Fire Escape Cast #73

Hello, everyone, Welcome back to the fire Escape Cast. It is episode seventy three. I believe I'm Mike. That's Dan, Hello, that's Mary. Hello. You probably know us. It's January. I think it's still January. So presumptuous. What they don't What if it's their first episode a fire Escape Cast and they're just testing us out and this is their Describe, Describe Mary, Describe Dan in one sentence for anybody who's new to the show.

Okay, he is part gamer, part wrestling weirdo producer Rapscallion, doesn't know how to cook or do many normal things, but is a very nice person, but a heel and kind of a bastard too. Okay, I was gonna say that that was way too civil up and time dressing last week. That was the first time I tasted chickpeas and breadcrumbs and made a salad. It was I cut kale. Anyway, we will do that all the

time. You didn't made sure the world knew about it so that you could bring it up now, the fact that you don't know how to cook. I was impressed with myself. I saw Brian Shape post an instagram of a salad that looked good and thought, hey, I'll try that, And I texted him like, where'd you get the recipe? And he sent it to me and I tried it and it was very good. How would you described Dan if you think mine is too nice? Me? Yes, you said

that I was too soft? Well go on, mister hard man. Mister uh, just as obviously a genius as he can be annoying, but also a good friend. Soft as hell. No, I wasn't. I said any annoying. I mean like playful. I'm going for annoying, so I mean, thank you. He is fair enough I'm going for so that's not an insult to Mary. Very nice, incredibly talented, crazily hard working, uh to a point almost of intimidating quality, will kick your ass and deliver

a great product for whatever corporation she works for. Mary Kish, I'm getting this is too cloying. We just people. No, this is one of those things where this doesn't represent us. No, we're always nice to each other's Actually, no, don't do me? Yeah, d no, we should do you want to start or should we like workshop this together? What a piece of shit? Your circutentious sailboat sailing wine drinking somalier want to be thanks. He's a writer. Sniffing, yeah, part sniff and I just

parted like ten seconds ago. All the other ones with me and you were very nice and then we just ship all over me maybe dictating Bill gasby Pan, you know, and I the only bit I asked you to not do, and you continually. I'm fine with everything else for the most part, but I don't like that one. If you know what about Mike, just search for about the author Mike Maharty and you'll learn everything you know about Mike

Mahrty. The people I got quite a well, I guess I've got some news if you didn't, if you're not on social media, I'm leaving Polygon. I've been at Polygon for two and a half years. About big news, big change, moving away, I'm sure maybe next episode, maybe two episodes from now. Sorry, I'll talk about what I'm doing next, but suffice it to say, I am moving away from forward facing games industry stuff,

staying in games, but I'm not doing editorial anymore. You two know, and people who have been listening to Firescape, No, I've not saying anything bad about editorial per se, just my I personally have been wanting to get away from editorial for a while, and after the Quibi Show, and then after doing some freelance stuff and after doing some marketing work, like the only place I would go back to editorial for is Polygon, and then Chris

Plant brought me on two and a half years later, got burnt out a bit on editorial again. Absolutely still thrilled with the direction Polygon's going. It's just time for me to step back, and I got a cool new opportunity, so yeah, I'll be doing that soon. But uh, you can. It's not affecting Firescape whatsoever. If anything, like, my opinions here might be more fiery because I'm not getting them out in words on Polygon.

You're not part of the games of media anymore. Yeah yeah, yeah, I mean my opinion will be getting conveyed in one way or another during my day job, for sure, but they won't be forward facing and it'll be wine related. So yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, were you in? Were you a Polygon when we started this April twenty one. April twenty two was the first episode. It might have been Quibi Quibi Town started.

Quibbi was March twenty twenty until September twenty twenty October twent twenty. So I guess technically the first like half hour thing we did, you were equipped. I was correct. When we started at full or when we officially started fire Escape, I was doing freelance like marketing, sponsorship work for Polygon, I was not. I joined in Polygon editorial August twenty one. All right, so now I'm the last survivor of games Media of us three. Yeah, jeez, I feel like a dope. Mmm man. Yeah, Ji Bomb

is always like straddling that line. It's games media, for sure, but it's also like I watched uh Blight Club yesterday. Okay, here's how okay, I'm in that weird. I never watched game Spot or game I never watched Giant Bombs. I don't either, and that's not that's not a testament to the quality of Giant Bomb. It's just like, again we've talked before, it's like, when you're in this sphere so much, it's tough. It can be tiring to watch other sites what they're doing. And the Giant

Bombs nothing like Polygon, to be clear. However, when I'm working for Polygon's like the last thing I have time to do is watch a full, like two hour stream of my Mike Manatti being very bad at this Moral Kombat game and it's good at it. Actually the game is he's pretty good at it. That game is hot horseship. Let me say something I heard of the half hour I watched. You claimed that several I know Michael Hyam, I don't know Mike Manatti, snow Bike Mike I think is the fourth Mike

you mentioned, and for myself Mike check podcast. You said that we're all extremely different, but there is one weird like X factor gene that we all share. I know you said that, like we all share a specific weird gene. I don't think I share any genes with Mike Manatti, just based entirely on some things I've seen. I don't think I was saying that. I don't know if I said weird gene, but if I did say something along that line, it was probably all you have. You all four of

you have quirks. There's something about your personalities that makes you not just like average guy on the streets, Like there's something very strong. It's a good thing. But like, I'm not saying you have something in common with Mike Manatti because outside of the name Mike, I am struggling. Yeah, yeah, No, I mean I don't. I've never met the guy. I'm going to reserve judgment until I meet him. They could both be flaky.

You don't know. Oh yeah, like very specific personality traits that we share. How many Disney songs did you sing right now? On command? I'll make a man out of like one, the move on? Okay, two? Yeah, of course it was. I'm not a Disney adult. I grew up. I drank beer and did push ups. Eventually, Mike Manatti, who was looking at any picture of him from age twenty down, He's just drinking into a push hips. Here's my thing, here's my Here's why

I'm hesitant. I don't want to pass judgment on him. How here's the adult part. You can here we go the Disney adult part in this household. You you you both know my wife and I pretty well. I think you both know that Disney adults are not held in high esteem in our apartment from either of us. I go on, I just not to say I'm not into some juwe wow, juvenile. No, that's the wrong word.

I don't know. I think here's my thing. I try to stay open minded and empathetic, but there are certain character traits that up front definitely create more of a hurdle. And I'm meeting someone Disney adult is a pretty huge one for me meet too, to the point where it's like I will give some if I know someone well, I will give them good natured shit about

it, Like I do that all the time. But at the same time, I also am someone who's obsessed with a kind of niche, weird industry that people get obsessed with, and that's wrestling, and so like, I have definitely had that break too. Yeah, Like when people hear they're like, oh, yeah, he's an adult that likes professional wrestling, Like I am used to that. It's in the same family of like derision from non fans that I met. Disney fans get like, oh, you're a grown

man who watches that, Like so a grau get that always gamers. When was the last time And this is all happened to us. We've been like at a function and someone's like, what do you do as a hobby and you're like, oh, I'm a gamer, and they're like a gamer and then they look at you like you're you should be twelve, and this is something that has plagued all people from you know, the dawn of childish hobbies. And the reality is like it doesn't hurt anyone, and it's fine for

them to do it. But I do struggle to keep a conversation with a Disney adult. They if I don't want to talk about Disney. It's kind of like the same when I try to have a conversation with someone who's like really focused on their kid a little bit an now about you know, the school system. I just don't care. Aside from games, because I agree the comparison absolutely works, but like more these days, every fucking body plays

games in one way or another. What Disney adults to me still conveys to me, perhaps you're around it, perhaps I'm in I'm in such a like politically calm mood tonight and I don't want to stir the pot and I want to rock the boat. But being a Disney adult implies to me that something you're you want to regress your childhood if you're not actively trying to do it

every day, And wow, like psychological video game. You of individuals who like Disney, let me can email us at fire Escape Cast at gmail dot com to tell Mike how you feel about his belittling views of Disney adults. Go ahead, I want to Devil's advocate for Disney adults. Mike Manati, if you're listening, this is for you. Do you feel and honestly, I can take it that idea of a Disney adult wanting to regress to a

pastime or innocent time child or whatever. Blah uh? Do you think that is in the same category as like me obsessively collecting every like genesis in any s game from when I was ten? Is that in that same family, because, like you know, it's a childhood thing I'm kind of obsessed with, Like oh, I remember that from childhood. To be fair and open the gate to potentially me having one, What would my Disney adult trait be? Did you like wine as a kid? No, I wish no.

No, Like I lacrosse, do sports count? I still every once in a while pine for the days when lacrosse thing not adult though, But that's

things for children. It has to be something that's associated with like youth, Like wrestling is a very young, like focused space I love, disagree with I would disagree, well, yes, kids love like John CNN and stuff like that, and yes, the big characters and all that, it works for kids, but I feel like you see a lot of obsessed like dudes my age that were teenagers during Stone Cold see Boston and the boom period in the nineties and step that are now obsessed at the age of thirty five,

forty forty five Disney adults. It's literally the same thing and all, to be clear, you were a child where you've got into wrestling and now you're obsessed with it still and you can't let it go. It is literally the equivalent of someone who saw Cinderella and now fucking can't let it go. But Mary, who's cooler stone Cold? Steve Austin or Mickey Mouse? Yeah, it's stone Cold? To get clear, To be clear, there's absolutely nothing wrong with like being a child every now and then, like I get like

I do it all the time. I would not would you a beautiful castle to like hang out with Stone Cold Steve Austin get my photo with him? Though, I literally it wouldn't be the first place I'd picked, but I would do that. I walked into the kitchen the other day Sunday morning, a bit hungover and like Amanda was stilling living and I started going, I'm gonna get a child and then start running at her. I'm a weirdo. I'm a child sometimes, but you don't have the child like interest. You

don't have that pop culture You're not. You're not someone who's obsessed with like nostalgia with like you knows Star Wars when I was a kid, or Calvin Hops that's you know, that's a comic strip. That's everyone that is nostalgi you know, Kevin Hobbs actually like a really adult comic strip about like boringly norm the thing that I'm very normal. I've I've always been called normal up throughout my life. That's the ways you're kind of boring and normal and very

adult. Yeah, that's that's what I've been working toward this whole. It's taking seventy three episodes to get you guys to admit it. But here we are. We're just in different places in our lives. I watched a v tuber digitally shit skittles for an hour last I'm sorry. It was like, I'm sorry, technical breakthrough that she was able to do it. A v tuber shitting skittle So is this a person was there is this literally supposed to be a pooping situation. Is a model. She's like a VTuber model,

So to be tuber implies you're not seeing an actual person. There's no person. Well behind, there's an avatar for a real person. It's like when the Gorillas would be in concert and there's skittles coming out, but like, yeah, is there a butthole? There's no butthole. That's against TuS. You can't ship without a bubble. It wasn't shown, but there was one realistic Yeah. Yeah, it sounds Disney adultsh to me, meant to be realistic. I guess what I'm saying is is that we're very much like still

involved in very youthful activities like stone called Steve Austin or pooping skittles. Mike, You're just kind of evolved and moved on towards like more grown up stuff like wine, I wear cats stuff. That's where you get it all in. Yeah, it's all sexual for me these days. My childhood stuff. I don't feel that, Like you don't have Disney adult stuff, you don't have wrestling stuff. You don't I mean, I mean the content. We all play video games, but like, yeah, I don't think of you

as someone who's deeply nostalgic in a childlike way or anything. Really really quick, I want to say I think video games can play a nostalgic factor. I don't think video games are for any of us here, especially or probably most people that in to the show a nostalgia thing. Yes, I'm kind of obsessed with retro stuff. I think that. Yeah, maybe you more, But like I think, I don't think it is in and of itself an obsession with video games is a attempt to regress to childhood's stuff sexuality.

I love playing games like I love I love war I play. When I play like Disney's Lion King, i am taken aback to my childhood of safety and I feel great again. And I love playing that game because of that. But I consider the differences. Is Disney adults that's a huge part of their identity. Yeah, that is a huge thing that they talk about all the time. I do not talk about uh Disney's Lion King on Sega Genesis very often, but if you ask me, I can talk about it for

quite some time. But it's really it's really not something that I bring up ever to compete. If you get two Disney adults in a room, they compete to talk about who knows Disney World or Disneyland better. I've seen groups of more than two do this as recently as the Game Awards and oh my whole fucking talking about specific menu items changing. It's some Epcot bar or something.

It's holy shit. And again, to be clear, if you get like three people in a room who like think they're the they know the most about wine, that happens as well. I'm just saying yes to your point. I think Disney adults are like the CrossFit vegans who tend to want to tell you upfront that they're into this stuff, and we're saying all the negative stuff. Yeah, that's positive. With a Disney adult, it's ever been awesome. Never been to Disney. I went as a child and thought it

was super lame. I went to Disney Paris when I went to Paris last year, and I went early because a bunch of people who work on the events team are Disney adults, and they mapped out the entire day, which at first I was like, I don't like this, but then I found out that they had did it. They did it strategically so that we could ride every ride without waiting a long time because they had it all like in their heads of where to go and how to get everything done, which places.

They made reservations months in advance that I could eat at the ant Man eatery. It's not that cool, but like it was neat that they planned up the whole day, and I was like, I would never have had this experience. It's kind of cool. They basically like gigendoed hamburgers so that they were like as big as I don't know how to describe this, uh, like three basketball withs like a huge, huge, huge, huge hamburger, and then they would have hot dogs that were like the size of your

thumb. Like the idea was like ant Man was shrinking and then expanding the food for funzies. I don't think there's a lack of creativity in this space at all. In fact, it's one of the most lucrative things ever. I get it. They're great to make money Disney, Yeah, they know, I just got to tap the money lever. But I just want to say I had a good time, and I specifically think I had a good time because a bunch of Disney adults were like here's how we do everything.

The min max this place, and I was like, I'm down to clown and they took control of everything. Yeah. That on that point I realized I did meet Mike Manadi in person for the first time at Disney World. It was like a press thing around Summer Games Fest for Mickey's Bullshit Island or whatever, and they had it at Disney World and I met him. I'd worked with them several times online, like a lot online. At this point

I met him in person in Disney World. It seemed like a fait and we didn't have like all day or anything, but he took me on like the Star Wars rides and took me around that area, took me to the Star Wars canteena bar, and told me what the stuff Like that, You went around Disney with a Disney adult who fucking knew exactly what to do. And I will not deny it was a good time. I really enjoyed it.

It was It's like it's like dating a bar owner and when you go in, they're like, here's the table for you, and I'm giving you the best of everything. And they didn't spit in this food, like everything you get is VIP because you knew somebody a Disney adult is that somebody? So I just get But they don't own the park, do they. No, they're just a weirdo but they still benefit. YEA. Yeah, you go to the park once with them and then you break up with them.

That's how it brings happiness to many people. I like Lord of the Rings. Geekery is probably the closest I would get to that, But like Lord of the Rings is, everybody knows those are the best movies ever made, so I don't can't argue with that. They're like legitimately good. Yeah, I think Disney adults are bad about raining it in where it's like like like you said, Mary, they will bring it up. They will like everything

will be tied to Disney I have. I think I do some like internal math whenever I'm on a podcast or thing, because like I think, if over fifty percent of the people I'm on the podcast with are at least somewhat into wrestling, That's when I'll kind of go into wrestling conversation mode or use

wrestling terminology and stuff like that you'll find on here. I don't feel like I'm shoehorning wrestling talking here a lot because I know neither of you watch, so but if I'm on with Jan and Grub and Backlar, Okay, I know Backlar doesn't watch, but I got Jan and Grub, so that's over fifty percent, and I think that's all bets are off. But I think even as a weird wrestling obsessive, I can rein it in, whereas Disney fans, boy, it's just coming out of every pore all the time,

right, Yeah, I mean I think that's fair. I also think, though to in their defense, there's been times where I have been at a party and people have been talking about who cares the stock market? And I'm like, I hope something, yeah, brings up video games because I'm suffering. There's not I'm not great sports fans do. I was just going to say sports sports is rough because that's way more common, and so it is. I can't tell you how many times I've been around a group of people

where they're only talking about and it's like I have nothing to operate. Also, I think there's also like there's this like traditional idea of like normal sea and masculinity attached to a lot of sports. So I think they bring it up because they want to appear that way, so like it's kind of admirable that Disney adults might not have that, so then they do it. It's a bit braver as opposed to just trying to fit in. I don't think

Disney deults are brave. I think they're pansies, but like, I actually like I just think sports and the stock market and wine are similar in the sense that, like, you can't not you should be able to rein it in And I just would rather Disney adults do it more often. Can I say? I think we're doing a great job of simultaneously having a very reasonable and responsible conversation disneydults and also shitting on them at the same time. I

think we're ruding that line. Well, I think it's so hard to give them pros, but my brain is flooded with coms. I just like the biggest Disney adults. I know Mike Benatti, and he's an absolute delight of a human being. So yeah, I had not watched I had not watched Giant Bomb stuff in a bit, which is not by choice. It was just because time and whatnot. And I tuned into a live stream and that dude captivated me for like forty five minutes before I realized I had been watching

forty five minutes of a live stream about video games. He's also dressed as Kwan Chi with makeup, and his makeup work is incredible. I think I would love to meet that guy, but I will not connect with him on Disney stuff. That's all I'm saying. I think he wouldn't expect it. He wouldn't, And I don't think he's gonna connect with me on certain things

either, But he wouldn't wouldn't push it either. He wouldn't be like, let me explain to you why, like no, No, He'll he'll talk breathlessly about it if you engage him, but he also won't like trying to convince you. I'm not even gonna say anything that rhymes with mulan or for example, lot, what rhymes with mulan gulash? No, it doesn't at all. That's how rhyming worksan hounan like new toodles, Uh yeah, whunan whunan? Pushing it round? Is the frozen chosen, not brazen. It's

an easier one. Frozen and chosen and chosen classic classic frozen and raisins in the Korean War, but I don't think that's what we're dan. You've been building your bar up, and you sent me a a that you enter what ingredients you have and it spits out of cocktail. Can you go into details in this because I have questions. I'm very excited about this, but I

also have questions. Well, yeah, I realized I have that bar where we did our game of the ear thing that room, and it's just like, god damn, I got this like custom made fucking liquor cabinet thing with the sink next to what I should probably stock this fucking thing up to.

