 What else do you even stop and say goodbye 2023 and then make a flapping sound? Yeah. Oh. Just off. Go away. I'm making a new friend. I have no friends. His name is 2024 and we're going to see if he sucks balls or not and we're going to find out. Hey 2024, are you chill and he's just looking at you with a cap of face, that's what it would be. Please be chill. You wouldn't lie to us, would you 2024? Yeah. You wouldn't do that. You wouldn't set us up for incredible and insane disappointment after all we've been through. Yeah, what's funny too is 2022, our coverage ended with Ragnarok and Andal. They're just like nice. Not bad. Oh yeah. Yeah. It's quite neat. Yeah. So hello chat. Definitely ending on a high note. Welcome. Everyone. To the live stream. Yeah. Wait, this is live? I'm sorry. What you just said is now everyone knows about it. Aw man, I'm going to get in trouble. How are you two feeling after your little streaming streams there? You doing all right? Good. You find your computers all right? You making it do okay? It was funny. It's almost like holy shit. Something like 30 plus shots or whatever and it's like yeah, but nine hours. So it's, you know what I mean? You understood that would kill me. I am very aware. What you do to get hyper drunk, metal does it between shots. Because I've had like, I've had shots and stuff of liquor at parties and events and things and that stuff, like it hits me like a freight train. I would be dead. That would. In some ways become a zombie at the end. I just be making noises from off screen as I'm slumped on the floor and then I would just pass out and cry for Boromir again. In some ways I'm jealous in others. I am not. It's a give and take, you know, it's a exchange risk reward or something, but I fully recommend getting hyper drunk and playing Simpsons and run to anyone out there. Oh, yeah. Bloodborne less so because it's difficult. I can't wait for that Supercode so I can finally know what I said all evening. Yeah. It'll reveal to you the secrets of the stream. Anyway, welcome to EFAP number two hundred and sixty five. Yeah. Like it's a question. You wrote it down. Hmm. What are you saying it like it's a question? I said it. Two, six, five. Yeah, I said it. You okay? Do you do inspect every single thing about the way I say words? You're right, bud. The one who's taking 44 shots. Yeah. Sit down. Anyway, we got a guest today. A wonderful newbie to EFAP anyway, but it's been recommended. I think in Superchats about 10 billion times though, we did it. That's that's exclusively why we bring these people on because we hate them, but we know that you guys want to see them. I'm fine. They always hit us by the end of the stream. Yay. That's how it's done. That's how you do it correctly. Any good podcast, but welcome to EFAP patrician TV. How you doing? Good. Thank you. Thank you. I've been recommended to come on this show since I basically started getting views. Hmm. When I released my Morrowind video, it was like the same day that Hbomber guy did a fallout New Vegas video. So I was getting comments from his viewers and I was getting comments from your viewers. That was fun. In parallel. The Venn diagrams of those are interesting circles there. Yeah. I had a long battle with Hbomber guy. The meme is like Matthew Matosis makes a ridiculously long video. Hbomber guy responds to a ridiculously long video. I responded to that with a ridiculously long video and all of them get longer as it goes. There's a few of those in relation to I think fallout as well. There's YouTubers who've responded to each other over and over again and it's just that. Yes. There's a five part rabbit hole all three discourse. I think in total is about 32 hours long. Did they manage to answer the question of whether or not the game is good? No, they just go back and start insulting each other's character. So far we've settled on baby. We're getting there. Fallout 3 is one of the games of all time. It truly is. It's one of the first games of its kind that I ever played. It was back on the Xbox 360 when it came out. It was one of the first games I just sort of lost myself in. Because I guess I was a little late to the party when it came to video games. But I'll never forget it. For better or worse, I'll never forget my experience playing fallout 3. Which is weird because I have a similar thing of I was late to games, joined in a GameCube properly. I played Game Boy before that, but I don't really consider that like as extensive as jumping into all kinds of genres. But at the same time, fallout 3 was the first of those types of games that I played. And I remember softlocking myself and cursing the game forever. I thought Bethesda would ever make their game softlockable. That doesn't sound like the tight design that they're known for. Yeah, it was rather upsetting. And I remember a friend of mine would be like, you didn't make any additional saves. And I was like, why should I have to? That doesn't make any sense. So I got to do two saves at a time. He was like, kind of. No, quite a bit more than two saves. Yeah. It's a skill you learn and you fall into that trap the first time that you play Bethesda game and realize that you've game overed your save. It's like making a deal with the devil sort of. The devil is known to be like to... I guess there's two interpretations of the devil. One of them is that he's the Prince of Lies and the other is that he follows his deals to the letter perfectly. And that's how he tricks you. So Bethesda games are kind of like both of those simultaneously. So it feels to play them. And apparently that hasn't changed over the course of what? Like 20 years? How long has it been since their first game that was relatively popular? What, Marwan was 20 years old now? Marwan came out in 2002. Yeah, I did a 20th anniversary video in 2021, 2022 somewhere in there. Wow. I think the plan... The plan today is to try and look over the year of 2023 and judge it. Let's see if it was any good or any bad. I'm already looking at what we're going to be talking about. They're like, oh, fuck it all. It'll be funny. It'll be funny to remember everything that's happened because it really does feel like some of these things. I'm like, oh, that was when that was? Yeah, when you got it in a big pile, when you check and then you remember, oh, yeah, that was this year. Oh, that was this year. Yeah, I'm kind of like that too. I have a bad... I'm not good at putting dates to things. I'm terrible at it. What year did this game come out? What year did this movie come out? It was between the last couple years. It's tough to kind of keep it all straight. So I had to get a list. I barely remember when my videos come out. I'm kind of to say about that. Oh, yeah. What we'll do then is between myself... You want to organize like we go movies, then TV shows, then games. I was going to do all of it. Just running on all of it. Because we will be bouncing between movies and TV from just looking at our history of the year for sure. With some games thrown in, of course, for good measure. I love games. Well, I will start at what is absolute zero in the story of the new year to new year. Which is... Remember our New Year's stream last year? Yeah, I do remember. No, I literally don't. Tell me about it, Mother. Oh, it was so great and fun. We got everyone together and we just celebrated. Had some drinks. Talked about the past, the 2022, I guess, at that time. What a year. Joy and happiness. A famous episode that everyone loves and I'm sure is representative of a brilliant start to a wonderful year. Well, that's all that needs to be said about that, so I guess I can move on to the first thing we covered. Do you know what our first coverage was of 2023? No, I don't. It was defending the assessment that... Oh, no, wait, sorry. That was the second thing. The last onion. Oh, no. The last onion came out at the end of last year, didn't it? Well, the thing is I'm not necessarily going perfectly by timeline on that one. Just whatever comes after our last New Year's party, you know? Right. Because, yeah, I remember the last onion being the end of the year. And I'm going to be honest, I hate onions. I really hate onions. And this movie is... Well, alright. This movie has further solidified my hatred for onions. I despise them in virtually all of their forms. Onion powder can be okay, but at that point it's not even like an onion. Rags, onions make sense. You know, they make sense. They have layers. They're like a food. You know, they make sense. Glass onion doesn't make sense, so I don't know why it would further your hatred for an unrelated food. I'm not kidding. I'm not kidding when I say glass onion is actually one of the competitors for the first film of all time. Competition is so stiff. Yeah. It's not hyperbolic. What a fucking foul movie. It's so awful. Yeah. I hate it. I hate it. I hate it. I hate it. It's not a foul movie. It's so awful. They're very... it is made more painful by what Rags said. The conversations surrounding those films. Yes. You can't have real conversations about Ryan Johnson films. It's fucking annoying. I can't believe he's gone away with it three times. He's kinda like an inverse Studer, in a way? While you can't have real conversations with his film as well? and they kind of run with that instead of really looking into what the thing actually is. Oh, I guess I get what you mean. I don't know about it feels like it's not contrarianism for it's contrarianism to not like his gloss out like gloss gloss out knives movies because that's what that's a common sentiment is he's a bad match for Star Wars but otherwise he's a good storyteller. Well, you don't know how many layers of irony a person's operating upon. You really don't it's the ultimate internet shield. There are people who are there are people who will try to be contrary to the contrarians and they'll loop back to the original position. Well, I was going to say was the safety but three times he's gotten away with like the assessment being you guys didn't realize that's on purpose like when you point out something that's really retarded and it's like, wow, that is like, all right. Okay. I would love to hear a thought about that. It's like people that is on purpose like they think your shit is shitty on purpose. He's like, what? What do you mean? It's all about phrasing. It's really hard to make it work. It's like, you know, you failed horribly because you would say like, yes, it is subversive on purpose. It does challenge the ideas of blowing up. No, no, no, no, stupid, stupid, What's spending profusely convincing himself? That's what he wanted to do. Hey, man, you know, he has the character say, it's just dumb. In case it's all justified and now make a third one and get paid millions and millions and millions of dollars. Yeah, it'll be on the way. We'll check it out. We'll deal with that. Anyway, the I guess partner to that would be the next episode we did, which was checking out Pillar of Garbage's video on Critical Drinker on Glass Onion because that was a really bad video. It was awful. He called him like a liar who's trying to like destroy discourse about films that he personally takes issue with because of and then like would try and make it political and stuff. Absolute piss of a video. The kind of thing that we often cover because, you know, it's just what the hell are you doing? Why are you ruining everything? And I'm sorry, Glass Onion was pretty bad. That's kind of just the conclusion. Yeah, I mean, and then when they destroying the Mona wasn't that that was a thing that came out recently, right? That Daniel Craig like was kind of hesitant about the whole Mona Lisa thing and like that they had a conversation about it. Yeah, because I was a stupid fucking thing to do. It's it's really hard to defend burning the Mona Lisa. You have to burn civilizations, prize works of art to own the rich, only everybody will because the thing about it as well is it's in in you know, like there there's a context which you could burn the Mona Lisa and it would be a good event in a film. It's really fucking hard to do that. He sat down and thought about it for a long time and you were very talented. You might be able to come up with something. Yeah, maybe, you know, it's like like in in being when he destroys the painting and then draws the funny. That's actually a really good comparison because Wistler's mother is still a very valued image. But the reason why I brought it up is because that was what Ryan Johnson cited. He cited that film. Oh, why they could do it. So funny to compare the fucking main character class on you to Mr. Bean. Mr. Bean did it. So I can't. Oh, yeah. Mr. Bean was suitably horrified by the by what he had done. Yes. And then do you remember the do you remember the reaction? I come over to his name, the actor's name, or the character's name. Rowan Atkinson. No, no, no, no, the guy, the other guy, the other guy in the movie, the other the American guy. The American guy living with. Oh, he told him about the the Janet, the guy, whatever. Is he a janitor? I don't know. But but his reaction of just like, oh, God, oh, the mother, very. Oh, that guy. Sorry, I threw him a glass of onion again. I was like, OK, yeah, no, he's from Ali McBeal. I forgot his name. But yes, I know you're talking about. And yes, his reaction is hilarious. Yeah. But it's just funny that he looked at that as like, yeah, that's what we did. Yeah. Yeah, that would be a good splice. I think his reaction to Whistler's mother's desecration but with the Mona Lisa scenes. But oh, God, Jesus. And then her trying to frame fucking Norton for it. Edward Norton. Yeah. Jeez, really. She really is a despicable character. Absolutely. Yeah. And all of those fuckers going away for perjury. So proud of themselves that convince themselves to be good guys after the whole building explodes and they all miraculously survive. Man, remember as well, the imagery of all the houses exploding. I'm pretty sure the pillar garbage guy said, like, there's no reason to believe anyone would be hurt. That's not a reason to believe. Man, your explosion's going to hurt. Nah, it'll be fine. There's like a little breeze in the wind, you know? Yeah, just air that moves really quickly. Come on. Yeah. So I guess the way I could try and do this is by saying. Wow. That's that's I was going to say, maybe pass it over to you. You're going to have more than I am, probably. So the next the next thing, the first big thing that we were covering this year was the last of us because that came out in January. That was the first one. Well, it depends on your definition, Marie, because we also covered Velma before that. Oh, that was really early, wasn't it? I remember thinking because She-Hulk ends the previous year and then they say, well, that was fucking awful and you can't really get much worse than that. But I'm pretty sure Velma is only 12 days into the new year. So it took a lot of days to come up with something that was worse than She-Hulk. What a new year was. Yeah, Mindy was determined to ruin the year early for all of us. I completely forgot about that show. Well, season two is coming out soon, so you'll have to remember it again. It got a season, too. We ain't just watching that shit. You guys can all do that. I just remember all the tweets. I was like, this is the most watched cartoon on, where does it come out on HBO? Lies. The actual drag was, it was weirdly more specific. It was something like this is the top-ranked premiere viewing for an HBO original Max anime. Yeah, yeah. I was like, how many qualifiers do you need to pile in a box to get that figure? It was basically the only one. No, it's not because of that. Yeah, it's like saying Hitler is the top, is the most well-known furor of the Third Reich. Yeah. Like, that is true. That's quite an accolade. We also had done the trailer reaction for Mandalorian, so that's on the way, you know? Yes, that was in March. People were very excited, I think. Because, yeah, I was going to say, some of these I can't know for sure, because the first episode of The Last of Us was an hour for us, as in like the final thing, so it took a while to edit. So it could have been, you know, the timelines are all this, that, and the other. I'm just going by our releases. But yeah, Velma, we watched two episodes and we decided we would never watch anything to do with it ever again. Yep, pretty horrific. That was really bad. There's nothing like it. There's really nothing like it. Fowl, it's a good word for it. Fowl, stay away from it. Good luck on season two, Mindy. I believe in you. They can't be worse. Oh, don't give them a ten. Because they haven't raped Scooby-Doo in a ditch yet, so there's still plenty of, say, cows, dogs, whatever, left to sacrifice. It was funny as well. Velma killed Eve, I was like, it is one of the few things that we would just like, no, absolutely no more. No. Anyway. We made the right decision. We made the right decision. I saw you guys coverage. I was like, I'm not going to touch that show ever. No, it's not. Horrific. It's radioactive. It's the elephant's foot of media. At the best of times. Which does push us to the last of us, I guess, then. That was really good. Yeah, it was really good. It was very, very pleased with the last of us. We were lucky to get an adaptation that was even close to the game, as opposed to what all of the options it could have been. We were worried throughout it. If anyone's familiar with our coverage of it, it was anxious, just constantly. Myself and for any of you very familiar with the game, so constantly knowing exactly, and we had John with us who, he's pretty familiar with it, right? The game? I don't remember, yeah. And they made changes, most notably probably, that they're both playing off-visions of the game. They're not quite one-to-one with the game, the two of them, Joe and Ellie. That was the big Kansas arc that wasn't in there. Like it was a remix and mostly original. Plus new backstories for a few characters. Obviously kind of a different structure. So it was like pretty close, but also some notable deviations. But I don't know how this has happened, because I've been super-chatted on other streams as well, but we're back to people claiming Bella Ramsey can't act at all. I'm confused. I thought we killed that myth. We were also back to it being mid. It's a mid-show. It's not very good. We are... Wait, does mid mean not very good? I never know what mid actually means. Mid means average. Well, it's better than average. She is an insult, but... In any case, just on Bella Ramsey, I think it was episode four that we were like, oh, shit, she can act really well, actually. Yeah, it took a little while for her to get there, I think, but I think a lot of that isn't necessarily her fault, it's the material. But clearly... The first three episodes were... It was by episode four that it felt like we were starting to focus in on that core pair, you know, like Joe and Ellie. Whereas the first three episodes, there was a lot of Joel stuff. There was a lot of building up the world. There was obviously the big episode three that weren't in that one much at all. Yeah. Right, yeah. But particularly the cannibals and the finale we were quite happy with, they were very good. Yeah. It was, you know, you get your normal stuff as stretches and plot armor and everything, but as TV shows go, it's scored pretty well, considering. Yeah. And it's one of the average shows of 2023. I definitely wouldn't want to re-roll the dice of fate to get another crack at it. I'm very happy. I don't want to like re-litigate the arguments. We talked about it during our coverage. Mm-hmm. Like... My assumption is that everyone's preparing to hate season two, and so it'd rather not be attached. It's like, let's just get it over with sort of thing. And I'm just like, I just think we should be clear and appreciate season one for what it is before season two ruins everything, if it does. Yeah. How much of that is rooted in what the director has said online? Some of the controversial takes going around. Yeah, I mean, he said some silly things like about video games. I remember there was that interview that he did where he was talking about the loss of us as if it was like the first video game ever to have a story. He also said they went for experience, not for fun. I may be paraphrasing him, but he is in that camp of game director who very much wants to be in the film industry more than... Oh, are you talking about Neil? Yeah, Neil Druckmann's reputation is dead at this point with online people. He says a lot of stupid things, and I can get the impression there are a few people like that in the gaming industry that I don't really understand. Like, why do you want to make video games when you... Well, so a lot of it is that they just failed out of the film industry, and we got stuck with them. The refuse of the film industry came to games. It's like, oh, no. And he's worth mentioning too that the... It had a lot wicking against it, and the show was nowhere near as bad or as inaccurate as expected. Like, that last episode, they are screwed if they accurately and faithfully adapt the loss of us too now. Oh, yeah. Because Joel was justified again. They didn't change it. Just step on the rake again. You really wonder how they're going to change it because I think they're going to change it. I think so too. There's no way they don't. They've seen all of the backlash. They've seen all of the discourse surrounding it. They've had all this time. For them to just do it again, they'd be fools. I'm gonna flip a coin and say they'll double down on what they made. That tends to be the game industry response to things. They'll just double down. I don't think they'll kill Pedro Pascal in episode one or even two. I would have thought they'd keep him. They can always bring him back in flashbacks. Well, there is that, which they will probably definitely do actually. But someone just said, better than expected doesn't mean it's good. I didn't say it better than expected is why it's good. It's good on its own. It's also better than expected. Which is better than expected. They'll double down and make Ellie kill him. This season one's safe. It's a package. You can have that whole story. Kind of like represented in a sense. And then that kind of continued with a few other cases as the year went on of like, we are Halo. I hate Halo, the show, not the game. I hate that show. It makes me angry. I saw it continue. I saw it available for free and refused to watch it. Just before you detail exactly what the fuck is wrong with that entry. Halo was the year before, right? Halo was 2022. The reason why I'm bringing it up. No, no, wait. So before you detail, I was just going to say that like, I don't like people treating the Last of Us show