you Hello, everybody, and welcome to a new episode of the MinMax Show, a place about games, friends, and getting better. Thank you for joining us on this grand adventure. My name is Ben Hanson. You're welcome to say it out loud to remind yourself of it. I'm joined by Jacob Geller. We shouldn't have connected. I'm joined by Jeff Marquiafava. Keep my name out your damn mouth. Hey, joined by Kyle Hilliard. Ben Hanson. Thank you. And returned.
Once and for all, I guess just for this one episode, but he's welcome back whenever he really wants to, but the grand return of cereal Vasquez. Deliveries are automated. Hell yeah. Thanks. Nice to have you back here, Serial. Former cohort who at some point said, I need to go on my own adventure across this haunted...
tar-filled continent to the world of game development a while ago. And now your game is out, man. Merchants of Rosewall, congratulations. We'll be talking about it later on this very episode, Serial, if you can believe it. I can. Okay. Okay. Awesome. And I'll participate. We're also going to be talking about Star of Providence.
I'm very excited to talk about that game. We'll get to that in a bit. We're going to be talking about Wander Stop as well. And then kicking things off, we're going to be talking about Death Stranding 2 on the beach. But...
After all that fun stuff, we're getting into even more fun stuff because we have another returning champion. We have Charles Hart coming back to MinMax to talk about his experience with Monster Hunter Wilds. Kelsey Lewin is going to be joining us. Once and for all. Kelsey Lewin is going to be joining us for a...
high-end monster hunter discussion you can skip it if you're extremely worried about even understanding what type of monster fights you'll be doing in the end we don't list all the monsters but we talk about categories of monsters if that's if that's the level of spoiler you're wearing
of and Jacob's saying don't be a freaking baby you're fine I'm gonna skip it Jacob I'm just gonna skip it okay smart smart it's like if if you knew enough about Monster Hunter to know what those categories even meant
then you would have known that they're in like every other game as well. Okay. All right. But enjoy that chat. And then back half of the show, Kyle will be coming back and we're going to be talking all about some community questions people submitted over there on Patreon. We can only kick this off. one way, which of course is going to the beach, everybody. It's a beach party because Death Stranding 2 on the beach got a huge trailer. Worst beach party ever. It's really abysmal. This is, yeah.
just 10 minute trailer dropped for Death Stranding 2 on the beach. And of course, as everybody knows, this is the pre-order trailer and everybody knows that pre-order trailers are 10 minutes. Reveal trailers are 10 minutes and then teaser trailers are four minutes in the classic. And it's also important that pre-order trailers are essentially like three trailers like mashed together. That's important as well. You think it ends the hottest place.
for pre-orders the South by Southwest film festival that's where that's where we pop off on pre-orders like I get it they talked about music you wanted to have I'm sure Kojima thinks South by Southwest is cool as hell and they focus so much on like the music in this game being made by wood kid and stuff and so they also announced that they're going to be doing like a concert series so i guess that's kind of the component for why it's cool to have it south by southwest but it's also like a film
festival as well right it's got it all it's got it all but there's still like you know as people were walking out for the panel and the crowd was like all right there Troy Baker. I just kept thinking like, man, if this was a video game convention, if this was a new PSX, that crowd would be losing their damn minds for everything Kojima's saying instead of it feels like, you know.
polite attention paid by the audience here it just doesn't feel like this is where it should have been but what the hell do i know about game marketing
Did you guys also, I don't know if you experienced it this way, but I saw people in Blue Sky kind of like talking about, oh, I didn't expect Death Stranding movies on a Sunday. And I was like, oh, I wasn't aware of this, right? I didn't know this was happening today. And I logged on and I caught the like... trailer as it was airing like my timing was like perfect and I only had to go back like 45 seconds to watch the whole trailer
And it was like truly in a way that I didn't mind. I was like, oh, my God, this is still going because I just had no expectation watching it live because I didn't I couldn't see the timestamp. And I was like, this is great. I'm so excited about all this. And I was like, oh, this oh, there's more.
And I was like, I couldn't believe it had been like 10 minutes when I realized like, and I went back and like watched it again immediately. I was totally enamored with it. It is like a Kojima thing to do these 10, 12 minute trailers. There are ones for a lot of the Metal Gear games. one for death stranding one and i was kind of thinking i was like if this was another game especially one this kind of cinematic set piece oriented i would be annoyed that they are
Absolutely showing things from like the final act of the game in this trailer. But for whatever reason, I'm like, you know what? kojima kind of thinks of this as probably just editing a short film that is almost separate from the game you know that like yeah i think honestly i don't know how much he's doing on this game other than you know like writing the script but like
He's editing that trailer. He loves editing these trailers. And so it almost feels like it's like a separate thing to just get to watch this like. 10 minute montage set to music and you know and then I'll play the game and I'll see some of those things and they'll be in a totally different context and I'll be like oh I guess I saw that in a 10 minute trailer but if it's like a marketing team pushing it you would trust them so much less than like alright there's a
a big boss fight even if it's the final boss we gotta put it in the trailer you know it's like it's not even that I think he's not revealing things it just feels like his goal here is to make a very fun watchable trailer yeah almost more than it is to like sell his game it's called the pre-order trailer jacob
I hadn't really thought about it from that perspective it's like why do I engage with all these where other games I will hit a point where I'm like I'm not gonna watch anything else about it and I think it's because like Kojima's earned my trust in terms of keeping the secrets secret to the point where he will edit elements of trailers, like inserting Snake in Metal Gear Solid 2 commercials and stuff like that to make people think you're going to play as Snake throughout the whole game.
And it's like, I just know he's going to make sure that the important sort of revelations are not teased at or hinted at in the trailers. Like, he's just, I don't know. I... If you look at all the Metal Gear games, like all the biggest twists of those games were kept out of the trailers really well. Right. We should mention this trailer is wild. And huge and pretty awesome and strange. You think, you know, once we've seen...
you know, a stop motion animated puppet in Death Stranding 2. It's like, all right, how much weirder can things get? But it just escalates. And kind of the easy headline this time around is like, they're leaning into Metal Gear in a way that they haven't done with Death Stranding since...
what was it like the director's cut where the trailer was like the cardboard box? Like there was one Death Stranding trailer. Okay. Yeah. Where it was really leaning into that. And then this one, it's like, we basically have the head of like a Metal Gear Rex. being put on top of a giant tar monster within the game. And it just looks like Sahel Anthropos from Metal Gear Solid V, you know, and it's just it's in your face, but it's delightful. There's a guy who puts on a bandana.
and looks so snake-esque that I, like, gasped. I thought, my first thought was, like, can Hayley tell me if this is allowed? Like, is he allowed to have a guy putting on a bandana in another game? Can you put a card? right on light blue bandana i think he's probably in the clear yeah and in case you thought there would be subtext it's just immediately pants to his skull like it
like flash cuts or whatever to be like, Oh, I wonder if he has anything to say about his relationship to metal gear in this. I wonder, maybe that was just coincidental. Who knows? Yeah. The funny thing is, so it's a, the director, the actor is a Luca Marinelli.
And he plays a character named Neil in this game, and he's transporting somebody, yada, yada, yada. But apparently back in... Oh, Ben, it's not somebody. It's the phrase... brain dead pregnant women sorry 45 seconds into this what is this a youtube comment section but anyway so uh he said apparently kojima back in 2020 he was talking about how much he loved the actor
Luca Marinelli. And he said, quote, I think if he donned a bandana, he'd be a spitting image of Solid Snake. And so it's funny that like, all right, I'm going to put you in a game and then I can't help myself. I need to have you slowly put on a bandana in this game.
we can have a big moment with the reveal trailer. We didn't believe him when he said that is what it was. So now he was like, I got to prove it to you guys. But it's just, it's so funny too, to think about that idea of like, you know, PlayStation had that big announcement at the Columbia lot, whatever the hell, where it's like, Hey.
PlayStation and Kojima, after Kojima works on OD with Microsoft, the next big PlayStation game for PlayStation 6, it's called SIGINT is the codename, right? And this is going to be kind of the spiritual successor to Metal Gear. So we're getting to that. But even before we get to the...
direct spiritual successor to Metal Gear for the PlayStation 6. Still, for the trailer number to starting too, they have to like, Metal Gear, everybody, how loud can we ring this gong for the fans to come around? Can we say that the... the gameplay parts unclear what's actually gameplay but there were several shots of environments in this where i said like are you kidding me out loud just just in like how
There's a scene where Norman Reedus is kind of looking over this, like, mountainy desert region. And it's like, if that... is actually playable terrain there is just something going on with like the the shadows and the geometry here that makes it look more legitimate as a landscape
than any of the kind of big triple a games that we've seen attempt in this and potentially you'll just be walking all over it you know it's like if it if it works the same way death stranding one did yeah there's and also i mean
The faces, I think, look incredible. Decima engines being used here, clearly a technical powerhouse. But I had the same thought too, Jacob, of like, by the end of this trailer, I was thinking, is this going to go down as the PlayStation 5's most technically impressive game? by the end of the console life cycle. We're only a couple years away from it. Naughty Dog's Intergalactic, perhaps, but this could be number one. GTA 6, I suppose. Yeah.
Yeah, different thing. But just the faces in this already look, I feel like, so much better than even GTA 6 reveal trailer. But this shot that got me... is when he's looking up at the mountain and then you see the avalanche come down the mountains oh my god that looks so damn good yeah i i also really like that i mean this seems pretty you know obvious but like
them exploring different parts of what america looked like so there was that one shot that feels like it was kind of in the middle of like an arizona ghost town or something where it's like here's the middle of the desert here's like one house on a road like that was that is the thing that wasn't really part of
Death Stranding where you would you would occasionally find like urban areas where it's like you know you enter like a dilapidated city or you'll find like one kind of residential area but like them kind of messing around with like hodgepodge of different parts of like American architecture and like different parts of housing. I think that that part is an interesting angle that they definitely have a lot of room to explore there. And I'm excited to see like what kind of.
what the interplay is between like what areas used to be populated and what is just like the huge land masses of desert and stuff. Yeah. Do we know that it's just America for this? Well, they say something about... Is it the world now? Yeah, because they say something about the new continent, talking about... They have some line about, oh, the new continent and how...
In this new land, it's a little bit like America used to be with its obsession with guns, and we need to not just resort to... ropes it's all about sticks now or whatever they started talking about two minutes after the trailer ended for the first time when they started talking about america's obsession with guns i was just like what is happening it's it's crazy because like they'll have
all of this invented stuff like they I think they refer to well the UCA's predecessor the United States of America as if it were ancient history but then also like Neil Specifically mentions Mexico as as still being a country that was around and apparently has, you know, outlasted the United States of America as a country is is so. interesting because of how it mixes like it or like it supposes this happened all in our lifetime but also there's an alternate history bent
But then we are kind of consistently referred to very real concepts in history as if they were happening kind of either side by side or concurrently with what's going on in their game. The way he's mixing that stuff up is... Very interesting. Yeah, it's just awesome to see somebody take this big of a strange swing again. And it's just...
You gotta be Kojima to pull it off, I feel like. But in the panel on the stage at South by Southwest, he was even talking about like, you know, what this game's about is that I felt something new during the pandemic. And so play the game to find out what I thought about the pandemic.
It's like, no one else can say that. Like, here's hundreds of millions of dollars just to express my feelings about the pandemic. It's like, all right, well, I guess we'll go on this wild journey with you. I started listening to more podcasts and they had some interesting ideas.
did hint that you can listen to the music as you roam around in this world, so maybe we'll have podcasts and Norman Reedus can pop on the mid-max. Metal Gear Solid 5 was a game about listening to podcasts. That's all you did in that game. Metal Gear Solid 4 was a game about listening to podcasts. It literally had the Kojima podcast in it. That's the thing, is that playing the Metal Gear games last year was... Oh, like...
Big Boss was like a proto podcast guy and that he was just listening to audio cassettes all the time of people talking. And then, yeah, Metal Gear Solid 4, you're listening to a new podcast. So it's only fitting. But they could bring back Ryan Payton and do a...
death stranding podcast oh my god don't don't tease me so did you all read anything into that where they say like hey it's the final journey of the dead as they're flashing all their big uh taglines like do you think they're going to try and build this as kind of the end of death stranding other than that movie they're making, yada, yada, yada. Hmm. I mean, he's already got other projects lined up, but I mean, I don't think...
I don't think Kojima's capable of giving it like a proper ending. Yeah, every Metal Gear Solid game was the last Metal Gear Solid game. You're right, you're right. Like, from two. Yeah, it's better if you just tease a little bit with kind of that ambiguous statement. If it works that way, it works, you know? The thing that I've watched back a couple times that really just made me laugh was the cast list, you know? Because they have, like, all these actors, and then, like...
They don't even finish naming all the actors and they insert like a mannequin head and it just says Charlie. And then they have Red Samurai, which just looks like an enemy. and then they go back to listing actors and cast like with their right no they specifically like they're like okay here's a bunch of you know here's ella fanning and all like leo sadow and then they're like charlie which is who is a puppet like it's an in-game character and then then Hartman, and then Red Samurai.
And then Deborah Wilson. And then Neil. With her reverse hand. How do I feel if I'm Deborah Wilson and I'm credited after a puppet and some other character in the game? I also love with both Hartman and the new George Miller character, it says like, Hartman, Nicholas Winding Rethin.
Tiny parentheses, special appearance, tiny text, performance by Darren Jacobs. Where it's like, that's not Nicholas Winding Refn. You face scanned him once and then a different guy plays him for the whole game. Like, he's so excited to have him enjoy. George Miller in his game, even though they...
Stood in like a photo scan booth for five minutes. It's funny to watch the panel. And the way they were talking about Higgs, which is Troy Baker's character, they were like, the iconic villain Higgs is back, everybody. He's going to be an even bigger...
And we brought him back because of how beloved he was. They're making it seem like he was like one of the most iconic villains in gaming from the first one. And like, it's, it was, you know, a real Troy Baker moment where like he came out on the stage, like filming himself. with the reaction of the crowd. And it made me laugh, though, because I'm like...
He nullified it completely by coming out and there was like a light smattering of applause for Troy Baker. You know, some, some, some woots. But then he starts going like, ah, like louder crowd, louder. Is that the video you want of yourself going out in front of a crowd and then trying to convince them? To cheer louder for you and your character? Actors, man. Can't live with them.