Like every time I drive past the liquor store, I buy a couple of things, so Topps all wine, and I got all these short bottles in the middle and like every type of liquor down across the bottom bunch of scotch stuff, and I realized, like, well, god damn, I I the only liquor I kind of drink straight for the most part is like scotch and whiskey, So like when am I going to actually like drink all this

stuff? And I realized, well, shit, I should have some like stuff for cocktails, and thought, well, maybe I have suffer cocktails, and I was I googled, like, you know, cock make cocktails with ingredients I have or something, and I found some app it's like cocktail something on an iPhone and you go to like the my bar thing and you just pick every like you go to like, here's all the spirits, and I have jin, I have whiskey, all this question and then you say,

then it's all the liqueurs where it's like I have quantro, I have you know this that, I've got the you know, triple stack whatever. And then it's got the pantry. So I say like I've got nutmeg, I've got vanilla extract, I've got cran apple juice or whatever, salt, pepper, whatever. So you just kind of check everything and then it does some stuff and it tells you like here's ten cocktails you can make, and there's

nine more if you want to pay for it. But I just looked at the ten and it's just kind of a nice thing because it's like, well, shit, this is all this stuff I have on hand, and also gives me a good idea of like, oh, I bet I could make a lot more if I had simple syrup or because I Mike, you bought those bidders when when we were all here like a simple when we're there too, right right, because we didn't have simple syrup. So I use the

bitterers you bought and syrup make simple syrup. It's easy, it's easiest possible. For me, I knew the easiest also need the easiest thing. But Dan, so that okay, that all sounds great because when you we were talking a few nights I'm talking about that sounds great because my question was something you already answered, which was, okay, I'm assuming you enter in the bar you have at what point? Okay, so if you're making if if you could make a last word, say you have gin lime, limes,

uh, chartreuse, and then you don't have maraschino. If you have those three, would this app tell you, hey, you could make this really good cocktail if you bought this one more thing. But it sounds like it is, which is great because yeah, Bonka asked me that exact question when I was making this like a half hour ago, and I have not seen I've literally made two cocktails with it so far. No, it sounds good. My thing was like, well, what if Dan is putting in like

three ingredients that he has of this really good drink. Would it recommend the fourth if you want to spend like other twenty dollars, which it sounds like it is. I guess I haven't seen it recommend things I don't have, but I can look at the list of possible things and I'd be like, oh, I thought the way you described it, I thought they were saying like, hey, if you want to spend another ten dollars, there's this.

No I don't think I know. Okay, no, no, no, that would be a good feature because like that's happened with me some of the books we have. It's like all right again, I'm just using the last word as like a popular example the last couple of years, like all right, I have limes for lime juice, I have gin, I have marisk but I don't have chartruths. A lot of people are not gonna have shoot chartruths these days. Would the app tell you, hey, if you

got chart ruth you could make this great cocktail. You're close, but you almost you need one more thing. I haven't seen like a section where it's like closed but no cigar or anything. I just say, like here's what you can make, and if you get premium, you can do this manymore if they if they're listening, or like we know the people who if we know the people who made it, then like that's a feature that would kill because that would flow cocktail. It might if anyone uses this. It seems

like it's a very popular one, and maybe it has it. I've literally made two drinks, so I don't really know all the features and stuff, but like it might have that. It sounds good otherwise, but like they should do that because so much of my experience with cocktails, which I made a lot. Have you seen the photos we finally built ours up to Dan, Yours is? Yours is? Yeah, yours is definitely like yours is

incredible. I loved it seeing in person, but like ours. We finally got a new bar in the dining room against that wall where we had that bonus video a couple of years ago. Amanda's been getting me these tiki cocktail recipe books, which if you've made tiki drinks you know that they have like twelve ingredients each. They take a while, but they're incredible. But my experience often with something I want to make is like, oh, yes, I have. I have orange bitters, I have gin I have I could

muddle raspberries. Fuck, but I don't have like eggs right now. I would need to go get those. Like so much of it is like I don't have that last ingredient. If the app was like telling you that last one to make something that you might really like, that would be a good feature too. I bet if you tap like an ingredient, that wouldn' surprise me. If it's like, here are the drinks you could make with that, and then you could see by the process of elimination to tell what you

can make. That app sounds awesome though, Like that, like that sounds perfect because like again, the more you bell out of the bar, the more you're like, I'm in the move for like I'm drinking the best cocktail ever in existence right now. It's in Alaska. Have we talked about this? Oh, real quick before I forget, Yes, I think you've made one of those. I just checked it. So I went to like the Bay Breeze cocktail, and I hit pineapple juice, which is one of the

ingredients. And you can just say it says used in fifty five cocktails. Oh that's awesome, and so then it's like I can know, like, okay, so I've got this thing. So yeah, that's perfect. No, that sounds cool. I want to look that up. No, this is in Alaska. This is a it's like a martini ish drink. But chartruse is a liqueur from France that is like we may have talked about this

in Fire Escape. It's like my white whale right now, or it's many people's white well because the last word cocktail was kind of brought back from It was a Prohibition era cocktail that got brought back by a bartender in Seattle not that long ago, and like in the maybe two thousand and five it got revived basically, which happens. There was like there's been several renaissances of cocktails, as there was with wine, as there are with like anything. It's

all cyclical. But the last three or four years, the last word kind of started popping back up on menus and one of the key ingredients in a last word cocktail, which I like, I think it's a bit overblown, but I still love it, is chartruse because that cocktail is showing up to so many cocktail many chartreuse itself, demands skyrocketed because it is made by monks in France who don't give a shit about how much it sells. Selfish bastards.

They didn't feel the need to up the supply. They're like, hey, this is our vocation, this is our this is what we spend our days, this is our calling. Chartruse is cool because there's supposedly, as it goes, there are two monks. I should have heard the rest of the story before I call them selfish bastards. Gone there sounds like they're very generous and selfless. I don't know, I don't I don't know them personally, but like, this is a shit go on, Mike, tell me

more furious. They save babies all over the world, and they're anti their pro their pro abortion and everything. So merry, are you again those things or is that what you're saying? Already made my point, I'm not gonna go back. There are only ever two months monks alive Carthusian monks that know the recipe, and it's like one hundred and fifty three ingredients for chartreuse.

My point being, they don't care about the money. It's a vocation, it's calling for them, so they didn't up the supply, so chartreuse is hard to find. I finally found a bottle recently. They shipped them out recently, So if I'm having a last word, now I finally have chartruse. But that was that one ingredient I just never had for a last word.

But an Alaska is just an ounce and a half of gin, a half ounce of chartreuse, and a dash of orange bitters, and you stir it on ice, and you pour it in a chilled glass preferably this is a Nick and Nora glass, which is my which is good for up drinks up meaning without ice. Oh it's the best thing ever. Nice, It's

a perfect cocktail. There is something fun about putting it together. And then like obviously drinking is fun, but when it's something that it's like, even like the simple bullshit I've made here, it's just like, oh, this is the fun thing that I put together and didn't just like you know, drink out of the can or whatever. Friday evenings at like five or six pm when I'm done with work, Like cooking is great because I start working with my hands and you have a final product to show for it, and

it's a good way to like get away from the computer. You're working with your hands, like you don't have to think about slack. Cocktails are the same thing. It's like, yes, I would prefer wine nine days out of ten, but cocktails it's like you're you're still concocting something in your shit like certain Like again, if you have like an egg white, you got to do the dry shake before you have the ice. It's it's a fun like alchemical kind of process. Well, Mike, you would know this.

I keep hearing people say lately that it is said that France has the best champagne. That was my duelingo thing for those I put that up there. That annoyed the shit out of me. Why does that someone rigging? Because France is the only country that has champagne. Now you can buy it here I got a New Year's No you can't, or you yes, Okay, you can buy champagne outside of but like, France is the only country that can make champagne because champagne the region is in France where champagne is made.

What's it called if I made it in Minnesota, don't fucking know. Just a sparkling wine. But it's probably right. No, it's not. It's what's different grapes years and years and years of tradition and wine making and institutional knowledge and practices, and it's made in a certain region where the grapes have

been growing in the same soil for like almost like centuries. What if I flew to Champagne, France with a big bucket that I could bring on TSA style and bring it back here through it in a garden pot or whatever. Yeah, and ile and I gotta pass customs, Okay, So you stole the grapes from Champagne, I'm stealing the grapes and the dirt. Okay, I see what you're saying. Well, once you steal the grapes off the vine, like, the soil has already done its job, so you wouldn't

need the soil. Okay. What if I want to be like super authentic, I see where you're going. No, it would not be shamp pain because it wasn't made with the traditional method in Champagne. What if I did it the same way in champ Yeah, if you did the same exactly, why I do everything the same? Whatever I stomped on him the same way or whatever you do? Uh? Here, I feel like the travel time would fuck with the grapes, it wouldn't be champagne. The first thing they

do is fuck the soil of the champagne ground. And you don't have that. That what stopped me, I think, stop me from a really long dick going all the way. Oh way. You're saying it has to go trans atlantic. Oh geez, Okay, yeah I can't. I can't like claim that that guy can't make a cocktail for ship, but he's got a transatlantic dick. Be unwieldy. That'd be a sick tender bio transatlantic chong. This is the Indiana Jones map, just the red dot going across. But

it's just a dick. It's just like the guy Ritchie interstitial map graphics like boo boom boom boom bom boo boom boom boom boom boom, and then a dick. It's like, catch me if you can do you okay. I went to a wi a Scotch bar this weekend. Dan. It made me think of you because you. I'm not a Scotch drinker. I drink bourbon usually, but I went to a place called Scotch Lodge. They focused in scotch obviously, and they I went with a scotch drinker who helped me so

I didn't embarrass myself. And I had several really nice scotches, one which blew me away, and they told me some really fun facts about it. And I'd wonder if you'd ever tried the Glen Dronik. I have a photo of it, gonna show you. That's what it looks like. Straight, what you just tipped on it like straight? I had it straight. I had all all of my scotch is straight. What they told me that I

think was fascinating about it is apparently the current batch. This is very similar to Mike's Sharp True story because alcohol is handmade, which means it's never perfect and it can change year to year. Right, you can have a bad year for wine. The current batch of Glenn Dronick. I hope I'm saying that right. Eighteen year is apparently quite good because it's accidentally twenty two year. They're not going to market it that way because that would make people believe

that every time they have eighteen year that it's twenty two year. It just so happens that right now a lot of the eighteen year was bottled. It it ended up being twenty four year and it's sublime. It was so smooth, and I don't like Scotch usually, I find it too Bernie. All so smooth, no burn, and it wasn't that sweet. It was just perfect and I couldn't believe it. And they were like, it's because this

is the twenty two year, but nobody knows that. And I thought I felt very smart leaving that place and made me want to buy a bottle. But it's like two or bucks though, Glenn Dronick eighteen eighteen years eighteen. But we're here and get it because I will get that, yeah, Glen Dronick, Glen Dronick. Is it's not the easiest Scotch to get, but it like you could find it. And I tried that and we bought the sixties, so I got h we were doing one ounce spores. I got

a sixteen ounce oh sorry, sixteen sixty Scotch. I was fucked up. I got I got a sixteen year boom par is a scot at the and the sixteen year wasn't chuck an us get her out of here, s all right. The sixteen wasn't even on par It was still very good. I would not. I wouldn't buy it. I wouldn't recommend it. The eighteen year bluey, you know what. I'm going to buy that the second I see it, because I've been meaning to because I love sitting on a scotch,

but I don't know much about it. I don't research this stuff, really. I just have every Johnny Walker from red to blue, and I love trying the different ones and you know, telling the difference between them. But I have never ventured outside of Johnny Walker, and I'm sure there's a whole world of scotch out there that I don't know anything about. That's actually I'll start with this Glendronic eighteen that sounds great, and tell me what you

think. I do not. I do not claim to be a scotch influencer. This one was the one where I was like, I feel like I've learned a lot because I had probably like eight glasses of scotch that night and this was the only I know. But you know, you're sipping, You're not drinking the whole ounce. You like having a little sip and you're passing it. This was like the white tasting. Yes, this is sure. I guess that's what I call it drinking in I tasted it, if that's

what you mean. I was getting drunk at a bar. I don't know what you're calling it. It blew me away. And I thought, for the first time, Oh, this is what drinkers do. They they have palette changes, and they discuss the palette and they talk about the aftertaste and all in the scent and all this bullshit that I usually don't do. What have I been saying? Yeah, but I'm like three years I know you were, but like, okay, so that sounds great, Mary quick like

was it a mislabeling thing? So they mislabeled it four years too early. So I was half listening when he told us, okay, think you can

start. I think he was saying something like it was one of those uh snafoos where they had all these extra barrels that were left over and they didn't want to have twenty two year because they're not going to continue it, and it was just this thing that happened, and so they were like, we'll just put it in the eighteen and that everybody who's like figured it out is like this is God like God tear Scotch apparently, and it's now here's the catch, Dan, Yeah, when it's out this current run, it will

just be regular eighteen. Well, I'm going to, like in the next right try to get this twenty two. And the guy was like, I can't promise you that if you go to the store right now that you will get the twenty two. He's like, but it is what's being circulated right now, so currently eighteen to twenty two. I'm making a note this weekend I will go out there and try to find it. Yeah, I feel that's what's cool. I'm also going to reach out to them. I would

love to be a Scotch influencer. Yeah, because come on sponsor this fire Scape cast. If you get like Lafroug or Oben to sponsor your stream, I would be extremely surprised. I don't think they go for the same kind of stuff that Like, that would be awesome if you do that. I'm one Tale of the Sun play No. No, I'm sure there are many people that work at Lfroug and the like McAllen that fucking like play resnual one daily or something, but like, I don't know that that's the kind of

marketing they do. If it is, I would be extremely elated to be wrong, Mike, I have actually had a lot of lafroug our. Mutual friend Sarah goes out there to Scottland for their based or something. She's brought a whole bunch back up for things for Ben Hansen's wedding. We all went to the Airbnb and she had like every type of lafroig and it was I remember that being good is that Scotch general rule of thumb Scotch can only come

from Scotland, which is, well, well here we are again. But if he got soil and Scotch Mary's from Scotland, liquor nationalist Mike Maherty here scott would you would need like the right barrels as well? Like that if I stolen from Scotland, you could probably replicate that. Uh what was that stealing? Yeah? I got it. But what if I stole the earth and you put it in a stolen barrel and hit it across the Minneapolis. You're always doing it like you're some kind of like nineteen thirty smuggler, Like

it's always sa rye ry is like bourbon. Here's a misconception. All these fuck wads who say bourbon can only be made in Louisville. No, or in Kentucky. No, that's not true. Some of the best bourbons are made in Kentucky. Absolutely, I agree. Bourbon just needs to be I think it's fifty one percent based corn is the rule to be considered bourbon over just whiskey. Someone correct me if that's wrong. I think that's the actual

rationale. But like when that's a thing too. It's like email fire escape cast at I actually want to know, gmail dot com courtesy of CC Mike Mahart Mike Maharty. Also we run on scott Factory fire escapecast at gmail dot com. See right, if I was wrong and you want to if like Lefroig wants to sponsor us, Oh my god, Amanda is more of a Scott's person than I am. I love it, but she knows more about

it. But Obin, I think it's obin. It's pronounced ob a. N Oh wait right here, it just has one behind it's well, no, this is the empty cylinder from the empty bottle. But open is really good. I like it. It's got that yeah, oh yeah, it's got that like salt water taste to the peat. Oh it's awesome. But it was amazing it's like such a huge part of the Scotch process. I wish I knew more about this. I I tried to cram in a lot of years of Scotch knowledge in two hours of heavy drinking, and let me

tell you, I retrained. I retained very little. Weird. That's like to get any more about the pize, Sir, I heard there's barrels somewhere. If I now, if I go to Champagne, France and fuck the barrels, what happens to the pete? Are my children Champagne? Then imagine imagine a child half Champagne. What does that mean? You just said if I fuck up Champagne, like, would it be children? Yeah, but

you're sayingiculous things now, nonsense. Imagine if a Cabernet and uh and uh, you know, and a person from Connecticut hooked up my god, the offspring, my god. None of this can be used in court. This is all just random, senseless things that we're saying about alcohol. And I don't think I'm educated enough to have such like opinions about it. But I know what I felt when I drank that one ounce, and it's amazing as like soap box as it sounds. That is why I fucking love wine above

everything else. I still but like I think Scotch encapsulates it as well. Like some of my favorite drinks, you can actually taste where they're from, Like you taste if you're if you're drinking like an Anna rosso from Sicily, like a Norella mascal as it was grown on the literal slopes of a volcano. You can taste the igneous, like the ash in the line, and it's still delicious. That's fucking cool to me, Like you taste a part

of the world. That's awesome, and like I love like Scotch is another thing where it's like, oh, okay, so this is what they were doing over like a century with this petmas. So it's like, here's why uh lafoy tastes different than lagavulin, And here's what these distilleries do differently in the growing process, and here's what they do differently in the actual aging process.