like people should treat the Halo show. It's like absolutely insane that the Last of Us show would get that kind of ire. When I think it's absolutely Last of Us 2 the game and the comments from Neil Druckmann himself and like a lot of surrounding meta stuff that had everything and everyone working against the Last of Us show. It was a, it really had to struggle to earn any kind of respect, which I think was really unfair. And those people focus on every negative thing when it did so many things well. If you're curious about any of this, we've got coverage on every episode. Go check it out. Yep. That's right. We got, we do. What I was going to say was that Halo season one very much feels like it was kind of like at the tail end of what video game at. It's kind of like between- Yeah, what they used to be kind of. Video game adaptations being really embarrassed of what they were, which was really annoying. That was super lame considering that these adaptations were far and away like worse than the things that they were like worse than the IPs that they were trying to extract as much as they could from them. But like Halo exists in the middle realm of we're at a point where we will use the iconography of whatever it is we're adapting. We'll make sure that we have like the wad hogs and banshees and rifles and Spartans in armor and everything like that. But in terms of actually- The battle rifles were automatic in the show, but yeah, yeah, there's like in terms of adapting the substances like, well, no, this is still like an embarrassing stupid video game and we're moving guys, we're moving guys. It seems spiteful to me. Like they outright were just, it's like a leech. I feel like the show runners of that show were parasites who used it to tell a story that they wanted to tell and they dressed it up into some Halo imagery, but ultimately what they did with it was it was a complete and total bastardization of Halo. It was on Paramount, wasn't it? Yes. Paramount Plus. They seem to draw that kind of talent that doesn't like the source material that they adapt. What's interesting too is that I noticed in the ads on TV for Paramount Plus, they would have essentially all of the characters from all their shows and stuff like sitting on a mountaintop or whatever in front of a board. I remember that. But they'd never had any Halo characters in the commercials. Apparently the show was successful. I mean, successful enough that it's getting to season two. I really wonder if it's going to get a season three. Wasn't it always going to get a season two, though? Because even I was about to say, even if it was even worse, like, well, it's difficult, but yeah, sure, it probably still would have gotten it because Halo, it was going to be given a strong chance. Like it's a Halo TV show with a high budget. Let's go, you know? I don't know because Halo has gotten more chances than a lot of other video games considering that it's being dragged through the dirt for the last decade. But I I don't know. I think I think the sentiment is so negative towards season one that season two is probably going to be in trouble. But the point being that it's like, yeah, we'll use the iconography. But in terms of actually adapting the story, like, fuck that. We're not doing that. We're doing our own thing because we're fucking movie guys. We're TV guys. We're not like those game writers who managed to make something like that. They're not the best goal objective. They also had to make a video game. Which is like mechanics and levels that like spanned across several hours. And they somehow managed to do it with a lot less money. Whereas the last of us is like it's kind of like in this newer era of we might actually like adapt the story. We might actually adapt the story that exists in the game. I mean, it's not impossible that someone who hates Halo could make something good out of a Halo adaptation. But like why even take that risk? Why are you highest of what he loves Halo? They desperately need money and Microsoft's willing to pay them. Microsoft's willing to spend money to ruin. Microsoft spends a lot of money to ruin everything. Are they not aware they could make a lot more money if they just, you know? Well, they can barely run the game studio that makes the Halo games to make good things. So it's not a surprise that they can't manage a TV show. Halo is so easy, man. Like Halo 1, you can adapt Halo 1 and break each of the main chapters of that game into an episode. We've already novelized them. Ten episode season. You can have episode one being like the intro. Remember, the first or the second episode is them arriving on Halo. The third episode is The Truth and Reconciliation. The first Halo has already had a book based around the first Halo. You would be better off adapting one of the novelizations like Fall of Reach than you would actually adapt. Well, it looks like they're about to fall. Especially the first Halo game. It looks like with season two, that's what they're about to bastardize is the fall of Reach, which is... I think the closer that gets to the games the more it's going to make me really angry now because they've ruined the framework. It's fucked. And so if they now want to start... Oh, we'll start actually pulling stuff from the games. Like, I don't want to see Arbiter now, but they're going to ruin him, I bet you. He'll be some goober. Yeah, he'll be some idiot. Maybe dumb as everyone else in the show is, unfortunately. And if they managed to get a season three, I wouldn't be surprised to be like, all right, fuck, let's try and get Johnson in now. Let's try and throw him in there and see if that can fix everything. But it won't, it's screwed. But that was 2022. I was just bringing up to say that I think that was something that 2023 feels like. And then, you know, later on with the Mario movie, it's like, okay, so, okay. And then plus like Sonic 2, kind of, which came out the year before of like, I'm not talking necessarily about quality, all right, but like, but at the very least, the whole like, maybe we should actually like, try to adapt more from the stuff that we're adapting, it was, yeah, like the Mario movie was clearly made by people who gave a damn about Mario as a franchise. Yeah. And yeah, it's like the opposite of Halo. And it was like a decent movie. I enjoyed it and had fun, but I never got that horrific, slimy taste of these people are just parading around its corpse in order to make money off its name. So that was nice. Yeah, I mean, you know, have people, like the idea that you got the one piece adaptation that did really well and people really loved combined with the Mario movie. And then you find out that there is a guiding hand or at least someone or an entity that says like, no, and yes, based on their interest and in the original IP is like, maybe have that too. Yeah. It's not gonna guarantee anything, I guess, but it just seems like a box that's worth ticking. Well, yeah, it's always a question of, do they learn the right lessons from any given thing or do they just think, oh, video game adaptations, go, go, go, go, go, go. But like, as for making sure that you get people who know what they're doing, like, I mean, Fallout's coming out pretty soon. We'll see about that one. I was gonna mention that because Todd Howard is involved in producing on the Fallout show. Oh, well, it might be good anyway. I find that really funny because I've been like telling a lot of people that and it's not gonna mean anything. It means nothing to me. That just, it just means nothing to me. Do you think the show has a design document? It probably has a more extensive one just because that's the nation, the Hollywood really can't get away with not having one compared to gaming. Yeah, you might be right there. Well, we will see. We will see. I'm interested. During. I'm not really attached to Fallout, so I don't feel like I have any investment in it, but you know, you can do a lot of cool stuff with it. Hopefully, fingers crossed. During the release of The Last of Us, we covered the triple threat of the menu, Puss in Boots, The Last Wish, and Pinocchio. Oh, Puss in Boots. That was good. Shit. Puss in Boots. We got around to them in 2023. I think all three of them are pretty cool movies. Yeah. The menu was cool, but Puss in Boots too. And I really like Pinocchio. Puss in Boots too, though. Oh. Oh, I love that movie. Puss in Boots is one of my favorite movies. I really, really love it. It kind of came out of nowhere, in a way. Like, I don't think people had these kinds of expectations for it. Certainly not after watching Puss in Boots one. That movie's meh. But then this one was like, we're gonna do all these different characters, all of these antagonists. It's gonna be emotional. It's gonna be wonderful to look at, and with a great style. It's gonna be, it's just, it's gonna have everything. It's gonna do all the stuff. It kind of has the, in a little way, it's similar to Godzilla in the sense of, they were willing to take a premise or ideas or characters and just really do all sorts of stuff with them. Just clearly a story they wanted to tell and a lot of stuff that they wanted to do. It's just wound type thematically. Like an exploration, essentially. Puss confronting his own mortality and coming out. Like, that's a really good, we've talked a lot about how, you know, deconstruction, right? Deconstruction of a protagonist and how many times it's been done really poorly over the last few years. Like, Puss and Birds would be what I point to as a really good example of how you deconstruct and then reconstruct your protagonist of he has a value system that he's been, that has been crafted over, you know, the prior stories and then that worldview was shattered and he's brought down to the low and then he has to reconstruct his value system in a way that like now deals with his new realizations and understandings about his own mortality. That's really cool. That's a really cool idea and it's done really well. And he's not even, he's not the only character who gets extensive development in the film. Oh yeah, of the one, two, three, four, arguably five antagonists and the villain, each one of them is like super interesting. Every character they're doing something with, nothing's wasted, it takes advantage of all of the opportunities that it can use. And I think it's an excellent example of how you can tell really, have very mature and nuanced messages in the show that's appropriate for children, you know? You don't have to. I'll point out and shout, it's like old Pixar, feels like it's more in keeping with old Pixar or a film that is like everybody can get something out of it. Yeah, it's willing to be mature and serious. Yeah, exactly. I mean, arguably adult themes. I wouldn't say that it is, it does have adult themes, absolutely. The scene when he meets death and then he slashes at him and then the blood. When I saw the blood. Actual blood. Yeah, wriggling down from like his head. When I saw that, I was like, oh, oh, oh. All right, all right. Yeah, especially because there's a lot of jokes in the scene before that. Yeah, well, it's just a very sort of harsh but to reality here. Oh, shit, like that in a way was one of the most pleasing things about the film, though, was that it goes on to do, you know, quite deep and complex things. But the fact that it hits so many of the really basic fundamentals of character introduction, which it sounds like damning with faint praise to say that not much modern media does that anymore. But just something simple, like introducing your nominal hero, your protagonist, showing him being incredibly skillful, as we all know he is, in order actually to big up the villain, not to big up the protagonist. So that you've shown him being incredibly skillful. So all you have to do to give the villain a sense of real potency is just then to show the protagonist who you've just seemed to be skillful being in fear of this person who hasn't even yet done very much to, you know, you don't have to have a villain which goes around destroying planets to get the impression the villain is a strong and powerful thing. You just have to show that impression via your skillful protagonist. He's afraid of him. Therefore we know he's a villain. And it sounds really basic and simple, but then we're coming up to February, compare Death's introduction in Puss in Boots to Kang's introduction in the MCU, which is like the complete opposite. Ooh, we're not talking about him anymore. We're, I don't know. Who is that? It's the complete opposite depiction there, right? Because Kang is killed off in both of his first two appearances by pretty incompetent people. And the villain, well, the first villain you encounter in Puss in Boots is just the complete opposite in the way it's introduced, the way it's written. It's so solidly done. And from the solid foundation, you can then go and do genuinely really interesting things. But getting the basis right is the most important thing that film did, I think. Yeah, you can tell me things about people or organizations, but if I never see it and you never show it to me, then I just won't believe you. Puss in Boots. Puss in Boots. It's another, I don't know how good that film is though, the fact that, you know, it's not just that it's surprisingly good for a Puss in Boots film. It's the fact that it can still come up as a positive reference a year later. And it probably will still continue to come up. Like this time next year, you'll still get people saying, oh, Puss in Boots actually did this particular thing really, really well. And it's gone down as quite a, I don't know if it'll be timeless, but it's certainly got a lot of longevity and it's used as like a positive comparison to all of the shit media that's around. I don't see why I would forget this film. I don't be happy to rewatch it around so long. Yeah. It was a joy to rewatch. When I was at a friend's place, we rewatched it and boy, it fucking holds up. It gets better on a rewatch. We're talking a lot about this 2022 movie. Wow. Let's not talk about good things. I already explained it's EFAP and the years. Our year year involved this because we are late to a lot of stuff. We were late to our cane. That's right, 2023 did contain the memories of puts and boots the last. This is when we discovered it. So it's our 2023. 2023 makes us reflect on our mortality. So it's very thematically appropriate. Yeah. I don't know what it is, the blood. They really made it feel. It's bright. It's very bright and conspicuous. And it's almost subtle as well in his hands. It's trailing down the face of this terrified character. They just did a very good job making it real. And it's like, what the hell are we doing here? The main character is bleeding. And it's like, everyone can bleed in action scenes. You have like a mark on the side of their mouth or their eye after a big ol' guff-up or something. But this one felt like it was like, am I about to die? Yeah, like liquid blood running down their face. Absolutely. And yeah, just him getting terrified. Really good choice. Nice and bold and I'm glad they did it. I think it's something we don't talk about that much, but like give kids a little bit more reddit, make some more serious stories involved. It's been used as a weird shield for things that are supposed to be for children. It's like, it doesn't matter, it doesn't make any sense. It's for children. It's like, why do you want your children to see dumb ass shit for some of you? We've got Lion King, we've got the Great Mouse Detective. Wow, I mean, it's just like, The Incredibles has a, there's like a lot of that film that as a kid, you might not like understand or notice, you know? Like The Incredibles in particular, feels like it's got a lot of, I guess, more mature like themes and elements in it. And that film came out 20 years ago. Yeah, I think we'll pop this on. It's like, because it used to be sort of understood that, you know, kids don't tend to take themselves to see the films of the cinema, for example. So you have to give the parents who are taking them something to resonate with as well. The difference is that I think we've sort of started to assume that the parents themselves are children. So children's media now, like, yeah, you get the constant deflection in any video on anything that is perceived as being for kids. Well, it's just kids entertainment. What did you expect? No, it's like, it's the most important entertainment is kids entertainment. It's more important than adult entertainment is because these are the kids who will grow up being, you know, they are formative experiences based on the media that they are shown by their parents. If you want better media today, or if you want better media in 30 years, show your kids better media today. Because if they grow up watching like modern Marvel stuff, then in 30 years, you're going to get at best modern Marvel stuff. Like you want kids to have really great experiences with media and adults, ideally, can take something from the same because a lot of these things, the Incredibles has been brought up, Person Boots is another example. A lot of these things have really important lessons and because they're perceived as being for children, they don't fly too far up their own ass with thematic messaging. They are approachable, but they actually get to cover a lot of stuff that nominally serious entertainment either thinks is below it or just doesn't think is worth rehashing. It's interesting to look at, like, if you look at, you know, during the golden age of Pixar, that, like, all of those films have, like, some sort of central message or idea that they're bound by. And it's like, it feels like a lot of those films, that it was, the focus was we've got, like, one very specific point or idea that we want to revolve around rather than getting too lost in, like, four or five or six, like a whole bunch of different, like, themes and sub-themes and stuff like that, that these stories were wound really tight in terms of the core objectives that they had. Partly because, like, the simpler you can make it, the easier it is to grass-sprite for kids if you can just present, like, one really strong theme that they can walk away from it with. Meanwhile, it feels like, you know, I find it funny, like, because I see a few people make the comparison that's like, yeah, I mean, you're invariably gonna compare Puss and Boots to, like, other, especially Disney films that have come out recently. You compare it to, like, Wish. What's that film about? What's that one got to say? I'm sure it's about being true to yourself or something. I'm sure. Because we talk about Sludge a lot, right, with these different films as if it doesn't apply as well to the equivalent for kids as movies they'll never remember versus movies that will be downright formative and inspirational to their later years. So, you know, like, a Puss and Boots could encourage them for a long time to be courageous while watching Wish. I don't know what to take. I'm not gonna, like, pretend like I watched it. So it's just, like, a mess from what I gather about. In terms of the message, it's trying to get across in that film that everyone keeps talking about how the villain is right, which is awkward. That was pretty funny. Wow, it feels like, I feel like Disney villains have gotten a lot lammer recently. You remember, like, how, and also just, like, man, some of those villain deaths were brutal in the, uh, in the older Disney, but, like, clingy. The Black Cauldron, man. That was, like, fucking intense. Oh, yeah. I want to say I did that more. That was cool. Yeah, it was cool. Like, these crazy little guys. Yeah, kill this evil bastard in a spectacular way. He's a real jerk. This guy getting mulled by all the hyenas. Is he engulfed in flames? It's like, dude, that's the coolest shit. You know, the menu and Pinocchio are also neat. I was gonna say I'd want to also make a note again that Pinocchio was, like, really well-crafted film. It was a delight to watch. Absolutely amazing animation and art. It had really cool and potent emotional beats as well. That was like a, that was a really cool movie. Yeah, a very, very unusual take on the Pinocchio story with its mysticism and some political stuff thrown in there. Feels like a movie that's definitely of a different time period. Not at all what I expected going in, but it had a great cast. And again, it's worth saying again, the animation is, like, it's the best looking of its kind I've ever seen. It looks, it looks suspiciously good. Suspicious. The thing is, it's hard for me to, like, if you were to ask me, what's the best looking, like, stop motion animated film? I feel like I can't answer that question because it feels like depending on which studio it's from, what the film is that you're gonna get very sort of different, like, styles that they're going for. You know, like, I love the Aardman style with, like, Wallace and Gromit, but I really like the style that they, like, Coraline style is really cool. Corpse Bride has a really cool art style, and this one has a really cool and unique style it's going for too. Just appreciating it. I really recommend it. Yeah, I see, you got them up there. It's really, oh, God, look at how detailed they are, you know? It's really, it's almost distracting how good it looks. Yeah. Because you can't help but think, as you're watching it, of all the effort and the attention to detail that went into it. The nature of stop-motion animated films is that, like, when you're watching it, like, every scene is kind of inviting you to think about how much effort went into crafting it. There's, like, so much detail in these films with, like, backgrounds and props and characters and movement as well. It's like, it's so immaculate. Yeah. And the menu is kind of like an interesting film as well in terms of just its, like, meta, you know? Yeah, I enjoyed what the menu made me think about. Yeah. It's almost meta or meta. Like, when I went in to watch it, I just, like, I had time to kill home and watch the movie. I didn't see any trailers when I was watching. I'm like, ah, this feels like it's about film. Truly. Film about art itself and how it's ruined by all of you. And I point into chat. Yeah. So I guess something I'd remind us of is because we're still in the month of January. There was some video against it came out in January. I just want to list the list them because it's an interesting little collection. So there was Hi-Fi Rush, which has anybody here played that? I've heard good things. I know. Which one? Sorry, say again. Hi-Fi Rush. I played it a little bit. It's pretty fun. Mark actually recommended that one to me and I checked it out. I played, like, the first chapter or something. It was pretty fun, but just other things came