You got a point. Thank you. Kojima did say that Higgs is going to do some wild stuff in this game and it's going to be so absurd that you will want to throw the controller at the TV. And then we get a tease of a tentacle coming out of his mouth. Unclear if that's what's going to make you want to throw your controller while playing the game. I like these big like Ferris, you know, talking about the end of split fiction and what it's going to make you do at Kojima's like.
you're going to throw your controller at your TV. You're going to break your TV. You're going to have a screen protector. Yeah. And that's what I want you to do. Cause that's on a wrist strap. That's how the pandemic made me feel is I threw a controller once in 2021. So I wanted to make a game about it. The biggest shock to me, even after a tentacle comes out of Biggs' mouth, is the release date being June 26th. Wild. Wild. Especially...
We don't know when the Switch 2 is launching, but it, you know, it's probably early June if we had to guess. And so the idea of like in the same month, we're playing the Switch 2 and playing Death Stranding 2. And that's only a couple of months away. It's really coming up fast. Do you think that they are also giving GTA 6?
like a three-month birth you know of just being like we don't want to be coming out in august if uh gta 6 is coming out in september yeah there's probably a little bit of that you know if they can pull it off they can launch it for sure before gta why not he's always been aware of GTA in a weird way. There was a Metal Gear Solid 3 trailer that called out Vice City, I remember, in a weird way. What? It wasn't even in the final game, but it was like...
Someone was like, this ain't Vice City, referring to the forests of... Really? I forgot about that completely. We should do that again. Yeah, yeah. It lines up. This isn't Vice City again. It is funny to have... playstation's messaging where they're like exclusive on playstation 5 and at this point it's like that means nothing like just it's so weird now we're at a point in
the video game industry, which is like, eh, you can say anything and I truly know that it means nothing. Death Stranding is everywhere. Apparently, Kojima Productions owns the IP. You know, it's on Xbox at this point. Like, it's on PlayStation 5 for... what a year before it launches everywhere else pc is it day and date pc actually i don't even know maybe not but maybe it won't be too far behind but probably not yeah um we had a somebody right in from the community
They're called the best Patreon member east of the Mississippi, but they wrote in to remind everybody that technically we did a max spoilers for Death Stranding 1. And it was Serial and Kyle in the old Midnight Studios. So if you're eager for more Death Stranding chat, you can always go find that in the bonus podcast feed or on our YouTube channel. It's fun to find. Actually, you should probably watch that just for a recap. Yeah. It's been a while. Anson, you going to play Death Stranding 1?
It's not important. Hey, there's a game called Wander Stuff. No, I know. We're going to do an episode of the podcast where we go back to it, and now we have a deadline. We need to do it before June 26th, where we go back and kind of unpack this trending one a little bit more, because I liked what I played. I just didn't get back to it, I swear.
I'm still a Kojima fan you guys I'm still like super into this guy's work I know everything about it other than his latest big game and I'm a complete phony for it speaking of being a super fan of a developer Wanderstop came out, everybody. A game that a lot of us were looking forward to for a long time. Jacob Geller was maybe screaming about it the most because it's technically the follow-up.
to his favorite game of all time, which is the Beginner's Guide. That is the case. That's odd. Yeah, so Davey Reiden, who co-created Stanley Parable and then made the Beginner's Guide. He formed a studio called Ivy Road, along with other folks like Carla, who worked on Gone Home and Tacoma and stuff like that. And they partnered up with Annapurna for publishing Wanderstop. It's a fascinating game. Kyle, you finished Wanderstop?
Awesome. I saw it to credits. I also saw it to credits because I'm like, I just need to know how this thing is going to wrap up. Not spoiling anything, but I think it's an important thing to talk about here is where this game goes and how it all fits together. And then Suriel and Jeff, I'm in... Jacob, you've played a little bit of Wanderstop here? Yep. Probably like six hours. Okay. Jacob, are you at for Wanderstop here? I might be done. That's bold.
I maybe it's I kind of I want to hear everyone else's takes but it feels like It feels somewhat against the idea of this game to play it just to finish it. And that is what I would be doing because I just... My concerns before this came out have played out, which is I just don't care about cozy games. And that is unfortunately more powerful than the draw of.
a new Davey Reiden game for me. It's interesting. I'm in a similar boat, Jacob. So the big billing for this game is something they're trying to message is like, hey, it's a cozy game. We're going to make a cozy game. We're going to make a cozy game. To me, it's got a great sense of place. And I really love that. And it is a cozy environment. But at the same time, it's such an odd mix because you see the trailer and the idea is you are a fighter.
The world's greatest fighter who got burned out on fighting and ended up in this kind of mysterious forest clearing where there's a tea shop and you're working at the tea shop as customers come through is the idea. And I think when you say cozy game working at a tea shop.
You think it's going to be more sim-y. You think it's going to be like, okay, I'm going to be like planting the plants and slowly raising the tea and selling it and getting money. You think it's going to be a little bit more of that Stardew Valley energy. And it's not...
It's really that. It's more like an adventure game where it's just kind of fulfilling very specific requests from people. And so maybe I'm overthinking it, but that idea of like, oh, it's a cozy game. Well, it's cozy, but it has a very... rigid structure for how you're making progress you're not just going and minding the crops for a while you know i would almost i would almost put it an adventure like if you're gonna give it like a genre yep yeah
Jacob, I'm in a similar place with you. I don't mean to diminish them at all, but I don't like cozy games. I just don't get into them. I want goals and I want sort of... challenges i have to overcome and that's just not the nature of a cozy game but the thing that i i and to be clear like i like wandersop quite a lot and i and i think it's like just as a narrative like adventure game i think it's really good and the thing that really clicked with me is like
that's alta's character too she is someone she is like an action gamer who has found herself in the midst of a cozy game and like sort of witnessing her reaction to that it was like extremely extremely relatable in a way that i really enjoyed to the point where like i remember like doing everything that was on my task list and going to talk to goro and like one of the questions are like what do i do next
And just that the conversation that you have with Goro about why she needs a task and like what his response of being like, you can just hang out. It's fine. Just was, I, it just was one of those things that really worked for me because I was like, I am Alta in this situation, and it's really working for me.
I did have the problem initially where I was like, I'm not really familiar with the genre. I think I'm just going to like make sure I grow a lot of plants and have a ton of fruit and like the game. And then I get into that thing that bugs me about like No Man's Sky where I'm doing like more. management of like things it's like i just gotta carry stuff to here and then it was like in the third or fourth area that i was like i just finally realized it's like
That's not what this game is. This game is someone gives you a task and you go complete that puzzle and get the task. You only need like one piece of fruit. You don't need to grow.
a bunch of apples just in case someone asks for an apple you get the apple when someone asks you for an apple right so that's where it like doesn't really feel like a cozy game in that way but it's not my typical genre but i really liked wander stop quite a lot That's really good to hear, Kyle, because I think I played it for about an hour.
I'm kind of at, I was at a crossroads that I think you answered of like, is this a Davey reading game that is using cozy as kind of like the layering or is it a cozy game that has, that uses the Davey reading stuff as the layer as like kind of a. glue right and it sounds like this is like you know this is basically like another exploration of like why we engage with video games and what we want out of them
Through the lens of cozy game, whereas the beginner's guide was like about the creator's journey and Stanley Parable was about like, why do we make choices in games and what motivates us? Right. So it's definitely leaning more towards the, OK, this is a Davey reading game and then it's a cozy game. That's exactly it. I think so. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. And it's an interesting case, I think, where.
We're guilty of it, too. But every podcast, when they talk about this game, it's like, all right, from the creator of Stanley Parable. OK, it says it's about a former fighter who's going to be setting up this tee shot. But what's the game really going to be like? And it's interesting case of like the pedigree of the team kind of.
undercutting the game in some way because it's like you know i don't want to spoil everything that happens and it definitely it's a strange game and i'm delighted by how weird certain sequences are and where it goes but like don't go in expecting a different game like the game is managing the tea shop that being said i'm with you kyle we're like i do like this game um and i enjoyed my time with it um so just have those expectations in check but it's a fascinating thing too because
The overall premise is that, you know, the main character was burned out. And, you know, it helps that even in interviews and, you know, their vidocs and whatnot to kind of preamble for trailers. They've talked about like this is this is our analogy for where.
Dave Reed was at specifically for game development. He was so burned out after Beginner's Guide and Stanley Parable and probably whatever he was up to after Beginner's Guide that this is an expression of that, of like, this character is also just... fried and worried about this one thing that I'm really good at in life. What if it just destroys me? What if I can't quote unquote lift the sword up anymore because it's too heavy, which is what they're working with here. And I think that.
really works and it's interesting theme. And I think by the end, it goes to some really interesting places that I've never really seen expressed in a game before. At the same time, there is a part of me where it's like, I was enjoying this game. It's interesting that in our Monday meeting, it was kind of hinted that some people weren't that crazy about it. And then after I beat it, I looked up reviews and I was like...
Whoa, those reviews are much higher than I was expecting for this game because it does have some definitely things you can nitpick. Like the core gameplay of making the tea, I didn't really find that fun. But everything else around that I think is really compelling.
and novel and worth experiencing. So it's a tough game to wrestle with. Yeah. Yeah, I guess that's... It's like currently I've played... I just had the first kind of scene transition where it seems like the structure of the game is you're making tea, you're doing plants, a couple people come, you fulfill their orders, and then when you're kind of done with them...
you move on to another season or just like era of the tea shop. Um, and so I did the first one of those and in the first one, it felt, it was like, okay, I'm making tea for these people. And my my kind of reward is some like well-written, mildly entertaining conversations. And that, you know, that's it. And it's like they.
i i enjoyed the characters i think goro is like a funny guy and you know you you talk to this like knight who has a curse on him and it's like okay this is you know this is kind of funny but it like it wasn't I looking ahead and being like, OK, is am I going to be doing this for seven hours was a little I just I was like, I don't know if I if it's worth it. But is it.
Does it expand from there? I'm not looking for a beginner's guide twist, but just like, does the game broaden its, I don't know, like, what it's doing past just entertaining conversations?
I think the way that I would put it is, or like the way that I think the thing I'm curious about, I guess, is that like, this feels like him kind of, uh, side-stepping the idea of like well what's going to be the big twist by kind of putting the twist at the front right like the right is like this person is now we kind of start at the twist where it's like something interesting has happened already kind of meta breaking of like this person is going to be
You know, we've already made the pivot, so to speak. And I think what I'm looking for is. it's very upfront about like, this is a game about burnout because like the, there's basically like an up esque montage of like, this is my entire life and what led up to this moment. And now I'm really burnt out and now I need kind of like a break. So you can almost see like that whole game would have been the precursor to.
like the twist right right and then this is it um and so what i'm looking for for from these conversations is like i guess i'm just kind of looking for does this game kind of go into territory that doesn't feel like it's
that I'm already kind of aware of as someone who does relate very strongly to the premise of burnout and stuff. Yeah. Of like, does this feel like it's going to have, you know, layered and meaningful insight that i haven't just you know read about on twitter i i hear it that i am with you as well in that curiosity because i do think there's a part of me where it's like boy i think the concept of
a narrative about burnout clearly it's it's striking a chord a lot of people apparently a lot of reviewers in particular are really hitting it which is interesting larger conversation probably i would say yes it goes in more interesting directions but it's still all kind of variations and more depth to that theme you know and so it i that being said you know maybe i just
was more into the character and the character designs specifically than some folks early on. Like what really got me, I think is that night that you mentioned Gerald early on, Jacob was like, I just love. that character like the doofy dad who's stuck in this knight costume and he's got cursed by a witch he doesn't know why and he's like i'm not too worried about it i'm cursed and my leg is smoking blue but i did 100 sit-ups so i think i think i got over that i think i'm gonna be cool like i
Every character that came into the little clearing and the shop, I was so intrigued by. I think their designs are awesome. I think the personalities are really clear, really distinct. And so unique. Yeah. So for me, it was like business people later, I think are really funny. That is one of my favorite storylines. Yeah. I mean, that is my favorite storyline of the game is.
there's a storyline with business people, which is like, it's very Douglas Adams. It's just perfectly. Yeah. Oh my God. It's perfect. But that, that was enough for me. So if you're starting out in this game and you're like, I just don't want to hear some lightly amusing.
wacky characters talking as they contemplate themes of burnout like that that is that is kind of the game and and there are layers to it that i think are really interesting that it gets into later but don't expect a hail mary uh narrative i guess Yeah, it's like I really and I think the idea of it, what I've read in some reviews is kind of the place that it ends is interesting and doesn't seem like prescriptive, which I.
You know, I guess my my fear is that I know the game Celeste feel like means a lot to a lot of people in terms of like its themes. And for me, it was a game where I was like, God, anxiety is climbing the mountain. Like, cool. I know where this is going to end from the beginning. Right. And I like I experience anxiety and that game did not have like new things to.
talk to me about and so i guess i'm like yeah i'm wondering if i'm going to like find a new perspective on the thing that the game is about versus I hear you. You know, like, what I feel like I could predict being the end of the game from the first cutscene. I...
I mean, it's almost not fair to the game to be like, can this game expand my perception of burnout? Like, you know. I don't know. I think if that's what the game is about, then it should have something interesting to say about it. I think it does. I think it does.
say that i that i expect i don't expect it to like solve burnout and say like this is what you should do if you're burnt out i think what i i guess the my best case scenario for this is like offering different lenses for like you know new thing new food to chew on in terms of like i hadn't thought about like this aspect of it or like why people would choose i think it i think it has that i think it has that like that that i think is is
what i'm looking for more so than like is it going to have you know the philosophical equivalent of like now we're pivoting completely to this other thing right like i don't expect there to be a big revelation it i ideally you would want kind of like small kind of
you know, food for thought as you go. And it sounds like it does have that. Yeah. Yeah. Kyle, did you enjoy the core idea of fulfilling these recipes for people? Because the idea is these wacky characters come in and they truly are wacky. No, they'll say like, hey, I'm looking for this type of tea. and you have to like look through like okay i've got a book with all these ingredients and people want tea that
tastes like cereal. What the hell could possibly, okay, if I grow this fruit, there's a description here that says it might taste something like this and that might be close enough. And then you're going through and concocting and kind of this giant Charlie and the Chocolate Factory style, you know. tea what's a tea maker there's probably some better name for that i actually did quite i actually did enjoy that because because it was
It was more of a, like I said, I kind of had to have my mindset needed to change about it, where it was like, it's not about just growing ingredients and collecting them and having a library of fruits. It's about solving the specific puzzles. And in particular, I liked...
some of the final teas that you had to make that like made you use the contraption in ways that you didn't realize you could. Right. If that makes sense. Yep. Like, so I actually, I did enjoy that part of it. At first I was like, I just have to like,
always be growing these things but once i realized it's more of just a singular puzzle i actually i did quite enjoy it yeah i thought it was fun okay one question i have related to that is actually like how much do you feel like the gameplay intertwines with its themes because like the, in the first hour, it definitely feels like they are trying to almost implicitly get you to be more mindful about.
certain game mechanics because like the the process of gathering the ingredients and then making the tea is definitely more involved than like okay once you grab you know once you have all the ingredients you press a button and then you craft tea right like it is it is you have to go for like basically spin this ladder around this giant like glass contraption to like do all of the steps manually right um in a way that is like you have to
you have to kind of stop thinking about your objective in the future in a way that like, oh, we had a quality of life where now you can just auto, you know, craft everything would, would. Make you focus on like, I need to do this faster, more efficiently. I need to do better, you know, meet goals and stuff. But it seems like.