Like that's when it's fun to me, when you're actually like in your mouth, you're or in you're like when you're smelling something as well, you are actually getting centuries worth of work that was put into this one tiny sniff glass and like so many intelligent people and like passed down through families and generations, like it's incredible, like and it's still at the end of the day, the most important thing is is it delicious? Does it taste good?

And that's awesome, But like, maybe you can answer this. This is something I wonder a lot where it's like, you know, I don't have the most discerning palette that might shock people. But like with Scotch specifically, part of the reason that I am liking it so much is I can tell the difference between a red and a double black, or a blue and a gold, and like I can tell and appreciate it's subtle, but I can tell whereas I'll be honest, I probably now had, you know, maybe

thirty bottles of red wine in my life. You know, I started fairly recently. I'd say it's a good summary. You think you've only had thirty bottles of wine in your entire life red wine? Oh, I've had maybe five white wine, maybe thirty ide over shooting it, I mean, like maybe it's fifteen. I just I mean, I started like a couple of years ago. Really, are you adding all the glasses and pouring them into back into the bottle to make your thirty. I've only drank a full bottle

of wine at the time. I've never had a glass, so that was where it's going to go bad. And yeah, Bod's on a big drinker. So it's like, well, I might as well just finish the bottle every time for red Yeah. Yeah. But but the point being that, like I've had let's say, I've had thirty bottles of red wine, and I've had ones that cost six dollars and I've had ones that cost fifty dollars. I literally gunned to my head could not tell you the difference between any

of those thirty bottles of red wine. And they're different types. I've had cabs hobs, and I've had a temper and I've had you know, all these different red blends and all that stuff. Literally, I mean, maybe it was Pepsi Challenge style, maybe I would tell, but sure, so my hand, it's like, yeah, that tastes like red wine. So so the difference being what you're doing with Johnny Walker is what's considered a vertical. You're drinking like five. On the one hand, you have like say

you have one specific bottle of wine from five different vintages. Vintage is a year in which the grapes were harvested. Say you have the same Cabernet salvignon from Santa Barbara, California, but you have the twenty seventeen up until the twenty twenty two. What you're doing the same wine, same exact or the same grape, the same same vineyard, the same venieron who made it, like the actual same like same everything, same grape, except they're from different

years in which the grapes are harvested. What you're doing with Johnny Walker is almost similar. It's like your palate is good, you're tasting the difference between a blue and a black and a red. But like it's still one very specific style of Scotch, even if like there are different qualities to it. Vintage is different because it's so, like Mary said, it's so dependent, like sometimes a hurricane hits wine seed and sometimes an earthquake destroys these vats that

were stored, like vintages like have these story behind them. Like like if you had like a sixty eight Margo Chateau Margo, it's like that's gonna be incredible, whereas a sixty nine could be terrible because there was way too much rainfall throughout the entire year. The grapes just drowned. But like you're basically describing a vertical of wine, which is when you take several vintages of something,

or even you take six Cabernet savignon's from different vintnors. If I lined up six, what you're saying is you drink a bottle of this specific wine at a time, and then maybe two weeks later, you have a different bottle of wine. I don't think that's that unusual for you to not be

tasting the difference. I think often and it's comparative tasting where you're like Dan, I think next time we hang out, if I put like Vionia from southern France next to a Savenon blanc from Sanser next to a Chardonnay from Argentina, you will night and day see the difference even though they're all even though they're all dry white wine or VIONI is not you get my point. It's like, I think the way you drink wine absolutely nothing wrong with it.

Like that's absolutely like how I think most people drink wine. I think it's just you, you know, Johnny Walker really well, so you're going to taste the difference between blue red. I don't think it's a bad palette. I think your palette is just a tune to specific things where it's like, oh, this is a red, Oh my god, this is blue. Of course it is. How could it be anything different? If I gave you a glass of Johnny Walker blue, you would tell me immediately it's not

red. This is blue. Yes, It's not a matter of you not being capable of telling the difference between a carmon air from Chili and a cabernet from Bordeaux. It's just sometimes there are weeks between when you have these reds.

It's okay. That's why it's fun, because like that's when you're like, oh my god, these two wines are from I just had a Merleau from santem Milion and I had a Cabernet Sauvignon from Grave not even thirty miles apart, but holy shit, they taste extremely different, very similar grapes. But like, how could I've not tasted this well because you tasted them neck and neck, like, of course it's going to taste different. Like that's

when wine gets crazy. To me, but then you get hyper focused and it's like, again, there's certain wineries in France where it's like you see a bottle that says Premier Crew or Premier Crew, that literally is assigning a quality to a wine because it came from a specific hectar, which is two and a half acres on a vineyard, because the sun hits this part of a hill at the right time of the year, and then rainfall tends to

slope downwards. But then you get a grand Crew, which the very expensive bottles from the same exact vineyard, which could be literally a quarter of a mile away, and because the sun hits it perfectly all year and the rainfall tends to the irrigation, they can't irrigate, but like the water tends to slope downward the right way, the grapes suck up water at the right time they ripe and at the right time to get harvested at the right time.

That's the difference between like eight hundred dollars, and it's like literally a quarter mile apart. And then you could taste the difference in those What you're saying is really interesting. But because I'm not drinking the wine, I don't care as much. No, that's why tastings are fun. That's the thing I want someone to say to me while I'm drinking an eight hundred dollars glass of wine. Oh yeah, smart person, like you tell me the difference. And I could be like, hmm, I can taste it or not,

doesn't really matter, but like this is not as valuable. No, I know, I know, I know, I thousand percent realized my like rant right now is not this is my way. But I also want to be drinking wine when I hear That's why tastings are fun. You do a flight of six glasses of wine from someone, they know what they're talking about. Then they will point out to you. It's like they'll ask you really good questions. They'll be like, hey, try this little glass, what are

some what's the fruit you're picking up? What are some like notes? Like what are like can you taste anything like? In like is there some weird like vegetable or bacious kind of things? Like I tasted banana in one of the scotches and it wasn't listed on the label. And I think it's because

they think it's not a like expensive fruit. I think the banana and some really good fucking whe It wasn't in their tasting notes, Like they wrote the tasting notes and they were like, this is charred mango and orange peel, and I was like, fucking liars, it's banana. You just don't want to be associated with it because you're elitist in your cunts. But that I didn't fun, like you can taste, you can taste such different things,

and like that's like you're never gonna get tasted with me. There's no like ideal palette. Everybody's palette is always going to develop it banana when I taste it. I think it's objective whether or not something is banana. It's one thing to say whether or not it's good. But if it has banana, fuck off blind taste test. You wouldn't know a banana if it was in your mouth. There's no objection. That's like, I would know a banana. You're good anti banana. I'm pro banana. Mike has a banana every

morning. He talks about it every time. I know he loves bananas. Oh you weirdo. The point is is I'm saying that we can discuss like the subject nature of like palettes and stuff like that bananas are objective. I know when I taste banana. I tasted banana. It wasn't in their notes, and I think they left it out intentionally because they think it's like a poor man's fruit. I don't really know the political nature of bananas and tasting, but I know they left it out and it was banana. But tasting

can be subjective, is subjective all the time. Right, No, so Dan must like Hollow Night then, right? Not banana. So Dan has to like Hollow Night because it's objectively a good game. If it had banana and he said it didn't have banana in it, I'd be like, you're objectively wrong. He just said it's not like a very good game, and I said, you're also objectively wrong. But that's a totally different argument. You can't just add this in there to set me banana's I'm not taking the

bait. I'm not taking the bait. Thank you. Banana's are objective. I no, you could taste steal it. You could taste many things in a wine that other people are gonna tase. Thats why you have a sound effect that confirms that I won. Mm, thank you. Yeah, I didn't hear that. It doesn't matter. I don't think my sounds it's a part. I don't think company, right, all right, Yeah I won? Okay, Well I wasn't trying to argue to a win or lose.

But you shouldn't not against this guy got companies on Instagram. That's what I'm going to do coming out of If you get like Laga Uhland to sponsor us, I will be forever in your debt. Laga BLANDA A l A G A v U L I N. I don't about sponsor. It's much easier to just get free ship I found well yeah, or lafreud l A p h r A Oh down you there's too many weird letters I got. I

got a contact. She's coming over for the Rumble this weekend, so that while we're at to get the email for Chateau cheval Blanc and sounds on there and shots cartoon, Chateau Lafite Rothchild would be awesome to Banana Corporation Rothchild, Chateau Margo Petris and someone step on bananas to make banana wine. It's crazy. I watched people step on bananas not to make banana wine. Just gets me going. Yeah, I made both of those up talk about down to

a science. That's my bit. Don't steal my fit of doing a weird thing into the transition. Okay, we can talk about like A Dragon infinite wealth. We got it. We got it a while ago. Yeah, they gave us some lead time, which is nice. It's weird, just the first time I can remember like two big games coming out, like A Dragon and Tech and eight. They both went out super early, and they're embargoes were incredibly lined up from like here's the review embargo on Tuesday, here's

the live stream bargo. But they're two different companies, so that it was I've never seen it like that, you know. Yeah, Teching was like an hour earlier or something or vice. It was like lined up even like that, like okay, give Tech a chance to shine here and then we got the infinite well stuff coming in. But anyway, yes, we've been playing for a while like a So I have not played Tech in eight.

Let me be clear about that. I'm interested in it just from a pure stylistic perspective because I've I've probably played maybe cumulatively three hours of the Techan franchise and my lifetime. I'd like it from afar. I realize it's batshit, but I also I would prefer I don't know, I just at first blush. I prefer Soul Caliber. I like the weapons and shit, I like I've all. I've played most Mortal Kombat games over the last six centuries.

Street Fighters fine for me. But tech and eight I'm curious about, however, not to set that up because I want to get to techon eight, but I am curious about Infinite Wealth. What you think of it, Dan, because do you? I do, which is interesting because it's a very cocky game upfront people I've been getting this because people are surprised because it's it

is extremely talky, and not just upront, it's talking throughout. I'm like twenty two to twenty three hours into it right now, and it's still like the deeply story focused game, except for the last five hours where I've just straight up been playing Animal Crossing. But that said, Dodo Island, I think Dundoko, I think, oh yeah, it takes a really long time

to get going, and I feel like I'm probably twenty ten. On podcasts, talked about how that's an unforgivable sin and there's no reason to ever have a game that takes that long to get going. But I guess I give this in Metal year of pass. I guess I guess if I liked the story, I give it a pass. It turns out because this one takes

a long fucking time to get going. It starts out I'm not going to spoil anything in great detail here, but like, it starts out and there's like several hours kind of setting up with characters you know in Japan, and then everyone knows from the trailers and everything. You wind up going to Hawaii, and so that's a whole nother re establishing this place and all these characters and what you're even doing. It's just a very long time before it's finally

like, all right, go do yakaza stuff. Oh yeah, super super quickly for those who don't know, because the Yakuza series can be fairly confusing if you're an outsider, U Yakuza Like a Dragon, which was what two years ago they like a Dragon? Yeah, Yakaza Like a Dragon was right

at the beginning of the pandemic, I want to say introduced. I think Itchibon as the protagonist and after Kiriu is the main one from all the Aakuza games, and again it's the same series, but it was also like in Japan it was known as like a Dragon, and then over here is Yakuza, but now it's like a Dragon is the series, although I feel like they could make ten more like a Dragons and zero yakazas, and I think we're still going to call it Yakaza because you know, but Yakaza Like a

Dragon was notable because it turned the combat into like this semi turn based, semi real time kind of thing, which I loved. But this one is picking up basically right at the end of Yakuza Like a Dragon. Uh, this one being like a Dragon infinite wealth, where I think, just premise wise itchibon Kasuga. He is basically working to rehabilitate and or rather reassimilate former Yakuza members after two big Yakuza families just got obliterated. Rehabilitate these people and

reassimilate them into like civilian life. So he's working for this like freelance job company, and uh, that goes haywire. So then he goes to Hawaii. I think it's probably a spoiler to say why he goes to Hawaii, so we don't have to do that, I will say to find someone, yes, And but then also I think it's a known fact that Kiriu himself is also becomes like it's becomes a dual protagonist game. I didn't know that, and I think I'm an idiot because we we did our game award stuff

and Mary you were there. You saw we had those cardboard cutouts because we were sponsored by this game them. Yeah it was great, But I heard several times I think greub was referring to him like oh yeah, I got itchubon and carry you here. And I kept looking at this like gray haired guy with this like different haircut. That's not cure you, and like why do people keep calling him carry you? And like I didn't like when Kiriu shows up in this game, it was like, oh shit, that's carry

you. Like people were literally calling him carry you for months and I didn't realize, like, oh he just got a different haircut or he like like the exact same, like once I figured out of his curios, like oh yeah, of course that's his fucking face. But I'm just an idiot and the gray hairs, like that's a different human being. Becomes a dual protagonist kind of game, not in the sense of like Spider Man switching back and forth, but like you can you play as he's very tied into the story.

But he's Yeah, he's been the star of like how many like eight games before zero through seven, plus Guide In and Eashan and all that. Yeah, I want to like this game more than I do right now, and I've not played a ton. I have been in Hawaii for maybe an hour, which is not far. This game could be one hundred hours if you all, I sincerely just I really need to try to get past this roadblock of I cannot stand Itchiban as a character, really relate to him in

a way. I've never related to video game characters in my fucking I've never I don't think there's a single other video game character in history that I've thought. I relate to this guy, but I relate to it. Gibon, have you proposed to a woman on your first date? Well? No, he blew that. He fucking blew that day. That was bad news. That part I tried to help fact. Yeah no, No, just a general just like approach George, life and attitude and things like that. I'm

like, I like this guy. I would get along with this guy. He's great. Some of the some of this game feels rather some of the writing for him specifically feels like it's surpassing like this kind of like Confederate of dun Confederacy of Dunce's style OAF and getting cringey. Like I Sometimes when he talks, I'm like, I can't, dude, I I I no, one's this dumb. I related to this man. I can't help that. But like I can my perception of what makes you think dumb? What makes

you think dumb? Dumb's social And I say this as someone who's social can't pick up on social cues as often as I would like to. But socially he's endearing. I think I think they make him endearing. But then other times, his way of approaching situation where he has fucked up socially, his way of repairing them is like, wow, he went very far in the

opposite direction. And maybe I'm just not in the right mindset. This has happened before where I'm like, Okay, well, this character, maybe I'm sure there's a reason that he's just like catapulting in the other direction to compensate for how weird he was in this one situation. It's not working for me yet. Maybe it will as I keep playing. I'll talk about this in a bit, But like I had other things sidetrack me, but I can't

do it. You bond right now? Okay. I want to like him because I fucking love Yacauz like a dragon is what do you like about him so much? Day? And that makes you feel like you relate to him? What? What has he done? Give me like an example of something you're like I would do that. I just feel like he, uh, you know, when when problems arise and things like that, he acknowledges them

and he deals with them. And there are moments where he doesn't do it well, like like Mike said, but I feel like he generally has a positive outlook on things. I think his demeanor is just very positive and likable and the way he like befriends people and looks for the best in people, and it's like, oh, let's have a drink and chat and everything, or let's go have fun, you know. But then also like when they're serious stuff, I think he you know, he handles that. He's not

just like this big like ghoul like Homer Simpson idiot or anything. I I don't know. I think he's fairly well rounded. I don't think he's he's not serious yachiz abas genius or anything like that. But I think, uh, I think he's doing the best with what he's got. I want the best with what he's got. Yeah, he's likable. I think he's socially I think, you know, yeah, okay, the dating stuff and then early on in the game like that, yeah he's an idiot about that.

