going to throw an ax at me that I have to abate, you know, or take damage. And then I think my favorite moment is like, there's a point at which he's behind you and you. You're basically going back through an area that you've already gone through, which I remember going all the way deep into that room and thinking.

there's no exit to get to the elevator from here do i have to go all the way back because you've gone pretty deep into this the second level of this elevator of this sawmill rather uh via an elevator and like you had to go all the way in to turn the power back on and now you're going all the way back out and i'm like oh that's you know

That's kind of old school design. We don't do that anymore. We always had a way you can drop down to get back to exactly where you want to be. But it's so horror movie, right? It's like you got to go all the way. You got to commit before you can get out and then you got to get out. You know, it's like very horror.

I felt like, yeah. So there's a point. Yeah. So there's a point where the, the rainbow killer, you can, uh, raincoat killer. I keep, I keep crossing rainbow with brain coat. The raincoat killer is behind you. And. then darts off to the left. And you know, because you've already come through here, and if you're a game player from longstanding, you've already explored. You know there's two ways to get through this area.

And he's taking the other fork and you're like, oh no. And you can't see what's ahead of you. So you have this additional dread of like, am I going to run straight into him? And at a certain point you run up and you push this box.

because there's a box in your way and then he comes charging up on the box in the picture in picture and is and swings at you but hits the box so that you can run away it is like is beautifully done um it's like at an intersection and the box crumbles you know it's a crate um and he destroys it which you know if you do that

it takes you several bashes and he just does it in one. So you're like, oh, he is really more powerful than me. I normally have to shoot that thing like four times to break open a box or whatever it is.

you know or hit it a bunch of times with the knife or the bar or whatever um and he just swung the axe once and it crumpled like a you know like a paper bag um it's it's really really good at playing on elements that you've already encountered a lot the level the objects you know etc to to really pay off on that like um you know we've talked about games you know survival horror games being disempowerment fantasies at least as they start

when the horror is, is, is kind of at its strongest. And this is a great moment where it like uses lots of stuff to do that. Yeah. Yeah. And remember, and, and just to, to point it out. again, and remember that this whole sequence you're running generally toward the camera, pushing boxes and stuff, it's sort of the camera's focused behind you. And there's the picture in picture.

I felt like there were a lot of ways to scare you. They had a lot of tools in their toolbox during this sequence because it was so different from the rest of the game. You know what I mean? like you said, splitting, him splitting off. And, you know, there's just a lot going on that I thought was very, fairly clever. I keep, I keep thinking, I think, I think you maybe mentioned it in the first episode as a theme, but.

I always get the saying wrong, but, you know, what is the – when your reach out stretches your grasp. When your reach exceeds your grasp. Your reach exceeds your grasp. I mean, this game is very... Which is what has happened with you and Common Phrases. Oh my gosh, yes. Oh my gosh, yes. a whole coffee table book about all the ones I've gotten wrong. But anyway, or joke book, maybe a paperback joke book is better, better, better, more appropriate. All rock.

Or rocks. Or rocks, yeah. But this game... is so ambitious. And it reminds me, and this is going way back, but I think we reference it a lot. In our Final Fantasy IX series, we talked a lot about... you know the way that that game was constructed and how there's so many one-offs and so many like moments that they just hand crafted because they wanted to

You know, it's like for this moment, we're going to do this. We're going to hang from a rope or whatever, you know, you don't do that anywhere else or you do it a couple of times. It's not systemic at all. You know, it's all just hand done. And, you know, there's definitely systems and we've talked about the simulation and this is open world and, you know, there's mechanics and systems at play, but it does feel like, and there's sequences later beyond this that I'm also would put in this bucket.

that i play where it's just like they just kept doing what they wanted to and yeah to some degree the game shows because it is so so unpolished yeah yeah but you know And that's the cost of doing this. And you kind of take the good with the bad in that regard. But this whole sequence, I just, my mouth was open as far as I cannot believe they're doing this. Like, how did this even get approved? But good for them that it did.

yeah for sure i mean i look at i look at this game and all of the things that are in it you know it's from a tech standpoint even and it's like well you know has it streams continuously it has it has loads um you know, whenever you go inside a building. But, you know, you have this open world you're streaming, which was, I mean, not brand new, but, you know, it's another thing you've got to put in your engine if you're writing it from scratch, you know, at this time.