around so I never finished it. But yeah, it's good. I recommend it from what I played. Maybe it still gets poopy, but I don't think so. The next one is one that I'm pretty sure most of us played, which was one of my favorite games of the year, Dead Space Remake. Oh, yeah. That was really good. Easily one of the best of the year. High, high, high recommendations for the Dead Space Remake. What a joy that was to play. To the point, if you're only gonna play one Dead Space, probably that one. Yes. Yeah. In a good way, it is a replacement for the original. It takes the original and it was clearly made by people who adore the original and love it and want to give them modern take on. Oh, my God. Well, like DMake? Yeah, someone said that. Why? Yeah, why? It's better in, like, I think literally every way. And I love the first Dead Space. Well, maybe not literally every way. Some of the characters aren't quite as good, but still. Some of the characters get dramatic, like a lot more, like Kendra's way better. Cheers, yeah. I mean, Nicole is the sort of standout for a character that was expanded. Isaac is a character now who has to press his perspective during this story. And plus, she had a whole bunch of cool side stories. But yeah, it feels like Nicole got a whole bunch of new material. It was really cool. That was the full-price texture pack. What? Come on. Do you think it's just a texture pack you're insane? Well, again, you're crazy. At that point, it comes across as like, wait, have you played them? Because all of us played the original at the new one. I've played the original many times. I've probably beaten it through. It's one of the two games on the Xbox 360. I got all the new games. Didn't they, I'll glorify Nicole. Oh, no. Nicole is old. Go away, Melanie. I'm going to retort. But yeah, it's a great remake. I mean, I don't see how anybody could scoff at the incredible art direction and sound design in the remake. It's like, I think we've talked about it a lot. Like, I think it's got like the best lighting in terms of implementing it in gameplay, of dark being truly dark and your flashlight being like this sort of penetrating brightness that is integral to like interacting in those small spaces, like the small dark spaces. That was super impressive. Yeah, it's an incredible atmosphere and environment. It is, I mean, you got to experience it to really understand how good it feels to play that game. It's got the more modern shooting elements in terms of how smooth it is, the higher frame rates. Because, I mean, Dead Space, the first one, it kind of came out at a time where if you wanted to play some of the ports on the PC, then you weren't really. The port is a little rough. The port's rough, yeah. I mean, Dead Space 2 plays like a modern game, but Dead Space 1 is, yeah, it's definitely a console game that was poorly ported. But highly highly. We can't leave the month of January without mentioning my game of the year, First Spoken. I was about to mention First Spoken. It actually came out before the other two. Did it come out? I thought it came out like at the end of the month. I was trying to. Yeah, I wrote down all the dates. It came out on the 24th. The high-five rush was the 25th, and Dead Space was the 27th. Oh, all right, so yeah. Well, I was going to say, are we done talking about Dead Space? I mean, it was just, in terms of culture, it's a really cool thing that happened. Well, not even that, just the fact that we got it was really awesome. Oh, yeah. I was going to say, I want to wait two and then put a bunch of the greater than signs afterward. Sorry, what are they saying? I guess that I'll wait two is dramatically better than the Dead Space remake metal. You stop it, stop. Don't, don't, don't get me started on that piece of shit game. Let them troll. It's all right. They can have you there. We'll get there. We'll let you do a little trolling on you, FAP, or a little trollers. PTSD from that game. Little things have to happen for you to get PTSD, or? Shut up, Rex. Things do happen, they're awful. Oh, no. Dead Space remake coming out and being successful, which I believe it was. Certainly don't remember hearing any talk about it being unsuccessful to where they'll never do another one. That's a good thing. It's a good thing. Well, yeah, it's just really cool, especially because it's rare that all of us had pretty strong investment in Dead Space as an IP and that we were always ready to see it revived or put in a better place. It's a famous story of just being crushed into the wrong. It was definitely a niche audience and it was pushed into being mainstream and it killed it. Really unfortunate that Dead Space's time was coinciding with cover shooters, their prime. It was like, yeah, we've got to get more of that in Dead Space. The opening of Dead Space 3 will forever make me cringe inside. It's funny because Dead Space 3 was the least successful one. There's a couple of what they did. The problem was the games were really expensive to make. Dead Space 2 had a pretty big budget. I think it needs to sell like 5 million copies to break even and it didn't sell that much, but it sold well. It's like, oh, shit, damn, uh-oh. But hey, maybe maybe Tom's, you know, maybe maybe you'll have a better chance at this time around. Oh, yeah, maybe. I don't know if we get in Dead Space 2 remake, but obviously we'll be jumping right on it if they did. Yeah, anything new? Yeah, baby. So far, spoken. Spoken, only seen things about it look cringe as fuck. I find it immensely fascinating because like the big cringe line that everybody is making fun of was in like that games reveal trailer that came out like a year before that. And like nobody noticed, I guess. But then like that fucking add on Twitter came out. I don't know if I've ever seen one ad on Twitter destroy a game in a studio. I mean, yeah, it's like they change their inner battlefield five for horrific trailers and they decided to, let's say, hold my beer. Because like, I mean, I mean, it's embarrassing. And apparently like the game is just filled with a lot of shitty writing like that. It's not just a one off. It's just not and also the thing because I think what I was curious about is, you know, like is the game itself like the actual video game? OK, like the gameplay of hit mix things about it. I've heard it's pretty mad at best. Yeah, I've heard a lot of issues. Yeah, that was what I say. Yeah, Dave, a friend of the channel, Short Fat Otaku, did a did a video on for spoken. And based on what he said, I was not impressed. I'm not chomping at the bit to play for spoken. No, it's kind of like a weird comes out. Maybe they are correct. And, you know, it's a bit of like an interesting thing in terms of work because Square Enix, I think it was it was either this year or last year, like Square Enix essentially like sold off all of their like Western, all of the Western developers that was in their company because it's something that's been going on for the last decade is that like they have Square Enix is like being consistently unhappy with the amount of money that the games that they've made in the West to make. I remember it was so distinctly that Tomb Raider 2013 sold like six million copies and that wasn't good enough, like that Hitman sold like the Hitman solution sold like two, three million copies and that wasn't good enough. They killed Deus Ex so that they could make that Avengers game. And that was not a good idea. And so now they don't have I don't think they have Western developers anymore. All of them now exist elsewhere, like owned by a different company. But this one was made by like a Japanese studio, but obviously trying to appeal to Western audiences to then fail more spectacularly like that. And he ever attempted they've done before to where I don't think they're ever going to do it again. I think that that might be it. In terms of business. Yes, they were shut down basically like a month after the game came out and folded into Square Enix. I just killed a game studio with my mind. Freaking mind. That's just a man. That's just remember everybody. Everybody blamed Joss Whedon for for the writing. Do you remember that? Wait for. Oh, they did that again. Yeah, all of. Oh, do you not remember that? All of the tweets that we're talking about the clip. Yeah, he gets blamed for so much as hard to keep track. OK, it's funny because in our space, we blame Borderlands. Oh, this. Oh, yeah. Because Borderlands has hype and like self-referential and Mimi and shit, right? Yes, in defense of in defense of the Borderlands writers. They're probably like 30 now. So give them a little bit of cut them a little bit of slack. Oh, my God. No, I actually I enjoyed the first Borderlands and I enjoyed the second one. I never played. Yeah, so it gets worse as it goes on. I tried to play the third one for a while, but it just wasn't the same. I don't know, it just wasn't as fun, even the gameplay. I don't know, there was something about it. And I was just like, yeah. I feel like the guns in the first Borderlands were actually way more varied and interesting than in the second one. Like there were, I think, technically, mathematically, there were more guns in the second, but they didn't feel as different as a lot of the stuff that you could get in the first game. Like the first game was willing to actually have like. Very like kind of crazy and out there guns to the point where sometimes you'd find one that was just almost like virtually unusable, but that was a price that you'd pay to get all the good and interesting ones. But people can see like Joel and Joss we're responsible for all the ills of the world. Everything. It's an old beam. I don't know, I don't know, I don't know. I don't repeat the point. It's not everybody. It's not like Avengers is funny. The first. The first is a good movie and it's funny. That's true. Yes. Just because other films and games and shit can't emulate the comedy, they try and they fail. Recently, a rewatched Firefly and Serenity and man, the amount of witty dialogue throughout this. It's so funny to be like, oh, it's so comfy because basically every scene you're expecting, you're probably going to laugh here and there just because of some sort of clever back and forth line. It's a master of balancing drama and comedy into one formula. And it's been a shit. It hits the fan. Mel's just serious when he has to be. It's a good captain. It's great. I think Joss Winspar is known for his balancing tones and it's difficult and you don't. I think what's happened is over time and it's more than just marvel at this point, as people have noticed, as the people are just throwing in jokes all over the place. And there's this the attitude of combined with we're on on the joke, too. The content itself is like, we're not we're not taken as that seriously. We're just having some fun. Even if we watch the first season of The Nevers and you can tell from the dialogue of the characters, like, oh, we got some we got some, you know, snap and some wit here. This is kind of nice. I like it. It's nice to have dialogue this week. You want to die inside, that sort of thing. Hooray, I want to live. Yeah, I know this isn't like a new game in terms of, but it came out in January. Metro Prime remastered. Oh, I still haven't played that. That's still on my list. It's a cool remaster. It's a real cool remaster. Yeah, I heard. So that's like an easy one for if someone's got a switch and they haven't played Metro Prime to just play that. Yeah, Metro Prime remastered. Yeah, it is. It often tops the it's usually within the top three of all, like, you know, top games of all time lists. My Metro Prime gets up there. It's excellent. It's a good hyper solid. This is so tight. I never played the first Metroid Prime, but I did play Echoes, the sequel. And that kind of left a bit of an impression on me because of when I played it and what I was used to playing. So I do it. Metro Prime, the Prime is like an easy one to recommend because it's essentially the core Metroid framework taken to 3D, whereas with like two and three, there are differences to the structure. Like I didn't like three, something about it. I never got an area split across like different planets. So it's not like one fully interconnected space. It has like these it's a little bit more segmented, obviously, to it had like the the light and the darker light world and the dark world and the light and dark guns. And you know, I think people have like mixed opinions on all that. I liked it. It's a problem when you when you fucking totally nail it with the first one, it's like sequel. You're like, yeah, guess. We'll try something a little different. Yeah, try a little bit. Prime is one of the most beautiful examples of converting from 2D to 3D. They did such an amazing job. It's kind of it's kind of amazing how well they did it. And echoes, I remember this still, that if you killed an enemy with the light beam, you'd get ammo for the dark beam and vice versa. So you always were able to like you wouldn't ever just like randomly run out, you know, while encouraged to switch. Yeah, I was like, oh, OK, it's nice. It's interesting. It's soundtrack to me. It had multi. Oh, yeah, the opening theme is really good. And it had multiplayer to it and split screen multiplayer. Dude, the talent overworld like the second version of that theme is so fucking amazing. Fenderana drifts both the main theme and the depths. Oh, I love it. It's so good. Metro Prime soundtrack is phenomenal. On it's and they have this retro kind of spacey. It's the it's the sound to it. I don't know what the instrument is, you know, like because a lot of like fifties and sixties, if it was like the alien, the alien sound, right? The high whistle, yeah. Well, it's like a lot of cool remixes, you know, like of a. It's got a very uneasy sort of like something something's kind of off. It feel alien. I mean, as a way to kind of describe it. Kind of it depends on depends on like which because some of them are very eerie, but some of them are just like beautiful, just like really beautiful. Like again, Fenderana drifts has a lot of really like beautiful chords and like melodies. It's it's got that game so good. Yeah, all the men's thing of that is just ever go play Metro Prime if you haven't because you haven't played Metro Prime and if you have played Metro Prime, get the get on switch as well. It's a really cool remaster that feels like it's they made very considered updates of not trying to like obfuscate the the like original direction of the game. Well, where are we at that point? Because the next up for us would be Quantamania of all things. Oh, yeah. Oh, my dear, all our good friend, our wonderful, wonderful friend. It's funny, it's been some time since it came out. I was like, what is it? What is its legacy now? I was just like, I don't know. I was just embarrassed. It doesn't have one. No one remembers it. No one. It's like love and thunder. And, you know, the marvel is as those great big terrible films. The harbinger for the beginning of the end of a superhero like media dominance, if it was like, yeah, it was where as much as Thor had his like reputation kind of tank really quickly and everybody basically forgot about Wakanda forever. It was like with with Quantamania, it kind of opened the door on the conversation. Man, Marvel fucking sucks. It definitely was a big step, yeah, to get that normalized. I mean, we've been saying it years before. We said it before it was cool. We said it when it was, you know, accurate. So it took us 10 hours to go through that film. Yeah, I believe it. There's a little shit on there. In your video. Yeah. I don't know. As concise as we could get it scripting where when me and Fringe did a video talking about the production of that video, we started putting out new things. We're like a good God, like new problems, like, stop. Yeah, it absolute disaster. And it is a bit of a milestone in the the box office of decline, though almost every entry has been a milestone in the box office decline, even DZ. Well, yeah, I mean, well, yeah, DZ was I mean, because I picked up the one out there. Yeah, but with good old Shazam appearing at the gods, which Oh, that was about you, Jesus. It just that was another case where it feels like by before it had even come out, everybody had accepted that it was like a bullshit clown movie. Yeah. You remember that thing of like, what was it? John Oliver, like on one of those late night talk shows, making jokes about like, oh, yeah, yeah. Everybody's really excited for Shazam, too. And it's like and then which which host was it? It was it was clear that he was like, oh, shit. I don't know. Am I like in a position where I can like actually openly shit I probably just have like the director of Zachary Levi on to talk about it. Who? Yeah, I think Zachary Levi really didn't quite get it. Like, it's like, why? Why is this film getting this treatment? And it's like a combination of things. Well, it's not. It being shit doesn't make it special, right? It's I guess so. Yeah, right in there, because it was it was a shit one that was in a sequence of very shit movies. Oh, and for the record, primed against it. Very awful film. We went through every part of that plot line. Absolutely terrible. Yeah, to say it's profoundly mediocre. No, it's a lot worse than that. If it was mediocre, don't let it slip by on being mediocre. It was really bad. But if it was like, I think it's because Shazam of all the DC stuff felt the most like fucking Marvel sludge kind of like that's what it was. Gold wads of like, yeah, you know, we got the funny banter and memes and stuff. That's like what we do in superhero films. It felt like it was closer to that, as well as like one that's harder to justify its existence, because it's like fucking Shazam. You know, it's not like a character that anybody's particularly. Well, I don't know. Anyway, I'll clarify that the movie version at the very least is not one. Yeah, I'm pretty sure. Like what I hear is that Shazam kind of actually has like cool law and stuff. But it's kind of being jittered and bastardized in a lot of adaptations. Um, I remember it was the thing with injustice where like Shazam gets killed in a way that was like really it was like effortless for Superman. I remember that pissed people off because Shazam is like super powerful. But yeah, the point being that it was like the movie version of Shazam at the very least had like it was just clownish, just felt like clownish. And when it's clownish, well, people get a clown on it, aren't they? That's what happened. It also doesn't have any kind of unique place. Anyway, I wonder whether Deadpool as well is going to meet this this exact same problem, which is quite apart from all of the movie's individual faults of which there are a great many. Well, once you've started to get, you know, it's OK when you've got the majority of superhero films being at least semi-serious and trying to tell a story, and then you have the one that sort of sits alongside it, kind of ironically metering the whole franchise. And Deadpool does that. It takes the piss out of the established and serious films. And it's kind of like a it's an optional bonus extra, which you can see if you're a bit, you know, overwhelmed by the dark seriousness of the overarching franchise. But once the entire superhero thing becomes pretty much that in its tone, like all of them are cheap jokes, all of them are lazy. What of them are just vaguely kind of there to be a guess? They think they're entertaining and that's about it. Then what's the point? What's the unique selling point for a character like Shazam anymore? Because it's the kind of the Ant-Man has the same problem. If Ant-Man and Shazam have pretty much in large parts the same tone, which is they don't take themselves seriously, even in their serious moments. Then why do I even bother watching Shazam? I barely remember anything about that. Puss and Boots took itself seriously. Yeah, did. Now, some funny moments in it. But, you know, funny moments kind of require that there's a serious thing to play off of. You can't just have constantly quip, quip, quip. We had this conversation the other day about like the kind of it's really it feels really lame how many things have been coming out recently that don't have the confidence to essentially be what they are and take themselves seriously to where like if it if it takes an absurd premise, well, I guess on its face, an absurd premise for a film like, like, you know, for example, like Big Lizard, not anything like. The point being that, you know, they'll take something that is like a seemingly absurd premise and because they're like so insecure about the thing that they're doing, they'll keep looking at the camera and like, this is silly, though, isn't it? Hi, yeah, no, we can we can make fun of ourselves. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge. We don't really give a shit. You're like knocking your you're like lowering the ceiling for yourselves of like the kind of payoffs that you can hit compared to, for instance, if you made like a big Lizard movie that took itself seriously and had something to say and isn't doing like wink, wink, nudge, nudge. Yeah, aren't we like a silly premise? Aren't we silly? Yeah, we're in on the joke, too, guys, that if you take yourself seriously with the premise that you're doing and try to make something that's good, did that approach, you know, the audience picks up on that. You're not even take if you don't even believe in your own film. Why would your audience believe in it? You know, there's a time and place for all styles and even that one. But it's been weird that it's been 100 percent of everything Disney put out, at least with Marvel, because that's that's where the Marvel humor criticism comes in for that. But it seems to have bled into a lot of other stuff. And it's just a lame thing that everyone's over at this point. And, you know, they need to realize this shit faster because they can make money if they start making things people want to see and find more endearing, which at this point is taking things a bit more seriously, taking stupid shit more seriously. Yep. And having jokes actually stem from the character who's telling them as opposed to them just being you can just put them on any person, you know, Modoc's death and Ant-Man. You could find the exact same reaction and start a fume in Shazam or Thor 11 Thunder like any given Marvel or any superhero character these days could have reacted in that way in that scene because none of these jokes stem from these people or the stories they're a part of anymore. It's just, yeah, that's in the scripts. And we've just earmarked it for this film, but we could have put it in five or six others. Dude, that's so gross. That man saved the multiverse and they're all they're like, oh, yeah, what a loser you are. Ha, ha. And I think it's a fucking. It's not a set on the thing. The the. Oh, yeah, like a character who didn't deserve like a percent of it. He just saved the multiverse. He died to save everybody. I feel like that's got to be worth something, whether or not you know, redeems him from any and all particular things. I I find it interesting because like a lot of those conversations come up for Darth Vader. It's like how much how much is he redeemed? And it's like it's a big conversation. And I've said before, but like him dying there, cuts off conversation, cuts off a lot of difficult problems that you'd have to deal with in terms of what happens to him next. You know, jail and all that stuff, potentially the relationship that he may or may not have with the Empire going forward and how much information or operations he would be influential in. I still think it would be a really interesting story to see what would happen. It's just that, you know, they didn't necessarily have to answer that question. And Modoc was in that position. And the other thing is, we talked about it with Barmy, characters who are there that can give the person who is dying what they need before they they're gone. All of them knew exactly what Modoc's insecurities were. And they did fuck all to look after him at all. And you might be like, yeah, whatever. He's like a monster. It's like he died to save them. Like, yeah, exactly. Got to be worth something. It has to be. But I guess Modoc had to look after himself and give himself all of the reassurances that he needed, you know? Yeah, because he's yeah, he died in Benja. They didn't say that. They all make fun of him. But yeah, he's he's doing. And that's the thing, all of those lines, all missed opportunities. You could have had Scott telling him that or Cassie telling him he's he's not a monster at all. But instead, they all laughed at his sacrifice because, look, he's got a big head. They're making fun of him because of his problem, not his fault that he's horrifically informed. Even a problem anyway. No, well, I guess it's kind of his fault. But at the same time, I suppose in a way, you know, he was a crazy grouper in the first film, but they're making fun of him when he saved the multiverse. It's not nice. No, also. Hi, John. Hello. Hello, John C. J. G. How you doing of the popular Internet show every frame of pause. Also, I'll be in the chief and countless secondary others. We're just talking about how great the year is it was. We're talking about our favorite character, Modoc. How about you tell the audience what you feel about Modoc and Modocington? Oh, Modoc. Oh, geez. I love him, too. It's been a bit. That whole film was a train wreck. Modoc was just like yet another blemish. It's like, you know, it's just a sea of dog shit. It's it's just. Modoc didn't really stand out to me in that way is what I'm saying. I mean, he was he looked really amusing. I was going to say, he stood out to the whole world for the way he looked. He stood out to a lot of us for how he was the only character with like worthwhile writing attached to him somehow. But he also doesn't stand out in that he's just as shit as everything else is at the MCU, so what a place for him to occupy. Yeah, I guess this is because we're in the month of February. I don't know that I don't know if anybody played it, but Hogwarts Legacy came out in February. Oh, I played it quite a bit. I missed that one. I heard it's a game. It's fine. I got in trouble for suggesting I was going to make a video about it. Oof. How bold of you. Gadzooks. Did you see did play it then? Quite a bit. Yes, I was playing it recently, considering a one year later style video for it. How does it compare in the the world of gaming? It is a. I want to say it's like an average video game, and I mean that as a compliment because they find a lot of things kind of distasteful. It kind of transitions from being a Harry Potter school simulator to just kind of you be slop at the end there. But every now and then I enjoy a good round of McDonald's, so I'm there for slop sometimes. Yeah, is it like a good framework for future games like that could be built on in a way that's like more interesting? The legacy storyline is a bit questionable. They would probably either have to create a new protagonist or not. I think they picked the year the year five that they did because of the issues that teleportation would cause in setting, you know, given the in the Harry Potter game. Yeah, I think it's all right. The probably the most questionable thing is carrying over the killing curse into this into a second game. Oh, yeah. I don't I don't know shit about Harry Potter, so I can't like. What do you mean? Spelly armor, you know, a vada cadaver thing that you can just say the words and then people just die, which is slightly overpowered. You know, you have to have a good find it. That's the that's the rule set. And that makes the player character the biggest sociopath because you just go around killing people willy nilly that you don't even really know. You guys are clearly huge Harry Potter fans. Is there a reason why a vada cadaver is so close to abracadabra when it's the killing in most serious case? Rowling is a hack. I was wondering if you could say the exact same thing. I was like, why would you want to associate with the scariest curse of all time with the goofy magic thing? Oh, wait, I thought I thought it was a Pokemon reference. Oh, and Alakazam, yeah. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, I will say that J.K. Rowling and the Harry Potter franchise is probably the worst part of Hogwarts legacy. I felt that the game showed that that universe actually has quite a bit of potential when it's not being created by her or in that kind of blood purism plot line that Harry Potter has. Yeah, that seemed to be a really big deal, which always did strike me as odd that that was such a huge central thing. And culling someone to mudblood was like the worst insult ever. As a kid, I was like, oh, I guess they take it seriously. I guess. I don't know. I don't know. Maybe it's maybe they didn't quite solve the short way of getting into the the world itself. It's not the best fiction word. It's not. No, but there's a lot of appropriately magic in the world construction. Like some of it is genuinely quite lovely to look at. And the books themselves are there's there's imagination that goes into them. But on the level of plot, most of the books just evolve into that they are just effectively murder mystery stories. That's what J.K. Rowling always wanted to do is what she's always read. And it's no coincidence that's what she went on to write afterwards. And when it comes to actually building out the world with characters and factions, she really doesn't have a huge amount of imagination, which I think is where the whole mudblood thing comes in. It's like, what's the shorthand way of creating an obviously evil group of people? What's like their one thing they'll be focused on? Well, they're basically kind of wizard Nazis who are obsessed with Aryan bloodlines. That's easy and it's been done. So we'll just chuck that in there because then you know that the evil bald man is definitely bad because he believes in like race, for example. And it's not the most that's not the most compelling part of it. I thought that the game itself translates a lot of the the better elements of the world of the books quite nicely. But it sort of it falls down in the same way the books do. The stories kind of lack towards certainly toward the end. Once you get over the initial joy of seeing all of this familiar stuff and you get down into the plot that's supposed to carry you along, you start looking at said that's really formulaic and I've seen that a dozen times before. And also a lot of the stuff you're doing around it to try and make the world feel more fleshed out like the puzzle systems are so simplistic. The like my five year old would be able to solve most of this stuff. We have a five year old. No, no, a five year old. Not my five year old. Unless there's someone lying around that I haven't been aware of, it's possible, but I don't think it's true. But it's like the game, I've played it a couple of times and I've also gone back to it a couple of times. Just like if I've got nothing else to do, I think I remember bits of this being enjoyable. Let's see if I can finish it this time. The answer is always no. But, you know, there's a good couple of hours of vague enjoyment in there somewhere. Hey, someone in China. The same praise was not given before spoken. So there's something in there. It is kind of an inverse Bethesda game where it is similar in that it lacks a strong central vision and it's got all these disparate ideas that don't really work together. And yet it has just enough charm with a lot of its mechanics that it can still compel you to play it, even though parts of it are pretty bad. Well, the first part of it, I found it really slow, like sometimes in a good way, sometimes in a bad way. I kind of like the mechanics of it, like the shooting spells felt like this weird novel in between place, between fighting and like shooting a gun. There's like there's a bit of a delay in like shooting spells. And then stuff just blows up as if you like shot. That's real good. Well, there's something about casting spells that I enjoyed, but it was just it takes so long to like get going. Yeah. But then like when I was in the like I picked Ravenclaw and I'm wandering around the commons room and I'm soaking in like all these students are sitting around having. Oh, you get a house? And I had it. Yes. That was you were a Ravenclaw based in Red Pilled. Yeah. Well, you pick one of the houses, right? You the sorting hat puts you in one. Oh, so how does it disagree with the hat? It's no, you do a question there. There's only two questions in the question there. So it's one of the least I wanted a bit more. For four, there's only two questions. Yeah, I think you should probably go into one of these houses. And you can still say now, I think I should be in the other one. The shorting that says, OK, that's fine. So you get put in Hufflepuff and you can just say, no, fuck it, I want to be Slytherin. And it says, fine, that's that's all good. Yeah, if I if I went to Hogwarts and it put me in Hufflepuff, I'd just be like, you know what, I don't think I just quit. Which is funny because it's actually the second house in the game. What's it? I mean, Gryffindor isn't the best, is it? No, the best is Slytherin and then Hufflepuff. And that has to do with the content. There's like a single quest that the house will unlock. That's lame. Like you think so. But yeah, if if well, it depends on what you mean by better with content. Like if it's literally, it's just it's just it's very early in the game. It's a single quest. But when you play a Slytherin character, you feel a lot more attached to kind of the side characters because the main kind of character driven plot line involves a lot of Slytherin characters. Yeah, we want to know that it was you think that being in a house would almost be like choosing a like a star sign in actually quite fired with it coming from Elder Scrolls. It's kind of a semi-exclusive kind of faction perk system that encourages replayability. As long as we can all agree that Hufflepuffs are fucking losing. Yes, and I think we're totally up for exclusive content based on houses, but not for like one of them being explicitly the best one. Once you understand enough about the game, it reminds me of. They're all balanced and encourage well, yeah. I mean best in terms of the story that gets told in there. Even that would be nice if they put as much effort to the right of role for of them. I would have thought Gryffindor would end up with the best story. Yon, oh, you're a Gryffindor. Yeah, you're a Gryffindor's quarrel. Yeah, let me guess. You have a fox. Oh, wow, you're a courageous lad. I got to say, you guys are just sort of speaking like nonsense to me. I don't understand any of this. All right, so I don't think it was that hard to follow. I'm not exactly fucking the pot ahead. Why is Gryffindor? Why is that better than or worse than like? It is the it's the good that the protagonist and the good guy. When you said there was two questions, I thought you were going to be like, are you good or evil, you intelligent or retarded? And then that would sort out a fuck is evil. Retarded people go to. It's like, what do you value most bravery, loyalty, intelligence or power? Yeah, they actually power. You just filter in evil kids. OK, so J.K. OK, so these are like houses in the Harry Potter world at like the school and so so Gryffindor is what? That's the main protagonist. Brave heroes. Ravenclaw is like the cuttings, smart, good people. And then they make. Yes, living a cunning. They're the evil ones. Pretty much the evil ones. Hufflepuffer games. What is that one? Is that like the clown one? What is it? Hufflepuff, which one? Hufflepuff is the clown one. They got the short end of the stick from J.K. They got the least focus in terms of the writing. But generally, they're supposed to be about loyalty and camaraderie, even though Gryffindor would be friends with a Hufflepuff. Yeah, and wasn't it Cedric is the only notable Hufflepuffian in the entire saga like he died? I think so. I think maybe Luna Lovegood was in that house, too. But I mean, it's a very they don't talk about it much. There's an in-joke in the Harry Potter community that says that goes along the lines of what the fuck is a Hufflepuff? It's not a good name. Ravenclaw sounds way fucking cool with a Hufflepuff. Yeah, and cool. Like, I'm a raven and I got claws and look at that. Yeah, I don't know. Hufflepuff just sounds fat. It just makes me think of. Fluffy, a spare little running away. Their house is actually next to the kitchen, believe it or not. Oh, my God. I don't know, makes me think of like Snowlax a little bit like Snowlax. Maybe Childeau, the kitchen. Hey, listen, my name is Gorlock. OK. I got that. It's not just Harry and Gryffindor. It's like it's like it's also Ron and Hermione, which makes sense because, you know, they got to talk to each other in the commons room to like dish out plot details. So they're all on the same page, but it just like and plus Gryffindor has like the warmest colors out of all of them. It's just got like red and gold and the Professor Dumbledore was a Gryffindor, too. Of course, he was. Right. He's just hands in the house cup at the end of the exam. Well, you've been shit all year, but I'm going to give all of you 50 points for being brave. Now you win. Well, there is. We can't talk about Harry Potter and how shit it is. We have to talk about two thousand and twenty three. No, we are. We're doing exactly what we intended to. I love how we've almost got more time. We spent more time on a thing that none of us. We're just bitching about Hufflepuff's. I mean, why not? Because I was going to say, I just like the joke of you could enter any house, but if you come out as gay during it, you have to go straight to Hufflepuff's. This is how the rules work. I'm afraid. What I was trying to say like 10 minutes ago was someone to let you know, Rags, because you have a couple of gaps in knowledge that a abracadabra actually predates Pokemon. They wanted to make sure you understood that. Oh, did that? Oh, does it? Yeah. I. Oh, all right. Thanks for clearing that up. Yeah, yeah, I was laboring under the impression that it was a Pokemon reference, but actually it was that. Oh, because maybe the abracadabra and Alakazam to the words. Yeah, they actually inspired a lot of people. Yeah, there you go. You understand when they called when they called them squirtle, that was actually the origin of the words, turtle and squirt. Yeah, they separated it out. It was so cool. I was there when they did that. Yeah, they reversed backwards. They figured it out. Yeah, I was in the room. Right. What Pokemon? I just want to just before we before we move on from that, I just want to give a big shout out shout out to Venonat. Big shout out to Venonat, the the often forgotten Pokemon of the first generation. So good job. Yeah, it is often forgotten because I don't know what that is. Which I know what that is. Yeah, he's like a bull, right? Yeah, he's like the little purple ball with the red eyes. Harry Pimmel shout out. Huge shout out to Venonat. He's just he's doing his best. And no one remembers little Venonat. It's a shame because he's more sensitive to Venomoth. I don't know. I don't know about that. Butterfree is really good, but I don't know if Venomoth is a shit butterfree. I'm inclined to remember that I agreed with that. I think Butterfree kind of kicked Venomoth's ass. That's what I remember. I know I know it was easier to get a butterfree because, you know, obviously you just going to get one first, you know, Caterpie and Metapod and plus, you know, it was really good to have one against Brock, if you, you know, yeah, Lee fucks up rocks. I think everyone knows that. And well, confusion. Venonat, Butterfree could learn confusion. And also, yeah. And Butterfree was great at like putting things to sleep and paralyzing. But Butterfree was just the fuck you, Pokemon. I'm just going to fuck around with you. But I saw the choice. It could be a real crowd killer weapon, Butterfree, because it flies over the battlefield. It's bringing sarin gas over people. That's Venomoth right there. That is Butterfree would never do that. But Venomoth would, you could tell, you know, by the eyes. I really like Psyduck. All right. So I look great. I really like Psyduck. Wasn't there an episode, though? Oh, was it Hypnotoad? Someone was like, take it over the mines of a bunch of people who was like, oh, shit. That could have been like a many. Hypnotoad is the Hypnotoadist Futurama. You're getting your references crossed there. He thought Hypnotoad was a Pokemon inside of him. No, no, whatever. The I'm picturing him. He's got like, he's yellow and brown. Yeah, yeah, you're right. Yeah, Hypno. Hypno, yeah, and there was an evolution. Yeah, from Drowsy. Drowsy evolves into Hypno. Yeah, so on. What's up? Hypnotoad is also awesome just for the record. Man, I think Ponytoad is the frog one. Zigzagoon. Pollywild. Who's the who's the best? So let me let me remind you how are we here? Zigzagoon and oh, yeah. That's what I remember. And Badoof. Yeah, B.I.D. Oh, that's a tough one. Oh, that's a tough one. I'm going to. Whoa. Oh, yeah. So like I'm just going to say Zigzagoon. I would say it's pretty obviously the one I like. I really like Zigzagoon. But Badoof's a little goober. I love him. He's a goofball. But Zigzagoon is pretty great. So I'm going to go with I like Zigzagoon. Anyway, so on. So Harry Potter, back to Harry Potter. Right, right back to Harry Potter. Yeah, I was going to mention that someone said it was from the Aramaic is why it apparently translates from destroy them or something about a cadaver. That's where it's from. Though I still would have recommended against it because it sounds too much like abracadabra. So they based Aramaic off of a Pokemon? Yes, it's strange because many of the spells are based on Latin. Interesting, cool. Yeah, yeah, it makes sense. You know, it's kind of the go to for old languages that people kind of, you know, love you. Well, as I understand, the Romans were supposed to be foundational in setting to magic. And they learned it from the Atlanteans. And they go around with me or is this actually in the books just to be just to work on the same page? I don't know if you're memeing or not. This is Harry Potter. You're going to. I'm half and half. I believe the connection to Latin was in the books, but I don't know about Atlantis. OK, you can't you can't do this when we're talking about Harry Potter because we will wait, wait, did the Atlanteans get it from Pokemon or did the Romans? I assume it started with Pokemon because the Pokemon are of nature itself. Yeah, so everything you all know that. Well, Pokemon, the civilization and there's actually the pre pre apocalypse civilization. I don't know if many people know that. No, I didn't. Well, I didn't know we had a pokey story in here. But that's it's good. That's good. You familiar with the stream of Pokemon? Is a Pokemon is you? Do you know a lot about her if you're a pokey story in? No, all right. I think the best is a cookie belongs to Arcanine. Yes, she makes cookies. Yeah, I think because we're up to much. Mando is next on Alice. Wait a minute. You forgot an incredible entry to the gaming world. I think I work atomic heart, baby. Oh, my money critters. That was a rage fair game. Critters. What a that was a weird one. Yeah, it was a weird one boy. But as I understand, it was lost in translation to English, wasn't it? Yes, it was. Yeah, just absolutely wacky fucking story. Yeah, that make no fucking sense. But what a what an interesting first game for a company? I believe this is one fish's first game. It was they were working on it for years. It was actually a running joke in my E3 streams that we would joke about the atomic heart announcement that they would inevitably do and then not say when they were going to release the game. We it was clear from playing at the immense level of time and effort that went into it, but for focus would be the word you might say is lacking in the game. And the problem these days a whole bunch of different mechanics and instead of just like focusing on a very specific experience that they want to create. And then there was definitely a credible aesthetic. I love the aesthetic. Oh, yeah, it's looked really good. It's a very interesting game to look at and to see. It doesn't feel like it's anything else. But yeah, I'm very curious to see what their next game will be, because I think it was very successful. I think a lot of people were playing it, talking about it. I honestly have no clue, but it did get talked about. We talked about it. It was a yeah, I saw a lot. I saw a lot of the ladies around a lot of people were loving them. Yeah, the whole Soviet futurism angle is really interesting to explore and see. And I didn't finish the game, but I did quite enjoy what I played. And I was laughing a lot like a lot of the dialogue and delivery is just batshit crazy. I was just like, what is the next crazy, goofy thing that's going to happen? Like those it definitely has a story that's too complex for its own good. Because there's a lot of different characters and then there's like espionage and weird stuff like that with a government. And then there's yeah, it's all and then like people people turned into goo and turned into other people. And there's the wristwatch is a guy and stuff