But to be clearly like him making friends and stuff like for instance, this isn't a huge spoiler. When he first gets to Hawaii, he basically gets like held up, like he basically like a stam type situation. He gets mugged, and he winds up like handling it in a way where he actually befriends that guy and they like kind of learn more about each other and they

kind of, you know, are he becomes part of your party. And I thought that was such a cool thing where it's like, oh god, he got kind of fucked over, but instead of like holding a grudge and being an asshole about it or anything, he like you know, turned it around and related to someone on a human level and met a new friend, you know, yeah, I appreciate that. To be clear, Like every I don't know that I've shared my opinion on him with anybody, Like everybody

had talked to is like, oh wow. No, I'm digging the characters and like, I like several of the returning characters from like a Dragon, yahkuz will Like a Dragon, And I love that game. And I think most of us here are probably like the game's mechanics for we're I think we're mechanics first before story here. The story has not yet grabbed me, and I want it to because I want to get to the point where I'm doing this like animal crossing esque island thing. I'm doing some other mini games.

I'm doing all this stuff where I'm like, like, I love the grind and the fun little mini games of Yakuza games, but I I don't know, I can't get there yet, but it's entirely possible. Next episode. I'm like, holy shit, I'm just like head over heels for this game. But right now I'm I'm trying to give you some signposts in case you're

you're trying to kind of move forward and get to that. I'd say chapter four ish is about when it starts really opening up or you can just really what's that If I've been in Hawaii for an hour, what chapter would that

be? Probably in two, I think, probably about to start three, and then chapter six, I believe, is when you start the Dundoko Island stuff and the stuff you have seen so far, Mike, that I absolutely love is the combat system, like the back that, Yeah, this is a talkie game with a turn based battle system, and I fucking love it. These are like two things I have historically hated, but I typically haven't

liked the auxias. I've never disliked the Aucuisis series, but I never typically finished them because I always thought the combat was very kind of like stiff, and I never loved the feel of the combat. And it happens so fucking often, and one time in history it switches from real time action fighting to turn based and that's what gets me into it, because I think this turn

based combat is so fucking good that I never dread going into fights. You know, there's so many fights with random you know, hooligans on the street, and I'm always loving it. With the job system stuff. You probably haven't gotten to that yet, Mike, the job system is great, but I I love that in Yakuza like a dragon, so I'm expecting to like it here and people have pointed out but it's funny. Also, the combat

is very wrestling. It's like if you're near a prop that you can use and you get smash it in their face straight cone or a bike or something in The positioning is huge if you are you can knock them into other people if you position it right, which yes, like for anybody who hasn't seen. Basically it's turn based, but you whoever, whichever characters turn it is,

you can move freely within a little like circle and then attack. Take as much time as you want to line up an attack on whomever you want, provided they are in the right area, and then you can line them up and knock them into other people. Well, there's a proximity bonus. If you attack someone inside your circle, you can attack anyone, but if they're outside that proximity bonus, you're not going to hurt them as much.

Yes, the condition outside of it, you can't move outside of it, right, you can attack outside of it, So like if somebody's thirty feet outside your circle, you can still target and attack but everybody's but like during this time when you're lining things up, everybody in the brawl is kind of like rope a doping and waiting for you to punch or kick or throw them. But they will line up sometimes so you can stuff. So let's say I'm the taxi driver guy and he has a move where he throws a tire

in a straight line. You can kind of wait until like, oh, those three guys are lined up, and then you can hit all three of them. So there is like it's turn based, but there's real time elements to it. There's timing things. There's like QTE style things. If you

have increased your bond with certain characters. Let's say me and that taxi driver I've done these drink link things where I see him sitting at a bar, I can go talk to him and you know, we'll have a chat about like oh, his his X and whether he should try to get back with her or whatever. And that increases your level in your bond, and you do that enough and it'll be like, okay, now these two can do

a tag team thing in battle. If they're in battle together, you can do this pick attack together, or if you know I knock a guy down, taxi driver guy will come and attack him on the ground because you have that bond from drinking and talking to each other and stuff like that. So a lot of really fun ways. Like all these systems I think work together in some really smart ways. Yeah, it's it's such a Also, like

for Turn Bay's combat, it's it's I'm playing on Xbox. I don't know if it would make a different that what I'm playing on, and it's so crunchy, like when I hit a guy into another guy into another guy, it feels great, like it's it's it reminds me of like God so weird. It reminds me of Octopath Traveler too, which is a two D sprite based game. Like but like there's impact in this turn based combat, and I love that there's no long unskippable like in fight sequence. You can hit

a pretty quickly through that stuff, so like it's really snappy. There's no loading into it. It's just kind of like all right, the fight starting, boom boom bom bom boom. Okay, you're done, move on. So it's yeah, yeah, yeah, I want to I want to get to the point where this game opens up and I'm liking it like other stuff has sidetracked me. But I really want to like this game because I fucking loved Yakuz Like a Dragon, and this seems like it's doing some cool new

stuff mechanically. I story's not gripping me, but I I don't need it. Money. Yeah, yes, yes, I considered so connected to and I played like a Dragon. It was like, this is funny. It's stupid, it's endearing, it's funny. It's made me laugh so many times. I've laughed out loud playing by myself, which I never do. I think games in general are bad at humor, and this game is funny as hell. It also did something I really appreciate, especially with the game as

talking is this. It's because you'll see the pink icon on your map for the main story mission you're going to, and you never know if it's the thing where it's like a conversation that takes thirty seconds and then you're free to do whatever, or if it's literally like an hour and a half cut scene

bananza. And there was a night where I was playing and I was like, ah, I kind of want to see one more thing, but I'm probably go to bed in like fifteen twenty minutes, and I went up and I talked to the character at the pink dot, and it said something I'm paraphrasing, but it was like, hey, following this character will start an extended sequence. You're not gonna be able to save or exit for a while.

And I was like, fucking thank you. I never see that in a game, and you told me exactly what I need to know at the right time, where it's like, that's exactly what I did. I would have been pissed off if any other game would have sent me into this thing and I'd be locked in and going to bed an hour and a half after. I want to That's such a nice quality of life thing that I noticed. Yes, that's awesome. I like that a lot. I don't fight

very much. This is fun. Are we fighting right now? We just like a little differently, the most amicable like, hey, I'm not loving this, I want to like it, and I love it kind of conversation. Ever, stop trying to cause shiit Mary seeing cracks in the foundation. I have argued with Dan many times in my lifetime. Oh yeah, Mary, what have you been playing? Oh no, sorry, Dan, final

thoughts? Oh final thoughts. Also, the Animal Crossing Ship is awesome because like, as much as I love Animal Crossing, this is that without the timers, so like you don't have to like, oh I did six things and now I wait till tomorrow. Uh, it's all in game. You just go through it. It's got like fighting and stuff in it. It's

less Nintendo bullshit. It's more actually kind of like smartly designed stuff. And it's surprisingly deep as far as the amount of as you're clearing these areas out and you can build like I'm putting together entire like shopping districts, and like I'm inviting these guests in, I'm catering to like what they like, and it is it is a game in itself for sure. It does not feel

like a side thing at all. So yeah, I want to get to the point where I'm doing that shit, because again, that's like I think when the two Yakuza games I played, Being Kiwami and Yakuza Like a Dragon, when I started getting to the side the mini games, like all right, now I'm into it. I want to like it. I'm going to

keep playing it. I'm going to give it a chance. It's my favorite Yakaza I've ever played, okay, An, I'm not like a super long time you know yakaz the obsessive or anything, but like it's I've played a lot of them. This is my favorite, and this is also my favorite turn based combat I've ever seen. And how far have you been playing? How many hours? Twenty two hours? I'd say around there, Yeah, that's t show and I'm only liking it more the more I play it.

But seriously, that turn based combat. I played enough games of turn based combat, but I'm not like a j RPG guy. I can confidently say this is the best turn based combat I've ever played, though, So okay, interesting, Mary, there's this game called pal World. I don't think. I don't, so I'm kind of torn on whether to talk about it because I don't think anybody has like said anything about it online. Everyone's in an agreement about it, and it's been kind of adding to it. Right,

Dan, there is this joke lost on you. I'm well, I know, I know there is controversy about it. I know people are talking about it, and I don't know just because it's what is it? What's the general? What are people pissed off out? Because it's is that people are upset that they feel that it was possible that this game and these are

uncorroborated, And I think that's important. So the jury is not out, but there are people that feel that this game has stolen ideas or straight up assets from other games again substantiated and used AI, which is a very very controversial topic and gaming right now. Of you know, how it was able to create such a vast world with such a small team and essentially make what

I would consider a very legitimate Pokemon competitor. Is success, Like it's doing that well where it's like it is Pokemon level success well on Steam right now? Yeah, it's did it. So today we were looking at whether it would cross the record for highest concurrent players on Steam, highest current which is like the record to be like this is mad and league and everything. But it's your question, Dan, I Marry maybe like feel free to refute this.

I don't. It's I wouldn't say it's like more popular than Pokemon. It's not in terms of like cultural geist. No, I'm just answering Dan's question in terms of current players. Sure, yes, this game is uh, it's like number one in cellars on Steam. Which is crazy guns of records. It was up. Let me look this up a while. No twenty seven bucks. It's a survival the cheapest drug there is. You don't want none of power, Dan, This got ai It's cheap as hell.

You're gonna get addicted. You don't want none a peal gun, Dan, it's Pokemon with guns. You're not gonna want to get into this. I think you can't kill them, damn. Oh yeah, I want it. These guns. They got many guns and gatling guns and shotguns, and you can butcher them and you can put them to work in your camp. Do they bleed and stuff? They don't? They have They have cruelty. They

have delightful death animations where they have police squirrels for eyes. Okay, it's not base building, dam So. It combines a lot of things that you would like from other games and makes it one universally good game. Question here, is it actually considered to be a good video game or is this just like because I I don't give a fuck about Pokemon, I never have.

My understanding is recent Pokemon games, people are pissed off by the performance because the stitch can't handle the river, that there is a Pokemon thing that runs well. Let me let me, let me let me say, I think we are potentially getting into a rabbit hole asking whether everybody thinks I want to know whether Mary thinks, specifically, if it's a Pokemon competitor. Sure,

I will tell you perspective. It's crazy my limited time playing it, because there is a lot of cultural opinion about the impact that this has on the industry, like the it's wild that the impact that this game is having is making us question is this a good or bad influence on game design? I will just tell you from my time playing Power World, this game is really good. It's really good. I like it. If I don't care about Pokemon, you're gonna like it. Dan. Let me. I'm sending you

a screenshot in our discord. Okay, Mary keep talking. I'm gonna I'm gonna have Dan look at the screenshot since I think it's pretty indicative of the game. Let me tell you, like some bonuses of this game. This game is really focused on things like base building and world exploring, which we've had in other games. But what did you say? I'm sorry, Mike Mahrty just sent me a picture of three sheep on gatling guns snow. That's to distract you know that he asked if he would like it. That's the

most dan image ever. Funny you would like it. It's absoly funny you are. And for the sake of how convenient it is. They have other words for a lot of these animals and for poke balls. I'm just gonna say pokemon and poke balls, because we all know what the hells are you capturing them in balls. You capture them in balls, and then they are yours. Here's what's really cool about it. When you're building your base with stuff that's in the world right like wood and rock and other various materials.

One of the things that really sucks about those types of materials is like once you do it, you're like, I have to feed all my uh you know, I have to feed all my animals. I have to wake up and I have to deal with it, and I have to water my crops

or I have to like do all this stuff. You can assign all this work to your pals, So imagine like instead of having to wake up and deal with that stuff every day, you're like, this morning, I'm gonna get my pals to chop wood, bring in rocks and feed all the other pals so that I can do the stuff that I fucking want to do, which is explore the area and like discover brand new types of pals and try and take them down. The amount of like the vast world of these pals

is nuts. So when I was going on my first little hike in the woods, just to see what the area was about, I came across a massive, massive, like Pokemon creature. He looked like a big elephant, and he was so big I knew I couldn't take him down. His health bar was like really too big for me. But the ability, the idea that one day I could chip away at this monstrosity and bring him home and then have him collect eggs to feed the rest of my Pokemon very appealing to

me. I was very excited about this. When you're chipping away at all this stuff, you make your own poke balls through the environmental assets. So you have to get I forget what it's called, but like just imagine it's some kind of like or or of the area, pel ethereum whatever, and you chop it up and then that's how you make these poke balls. You have to just like Pokemon, you have to kind of chip away at them. If you throw a Pokemon and it's got one hundred percent health, you're

not gonna get him. If you get him to like under twenty percent health, you have a decent shot of getting him into a poke ball. But this is a bunch of factors, and if you send the ball out there and it doesn't collect them, you lose the ball. So it is precious resources. You're like trying to make sure that you're doing a good job your Pokemon friends. Once you collect them, you can either set them to work in your base to do stuff like build, collect stuff, go to work.

You can have them come with you on your adventures and they protect you and so like I was out on an adventure and I got attacked by some Rando and all my Pokemon came out, were like, all right, let's fucking kill this guy, and a couple of them died in battle. Made me feel very proud that they did that for me. It was really really fun. I haven't even scratched the Survices game. I have not played with

guns yet, and I'm having a great time. Oh it takes while, apparently, I think I think you have to earn those guns, but the fact that they've beencluded it is there a story, is a quest is fully open like survival RPG open. It's an open world, and there's lots of environments and things that you can explore. There's uh NPCs. So you're playing this in servers, which I think is also an important factor here because I'm not playing this game solo. I'm joining a server with my friends who already

had a base. They introduced me just like so many other games that you love in today's world, where you could just like play with your buds, and then we go exploring together and I'm like, what do you guys need? Like, what resource do you need? I'll go get it. Oh my god. They have uh what's a glider's and so you can like jump off a cliff and you can just glide down to the next area to go get more resources or go collect more Pokemon. It's very addicting. I mean,

I'm going through all the nice stuff. I will tell you my criticisms, but like it's fun, like it's it's It is a reasonable opinion to say this game has tapped something that I've always wanted in Pokemon games, which is like Pokemon as it is just collecting Pokemon. It's fine, but it needed a bit of an evolution. It needed a push, and this is this is a huge part of it. It's base building. You can play

with your friends in your friends server. Your Pokemon are doing grunt work so that you don't have to like take care of your base all the time and do menial tasks that you're beyond. You can focus on adventuring. Yes, it allows you to do the things that are the most fun in the game. And acquiring your pals is exciting because you never know what you're gonna come across. So if you see a flying pal and I have seen like a big dragon pals like flying in the sky, all I do is think about,

like, oh, I wonder how I could get that. I wonder how I could take him down. That would be so cool. But it takes It's going to take some time before I'm ready to get that guy. But I mean the dreams are there. It's just solving all sorts of really interesting ambitions that I wanted our original pokemons to do. But this this game

has it. It has a lot of good stuff in it. Is there a bit of like Monster Hunter here too, Like based on you're describing, like, you know, these big things you had to work towards me. You're getting with friends to take these things down is prepared. You have to be prepared to take down a pal And I do think that I asked. We did work as a team to take down one larger pal ones one time, Like the whole crew died trying to take down a pal because it was

just stronger than us and we weren't prepared properly. And I thought that was kind of cool. Yes, I don't think it's like Monster Hunter with that's such a huge focus of it, and you're like carving up their carcass to make a really cool bird suit. But being able to get them down to that very minuscule percent where they're not dead but you can throw a ball at them and collect them. That fucking feels ace. And then you have them and you can utilize them in all sorts of ways. You can have them

be your companion as you're venturing from now on. I mean, that would be so rad to be able to have that giant elephant Pokemon just hanging out with you, beating the shit out of anybody that messes with you. But that's bragging, right, So that's cool. Yeah, we're so for context, I'm looking at another screenshot where there's a little like leafy on pal looking thing with an AK forty seven. It's been gotten there briefly. So we're

recording this on January twenty fifth. It briefly yesterday, on the twenty fourth, surpassed Fortnite on Xbox. Isn't that nuts? No? So so the you record for concurrent players on Steam do either? You know, pop quiz what what game? Fortnite? Counter Strike Pubs? Three point three point two million yesterday, still has a while to go, but it's it's High Power World Cross two million concurrent players. Oh shit, fuck a ton of people

are playing this game. It's people playing it. Whatever you think about it. It's big, but like there's also all this ship wrapped up in it. But like it's all had to admit something to you, guys, though I intentionally kished this game. This game is on game Pass. Yeah, you can play it on game Pass right now? Oh yeah, you want to support them? Yeah? No, or you don't want to you want

to play on a different platform. I want to play with my friends, and there's no cross play to buy it on Steam, play it with my buddies on the intentionalish I've purchased it least that I can play with my friends. Oxy mooron you can't intentionally kiss intentional Yeah is uh, it's what sixteen players for a server is that? And I remember correctly, I don't have sixteen friends. I wouldn't know. We didn't max it out right now,

Yeah, I have for a server. But to Mike's credit, there is some controversy surrounding it, and I absolutely can see where the controversy is coming from. So just as an overview of some of the things this game is being heavily criticized for. Is Richard Nixon his son is working on which only which only increases my love of this game. Been propping it up on Twitch.

