 What's up, everybody? I am the hook and I'm the blade and I am the bracer this week We are continuing our conversation With the the putrid moldy man himself. He is putrid. He is moldy, but above all he is a man We're so glad to have him Putrid I feel like people might be wondering why you go by putrid moldy man Do you want to just give like a quick explanation? Yeah, so it is Completely unoriginal. This is literally just the name of an enemy from the game earthbound Yeah, if there's anyone out there who is a fan of the earthbound and mother series Hey, that's cool. So really what we just wanted to establish is that he is not called putrid moldy man for any odor or stench reasons By all accounts he smells lovely in person I wouldn't know yeah, when people like first see me by my username and they say like what do you want me to call you? Putrid and I'm just like yeah Yeah, and it takes me it takes me a second to realize that oh wait, yeah That can have a negative connotation, but it doesn't even register as to that in my mind Just so used to it. Yeah, we also I mean I I talked to putrid before we recorded this I was like, I don't know. Do you want me to call you like Stephen? Putrid putrid's fine. Okay. Putrid's fine. We'll go by putrid. Oh, yeah Yeah Pewdie I call you beauty most of the time. Yeah, me too. Pewdie the cutie We had this really long tangent last week when we were recording about dialogue options And we thought maybe that could be its own episode So what you're about to hear is essentially a conversation that happened in the middle of recording for last week But hopefully you can enjoy it this time It is just evaluation of the game's approach to dialogue options And we'd really like to hear your guys opinions in the comments So tell us what you thought where you stand on dialogue options what your ideal implementation of it would be and As always enjoy the show When they were talking about the twist where Like Bayek would have been killed or severely injured then you would have played as Aya. Yeah, that would have been so Out of left field and I would have loved it because it's such a ballsy move. It's like that's something rock star would do It's not something Ubisoft would do. Yeah, and it's like not something you would expect with like the animus structure But it's still it could still work technically. It would have been perfect. You wouldn't expect it. Yeah It would have been great and but no, they just had to be misogynistic again Same as they did to syndicate when they made Jacob take up 70% of the screen time in the main story And most in the box are in the trailer and same as they did to Odyssey when they said you can't have a single playable female Protagonist so and now with Valhalla I mean we've been saying from the beginning of the campaign that it's way biased towards male Avor and it's like Yeah, we can tell what you're doing Ubisoft. It's not it has never been a secret You can literally read interviews where I think Steven Totolo and Kotaku is like Hey, isn't it kind of weird that you guys are only focusing on the dude? And then the PR lady is like why don't you shut the hell up Steven Totolo? We're not talking about that And it's like we know what's also what's funny is that we know what you're doing I honestly get surprised whenever I see a female Avor in any marketing material because I'm just so used to them Only showing the male even though I'm as far as I can tell Avor may or may not be the actual Kenan protagonist Maybe I don't know. I am really my expectations for the Narrative value of whatever justification they have for the protagonist gender switching is pretty low like Darby says they've come up with a good reason I'm pretty sure they said they came up with a good reason for Alexios and Cassandra. It's not good There's no good justification for the way that yeah, I mean the fact that you're you're present super silly That spoiler alert your present-day character can meet one of them in the real world And it is either one of those genders that blows open the canon because now there are two alternate Assassin's Creed cannons one where he was a male and one where she's a female 100% the only way where the whole meeting The ancestor thing could have been neat in a way is if you played as Alexios and Then by the end of the game Cassandra shows up. Yeah, and there's like, oh, no, it's it's the mean one and Cassandra's like, what are you talking about? But you don't want to have all those all those angry boy gamers playing the game and be like wait a second The girl was the real one. This is bullshit. I'm Refunding the game. I've already spent full price on that I'm already 60 hours into and therefore cannot refund you already have their money you be soft You dumb fucks you can make Cassandra the main character. You can pull that on people if you're willing to pull a Heterosexual relationship on any gay people play in the game Why aren't you willing to pull a canon female character on any men playing the game? Even when they get to play the character. I it's so ridiculous, dude I don't think it's a thing to be proud of that they are trying to tap into the in-cell market But I guess that's what they want to do I don't think it's a thing to be proud of I think that And I've you know, I've talked about this a lot like on the subreddit and on Twitter lately But I think that it's purely in a matter of attitude I don't think the data shows that fewer men will buy the game or any such bullshit because the truth is There