like that. And it's all very strange. It needed a very simple story and simple premise. Doesn't your hand betray you at the end? Yeah, because he's actually a dude. Of course, you will hand. It's like a very, very strange. Which is which I think is the same thing that happens like in forespoken. I think the hand betrays you there as well. Isn't there a big start betraying me quit? Yeah, it was a big old sequence. The reference rapture as well in the atomic heart, right? Because you were so disappointed. I remember I watched you while you were playing that pocket. Dude, rapture is so cool, man. It's like a rapture. It's like, fuck off. Oh, God. Yeah, the top of God pissed me off quite a bit in many places. There's a lot of things to appreciate as well, though. It's just that those influences are so clear. The bio shock and everything else. I wish it had more replay value because there's probably a lot of fun bills you could do around with. But there's so many times that we just need to walk to the other place and you guys don't want to fight everything over and over again. Too much TD doesn't. Yeah, it has that like a grand idea with the first time execution kind of vibe to it. Yeah, but like I like I said, I wonder what the good version of this game is an incredible game. But yeah, my favorite part in the game was towards the end when you just run through like multiple rooms and just start killing lots and lots of things like the crazy metal music kicks in. It's like, yeah, cool. I was like, oh, that was awesome. Then it stops and just goes back to now. I was like, no, go back to that. That was awesome. I could use all my abilities. I could use all my guns and I could throw shit at against walls. So we have some of the powers were really fun. I suppose that's the sad part about it is that all of the best stuff, if you put it all together, you probably be really fondly remembering this game, but it's packed in between loads of long and oftentimes mere stuff. It's a focus thing. Like this feels like the game equivalent of when a lot of people say like whenever you finish a script that if you were forced to cut 20 percent of it, it might end up just becoming stronger because you've actually cut the least useful stuff as far as you're concerned, which because it's your thing, it's actually kind of useless stuff to most people. It's like you value all the stuff you put in, of course. But it's like an interesting little rule of thumb and that this game could stand to lose a lot of its content. There's a lot of stuff that doesn't need to be here. Refinement and stuff. But yeah, like I said, it's very clear that people who worked on it really gave a lot of time and effort to it. Yeah, they gave me a shit, and it shows. And Chad, that's like the whole rabbit part when you're dreaming or something while you go crazy or whatever it was. Yeah, that was fucking weird, too. And don't forget the rapey fridge. Oh, yeah. Nora, yeah. I would say probably among the best shop music in a video game. What do you mean for like the UI or the fact that she wants to rape you? No, no, the menu music for the shop is not very good. Yeah, good music. I like that you would go into save rooms and see a little snippet of a cartoon on the TV between a wolf and like a Tom and Jerry sort of thing, but it was a wolf and something. And I felt like he was like a little allegory for something. You know, maybe even if it was just on like a surface level, but like it's like, is this trying to tell me something about the world that everybody inhabits here? Like I just thought that that was such a charming little thing in the in those rooms and it reminds me a bit. And I don't know if anybody else has played at the game Singularity, which had a similar Soviet futurism aesthetic. But a time control in that, right? Yes, you can change the timeline and then you end up fucking it up where the Soviets are the dominant world power. I just remember cool things like this door is locked and you can age the lock so hard that it breaks stuff. There's little interactions like that. Oh, well, atomic heart. That's probably all that we have to say about it. Yeah, as far as I'm concerned. Oh, wow. Oh, awful. Mando season three. Yeah, the thing that kind of changed Mando's reputation forever because a lot of people were very positive about Mando. Really, it was always bad, though. I still want the caveat in that season three is clearly the worst out of the three Mando seasons. I agree. Yes, it's all bad. But season three is particularly memorably bad. Yeah, what was quite striking is the comparisons of cinematography between the three and one. Three was so hastily shot production values. Three looks like all the other crappy Disney Star Wars shows. Yeah, I would have suspected that the second season would have knocked people more like people. It certainly kicked me off. Oh, you OK? Well, so yeah, with us, right? We watched season one and we were distinctly disappointed before we hit the halfway mark. And then by the time we hit the finale, everything is hyper retarded. A lot of people like to not think about it, but that finale, the two part finale, none of it makes any sense. Like the Empire are hyper stupid and they established that the Empire can't shoot straight, which sucks. I like it as a schlocky kind of space Western. But I do agree that it doesn't make a whole lot of sense. And then they took away kind of the schlock element in season two. Season two was clearly the age of Ultron of Disney's products where they were like, we need to use what we have to launch other things and launch. They did. We ended up with so very well. The Book of Boba Fett. Everyone loved the Book of Boba Fett. That launched a thousand ships. Everyone loved the book of Boba Fett is is integral to understanding the beginning of Mando season three. That's when most of the important stuff happens. Not that it actually it's funny. It really is. I'm always be like, why is baby Yoda back? We've talked about this before, but it's still the funniest shit. But they were obviously making season three of Mando. Something went wrong and they stopped from rumors that we've gathered. It's something to do with Pedro Pascal and negotiating his role going forward because he didn't want to be in it anymore in the suit. And so then they rushed Book of Boba Fett to have something to release. And then they shoved what they had of Mandalorian into Book of Boba Fett to flesh it out a bit, even though what did that end up with? Was it seven episodes? Seven. That's not much. And they are not a very thick seven episodes. No. No. Well, just the fact that two episodes of Book of Boba Fett are just Mando episodes that have way higher production value. And it's an actual. There is a fact that across two episodes, Boba Fett doesn't speak a line, right? No, he doesn't say anything on episodes five and six. I don't believe. So crazy primary character. And he's even talked about that tomorrow, Morrison, that that was really sad. Pulled up a nose lizard. And it's like, what is going on? Well, no, that's how we had to get a stick from the magic tree so that it could get like carved into a beaten stick. Yeah. And that was so incredibly important to everything that's happened. The savage barbarian slave tribe that, you know, they're really they're really misunderstood and they're actually quite good people. There was a lot of defense for them. At one point, which was nuts because they're horrifying. Yeah, do a lot of fucked up shit. And then was it the bikers killed them or someone else and they framed the bikers? Oh, yeah, that's right. They ought to follow the good, right? They are the bad guys. What was that? Were they called the syndicate or something like that? I think so. Yeah, I think or something like that, which lame name for the overused. Yeah, they did that. So like it means that it means that Boba Fett just slaughtered a bunch of bikers who like had nothing to do with it and then he doesn't really he doesn't care about that at all. But he cares about as much as I don't know. I don't know. They had a common. They probably smelled bad or something. And then he wrote a rancor and remained to the people at the bar. Yeah, he wrote a rancor. And then that was that. And then the next one after that was good old Obi-Wan Kenobi, which really does feel like the turning point, doesn't it? I feel like it's the worst of them all. I hate it the most. Yeah, I hate it the most, yeah. But I feel like it was because Andor came afterward and was like kind of lost in its wake and the wake of Obi-Wan Kenobi. Yeah, you know, like he ran away and succeeded as baffling. So before I'll say it again, if Andor came out just after Rogue One, everybody would probably have a really positive view of it. Like, yeah, that was cool. I think everyone would have had a lot more patience for it had it come out after Rogue One. Yeah, I think so, because after Obi-Wan Kenobi and that being a massive disappointment, it's hard to convince the average viewer that it would be worth their while to watch a show about one of the characters in a film that let's be real, like a lot of people. I don't know how many people, like, remember a whole lot about Rogue One. If it was like it's kind of remember the last 20 minutes, mainly K2SO. And that's about it. But then they they made a really great show out of it. But it's suffered in the in the wake of Obi-Wan Kenobi, because that was like, yeah. And I thought I can't imagine getting handed that is like that's like a dream that you get to like tell essentially the middle chapter of Obi-Wan's life with all of the resources that you could ever want. You got John Williams to compose your theme for you, you know. You've got all the actors, you've got everything that you could need. And that's what they did. Connecting story between the prequels and the OT. That's some meaningful. Mike Recker involved in the in the production or whatever. I think he was one of the he was executive producer or something. He was involved. That's sad, but it's just and it's like absolutely embarrassing. It's so bad. And I feel like and then I think, I guess, Mando season three coming after all of that. As somehow managed to retain the perception of it was kind of like before the shittier Disney Star Wars shows. And then season three, like just firmly established. Oh, well, yeah, that's not the case anymore. You don't even get better production values anymore. It's all it's all just the sludge. It's just clear that all of their scheduling is caught up to them. They couldn't even make Mando season three. Like the primary shows in in theory movies because all of them have been scuppered away. It's a couple that may make it, but we don't even know about them. And I guess it seems like the one that has the best chance now is that rain movie that they're trying to move as fast as possible. I'm getting that one started. It's just a staggering amount of mismanagement, misallocation of resources and then having no interest or plan in absolutely anything that's happening with Star Wars other than merchandising it, get it on the shelf, whatever it is, as long as it looks recognizable. Now your boy Dave Filoni is in charge. Yep. Oh, don't remind me. It's just it's just what you just want to make sure everyone understands Dave Filoni had a big old finger in the pie of Book of Boba Fett. Don't don't forget that. He had it in all in all of these shows, except for Andor. The only the good one. Yeah, the only one he didn't touch to be the really good one was absolutely embarrassing. It was boring project again where he had all the money he could ever want access to any characters he basically could ask for. And that's what he made. And now he's now he's in charge. Yeah, I'm a promotion and I'm staying out a lot lately. But it's been interesting as well to note some of the way the excuse making has evolved a little bit, because you know, Mando season one comes out and whatever it's its flaws was very popular. And that was around the time people say, oh, Favre and Filoni, they'll save Star Wars. Yeah, the dream team. They'll do it just about keeps up that reputation. Season three comes out and it's it's gradually but quite quickly become known as is a complete incompetent mess. And now you're starting to get people to my comments section saying, well, that was because Filoni came in for Mando season three and he ruined it and also KK because she's she's the evil demon witch creature who just, you know, infests all bad things. She's the spirit of bad in art. So yeah, but like even things where there isn't that much evidence that she is involved, she is now blamed him for that, for that as well. But you actually look at a lot of the plot lines for Mando season three and you find that the whole Mandalorist Jerusalem thing is John Favre exploring his own Jewish roots, which I think he said publicly. If anything, that's the storyline that's had the least outside interference. It was a passion project or a way of converting the juice to sort of that kind of treatment. Well, no, it's the worst Jewish related disaster since when. But yeah, it's a complete mess. And it's but that's all Favre. You can't keep saying, well, Favre will save it, except where it goes. I think people like to think they prefer to think in narratives and patterns. People don't like, I think, disparate information that almost paints a picture that's kind of confusing and unbridled. Inconsistent abilities that are just part of being. Yeah, because I think I think Zack Snyder kind of highlights this perfectly. You have we we've only watched his stuff and been disappointed every time. I think a lot of people have been like, well, that one was OK. I kind of like the ideas here, like what he says here. I don't like how he was treated on this. This one's all right. And then it's just like, have you seen Army of the Dead? And it's like, no, like, oh, yeah, because that would that would like fuck the whole thing up. But Rebel Moon, which we'll get to a bit later, probably Rebel Moon. It's it like collapsed and reversed the narrative, it seems. Like the the pay to that the efforts to paint the picture that he is an artist that should be given freedom and control and that he makes awesome stuff. It's all gone backwards. And I'd say that Dave Filoni is the the the one that happened to it sort of before and after at the same time he's been having this whole arc to thoroughly respected and expected to make the good stuff to now, especially after a soca and whatever he does next. Because let's be honest, we like us at EFAP don't have any faith in Filoni being able to tell great stories. We just don't know. No, I think he's incapable. I think he's actually capable like Rebel Moon. It's it's a bit of a he's showing his ass because he can't show anything else. And so it's just a matter of time. Everyone you have to actually put something up eventually and people are going to see it and we know what you're capable of. Meanwhile, like if they said new Star Wars show coming from Mike Flanagan, we'd be like, oh, shit, OK, I wonder what that's going to look like. Because yeah, instant watch. You know, of course, we would still be worried that it is Disney that's, you know, breathing over his shoulder. Right. But the point being, and he's the kind of guy you hire. That's, you know, that's why I don't think he would want the job, if that were the case, right? I think he really likes the control. Yeah, it's part of what the interest is, like they're willing to actually take a chance on letting a proper storyteller. But it doesn't seem like that. That's like the modus operandi, especially on like, especially on Marvel stuff, but seemingly on Star Wars stuff to get people who don't have, who are not going to really fight back against like whatever sort of mandates we have or know how the system works. Know when they're not allowed to make their own decisions to shut up. They're kind of, you know, so they're the director, but really where the ones in charge, you know, it's all our choices. They're the redirect. And I was going to say, I think the probably the peak example of this confusion would be Jon Favreau. There was a time where I think everyone agrees he was he was awesome. It's like he's making stuff that we like and the Iron Man 2 or anything else you'd reference in that way for whatever flaws it has, they're not his fault. But then they started making the remakes. Well, I was going to say, it makes sense. The picture is drawn, we get it. It's it's it and so whatever we see from him next can fit into that picture and it doesn't, you're like, fuck, what? No, this doesn't how does how would how did you make the Lion King? How are you talking about the Lion King and all the things you did in the Lion King as though it's a it's a monstrosse. How is this possible? You're the guy who made Iron Man 1. You're the guy who made a movie about interference and like the destruction of artwork. How is this happening? And then he makes all the shit with the Star Wars shows and you're like, what the? And so you have to the brain struggles with something. You have to paint a new picture. You just have no choice. There'll be more of that coming. Because I think it's Skeleton Crew and the arc that I did you out this year, I think. Yes, yes. And so there's an interview with Favreau and Favreau and he seemed down together and Skeleton Crew is mentioned. And the problem probably going to be that you've got simultaneously. You do have quite a strong studio lead in this matter in terms of hiring people who won't ask too many questions, but the people at the top don't really have any vision for what they want to do. So nobody really knows what to ask questions about. So on Skeleton Crew, Favreau was talking about how every episode can be completely different. We're bringing in so many different people to take this very different line and all that really passes for Star Wars is that me, Dave and Cathy sit down and we say, does it look like Star Wars? Yeah, it does. Then it's good. So we'll run with it. So Skeleton Crew will be. Yeah, they said that Star Wars, as long as it has the Star Wars aesthetic, then this is this is going to work. As long as we all agree that it's got the Star Wars aesthetic. That's not a good sign, though, is it? Because what you really want is an interview. Don't you like as an interview, isn't it like your first question after it's like, oh, but what about like the actual story and the episode? Then you don't get to come back. You don't get to come back and do an interview. You also know it's nice. There's only one Star Wars project that I consistently hear that doesn't feel like Star Wars is and or and or so interesting. That it's like, yeah, maybe maybe we shouldn't fucking care if they nail the Star Wars feel if they're doing that every time with stuff that we all despise. That's what I say. They're ruining the field. They're flanderizing what Star Wars is. It's like, well, yeah, as long as we got some storm troopers and we got blasters and we got some lightsabers and some people remember lightsabers are fucking worthless. No, you can get stabbed and you're fine. Yes, they've done an incredible job at making light away in and out of universe. Super shit. Like, I never want to see another lightsaber again in my life. Just I mean, crazy. They can be really cool, though. It's just I don't know if it's possible. It's just if and or has like one scene with a lightsaber, it's going to be way more impactful and meaningful than any of the stuff that Disney Star Wars has made. Because it's like you see it in the structure of Andal like the way that they've broken it down into these sort of four major arcs that culminate in one big, I guess you call it action set piece. Each time it's like it's a more impactful set piece because they don't have three per episode. They have one big one after like two and a half episodes of set up. And so imagine what it looks like two seasons and then you finally get like one scene with a lightsaber. That's going to be crazy. Meanwhile, Dave Filoni is turning them into fucking helicopters. In that sense, it doesn't look like Star Wars. Imagine the clown. Imagine more people saw a new that like the people that, you know, have like hyper respect for Flonies like you'd have to just ignore it. But it's nothing new for Star Wars fans. We are fairly used to there being some elements of just really stupid detail in some ancillary story. So I think that's fair. In a lot of ways, they they see it as a feature. It's just not you don't have it too. You don't have it all the time. Just that is so much better as well as like Ador is more like in line with Star Wars just for the fact they made the Empire competent and intimidated. It's like, I know it's crazy to imagine that we wanted to stop them in the first place, guys. Seriously, I think an easy way that Andor could help fix that perception is just have one or two of the characters be aliens. You know, it's it's one of the few things I really take issue with is that there's not enough aliens in Andor. That should be a one or two character, you know, I am an advocate that we don't like try to run away from references to Star Wars just out of the interest of not jangling keys. You have reason for a few people to show up in Andor. And that's OK. I'd be absolutely fine. If not ecstatic to see it handled really well, you know, like a I don't see why we can't have talking show up maybe just as a voice. You can at least have a reference there. But you know, it's like, should we have Vader? It's like, well, at this point, probably in terms of just trying to get the show a bit more help. But like, I have no reason to think that Gilroy wouldn't be able to implement Vader incredibly well. Yeah, I mean, I've got enough confidence in him to have Vader arrive in some capacity, be in calls, have his hologram speaking to our imperial lady character after I forget her name goes without saying implement them into the story, make them meaningful now. And I don't have a worry about that. Andor is so very carefully planned out script wise that I wouldn't worry that we'd ever get like a Mandalorian season three. Yeah, I've got confidence in him. And as I've been late again, so they're probably going to use that time to do more rewriting and revision to the script. Genuinely, people tell me that was like bad news. I'm like, how do you take those good news? Just let's just hope it's good news. Yeah, but yeah, Mando sucked. Remember, remember, remember the video we covered that was using the fact that Gilroy had to research through Wikipedia to get information on Star Wars as an insult? Oh, yeah. The guy who said, yeah, Andor wasn't real star. Is it really Star Wars? Yeah, that guy. Like the creator had to the