What was the scripting, the whole open world? So you've got these. You know, the actors who are moving around all over the place, that's a ton of authoring. What does that look like? I mean, we've seen something like that in like The Last Express, which we, you know, we talked about, I don't know, a year or two ago. And that having sort of added state machines for all the characters so that they could actually sort of independently.

exit you know or re-enter them you know after they've encountered the player if the player kind of messes with them you know i don't know if that's what's going on here as an implementation or if they just kind of suspend their script and resume it it'd be kind of hard to to obviously know um have some suspicions just based on some things i've seen but i don't really know it's probably not that deep but again it's another thing you have to put you know in your in your game and

and end your engine and figure out how you're going to do that and how you're going to author that and like who's responsible how many people do you need to do it the more characters you have the more you you need to do it um etc and it's like every thing that they're adding

you know is another one of those you know it's like oh we have to have third person you know hand-to-hand combat and third person you know gun combat um etc you know and that you know the systems just start to pile up you know and uh It reminds me of Beyond Good and Evil as well. Yeah. Yep. Yep. Another good touch point. A lot of, you know, an open, very open game, but also a lot of, like, custom sections.

Yeah, it was just an era. It was an era where that can be done. You know, it's like, yeah, we're just going to brute force some of this stuff and do it.

do it all in one game versus making a game focused around one or two of these things that you tend to do today. Yeah. I mean, I think if you're willing to, you know, I think the. the part of the you know reason why games cost so much is that there's so much more expectation of these kind of like every game you know uh you know games that are like they all have the progression system and they have some kind of mount whether it's a car you know a horse or whatever you know and it's

got combat and it's got you know npcs with dialogue trees or you know or at least you know little scenes that set up your quests and i mean it's just and and and and and the layers of all those things if you're also going to do that to a high degree of polish like no wonder the budget are where they are. It's interesting too because I feel like the bespoke...

I'm trying to figure out what lessons to learn from this in a modern day to your point about like the expense, but also just the, the er game or whatever you'd say that every game, like you're saying. And, you know, everyone has those games in their heads. I won't definitely throw out. Yeah, I'm not even smirching. I'm just saying it's like. Yeah, but it is what it is. But I was about. It's an evolutionary trend.

let's say. Right. Right. And I, but I was about to a little bit in that, in that I really appreciate, I guess what I, what it would.

How would I put it? I appreciate in this game and games of this era that I want to learn from for modern games. I appreciate being surprised. Yeah. And I have, I know I've talked to you about a couple of them. But over the past couple of years, I probably have started about... Maybe half a dozen of those every games you're talking about, basically big open world games that have all of the different checkboxes of things you mentioned, right? Some third person, some first person.

We all know what I'm talking about. There's a map with layer upon layer of things you can sort of page through of like, well, I only want to do these right now. You know, and all of those might be mini games or they might be little explorations of a space or they might be, you know, whatever. Or a quest or whatever. Some have come out this fall that are the formula, right? And they're very, you know, I haven't...

I haven't played the recent ones, but by all accounts, they're very good. People are liking them. But I, for myself as a player, I have... I keep trying to play some of these games that everyone talks about that are these kinds of open world games that just have this checklist of things that they have in them and they all have basically the same thing. And I keep bouncing off of them.

Yeah. Because I know what, I know what my next 200 hours is going to be. You know, I know what my future is and I can just envision it. Yes. The setting might be different and yes. There might be some nuances that are different here and there, but generally I know what I'm in for. And I don't know if I'm just getting old or don't have the time or what, but I'm just like, I need.