You know, between like, oh, all of the manuals that you have, all like the instructions are literal books in the world that you can carry on your person. You reference them or you can put them down. And like that is, I think, very intentional as a way to say like. think about what what like every step of this process in a way that will occupy your mind and distract you from like you know be more meditative by making the the process more elaborate and i'm curious to see if like the
that aspect of it feels like it intertwines with like the stories they're trying to tell in each section. I think it does. And it's interesting that, you know, even early on when I would mess up a bunch of tea orders and I would mess them up later too.
I have that feeling of like, oh, God, I can't believe I did this wrong or forgot to empty this into that pot over there. I did it too early. And it's like, oh, no, that's exactly what the main character would be going through at this point. So it is nice how like the contraption aspect of it, trying to manage this contraption does line up that way. And, you know, I think.
It also lines up in an interesting way, like Kyle talked about, where... you know she is a fighter at her core she's out of her element here making tea for everybody but i like that even still by the end of the game you can still have the dialogue options where some people come into the clearing and they're like i don't really like tea and she's like yeah i don't really like it either i don't really i don't
understand what this is all about you know but you know you have other characters there who are trying to drive home larger themes to sink in a new way that I do think it syncs up in a cool way for what you're actually doing on a regular basis and a larger narrative here. Did it feel weird? I don't know if this is just kind of the opening or if it continues. The characters kind of have plot lines that they go through while you give them like multiple T orders. Yeah.
And it felt a little strange that like with that night, you would give him tea and he's going to be like, all right, I'm going to go out and then I'll come back here later and like tell you about my adventure. And then like. 30 seconds later, he would be there and ready to get another tea delivery, and it...
I think it's contextualized. The forest is mystical and weird and time works differently there. The overall thing is it's a little Wizard of Oz-y a little bit. This is a wild world and so they do talk about that. I think it's a really smart way to have these characters you can fulfill their quests and then they come back and it's like oh my god I've gone on some crazy adventure since the last time I saw it even though it's really not that much further along I was also kind of charmed by like um
because my assumption going into it it was like oh this is like medieval fantasy stuff yeah then you meet characters who like have cell phones and have pictures of like them hanging out in a like a contemporary living room i mean that night you had a stop sign and i was like yeah like
and I kind of liked that actually just that sort of like that just like what is where is this like you know I don't know it kind of worked for me it's some of my favorite character art in a long time I yeah I feel like every character that came through is like I love the look of this I want I want the Smash Brothers game
but it's only characters from Wonderstop. That would truly be the best. Wonder smash. Yeah. Is it too much to ask for? So yeah, I enjoyed my time with it. I'm not as over the moon as some reviewers out there. And I did eventually get to the point of like, you have a big book of answers, as they call it, which just gives you like, hey.
we're talking about this fruit, grow this fruit and combine it with this and then do this to the machine and you'll get your end result. And by the end of the game, I was like, yeah, just let me keep looking at that big book of answers. I'm not in there thinking about what, how do you extract mint from this certain flavor of plant?
It doesn't really, wasn't clicking with me in a big way. But I enjoyed my time with it for sure. Like I beat it in 14 hours, I think. Like they said, it's about 10 to 15 overall. And that was, you know, steam time is always a little bit. squirrely just like the forest so it could be you know simple 10 but jacob i am curious to hear what you think about
Some aspects of it. I do think it does get cool by the ending, but if you're aggressively not compelled by it, it is the game. It's like, I want to finish it, but also, I'm like, 14 hours seems pretty long for... this gameplay. But I don't know. You're being a baby. I would feel bad if I didn't finish it, but also...
Pressuring myself to play a video game kind of seems antithetical to what the game is about. So I don't know. Jacob, let me tell you, someone who no longer has to play games unless they really like them. It's real cool. The grass is real green on this side. Yeah. It is a weird idea, too, also. And I'm sure they thought about this plenty, but like, oh, we're burned out for making games. Our solution? Let's make a game that's about burning out. Like, okay, all right.
It's the best game about burning out on games since Uncharted 4, I suppose. Since Burnout 3. Since Burnout 3 is a better comparison. Burnout Paradise. Also, good alternate title for this game. Is it too late to change? Yeah, actually. Also, the music, I think, is fantastic throughout the game. It's, you know, the composer. The Minecraft composer? Yeah, Minecraft composer, which I was really thinking about him a lot while playing and thinking about that idea of Minecraft music.
I understand this is an older perspective and a dumber perspective, but I'm like, is Minecraft music quietly a juggernaut? Quietly a... Not quietly. Okay, it's loudly. I don't think that's an old perspective. But to the point, I was thinking about it where it's like, Minecraft's music, is it more iconic at this point for more people than Mario 1's music? Like, I think it is.
It's getting there. My kids, or kid, I just have one. I didn't... find a new one she plays it on mute because she finds minecraft music to be creepy she told me once so she just never listens to it okay well you know that's still iconically creepy in its own way but uh wander stop uh it is out on steam ps5 xbox
Curious to hear more people's thoughts on it. Jacob, just look up the ending or something, please. Another game about managing a shop. By the way, it is weird. I don't know if you've noticed this, Surreal. But like Wander Stop came out about managing the tea shop. Call of Boba just came out about managing a Boba shop. And then there's this game called Merchants of Rosewall, which is also about shop management.
Yeah, I'm well aware of both that game and this trend, let me tell you. Also, well aware of... a growing trend of games where you, uh, someone asks you your name and you can choose not to tell them. We noticed that in wonder stuff. Okay. Interesting. That's helpful. Uh, this is a game that you were a damn narrative lead on dude. Crazy. Yeah.
Congratulations. How are you feeling with the launch of this thing? Feeling pretty good. It took us a while to get there. We are... kind of at a point where we're mostly just kind of addressing bugs and stuff so we're kind of on the on the tail end of it and kind of figuring out what we want to do next um but yeah uh
I think we were talking about localization stuff and I think word count came back at like 95k. So like I'm now faced with the prospect of now reviewing all my writing to see if it's translated well and it's harrowing. Can you compare this to any other project throughout your entire life? Is it just the biggest project you've undertaken? It's by far the longest thing I've ever written.
Yeah. Which isn't to say that I'm the only one who wrote on it. We had a handful of other writers. But yeah, definitely by far the long, at least in... terms of sheer size probably like the the thing i've invested the most time into what about like pride levels where you're at for this thing uh pretty high and that like it's you know um I don't I hadn't had any kind of like long term professional experience in creative writing. I've.
I dabbled with it as a hobby for a long time, obviously. You've all read and have listened to my fan fiction. That's right. Smash Brothers fan fiction. It's excellent. But yeah, having... like the, I'm most proud of like the process side of things of like figuring out exactly how to work with the team and, you know, not just be kind of like the, like the soul writer on thing, which is basically what I did as press and in consulting where you're like, everyone's kind of responsible for their own.
kind of uh isolated section and works on this thing and then they turn it into an editor and they kind of get feedback but like with this uh project there was definitely a lot more of like this we can't you can't just like write the entire game and then have someone else
do it like even with a movie because you have to iterate on the process along the way and so like figuring out when to check in with people how to how to basically work within a game structure was definitely like the biggest challenge and you know shipping the game is definitely like a point where okay we've completed it it's you know it's kind of out of my hands and whatever happens I'm at least happy with
the fact that it's done like having shipped the game and the pride people feel in okay we shipped it like even for you know uh for titles that end up not doing so well or like you know um having that pride in like the process I think I definitely feel that more than anything else of like okay having shipped the game is probably the thing I will remember
most about this game yeah just having taken it across the finish line yeah and it's like that doesn't feel like that doesn't feel small in the way that I maybe kind of reflexively thought of like hey they shipped it uh and not not tying into like whatever the perception is or whatever happens like i'm happy with the processes and i i've had people you know text me and say like i'm playing this game and i've you know uh
I really got into the loop of it and I've been playing it for, you know, 10 hours and I'm really into it. So like, uh, seeing that part of it is all is basically like, it's really, really nice to hear that from people, um, from like friends and stuff. Um, But that feels like, OK, I get to enjoy that versus like have needing that to validate all of the work that I've done. Right. Right. And so.
Yeah, pretty happy with it. So are you reading a bunch of reviews? Are you watching streamers? Are you trying to absorb as much feedback as possible at this point? I'm taking a very methodical approach. I didn't want to do it all at once because then, well, for one, I was working on other stuff, so I couldn't.
I can like spend a bunch of time but there were we had like partnerships with certain streamers and stuff and watching their streams kind of over time and not like you know using it like on my lunch break I'll watch some of this person's archive stream archive and not feeling like I need to I need to see everything everyone is saying about the game because you know that's what our community manager Kate is for and you know
I'm curious to see what the reports will be of like, here's what we, here's all the feedback we've gathered. Just kind of like a con, like a concentrated effort of like, here's, you know, the points and stuff and what people liked and didn't. But right now I'm like, I'm being very selective with what I. you know, here in terms of feedback. Yeah. So if you want to manage a store.
but get some more systems in there than Wanderstop has. Is that the easiest pitch of like, okay, you're actually like assigning companions here. You're actually creating these recipes, managing a little bit more. There's definitely a lot more goals explicitly up front where you're trying to meet quotas and trying to raise money to upgrade stuff. So it does have those progression hooks.
we have that. And then there's, you know, a whole story of like things are happening. It's it is somewhere between like a reciteer and persona where you're managing like a calendar and. um you have a certain number of things you can do in a given day and so like okay am i am i going to make this kind of product or do i want to make um you know do i want to
make a bunch of food or do I want to cast some metal or, and then you sell to customers. And so you're managing like what you want to sell. And so, or do you want to make things for like stories?
for story reasons or like, you know, imagining those different things of like, I'm going to get this, this, and this done today. Yeah. Managing that calendar stuff is definitely a big element. Speaking of calendar stuff, I started playing the game this morning and I've never been more jealous of my life than I was like, wait.
Narrative team for this game? They get to come up with new days of the week? That is such a dorky specific thing. Is that the peak of the project? Okay, we get to have a discussion about what days of the week are called in this world. That's so good. Yeah. And like just even thinking about the calendar and what that means in terms of like, well, we have for both like narrative and system reasons, we cut down the calendar.
from 12 to eight months. And so figuring out what does that process look like? How do we condense the themes of the months into eight versus 12? That's perfect dark stuff. Yeah.
Yeah, those are definitely a lot of discussions. And then how often people cited metaphor is like a game that's kind of similarly condescends its calendar and thinking about like, OK, well, they did this for a reason. And that's because in Persona games, there were just large gaps in the calendar where they're like, oh, you're going to be out for two weeks because we don't. Yeah.
Yeah, totally. Jeff, what's standing out to you about Merchants of Rosewall so far? Mostly the systems. I'm not a huge... like visual novel fan and so i was pleasantly surprised when it was like oh they're like like these are fleshed out i'm only i'm only a couple days in as as a caveat but but like the the idea that you are That there is this whole system of running things.
and crafting things. And then, and then I was surprised that like right away, they're like, Hey, if you haven't done this in like nine days, you lose. And I was like, Oh, we're taking this seriously. Are we? So like, and, and just like, And and also having but having all those systems streamlined to where it's like I go to the market, I can go to the market anytime. Like these are my people. Each one is like specifically tailored to.
whatever you know like crap you know like crafting or cooking or whatever like just having having all those systems completely streamlined so that i can just like you know press all the buttons that i need to and And also, I like the pacing, because most people can only do one or two tasks. On day two, when day two ended and I sold everything, they were like, you made like...
300 quills and you spent 600 and i'm like oh i'm going out of business but but it was because like i i bought all a ton of ingredients and then i could only make a certain like I made a bunch like I made all the money back the next day, but it was basically like I had to spend that day crafting all these things. I only had a few things to sell that day. So like I took a huge dip in terms of the money that was coming in. But then like.
making it up the next day and kind of having things staggered out and having to think about what I'm making, what I'm going to be able to sell, and trying to keep that going has... As first impressions, that has been really interesting to me. Just to jump to community questions earlier, Chris Hanlon writes and says, Hey y'all, question for the returning champion. That's you, Serial.
I've been working for a company for a short time, but find myself moving into a more senior role quicker than I expected. I'd love to hear more about Serio's path from game writer to narrative lead. What was the biggest challenge after taking on the lead role here in the game? I... Not to put too fine a point on it, but leading and like knowing that you are responsible for other people's workloads and having to, you know, make those decisions of like, oh.
At some point, I just in my head had this floating thing of like, that'll be decided at some point by someone else. Right. And then realizing, no, I'm the person who makes that decision. I need to hit me. Not only deciding things and then communicating that to both.
the people who you know i i am in charge of and then also communicating that to other departments and you know dealing with the consequences of like well if you decide this then we have to change this this and this and so you know getting feedback on that and having to change course like that
you know, knowing that the buck stops with you is definitely the hardest thing and just having to be more active than reactive, uh, in terms of like getting, not just being assigned task, but seeing like, Oh, these things need to be fixed. I need to be the one to, um, create the JIRA tasks and assign them out and properly do all that stuff. That has been hard. So I think just having that effort of not...
not feeling, not waiting for tasks to come to you. And it's interesting in like an environment where you are there because, you know, you are an employee of a company, but also you want to be there. And so like having that, that need of like, I need to fill these voids before. before they become a problem. And yeah, being proactive about that stuff, I think it's, has definitely been like the biggest learning experience. Right on. Well, sorry, Vasquez shipped a damn video game round of applause.
merchants of rosewall on steam uh just on steam at this point right yeah okay sweet merchants of rosewall if you're gonna check it out uh before you switch to cereal can you reveal it here going to switch I can reveal that Switch 2 will be out this year. Oh, shit. Ricky Winterborn wrote in as well, Surreal, before we let you go, and they say, hey, has Surreal continued to think about Advance Wars every day?