creator had to Google things about what's in Star Wars. I was like, it's so fucking great that he's doing that. We absolutely want people doing that. Are you great? I mean, crazy, like do that. There's no way I wouldn't visit Wikipedia if I had to write a script for Star Wars and I'm a pretty big Star Wars fan. That's so much to consider. Yeah, so many things to look out. I actually did look at Wikipedia when I was doing the Mando season three videos because there's bits in that. Well, they reference the chain code and the chain code is that thing that lets those really useful tracking fobs in season one work. We don't talk about those. But then you look at what the chain code is, is that actually like established? So I looked it up. There's like one paragraph on it on Wikipedia, which says it's empire tech, which means the chain codes were around at the time when the rebels were hiding from the empire, which means that, of course, they couldn't possibly survive because. Yeah, I've already decided that those are a thing now. And then fuck the world building implications of adding that to Star Wars. Yeah, remember when talking said, where is the hidden rebel base? Oh, let's go and use the tracking fobs. Yeah, let's just use these tracking fobs, these insanely overpowered ways to detect anyone in the galaxy in their location. It makes Mando white cool that when he uses a white point instead of actually, oh, no, oh, I had a weird noise. Don't worry. It's yeah, it's way cooler that he uses a white point instead of actually like tracking him down like a bouncy hunter by asking questions and investigating and doing all those sorts of things. It's the crappiest fucking thing ever. It goes beep, beep in a universe. Like, what are you? How are you? How are you figuring anything out with that? Even hot and cold. Walk up to every random person in the bar and press it to them to see if it beeps a little faster. That was definitely a like, it's sci-fi. Don't think about it. You're like, why should mean I should? It should encourage me to think about it. You think I like, by the way, we spend most of the time looking at Google Maps constantly on their phone as they're like bumping in the shit up like I just pay attention. I just follow the beeps. That's all I'm doing. Tracking fobs is my only real problem in season one. Oh, no, no, it's the it's the horrific plot armor insanely retarded characters and awful blots as well. But yeah, they're under the umbrella, I guess. Yes. But I was going to say, it's funny that we spent all of our time talking about Mando season three, not talking about Mando season three. All the stuff around it. Well, the point I wanted to make was that it was less to talk about in terms of the content of it, because everyone agrees that shit is more so what it represents by coming out, which was the fall of like Fallone and Favre's reputation. That's certainly the beginning of it, at least like not for us, but for everyone else. It's like, wait a minute. Madeleine's supposed to be amazing. This is an amazing at all. And then you combo it with Ahsoka. It's like a one, two punch of just wait a minute. There's nothing good from Disney Star Wars anymore. And it's important going forward as well, because, you know, one of the planned three films is supposed to be the big wrap up for Loniverse, which is supposed to take, you know, the storylines of Ahsoka and of Mando and give them a big cinematic finale. But if Mando three, which is still, you know, Mando is supposed to be Disney plus is like premiered Star Wars offering. If even that's now complete dog shit, and most people understand that that's the case, is there even going to be that film anymore? Like, can you possibly justify spending hundreds of billions of dollars on something no one will watch? Oh, yes, you can because Ahsoka exists. But will they do it again? Maybe not. I don't know. Oh, that's maybe. If this was a couple of years ago, I'd say, yeah, of course, they're making a season two. But now I got my doubts. We talked about how like go back to the 2000s and shows would get canceled, even if they were successful, because like you have to be really strong. These days, though, so it's all about with Mel. STD or Star Trek Discovery. It's the fifth or sixth season or something. It's like nobody is this year, and it's the last one. Absolutely fucking nuts. They got five seasons. It's like, what the hell? It's like one of those shows I hear the name of. So like, wait, that's still going. I thought it was like a one off one off season because I feel like no one is talking about that one. Like it's not. I know it's a stupid world. We're in with so many TV shows get made and they get other seasons when it's just like, there's no way there should be a positive investment. This is the gamble on this. Hello, season two, Velma season two. Velma season two. They're like Apple TV. There's like a lot of stuff on Apple TV that I hear about, but then I never hear about that get like multiple. Well, they're going to hear about something from Apple TV in this episode. Yes, that's right. Well, don't they get like contracted for multiple seasons of stuff? Yeah, that's probably why I feel like this happened sometimes. Well, and then the first season comes out and they're like, fuck, we bought how much of this? Yeah, and then you have Rick and Morty because they had to make like nine seasons. They agree to a nine season deal. And remember, we talked about like a lot of people would consider is like, yeah, well, it's a sure thing. Right. That's why they put the money in. It's like, it seems like it's more risky now than ever. Like a secret invasion type thing. Imagine invested in someone like that. But like, this is a huge gamble. Like, how could it be as huge gamblers as it is? Look at the landscape. You really want to make a really terrible TV show that everyone hates that's really expensive on a show that's on a service that not enough people are engaging with that's bleeding numbers constantly. I just like, I don't know. It probably should be Amanda season three. That made like more sense. Like Star Trek Discovery is probably the good example of that because it really is the show from the early stages of streaming growth. So I think season one is a Netflix only thing. But when Paramount starts to create its own streaming service that you know, it's willing to do battle with Netflix ever taking Star Trek Discovery off of Netflix and having it exclusively on Paramount Plus. But there's a, the reason they're doing that is not because the show itself is any good. It's because it has Star Trek in the name. And so people will look at that and say, oh, look, that new streaming service has all the Star Trek things. I like Star Trek. I'm going to go check it out. And the hope is they'll, they'll subscribe and they'll stick around and find something else to watch except Star Trek Discovery. So the value in the property wasn't ever really the quality of the art because it doesn't exist in Star Trek Discovery. It was all in the name recognition. But that's kind of beyond, we're beyond that point now. You know, Paramount Plus is not doing particularly well. Anyway, the show is recognized to be shit and Star Trek as a brand has kind of failed. And I think something similar is probably at play with Star Wars on Disney Plus and Marvel as well. There's a reason they've put all this money in and it's not to get the money back immediately. It's to get the subscribers in who in theory will bring the money in long term. But that's evidently not working out too well. Because you need to, you actually need to support the content. You can't just say, hey, look, we've got all of these IPs. Come watch them. If all of the IPs have just been reduced to dirt, what's the point in sticking around for that? I mean, like some people mentioned like, well, what about Arcane and Invincible? It's like, those are normal. Those are shows that people watched enjoyed thoroughly, probably brought in a bunch of new subscribers who stimulate culturally, culturally. Yeah. And then they get told successful. Okay. You've got a second season now. And we're seeing outside of their fandoms as well. Yeah. I mean, Arcane still has the struggle these days. People being like, that's the League of Legends show. Why would I watch a League of Legends show? It's like, uh... Stop! Do it! We said the same thing. This is really, really good. Oh, it's awesome. And they released this teaser for season two and it's like, don't do that. We're so far away from season two. Don't tease it. I didn't even click on it. I'm like, nope. I'm just... It'll get here when it gets here. I thought I wasn't going to click on it, but then I did. Sorry. I won't be able to resist any and all teasers and trailers. I'll be... Yeah. I mean, I'm going to walk into that shit cold. I can't walk into it cold. I know too much about the... Not only the lore it's going to be adapting from and the future of certain characters, but they're even... You know, Mel's mum in the show. The last... I forgot her name. Ambassador Medad, or I think is what she'd be called. Yeah. She's being added into all of the new characters. It's like, oh, so she's going to be in season two then. Big time. Yeah, I expected. That's not a surprise to me. I would... I'd be more surprised if she wasn't in season two. No, big time. Of course she'll be in season two, but she's going to be a significant character at this point if she's going to be a full-on character in League of Legends. Champion, yeah. Yeah. No speculation on Arcane yet. Okay, it's too early, but I'd love to because... Oh, exciting. I was actually going to say, by the way, in the middle of our bad-dough coverage we did a complete breakdown of Jurassic Park. That was fun. That was very fun. I was... it was a delight to watch that movie again. And see and appreciate all that they did. That movie holds up. We need to do it with more stuff, I think, with just the greats. Explain it, because we have this problem of a lot of people saying, like, you know, film is just as good as it always was. And it's like, oh, no. Like, we can go over how exactly. And someone again might be like, oh, so there's no good feels like blockbuster, mainstream, plenty of millions of dollars put into it. And it was one of the most amazing films of its kind, and still is. Jurassic Park is still the best Jurassic film, and it's never going to be defeated by the looks of things. No. So, you know, it is fun to do that. Just look into the past and be like, all right, let's give it the old scrutinization. Because a lot of people do say, like, scrutinize any movie and it falls apart. And we're still the people who are like, no. So scrutinize some of them and they get better. That's not actually true. Interesting. Hell yeah. Talking about, like, the animations being so important to making the dinosaurs viable, because they obviously will be limited somewhat by their time of fidelity. But that and Lord of the Rings just nailing their respective special effects and stuff. We mentioned a bit of Lord of the Rings, the close we get to the end of going through this year, as well. Mm-hmm. Yeah, Man of Seasons 3 was really awful. And I can't help but think about the Lizzo and Jack Black episode as being the one where everyone was like, that's it. It's not even about... Floyd was in that episode too. Don't forget him. Not even about whether I liked her or anything. It's just that the whole world was like, fuck. It's over. It's all over. Lizzo's in Star Wars. It's all over for her. It's not even the runaway worst episode, because, like, the suddenly pterodactyl one probably comes pretty close in terms of its quality. Oh, suddenly pterodactyl was really... It's really funny, though. Oh, do you remember as well that they keep adding new flashbacks that add absolutely nothing to the story of Order 66? They keep going back. They're like, look, Order 66. You're like, yeah? They're like, yeah, you like that. They've got the well of one emotionally resonant moment that they can draw upon that we haven't seen the full extent of, so... It's so cringy. They keep showing Jedi getting killed and then Jedi that made it. And it's like, Baby Yoda got out because Jaja being saved her. You're like, I don't know what that means. I'm convinced that Order 66 never actually happened. It does diminish it, if you ever... Absolutely. Yeah, when more Jedi there are running around, the least impactful it is. It's almost like a really local event now that actually most of the Jedi just ran away from. Or they weren't there at the time. But that's another of Philoni's problems, is how do we fix this new problem? There's another Jedi they also survived Order 66. And if that one didn't survive, we can go back into the world between worlds and pull them through time. So they're back as well. It actually predates Disney too because they were doing it with the Force Unleashed games. They kept introducing more and more Jedi who also survived. I think back then it was more considered like tolerable. Especially because it's the one that's mainstream. But yeah, the more you add, the more intolerable it gets, the more you look to the better of like, why are we doing this? When was the last story they told that were actually stuck with me? Holy shit. Suggestion 66, as I was gonna say. It's a PSYOP 66. Do you guys think Mando season two is worth checking out? No. I don't think any of them was checking out. Oh, bad. There are other shows you should spend your time on before them. Yeah. I mean, I watched the first half of Mando season one and I tuned out just because for one, it felt like there was no long-term narrative hook. The most they imply is that there's gonna be something to do with his like history, you know, where did he come from and what's his ultimate value within the war that happened and what's his deal with droids. All that stuff just petered out. Like he ran out of gas and though they just... Right, yeah. Because I was wondering. Sometimes it was. Now it's just not consistent. Maybe I'm not being fair to it. You know, I just don't remember there being any kind of hook with that. No, yeah. What got people hooked, I think, was the fact that it sounded really interesting. I think on paper, in an office, if you said he's a victim of the Clone Wars, he didn't necessarily go for any side, but it was the droids, the CIS that wiped out his family and he was found by the Mandalore and it's like, that sounds... There's loads we can do with that. Holy shit. And the most we got as of recent, I think, was the mechanic making fun of him for it. First you hate droids, now you love them. Right, yeah. Okay. In season one, as soon as I saw this pattern of like, you know, they're on the run, baby Yoda's kidnapped, Mando goes and saves him, he gets in trouble, baby Yoda uses force powers to escape and then it started, they got to this planet and then there's enemies coming and it's like, oh, we're just doing this again. Like I felt like it was just gonna keep doing that over and over. And then I got the sense like, we're just filling screen time here, I guess. Like I just, yeah. That shows where a lot of things happen and nothing happens. Yeah. Right, yeah. I think that's part of what killed it, too, is people were like, wow, three seasons. What are we doing in total? I was like, found the baby. What's about it? Went for a swim. And somehow it came back again. Yeah, a lot of it is like, the story progresses and then comes back, story progresses comes back. So there's really overall progress that doesn't feel it's been made at all. And it's funny because you'd be like, they reclaimed Mandalore. And you're like, okay. I guess that means somebody just somehow never was checked before this time. They only now bother to do. Again, it's the nature in which it occurs that makes it feel completely meaningless. It's so weird. There's so many mechanics that don't work. And then, you know, the empire led by Gus being wiped out three times is just getting boring. But here he comes again with a big old army. This one's even better than before. Whoa. And then they're all gone. Yep. There you go. But Gettling Man died. That was sad. First season army of stormtroopers with a bunch of special troopers. Season two army of robots. Like with, what was it? The vibranium armor. Season three was his Mandalorian stormtroopers that all had best. It's just, it's so tiring. It's all fucking tiring. You can't ever win. And every time we meet him and Mando, he's like, I hate you Mando. Fuck you. You get him in the way of my plans. Yeah. It doesn't fit with anything else either. Cause you know, Moff Gideon's grand secret plan is that he's been taking the blood from Grogu to create four sensitive clones of himself, which Sky says, well, okay. So the force is tied to your bloodline then. Is it? And then Filoni comes along with the slogan. He's like, now you just have to train. Everyone can use it at a different point having bloodlines. I'm glad we're really learning a lot about the world building. Definitely come to understand. It's like, man, I've never wanted to know absolutely fucking nothing about their opinions on how everything works in the Star Wars universe. Just, just, just don't, just don't. Have you a little Mando running around in space, ship shooting things? Fine. I remember the cope about his Starship. This is actually the perfect starship. No, it's not. Oh yeah, that was, yeah, that was that cart's ladder. It's destroyed. Then he gets a fucking tour. It's certainly this perfect form, yeah. It's so perfect that when in season three, when he has to land on the planet and drop the astromech droid, they have to just cut the camera away because there's no way of getting the droid out from the ship. They knew that. Yeah, Mando in season one starts with the show showing us that he transports the bounty people, like a... Yeah, he had a mini cryo-freezing chamber. A cryo-freezing, yeah. They store his bounties in the holes, yeah. It's over there. He has all kinds of stuff lying around and has sometimes... He's a toiler. And I was like, now we have this one... Get a proof shoot. Yeah, we have one, too. Yeah, now we have this little starfight, not even starfighter, a little fighter jet in space. That would legitimately be... Like, I'm not that claustrophobic, but I'd be like, man, it's been days and I've been sitting in this. I have so much shit in my pants right now and I've put it many times. Do you make jokes about how the baby's just pooping and pooping the whole slot just filled with poop? And the baby's shitting everywhere. Oh, my God. Sorry, Grogo, I have to reject you. And just poop goes in space. The show would be better if he did that. Yeah, but wasn't it funny when he ate all these endangered species eggs? That was really funny. No, don't talk about that. That was weird. That was so weird. Yeah, awesome. I thought it was so funny or something. He kept doing it. Yeah. Are we going Mando season four? Is that happening soon? I don't know. I actually don't know if that's on the cards. Not soon, definitely not. Not soon. I don't know. Is it renewed for a fourth season? I don't know if it's got a fourth season. It's not that. What would? It's probably not about Mando then anymore. Highly anticipated, but not officially confirmed. Scripts have been completed with Karson's crew. Simply awaiting the green light from Lucasfilm and Disney. Interesting. Well, they're not being green lit, then. It doesn't exist yet. Yeah. It's where we're in. Probably trying to figure out what they feel they're going to do next. I don't believe scripts have been completed before they've even green lit. It's like, you guys don't write scripts. You're lying to me. I don't know about that. Um, hello. Uh-oh. Well, season three's ending sets up major New Republic storylines for season four. Shut up. That's it. Shut up major New Republic storylines. Oh, we can't wait to see this. This article says, like, looking forward to seeing the Imperial Shadow Council be further fleshed out and did Jarin hunting down their members. What are you talking about? Why would that even happen? When you say further fleshed out, kind of implies they've been fleshed out. And I have. Of course. Is it not? God damn. Oh, and they said it could very well coincide with Grand Admiral Thrawn's resurgence. I don't even. Well, that's going to be the thing. They have to wait for that, right? They have to, Soka season two has to come out. And if it does, assuming it does, Thrawn is back. Mando comes out of retirement, his latest retirement, and then rejoins the fray or something. That's the logical way the plot would progress. But that does then require that you have to wait for a Soka. By the way, we should probably wait to talk about it later. But if Thrawn shows up again and he's a clown again, it's going to absolutely annihilate his reputation as a character. He's got, of course, he's going to be a clown again. Disney cannot write villains. They can't write anyone competent. Everyone in these Disney shows, it's the big common thread is that everyone's a retard. Everyone is incredibly stupid. Yeah. These are all clown universes where everyone's a fool. Soka season two is that you accidentally hyperspace is back into a whale. And now that was all part of the plan, all part of the plan. It was had to be half blown off. I always just saying, wait, there's a way to spin this. Hang on. Actually, this is a win. Finally, my way lost program kicked in. Yeah, that's that's the half update for Star Wars. We'll get to the other half near the end of the year. Sure. So his next up would be Resident Evil 4, right? That was March. Well, in terms of how we covered stuff, I know we kind of mentioned it, but this is when we actually covered Shazam, Fury of the Gods. What a fucking awesome film that I don't know if anyone actually remembered the plot of it all or talked about it. There was a dragon or something. There was a dragon. There was a Lucy Liu. We already talk about this or. Did you know what I just said or? No, I said it was mentioned, but that we didn't actually talk about it being Shazam, Fury of the Gods. It's like position and failing in DC and everything. But, you know, the actual film itself being, I mean, do you remember the Wonder Woman cameo? It was almost as funny as the one in the flash. That's right. Did she resurrect Shazam? Who resurrected Shazam? I can't remember. I think it was her. That was her, right? Yeah, she do that. I've genuinely blocked that on my mind. Wonder Woman magic. I forgot. Wonder Woman magic. Yeah, well, the film itself was, the plot line was the guy from the first one that definitely died is back. And he, the old wizard man and the sister, the daughters of Atlas is what they were, the bad guys. Yes. Yeah. They