I need to be delighted. I need some surprises. I need to not know what the next 200 hours is going to be. Yes, there'll be a story, and yes, there'll be different things.

Bringing it back to Deadly Premonition, again, one of my big surprises for this game, which is just more of an education thing, is that it was open world. But even within that, we went into this sawmill, the sawmill... completely changes tone we're now in a combat sequence and now we're in this weird picture and picture running toward the camera sequence you know with this undefeatable enemy yes qte's bad decision

that I hope we learned from. We'll get to that in a second. And then there's just more of that stuff later, and I'm sure there's even more coming. So I don't know. I guess it's...

This kind of game today would be very expensive to make in a polished manner, but I just kind of miss those surprises these days. Yeah. I mean, one of the things that I think you're kind of... putting your finger on is that when i look at some of these games you know and i play and enjoy them and so i'm not like i said i'm not you play you you definitely play them more than i do yeah um what i see is like oh i see the production methodology on the screen

that's what i see is like yeah for sure we needed to be able to say here's the checklist of things you have to do to do this kind of content in our game not we're going to have a piece here that, you know, is this experience that has this tone, go figure it out. Right. There's a lot more independence. I feel like in the people putting together the sections of this game that we've talked about. And, you know,

other things that can do it like beyond good and evil or whatever you know from that kind of era where it's like we're just gonna figure it out when we get there you know and these people are responsible for it go figure it out you know and not not we're gonna figure it out

with a small team or maybe on the last project we figured that out and now it's just another thing we put in every game but we have a production you know list of things that have to be done and how many of them they're going to be so that we can budget it you know and send it upstairs and then tell us

it's okay you know as well as sharing because of the scope of these things um as well as you know part of the reason for that methodology is that the games of this scope are often shared across multiple studios around the world You know, so it's like you have this additional burden of like you can't even necessarily get all the creative, the right creative people in a room. So you actually need to put in these pretty heavy guardrails around what individual piece of this game is meant.

to be because you can't directly communicate the vision anymore because you're you're working with 1200 people say or whatever you know like i don't even know anymore right you know and so i think that that's that's been part of it as well it's like there's a lot of cost that goes into the to the art and that's probably the most visible thing but there's also a ton of just like just the the labor of putting of putting the pieces together you know

for each one it's like oh there's got to be a little in-engine cut scene that introduces the little quest line and then there's got to be another one at the middle that kind of like

puts a twist on it. And then there's another one at the end that puts a button on it, you know, or strings it to the next one or wherever it is. And like, all of those are like, okay, well you need a person who's going to operate the cameras. Yes. Or somebody had to go and make the faces and like what clothing that person was.

So there's like a character constructor, you know, like, and you just like, and, and, and I, you could probably sit down and go through any one of these pieces of these big games and go. check check check check check and just like write down all the things you see and then see how many of them carry over and that's the methodology for making that kind of content for that kind of game yeah

And that's why, yeah, and as you're speaking, that's why I just keep coming back to the word formula. And it is a production defense mechanism, right? And some of those big franchises that have been doing it forever for many years now have... been iterating over the years so they have expanded their formula but yeah i mean the two examples that that hit more more of a formula is still a formula

Yeah, exactly. No, it's just like making the formula more harder to do. I mean, the other thing before you switch that is that because you have these formulas, it's also just you can use cheaper labor.

to do those things as well. Right. Yeah. Yeah. It's a no, it's more of a note. Yeah. There's fewer unknowns because unknowns and especially in anything, but in, especially in game development, unknowns are anti-production, right? Cause you can't, you can't measure them. So. if you have a formula that's more known even if you add something to a formula you can probably quantify it better or you can we've done it you know it's not perfect but it's easier than not knowing anything

But yeah, I think with Deadly Premonition, like the thing that, that it, the two, to your point about like the, this, the, um, I guess the production elements and what I would say maybe a systematizing. certain elements of these games that is interesting to play a game of this era like Deadly Premonition to see like how much they tried to systematize and how much is custom, probably custom.