are female gamers and there would be more of them if you didn't pull shit like this like Take the time and have the consideration to invest in creating a wider market of gamers who can all enjoy your content and Start treating them as as valuable valid customers and not marketing solely the male options I mean, I think it's exactly the same as what happened at Marvel Marvel had an executive Ike pearl mother who was Stodgy dinosaur sexist racist motherfucker and he said oh well women don't sell toys kids won't buy toys of female Characters, so he steps on the whole plan for Iron Man 3 to have a female villain and he doesn't allow any, you know non-white non-male characters get their own movies and then oh Something happens. We got rid of Ike pearl mother Captain Marvel and Black Panther make over a billion dollars in the box office Because to believe that women or black people don't sell toys is just ridiculous There is no market research backing that up. It is not true Same will happen with video games the moment yet one of these big franchises or a new big franchise It's created like Horizon Zero Dawn that like no one is no one's blinking an eye at the fact that there's a female main character of that game There was not controversy about it. I don't remember there being any fucking Raging fanboy assholes. There's no reason Assassin's Creed a series is broad and deep and Expansive as this one can't have a playable woman. There's just no reason. Yeah rants over and Although there is a lot of controversy surrounding the last of us part two there is no denying the fact that people wanted Ellie and The fact that that game Broke records long list of controversies on that game I don't think any of those controversies are that you play as a female or a lesbian I don't think anyone cared they wanted that they wanted to yeah Continue the story of Ellie. There are a billion other reasons you can be mad about that game But no one's complaining about the fact you're playing a lesbian. No one is no, I don't think so either Because of all the different choice mechanics There are some certain things that can bar you from Doing certain side quests in certain ways and that just kind of stresses me out It is stressful like when I find out that a game has multiple endings I get stressed out and I try three times and I could never get the good ending because of something being really easy to fuck up and The game that made me like really stressed out about like missing side quests missing certain content was fable to Because without going into any spoilers, there's a moment in the game where it specifically says Hey, if you're doing something if you're in the middle of doing something you might want to finish that before you Continue and at the very least it gives you a warning But I did not follow the warning the first time I played through the game and I was devastated and now it's just like Now it's just like I want to do all the side content as early as possible because I do not want to miss out on anything Yeah, ghost of Sushima pulls out a warning that's very clever because it's like it's not like you should finish all this stuff Warning, it's like you're about to embark on a really long mission like this mission is about to be really long Do you want to do it? Oh, yeah, and well, that's a fable does it as well Is that even though it's not like oh if I do this mission someone who gives me side quests might die It still made me think that was possible and made me go back and clear up a lot of side quests Yeah, it's just unless there's like a warning or something It's like a bit. It's it makes me feel like a sort of Bethesda game as to where you could just do something in the open world And then blow up Megaton City and have that whole city be gone forever if you want Yeah, or just like pick up something in the open world and oops. He accidentally fucked up a whole quest line Yeah, dude. I when I saw the gameplay demo like do you kill or spare roued in Valhalla? I'm like alright Is this gonna be like a thing that actually matters because I presume it will and from people who've had more experience with Valhalla It seems like they go really deep on the choices and the way that those things Fractalize out and create the narrative, but like I I just don't want to be Stuck to anything like I don't know I want to I want these games to make it easier for you to see the possibilities of what the world looks like in different Playthroughs they usually won't do that because either they don't want you to see how different it could be or they don't want you to see how similar it is But I that's what would make me more comfortable in a game like this to have like a window into the alternate realities I could have created yeah for sure and it sucks because Sometimes you don't know and it's just like do you look it up and get spoiled or yeah do you go with your gut feeling and Mess up the game. Yeah, cuz I want to think I want to be able to play a game on its own terms and engage with it Naturally the way that I would want to and I know that's what they want us to do and on some level I want to be comfortable with the fact that I'm gonna make the choices I make and Get the ending I deserve but the truth is in a lot of these cases you're not necessarily going to get the ending you deserve because Maybe you don't know what actual choices or what actual mechanic decides the ending and then you're just gonna feel cheated if your story turns out That you did not earn a really great ending