were mad and they were gonna destroy the world somehow. Shazam had to stop him with his Shazam family. Family power. Rachel Zegler was in it before we knew, before we knew Rachel Zegler was, she was, she was one of the sisters in that. Isn't that crazy? She's pretty cringe, but in the film, she had like the powers to move the entire world at will, which was called problems, as you can imagine. Shazam died and then they brought him back and then he's not gonna be in any more DC stuff. Don't worry, he's still with us. It's like the weird things, like this is gonna be over instead of giving him this heroic death. They're just, no, we're gonna bring him back. Why? You're not gonna do anything anymore. Well, yeah, it's dead, it's over. It's all over, so it's awkward. And then, yeah, the film was almost completely ignored by the very companies that were meant to promote it. They focused on the flash instead, so they just, they were just like, let Shazam die. It was never gonna be successful. To the chagrin of good old Zachary Levi, poor guy, had to, I think he put, didn't he put out a couple of cringe videos, one of them being like, go watch Shazam, don't watch John Wick, it's dead or something like that. I mean, pick your poison at that point, right? I mean, you'd rather watch Shazam or John Wick. I think John Wick's better than Shazam. Probably, yeah. There's some action in John Wick that's like, oh. There you go, he's always got a bullet's came out. That's pretty, that's a... That works. You can watch him fall down the stairs for two minutes, that's funny. I mean, it happens in John Wick 4. Best action scene I've ever seen in my life. Correct, you won't believe it. It is unbelievable, Eisen, I cannot believe it. I can't believe that happens, yeah. It is, it is incredible. Anyway. He's like his Kevlar weave suit. Well, funnily enough as well, we could say that John Wick 4 came out soon after we covered that as well. Hyper disappointing once again, because it's the full-on sequel itists has set in for that franchise. Oh yeah. To the point where people forget that the first one was even remotely serious. The franchise is this way and will always be this way. It's like, I hate it when that happens, when enough entries come in. It's like, I'm waiting for it to happen with Star Wars, where people will forget the OT even existed. Hopefully that never happens, because the OT is so important, culturally. Speaking of forgetting things existed, there was another film that came out, I think the same day as Shazam, 65. Anyone remember that film? Oh, we, I didn't see it, but yeah. I know you're talking about it. We've covered 65, well, we're getting there. We still gotta talk about a few other things. Wait, were you there? Yeah, a little bit too, was on the EFAP. I think you're on one. That's the only reason I remember that film. You're welcome. Yeah, don't worry, we'll get to, we'll do our best to keep chronological. We're nailing it so far, because. Yes, we're up to much, and we're three hours in. Nailing it, like I said. John Wick, I was gonna say, is a John Wick 4. There's not much to say, you know, you guys know how we feel about it. John Wick 3 and 2, it's all the same. There's more unlimited assassins, and people get excited to go after John Wick, because there's more money now, even though it's just more, a lot of money. And they're like, yeah, now we're going after them, then they all get killed. He gets run over by 17 cars, and then falls down some stairs. It's like four minutes to go up, I take seven, but still makes it. And I get shot, and this time he's dead, for realsies, for realsies. Yeah, he dies like five times in that film. And then doesn't die, because they need more films. And then he gets shot. That was a little, like, hyper cringe to me, that they didn't want to confirm a John Wick 5 until they made enough money that they were like, yes. And it's like, oh, so is he dead? It's like, no, just wait a sec, and yeah, he's not dead. Because people consider it a huge spoiler to announce that he was supposed to be dead at the end of the film, but I was just like, he's not gonna die? Why would he die? It's just gonna bring him back. It's gonna bring him back. They almost have been gradually making more and more and more and more and more money. And when that happens, you have a billion fucking sequels. They'll keep making them until they stop making money. And they'll keep getting to exist in this fun world where they get regarded as being way better than they are. Not just regarded as like, oh, well, they're, you know, fun action movies, but they're stupid, but regarded as being genuinely quality, and that they have like stories worth telling. Fucking annoying. Yeah, like if you do a really good finale to something, obviously it's gonna make a shit ton of money, but it's like, it's the end, right? But the executives aren't gonna see it that way. It's like, where's the next one? Like, so you need to have like creators who are willing to put their foot down. They're like, no, the story's done now, okay? Yeah, like we're not doing it anymore. Like there needs to be more of that. Like creators say, no. Oh, it'd be awesome if there was, man. There really would be. Because I was actually gonna say, I worry for extraction, it would have like the same trajectory, but two has managed to maintain the serious tone for a little longer and taking things. Which is child to a child. Oh yeah, yeah. Because extraction is better consistent quality than John Wick. But I would say it has gotten more ridiculous. It's like still in control, and hopefully extraction three, because I don't see why they wouldn't make 10 of these fucking movies at this point. I'm hoping that Chris Hemsworth can even be a guiding hand in terms of like, don't let us thaw this. Let us please. And this is a serious thing. We need to keep this, you know, we can't go ridiculous. Because I've been to those deep, dark places. Yes. Attraction two felt like sort of like a mostly appropriate ramping up of things. Yeah. It's the next step after this that concerns me. Because I feel like we've gone about as big as we need to go. Yeah, the level. That was fucking amazing. The action in distraction two is phenomenal. There's a couple of times, and some people mentioned in chat, which ones they are. We were like, oh, okay, okay, calm down and just get a little silly. Just come back to reality. We're all right. Go see extraction two, it's good. Hell yeah, easy recommendation. We didn't cover that, but we did mention very, very strong, check it out, stuff. Which yeah, I think takes us to RE4 Remake. That was awesome. Yo. We played the fuck out of that game. It was pretty cool. It's pretty cool. My favorite game this year, you know. Very, very ecstatically happy as long time Resident Evil 4 fan. After you play that game about a thousand times and then you play the remake, you can do a hell of a lot of appreciating about all the references and how they've changed things and updated everything. But as we said, as a stark difference to Dead Space, these two games coexist. This is two very different experiences. They're different. Yeah. I'll definitely play the original one and the original remaster. Yeah. Would you prefer, you can go ahead, Metal. I just want to say, especially the aiming works very differently. And I think I actually enjoy the one and the first one better because it's more consistent and reliable. Yes. Yeah. We had a whole rant about that. Yeah, I mean, we did a whole, I mean, you made the whole challenge thing going on, doing the two dudes, the chainsaw dudes in the beginning on super hard difficulty. So you just get all the resources and the amount of RNG you encounter in that place alone. We do the same thing over and over again. There's this one villager you can shoot. Sometimes you kill him in two shots. Sometimes three, sometimes it's five. Sometimes he staggers, sometimes he doesn't. And you can't do the whole shoot him in the leg and kick him away. That doesn't work as consistently anymore. Yeah, because it's, yeah, there's a bit of RNG. Because he is so used from the original ones like shoot him in the leg, kick him away. Preferably, there's like five zombies around me or villagers. And I kick them all and it's like, yeah, and I can get free damage with my knife. But no, knives are now with, they can break and you have to repair them or find new ones. It's like, it's very different experiences and they're both fun. They're both very fun. And they're both fun. Like the Resident Evil 4 remake is good, but I feel like it's the things like that. Like there's no laser sight aiming for, it's only for like one or two guns that you can have the laser sight for, which is I think already a big misstep. And one of them is a pre-order gun, I'm pretty sure. Oh yeah, there was that, yeah. Yeah. But yeah, we had loads of conversations about like the red dot sights. And yeah, they don't, we kind of like lucky to get what we got in the original Resident Evil 4 for how consistent they make everything. Because I think a lot of games think that you don't want it to be too consistent because it's too easy to exploit. Be like, oh no, we don't want to make it so that you always know exactly when all the enemy's weaknesses show up and when they're all easy to do this that and the other thing with. And it's like, no, we actually really love that though. Yeah, that means that I'm learning the game systems and I'm improving. Like this is what you want to have happen. The fact that I'm a God at the first Resident Evil is the result of a lot of experience and time with the game and learning about the mechanics and giving a shit. And something we only realized later on is it's either pre-order the deluxe edition gives you more resources and you can't turn it off. You remember that, Mewpley? Yeah. You have more dangly bits on trees and stuff. You shoot them down, you get more resources and you can't turn it off. In the game, more resources spawn? Yes, yes. Oh, shit. I must have forgotten about you guys talking about that. Geez, fuck that. Yeah, it's a bit annoying. I mean, it's nice to have if you have it, but if you don't, I didn't know about this. Yeah, I've never known about that happening in a game before where in, like normally you just get like a little goodie bag at the beginning. There you go. Exactly, yeah. Or it deposits some cash into your account. You get a very good... It's not like in the game more stuff spawns. You get a very good shotgun with the deluxe addition as well. Yes, you do. Yeah, the little buddy one that takes it. There's a lot of damage. It's very, very good. But yeah, there's a lot of choices. We were like, why'd you do that? Boo, but then there was a hell of a lot of choices. We were like, oh, this is fucking cool. Exactly. Yeah, it's weird that they did a cool little thing with the rewards from the shooting gallery, given your character bonuses. It's like, oh, this is a cool idea. And then you're like, oh, but they're perfectly unbalanced and they're orangey. Yeah, so I was like, oh, man, you tried. Some that are exceptionally good that change your actual like gameplay almost. And then some that don't matter at all. Some are useless and some are broken. The pre-order shotguns laughably small too in terms of grid space. Which is super important, yeah. Changes everything. Yeah. Right, like relative to the base shotgun that you just get in the game like near the beginning, it's like way bigger. And it stays reliable for a very long time in the game as well. So it's kind of overpowered, but kind of it is overpowered. It's literally one by four, one by five. Like the fact that it's just occupies a single row is ridiculous. Well, it was really neat. Yeah, we bitch a little bit, but I think it's just because the game is so, it really is an amazing game. It looks great, it feels great to play. It has a lot of respect for the original game. But it's just those little things that kind of, they disappoint us because of how good the rest of it is. Definitely recommend it. But I lost this, I think I asked everybody when we did our original E-Fact, but do you prefer this or the Dead Space remake? I, man, I can't remember what I would have said back then. I can't remember what I said back then either. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know what I would say. I really, really enjoyed both games. I definitely love them both, yeah. I think I prefer the Dead Space remake. I want to say that myself. I think, okay. I want to agree with that sentiment. Mainly I think because of the fact of all the things we just highlighted, meanwhile the Dead Space remake, I can't remember taking issue with much. I'd have to think about things I don't like. I think our biggest complaints with it were some story and character changes. Yeah. The game's stories and characters, I think, are in general better, but there are some that just, I don't think it's quite the same. I think I would want to more frequently replay Resident Evil 4, but with Dead Space. It's like, I want to forget about it for maybe a year or two, and then go back to it and really savor the replay. Yeah, I don't really want to say which one I prefer over the other. Yeah, fair, they're both. I could totally reasonable choices. Did you, I assume you did a video on it, Protrition? On Resident Evil? No. Resident 4 Remake? I did very few videos this year. Oh my God. How could you not? I assumed, I just assumed everybody's played and loved Resident Evil 4 and thus played the remake too. What you have to understand is I checked out like the AAA Space in 2016 and kind of just never checked back in. I don't really play that many AAA games anymore, especially remakes. Yeah, I know what you mean. I heard it was good, but it's a remake and I don't have a favorable opinion towards remaking games, so. We don't generally either, but these two are legitimately really good. Surprised by them both. Really good, yeah. I would highly recommend both of these games. Yeah, and it was so wild to get them so close together too, it was just like, damn. That was strange. They make an excellent pair. Both just awesome action horror from a bygone era. And I can't wait to see if they actually remake Resident Evil 5. That would be funny. That is a landmine of a game in every way possible. Mechanics, the co-op, the meta. He has to, he has to say goodbye with saturation. Well, they won't have the voice actor anymore, right? They'll have to get the other guy. Yeah, but you don't wanna be funny to see another guy try and do the same. I think we'll be disappointed probably. Especially if they go like serious and he's like, Chris. You're like, no, no, it can't be like that. It's gonna be like, Chris. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I'm a volcano, Chris. Do you think they should preserve how over the top Wesker was in Resident Evil 5? Yes. Yes. I feel like it is just Wesker, you know. Absolutely. But hey, maybe like, well, it's funny that I haven't played Resident Evil 5. Like, I just really like it. It's an experience. Yeah, it's so fucking over the top. The end of that game is hilarious. Love it. That part of me wants to see that remastered and have that be intact. What punching a boulder into the, and then blowing him up with multiple rocket launches while he's in the world, you know. They kept a couple of the absolutely absurd camsha in the remake. So I hope they would be able to recognize the stuff that the fans absolutely want to see, you know. I mean, you probably get that impression with four rides. I mean, the cart chase on the Resident Evil 5 remake, right? The one thing they didn't keep, that people were like, oh, was the Salazar statue? Well, not Salazar, yeah. They had one in there, but it was just a... Reference, yeah. It was just a prop in that, yeah, it wasn't, you know. But they kept, they did a really cool version of the cart ride, so that was... They did, it was really awesome. Well, I think they're actively remaking something, whether it's RE5 or Code Veronica or something. They are, they got something cooking. The sad thing is, RE5 is a bit of a gamble remaking that one. There's so many things they're gonna have to account for that's gonna make it... I don't know if I would, yeah. RE4... It knows itself to a remaster in the way that 4 does. Yeah, RE4 is so straightforward to remake compared, because 5s, you have a serious set of discussions for basically every element of whether or not you're keeping anything in that game. I don't mean that from a point of view of good or bad. The whole second half of that game is a minefield, and the third act is, it sucks. So it's gonna be, yeah, the whole Ouroboro stuff and... But Code Veronica acts sort of, like I think from a residual standpoint, like it's probably safer than we make that. What if they remade Resident Evil 1 again, but the shoulder third person? I would really like that. They already remade it, right? Are they remastered it? That's what I'm saying, we make it again, because they did the remake with the same POV. I don't think they wouldn't want to do that. I don't think they will. No, I was floating it there. I kind of want to be just maybe at this point, like I have confidence too for you to make your own. Well, I mean, I would prefer it if they made like new Resident Evil games with the over-the-shoulder thing than the first person ones. Yeah, I'd be a fan with that. Because we're going to be getting Resiable. Are we on 9 next? Yeah, 9 is next. And I want 9 to have over-the-shoulder. And give me Chris or Leon. Don't give me some fucking loser or Jill. No, Ethan Winters, yeah. But he's dead, so he's dead and gone. That won't stop him. He went to the place where it's always very dark. That would be like one of the lads. Chris, Leon, Jill, Claire, all of those guys, not fucking Ethan Winters. I want to play Salazar. He's like Chucky. Oh, maybe maybe it should be maybe it should be that Wesker has survived and he has to claw his way out of the volcano. And this is his spirit quest or something. Yeah, he's like Boba Fett. He had to get out of hell. Oh, he has to find a way out of hell, like. Oh, yeah, it's like a reverse Dante's Inferno. Yeah. Have Wesker get out of hell. The point is, I got confidence in him. Like, resident village sucked. I hate village. So I'm really hoping that, you know, these guys can try something new. Well, yeah, it'd be nice. That would then take us to Mario Tetris in 65. Mario is about to say, yeah. Tetris, one of my favorite movies of the year. It's a really good movie. Really solid, easy, like, we recommend. We'll probably talk about the latter too much faster. Tetris was awesome. It was a really cool, unique movie. It's almost, it's in the pantheon, I guess, of video game re-adaptations. That was vaguely kind of a store of a historical. There are people who think of the emoji movie when you reference Tetris and you're like, oh, God, that's not at all the impression. No, it's not like pixels. No, it's a movie made by people who care. Don't you worry. It is a good movie with a very interesting premise that's like a historical drama, kind of, not adventure, but it's an autobiography movie. Yeah, like an adventure historical drama that centered around the history of Tetris. It's a story that on its face should be like, huh, OK, because it's just how did they get the rights for Tetris for Game Boy? Like, that's basically how they get the game rights for it. But then it's like, well, no, it's a story about creativity. And the idea of that great art will invariably sort of break through any and all cultural, political bounds. Like a great experience will reach everybody universally. And that it's important that the people who create these things get the attention and credit they deserve. Yeah, behind the games that are iconic. Yeah, it's really cool as a way of and then having that frame through just what on its face would seem like a pretty boring story, but it's made very entertaining and interesting through like its structure and a lot of the gags and jokes that it injects in there. It's a really fun movie. It's really good. That's like an easy recommend. One of my favorite movies of the year. Yeah, yeah. And to easy what you guys are saying, I feel like the term video game adaptation, you can't really map on to that movie because I feel like I didn't throw up a little when you said that. But what? Why we've had good video game adaptations. I know that's why I didn't throw up all the way. We're cleansing ourselves. Tetris, Tetris, Tetris, Tetris, Tetris, Tetris helps the fight. OK. And then a movie gets made about that story. But Tetris doesn't really have a story, except for some Tetris like games on the end. Yeah, you played all the visions super Tetris seven sixty three alien pieces that are coming to clear our lights. That's why rags referencing pixels is accurate. Like they could have done that. They could have made a really cringe like, oh, the Tetris aliens are coming to get us out of Sandler. But that's what they do. They would do it. It's now I'm just thinking about the joke from Futurama building that building in Tetris. Like, no, wait, don't put that there. Drops the light and clears four players. You know, the space made a shit in Futurama, right? Oh, yeah, that's really funny. You could see them making a movie like that. It'd be like, oh, well, that would be OK, because that was really funny. But then pixels. I was about to say, yeah, I'm also going for the pixel side of things. But yeah, the reason I bring all of that up is to try and dispel any sense that Tetris is anything like any of that. It's like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. You should check it out. Good movie. Don't get put off by the actual movie with characters and emotion in the story. To be honest, I would expect it to not have done that well in terms of engagement, probably, unfortunately. I think it's just a hard tell, you know, like how do you convey what a Tetris movie is? Because I think if you say to somebody, yeah, it's a Tetris movie. I don't even know where they would begin, like where their mind would first go to it, what that means. Tetris is not even possible. And I think it would be pretty far down the line of it's like the origin story of Tetris. That's what it is, the game in real life. It's like the oregano story. And I'm like, what, what do you mean? And 65 was awful. Sixty five. I forgot that we watched sixty five Adam Driver. We'll take long to talk about it. It was like one of the most forgettable and shittiest awful movies ever. Never. No, I remember about that movie. It sucked totally. What? Me seeing the trailer last year when I was over here. That's that's all I've seen of that movie. It was just Adam Driver was going to fight