Two examples that in one of the big games I played recently, where one is mini games that impact your sort of character's progression, where they've turned a mini game into some sort of contextual reference of the world. Say it's a cultural kind of reference. And they've made it into a little mini game that's a system and mechanics. And then you get a point, right? And then you're like, I'm upgrading something with this point. And then they pepper those around the world.

But it then diminishes this sort of like point into this, or more importantly, I think that whatever the contextualization of it is, say it's a cultural aspect, it kind of like... it it uh waters it down to just become this little mini game and it's like well now i don't care as much about it because it's now this thing you know and and

Because they can make it a little bit more unique and bespoke in a game like Deadly Premonition. I'm trying, again, trying to pull on a thread that can help us today. Not us specifically, but, you know, game developers today. And then the other tension, which is on the opposite side of the spectrum for me, that's interesting to me about this game too, that makes me think of some of these modern, big, every games.

is how the main story integrates into them. That's one of the big tensions, especially, you know, the Rockstar games are always the best example of like, they're so story driven, but yet they're open world. So it's like, how do... you know that there's sort of like a whole team of people putting basically a linear, you know, steps to get through a narrative.

In and amongst this world where there's a hundred other things going on and It's been interesting to watch that happen here because Like you said there doesn't seem that there's not a time limit And I haven't yet felt... It actually relates to another quick note I'll make that I had in my notes that I don't want to rabbit hole too much on because maybe we'll do it next time. But one thing I've appreciated about this game...

So far, and I don't know if this will continue to be the case, but basically the structure of the story so far has been suspect-based, character-based. So it's like, who's the next suspect that we're going to go talk to?

And it's like this chain of events there. And you can actually talk to some of them, I think, out of order, it seems like. But I have really appreciated that because in an open world simulated... semi-simulated open world it feels natural to me to be like who's the next most important suspect we should go talk to and then i we go talk to them and they're living their life so if i don't go talk to them right now it's not like

that big of a deal because they just live in the town with everybody else. Does that make sense? But then when I go talk to them, it triggers the next narrative beat to move forward linearly. So whether... completely intentional or not it's an interesting kind of mini takeaway for me of like in this open world with set pieces but also like gives me a little bit of freedom to roam around

And maybe that'll change. Maybe there'll be a time when you really have to do a thing. Yeah, I mean, certainly towards the end of the game, there's a... there's a narrowing down like because we're sure things up i assume yeah yeah yeah i mean there's definitely a point which is like okay now you're on the ride right i mean and you know you you can't really go back and i

I don't remember how well it signals that you're getting there. Again, because the first time I played this, I wasn't really aware of the level to which the town was simulated. so my you know my recollections of this is all super muddy but there's definitely a point where it's like okay beyond this point like you're not making a lot of decisions about where you're going you're just you're going to just follow you know um you know games tend to

signpost that stuff pretty well these days that literally just say beyond here you know you're not going to be able to you're not going to be able to visit such and such a place for a while you know and uh you know and and you and you know at that point um

the uh where was i gonna go with oh yeah so it again that reminds me of kind of the last express with the state machines it's like that person like has has a thing that they know like in the last express If you interact with somebody or reveal something about them.

you know or learn something about them that will make them you know advance their own agenda as it were right you know so it's like oh somebody knows about me you know on this train i'd better you know get moving on my whatever my spy plot or my weapons trafficking plot or whatever that is, you know, or maybe even make an attempt on that person's life. Right. And this is kind of similar in that way. It's like, oh, OK, I'm advancing the plot. There's kind of a big engine of the plot.