I think so. Yeah, I've thought about it while we were making merchants. Every day when you were making merchants? Have you thought about it since we started the podcast? No, not since this podcast began until now. I should have been off my list for today. Hang on, do you hear that? Is this a mysterious new crew coming in to talk Monster Hunter? Charles Hart, Kelsey Lewin, welcome to the Min Max Show.
With a very well-coordinated clap. Oh, my God. Perfect magical clap. Charles Hart, thank you for coming back, sir. Yeah, sorry. It's been so long. I got sick, but the doctor said that the only cure was to play Monster Hunter. Now I'm better. Alright, we are diving into some high-level Monster Hunter discussions here. If you're some...
scrappy noob. Get the hell out of here. But we're not going to spoil anything. Okay, see you. Okay, bye, Jeff. But we're not going to spoil anything, you know, too big and specific here, but I'm just curious about, like, for the people who are post-credits what your Monster Hunter world...
is like no pun intended for how you're playing this game. And Kelsey, we did a new show plus this week where you tried to coach Jeff and I with your high level play of monster hunter. Cause like, what is your hunter rank now, Kelsey? It's not. that high it's like 72 73 i think you're doing fine you can you can hold your head over 100 i couldn't i couldn't play for five days i don't know i want to gloat because this is the only time in my life that will be a higher hunter rank than kelsey
She didn't play for five days, and so now I'm like 76. And then within probably the next 24 hours, Kelsey will be ahead of me again. All right, we can't have YouTube. Over 80. Jeez. Yeah, YouTube's going to be flooded with everybody screaming about how much cooler you are. I'm higher than you. That's all that matters. Okay. I see how this is going. Sergio Vasquez, what's your Monster Hunter experience like so far?
Uh, I'm not as high rank as either of them. I've only gotten to rank, but I did get to the point where you can level Hunter rank freely instead of having to go through the campaign. So I have beaten the campaign, I guess. Okay. And it's still, you can't, there's still like three more gates.
Yeah. You'll get gated at 20 and then 30 and then 40. Oh, really? Okay. Yeah. Well, I did. I think I rolled credits, but I skipped a lot. But yeah, I've been messing around with the long sword and gun lance. And then Jeff, of course, is a champion of Monster on Every Weight. Because you mainly are playing on your wife's character, which is a really confusing way. I don't have any hard stats now. Her account, which we've both been playing on, is now at 100 hours, but it's only like...
68 ranked or something. Jeez. I don't know. You're flying. And Charles, you're the big question mark here just because you did the preview trip where you went out to Osaka for MinMax to check this game out and make the travelogue video and all that fun stuff. where you tore apart a hotel room. If no one's seen that travelogue, you got to check it out because he really let him have it in a rage. But you were apprehensive.
about your knowledge of monster hunter going into that thing and do you think you're getting into the game now because of that preview trip and like having that intense pressure of feeling the need to understand monster hunter Uh, yes. And I also, I feel like this game, from what I understand about now, it is easier.
than other games and it's it's just a little more streamlined to get into so i remember going on the previous trip i had played a bunch and then i was playing the game there and i was like yes i understand it it all makes sense i'm really good now i'm playing i'm like oh wait that's just it's just kind of the easy
one and that's fine and it's like i i had hyped myself up and i'm like so i still like i was still having lots of fun but i did i really related to i listened to the monster hunter segment from last uh or two episodes ago i don't know when it was but
talking about the capture mechanic and how poorly explained that is. And I, I was like, dead set on i was like i'm not gonna do like i want to experience this game as a true newbie and not do outside guides i don't want to ask people for help i want to I want if the game is telling you how to do it, I want to find out how it's telling you to do it. And I wrote down where the instruction on how to capture is because it was so ridiculous. So you pause the game.
You go to the info tab. Then you scroll down to the play guide section. There are three sections there. There's basic controls. There's tutorial list and their tip list. Three different categories. I would understand if you confuse them. You go into basic controls, and then you go to hunting tips, which, again, is not tipless from the earlier menu. And at the end of basic controls in the hunting tips, there's four tabs, none of them marked.
And if you go to the last tab and scroll down, you can find out that you need a shock trap or a pitfall trap and trank bombs in order to capture a monster. So I figured it out on my own, but it's stupid. Can I ask you if in that menu it says you need two Trank Bombs? No. This is so insane to me. Why would anyone know? Again, I've been playing Monster Hunter for a long time, so old news to me. But like...
How would you ever know that you need more than one? You would think, this is the tool I use.
and i need like two shock traps i used it purely because i was like i don't know if the first one worked so i'm gonna use a second one and then they kept working out i was like oh sick and then literally it wasn't until i heard you say it on the podcast that you need to and you wouldn't know about it i was like well that makes sense i should stop and it's especially it's especially confusing because like my wife and i didn't know the parameters for capturing in the first place and like
It's you have limited resources for building those in the first place. So it was like and you have to wait for them to respawn in the environment. So like the first times we went out and we'd spam them when they were on the ground and it would do nothing. And it was like, oh, I guess they have to be more beat up or something.
So it's natural to be like, okay, I guess he's pretty beat up. I'm going to try it to see if it works. Oh, it didn't. Okay, I'm going to save the four remaining ones that I have. For when he's more beat up. Not knowing that. No you just have to do two in a row. And then you get him. I feel like this is. I've been thinking about. I was having a conversation with someone.
The other day where she was like, you've been playing Monster Hunter and you you don't like it that much. And I was like, no, that's the thing I do. But it's so much easier to talk about the things that are like bad in the game. And so I do want to it's like.
with this high level discussion, I want to like make clear that it's like, especially once you get past the campaign, the game is really good and fun. And I've played it for 50 hours because I like it, but, but like, it is so kind of inevitable that you. segue into these kind of conversations about like what the game communicates so poorly because there are so many of them and it's easier to talk about than like
Man, I love how the long sword feels when I hit a wound with it. That's mostly my experience with the game. You'll be pleased to know that they don't teach you how to actually trap a monster until after the credits roll. Okay, well, I think that's the point I was at. Like, I just hit credits, and then I was like, time to go into the rest of the game, and then I was hit with a rude awakening. Why would you want to know that until then?
Right. To Jacob's point, I remember like there is a thing where you play like dozens and dozens of hours of a game where like just when you have a nitpick, it just becomes enhanced. you know, tenfold, twentyfold, because the amount of time you're spending with the game, you're just thinking...
proportionally you're spending more time being annoyed at a little thing because of the hundreds of hours you're playing than it's amounted to like 45 minutes of annoyance. And you're like, wow, that's really getting on my nerves. And that'd be a much more significant part of a different game.
But the thing I specifically remember from the preview is I was a long sword guy. I tried out the hammer and God, I love the feeling of hitting a monster on the head over and over and over again. And I have been like. Like when you have a craving for a food, but it's not made in your local area. I've just been like daydreaming about getting that hammer combo. And the combo is you just press the same button over and over. And if the monster never moves, you just do a little bit more damage.
every time and it's like oh how far can i get this time and that feels less smart to talk about than me critiquing the ui of a thing but it is far surpassing any like little annoyances i have The environmental stuff in this game is so good. I mean, there's so many different, like... I mean, I just keep talking about the different tools you have to takedown monsters. They do a better job every time of adding more and more. I've said this before, I'm a chargeblade main. Be like...
I forget what they call it, but it's basically when your axe turns all spinny and into a chainsaw. It's like amped axe or something like that. And just... Getting either a perfect guard off or destroying a wound to turn your axe into a chainsaw is like the coolest thing. It feels so good. And I like I have to stop myself when I'm playing with friends because I've.
I'll be playing with people who, like, they also need to break a wound to do something cool or to change their weapon or just, like, they do a ton of crit damage. And I have to, like, stop myself because the feeling of... the chainsaw is so cool that i like want to do it every time even if it's like not my turn you know i need to hit this thing with a chainsaw and beyond just kind of the the
simple good feeling which is always present one of the really fun things about like being high rank and your only goal being just kind of like get better is you start thinking about your different armor pieces and gems and weapons as almost like it's like it's like fitting things into the back of a car or something where every Every armor piece has a number of different both gem slots and innate skills that it comes with.
The skills are also something that the game communicates extremely poorly. But once you figure out what they do, you you know, you're looking at it and you're like, OK, well, so big. big for my character uses a long sword is creating those wounds and breaking them because it lets my sword kind of go to the next boost level. And so now I have like gamed out the system where I have like.
You know, the highest... possible skill in the creating wounds and the damage that it does and also now i've like built myself a full set of like earplugs so when a monster roars i don't flinch at all which means i can do all these things and it's like it really is
It's like looking at the different where it's like this chest piece gives me two in this one, but it only has one gem slot, so I can't add another thing like it's a really kind of complex balancing act to get it all together. And there's always. You're always like I could refine this a little bit more like I could make it like a little bit better suited to what I'm doing. And I've just had so much fun kind of like.
You know, when you just have every monster in the game available to you and every armor set is a potential thing that you can, like, slot into your character, it just gets kind of that loop.
is so engaging and you just want to keep back and go do it. And now that I've got like my perfect armor set, now I'm doing just the looks because you can, of course, you can like transmog any of your armor so it can look different than the skills that it's giving you. And so now i'm all about fashion and i just want to get my character looking as cool as possible and so it's like you really they give you so many ways to just be like now now the world is your oyster and so just figure out
how you want to play this game to like the highest possible proficiency. Do you need to get that specific? Like Kelsey, we're talking about that new show plus how you're like, you know, I'm not dying that much, even in kind of the. tougher fights out there? I mean, it depends. Like, I think, first of all, they're going to add harder monsters into the game. Right, yeah. The...
without spoiling too much, the hardest version of the hardest monster, which if you have not gotten all the way through the high rank story you have not seen yet, is really tough. You need to be playing with at least two other people, at least in my... experience who really know what they're doing um or you will fail uh and so you know building just around different different abilities and different uh not weaknesses but like
Strength, I guess. You know, resistances to things. It just makes being able to do these fights in different ways so much more fun. And I think it's fair if that part is just not that fun to you. If, like, really...
Crafting the absolute perfect armor is not... a core part of your experience I've always I think that's like a really big part of the like people who are super super into Monster Hunter and I personally think that's kind of like a a hindrance for getting more people into it like I think that You can really enjoy that, but it is also very valid to just be like, I just want to make sure that when I'm fighting the electric guy, the electric stuff doesn't hit so hard and otherwise...
I really just want to focus on beating the monster and like you can totally play that that way. And I think you can get through the vast majority of this game, even the high rank stuff playing that way. But it is really fun to feel like you have crafted and refined like. the the perfect set for every situation and they're gonna add more hard stuff later i assume because uh i don't know i just feel compared to world and i may be misremembering because it's been several years like i
I feel like I have run out of new stuff to experience a lot quicker. Yeah, which is still, you know, 50 hours or whatever. It's not short, but it is. What is weird and the reason that like.
you you go into this kind of armor min-maxing is like the game becomes entirely self-directed at some point like you will you will just finish the storyline quests and like i have i have no more quests that are like do this in my corner and so it's just me deciding i guess i'm gonna try and get this armor now and that means i need to fight this t-rex you know and like that's
And that's what, you know, that's what the game becomes. And so you can do that and just be like, I just want to play with my friends and I don't really, you know, the fun will just be I'm doing this with other people. But if you want to set yourself a goal.
Those goals are generally building more weapons or armor sets or something. The Artean weapon stuff is kind of a way of extending all of that. So you have these weapons that basically when you fight... how spoilery not very you can say like guardian monsters like that doesn't really give anything away right it's not guardian though it's the other one tempered yeah okay
If we're cool with saying that there are tempered monsters in this game, which are just really... They're just more powerful. They're kind of like war-torn. They've got scars on them and everything.
When you fight those, and at varying monster strengths, you will get parts that you can then... build into like these kind of bespoke unique weapons that as you upgrade they'll unlock more skills and everything you can disassemble them if you're like ah once i upgraded this all the way it actually This is not a great fire weapon like I thought it was going to be, and you can disassemble all the pieces and try again with a slightly different combo and try the upgrades again.
That adds a lot of like, you know, I'm at the point now where I'm pretty happy with most of my armor, but I'm like, but I don't have like a super good blast weapon yet. What if I had a really good blast weapon? Yeah. But here's the problem, and this is the real Monster Hunter. All the Artean weapons are so ugly compared to the highest level weapons in, like, the regular tree that now I'm like, well, that sword is technically better, but this one looks so much better.
much cooler that I think I'm going to stick with the cool looking one even though it does less damage. They should do layered armor or layered weapons. Yeah, I'm sure they will at some point. That sounds so...
Nice. Like, is there any world or are old Monster Hunter games more like this where, you know, they're less focused on the story and it's just like from the beginning, it's like, hey, here's just a big environment. Go out and find the monsters and take them down with your friends and get on that upgrade path. I don't think any Monster Hunter has done story particularly well. I don't even think that's Monster Hunter's fault. I just think that...
What kind of story can you really ascribe to a game where you are whacking a dragon in the face with a hammer over and over again? Every time they try to do a like, are we the baddies or the monsters? Like maybe they were, maybe this was wrong of us or they're agitated for a real reason. But at the end of the day, you go smack him in the face with a hammer a bunch. So like. It just kind of never hits. But in previous games, I mean, you're just doing... It's less go out and explore.
And more just, you can just kind of do whatever quest you want to do with your friends and you just kind of start from a central area and then go out and then come back. Right. Yeah, I was playing, I actually started playing Rise with a couple friends because of the...
I didn't want to get a bunch of people into Monster Hunter with Wiles just because of the performance stuff. They didn't know if they were going to like it, so it rises on Game Pass, so we just all started playing that. Oh, interesting. And that one, I think, gets you in a lot more quickly and is also a little bit more...
uh it's less guided in that like your goal for most of it is just like complete x number of quests to reach the next hunter rank it's not like a thing where like for this next section you can't join up with a friend because you're going to be doing a like a story bit where you're going into the caves and like finding a monster there So I think Rise is a little bit more kind of like just get in and do a little bit of co-op. But yeah, like...