It's very political. Most of the issues with this game is based on accusations that the game is stealing assets or is using AI to essentially like make lots of assets at mass quantity. The developer has not confirmed any of this stuff, and there's no evidence that is making it like proof that this has happened, which I think is a shame because it's embroiled in this huge controversy of whether or not it's even you should even be able to make some kind

of cookie cutter crap game like this, but it's not cookie cutter. It took a lot of time and energy for developers to make an open world with base building and all these creatures like this. So I do think there was obviously a lot of effort that went into this game. But when you talk about originality, I would say that it is questionable whether or not they were

very original and very inspired by Pokemon when they were building these creatures. That being said, I also just want to say the other part of this, which is Pokemon is a little bit like the Simpsons, where they've done everything. It's almost impossible to make a cartoon style sheep creature and have it not look a little bit like a Pokemon sheep creature. You know, they're based on real animals that are kind of merged with other animals. It's very Pokemon

esque. But that doesn't mean that Pokemon owns all those ideas. Like sometimes you just make a character that looks like a kangaroo and and it's just it's just its own character. It's not a Pokemon. We're talking about Nintendo, Nintendo likes to be overly protective of it, and also like video games.

I I challenge you to point out one video game in the last decade that was not derivative in some way, just me an image of it looks like a Monkeyball character with a weed leaf on his forehead, just carrying around in ak Yep, that's that's Power World. That's classic. So I've gone back and forth a bit. I'm a bit back and forth on it because I will tell you, as someone who's played this game, as this game started, if you were to close your eyes, Dan, you might be like,

am I playing Zelda? Right? Because the audio of this game, the sound effects and some of the tones, oh like Breath the World weirdly reminiscent of Breath of the Wild, like too like it makes me uncomfortable because I am the first person to say inspiration is free. Get inspiration. People can't own everything, like go for it, you know, if you love something, make your own version of it. But when I unlocked my first fast travel station, it made a tone and I went, oh, my

god, that's Breath of the Wild. You guys ripped that shit. Obviously it's not literally ripped. They didn't steal the sound effect, but the tone, the melody, the instruments that they used, whatever they did. They gave their audio designer Breath of the Wild and they said, you make this exzact sound, you little bit, And he was like, yes, ma'am. And that's what they have. It is. It is inspired to a fault, I would say, but I would not say that they have stolen

it, but I I feel it. When I played that, I was like, you guys did not do this. You did not do this with honor. I can make the noise in my mouth like when you're picking up apples, Like maybe I'll send you guys the audio for when you unlock fast Travel a fast Travel beacon in pal And I think you guys will be like,

whoa, it's not just the tone. He'll be like, how did they How did they get the exact same instrument sound with like the reverb and the right like lightness to it. It's so similar that you would be like, that's too similar. Well as I think they just parodiedd or they like mimicked it like very heavily. It's it's hard to describe it. I do think that's littered throughout the entire game. I would think you could say that to the creatures, are they too close? I think they are too close?

But did they copy them? That's for lawyers to decide. I wouldn't know, but I'm seeing the inspiration so heavily throughout this game. Interesting to try to figure out like where the line is with stuff like that, because

like even with infinite Wealth, there is a sujiman system. It's called Sujimon, and they started this in the last one, but it's just like it's insane in this one, where it's like you you'll fight people, so it'll be like, oh, you know, hooligans, You're you know, just a g rowdy pro wrestlers on the street that you fight, and at the end they'll be you know, you have the option to talk to them and give them a gift, and then you can kind of do this little mini

game to see if you catch them, and if you give them a good enough gift, just like I think like Pokemon, it's like a good enough poke ball or whatever, it increases your odds of capturing them. They join your Sujimon party and you straight up have these sujiman like jim battles where it's like three on three and it has the full rock paper scissors with the two on the side, Like what's the spirit in the light or whatever it is.

It's literally called sujimon you've got that like Professor Oak style thing. It's called like you get like a Sugi dex. It is like I barely know Pokemon, but I know enough to know that, like, oh, this is very clearly like this goes beyond reference for sure. This is a straight up like but it like that. I think it's it's more clear homage slash satire, Like it seems like that's definitely what like a Dragon's do. Yeah, So at what point does it cross? Does the scale tip from homage

satire to rip off? You know, like legally it's legally hard. Yeah, legally it's so fucking hard to disprove parody, if that's the right way to put it. Want them to. I don't want Pokemon to own the fact that you can throw balls and capture animals. I don't want them to. I think that stifles innovation and creativity, which sign is all for. As much as the game do iteration, Pokemon never had base building, never had guns, never had any of this cool shit like diff pushed some Pokemon

Power will push this forward. They pushed it forward, and I'm I'm excited about it, and I think that, uh, to a degree, like the sales are showing like this is something the audiences were hungry for, we wanted this. I do want to make a clear statement though, that like sales doesn't absolve them of their sins. If they indeed did severely steal things, then this is not cool. But again that needs to be proven in

like legit court systems, I'm not going to go there. But as far as I've seen and what I have played, this is just an extraordinarily inspired and at some points morally dubious version of a game that is extraordinarily fun. It's really enjoyable to play, that makes advances in this genre that our audiences have been asking for for some time. And to that degree, I say, may the best man win. You know, like they probably will go to court over it. I assume, I don't know, and we'll see

where it falls. But I would hate to think that if they did do this legitimately, I think they should just be left alone. I think we should let games like this exist. I hate when like a company like this can overlord over the concept of what can be and what cannot be a Pokemon game. Who is the developer of powerld Oh, I don't know. Are they like a known quantity or are they just amply by night operation. This is where Mike shouldn't have left, because I never pay attention to stuff like

this. See it looks like it is pocket Pair incorporated. You know everybody knows pocket Pair Google kraft Topia, what is that? I bet I don't know what their whole deal is raft Topia to do that. Their visual style is so cute and quirky and very saturated. Kraft Topia is clearly like also an element of it. If you've looked at, like even the visuals of kraft Topia, you can see the base building and the adventuring. But there's

just something about Power World. It's like that scratching that itch. I'll say, if you feel bad about the Power World stuff, your Sujiman and infinet wealth, you can put them to work on the Don Doco island. They can fucking tend your vegetables, they can build shit, you can all that stuff. You can do that too. Well. It's also ripping off animal crossing. At the same time. I think it's borrowing from a lot of

pieces that it's also doing a lot right. I think you're right, like this is the place to decide whether or not something is morally just or not. I can tell you I had a visceral reaction to hearing the fast travel sound. I had a like, ooh, ooh, you guys. I know where you guys got this from. I know what you wanted to do. Yeah, and that doesn't sit super well with me. I think that

we should be respecting. I don't think that capitalism rules all. I don't think the fact that this is the most top played game on Steam right now justifies if they have legitimately harmed hardworking, original artists and ideas, I don't think that's a good thing. So I think there is a moral conversation to be had here, But until that has been fully played out, my reaction

is is this is a genuinely fun game. It is worth looking into and trying and seeing for yourself and determining, like where you think it falls.

And nothing has been definitely proven, nothing, not like the AI nor the duplicates of And this might change when this thing comes out because everybody's everybody's everybody's investigating and there's a lot of internet investigations make you've probably seen there's a lot of people like on there's a lot of like keyboard warriors on Twitter that are like, I can prove that these are the exact same copy, and it's

like you, you literally can't. That needs to be proven by people who actually know what they're doing and talking about, so nothing, nothing has been proven if they have done that. That is the risk with pre recording of podcasts, Like it's rare to say something and then like several days sometimes after like a week passes and then it's like, oh God, any number of things gonna happen. Don't cancel me. I'm just saying that, uh at this time. And I did look it up, especially after I heard that

audio. I was like, these bastards steal all this shit and I couldn't find any definitive proof. But there's a lot of people who feel that they have taken too many liberties. That is that is like a fair way to say it, like brashly have iterated in a way that's not like it's in a distasteful way. I think is what people are saying. Yes, people are saying that it's not cool and the question is is will a judge say you are guilty of being not cool? To the tune of forty two million

dollars. It's like the question that we're all thinking of right now, which is not cool worth. I did see if you want to hear someone who like knows legal stuff talk about it, I saw that min Max put out a thing. They've got Haley over there min Max, who is like a lawyer and knows lost stuff. I have not seen the video, but I saw they put up a video where it's like, is this illegal? Is

this copy? Where is this stand? Copy? Right now? So I checked that out out that, yeah, I'd love to hear like from people who know what they're talking about. I always feel like I'm getting too much of my information from Twitter, which is such a garbage source for fucking that. Bring that down to zero in your life will be better. Everybody on Twitter, and that's what I'm talking about. I got on Twitter briefly to say like, hey, I'm leaving Polygon, and so many people are incredibly

nice about it. And then I was just like, because Twitter was up, I saw what other people were saying this week, Oh, I don't miss it. Between games and wrestling. It's been a week. It's so exhausting, you know what, I uh, I don't have a clean transition for that. But I also played the Last of Us Part two remastered Roguelike mode, which is Valhalla. No, that's God of War right good good bit no return it wasn't. The Last of Us Part two is Roguelike Mode

is fucking kick ass. I like the idea that Dan doesn't understand when you're being ironic, Like he doesn't understand when you're being like cheeky or facetious. He takes everything you say sincerely no no good idea, Dan, and he's like, thanks, yeah, I don't I don't trade you can't process it. I don't like sarcasm. I don't trade in jokes and never been one for senses of humor, Like anything laughable is always like, you know,

anathema for me, like get out of here. Mary's saying he doesn't get sarcasm reminded me of when I was single and he'd be on dating sites the like number one not number one. There's lots of bad things somebody can having a profile, but whenever somebody be like I speak in sarcasm, I'm fluent in sarcasm. It's like, fuck, what do you mean that sucks? Is pizza? I love Harris you doing a yoga pose in front of ruins. I told you my own thing Selvo for dating apps when I was like

twenty five with that. When when I matched with someone, my first message would be, hey, I bought us a dog and it worked and I loved it. Yeah, but god, no Return. You think i'd be getting sick of non roguelike games like action adventure games adding a roguelike DLC to the mix. But I didn't play Valhalla. I don't want to go back to Gotta War Ragnarrock. But Last of Us Part two Remastered includes No Return, which is a roguelike mode and it's awesome. Is it on the old

version of the game. Did they update that or is it just on the five? I don't believe. So if you have the original PS five game, you will need to a PS four game. Rather, you will need to pay ten dollars to upgrade, and then it will include no Return. I love Last of Us combat. I know I know a lot of people find it stiff. I think you know I'll be the first to say I think that's the point like it's very like survival horror esque, but you get

to they went all out arcade with it. It's not they're not trying to apparently, Valhalla the Gotta Ragnarock one is very much like an epilogue to this story of Ragnarok, Like it's a therapy session for Crados. I've heard time and time again it's a it's basically him speaking out loud as he explores his past, and like, I don't want that. I just want an arcade version of the combat that I like. And the last Us part two wastes

no time. It's like pick Abby or Ellie and then each of them as you complete challenges, unlocks like another six characters in their camp, you know, like to me and you would know if this is an app comparison.

Is this like Ari four versus the Mercenaries mode? No, because that's like Horde mode, But I mean not in terms of format of the actual mode, more in like tone and format of the game where it's like, No, Ari four is not as trade of like scoring arcade pickup power up type game, but Mercenaries is you know, oh yeah, it's residual village Mercenaries mode it's like, oh, I could pick a character and just fight shit

that was in the game that has nothing to do with the story. Absolutely yeah, it's I picked, you know, like Ellie, and it's structured on a like mind place Ellen Wake two esque pinboard, where you're like, all right, I pick Ellie. Each character has three specific traits, like I'm butchering some of these, but it's like Jesse he crafts fifty percent faster, or Dina she can make explosives with fewer supplies or whatever. So you're

thrust into these environments that were taken from the campaign. But it's been so long since I played that game that I didn't feel the repetition all that strongly. And you're fighting through these individual events and you're unlocking as you get through this mode, you're unlocking new as you're going through No Return, you're unlocking new modes. At first, it's just assault quote unquote, and you've got three infected to take out. It'll tell you the faction when you're selecting it.

Sometimes you get to choose between two scenarios. Other times you have to go through one. But it's like, all right, you can choose between fighting the Washington Liberation Front or the Infected. This is Assault, and this is holdout. Holdout. It's like Horde mode. Assault is just like you could sneak around if you want. If you're playing a character who has stealth stats, go for it. But you get to the end of this one

run and you might die, or you fight a boss. And once you beat the boss, which could be a bloater or a really upgraded stalker or whatever they're called, the ones that hide around corners, you then go to the next set of levels. And then the whole time you're completing challenges, you're unlocking mods, you're unlocking gambits, which are basically like, oh,

you get a pretty overpowered ability. However, you're also dealing with the enemy also gets this one specific overpowered ability, and you know the meta that arises out of it is that, Okay, I'm I just completed a holdout and I use like all my ammunition. So now I have to choose between Assault, which is very much I control the tempo because I could be in stealth collecting all these supplies around the map, or I could go into hunted,

which is when everybody knows where you are. You're just trying to survive for one minute thirty seconds. It's such a good like expression of the combat in Last of Us one and two, which I think is just like brilliant combat system. I know it's not the best most fluid feeling combat. I think that's the point in those games. It's supposed to be a bit stiff and not wonky, because it feels it still works as it should. I just

think it's it's supposed to be these people surviving in this post apocalypse. And I don't like the Last of Us Part two all that much. So the fact that I can play the combat, which they added the dodge that was not in the first game. I could play as all these characters without dealing with the baggage that that long story has is so fun and I'm hooked and uh it actually because I did want to go back into that world. I

replayed the Last of Us Part one remastered because I never played it. I never finished it when I came out in PS five like a year ago, and then because I was in the Last of Us Part one, I am now at the end of Uncharted four. I've been on this weird naughty dog kick because of no Return. It's I'm a psycho. How did you get here? Because I love Lasts of Us so much? And there you are playing uncharted four, played Jack and daxters I might go back to Jack and

Daxter. I started on Jacket Daxter, I was, I was, I was in this world and the Last of Us. I'm like, man, this combat was always great. Like then I went back to part one. Well, I should just say part one because that's what they called it when they remastered it. Still love that game, Last of Us Part one. Have you guys ever heard this? It's a good game. It's really good. Yeah, no, I know, I know. This is like I

know, I'm the first person to say this. You are, Yeah, you can take credit for that, but let me say like it was episode seventy three of the Firescape Cast when I the first person ever said that Last Most Part one was a good game. I played it, no problem, best pacing of maybe any game ever. I loved it. And then I went back to on chart four because I fucking love on chard four. At the end, I was on this weird naughty dog kick but no return.

If you own Last of Us Part two on PS four and you have ten dollars lying around and you want a good roguelike independent of the game that it sprang from, pay that ten dollars for a very good roguelike. Play no return on PS five. I love it. It's awesome. It just feels great, well designed. Further proof that every game could be a real roguelike

if the developers want to make it one. I mean, you saying it's Arcadie and it's not, Like Valhalla makes me a little more interested, Like I hadn't considered this because like I tried like thirty minutes of Valhalla, and it's like the fact that it is trying to do this big story of stuff. Like the thing I loved about got a word the first time around was you know when I say the first time around, I mean the original trilogy

and so worth like was the action and then it by Ragnarok. It was so deep into the story stuff that I didn't want any more of that. So I started Valhalla. It went really hard on that stuff, and I just fell off immediately. So like with Last of Us, I loved the Last of Us one fucking incredible masterpiece. Two I liked a lot. I

really thought was great over long and sometimes and stuff like that. But like when I think back at it now, Like I don't dislike Last of Us, but I do feel like that first one in particular, was kind of that move. And like you hear a lot with like PlayStation First Party being like, Okay, they're just trying to be like this is their HBO prestige

television type thing, which is not my favorite type of game. Like I like games that feel like video games, and I feel like Last of Us was like one of those big like Okay, we're this is a you know, prestige video game type yeah, and that's not really my thing. You know, No no return is honestly very surprisingly, like this is a fucking video game. Ass video game mode like pick pick Elly or pick Abby Abby, her melee attacks, restore her health every time. Sorry, how do

you get it's on? It's if you were to just buy because I already have the original two games, but I don't have the remix. If you have the original on PS four Part two, you would need to pay ten dollars to upgrade to the PS five version remastered, which would include no return. Mary, play it safe, go to Target and just pay this seventy dollars for it, just to you know, you just want to make sure

you're got your brass covered. I do like spending money. You get that, mon man, Uh, I am preserving physical versions of games, you bastards. I appreciate that. Now you're not. Don't say that you're buying games on like Xbox Digital market on the Xbox marketplace that you didn't know you already owned. Don't preservation. We have you saying that many many times on this Podcastle Company Bitch, I have Lethal Company physical version. I'm co I

made it. It's just a fucking pancake that I put a sticker of Lethal Company on and I put it in my disk drive. No, it's if you had syrup on it. Definitely. It is jarring. How it's Naughty Dog doing this mode because you load in and it's just, hey, here's a weird little corkboard with a with a yarn connecting different scenarios. And then Abby she's fucking jacked. So if she kills an enemy with a melee attack

her one of her stats gives her health back for that. So as Abby, you're just running around beating the shit out of people and then infected. And then as Ellie you're a bit more crafty and whatnot. But it's man, they I don't give a fuck with no return that it has no connection, no meaning, And it's awesome because having gone back to Last US Part one, it does not have the dodge that they added in part two, and it is noticeable. But Part two that that combat system, those mechanics

like work so well in a roguelike. I just got it. It hooked me so quickly. I got like halfway through a successful or I got halfway into a run then died, and I was like, well, this is my next week and a half. It's great. I highly highly recommend it if you have that ten dollars lying around, if you already own a on PS four, or if you've never played that game. I'm not gonna say, if you've never played that game you don't own it, that this mode

alone is worth the seventy dollars on PS five. But like, I think that game is still good enough to buy on PS five, I think it's too long. The part one is a hard comparison because that's one of the best things ever in games. But like, yeah, no return, if you have a reasonable way to play it right now, go do it. It's it's awesome. Okay, nice, Yeah, Mary, I'm finally catching up to you, Prince of Persia. Yeah. It's really good, right,

it's really really it's fucking great, right, it's super good. The traversal's really fun. I love the map upgrades that I can actually take a photo and I'm not allowed to go somewhere, so I can be like, oh, that's right, I couldn't go up there because I need like a double jump or something with a deep ad button. You don't even have to pause, Dan, you do just tap it. Oh sorry, sorry,

last episode you were saying you need to tap it. I said hold holding takes the screenshot and also brings up the map in what tap just okay, yeah, yeah, it's really fun. Now there is a limit of how many screenshots you can take, which did come up to come to play for me. But then I was like, I can delete these other four. I don't need them anymore. So it's been you can upgrade that too. You can upgrade that. Oh I didn't know. I didn't do that yet.