or a really satisfying ending. You're gonna feel like You did something wrong. It's not really a great feeling. I don't think yeah, and one thing that I Know I've talked about this before probably with you guys But I wish that at the very least they would be a setting To choose if they're gonna keep on doing this choice stuff to show I would love it if even in the codex or the database or whatever they said While you chose to do this what actually happened to Avore was this that would be fine I okay, so but I I just don't think at least in like my like revitalize AC that dialogue choices are around at all So I don't I don't think that like talking about how like how they could I don't know Like I don't think that any form of compromise would still make me want to play them anymore So here's my question for you then Tim if they do everything else we want them to do but there are still dialogue choices How happy are you? But I think they're being dialogue choices kind of makes a lot of what we're talking about here obsolete I don't think so. Okay, so how can there be it? How can there be an assassin in multiple games that there's choices if you do it the mass effect style where your previous games Saves influence the stories of the future games if you keep magic and mysticism out Expand on the black box stuff do all the other things that were on your guys's list But then also there are dialogue choice. I don't think any of them are conflict Yeah, but I don't see with the way that Ubisoft develops these games that they're actually gonna Going to do a multiple protagonist game with dialogue choices. I just don't see that happening I mean, I think they could but I also don't see that happening like I don't think they're Contradictory, but I also don't see them making a multiple protagonist game anyway, you know Yeah, but I mean a lot of this stuff is hypothetical anyway. I mean, yeah, it is if I may say my I know Ubisoft wants to continue doing the dialogue choices, but I would prefer for them not to It doesn't it doesn't seem like A good thing to do in an Assassin's Creed game and like if they did choices or whatnot I feel like they should be about as deep as Red Dead 2s. Yeah, Red Dead 2s are very very shallow choices Yeah, it's just like do you do the good thing or do you do the bad thing? And I think too that that could work It's like I want them to either like either no asset or full asset Don't half-ass it because like no choices or deep choices are to me better than like choices But not really, you know But at the same time like I didn't mind that there were some choices in either Red Dead or Ghost of Tsushima like That they could be nice little dialogue Changes, but it's definitely not a choice based game the way that Odyssey is right. That's true I guess I sort of mean it more so in the sense that based on How you act in the game Yeah, could impact some dialogue later and ultimately the ending and there are multiple endings in Red Dead 2, right? Yeah, and I don't know if I should get into spoilers for that game here But like I didn't know until recently that there were multiple endings So that's a game that did it well for me where I felt like I was getting the ending and my ending was satisfying to me But when I found out later that there were multiple endings I looked up what those endings were and I was like, oh, I'm really glad I didn't get that one Yeah, yeah, and then also depending on How you act specifically Your honor level. Yeah, it changes my details your spirit animal and Certain songs and also a lot of dialogue in chapter 6. Yeah, which is all cool I think that's a great way to sprinkle choice into a game that doesn't have it typically Yeah, and that's that would be I would be okay with seeing Assassin's Creed take that approach I would despite what I said about half-ass again It just it would just make it a game. That's not about choice But has choices in it and now these games are currently they are about choice It's definitely creating some awkwardness in terms of their ability to deliver a cohesive narrative for sure There was like a whole side quest story in Assassin's Creed Odyssey It was like on a pirate island. The woman was named Kira. Do you remember the one I'm talking about putrid? I do I don't think I played that when I played it the first time I played the game, right? I'm playing as Alexios There's Kyra. We're doing this, you know stuff. There's this story about her her father being the like Ruthless like ruler of the island that she's rebelling against and she doesn't know it's her father And there's all this sort of tropey stuff But it was an interesting story But what made it really interesting to me was that she was a romanceable character and I said hell Yeah, let's romance this character even though and I knew this at the time. She had a boyfriend, right? Oh And so it was this thing that it was interesting to me narratively that my character was choosing to engage in this sort of you know Infidelity keep in mind her boyfriend is like a character in the story And he's got his ambition if he wants to like be promoted to the next high level in his fucking whatever he is Okay soldier, I think the the thing is yeah, he gets promoted and then the day that he gets promoted He finds out that his that his girl is cheating on him He's like I think she tells him and then he's like you and I we have to fight to the death and I felt terrible because I liked this character He just got the thing that he wanted he's about to