I would love to have like the kind of like Breath of the Wild thing where you're just a dude running around a giant open world landmass and you're taking down monsters kind of like that. But yeah, I think that's a that is like the thing that they want to get you to.
And then a lot of the like, well, you can beat the story, but that's not really the full game is kind of like a Pokemon esque. Like we have this whole thing for people who've already played the game, but we know that we have to have some kind of allowances for new players.
But I feel like they've never really managed to get to a point where both of those audiences are satisfied in a weird way. One of the things that I actually find kind of... interesting is the way that there is so much that the game doesn't tell you that it almost counterintuitively helps you kind of invest in things so that um you're looking at things and asking questions and if you're playing with a social group it kind of um
helps to have other people there. And you almost get more invested by when someone tells you like, well... Elemental is kind of a weird thing because you're not supposed to just add it to like, oh, I have a 400 damage weapon with 200 elemental. Does that mean it's 600?
damage versus this bone weapon that's 500 but no affinity and then someone explains it to you like well it elements was better for weapons that hit more quickly and it's only relevant for monsters who are weak to that element so it's kind of a conditional thing and you're like, OK, so now that I know that I can change my build up a little bit. So when I have a slow weapon, I want to use bone or whatever. And like all these different things that the game doesn't really tell you.
You start asking those questions as they become relevant versus like them giving you the info dump of like, you need to, these are all the things you need to know to optimize. like your armor from the beginning like they just don't really bother with that but that information is there in the ui in a way that gets you to ask that question
It's like figuring out what poise is in Dark Souls, right? Like it's the entire gaming community has done this with FromSoft games. And now it's like, oh, just watching YouTube videos is kind of part of it now. yeah and it just speaks to like how weird like uh onboarding and teaching players is because like despite how many things like people will say like well the game doesn't really tell you this this doesn't tell you this like this is
you know, by far the biggest Monster Hunter game ever. And I've, you know, I've since this game has come out, I've played with like three different groups of people. uh and like various skill levels i've played with jacob uh and i've played with you know a couple other people in like kind of the game form in max circles and then i've played with my friends and like all these
they're all asking like very similar questions of like, how does this work? And like, what do I do? How do I even post a quest? What does it mean to join a lobby versus how do I like, we are all in the same lobby, but we're doing different quests. How does that work?
work and i need to talk you know i need to get my hunter id but not so don't use the steam thing like it's um the fact that everyone is is interested enough in overcoming those humps i think kind of speaks to how big this game is and how people want something that feels unique even if it means like yeah uh dodge isn't like a universal get out of jail free card but there are
ways that you can work around it and it like the kind of feel of monster hunter is something that like wouldn't be designed in like a you know a lab or whatever to say, like, this is how we engage players best is to like make you have all these like very small things that you have to keep in mind. But this is it. People want to learn those.
uh idiosyncrasies yeah i mean it is it is wild to see that sales i mean it's tearing up on on steam it's got what it sold eight million copies in three days it is just uh firing out of the gate so damn strong and it is
Funny then, because, you know, headlines were running amok this week because the producers said like, yeah, I think it's selling so well because of the story. You know, it's like, that seems absurd. But from Capcom's... vantage point they're like well we put a lot more effort into this story in world and this than we have before and those have sold so well so what conclusions do you want us to draw
Maybe there's some focus testing where they can learn the opposite or something. Go to a forum or watch any podcast talking about the game. Not interested. Not interested. I did want to say that. So like as a new player, I did like the story in that. I enjoyed being guided around and having big set pieces handed to me. And I think the part where the game, I kind of struggle with it. I'm like a... I don't like playing with other people in games in general. I've had a PlayStation for...
I don't know, seven or eight years. And I have one friend because he in real life was like, hey, I want to add a PlayStation friend. That's fine. And I was like, OK, whatever. Here's my username. But I just like don't play online with people. So there is a element of it where like you get past.
the story which was guided and it was easy and i i don't really like the characters and stuff but i really like when you're in a cinematic cut scene and it's like hunter i give you permission to hunt this i'm like yeah every time i'm the coolest person in the world i got
I got to the point where I was getting armor sets where it didn't show my face, and I just felt like Master Chief every time. It's like, I'm the only one that can do this. I'm the only one that brought the biggest sword in the whole world. But then you get to the point where it opens up a little bit, and I...
that's the part that was while some people were like finally i'm free to do what i want for me that was when i mean the the capture side quest i think or it's a main quest that's like a perfect example of all of a sudden now there's all these elements i have to
concern myself with that the game didn't really teach me about because it wasn't relevant in that structure but now there's a new structure which is actually an old structure that it is relevant so it is i i don't think that people are playing it for the story but as someone who like started world a few times and was kind of turned off by
the way I was being taken through it and I had to watch tutorials to get into rise. This was one where I was like, well, I did make it all the way through and it was partially because I liked the structure of it. Yeah. I think that, I think that capture quest specifically is a case where.
That is... the kind of campaign experience not really setting up expectations properly whereas if like after you beat the like the guardian like the main campaign or whatever they instead of saying like well now this is the next story thing and then it just being tutorials for like higher level stuff
they just had like a thing where like optional quests are like things that explicitly tell you, like learn how to capture things, learn how to do this, learn what element, like let's, you know, have a quest where you're comparing elemental, you know, resistances and weapons and stuff instead of.
like funneling in through the same flow of like well you know alma has a thing she wants to talk to you about and it's like the story set up around like oh we need to do this thing check the ecosystem and then oh by the way this is the capture tutorial
Like as you're in the middle of it and you're like, I might, should I have known already how to do this? Yeah. When the quest is meant to be like, this is how you do this. And it's just like the kind of cross expectations there, I think are where that.
campaign starts to feel weird i mean i i did panic for a minute in that one specifically because like i did know about traps and everything um and i had been taking them with me but i didn't i didn't like re-up on trank bombs before i left for that mission so i was like uh okay i guess i need to go gather so i can make some more trank bombs and then of course i mean it gives it to you but only if you know how to look in your sacred's pouch so
For the record, I did know to look at my secrets pouch because I've been doing it at the start of every quest. And I have like a setting turned on that like auto summons the SOS hunters. But all this was because I was like, I'm going to sit down and I'm going to really... dive through these menus and make sure i know what all the buttons do which i don't think is fair to expect there's a part of me that's almost like
until you roll credits there should just be like ui stuff that they just don't they just say like don't worry about this now under construction i don't know like you want to mess with like a bit like upgrading your armors or like transmog stuff like don't worry about it this is like don't don't look at this yet. And then once you get to that, cause you can't even do much with that information besides like, okay, I'm just going to buy whatever the highest.
defense armor is and upgrade it all the way if like if you do that for like one of the later armor sets in the game you're basically set for most of the campaign and like it won't be a big deal and then and then you know after you roll credits like by the way I mean, they already kind of do that by showing you the rest of the upgrade tree for various weapons after you beat the game.
uh and that's because like the rest of that tree is not relevant to you you're not going to look at it right now like don't worry about what the skills do uh just just you can beat the game without any of that stuff don't worry we're gonna show you that all later if you're interested right And then the campaign can be a jumping off point for like, do I want to keep playing and optimize or am I good with what I've got? And the environment's wowing people.
Like on the Into the Aether podcast, we're talking about like, you know, nothing's as cool as the Coral Highlands was in Monster Hunter World. True. Okay. I mean, I still really like the... I still really like all the environments. I think they're cool, but I do think that is true. Honestly, one of my biggest... It's a very mild bummer, but like...
The arena, which they call something else because it's like an area of prayer or something in the game, but what functions is the arena in this game. They just...
There's just not really arena quests. There was one really cool Hirabami one where in the past when you do arena stuff, there's a big gate in the middle that you can throw up and separate the monsters and take them on separately. That's like a... super cool just kind of twist on on fighting the monsters and like there's just kind of random monsters that show up in there and usually not particularly difficult ones even in the very end game so
I wish they were doing a little more with that. There's a lot that feels work in progress about this game where like... I think they're going to add more specific arena stuff. They have said that they're going to add kind of a big central gathering hub and maybe... the you know meowscular chef and like the ability to kind of eat meals as a team but like the fact that that stuff is it's the hard thing about like
going from a game that has been being worked on for you know six years to a new one but also that stuff was there in the beginning in wilds layer in world like they they you didn't need to wait for them to put in the chef in world and so it does feel a little strange that there are these the the current state of the game just feels a little placeholder and we were talking about last week like
it's weird hours of good placeholder but yeah and it's like like the the loop is there and that's what you care about but it just is weird that like even with the 50 hours that i've played i'm just kind of going between you know six random camps none of which really feel like they have a personality and are just like well this is the camp in the forest this is the camp in the desert you know and it like i i think there will be a time when
This gets more solidified, but it's one of the drawbacks of viewing your game like a living game is that now I can just kind of see where those things are going to be and they're not there yet. Right, right. Charles, at this point. Are you a monster hunter person? Have you fully converted? Do you have it on your driver's license? one of us when i when i die you can craft my bones into an armor i bet you can carve charles like five times he's pretty tall
That's true. That's true. Wow. All right. Monster Hunter Wilds. Anybody got anything they're dying to talk about with this that we haven't hit yet? Hammer good. Hammer good. Donkey Kong feel. The last monster in the game is really cool and I missed him and I'm glad he's back. Interesting. Wait, but is it like the final boss guy?
Are there ways to fight more times? No, not back. No, no, no, no. Final boss of the high rank stuff. Okay, just tempered Mr. A. Okay. Yeah, but they should put that final boss back in because that is really cool. No, no, no, not Mr. A. No, the other one. Mrs. A? The secret one. He's goth. Oh, sure. Okay, yes. He's goth! But the final boss before credits roll is also really cool.
Awesome. Charles, anything you want to say? Or Kelsey, anything you want to say? Or do you want to say it in unison before you clip on out of here? We love Monster Hunter. We love Monster Hunter. We love Monster Hunter. We love Gunland. We love Gunland. And Suriel, you got to head out too, but thank you so much for joining us on this adventure and congratulations again on Merchants of...
Rosewall, man. All right. Thank you. See you guys later. Bye. Kyle, welcome back, man. You dodged so much good Monster Hunter chat. You're missing out. I'll live. Okay. Hey, I thought I was going to be able to live without this new game from Big Mode, the Dunkey Publisher, right? Their last game.
Technically, it was Animal Well. This is kind of the second game published by Big Mode. And it's called Star of Providence. And I watched the Dunkey videos about it. I'm like, well, I like twin stick shooters, but I don't know. I don't know.
And what a fool I was because you and Jeff were both like, hey, we should talk about Star of Providence. I'm like, yeah, yeah, we'll get to it. We'll get to it. And I've been playing over the last couple of days and it was just this overwhelming feeling of like, uh-oh. Oh, Star of Providence, we're growing and we're growing. And now I am Gaga for Star of Providence, which is twin stick. Rogue game is probably the easiest bullet hell twin stick. Rogue fiasco.
um i am really into this thing but it has a weird development history right because i guess it started out as a game called monolith that launched in like 2017 and then this is kind of like a revamping of that game and it's also now on switch and they changed the name to star of providence but it freaking rules kind of right like if you own monolith like you just have this yes yeah yeah and i think they it i think it coincided with a big dlc
Like update release. Okay, and definitely the launch on Switch is a whole new avenue for this thing. But yeah, what's your guys' experience with Star of Providence so far? Fun. Fun, indeed. It feels like I'm softening it because you seem like head over heels. I'm getting there on your top 10. I don't know if I don't know if we're there yet, you know, in our relationship. But like I yeah, it's it's a really good sort of.
Rogue like which I've come to like know more about is I've been working on undermine 2 and stuff like that Yeah, I've come to have like really get into that genre and spend a lot of time with it and understand it better and there's a lot about this game that like I'm really liking that works and it's like fun to play and the shooting's good and it has a little bit of that
It kind of fits with big mode because there's a little bit of that animal well mysteriousness to it where it's kind of weird and strange. Yeah, I've been playing it on Steam Deck, and I'm liking it. It's cool. Dunkey's proven that he's good at picking games. Dunkey, do it again. Remember when that video, he said in that video, like, I know what good video games are, so that's all be good at this. And then we all made fun of him.
i didn't let the record show i defended donkey out of the game either actually i was like if the first game comes out and it's good we'll all forget we said this and then that happened so yeah exactly and then it turns out the second game is also uh damn good but Jeff, you seem like the type of guy who maybe is digging more into the systems of this game and has a better understanding about it based on your proclivities.
Yeah, it's up my alley. It felt really novel to me, and then I was trying to figure out why, because it was like, oh, like... Like, this is so different for a shoot-em-up because I'm a big fan of shoot-em-ups. And then I realized, like...
No, this isn't that different. This is Binding of Isaac. This is almost the exact same format as Binding of Isaac. Yes, Jacob. I didn't even know about this game before the segment started and it's going to ruin my life. It is such a good Steam Deck game. Oh my.
god yes but but but then i realized like you don't usually it's it's it's just a different it's a different way of doing a shoot them up i'm so used to vertical shoot them ups where it's basically like background environment doesn't matter it's just a scrolling background it's just waves of enemies coming in that you're blasting through and you know trying to survive the bullet hell thing and it it feel it feels so much different to be in
bespoke single screen rooms with a few enemies and then other things that you're trying to like navigate around and that makes makes enemies feel more like actual enemies and not just you know, like patterns of things that you're trying to shoot at. Um, and so like, and, and, but it is, but it is like the format basically just is binding Isaac where you have, you know, a bunch of Zelda style.
rooms laid out there's a boss in each in each one that you're trying to figure out and then like i was struggling for a while there there is a good there is a good steam guide by someone just named Nicholas who put together like a beginner's guide that's worth everyone going and reading because there are, there are some nuances to.
How you're collecting weapons and everything within a run. Yeah. Where it's like, you get special weapons. Your main weapon is perfectly serviceable. But, like, you want to be getting new weapons and you want to be... exchanging them for other weapons as you find them because that actually gives you a little bit of health back which is a big thing that you have to manage um and and you know like some other
other perks and bonuses and things like that. And ammo too, which I'm not usually thinking about in this genre, in the, in the twist genre, which is interesting. Yeah. It's, it's, it's like the specialty specialty weapons that you get have limited ammo that you. But you really don't want to try and conserve that. It's better to just pick up a new gun and get the bonuses that you get from changing out your guns.
um then then like trying to conserve like this one does really good so i'm gonna hold on to it as as long as i can but then they're like there are some core other things like that like bombs
Like your bombs replace every, like every time you enter a new room, it will refill a third of your bomb if you have less than two bombs. And so like... don't worry about that too much but like the takeaway is just like just always be using your bombs and like that was something that I was trying to conserve in the beginning and I was just kind of struggling with the actual
roguelike structure of it before before I started learning a little more of the nuances but yeah it's it's just it is it is a perfect kind of roguelike for like even right now Like if we weren't in the middle of a podcast, it's like I got five minutes. I'm like, I just want to jump in. I probably can't. I can't do an entire run in that time. But like.