I haven't beaten it, but I want to say I'm like, I'm pretty close. I think I'm probably like eighty percent or something. I feel like we're you know, we're several weeks away from release. Now, what is the last upgrade you got? Tell me your abilities? Okay, uh, I oh, I'm in the Uh there's like a swamp area with a lady and I just killed her, and I so I have a ability to like see other worlds. I have the ability to like take a mask of myself and then jump to it. And I think I have a new jump,

like a double jump or triple jump. I have like a new jump mechanic or something like that. Okay, I would say you are sixty five to seventy percent done, maybe seventy night. I feel like because I'm also like doing the thing where I'm trying to get as much of the map covered where I can, so I'm already in the vicinity of like persenting it so that when I get through the rest of it, it will be done. Ish. Uh. It's extremely fun. The boss fights are difficult, but

totally doable. You just need to work your way through them. This game is a fantastic addition to any metroid Vania lovers. Rolodex by the genre. Like I keep saying, fantastic, It's fantastic, and I this is coming from someone who's like, I'm like obsessed with or this is a very good like ory game. It's just the traversal's great, it's good to look at. It has really good combat, but it had some really nice quality of life updates that I just think almost put it give it an edge and make

it better than a lot of modern Metroid and old Metroid vanias. It's fucking good. So full recommendation. I won't like harp on it. I think it's a fantastic game. It will come back. You cannot game of the year. I'm not done discussing this game. Yes, I don't think we will. I have already been adding stuff documented for next year or this year. Yeah, who knows when I'll bring it up again. Wing December? Wing? Oh oh yeah, just like what okay, I'll be with you

there. Yeah. Anything else we didn't touch on? Tecing oh, tacking eight? Right? Yes? Oh right? How okay. So I'm hearing Dan, how are you liking it? Because I'm hearing this game is good. I'm also hearing that this game, like Street Fighter six, also takes measures to make the series pretty accessible. That's easy for me to say, because, like I, it has a mode where you can like hit LB

basically and it totally it's like a new control scheme type thing. So it's like, oh, I'm gonna jam on X and it's gonna do combos, I'm gonna jam on why. It's gonna do like air juggles and brows like system. No, the heat system. I'm finally the heat system. This is more. This is a different This is like a special control style the way that Street Fighter six kind of has a simplified thing, so you don't have to memorize a million like you know how to do a haduken. You

can just do like why and forward or whatever. This is more along those lines. And I tried it. I was curious and because I've played every TECND since the first one, and I don't know, it could be a thing where it's like I'm just old and played all the old ones, and it was weird to me to like, nah, I want to have a certain level of control over what my character's doing. I don't want to just

jam on X and hope cool stuff happens. You know, if you are a first time player or somebody who if it's fun for you, it's yeah, it's there. Hit LB. I'm sure I can't imagine it's the thing where you're going to go beat some EVO player because he turned on the special thing and jammed on X. You know they're going to know how to counter that and stuff. So I don't see a problem with it by any means. But I did just go back to the traditional controls because that's that's what

I'm used to with tecond. Also, I'm playing on an arcade stick, and it is a fantastic arcade stick game. I tried to play more to combat with the arcade stick, but you have to do the ex moves and you know, hit RT at the same time. It's not great for that tech. And it's awesome. The heat system I like a lot. It's you kind of get once a fight, you can do this RB thing where if you just want to jam on RB, you'll do this big combos.

Some people use the whole meter at once, some you can use multiple things to do a bunch of small combos. Yeah, it's just kind of like it's a super meter that you can activate once to fight. And then there's the separate like rage arts or something it's called where it's like you were when

you're down to like nothing. You can kind of go down forward in RT and do one of those big ultramove type things where it's a last gasp like hopefully I can connect with this and fuck them up or whatever, and that's I'm not big on. I feel like, for at least a decade now, a lot of fighting games have had those like ultramove type things where it's a long animation and they are really cool. They showcase they're really cool at

first. They showcase well in trailers and stuff like that, but like when you're doing a million fights in a story mode and stuff like that, every it so much it's kind of like, okay, you know right away if it connected or if it didn't, and then it's like, okay, I got to sit here for like eight seconds and watch this thing play out. That does get a little bit old that like take a sip of coffee break. Yes, not in a fun way, but like that, that is

what it became after a while. When I was playing Mortal Kombat enough, yeah, yeah, it's like, okay, I've seen this. It's it's good for the first time, but this whole game just has a confidence in its presentation, Like you can tell they know, it's a fucking great game. Just everything about it is so polished, everything from the visuals to the menus to the music. The new characters are great. My favorite new one

is Azusaina. She grew up on a coffee plantation in Peru and she's like a dancer, MMA fighter, coffee enthusiast, and she's She's a blast to play as I think. The thing I really love about this is as someone who has never gravitated towards fighting games to be competitive, I've always gravitated towards them for the personality. It's why Street Fighter I think is probably the best fighting but it's not in my top three because like it's you know, you're

about like comedians, comedians. I feel like street Fighters like the fighting game, fans fighting game. Yeah, my big three is combat. Yes, sorry, now I'm just thinking, who's like the comedians community. What's his name? And Norm? People said that about Normal all the time. Yeah, but he's also that's a tangent. I'm trying to think of the guy who did the Aristocrats joke at BOPSI Iago, the voice of Iago, Oh God for god Gil mc godfrey. I feel like it's a Comedians comedian.

Sorry, such a stupid tangent that I just brought us on. But yeah, it's like Mortal Kombat, Soul Calver, and Techan were always my favorites because they were all pretty accessible. If you don't like know everything about fighting games, you don't know, you know, you're not you're not practicing frame data and all that stuff. They had these flashy characters, like the tech and stories insane with just constantly throwing your dad in the volcanoes and vice versa,

and yeah, this one delivers on all of that. I was I was worried about the story mode. I remember not loving the story mode in seven. I didn't play all the way through it. But this one is more kind of like Mortal Kombat style with these like insane cut scenes. Like the first thing that happens is you're playing his gin and you drive a motorcycle up a skyscraper and he like throws the motorcycle at his father who's in a helicopter, and it explodes and you fight your father. It's until he turns

into a devil or you turn into a devil. It's it's all that tech and bullshit that I absolutely fucking love. But what I was getting to was that the thing I love not being a competitive player is the wealth of single player content. So there is the full on Mortal Kombat style arcade mode,

which is really good this time around. But there's also this Arcade Quest thing where you basically make like an Xbox Live avatar and you're just like walking around from arcade to arcade and like challenging people, and there's like a little stupid mini story that goes with it, but it's basically just a really nice way to teach you how to play the game and teach you the heat system, teach you these rade yards to get some coins to buy customizable items and stuff

with. So I found that as much as I was liking the story mode, I have been focusing on the Arcade Quest because I think I'm learning the game better that way, and then I can go into the story mode and I can be like, all right, I know how to play these characters, I know what I'm doing. More now let me just sit back and enjoy the story. So yeah, it's exactly what I want out of a

techn game. It's got stupid ass endings, it's got all the personality, the stages where you're just fighting in the middle of like a multi tornado storm on the ocean, with like boats crashing into the shore, and it's destructible environments and walls you can smash through and go to different parts of the stage. It is. It is an absolute top tier fighting game. I'm loving it, loving it, loving it. Will probably pick this up and play

it for years. Where's tech In as a franchise rank in your favorite fighting franchises? I think my favorite fighting game of all time is probably the first Soul Caliber for Dreamcast, and frankly it kind of fell off for me a lot after that. I played them all a lot, but like one I think is a perfect video game, the Dreamcast. One my favorite franchise ever is definitely Mortal Kombat, and that's the person that's That's one of those few

video games series where like, I love the characters. I love that very big trouble little China style, Like, oh, these very just kind of loud, silly characters, but we're playing it pretty straight faced and everything, Like the tone of Mortal Kombat is exactly what I want. And I also

think it's it's always been a fun fighting game. It's never been on the level of a street Fighter or a techan mechanically, but it's been good, you know, but it's more about finding the fatalities and the secrets and all that stuff. And so Mortal Kombat's my number one. I guess overall, Tech and is a series is my number two. But if I had to pick one game, it's that first soul Cast. Yeah, I was scurious what you the rank of your series would be. I guess I would say

Mortal Kombat, Tech and Soul Caliber and Street Fighters close there. But yeah, I don't care about Street Fight. I appreciate, I admire reckon is the importance. You can email us at fire Escape Cast at gmail dot com and c see Mike Maharty with all of your opinions about Street Fighter. You fuse Mortal Kombat as a franchise, all things considered. As a franchise, all things considered, hold this point nine point five. Now do Teken nine,

Soul Caliber eight point five street Fight? I mean it's hard to give Street Fighter less than a nine. It's really fucking good. But are we talking about my own personal taste? I guess you can't fuse for somebody else or society. Dan so weird because like I think Street Fighter is probably the best fighting game of all, but for my personal taste, I'll i'll if we're talking everything with street Fighter in the name, i'll say we'll average out

around an eight. But that's a lot of stuff. Clay Fighter, Clay, that's a ten. Yeah, six, Yeah, that's what I was waiting for. Balls three D Hell Yeah, I don't think I'll play tech In eight. I've again, I've I've only ever played teching in like Arcades proper. As much as the storyline sounds fucking awesome and like the most metal Garselid shit ever, I don't know that I'll play it, but I might. I'm more focused on trying to like infinite Wealth, and if I don't,

I'll ditch it. But Mary, anything else that you're playing, you'll talk about. That's it. Anything else, I'll say real quick. I've been fooling around with some metal Quest three fitness stuff. They're running something where they asked me, Okay, do you want to try a bunch of fitness apps, and I said, yeah, i'll try them out meta No, Yeah, Zuckerberg called me up. Yeah, that's what they said. Yeah,

So I basically got access to like a suite of fitness stuff. Yeah, I got mixed thoughts on it. I think they're I'm not sold on VR in general as a fitness thing. I think it can worry Huh. I don't want to sweat in there. No, you don't want to sweat in there. And also for most people, I would think space requirements are like it's not like I've lived in small apartments for most of my life and

like it's just not realistic there. But I have space now and I played a lot of this stuff, and you still even with through even with all that, it's the concept of space space I'm always worried about, Like as you were doing these swings, like you're doing these games and like the supernatural VR thing, it's got these like boxing things and all that. It's very beat saber, where like shit's flying at you and it's telling you like, yeah, swing up hard and I hit my ceiling ones and then like you

don't know, I'm I gonna hit that chair Where am I am? I facing the windows and I, like eve been in a room with a good amount of space. It never feels comfortable really, And I feel like if you're going to spend money on something to try to get fit. I think there are things you can do, Like I love Peloton. I have all their machines the row and I do it every day. I think it's great,

and like it has this daily refreshing like set of classes. So there's so much variety where all of these VR apps, you know, they will have a certain cadence that they update things with, but it's also just very like a disembodied voice talking to you while just flying. Things are coming at you and you're basically doing beatsafer stuff to like duck into this triangle, you know, punch this thing this way, do a hook, do an uppercut.

I mean, you're burning calories. I just think there are better ways,

more cost effective ways, and more fun ways to do it. And then the other aspect of that is like they try to do meditation with some of these, so that that supernatural one does that and it's like, okay, it can make it seem like you're sitting next to the serene river, you're on top of a mountain or snowy something, but like, yeah, if that was happening for real, if I was sitting on a mountain or by a river meditating, that would be like an ideal meditation circumstance for the

no outside noise, I can just focus on the nature sounds. But having a thing strapped your face with a screen an inch away from your eyeballs, I think is so guess someone who's meditated for my entire adult life. It's like it's goes against what meditation is to me, where it's all about just being in the moment and focusing on your breathe and your real surroundings. See

exactly, like it doesn't help you like anchor to the present moment. And I'm scrolling through because like they have some where it's like I had to like find out how to just like, hey, just put me in a screen thing let me hear nature sounds, because if you just pick the shit from the menu like in Supernatural, it does the thing that a bunch of meditation apps do, which I hate, where it's like one of them was Tiffany

Hattish hosting like this like eight or nine minute thing that's titled Manifesting Abundance where it's like, Okay, here's the celebrity teaching me how to manifest getting rich. It's like, look, maybe that for some people, but that is like a so against my entire approach to meditation. So I don't know. I I like the idea. I'll always try like a novel approach to meditation. But at the end of the day, I think we kind of got

the tech of meditation figured out. Just kind of sitting focus on your breath for a bit and don't gitting rock. Yeah, that sounds fucking hard to do, so the extent of it, yeah, yeah, So I'm not sold on that there were There was there was like a VR Baseball, this win reality thing that seemed like a pretty cool like training thing if you were an actual like high school baseball player or something like there's attachments for your actual

bat, and that actually felt cool. There was like almost like a home run derby element to it where it felt really good, like that the bat felt good and it mimics the stadium and the pitches, like it all felt the way you would want it to. So there are some very specific use cases that I was like, Okay, I can see the benefit of this. You can't always go out to a you know, pitching mound or whatever or batting cage and you know, actually swing, but you know, you

just want to get some practicing it feels close to. But also I'm sure that like real athletes are probably just fucking training a lot, absolutely not or any like legitimate athletes being like, well, I can't make it out to the batting cage today. I guess I'll put on my meta helmet. I'll do a couple rounds of meditation as I always do by a serene river in the Alps, and then I'll have a couple big swings out with my favorite

pals who are also a metaverse. This is like a farce and it feels like something that you would see at like a GDC, where they would try and sell you this concept. It doesn't feel legit. It's been waiting to say this. I would think the approach if they wanted to like sell people on the fitness aspect of this is like working like fitness tracking things into existing games, like there are boxes like the Thrill of the Fight or the Creed

game on like they wish they were them. We still have a bunch of step moms to this day playing goal and panting with the stars and we getting checked in on the Wii. You wish you're not, it ain't gonna happen. You can burn calories doing it. I just don't think. I don't think there's dedicated fitness after that. Bring a whole bunch of shit. Do you burn calories? Rolling your eyes at how stupid the metaquest is, I'm losing batteries. The medic Quest three is the first time I've actually been kind

of like, it's what got me playing Appli pallets. It's what like like the pastor stuff and the lightness and everything and the same integration. Like it is the first one to give it a credit. It is getting me there. It's getting me there more than any previous incarnation of bar has But I still think the entire VR thing has a long way to go. Say it to the Wei. We actually burn more calories than any VR all one hundred percent, lost many pounds from so many people. We actually did it.

This is this is a gimmick. But it's cool that you can swing. It felt wrong not to swing. You guys want to do emails? Yeah, sure, all right, everybody as usual. You can write into firescapecast at gmail dot com. We've gotten a shit ton since the New year. When we ask people to start writing in more, we're banking them. But that does not mean you can't keep writing in question comments, corrections, concerned Dan, someone actually let me pull this up. I forgot about this.

Someone pointed out, what would you call let me figure out a movie? What would you call a movie that is about a historic figure, like an auto or a biographic? So how you say it? Mary? How do you say it history? No? Like, I see what people are saying. What they're trying Tore pointing out that you said biopic instead of biopic, bionic? You don't say bio. Wait, hang on, I say biopic. The correct way to say it is biopic because it's a biographical picture.