have this life with her and now I have to kill him, right? That was a very memorable Moments of that story. So when I replayed odyssey, I thought how does the story go when I don't romance her at all and it ends up that Uh, there's no romance The guy does not get promoted because he decides he doesn't even want to be that thing anymore And then someone kills him anyway in a completely unmotivated What random thing he just gets like poisoned or something and it's like Oh my these stories don't feel like they're different because of choices I made it feels like they're different because The the two versions of these characters and they need to die The choices made by the two different versions of those characters don't feel like they're the same character Like in one universe all he wants is his promotion in another universe. He doesn't want the promotion He just decides not to do that job that didn't feel motivated by a choice I made it felt like the thing that the game had to do to to be telling a story So here's two possible realms where I'm playing this game in one of them. I've had this Really interesting and cool, uh memorable experience and another I don't think I would have ever remembered that story I would have forgotten about it immediately like I did so many others in odyssey makes me wonder first off How many like great stories did I miss because I made the wrong choices second off The thing that made that story memorable and great in the first place was knowing That I made the choice that led to that Was that satisfying and to me on a level that could not be accomplished by a story with without choice Because the answer to that is quite possibly. I don't think I would remember that story if it was scripted I think I remember that story because I felt guilty about choosing to cuck this dude Yeah, and that is a good argument for there being choices in assassin's creed and also argument against it, right? Yeah Like I feel like that experience kind of encapsulates my love hate relationship with the dialogue choices because again like I would love to think charitably and assume that the reason so many of these side quest stories are fucking terrible Is because the choices I made were bad I do think there are quests that I had the thought that I was like Oh, I bet this would have been interesting if I had chosen not to romance this person or not to kill this guy Yeah, I remember there was a side quest. I think it was like a pre-order bonus Side quest You had to go around the world and find the Pythagorean theorem and like two other things. I never did that because I definitely didn't pre-order But it's just like you find these three things And it's like, oh, I found the Pythagorean theorem And then there's like two options of like you interpreting these concepts correctly like uh, you interpret it correctly or you interpret it in a very Incorrect way, but it doesn't matter At all. Yeah, which you choose That's the thing. I mean there are examples of both at working well and working poorly in odyssey You can make choices that okay, you decide to spare this guy's life and then Many hours later that character comes back in a cutscene and you're like, wow, I can't believe that I could have killed that guy and then everything I'm experiencing right now wouldn't be happening But then as far as like the ending of the game goes all that your choices are really amounting to is who is sitting awkwardly around a dinner table in a cutscene because Genuinely the only thing that's going to change about the way the world is when you're done with that story is who's sitting at the dinner table and Like on one level that's interesting, but it's not the same kind of interesting as like feeling that Your choices could have gotten you a different story. I mean I wanted to redeem Demos every time I played and I have never successfully redeemed Demos And nor have I looked on youtube to see what happens when you redeem Demos He he just becomes part of your crew. Yeah, I mean that's gonna be it, right? So yeah, these choices are family's ownership all right once both incredibly superficial and incredibly Like like they can lead to interesting they change a lot like your choices are not telltale choices where it's all illusion There was a minor detail that I really really enjoyed. So it was on the first island where you learn about faction rule and how to Caffalonia No, it was It was this it's like the second place you're supposed to go to in the story. I believe Where you met your quote-unquote father and you learn how to Stop the influence of the Athenians to get Spartan control But there's an area there that is taken over by It's like a church or something where the cultists have I guess taken over and you can kill the cultists in the open world Or you could just like stealthily kill them all and like hide the bodies But if you openly killed them When you Get to the point in the story where you infiltrate the cultist meeting and it's like the first time you see Demos If you openly killed the cultists in that area, you'll see like the priest That was from that building like being tortured and interrogated by the cultists Yeah, it's like it was a little thing that I thought was very cool. No for sure. That's a great point I mean, that's the thing like I I love when it's done well and when you have those good moments And it's sad that they kind of have to contort things like in order to ensure that You know, you play out the side quest There's one side quest that sticks