I can probably get through a level, like an entire – like the first level. And like it is just a – it is a very satisfying – and the sheer number of bosses and different enemy types and stuff is – Like, that is like the donkey publishing in my mind of like, oh, like... One fanatic worked on this for years and years and years and just like completely blew this concept out of the water. Yep. I'm totally with you. The stuff that you're unlocking.
between the runs like it's very satisfying every time you die it just like pops up for like all right you unlock this you unlock this unlock this are those really tangible i feel like it's a lot of like options like okay you can buy this weapon if you really want to but yeah is that the main avenue for stuff you're unlocking there it is and and my one my one semi-criticism at this point is
is that the roguelike structure of it has thus far been very traditional in that most of the unlocks that you get are just unlocking things that will be added to the pools. That you may see in future runs. It seems like. It seems like there's kind of a. you know galaxy brain strategy for that too because because like the guy you know the guides and tips that i've read have been like oh well you know if you get this if there's like one there's one upgrade that you can get that's like it'll refill
10 hearts or whatever, which is the majority of your health and stuff. And they're like, but don't pick it up early. Like, wait and hope that you get that towards, you know, the final... layer or level once you get there because because if you get it if you take a power up it won't be it's taken out of the pool for the rest of that run and things like that that kind of very traditional roguelike format is
is not my favorite at this point and i and i kind of i like a greater sense of meta meta progression um and stuff like that and and this is this is very much a traditional one where it's like
You will eventually beat the final boss because you have gotten better at the game. Right. And you're not like... adding on to like well now i have now i start with 13 health every run or you know i've unlocked these shortcuts or whatever it's it's like you put in the time but it's like it's so short and bite-sized and satisfying tactically that you know it's
It's something that I keep coming back to. Yep. I'm totally with you. It's like, it's just little moments like, okay, this is really smart. Even just the ability of you can pull up the map at any time and then teleport to any square on the map. That's like, that's such a easy shorthand thing. It's like, yeah, why wouldn't you be?
to do that of course like you know that kind of second to second combat is the fun thing upgrading your weapons is a fun thing like traversing the environment slowly to get from one side of the map to the other is not really going to be the appeal here Just think of it, Jacob, like imagine a miniature adventures where you can never get stuck in the map.
Where it's all easy to navigate. Y'all need to stop selling me on this. Legitimately, I'm going to get it immediately after this podcast and you'll probably never see me again. Perfect. You looked upset as Jeff was explaining. It's just like it's hitting too many of my buttons. It is very good. Lock it in. It's like I'll be playing this all year for sure. There is, in terms of like smart additions as well, like you can unlock a mirror back in the little base that you go back to every time.
And that, and one of the options in that is that you can practice any boss fight that you've gotten to. And that is so good because the boss fights, the boss fights can be like one of the biggest hangups where if you just haven't. If you haven't really experienced that boss much, you know, that is when like real bullet hell kind of patterns and trying to figure out how to dodge stuff comes in. And that can be.
that can be very helpful as well that's perfect and and also then you can just look at this giant list of like 50 different bosses or whatever and it's it's just like There's so much content that you have put into this. It's very impressive. Star of Providence is the name of that game on Steam and Switch if you want to check it out. One little weird quick tip on that.
randomness maybe i'm dumb but like you have to manually change the settings to be using a controller yeah that is sure on steam deck especially what the hell's going on it doesn't automatically even on steam deck it was it didn't automatically notice that i was using controllers so just heads up on that like that makes it that makes a big difference yeah when when i started that the first thing
i did was go into the controls and it was like oh well like i can i can jerry you know like i can customize i know how to customize my controls on steam deck so i can just jerry rig this to work how i want it to and it was still super wonky And then I foolishly looked in the options and it's like, oh, no, there's like a controller mode that you switch to. And then it's just pure shooter. Because normally it's like you control your aiming with the mouse.
So you're like moving your mouse around your ship in a weird way. And that, like figuring out, there probably is a way that you could custom... bind that for the Steam Deck controls, but just turn it to controller mode and you'll be fine. I'm turning mine to big mode when it comes to paying attention to future releases.
There's another game that Jeff was screaming, like, for the love of God, I need to talk about this, and I know it's so far up my alley. It's a parody of myself, and I apologize. I'll just apologize on your behalf ahead of time, Jeff. But a game came out that's called... aotenjo colon infinite hands which is balatra with mahjong yes listen listen guys i was on last week's episode i can't remember what the games we talked about but i did not talk about any roguelikes
And I'm blaming you guys brought up Star of Providence, so that doesn't count against my allotment. Okay. Aotenjo is Bellatro with Mahjong, and it is... freaking amazing it like the high level pitch for why you should care about that i guess is that like they're both essentially and it it completely apes palatro's like to a T in terms of what, like, it would be shameless if the game didn't turn out as well as it did. Okay, okay.
High level sales pitch is that they're both essentially set collection games where you're just trying to make patterns. But in Bellatro, poker has five or six patterns that you're trying to make. And turns out Mahjong has like 70 or 100 different patterns. And so like they have gamified that so expertly. You can upgrade each pattern, you unlock them, you add more points to them. There's the same identical scoring mechanism where you get points from...
from like the tiles that you were playing. But then the patterns, the patterns that you're filling out are essentially like the multiplier.
that you're that you're multiplying the two numbers by so you're trying to you're trying to balance like which ones you're adding to all the different you know artifacts and upgrades and things that you're getting um also add to that as well but it's and they they also they also like came up with a really smart way to translate mahjong into into like the format because each hand that you have you play four rounds
And normally in Mahjong, you have like you have 14 tiles. You normally each on your turn, you will like discard one and you will draw a new one. And you're waiting until you get one of the patterns that you can. you can basically end a hand. And either you'll get it or one of the other people at the table. Here, because you are just playing by yourself and you're basically just going for a high score that you have to beat each time, it splits it up into four distinct parts where each...
For each part during that hand, you will play a set of three tiles, which either has to be a three of a kind or a numbered sequence of like three, four, five or whatever, because there are three suits in Mahjong. So you'll play one set and you'll play one pair. And then you will score those. Any patterns that those configure into, you'll get points for that.
But then when you play your next grouping, the pair replaces the other pair so that your first pair doesn't count anymore. But the sequence gets added to it. And then you'll score...
You'll score everything again. And so, like, the first three ones that you play out, you will score four times. And every, you know, subsequent sequence that you add to it... gets like gets scored and it also like they all build up for the different patterns so like you can you'll you'll play your first three tiles and if they're all the same if they're all the same tile you know or they're all the same suit
and the pair is the same suit, that will count as a flush, and you'll get some points from it. But then when you play the next ones, now you have six tiles out there plus a pair. If they're still all the same suit, it's an even bigger flush, and it counts for more...
counts for more points and so like and so like imagine but guys guys listen no seriously this is this is really cool yeah yeah imagine imagine if you were playing bellatro but instead of you play a hand and then it gets flushed away and then you play a new hand imagine if each hand just built on itself successively so like if you play a super smart hand the first time like that one just keeps cashing in every time and like
And your score just grows exponentially throughout the entire hand until you are making so much bank at the end that you feel like the biggest genius in the world.
I have an important question, potentially. I'm actually nursing a renewed Bellatro sort of obsession because I got it on my phone and I'm playing it like... more than i ever did on switch or anything like that but my thing with bellachio is always like i i really continue to really not know poker like i feel like i've finally gotten a handle on like the hands and and like can i play this
without understanding anything about mahjong like is that even conceivable it so yes and i had when i streamed it last week um i had people asking if this will help you learn mahjong it is hard to say because i knew some stuff about how mahjong played beforehand and so like the way that they're the way that they're breaking hands up into different chunks is completely different and that would not help you but essentially like all the pattern building that you are doing
most of them if not all of them are real mahjong patterns and so like you will be learning those if if you're still figuring out like what flushes and and you know full houses are i'm not sure how quickly you will you will learn them but you have like a big book that you that like will tell you what the different patterns are and whenever you select tiles uh to play
It will tell you like, OK, these are the patterns that that will qualify for this hand. And then you can look at them and it will give you a good detailed explanation of like, well, this means that you have. You have either just all honor tiles or every sequence that you have either has a one or nine in it, which are called terminal tiles. And so like and you will like I have already internalized those much better than.
I can only play Mahjong in Yakuza because I can pull up a guide and it will tell me. what the patterns are but like now i'm now i'm like thinking about them more and again um unlike bellatra where it's like well okay am i gonna do a flush run this time Or, you know, like, I feel like there are such specific window, like, avenues for, like, big scores and that. It's like...
You have so many more options for what patterns to go. And there are, I mentioned it very briefly, but there are artifacts in this game. And artifacts are exactly like jokers in Bellatro. Like you will just get them. They are at the top. They will score, you know. They will ping off sequentially and it's just a real good time. Yeah, Hanson? So it's like really, really good?
It's really, really good, guys. Okay, all right. I just wanted to check. I would love to say, like, hey, this is a cliche fad at this point that, you know, all the Bellotro likes that we're getting, but... Bellatro Mahjong is actually really good, and they came up with a smart way to do it. Ayo Tenjo, infinite hands. Check it out if you like Mahjong and you like Bellatro. Got it. Papa Diesel, by the way. And your name is Jeff. And your name is Jeff. Otherwise, stay far away.
In fact, delete this podcast. You want to stay so far away from any mention of AO10 Joe. Popup Diesel wrote in for a committee question. He said, my new favorite thing is getting a little high, taking a long walk, and listening to Jeff Wim passionately talk about almost anything. Some roguelike nobody else cares about?
about i'm sold there you go jeff i'm so papa diesel that has become my yeah my lot in life yeah that's for you and your joint on your walk there papa diesel i can't help that they're so good man you're right you gotta like what you like that's the way it works um Jacob Geller, sir. Yeah. Did you know that MinMax wouldn't exist without new supporters jumping in to help support it directly? Because people drop out on a daily basis. So people like Jacob C.
Here, no relation to you, I presume. They jumped in at the $2 tier, which gets you access to the Discord, gets you access to submitting questions and comments for the podcast, for the deepest dive, all that fun stuff. The Discord is really the place to be, though. Somebody named Ann. Jumped in at the $5 tier, Jacob Geller. Relative of yours? Wow.
Um, and jumped in at the $5 tier. So she unlocked that bonus podcast feed right in her favorite podcast app with early ad free versions of the mid max show and also deepest dives and all of our interviews and bonus pod each and every week. Mark here jumped into the $10 tier. So shout out.
to everybody here mark unlock the backstage past here so congratulations and of course a huge thank you to some of our dear friends our number one dear friend thank you to iam8bit they want everybody to know about Persona 3, everybody. Specifically, the Persona 3 vinyl soundtrack available in their wonderful online store. Sweet soundtrack, sweeter company, sweeter store. They have the full Persona 3 reload soundtrack.
It's been restocked, ready to go. And you can pre-order, actually just order, I believe now, the Persona 3 Reload Episode Aegis soundtrack as well. So check that out. It's, of course, a beautiful vinyl. Thanks to iMateBits. Wonderful physical productions. over there. Help support IM8Bit because they support the MinMax community in a huge way. Go to their store, check out IM8Bit because they ship out a prize each and every week to whoever submits the best question.
over here on Patreon. Supports at any tier. You can submit a question. We choose our favorite question. That person wins a prize. This week, that person wins. What is this? This must be an error. That exact Persona 3 reload? Four vinyl set from iMateBit? This is a huge prize. That is huge. So thanks to iMateBit.
So you can go there, enter the promo code green machine for 10% off of everything in their online store, except for pre-orders and except for Atlas vinyls. Other than that, it's the place to be. So here we go. Big community questions. Y'all ready?
Great. Xavier Richardson says, Hey, Mad Max, my wife and I were talking about Hazelight games the other day and came to the conclusion that their two most recent games haven't been vibed with us the same way as Way Out because of a serious lack of narrative quality.
I almost wish that at this point they'd go full Astro Bot or Mario route and just make a fun-ass co-op game while almost completely ignoring narrative, because at this point their narrative writing is actively inhibiting us from enjoying their otherwise really cool games. It's a bold take, Xavier. You're not alone. A lot of people I hear are complaining more and more about the split fiction story in a way that...
I don't understand, but I don't know if that's just because I'm streaming it, so I'm inherently not paying attention to it as much as other people are, but it seems totally fine. I certainly would not want a hazelite narrative-free co-op.
game. Like, even if I'm not like... overjoyed by the story like a big part of the fun as I'm playing it with my daughter is like discussing what we think about the story in real time and the characters in real time even if it's negative you know like it's that's a that's a huge draw for me and I also like just how my my i was really impressed by with my daughter's sort of succinct sort of explanation of it she's like this is a disney ride
Yeah, exactly. This is exactly the structure of this game is a Disney ride where it's just like there's this little narrative that's just like giving you excuses to pull you along and weird and unsurprising directions. So I actually I would I wouldn't want that myself personally. Yeah, for for as varied as the games are gameplay wise, like that is the cohesion that kind of keeps it all together. And instead of just being like.
a random collection of, of mini games or something like that. Like, and, and for whatever complaints people have about lit fictions narrative, like. It's fine. I made the same camp. I don't know if I'm giving it a pass. It's not that bad. Yeah, everyone would be like, oh, it's the worst Marvel writing. No, it absolutely is not. It's absolutely fine.
I mean, neither of the characters are likable, which feels like a problem. I mean, sure, there's that. You know, it's like the entire game is a conversation between two people and neither of them are entertaining.
but they're fine i don't i i would say like i i think that it's i agree with you that there should be something and i think that like Having a tension between the characters in the narrative... works really well with their gameplay because when you inevitably like screw other screw over the person that you're playing with either intentionally or accidentally it's like fun that that's reflected in the story it
Like, I've been playing it with a different friend than the one that I started it with, you know, because for kind of my second go through. And like, it... Whenever there's a cutscene and they talk, it sucks. He's just like, are these really the characters for the whole game? I don't think it would be better if they didn't have a narrative, but I wish that they wrote characters that I liked. I think that would be an improvement on the game. Yeah. There is real energy of like...
well, this sucks and I hate it, you know, like, oh, you write fantasy, I don't like fantasy. Like, you could just write two likable, fun-loving characters who get into some kind of predicament and... It's just like every conversation is like, you like ketchup? I hate ketchup. And it's just like, for an entire game? They get a little better. They learn the power of friendship at the end.