Sure, I get that, But biopic looks sound. It feels more fun to say because rolls off the tongue. Yeah yeah, biopic is nice. It sounds like a procedure that you get that makes you sexier. It makes me feel smart to say biopic, even if i'm did you know he's biopic? I knew it. It sounds like it sounds like eighties ish, Like no, bionicle wasn't eighties, But like it's like bionic biopic, man, that's what I was thinking, or biopical the Lego competitor. But anyway,

fire Skit cast Gmail dot com. You can write in anytime. Might read your questions on air. Uh Mary, do you want to read this first one from RAVI sure, Hey, fire Escapist, been listening since day one. Love all the content you guys point out. Even though I'm sure GODI was a marathon for you all, it was my favorite end of the year stuff I concerned consumed last year. Thanks. One of the first games I played growing up was Too for Mario Brothers. I was only four or five,

and I remember dying all the time and barely making any progress. One day, I finally made it to World three. I didn't even know about world warp pipes or anything like that. I was somehow blown away by the fact that this level took place at night. I'm not sure why it's stuck with me so much. At this point, I know it's just a color swap for the background. However, even to this day, I get nostalgic

whenever I play it and get to one of those night levels. They're small detail from a game from your childhood that seems minor looking back, but it's stuck with you throughout the years. Thanks Robbie, Thank you. This is a nice, nice email. I appreciate you talking about our GODI. They are marathons. It's nice to know that they aren't just wastes of eight hours. They're massive slots. Yeah, I hope they're worthwhile. I hope they're

enjoyable. Time flies. So much of my formative experiences with video games it has been Zelda, and then that's continued throughout my life. The I think the thing with Ocarina of Time that's stuck with me is how effectively it conveyed you. The specific example is when you're inside Jabu Jabu still as a child. It's a third dungeon. As a in the game, the walls are just flesh stomach like lining, and it wasn't just like I think in any

other game I played. I don't know a specific example from the same what nineteen ninety eight time period that would have been like, oh, you're inside a fish. I think a lot of games would have just like shown. I don't know, stone walls are like the Doom walls, but this was like, no, that's moving flesh and I'm also walking on it, and holy shit, there's like part of the puzzle of that dungeon is figuring out the right little esophagus to fall through in that one room that has like eight

of them. Yeah, and I say esophagus, but they're anuses, they're inside him. And uh, that's like a collection of details. But the way that game made me feel like I was actually inside a big living creature was pretty fucking gross at the time, still really good. I don't think people often say Akarina times a good game, but I'm here saying Acrea times a good game. You know, I like to, you know, go

out on a limb every once in a while. I think I think that's like the kind of the full crumb of how good that game is at details like the fact that like I walked in it was like the first time I played them, like I'm walking into a giant fish. Sure, okay, what's the inside gonna look like? It's just gonna look like, you know, maybe it'll look like the Dongo's cavern again or inside it that could tree. But I was like, no, this is I'm inside of fish.

Turns out and it worked really well. Simoon heard about Jabu Jabu. There's a dog here is very cute how he's his paws just kind of slip on the hardwood while he's walking action. I've got a dog in the frame. Now for the audio listener. It's a cute dog named Yft. Lift him a little more, Okay. He's a chunky little guy. Yeah, the audio listener might be able to hear his brunties because he's pretty grunty. I heard him when he lifted him. Yeah. Yeah. He usually is either

making noises from either end. He's Amanda's always a man. Is always disappointed that she still is not met him in person, and dogs a good dog. She hasn't met him in dog. He has a dog, Lucimon when he was a puppy. Is a handsome boy. He is. He doesn't look a day over twenty eight. He's over it. Like I usually go into my office you know where I work and stuff, and he'll deal with it. He comes in at noon for his walkie. He walks. He gets walked every day noon. So if I don't come out by noon,

he's like, where the fuck are you? And it's it's like almost ten pm here my time, So this is like, this is beyond when I would ever stream or work. And he's basically like, you're not supposed to be in here anymore. It's like your grandma coming coming in to be like it's time for you to hang out with me on the couch, or like pet me, or hang out with me, or just look at me and tell me that I'm cool. No longer time for me to be in here.

Daisy's licking herself right now. She doesn't give a shit that it's like almost one am here, no concept of like time or anything. Nope. Yeah, he's like most dogs are. They have like rituals, and my dog is like noon, we go outside and he gets very upset if I don't take him, and at five he gets fed and around like, well, I mean unless I'm streaming. If I'm streaming, I'm out at nine, so this is late. He's like, there's no reason for you to

be in here anymore. Sorry, he doesn't understand podcasting at all. To answer your question of simple things, I think I have one that I think that is more complicated. As a child playing Jurassic Park, the original game, where you play as a guy who's like avoiding uh dinosaurs, the Justice fun where you could be the Raptor or Grant. Yeah. Yeah. When I found out that I could be a Raptor, I only played as a

Raptor. I thought it was the coolest thing in the whole world. Copies believe that you could play as a raptor in that game, and I thought that was really rad. But you have to unlock it. No, No, that was like a game you're grant or the Raptor at the beginning. Yeah, it's just nuts that they included it, and that somebody convinced somebody in that company that was like, what if you could play as a raptor. That's like a simple meeting where they all laughed and were like, that

guy's nuts. But then they fucking did it. They made an entire version of the game where you play as a raptor, which I think is insane. But I don't think that's a no. I was gonna say sorry when you you mentioned like the meeting where someone suggested that every game of that era was fueled by cocaine. I have to I was on so many drugs and they and they did it, and they made it the Key and Peel, It's Judge, Yeah, the Gremlins two. Yeah, Oh my god.

I watched Aerobics Meltdown again the other day. I think that's my favorite. Key and Peel skit after Gremlins two Aerobics meltdown is and what's his name? Uh? Uh, what the hell? I can't Ron Howard's brother. Yeah, he's holding the the Q cards. It's like, I'm sorry, keep dancing. Your wife was in a car accident. The daughter was writing shotgun, keep dancing, smile. It's really good, Dan Well, I was

gonna say, like a more simple version, because that's very complicated. I don't think that actually fuels the prompt is that one of the very first games I ever played as a kid was a King's Quest game that my dad sent me King's Quest seven, and I remember being really blown away by the fact that in a game like this point and click adventure game, very old school, that if you clicked on a character, they would keep talking for a

long, extended period of time. And this was the first time I had ever experienced the idea that if you clicked on a character again, it had new things to say to you. I always assumed it would when it was done, it was time for you to move on, and my dad will be like, click on them again. It turns out they had something else to say. There's a very specific character, which is a mockingbird in one

of the spaces. It must have had one hundred jokes, and if you clicked on it, it would make fun of the character and belittle you and be like you smell like a pair of pants from the One hundred Year War, and they would be like, you'll cover your face, you're scaring the horses. But he had like a hundred of them, And it blew my mind that they recorded hundreds of dialogue, hundreds of this bird making fun of me, so that if I just happened to click on him, he had

a fresh one ready to ready to make fun of me. I just think that's fascinating. Like it's not a big deal and it's very commonplace now, But childhood Mary thought that was insane. I was like, man, there's like a whole portion of this game's storage just for these birds smack talk, just in case one person does this over and over and over again. I don't even know you could do that anyway. I thought it was really cool. Mine was. I have a very distinct memory the first time I ever

experienced a new console like generation, where I was a little kid. I was like, you know, at this point, I was probably like seven or eight and I got a Nintendo Power that advertised Mario World, and I was obsessed with Mario at that point, and I was telling my dad, I got to get this, this seems so good, and he was looking at it and he was like, I think he needed a new system for this, and I was like, what does that mean? What do you

mean we have a Nintendo. What do you mean like the concept of other systems. I didn't understand. It was just video games were Nintendo. And so it was one Christmas, it must have been ninety one or ninety two. I got a Superintendo which came with Mario World, and I also got Length to the Past, which are like two of the all time, all time perfect games. Like yeah, so I was torn and I decided to go with Length of the Past, and I remember like starting it up and

it looked incredible. The music was different, but it was the moment when at the very beginning, after you wake up in Link's house and you go

out the front door the rain. You're seeing this like diagonal rain, and it's kind of like dark outside and for voting music and stuff, but specifically just seeing the rain, and you can see these little drops on the ground and stuff, and that level look like there had been rain levels in any S games and Ninja Guidance and stuff before, but like there was something about the detail and the music fidelity and everything where I was like, oh my

god, everything's changed. This is like this is on a different level than any video game I've ever seen. And then I popped in Mario World and it was the gas Bullet bill. It was that Bondsie bill they came through. It was like they couldn't make things this big on the nes like those two back to back like understanding, like that big graphical leap that was always like nowadays that that's lesson. I feel like nowadays with like kind of the

mid console jumps stuff, it's a bit lesson. Yeah, back in the day, oh my god, you get a new console and it jumps like sixty four, Oh my god, a three D like huge, massive, literal game changing leaps. But my first experience with that Superintendo and be like,

oh, everything's different. This is so much better now, fucking even like U My brother was getting deployed to Iraq with the Marines, so we did a Christmas Earth like eight months early, and my parents got us all at Xbox three sixty and they're like, oh, here's Madden O seven six six was the last six It was us because it was it came out in November five, but it would be the six Madden. Yes, so we

were doing an early Christmas. So maybe it wasn't that bar in advance, but I remember were like even then, I remember Madden was like since the Xbox, I was like, what the fuck is this what it's gonna be? Like every time a new console comes out? Do you have a TV? Yeah, that's a huge jump too, because that was the first A two system. Oh yeah that too. It was like kind of doubled up there. But it's like, maybe it's a bit unfair because I had the

TV as well. But like even if the Xbox One, I was like, I don't know, I don't want to just reminisce for old times sake, but it was. It was incredible, But like, yeah, I going for PS four to PS five Xbox one A series X. I do miss that, Like, oh my god, games are different now. Yep, getting a PS two playing Grand Trismo it's so realistic. Yeah, well

yeah that that three sixty. I remember they released two screen shots before the three sixty came out, like the first screen shots were like Madden and it was like a need for speed, so it's like football and cars, and both of them were just total bullshit, you know, just like rendered, like this is what gameplay is. But I remember thinking, like staring at the detail met Madden screenshot of the grass and everything, It's like, oh

my god, this looks so fucking real. We were the we are still to this day, the biggest Perfect Dark family you'll ever meet, which is what a weird phrase. But playing Perfect Dark zero on three sixty, which is not a good game, we still were just flabbergasted. Were like, this is what Perfect Dark is like in the three sixty era. This Call of Duty two, remember that how we played that. Call of Duty two is still a really good game. By the way. I was talking to

my brother about that. He's like, hey, I got like a weird So my brother, uh, one of my brothers is getting more into PC games because he got in the Steam deck, and then he also has a decent gaming laptop that he acquired, so he's like, hey, I've been playing like Call of Duty games. I got this bundle like every Call of Duty game for like one hundred and twenty dollars. I'm like, it's actually not bad for how many Called Duty games there have been for one hundred and

twenty bucks. He's like, it's sick. I'm playing through I'm a met Call of Duty too, first one oh the campaigns because I know he's playing through them in order. Wow. So he's at Call Duty too, and I'm like, oh, that's the best, one of the best Call of Duty games. And he's like, yeah, it's incredible. It's like you know, the Rangers at D Day. It's like a British in Africa. And he's like, uh, did it look this good on three sixty. I'm like, it looked pretty good on three sixty when I played it back

then. But like ps three smoke Grenades, I remember the smoker aids. Hold. What is he playing it on? He's playing it on like a gaming laptop. Might be playing on Steam deck as well, but he got both kind of concurrently. But is it like is it using an emulator? He's just playing it on PC. He's playing it on PC. On Steam

you can play all that. Oh yeah, there's bundles on Call Duty that go and sell for I want to say every Call of Duty up until like the very no, because the modern ones are out there too, But like their bundles that include everyone a good game series, every playing the Call of Duty campaigns, they're sure yeah, fucking oh man, call of Duty campaigns

for all the for all the like mainstream ship we give them like. Call of Duty campaigns are usually really fucking fun, especially back in that heyday of like the Infinity wards Call of Duty two to four, Yeah, Big Red one. The intro to find a stower was just Enemy at the Gates with Jude Law and Ed Harris and Rachel watch a good film, yes, And the intro to find a stower was literally crossing the Volga with and then one of your partner has the rifle but you have the extra bandoliers. Great,

I play through all that again. What was that face for it? Dan, I'm looking. I just looked up Call of Duty two to see it was on Steam and it is. But I just found a Call of Duty franchise collection on Steam which is ten percent off right now, so you can get it for the low price of nine hundred and sixty two dollars. Okay, No, my brother got like some crazy buntle for one hundred and twenty dollars during a Steam sale. Wow that is wow, that's very expensive,

jeeze. But yeah, there's everything from Call of Duty one, United Defensive two four. Oh they don't have three, those stinkers. How many games do you? Okay? Was three not on Steam, it's not on the three bunnel three. It was definitely not great, but I still have a soft spot for it. It tried to do the two like, uhmember, you'd like melee someone, you'd have like a quick time event to like wrestle

the gun from them. But it was a cool storyline like you were a French resistance fighter and part of it, which was awesome because like they were badass as Black Ops. It has four as monern war per two has a bunch of like zombie shit for Black Ops per two Wait no wait sorry montor work for three mon War for two Black Ops two. Okay, it seems like it has does have infinite warfare. Okay, it's got like everything, but three it seems weird. But yeah, almost a thousand dollars. Didn't

get the rights. That's too high. Thousand dollars, But yeah, buy a new game, bitch, lot of good details. Thousand dollars. I have one thousand dollars. You buy like fifteen year old Call of Duties, buy a new game. You can get the Call of Duty war Chest, which is just called Duty. Call of Duty two in United Defensive and that's only twenty nine ninety eight, so fair price. Duty Call Duty two and what United Call Duty United Offensive? Which that was the play which was before

Call of Duty two called Duty. She was six, wasn't it. Yeah? I don't know what this is. It doesn't it EPI? Yeah, yeah, God. Call Duty two is really good. It's great, a lot of fun. One of my first online games I put a ton of time into. I guess Halo two is the first big one. I want to watch Masters at the It's the like Bannon Brothers the Pacific. This is the Air Force war Worth. Oh sure, but it's about like the guys who bomb Dresden, which cannot be fun to watch. Dan, you want

to read this next one from Adam? Yes, how do you fire escape? Prue? Longtime listener, first time emailer. I hope you're all ringing in the new year. Well, answering the call for interesting questions. I wanted to ask you a question. My fiance and I had a lengthy discussion about in the past that I thought brought up a lot of interesting ideas in a different timeline of your life, what job do you realistically think you'd have

given you don't have your current job? For reference, I'm a software developer in my fiance is a reading specialist, and we said mortician and nurse, respectively. Very different careers in lives than we have now. Anyway, thanks for the hours of fund and please tell Dan he can't be president in this scenario. Nah. But I mean if I'm giving a realistic answer about the second career, I'm talking about realistic answers. What's a reading specialist? Well,

yeah, so that was my question. So Adam said, for reference, I'm a software developer. In my fiances are reading specialists, and we said mortician and nurse. So what does those specialists I don't know read really well? Does she read competitively? Does she read for non readers? And how do you tell them? This is tall and you said it before the other guy. She's like a somolier for books. I can name that. It was the best of times. Okay, well here's my question. Maybe

Brent put it into two questions. What is what is a realistic job that both of you, based on your past, maybe branching choices you've made your life, could realistically be doing in another timeline. I mean, I think the only other answer for me is go all in on wrestling, Like that's the two things I know video games and I know wrestling, Like, I don't know what the fuck else I would do that? No offense, that's obvious. What is there a world in which it wasn't that too? I

guess because I did also do that per job. I was gonna say, you know that about you? Couldn't you have been a you know, a person who like made cups out of clay or some ship, Like, wasn't there something else that? No grocery? No, I never really had an interest or knowledge in that, like in this life. In this life, is there a life in which you did take into the Riker franchise? You didn't make it in gaming and you did not make it in wrestling? What

are you doing? Like you want to take and whatever job will pay me? Like I don't think, like there's no other obvious. I'm working at making milk, I'm managing a movie theater. You know, seems possible. I mean I worked AMC because I also love movies, not on the level of like games and wrestling, but I I worked at AMC for years enjoyed

it. No, no, no, no, no, okay, because like Dan, you are someone who I don't think there's any timeline in which you are not just like going one thousand percent into what you are into. I think with you it's less what were you funneled into and more not that like managing a movie theater would not be got I was in movie theaters too. No, I see, Danny'll be like eating gobstoppers and be like it's not everlasting two out of ten and every stoppers. I think I think you

could make it. Going off of your personality, which we all know and love. I think you could not in any timeline not be like extremely passionate

and ambitious. So the fun part of the question for you is like in another life, if it wasn't wrestling or video games, what is the thing that you would have gotten so into, or rather that you did get into in this life that you didn't really pursue that you would have been like so fucking obsessed with that you would have applied the Dan Reikert formula to which is just to go all in on it and what other life are you this like obsessive that has had success. Well, I think I realized, and I

think it is actually in this life. It's the thing I went to fucking college for. It's you know, in junior high high school, I got so into like making short films and comedy and video production and things like that. And I love editing, I love directing stuff, writing stuff like I think the only one of the only reasons I really pivoted away. I went into college as a film major and made a sketch show that aired on television

throughout college and everything. Like, I think the thing that moved me away from it was I got a job writing video game reviews for newspaper, and I love that more. You know, I think if games had not worked out, I think maybe I would have gone all the way in and just trying to like make comedy late night comedy writing. I would have loved to try to go from college to writing for conin or something like that. So absolutely could have seen you as a writer, just a comedy writer. I

think that's it. Yeah. I was gonna say yeah, because I think I think by the logic of this question, there's another you right now. That's like, if I didn't follow my passion in college, maybe I would have just like continued my obsession with video games and wrestling, which you have done in this world. So it's like, that's what's fun about it. You have done both of those things. Question. Yeah, yeah, we would happened if you did not do those I didn't do the movie thing I

didn't do. Then this other world where you have become this like successful producer. Yeah, Mary, what about you? So possible careers that I went. I always was pretty obsessed with video so I think it would have maybe done that. But there were times where I was really struggling to make it as a video professional. And both of those times in my career, I was a secretary, and I usually was like the person who greeted people at

our film company. That I that was like the very first legitimate job I got, and I was going to get at greeting people and answering the telephone and sending people to the appropriate party. And so I feel like I would have made a pretty good secretary. But when I was ready to move on from that job, I was I got a really good interview for the secretary of the president of a company, and it was a big deal to me. It was a very legit corporate company, and I got dressed in my

nicest suit for this interview to be the executive's assistant. I've always I think that kind of sounds cool and it comes with a lot of prestige. And it was at sally May, the number one company that calls you if you owe the money for college. It's not a great company, but I was twenty two and needed a job and it seemed like a great fit for me, and I was very eager, and so I was in the final round.