out in my mind because it actually was broken in my first playthrough of the game when I played on my ps4 Um, there's a side quest called eye diona that leads to a cultist Therefore, it's you know part of the game and it was just broken on my copy and there was no update in Over a year after it came out. There was no update that fixed that that side quest So I never got to finish the cultist story on my first playthrough It took me getting it on pc and playing it there to actually finally complete that side quest Do you remember what broke it? Um, yeah, I remember the glitch it was Um, diona the side character is telling you. Oh, I have to get to Uh the city and then they just stop following you. So they're just standing in the in the street Essentially being like and the glitch was it was created by if you got into a fight So if you got into a fight with You know guards while you were walking with her she would never get back to being On the path to follow you to that location And you could if you wanted to spend two hours sitting there slowly nudging her NPC Across that entire length of distance to get her into the place where the next thing happened But I was not going to do that So I had high expectations for the side quest when I replayed the game And it was pretty bad because as far as my choices went Um, she was being like really affectionate and and like sexual flirting with with me And I was like, okay, sure because I I kind of just like I don't have like a philosophy on romance choices where I'm like Oh, I'm straight or gay or anything like that I just kind of like oh if the character expresses interest in me Then I'll do it, but if they don't I won't express interest in them. That was kind of what I did So based on that I I slept with Diona and then found out that Diona was the bad guy that I was after technically But it wasn't because she was a twin. So there were two of her. Okay Are you remembering this now if you completed the cultist? Oh, yeah Yeah It's just like manipulating you the whole time and it's stupid because Then you're like looking at two copies of the same npc and it's like which one's the good one and which one's the bad one And I was like this is like I I have no I thought really carefully. I listened to what they were saying. I was trying to make an informed decision Of course, I killed the wrong one And it's like ha ha you killed the good one Now go kill the bad one, but I really wonder and I don't know I haven't looked up to confirm this I really wonder if you could kill the right one off the bat Or if either one you selected would just say, oh no, we're the good one That's a good point because I think they would be the kind of developers in this case to be like Oh, we would rather make you feel bad about a choice you made Then actually give you a real choice Which is what a lot of the choices boiled down to it's like ha ha You thought you were doing the right thing and then you accidentally became an asshole Yeah, I still remember there was like a side mission where the most rewarding thing to do was to like cock a guy because His wife was like Oh, he can't Can't last as long because she's like yeah crazy into sex or whatever It's like an old woman too and she's like my husband can't keep up And then your husband is like, please fuck my wife Please yeah, my wife And he's just like you go Once you're done with your little session, he's just like thank you. Here's a blade It was like my custom made blade to give you his thanks And like if if you refuse to cook him, he's just like, oh no Now I have to fuck my wife So it's so bizarre, but I'm really hoping that Valhalla is going to be able to Like flesh these choices out I I do like the idea of rather than just like All the romance things being one night stands They're a longer term the idea of being able to have more long-term That sounds cool pointed out as Treviso said it's basically an ash raft simulator Because you can have a long-term relationship, but still have like a dozen side pieces going Yeah Oh boy, that's when when art imitates life Origins he made it about the death of his son now Valhalla He makes it about his being a serial philanderer. I don't know. Hey, Tim. Are you alive? I'm alive. You're just so Disgusted by the idea of dialogue choices. You set out this conversation I just don't have much to say just a lot about odyssey which I Yeah, you didn't play odyssey fucking. Yeah, and I apologize you're talking about It's okay. I think that gives me if I split this up into two. I feel like this will be like a dialogue choices episode almost Thank you so much for listening to this week's episode of the hook blade podcast As always there are things you can do to support us. You can send us a letter in the mail Um, you can have a carrier pigeon deliver your words of praise and enjoyment Really at the end of the day, um, interact with us Hit us up in the comments hit us up on twitter. Uh, tell us what you think about what we talked about Um, this week actually if you guys wouldn't mind Let us know some of the things that you would like to hear us talk about on future episodes because Um, we're we're very very stupid and we're running out of ideas So if you can suggest things that make a good episode, we will shut you out in that episode for all Uh, five of our listeners. Thank you again for for joining us. Thank you this journey putrid. Thank you so much No problem. It's been fun. Thanks for having me on that wraps it up for this week. We will see you next time