But how those little pieces plug into them, you know, parts of it can be just done wherever they're done, wherever you happen to encounter this person, if you're going to ask them a question that, you know, which is very. You know, like you could imagine a lot of episodes of Twin Peaks of like, well, what if this happened later in the day? And it wouldn't be a big deal, right? It's just, you know, it just happens where it happens, you know?

I was about to say, yeah. The fantasy fulfillment, because I'm watching the show at the same time as playing the game, the fantasy fulfillment in this game is very high for me because as you watch the show, and it's not one for one, but it's enough. It's close enough. As you watch the show, there's times where I'm like, I really want to be in Twin Peaks, helping all of them with this murder mystery. And then I get to go play.

deadly premonition and i get some of that right it's like yeah and and because they chose and i'm thankful for you telling me about the simulation aspect of it and the open world aspect because because I do get a sense when I'm roaming around the town in the game that it's kind of a real town, you know, to sound cheesy about it. And so like, if I need to go talk to Diane, I know she's in the gallery and I do have a window of time I have to do it in, but it's not.

like a tiny window so i have a little bit of slop in there and if i want to go to the diner before going to see diane it's not a big deal you know Yeah. Because this is like a quote unquote living town. And, you know, heck, I don't know, maybe there's a time when you need to go talk to a suspect. And they go to the store and you meet them in the store. That would be awesome. I wonder if that could be possible. And so you just meet them out in their life. That's like...

Well, any character you haven't met, if you look on the map, any character you haven't met will just show up as suspect. Yeah. Yeah. I made that note too. And, and yeah, after though that, yeah, after the, the next event for you. Yeah. That town meeting you've met so many people. Check a bunch of them off. Yeah. Yeah.

Um, but then you, once you, once you've actually met a person, so it's like before the town meeting, you can actually, so I'm on, I'm the morning of the day of the town meeting. Like, and I actually, I wish I had done more of the, uh, between the. well before the tree you know before the crime scene i wish i had done even more because you know there's a lot of um

There was a lot of time that I had left that I could have spent, but we were also coming up on recording time. So I was like, well, I better wrap this up. But I'm trying to spend a lot of time. figuring out what people are doing like i'm going to try to see if i can get to um you know emily at her house you know like i know where her house is you know it's 7 30 in the morning or so

Her door is still closed at 7.30. Is it going to open at 8? Is it going to open at 8.30? And again, I think I've referenced this game before, is it's like Witness or Deadline, the old Infocom games, where... you know there is a schedule for that person and you might see something interesting if you're there at the right time um and the the quest slash task system

at least helps you. If you go to the map, you can hit, there's a, for me, I guess it's a circle button. You can look at the list of tasks and you don't know what they are. They're just numbered, but it does tell you what.

chapters they're available in um and so you can actually at that point go and be like oh here's there's like six things i can do here in chapter six that i haven't done yet you know and you can go run around trying to figure out what they are you know and um you know you you you know are making some random guesses at that point a lot of them are like multiple times there's very few that are just like this is only available at

you know, in chapter two or whatever. Um, if there's any that are like that, there might be a couple, um, you know, and those are ones I think you'd probably have to use a guide for, you know, probably cause they're a little obscure sometimes, but, um, and I really. I really love that about the quest, you know, sort of task, sort of get to know the townspeople system is like, you know, you can go and explore and figure that stuff out for yourself.

You know, this is the sort of game where you could replay chapters multiple times just to be like, OK, what, you know, what's. What's the way to do this? Like The Last Express with its multiple Fabergé eggs. As I was going to say, yeah, the fact that The Last Express has different endings to accommodate, you know, kind of like different degrees of success.

and failure was a, was really like a critical, like I didn't, you know, I don't think I definitely didn't get like, I guess the real ending of that game, but. the endings that i did get i felt like were a complete story and i might have messed up but it accommodated that you know yeah which is seems very like uh rare oh yeah so

Yeah, I don't know what it is. I don't think I'm describing it well or putting my finger on it, but I just think it's really fascinating to me that a primary, for lack of a better term, a primary objective for the main story.

is just kind of like... Because in something like Red Dead or something like that, it's not... You know on the map where you have to go to trigger it. But once... This is kind of what I'm trying to get at, and I don't mean to like... point fingers at rockstar specifically but it's the example that comes to my mind when you get to that location which is

your clock sometimes they're timed but and I'll just say this generally for open-world games with a big story in them you know where it is on the map you go with there when you want to But when you get there, it's like, it usually triggers this whole to do as if the time had stood still for you. You know what I mean? Like.