Michael Baker. But then you get a gameplay sequence that's about ketchup, but it's fun as hell. And so it's like, well, then this is all good again. There literally is a gameplay sequence about ketchup. It's fun to play that with my vegetarian daughter, by the way. Oh, that sounds delightful. Kyle, by the way, are you making up for a lot of...
I feel like you weren't name dropping your daughter over the last couple of years too much, but you are, you are. We're talking about fiction, which I'm actively playing with her right now. All right. We get it. You have a daughter. Michael Baker writes in, you're suddenly transported 30 years into the past. to the center of a busy American city. 30 years in the past, bam, time travel. It was messed up. 1995. Perfect. Let's all play Chrono Trigger hot off the presses.
How long would you last before someone identified you as a time traveler? What would give you away? Forever. No one would. Forever. 95 was not. I still dress like I did in 95. I can tell. I mean, like literally imagine I've met plenty of people who are weird in my life. Imagine how weird someone would have to be where you're like, this is a time traveler.
This isn't just someone who doesn't read social cues or has strange interests. They are from the future. Because it's like, what would it be? You just reference something and be like, I don't know what that is.
But you wouldn't be like, I don't know what that is. Therefore, like, you know, before the show, you guys were talking about some musician I didn't know. I mean, I guess it would be... approximately six years because i would say something about 9-11 and then it would happen like that's kind of the only thing that i could imagine being someone being like no this is
This is truly, like, inexplicable. This is true. And 9-11 is your Kyle's daughter. Then they just think you were a terrorist, Jacob. Right. Right. Yeah. I did. When I was working at GameStop a long time ago, I did have a day once where this guy came in who was from out of town. I don't know why. I was in a small town in South Carolina. I don't know why he was there. But he was from out of town, and we were chatting and stuff. And then he said, is there a time machine nearby?
And what he was referring to was an ATM. like where wherever he was from the sort of jargon for atm was like you know everyone calls it a time machine that's the fun thing we call it you know but for like one second for at least like one tiny moment when he was like is there a time machine nearby I had this like thought of like, this guy threw that out so casually.
this guy's a time traveler and he doesn't realize that we don't just have time machines just like around everywhere and that moment passed very quickly he still thinks god i played that off so smoothly i told that kyle guy that we all called atms time
I remember my friend Jesse. He's really into like Bigfoot and Mothman and all this stuff. Skinwalkers, all the good stories out there, you know. And I remember him telling me this story once I captured my major mission in a big way. I think it was about Mothman. So what was that? West Virginia?
Jacob, where's Mothman at over there? Where's that crazy Mothman hiding? I think it is West Virginia. Okay. The Mountain Mama, the Mothman. But he talked about like how there are a lot of sightings of Mothman. And then in that same vicinity, in that same window. Like some guys pulled up to a gas station and like this old black car, I think like, you know, car from like 1955. Right. And they got out and they like the people in the gas station were like, these guys were just really.
weird they were dressed in like full suit but then at the same time like they didn't know how to hold a pen as they were like writing a check. And it was like, what is going on with these guys? But that's my favorite type of story. It's like these weird ethereal beings or time treasures like trying to pass off. And it's given away by the fact that they can't hold a pen and write a check out, you know?
It's good stuff. So yeah, we could all live forever in 95. It'd be wonderful. Yeah. Hold on. Chan in the comments says, did the guy just say ATM machine? Kyle, and you heard it as a time machine? No, we all call it an ITM machine. And you're like, a time machine? What? You guys call it a time machine? That was the thing. He was not from the South. And I know he said time machine because it was a whole conversation.
conversation afterward where i was like did you call it a time machine and he was like yeah that's what we call it so i'm not crazy okay maybe you're from the future i don't know there's a um there's an snl sketch that i think about more than like its quality would more than cereal thinks about advanced wars more than cereal thinks about advanced wars where it's like a humans in the future doing a period piece play about
now you know about like 2020 and it's like really it's a really clumsily done play and so like a guy walks in and he's like hey everyone i bought my pet wolverine and someone's like you silly those haven't been domesticated yet he's like oh yeah and throws it out and it's like referencing lots of things he's like i'm gonna go to the bathroom a room that we keep very close to where we eat and bathe and they're like yeah that sounds like a good idea perfect
Channing Potatum, speaking of good ideas, they say, in a new conversation with Alex Garland. Did you see this, by the way? Neil Druckmann did like an hour-long chat with Alex Garland. Did you guys watch it yet by chance? No, I haven't watched it. It's good. I saw kind of the one headline. Okay. Which is probably what this question's about. Well, let's see. So the new conversation with Alex Garland, Neil Druckmann said that Return to Monkey Island 2 has the best video game ending of all time.
And I like it that even Druckmann's like, yeah, it's still not even close. Like it's still Return to Monkey Island 2. It's like, yeah, it rules. Curious if you, yeah. Wait, is it called Return to Monkey Island 2? No, Return to Monkey Island was the new one. Secret to Monkey Island 2. Is that what?
LeChuck's Revenge. Anyways, the point is, Channing Potato Mass, what is your favorite video game ending of all time? Metal Gear Solid 2. 2? Yeah, which is like kind of unfair because I'm talking about like the last like... four hours of the game in totality yeah I mean the final boss fight singular period you know like on the end of the sentence it's always better if it's specific it's always better if it's specific Dead Space 2 maybe ooh
You like the jump scare fake out? Yeah, I don't know. I don't know, Jacob, if you feel the same, but Dead Space 2 ending... just the whole build up to everything that's happening. And then like the sort of last second, like moment. And then the final line of dialogue and the cut to black. I don't know. It just was like, I was like hooting and hollering at, by the end of that whole experience. I love the ending of dead space too.
Look it up. Mine's probably Wander Stop, so Jacob should probably finish it. What was the headline you were talking about, Jacob? Oh, just that... uh garland said that like the last of us was better than 28 days later and he like incorporated it into his writing of uh 28 years later yep yep he really went out of his way uh to emphasize that which is very sweet you can see all See Neil be very pleased with the idea of somebody as talented as Alex Garland and be like, oh, no.
last of us is so much better so much more subtle it's everything he's like man i was i was inside the machine that made 28 days later and i'm telling you the last of us is better but then he like stepped off a little bit he's like i mean maybe not direction like just want to insult danny boyles you know but like from a writing perspective it's it's it's
neither of them hold a candle to dmc devil may cry well now we're talking that alex garland wrote that's right um yeah but you know it's interesting neil druckman does talk a little bit more about Heretic. Sorry. Intergalactic colon the Heretic Prophet. I need to get used to saying that. The new Naughty Dog game.
And, you know, he's like, yeah, there's stuff I can't talk about. We'll trim it out, which is always the worst thing to hear in a video to be like, don't tell me you're going to edit around that. Come on, man. But they he sheds more light on the story for Naughty Dog's next game in that where Neil Druckmann says that it's like it takes place. years after a split in time that happens in the late 80s in our world.
So 2000 years after like a branch there. And Alex Garland is very cheeky because he also talks about like how it's all about religion and faith. That's kind of the idea for. the core idea of what they're working with intergalactic. So Alex Garland's like, Oh, so you just chose 2000 years just as a random number for people distorting the concept of a religion over time.
And they were very jokey about all that. Druckmann also watched Dune and was like, this is really good. Could be. But then he talks about like how the core of the game is going to be going down to this planet. He made it seem like it's all taking place on this one planet, and you're trying to get off the planet, and it's about uncovering what happened on this planet, kind of the full history of the religion, and how this planet lost communication with the outside.
intergalactic universe I suppose like 600 years before and how every well the main games that Neil Druckmann's worked on at Naughty Dog has been a lot of you know, working together with somebody, having a partner, you know, that type of thing. And so he said that his main thing here was he wanted to just uncover the secrets of this religion and the planet, and he wanted to do it solo. So it's all about being alone in this game.
which is an interesting pitch, I think. And is the character going to not talk to themselves constantly? That's the question. You sound exactly like the character in the game. Oh, I'm supposed to not talk to myself right now? Yeah, I'm curious to see how... it all works it'll be flashbacks or if there's not going to be talking maybe kind of like
Because they have that kind of radio communication with the lady in that reveal trailer. So maybe you're talking to her over the radio, but then that would defeat the purpose of exploring this environment all solo, you know? So I don't know exactly how that would work. But yeah, at some point on the podcast... a while ago before the reveal trailer happened, I, I tease that idea of like, you know,
I've heard Naughty Dog's Next Game is very inspired by a game with a lot of player freedom. And I think it's fine to say it now because that game was Elden Ring is what it was compared to back then. But if I would have said Naughty Dog's Next Game is like Elden Ring and then that reveal trailer comes out, I feel like we would have been...
lit on fire but now that idea of like okay it's taking place on one planet kind of uncovering the history of this world like you can kind of see a little bit more where they might be going with that so exciting stuff sounds cool sounds cool Joey Smith writes in and says, if there were another version of Death Stranding that had an editor with more power and some of the more confusing long-winded cutscenes or aspects of the game cut down, would that game be better? Would it have broader appeal?
Or would it miss the point? It totally misses the point. Come on. You weirdos play those games because Hideo Kojima does whatever he wants to do and it's just this one freaky unique vision and it's way too long anyway. You want to turn it into a different game? I mean, that's right.
that's appealing to to me but like then there but i'm i'm thinking more about the people who have bounced off of death stranding right like who just it didn't click with them and i don't think shorter cut scenes would have been the solution to that you know i think yeah the yeah the like the weird part about the game is that you walk with a backpack on for like 40 hours yeah
Right. Also, those games have editors. Even though we view them as indulgent and whatever, If you watch those, like, did you know gaming videos on Metal Gear, there are always like 30 things that Kojima wanted to do that his team was like, no, we are not going to do this.
He wanted someone to get pissed on in every game he's ever made. Like, truly, it's like every Metal Gear game, he's like, and then it would be really funny if someone peed on this guy. Right, right, guys? Right, everybody? Yeah. Oh, God. Dustin L writes in, hey, gang, I'm going to go to a work event soon with a pizza buffet. How much pizza can I eat without drawing too much unwanted attention? What a wonderful question.
That's an interesting question. Just don't put it all on your plate at once. Yeah. Just like two slices. Wander away from the conversation. Two slices. Repeat. Like with the time trailer, it would take a lot before I was noticing like, what is wrong with you? coworker, why are you eating endless pizza? I don't think you'd ever notice it. I mean, unless there are like five pizzas for everyone or something and you eat a full pizza yourself. Seems like an endless buffet situation.
Yeah, well then, endless. So yeah, the suggestion is fewer pieces more often as opposed to more pieces less often. Yeah, don't stack them up on your plate at once, obviously. If you have, like, a fake mustache you can put on in between trips. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's good. Spectacles. That's important. JG writes in and says, hey, CLCs, Jeffem has a YouTube channel?
And it's all just funny clips of random games? How could he have kept this secret for so long? Jeff, how is it possible that I did not know about this YouTube channel or maybe I forgot about it years ago?
You forgot about it because it was the thing that I would use to upload videos for when we worked at Game Informer and I needed to embed like a stupid... stupid gameplay clip stupid destiny clip okay and that's where's me falling asleep while i play destiny that's that's all i've ever used it for your old funny to a point blog uh on the site which has been nuketubeoluvian and so that explains why like the most popular videos are just
A bunch of clips of you playing Homefront the Revolution and a bunch of bugs you experienced in Homefront the Revolution. I recorded them while I was being forced to review it and then I mocked it after it came out. Perfect. With a...
I think that was a high-viewed feature of, like, these were the worst, stupidest bugs I experienced in Homefront. Now, this is a very convenient... story of you being like it was just for work it was just for work there's nothing else but what if i told you that also you uploaded videos of you chasing wild turkeys in your backyard no they were in my backyard and i may have posted it to twitter in which case again I needed a place to upload a video. I don't know if...
You could upload videos to Twitter. I think you could. But yes, I had turkeys in my backyard. Okay, so then that explains that. But then what about the nine second video of you making a comedy video about the weather in Minnesota? That was a good one. And it also went on Twitter. Why didn't you just...
You said you couldn't upload it to Twitter four years ago? I refuse to believe that. I'm not going to figure out how to upload videos to Twitter when I've never done it. I already knew how to do it on YouTube because I did it in these very specific sites.
situations. What are people creeping on me on YouTube? It's endlessly entertaining, but your heart was just screaming, I need to make this video about the wacky weather in Minnesota. Someone was joking about the weather in Minnesota. It was like 70 degrees Monday.
they were like it's gonna snow a foot tomorrow and i was like well it'd be funny if i went out and i recorded something now and then recorded the same thing the next day in the middle of a snowstorm and that's exactly what happened and it turned out and it was a funny nine second video that would have blown up on vine if vine still existed everybody would be talking about that instead of the bagel police instead all right but it was too funny i'm too
Too late, yes. I'm a man out of time, you might say. I think this is the perfect time because you know what we should do? Hold on, is Jeff from the future? Hang on a second. I mean, this is just from the past. A hundred percent. Yes. This is just a new show plus, right? Of just looking at all the videos on your YouTube channel. Cause it's going to be, I don't think there's enough.
I think there is. I bet there are more min-max cohorts that have old, maybe unlisted YouTube videos. I think you're right. All right, that's perfect. In the pipeline. Um, Ken H rates and says, Hey, howdy cohorts. What is a video game trope, storytelling, gameplay, or otherwise that you're a sucker for no matter what?
I was actually thinking of this while not playing a game, but watching a movie. The movie Flow, the animated best picture winner, which I messaged Kyle about because I was like, this is a Fumitu way to movie. But whenever there is something really tall...
really far in the distance and your goal is just to get to that. Yeah. And you just keep getting closer. Like flow does that really, really well where it's like, well, the movie is just like a lot of events, but like there's a really tall thing in the distance and they just keep getting.
closer to it, and it's always good. It's hard to have that in a movie. I feel like it's such a video game thing. Flow is a very video game-y movie. And it's good? Yeah, it's great. Okay, great. I should check it out. Mine's more like just storytelling-wise. And maybe it, you know, comes from always just being fascinated with, you know, psychedelics and stuff. But I'm a sucker for like, I've seen something I can't explain with words.