I was in the final two as me and some other girl and I went to the Sally May company corporate and I had this interview with the main guy, and I remember like the whole place was filled with little signs that said, like congratulations to the person who got the most money that week, because that's what they do. And he was really into golf and he told me he likes to golf all the time and he doesn't want to be bothered when he's golfing. And I said, that's awesome, And I didn't get

the job. But I think I think in another world I would have made an awesome executive assistant. I think, are you be happy doing that? I don't know, That's not what the question is. I don't think so. I could see, I could see you owning a successful group of breweries. I think that I would love so my fantasy job, if that's where we're at. No, no, no, not fantasy. I don't think

it's fancy. I think like there is a world in which you know that it is a world is my fantasy world where I own a brewery and it also helps find homes for puppies. Hell yeah, and that's a cool job. Go and get a beer, and then you can look at dogs and maybe you can play with them, and then if you like one, you can take them home. And you've got an arcade in this brewery. Let's dogs and beer. Yeah, because you got to hook the regular people who

just want to play the video games. We have a lot of those though. We have a lot of video game based uh bars in Portland, Like, we have so many it's hard to choose. And the other day we got to eat, you know every once in a while, and I went to a pizza place that we've gone to for years, and they had a fuck arcade in the back and I didn't know. I was going to the bathroom and I was like, there's a whole arcade back, hitting room back, there a whole arcade, and I missed it. I was like,

this is just another arcade bar. I mean, good for them, but arcade bars are not few and far between here. I mean there's an arcade bar every every block. It's a Starbucks here in Portland. I went to one in Portland with Jake Fuck. I don't even know how to describe where it was. I think it was fairly well known, like Pete Brown recommended it. That's all I have. What was it? What did you say? Quarter World? That was probably it? But yeah, I got on

the first try. Do you guys hear that? Yeah, it's funny. I can pinpoint like a couple specific turning points in my life. I think there's a world in which I did not get my tailbone fractured playing lacrosse, and I continued playing lacrosse in college thinking about it seriously, like thinking this should be something I'm doing and spending most of my time if I'm not playing

them, like training to play. I was still in like college for media and communications at that point, so I can see my I could see myself in another life actually writing more for like a mainstream sports yeah, out of college like sports, which I did. I've done that in this life, but I could see pushing that farther because I've written about SEC West football, basketball, baseball, which is like you know, good, you know good

teams. Arkansas was in a you know, top of the league and certain aspects, but like in terms of things that might have changed that led me a different direction. I feel as if there's a world in which I tried, and I'm not saying I succeeded, but most of my life, being the youngest of five, the best way to get my siblings intention was to try to be funny. I think there's a world in which I tried clown,

to be like a stand up comedian of some sort. I would kill to see you do it now now, party clown, No, because doing it now I haven't been training. I have been like a very funny person. I would love to see you given ernest like open my five you know. But but like in this life, I had been doing that since I was twenty and I think part of my like DNA is very I don't get embarrassed easily. I used to say I don't get embarrassed, but that's not

true, because I do. But it's not easy for me to get embarrassed. And then also again, I've always like I grew up feeling like I needed to be a performer to get all these people who I fucking loved and admired aka my siblings who are older than me by several years. I've talked before is like, my next sibling is six years above me. I'm the youngest of five, and they're all well older than me, not well older, but like you know, like I was always trying the best way to

get their attention was to say something hilarious. So like, I think I grew up and valuing performance and trying to be a natural performer. So like, I think there's a world in which when I was younger, I made that connection sooner. Whereas like, oh, take this way of being when you were a kid with your siblings, and then keep pushing that to its natural extreme as you get older and be a performer for strangers and as a stand up comedian, as or whatever. The potential for success. I don't

fucking know. But it's like, in terms of what I could have tried to do, there's a world in which I tried to be a comedian of some sort. Does that make sense? Like, I'm not saying I'm not saying another world at this point I'm a successful stand up comedian. There's a one in which I tried to do it and then maybe ended up doing whatever. The fuck? No, you're saying you would have had a fifty million

dollars Netflix deal. I get it. Yeah, that's actually owned and me would be hanging out right now, and you know, canceled again, Mike. I'd be on Rogan every other week I canceled this, Yeah, un cancelable. JJ row Row and me would be great friends. In that world. I could see you trying, and I could see you being pretty good at that. And if you trained from like a young age and practiced, I could see you being good at that. I agree. I just talking

about Joe Rogan opened up another aspect of this to me. It's like, in that world, what would your outlook on life and politics be? Like, we don't have to talk about this. I'm just saying, like, in that world, what world inside the Roro Podcast. So I think all of us are answering this question and assuming and just saying we don't actually have to go into this because it's dangerous, But like we're answering this as if, like in this other universe, what would your career be like what would

you push it to? But we're not considering what it would do to our personalities and beliefs and politics, which is fun because it's like, well, I don't would I even like this guy who became a who tried to be a stand up comedian or Mary, would you like this? Consistent to the president of Sally May, I would be pro people. I would not like you love they can't get out of keeping me in a job, and I love when people have loans. Loans are good, and I bet you he

somebody feels that way. But the presents is like, listen, loans are actually really good. You want to have at least a couple of loans. They're good, And I'd be like, I agree, sir. So like I'd probably be a big weirdo if I was writing Masturbating Bear Skeedus for Conan, and I'd probably feel all right about my decisions. Yeah, like you know this one in the right direction. This is good. I'm doing it. Bought five thousand skeedges. That'd be good. I I don't think we

would all be friends. Well, no, we literally wouldn't because we wouldn't. There's yeah, But then you get to the thing it's like, I don't wanna. I don't want to get into this too much because then you just start my point being like what a weird universe that we find ourselves in in which all three of us are doing this podcast but we all have these different jobs. How the do we meet? How many factors had to align

for this thing to happen that we're doing right now? Kansas, Ohio and Syracuse got really into Rocket League and like met and then created a discord. And there I were born. You were born two hours west of where I was born, and yet like we didn't meet until we were in San Francisco. I avoided you for years. I know I wasn't born. Somehow made I got up. I did everything I could to avoid it. I got youa mike. You caught up thirty forty minutes from me at one point right

Joplin when you were there, Yeah, I was in Joplin. I would have been in Minnesota by that point though, But I you're up in Kansas City. Yeah yeah, but in this world, I don't go to Minnesota, so at some point you're in job. He never went to Kansasity though, right. Uh. No, I've been to Kansas City a couple of times. There's a movie, a rom com that's about this topic called Sliding Doors, right ideas, Yeah, yeah, bunch of shit back then.

And if the doors slid shut, she wouldn't have met the guy. And if they do, if they open and she gets in, then you know she does meet the guy, and like how different their lives are. It's a fascinating concept. I don't like going down that route because I feel like it always ends up in like a grass's Greener type situation, where like, no, no, I like my life and I'm very happy with it. So most of the time when people are like, what if you were a

scuba diver, I'd be like, I don't fucking know. I don't know who she is. She might be weird, and you know, I hate dogs. I don't know. There's all sorts of stuff that could have changed if I had a different path in life. I don't really know what i'd be like. I don't I don't want another path. I am extremely happy. Yep. I love everything that's happened to me. I'd love everything that I've made happen, but especially like love you too. Hanging out here,

this is great. Fire Escape might not exist in any other universe. I'm glad we're in this one. I wouldn't change the goddamn thing, not one decision. My instinct now after saying that sentimental thing is to like tear you both apart, but I'm not gonna do it. Mary, episode tearing each other? Well, no, Mary, but he was nice to both of us, but we weren't nice to him. Should we rectify that on the back on here? I don't want that. I don't want that. I

don't want that. Hey, thank you so much writing fires Cap. What a nice friend? Question comments concerned to hang out? We will always delightful to be here every other week ship. Yeah, Will, We're always We're always. His wife is smoking, she's a she's a bib. We know we looking for too all the time. When you're not looking, I'm looking. If you fuck up, I'll be there. I'll scoop that girl. So quick, Amanda, give me a call. Fucking enjoy waiting. Speaking

of sliding doors. If there is a universe in which it doesn't work out, him me have Amanda, I got you. I think we'd be great together. I could show I don't know anything about wine, but you could teach me. Girl. We Hey, Simon's if there's a world which dog no, he can come. I'll be his dad. It's not it's not a weird thing. Don't make it weird. Sliding dogs, Yeah, sliding dogs? Oh, really, really quick before I get into the end of episode. Uh Rigamarole, have either of you seen Past Lives yet? Did

you watch Past Lives from last year? Uh? Huh? Oh my god. That's my favorite movie of twenty twenty three. Fucking devastating, but really fucking good. Selene's song. She's a playwright. It was her movie directorial debut, Childhood Romance from Korea. And so I've heard about this, no spoilies. I really want to see it. Watch it. It's like up for a lot of awards, one of the one of the like saddest movies I've ever seen. However, careful, I think it was my favorite movie

last year. It's that time year. We're catching up on movies. We talked saltburn last episode. I love Selburne. It's coming from is that Alex Boniello. These are three pictures for the audio listener. Alex Bonielos sent me three pictures himself watching past lives, him crying. Just here's the difference between. Here's the difference between Alex Boniello and I. I may have cried harder than those photos imply he cried. I'm not going to show other people.

I think Alex knows I find it funny, and yeah, he knows his audience. Yes, he always sends me pictures of my contact photo in my phone. Is him crying at like a toilet paper commercial or something? Yeah, I need to text him about the movie because, oh my god, would you watch it on Did you watch it on like Amazon? Did you watch it on do you remember? I want to say, HBO, Max, whatever you want to call it. Uh, I believe I watched on Max, but it might be I might have rented it on Amazon. If

you need to rent it. That is one of the easiest three dollars I've ever recommended in my life. If we're doing recommendations, I'm gonna throw out a movie I saw that really touched me this week called The Holdovers. It's also nominated for a lot of awards. Yes, we watched that last week

too. A lot of sleeper hit It's it's so, it's such a it's such a genuinely well written and well acted simple story of kids who get stuck at school during the Christmas break and so they have to stay with a teacher that's like no fun? Are you like fun? And Paul Giamani kills this role. But it's not. It's not a very like exciting film. There's no like sex or like murder, and it's just a simple story of people

getting to know each other. And it hit me in my core when it was done, I was like, that might that must be like the best movie I've seen in a really long time. I loved it. I really recommend it legitimately my second favorite movie of twenty three after Past Lives. We watched The Holdovers. Yes, we watched The Holdovers. Also. Do you know what other movie Alexander Payne, who directed The Holdovers has directed? It was Sideways with Paul Gimonti, which is the movie about Why, same director,

but Sideways is really good too. And Jimmani, which he kind of got famous for. I do want to just quickly say, my sister recommended The Holdovers. If she ever watches this or like listens to the podcast, she'll be like, I recommended that movie. My sister recommended it. She was right. It's a really good film. She's right. If you're in a like rush, if you're like an west Anderson like that, but like better, Oh my god, The Holdovers is awesome and you're literally passized.

And then The Holdovers, Yeah quick one two episodes in a true detective season four very good, Jody Foster kicks ass, real good. I think they might be back. One was perfect television. Two was fucking weird and shitty. Three was man fine. This seems it's only two episodes that have been intriguing, but the big one. You can't. You can't justify that. Not two episodes the right so far, very intrigued. It's fucked up and cool and yeah, but I know, we talked about it briefly last week

before I finished it. We finished The Curse. I don't know either of you have. Jake's been watching it, but I haven't. It. Okay, talk to Jake about it. I'm just gonna say it is a weird like I could see people bouncing off as it goes. It's a weird vibe, it's a weird tone starting off. It is the craziest fucking like GiMA ass ending God never I've never seen anything on television like the way this story wraps up. I hesitate to say anything beyond that, but that whole way

wrapped up. Bonk and I were like, what the fuck is this? It is the weirdest thing I've ever seen on television, and that's a good thing. Fucking loved it, including Search Party season one to four. This is this is one of the most fascinating things I've ever seen on television.

It's uh interesting. You seem so like wavery on it. Last time we talked, it grew, our appreciation of it grew, for sure, and by the back half of the season we're kind of like, all right, these are unlikable characters, but these are this is funny, and this is where the fuck is this going? Like you keep like the season's wrapping up, there's only ten episodes. Where is this going? And you could have a billion fucking guesses where the show goes by the end and there's no fucking

chance he'd be right. There is a moment where both Bank and I were like, wait, what's are we looking at this right? What's happening here? And then it just takes this weird fucking thing and goes so far with it. I just please watch all of The Curse season one. It is awesome. Now if you have the paramount plus Showtime add on thing. It's annoying. We we had to subscribe for like a month and get the paramount

thing. But yeah, is it not on Hulu. You can pull it up on Hulu, but you can't watch it unless you have the paramount showtime. Oh I see us to add on? Okay, gotcha. Yeah, that's that's next on the list. After like the movies. We're catching up and we got to watch May December. We got to watch Iron Claw, and then we like, we've heard nothing but good things about the Iron Claw and like, the trailer looks great. May December. What am I missing?

There's one other I'm missing? But oh my god, Like, do you watch Past Lives and you're you're read to like hurt The movie is awesome, but yeah, that is our episode seventy three. Firescape pass at gmail dot com. If you want to send any other questions, we got a bunch of responses. Thank you so much, or keep banking them so keep sending them in. You can go to firescapepass dot com or patreon dot com slash firescape if you want to get ad free episodes, if you don't already

have them, you can get video versions. Watching this right now, you don't need to worry about this, but if you want the video version, you can go to our patreon to subscribe monthly to get them, and then you can also just treat that like a like a tip jar. If you appreciate what we do, because we appreciate what you do, and you tune in, listen to us, leave that's the company. You get bonus episodes. Get a Lethal Company episode. There's the Sons of the Forest episode.

We did a ranking of candies, did the road trip episode from Jersey to Connecticut, the cheese episod in Minneapolis. Yep. We did a thing at your Place mic around around our meetup time a couple of years ago. Yeah, there's plenty. We're slowly amassing. We don't do it on a regular schedule, but at this point, if you sign up for the video version,

there's there's a good amount of stuff in the last few years. You can check out yes, and then you can go to firescate merch dot com to get some sweatshirts, to get some mugs, to get some thermoses, to get some hats, what have you. All good stuff, all very well designed. I still wear some of them, like absent mindedly. I still put some of them on in the mornings and I'm like, oh, I'm not trying to wear Firescape stuff. It's just good stuff. Married did

a good job setting that all up. Dan, what do you have going on these days? Giant bomb dot com. I got my Twitch dot tv, slash, Dan Reichert. Not really doing any social media outside of the occasional Instagram Dan record. So that's me Mary streaming Mondays on twitch at tv, slash Marykish and sometimes tweet, but I think I'm also mostly on Instagram now it's less sad there, it's better. I agree. I'm as of January thirtieth, no longer at Polygon. That's my last day of Polygon.

Yeah, so I'd say, like i'd normally direct you to Polygon. It's my only other thing forward facing thing. But after that, no, like my my last forward facing thing for a while will be fire skate. I feel good, Yeah, I feel good. You did the You were the guy on the Unraveled videos, right, yeah, I'm Brian David Gilbert. That's you. Yeah, okay, okay, right right, okay. I tried all the Zelda I made Zelda foods and then I saw that. Okay, cool, cool red Skyrim books. I made some yarn I did the

mind place thing on or something. Yeah, yeah, that's that's that's our Michy. Yep, that's Hike replaceable. I look forward to seeing what fully untethered to games media Mike Maherty is like on this podcast or it's his one outlet to say games plays, I can invent about it. Yeah, yeah, I look forward to that. To be professional, this is but this is my Like, this is my You're not going to be seeing my work at the next work next place, which is by design on my part and

other people's parts. But like this is where you'll be hearing my opinions and uh seeing potentially how I play new games. But it'll be fun. We'll be here as everything. Bye, No, I don't say bye yet. I'm not done. You're done. I've got smart things to say. Don't rush me. Hit us. No, just kidding. We'll see you. We'll see you next episode.