And so like big cut scenes happen and like a big pomp and circumstance and all this stuff often happens because it's a big main storyline. And so far when I have progressed things forward in this game.

it's still a conversation and it's still like appropriately. Um, now, like you said, later in the game, I'm sure it becomes much more dramatic, um, and action packed, I guess. But, uh, but it just feels like i'm just interrupting their day you know as i would if i were a fbi agent you know investigating a crime

It's like, I'm knocking on the door and there's, you know, Oh, Hey, I heard about you. You're, you're that FBI agent and it's small. You're FBI agent Morgan. Oh, please call me York. Nobody calls me special agent Morgan. Or recently someone called me Scarface. Oh, yeah. Scar over his left eye, his eyebrow. Yeah, I don't know. I can't put my finger on it, but it's just interesting.

To, yeah, to compare it to, you know, to modern day stuff. Yeah, yeah, for sure. I think we should probably touch on the Twin Peaks of it all again. because we're sort of talking about the the setting and the characters and you had remarked since you've been you've already mentioned that since you

continue to watch the series while you're playing this, that you in pre-show, you mentioned you have now kind of a different perspective than you maybe had, you know, last week or the week before. Yeah. Yeah. For anyone who, like I said last episode, I think anyone who really wants to deep dive, or maybe you're already a Twin Peaks fan, but yeah, it's very interesting and I think special.

experience for me to be watching the show just by sheer accident wasn't the plan but in retrospect I'm really glad it's happening because I'm able to play the game watch an episode, play the game, watch an episode. So there's really direct comparisons. And I actually had forgotten that Coop does have this sort of premonition thing with the dream.

and everything. So I was like, oh, wait a second. Okay, so actually that is pretty on the nose. But what Brett's alluding to, I mentioned in pre-show, that I'm coming around on it, and I guess it makes sense now that I think about it, that the more I'm playing Deadly Premonition, I am becoming much more appreciative of Swery's, the places where he has taken a different turn than Twin Peaks. So clearly the inspiration's there.

A lot of things you can see are almost one for one. But like York is definitely not Coop. There's enough of the crime and sort of the setting. You can see what I would assume are, you know, whether they're personal. influences or cultural influences or even regional influences like there's definitely enough different special and you know solely motivated by this games

vision that is not Twin Peaks. So the needle for me has, when I first started, I was like, this is a rip off. This is like, they, they have gone too far. Twin Peaks is sacred, you know. There's one for ones for this and this and this. And there definitely still are some of those things, but they always have this tweak on them. And now as I've gone further in the game, there's definitely some fresh things that are not in Twin Peaks that are different.

So I just want to give, I wanted to give them credit for that, that, you know, that yes, there is a pot lady who holds a pot all the time, you know, but then like she has an interesting backstory that's more going on there too. You know, I don't know. They took their inspirations where we know they took them from. But at the same time, I think they're having their own fun creating their own world too.

And like you said, they do seem to be self-aware about the uncanny valley-ness of it all. So I've come around that it's more in the homage category than the, you know. Then the ripoff category, I guess. The straight up intellectual theft. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Not the, what was the, I lost the phrase, but anyway. Yeah. So it's, it's, it's.

There's enough. Yeah, there's enough. If people ever do play this game and you're a fan of Twin Peaks, don't fret. I think there's definitely some problematic stuff. It doesn't get better at that. So be warned on that.