You know, whenever a character is trying to convey, like, no, I've kind of gone beyond the veil and I cannot possibly convey what is happening. with this stupid English language we're speaking now. Like that's always going to be compelling to me. Like characters unstuck in time, that type of thing. It's always good. I like revenge.
Cool. It's such a lazy but easy setup that it's like when I'm playing a video game, it's like, okay, I'll go kill these 12 people now. Like that, like you got me. I'm hooked. Yeah. I'll go like, yeah. That's kind of, it makes sense because a lot of YouTube channels are dealing with revenge of like, oh, these turkeys pooped my yard. Now I'll chase them around with the camera. We ate good that night. That you missed mine. Eating six wild turkeys for dinner.
I should have posted that one. That would have done much better. Go back, man. Upload a new video. The mukbang of... eating wild turkeys. Sincerely, Eric says, hey, dear Ben, in a recent episode of the Fire Escape cast, Dan accuses you of thinking the horse from Shadow of the Colossus is the best video game character of all time. Not the best horse, the best character. Please explain yourself.
This MF-er, Dan. I mentioned something, not this, but something related to that in 2011. And Dan, I feel like, has brought it up on podcasts every six months. Which is key to this point because it's very important to remember that Dan... does not realize or forgets how often he brings it up because he has the worst memory out of any friend on earth. Any person on earth, I'd say. And so, no, I did not say that the horse from Shadow of the Colossus is the best video game character of all time.
What I said in 2011, and I still will stand by, is out of any character in a video game, I cared the most about Aggro and Shadow of the Colossus. When something bad happens to Aggro and Shadow of the Colossus, I felt that more than...
Elizabeth's in trouble in Bioshock Infinite. You know, like there's one cutscene moment in particular I'm thinking of and like that feeling of like, oh my God, oh my God, my dear friend, this horse. Like I felt that more than... I'm trying to think if there's any character that I would feel more...
What's it called, Jeff? Empathy? Empathy. I mean, at the risk of inviting Dan's ire, I'm with you, man. Thank you. Agro is like... like your relationship with aggro is so crucial to shadow of the colossus like it's your only partner through the course of that just kind of heartbreaking adventure you know i named my cat after aggro
Well, there we go. And it always lands on his feet. Mr. Agro. Oh, that's the Mr. A that we were talking about earlier. So, Dan, shut up. Shut up. I stand by the thing you misremember. Andrew Danglis writes in and says, Kyle, yet again, I'm asking if you've righted your wrong and watched the tale of the Princess Kaguya. Not yet. Okay. Get on that, please. Sorry. That's all right.
John Skavik says, I know it's faux pas to talk about backstage pass content if you're not at that tier, but in the unlisted video shared with backstage passers where Ronnie and I have a pizza break while playing Split Fiction, Ben said that he's never had crab or lobster in his life and he's had shrimp maybe once. So I have a question for the panel. What?
Yeah, lobster, it just felt like weird rich people stuff and just not in my vocabulary. I think I've had like a cream cheese Rangoon or something that had some crab in it. I think is the closest that I've got, but it's fun. I like, I love lobster and crap. That was like my birthday meal when I was young. It's like, we went to red lobster and I'll get a lobster. Cause it's like fun to.
dig into it. It's like a puzzle that you gotta solve, and then you get to eat yummy, buttery meat. But if you went to a place in Maine that had a lobster roll... Would you not get it because you would think it'd be yucky or is it just you just haven't had the opportunity to eat lobster that many times? Now to be clear, lobster roll.
Is that bread that lobster's in? It's like a sandwich. It's like a coleslaw kind of filling that's made with lobster meat. That sounds really weird. You don't have to crack it open. I don't think I would do that. That seems, that seems somehow grosser than like warm meat. Um, but this is why I did pitch. I had on the list for new show plus options, just a show called red lobster where.
I went to Red Lobster and ate all this stuff for the first time. But then I had it on the list in Google Docs. And then when I was on paternity leave, you guys decided to open up that list and dunk on the idea of a show called Red Lobster. So now it'll never happen, everybody. I mean, and it was Red Lobster was...
by private equity i don't know if that even is there one close to you i think so feels about right i feel like there's a red lobster close to me um do you all want to to go off the rails for something strange
Yes. Great. So back in October, I think it was, we competed in Trivia Tower against all of Easy Allies. And our community kicked their butt on this episode of Trivia Tower. And so the stakes were... that because we won, Iowa Hank and Michael Huber over there at Easy Allies, they needed to create a song about MinMax. And they have created that song. I think they're going to play it on Easy Allies' podcast this week, but would you like to listen to it here for the first time?
Oh, yeah. I have not listened to this yet at all. I haven't even opened it up to see if the file works. So here is the sweet victory lap, and this might be unbearable. I didn't ask for this. All right, here we go. Hang on, this sounds cool. under some strange delusions like a tower of endless confusions oh no this is a real song Those are the facts. I need some tips and tricks to We're halfway through.
Hell yeah. There we go, everybody. I like Michael Huber, the layer of vocals over the top. It's cool. I was genuinely expecting it to be like... a parody of like we didn't start the fire and just be like new show plus Kyle's daughter something like that I was not expecting some song that Isla would actually be proud of musically I know it's kind of like Nine Inch Nails stuff happening there good lord
Thank you for the MinMax community kicking their butts in Trivia Tower. And thanks to Huber and Isla for following through on the grand journey. And I hope you all enjoy that as a new intro to every episode of the MinMax show. There's no way around it. What do you all like for question of the week here? I like learning about Jeff's YouTube channel. That's a solid contender. I feel like that's quietly a ringer.
I like the time traveler question was good too. Even though we all were kind of like, I apologize to the person who wrote it in that we were like, no, you know, we're so boring. Jacob, which way you lean in? I like the time travel. I think it's fun to think about. All right. There we go. That sounds like somebody who's a time traveler. Michael Baker, congratulations. What if? That'd be silly, right, guys?
And now it's time for something that's called get a load of this. Here's a simple one. You guys probably know, but get a load of this. There's a little clip of an interview. from Hans Zimmer, the composer, and of course he was asked about that Inception sound that every other...
movie and movie trailer has ripped off six ways to Sunday. Um, how do you feel about that? And he had an interesting take where he's like, he's like, yeah, everyone's just like, Oh, Hans Zimmer, the inception sound, the inception sound. He's like,
I didn't even really compose that. He's like, it was in the script. Like it was written in the script. There used to be a sound for like time distortion happening. So I made a sound for that. But it's not like I said, Eureka, I have this musical vision. It needs to be this. I was just following this. script uh for this film so i thought that was interesting perspective i hadn't really heard before and the uh the sound is that it's that song that they
Play to wake up, slow down like a hundred times. Oh, see, there we go. Like the French song. Get a load of this. I put this in the Slack. I encourage you all to look at it right now. It's from the Monster Hunter subreddit. And it is simply a post called thought I got launched into the camera. Super smash bros style. And it's someone playing monster hunter and a monster smacks them. And the camera is perfectly aligned kind of behind the wall of a cliff. Oh,
And so the character just, I mean, it looked exactly like Super Smash Bros. They just hit the camera, and it's so funny. It's cool. Links below if you want to check out all this stuff. Get a load of this. I was watching this little fun interview with Charlie Cox and Vincent D'Onofrio. They're promoting Daredevil. And the subject came up of Vincent D'Onofrio. They're talking about like roles they turn down that they regret. Lobster roles. And I want to see like just guys.
Guys, give me one guess you think the one role that Vincent D'Onofrio regrets turning down. Very serious actor, I think, of Vincent D'Onofrio. Jack Sparrow. Nope. You're not going to get it, but I just want to know. I watched this clip, Kyle, so I can't guess. I'll just go to...
It was Inspector Gadget. That's the one role that he was like, yeah, it would, I think I could have figured it out and it would have been fun and my kids would have liked it. But like, I really expected him to say something like serious and dramatic.
Vincent D'Onofrio's Inspector Gadget sounds pretty good, unless he was supposed to play the villain or something like that. I don't know. I just watched this clip with Nick Swartz on a podcast where he was talking about that he auditioned for the role of Anakin in the prequels.
He's like, I don't know why, but my agent got the call that George Lucas wanted me to audition as Anakin in episode two. Weird comedian. I have a hot take, Kyle. From Minnesota. That's right. St. Paul. St. Paul's own. But... D'Onofrio. Everybody loves Kingpin. I get it. I watched the first season of the old Daredevil. I've only one episode into the new one. Am I the only one who thinks that it's just...
He sounds dumb. It's, oh, what if I was a big bad guy? I love Vincent D'Onofrio, to be fair. I just think that character, I think he just, it's like eight layers of a parody of itself as if Kim K... was a big bad guy. Am I way off on that? I haven't watched the show. Okay. I can't comment. You're just watching. I get it. I get it. Okay. Sorry. Jeff? Yeah, get a load of this. YouTuber Carl Yobst has a new video called The Elon Musk Cheating Scandal. And it's not about...
Diablo, you know, his claims of being the best at Diablo 4 or Path of Exile 2 because those have already been debunked. But he looks at the old and often... His often claimed statement that he used to be a semi-pro Quake player and that his team got second place. in one of the first esports tournaments for Quake. And the surprise twist of this video is that it's, like, partially true, actually? Like, he actually, like...
He went back and found like this old tournament that is probably the one that Elon Musk played in because a lot of like quake old heads said, no, this is total BS. Like all of the old like. Quake started the esports tournament scene, and everybody knows all those old tournaments, especially the first ones for money.
And he definitely didn't play in any of them. But Carl Yopes, like, found this old tournament that it turns out none of the actual pros played in. So it turns out Elon Musk probably super did still suck at Quake. And the reason that they got there, there are many like circumstances for why they ended up getting second place. And it's still a totally bunk story. But like that actual old tournament existed and it's an interesting.
rabbit hole of investigation that's cool that still ends with and elon musk sucks and he's still lying about this so you still get that feel good hit oh all right some some interesting quake history in there as well right on
Let's see. Wombology in the MinMax Discord, we have a good load of this channel where people share good little stories all day, every day. It's a wonderful news feed if you're looking for something clean to use there. But Wombology shared this link to a Polygon story, which is... linking to a post from LocalThunk, the developer behind this game called Bellatro, which I just love it, where he's like, hey...
I know Blotra was a big hit. Like, I feel like already the history of this game is kind of getting lost to time and I'm forgetting some of the facts myself. So I just need to like write down a timeline of all of Blotra's development, how I felt through all of it, the twists and turns along the way. And it's... It's awesome. It is like one of those things that...
25 years from now and we're still reflecting on Bellatro in some way. It's so nice just to have the developer be like, I need to get this down for the sake of history right now. And what Polygon was focusing on was just talking about, you know, his struggles with mental health throughout the game's development and stuff like that. It's interesting that he included in there. So super, super cool thing to document.
did you in there right where he says like one of the reasons he picked it back up after letting it go for a while was because rocket league servers were down or something yeah he said in 2022 he started working on it again because he couldn't play rocket league
All right, but that is it for this episode of the MinMac show. It's a big one. Thanks for sticking with us. I know we packed a lot in there, so thanks for the twists and turns along our way. For MinMac stuff, the community meetup is happening next week at GDC, which is the big...
mention that Sarah and I and Haley and I and technically Janet's going as well not on behalf of MinMax but for her own podcast but we're all going to be out there in San Francisco next week so if you see us please say hi don't be shy please and don't be shy again because you can come out to Tempest Bar on Monday, March 17th from 7 to 10 Pacific. We'll be hanging out there and...
talking about games, having a good time. Swing on by. You don't need to be a Patreon supporter to come by. Tempest Bar in San Francisco. We'd love to meet you in person. It's very fun. Also, programming note, because of GDC happening next week, we're not going to get back into town. until later on the week. So next week's episode of the MinMac Show podcast won't be going live everywhere until Friday. So it'll be up a day later next week for the main podcast. So keep that in mind. Also...
Let's see, bonus pod this week. If you're at that $5 tier on Patreon, you unlock this bonus show each and every week. And for bonus pod this week, it is Haley and I kind of talking about GDC, planning for GDC, our roadmap for GDC, different panels that we want to attend at GDC, all that fun stuff. So unlock bonus pod. bonus pod, show some love to Haley because she's killing it with the show over there. Also, we have a post up on Patreon right now, which is kind of funky where...
Because we have the big charity stream in the fall every year, a lot of people from the community want to... volunteer stuff like hey i made this wood sculpture can i ship it to you and you can auction it off it's like that's very sweet we don't want the community doing free labor and volunteering their time to do this thing that's not guaranteed to get in the charity auction
But people want to do it. And so the middle ground is we have a post up on Patreon that went live last week, last Friday, where it's like, hey, we have five slots, five slots for community submitted things that we can auction off for charity this fall. And so. Go to that Patreon post if you have something. It could be like, oh, I want to create this sculpture. I want to 3D print this MinMax logo, which somebody did last year, which was fantastic. Or...
I run an Airbnb in Texas and you can have a free weekend here. Like whatever it is, get creative. And then we will let you know once we lock down what those five are. So no one's creating stuff, doing this stuff for free. But if we can limit it that way, I think that's going to be a good system. But.
Coming up next week, we have a new episode of Max Settings, which should be an exciting one, presumably with Leo and Kyle. So look forward to that. Them playing a game, which might be a fun blast from the past with a new Sheen. Also in that bonus podcast feed and on YouTube. we have a Max Spoilers episode all about the movie Boyhood from Richard Linklater. It is Jenna Garcia, who just watched her for the first time, Jacob Gellar and myself, and then Jeff Cork.
Our old friend came back to unpack that movie that was filmed over 12 years. And God, the movie, it destroyed me watching it again. I think it shattered me in a delightful, interesting, good perspective kind of way. Other stuff is this week I was on Daniel Dwyer's No Clip podcast. So if you want to hear...
Daniel Dwyer and I spend two hours talking about just like, God, Patreon, right? It's fascinating, right? How do you get the most out of this? And really get geeky, behind-the-scenes-y type stuff just on running an outlet and, you know, the ups and downs of Patreon, the emotions of Patreon. You can check out that episode.
from No Clips Podcast. Well, that is it for this episode of the Midmax Show. Thanks so much for watching, sharing, listening, all that fun stuff. We'll be back next week. Until next time, be good, have fun, let's go.