York is not the greatest in some significant ways, but there's definitely a lot going for them. For sure. Well, with what... Our one last element, I don't know if we did it last week, we're going to try to remember to do it, is to pick your favorite collectible card that you picked up this week.

This is something you mentioned last weekend. I don't remember if we got around to it. I don't think we did. Last week, mine would have probably been yours from this week because I found it last week, but I have a new one this week. Yeah, last week's would have been Gina's Sponge, which is a card you get. Yeah, it would have been mine too, actually. I got it last week. Okay, and the first week I got Turkey Sandwich.

which was, I was like, that was where I was like, that's where I started where I made the note of like, Oh, we need to actually, this needs to be a gag. We need to do this every week. Cause I can only imagine that get weirder and weirder. Some of them are just characters. Oh, the other thing to mention about the cards, which I really love too, is that once you get the card, if you go into the interface, they have a written description that goes with the card that gives you more backstory.

Oh, okay, yeah. So if you want more. Yeah, there's like a booklet as if you were collecting actual collectible cards. Oh, it's great. It's great. I love it. You know, I love collecting things and completionism and all that stuff. And lore. I mean, if you're a lore person like me, then there's like basically these are lore cards if you go and read the little, you know, it's like a G.I. Joe card or something. I will say, you know, that this game.

I don't actually find those things to be terribly separate because it feels like the motives of the characters are part of the charm of the characters. Like the... their their backstory is evident in their performance quote unquote you know so it does feel more like it's part of the game and not just ancillary whatever you know that i don't normally care about so um Although I haven't spent a lot of time reading the cards. I do remember that that's a thing you could do.

Well, next episode, we definitely, I'm sure we'll talk about the town hall meeting because that I think is where we will then go through the characters. Well, what was your card for this week? So my card for this week is Polly's pepper shaker. She is always talking. She always mishears you because she has bad hearing. Or, by the way, I made a note.

I don't think Polly has bad hearing. I think Polly hears just what she wants to hear. I think she hears exactly what she wants to hear and then throws you a loop. But she always is thinking that you said something about... The food needing more pepper, like almost every conversation she brings up pepper. So of course her card or one of the cards for hers is literally, it's a pepper picture of a pepper shaker.

Like just a diner pepper shaker, and it's Polly's pepper shaker. She's a spicy lady. What kind of collectible card is that? Oh, my God. A sponge is a collectible card? for pete's sake but it's just it's i just think the cards are like the distilled down essence of this game for me it's like this if you want to understand what this game is just look at these ridiculous cards

Mine was the legendary guitar Grecoch. What? Oh my gosh. Yeah, that was one I found because I was tracking down a character. that i knew like so i knew with that person because i haven't been to the town meeting i have fewer characters than i know if i haven't gone in and gone to places so i was going to a place where there was

There were two suspects I didn't know and two suspects I did. And I was like, oh, what's going on? You know, what are they doing? Are they, is that a meeting? You know, like what's going on? You know, so I was trying to get to that place. You know, that's actually one of the things I really like about.

the open world as well is like you go you look at the map and like because you know these characters if you know because you have their names if you see their names you're like oh i know what that's about and if you see those you see you know, names that you don't, you know, suspects who haven't met yet, you also are like, is there something going on there that I should know, you know? And so it just adds this mystery again, like those old Infocom games of like,

Oh, this person's heading out the back of the house. Well, I know that other person is back there. Are they going to talk because. One of them knows a secret about the other, you know, that sort of thing. I mean, that's a very... I can't believe Infocom Games did that. Like, when you keep describing that, I'm like, how does that even work? That sounds... It's fantastic. As a player, how did you even keep track of that? It's just...

You played it multiple, multiple times and did things over and over again to figure, to kind of map out what was going on. Yeah, it's not, those sorts of games were not like you play through it once. you know yeah and you're done you like you play up to a point and you go huh i guess i'll start over and see what if i had gone over here and done that which is very last express except left last express supports it more systematically than yeah

Yeah. The legendary guitar, Grecoch. The whole suspect thing, you know, that really goes hand in hand. And by the way, I got, I got Pauly's card, the Pauly's pepper card from a side quest. That was the reward for it. So that was actually kind of cool to find out that you can get cards that way. They're not just in-world collectibles. I mean, both terrifying as well because it's like I probably missed some.

Yeah. That's the, that's the hard part is like, you'll get to the end and be like, Oh my God, I missed one in the eighth chapter. Yeah. It's going to happen. I'm just, I already know, but I just did. Yeah. Just to end on the suspect thing in general, like your point about.

I really love the suspect. I wouldn't call it a system per se, but just the concept of how they've implemented it where until you meet somebody, they are a suspect and they're peppered throughout the town and you can kind of go there at any point. Just this sense, like it just really feels like you're solving a crime. And it really, I think I said this last episode, but even after this last session.

These last few sessions, I really wish there were more crime games where you were solving a crime. I was going to say not committing the crimes because there's plenty of this. Oh, exactly. Exactly. Like, why do we have this criminal? uh, fantasy fulfillment being done so often when, yeah, I just, I want to be, I want to say because America Tim, but yeah, fair enough, I guess. But.

And again, we mentioned Heavy Rain, but that's not really what I mean because my impression, though I haven't played that game, is that that is... more of just a linear story i don't know how much you're really like exploring and you know like this game and trying to find it is it is a little different from that um Because the suspect is not fixed in that game. What? The person who did it is not a fixed person.

Oh. Because the person who, so one of the things about some of those games is that I haven't played all of them, but that like, and in particular with Heavy Rain, this is true. I think it's true of Farrow as well. Oh, because of the branching you have created? A character could die, you know, who might otherwise be the killer. So they actually have to write it in such a way that the killer could be...

Anybody. Weird. Yeah. Yeah. It's sort of like that classic. That's another Agatha Christie thing, right? There's a play. Mousetrap. Yeah, Mousetrap. I was in it. Yeah, where you ask the audience, who do you think did it? You take a vote, and then you play it out that way. And that's sort of what that... what uh heavy rain is doing yeah okay okay well that's a different way to approach it then yeah but what i think what i mean is really like um

It's sort of like you mentioned last episode, the Batman detective stuff. But imagine a game just about that where there is a killer out there and you do have to... be a real agent and figure it out. Like, I really, I want a Twin Peaks game that's really Twin, or Next Files game or something, you know, that's like...

This is just true crime is so big right now. Well, if only we knew some game developers. Yeah, exactly. Let's pitch it. All right. Well, with that, with the horror, the true horror. of this Halloween system, this month rather, is of pitching.

Let's turn to our outro. We love to get your reviews and email. Hold them and try to send them in before next week because we'll be doing that live stream. It'd be great to have some email in the can. We have one already, but more with questions that we can answer and interact. the audience are ideal you can send that email to devgameclub at gmail.com we're on the web at devgameclub.com and my co-host and occasionally me twitch at twitch.tv slash

Tim Longo Jr. with a JR at the end. Yeah, the day this comes out, we'll be finishing Portal 2 Co-op, assuming it doesn't take us too long to play Spelunky. We'll see how that goes. Well, in one case, definitely won't be that long. But in another case, it could be. Could be. We have a fan run.

It will not be a turkey. It could be mid-turkey, I guess. I haven't played tomorrow's yet. We have a fan run discord we've referred to on the cast a couple of times already tonight. There's a link for that in the show notes. Our intro and outro music was written, performed by Kirk Hamilton, commissioned by friend of the cast, Kern Evers, and our logo, that Discord, our merch store, all by Mark Garcia. Have fun keeping your pearls of wisdom to yourself this week, and good night. Good night.

Keep your pearls to yourself, pot lady.