dinosaurs. He's like, OK, and then you watch and you're like, wow. Is it like procedurally generated dinosaurs that stick the head of a T-Rex on the body of whatever the fuck. And that's a dinosaur. They can't even be bothered to pick up like some kid's book and have an actual dinosaur in the film at any point. No, it's books, children's books have better stories than sixty five. Oh, yeah. You know, what's wacky is the girl in that film plays young Ahsoka in that episode of Ahsoka and she's in the Bobby movie. She's a couple of things. Oh, I'm pretty sure that's the same girl. OK, so she's been in nothing good. I mean, I haven't checked a hole. I have to be, you know, but she's yeah. I was just like, oh, shit. She she popped up in all those things at once because yeah, sixty five is really hard to even tell you what happened in the film. I've forgotten the vast majority. Adam Driver is delivering colonists to a faraway land in space. And inexplicably, he hits an asteroid field and crashes on the dinosaur infested. And then they make sure they let you know, sixty five million years ago. Mordor and it just kept going. They kept adding more text like they did. The people who like this movie can't read. I don't know why they bothered. Nobody liked it. Come on. There wasn't even one guy. Not it. Yeah, I know. And like the Adam Driver for price is not even going to talk about this movie. Was it in cinemas or was it a Netflix thing? I think briefly and failed at the box office. Daniel. Yeah. On on Tetris, it's a really fun watch. If like, if you know stuff about like video game history, like. Nice segue. Because yeah, sorry. I know we kind of moved on. But like, no, it feels like we're talking about Tetris and sixty five and kind of a lump here. So I was like, it's all good on Tetris is a lump. It's a lump on my brain. But there's there's a scene in in Tetris where he goes to Nintendo to talk about like putting it on the NES. And it's like through the discussion, one of them is like, well, Nintendo doesn't have a handheld yet. And a guy is like, follow me. Yeah, this underground lab with the gameboy, like it's some crazy contraption of just like this is so fucking cool. Like I just I love that this is being turned into a movie the development of something like this, like the original Game Boy. You know, I think it made a lot of sense for people who are not that familiar with video game history. So the thing with Tetris, Tetris is very accessible to anyone who doesn't know what it is because as discussed, you can't say, well, it's not a game adaptation. So it's not obviously like falling blocks. It's the story of the history of a video game and that like to normies or like normal people didn't play many games. Like that's not the best sell. But actually, yeah, if you watch the film, even if you don't know anything about the history of the thing, the point of the film is in part to inform you of history. But also you've got a passing familiarity with the Game Boy and the film does a really good job just in that one quite comical shot but of showing how big an achievement and a big game breaking to use upon thing this is even if everyone in the thing treats it with immense reverence and like wonderment, you know. So it's what it goes back to the thing we've mentioned a lot on EFAP. If you have your characters in a story, treat things seriously, then I as an audience member am like, oh, this is the thing to be taken seriously. Yes, no matter how cool you think you are as a writer, OK, it's fine. Just press press press, which would then take us to talking about a big moment in culture for film and gaming. The Mario movie. I still haven't seen that loser. Oh, really? Yeah, it's worth it's worth looking. It's worth watching. Well, I was watching it, but that I saw it wasn't out on Netflix, but I was too lazy to turn my VPN on and then I went to bed. I feel frequently compelled to keep mentioning that there could have been a better Mario movie than this. I feel compelled to keep mentioning that. I feel compelled to have to take everyone has or. No, no, no, but just to like emphasize like, don't just be like super. Well, no, it's just when when you say like, oh, yeah, no, I'd really recommend it's like the big asterisk there is like, man, but, you know, if it wasn't like Illumination or something, if it was like, yeah, it could have been it could have been better. Yeah, the opportunity costs on the Mario are horrific, but I still think what we got was decent. It could have been worse. Yeah, that's that's that's not like the other thing to add to. Yeah, I feel like that's the more radical point of view is that ever would have thought this would just be absolute shit surely, or at least like, but we were relatively surprised. They managed to get a couple of things in there that we especially Illumination. Holy shit. But, you know, the yeah, the nature of the was working against it, the nature of the investment in trying to keep it somewhat in a particular way from Nintendo or whoever else. And there was some jokes in there that we were like, oh, that was that was kind of funny. Yeah, I mean, I was surprised in a decent amount. I guess the thing is, is that it's an easy film to point to of it. It hits a lot of the standard beats of Mario's going on like his sort of hero's journey and his brother is in danger and he's going to go rescue him and both of them realize that they're better working together, that they both complement each other and they can lead each other for support. And it's the Mario brothers, you know, and their bros and they're going to they're going to save the Mushroom Kingdom and become the heroes that they know that they can be, but the world doesn't expect them to be. It's pretty straightforward. But it's like it's it's incredibly safe film. Yes. And it strove to be safe and it succeeded in being safe. Great. And for that reason that it wasn't particularly objectionable. Like I think I've as much coming away thinking, yeah, I would have really liked it to have been a bit more than that. But at least it hit the basics and it did a possible job. And like you said, there are some jokes in the work and some of the references. They're not just shoehorned in a lot of them are. But not all of them are just shoehorned. I will I will say I've never understood the criticism that the film got for like Easter eggs. That never made any sense to me. Like an R-wing sitting on Mario's TV. What does that like? How does that negatively affect the movie at all that I can see an R-wing on there? Or I can see the dot com logo in the background. Or I don't know, you know, what was the criticism that there was too much? Oh, people would say they were not related. They were like, oh, they're so they're more interested in making a film filled with Easter eggs and making a film. And it's like that's just I don't even understand like the nature of that argument. If you're like a normie who doesn't recognize any of these references, you're not going to be like they're not going to buck with your experience of the film. No, you're just going to see things and you're just going to gloss over them. Whereas somebody who knows, be like, oh, yeah, I know that. Yeah, I recognize that. That's cool. And it's neat because there's a lot of there's like a lot of and that's a lot of them are not references to. There are a lot of deep war references that I really appreciate. Well, honey, I'm research. I would format a criticism in the opposite direction that the for not having more confidence in themselves in the content that they're using being Mario, they ended up cutting out original soundtrack pieces and in favor of like more mainstream pop songs, which sucked. The soundtrack was on the most disappointing things about it. Yeah, they have all the brilliant music that you could have picked from. Yeah. Why did you have to do that? Yeah, that was real lame. And the songs they made was really good. But they had a lot of cool remixes. You know, they had they had they had cool remixes spanning across all of Mario's history all the way from like Super Mario Brothers Mario Kart 8. Yeah, it was cool. Like I want to when I'm seeing this Mario movie, I don't want to hear fucking pop music. I want to hear Rainbow Road. Well, they did play the Rainbow Road. I want to they did want to hear original tracks. You know, a bunch of tracks, but I want to hear original tracks. I want to hear remakes of the tracks I like, but not not take on me. I hear that seven times a day. Anyway, I don't need to hear it. You know, it's a great song. I know I'm fine. I got it. Well, it's just Mario has such a diverse array of tracks again, spanning across many because like Mario's had lots of genre changes like just with each like generation, Super Mario Galaxy is hyper orchestral. And then when they moved into like 3D World of Mario Kart 8, you have like big band Jazz Jazz Fusion. Like there's a there's a whole bunch of variety in terms of the music that's been created for Mario games that basically like any tone that you could want for any given scene, there'll be like a there'll be a song that you can pick from Mario that you can use will work. Like, why would you, you know, because, yeah, take on me when they show up in like Donkey Kong, that was so appropriate from Donkey Kong Country. Yeah. Well, and I thought the reality was that they did have that. And then they switched them out. That's why it was even more clunky happen. Yeah, they had they had orchestra for everything, but then they decided because I remember, um, yeah, like because you look at the soundtrack and it's like, oh, yeah, that wasn't in there. What the fuck? Like you made it and then you got rid of it. Why? Because that's what you're meant to do when you make these movies. You've got to throw in some pop songs. We can't expect Mario to sell. We have to expect Mario to go around there. It might actually be like some kind of bean counting statistic of we'll get an extra one percent of the money overall if we put in the pop songs. Maybe. But I mean, it just seems because this is like this, I believe a second highest grossing film of the year, highest grossing video game adaptation ever by a considerable margin. Like it made more than twice as much money as Sonic 2. One of the most successful animated films of all time. Biggest opening for an animated film of all time. And it's Mario animated. It's a film. Yeah. Yeah. And it's a film that we'll be able to look back after many years and be like, this is what changed a lot of things moving forward. A lot of projects are going to come from this now. Yeah, that's sort of my concern about it, though, I guess, which is. Yeah, yeah, it's such a safe film made so much money. Are they going to make every subsequent NCU film as safe as they possibly can? Like probably be as unimaginative when it comes to Zelda, for example. Well, I got to say, that's going to be much worse. I think I'm really, I'm really, really, really. I'm basically it's kind of funny because I have the same thing happened with this film where I was expecting that I wasn't going to like it. And then I came out of it kind of liking it. I think the Zelda movie, I'm way less optimistic. Like the fact that the guy who's writing it has written so much shit. Like I just it's it's over. How does this guy get to write? I think what I'm what's really disappointing to me is that I don't see any reason at all why Zelda couldn't be a 3D animated film or a 2D animated film. Like why wouldn't you do it? I mean, look at the art style that's been present at this point in Zelda for the last like 15 years, the style in like Skyward Sword and Breath of the Wild. And when you have a mini short like Pixar beforehand that has the Wind Waker style, you know, I just I would if you if I could make a Zelda movie, which I probably wouldn't want to take on that task because like I'm not as big as all the fan at all compared to like Mario. I'd have to take it out of that. Fuck, I would. Well, yeah, that'd be that. I didn't have to jump on the ground. You told me do you want to do you want to make it live extra animated? I'd say, come on, animated. Fuck, obviously, anime, obviously, obviously, yeah, pretty much. But I imagine that wasn't even entertain. They'd be like, well, no, we're making a fucking Zelda movie. They're they're people, essentially, they've got like the big elf fears, but they're they're human characters that are. I don't know, elves being people is not an opinion that is shared by everyone and the point being they probably were like, there was probably never any world where it wasn't going to be live action in much the same way that there probably was never a world where Mario didn't have celebrity voices. Yeah, it's strange when they can say if you look at the amount of praise that's heaped on something like that across the spider verse and the spider verse films more broadly, which for all of their narrative falls, the art style is is always uniformly like recognized as quite distinctive one thing, but it's generally well liked and well loved and it doesn't seem to have harmed the thing that it's an animated rather than the line. Talks about bits and boots. You know, I mean, at this point, because I mean, you know, across the spider verse was more successful than the vast majority of superhero films that came out this year financially anyway. And I just I think that Zelda is another thing that at this point, like Breath of the Wild sort like 30 million copies. This is just another you're guaranteed to make money. So what are you afraid of? It's going to clean out what are you afraid of? You know, just like, why would you be scared at all of its prospects of not making money? You'll make money. If you can, if you made it and you had like a trailer, I could just imagine a trailer. If you opened up and it was it was like 2D or 3D animated with like these gorgeous backgrounds that look like a like a watercolor painting like that, that would instantly it's like, oh, dude, you've already won. You know, like you've already won. Everybody's got to want to see that. But oh, well, um, yeah, on the Mario movie. Anyway, it's this this feels like very much that. Yeah, from this point on would every video game adaptation is going to be like absolutely trying to be emulating the visuals and the art direction of the games that they're adapting. Yeah, it leans in super hard, fully and completely committed to being a Mario, which was always wise, because there is a preset audience ready for that exact kind of content. Yeah, I want to see Mario who looks like Mario. I want to see Donkey Kong who looks like Donkey Kong. I want to see the Mushroom Kingdom. And I want to see, you know, Peach's Castle, it looks like the castle, nice and colorful and and vibrant. And yeah, I mean, it's probably the best looking illumination film. I think it's a lot more expensive than the average illumination film. I mean, it looked it. It was it was a delight. It wasn't garish, but it was highly stylized and colorful. Yeah, I really like the way it looks. Yeah, and there's a lot of criticisms came out of it, but a lot of people seem to be praising the every like the Mario Luigi stuff. Yes, that's the best part of the film. It's it's really good. And even Seth Rowan as Donkey Kong wasn't as cringe. It was fine. No, he was fine. He's no jackpot. Seth Rowan and Donkey Kong is, you know, yeah, yeah. Yeah, Peach was kind of lame, though. She was a little bit boring. Yeah, the the sad fact of it, Peach, they did give him more character. And Jack Black is Bowser with very entertaining. He was very fun. Yeah, he's a gamer in the next game. Is this got to be Mario and Bowser have to go on a venture together to like Yoshi's Island or something. Please, yes, yes, we can be. Yes, you got to have Mario, Yoshi and Bowser going on an adventure together, a dynamic trip. Oh, and bring Luigi as well. Let them have an adventure together this time. And Peach is mysteriously missing. Yeah, look, right? He just just give her more material, give her more of a character. But yeah, I imagine they're going to keep making Mario. There's going to be a sequel. That's surely going to be a fucking sequel at this point. Oh, I can't imagine the absolutely insane level of plans they have for everything Nintendo after this. Well, I got to imagine that at this point, every studio in Hollywood's like, hey, so can we get can we go like Star Fox or can we get Kirby? Can we get you know, come on. You know, for a fact that Disney is like, Andy, this was like, I want to play with you as superheroes. They want video games to be too bad. I don't know, are they going to get any? That's the thing. They are poised in the worst position they've ever been in almost for potential. The thing about Nintendo is Nintendo isn't incredibly successful. I'm pretty sure it is just like one of the most valuable companies in Japan. Nintendo at this point is I think they're like more financially successful at this point than they have ever been. The switch is one of the best telling video game consoles right now. I got many, many bangers on it. The big thing Nintendo's got that they have that Sony and Microsoft struggle with is that Nintendo has like an insane attach rate for their games. Like Mario Kart 8 Deluxe has sold like 60 million copies. So like everybody of everybody who owns a switch, one in two people own it compared to if you looked at like PlayStation, probably more like one in 10 or people like own any given Sony first person first party game. And that applies broadly like an every single game on the switch. Every franchise has had its best selling entry on there. Zelda's best selling entries on switch. Kirby's best selling entries on switch best selling. Yeah, best selling iterations of Mario Kart, Pikmin, Animal Crossing. I imagine that all of those are on the cards at this point. And Nintendo, the big thing that they have is that they have the power to be very selective about where they give them. Unfortunately, with Zelda, I guess they convinced them that it would be a good idea to get the guy who wrote truss to write it somehow. How does that happen? He must have dirt on someone. But the series of bats were lost. Someone or I don't know. It's Occam's razor, you know, he must. As long as Link doesn't pick up the master sword and then unfurl a little ruler from underneath the bottom of it, which points in where to go. And we're on that's that's an improvement on some of the past nonsense. Oh, well, I want to say this is what do you because what do you think is next? What do you think the next one they are announced will be after Zelda? Open Nintendo? What's the next? Yeah, what do you think is next? We talked about it before, but like, you know, Star Fox seems like it would be suitable. Safe bet. Yeah. Well, it's funny you say that because like on the video game front, Nintendo doesn't seem to do much with Star Fox, which is weird. Yeah, I think people would be chomping at the bit for it and they are. I feel like that makes it much less likely to happen, though. Right. Certainly if they've gone for Mario, because it is the most safe property you can possibly make money on and Zelda is probably the second most safe one you can probably make money. If Nintendo hasn't been putting Star Fox front and center for years at this point, it's not quite got any but say not quite. It's not getting like the same level of cultural familiarity as the preceding. So whether they would jump for that is their second or third installment in the N.C.U.I. I doubt. Oh, I'm not. Yeah, I because I feel like Kirby would be a safer bet, like financially as a prospect. Is the thing there's a couple answers to the question when you think of different priorities. It's like it will be next based on the most like engaged with a money making franchise in Nintendo. It's like that'll have a definitive answer. Well, crossing might be the next one in that case. Yeah. Animal Crossing movie. Then it's like what one would it be based on most suitable to be adapted to a film? Like, well, it'd be more like Star Fox. The thing is Metroid is oddly, even though the games themselves is like direct adaptations, doesn't make as much sense to me because of their very structure. But as an IP, like Metroid seems pretty viable. But again, I would want that to be animated, probably, and they're not going to do that. They won't know is they need to have animated and stylized because that's what people have fallen in love with. Don't change perhaps the most interesting question of us. What one do we want to see the most adapted into is the asterisk that it will be good? Yes, it will be good. Then it would be Metroid. Yeah. Am I too greedy to say Super Smash Bros? I will. That would be my question. Are we going to get the Smash Bros Avengers style crossover movie? I have to assume, yes. I mean, but what does that look like when it's split across because Universal is doing Mario, Sony is doing Sony is doing Zelda. I don't know what kind of pro studio collaboration you'd be able to unless they had deals where Nintendo like gets to make that call of like one studio or make it and then they get all the money. So you couldn't have live action link next to CG Mario, either. Could you really? Yeah, I don't know about that. I'm not sure. Well, to be fair, you know, even in even in the world of the games, you have many links from different styles that coexist in the world of Smash Brothers. It's timeline. Yeah, like honestly, they could maybe pull off some stuff. But yeah, whether or not, you know, what I would want to see is just all the characters taken care of well in a story that's really interesting, obviously. But, you know, to an extent, I'd rather I'd like to see every one of them get that treatment, but which one do you want the most? Like, I don't know. Tough to say. I mean, Metroid is a really strong pick. I think if you were adapting, Metroid, you might want to make I feel like Metroid and Star Fox could have a really cool crossover as well. I think so. What I want to see with like Star Fox is I'd like to have like wouldn't it be cool if you had like and it was animated, but it was still trying to emulate like so you have like the cockpit camera and you have like these really tight sort of shots of just like them whizzing by as explosions are glancing, you know, like glancing off the like the wings as they were getting into all of these crazy dog fights. It's like, that sounds cool as shit. I would really like to see that, you know, like with like the top gun kind of like cinematography. Yeah, yeah, it's like it's the most immediately filmic one that comes to mind that in Metroid, I would say, you like easily make movies out of those. And we could do our light, lighthearted fun, like Pikmin stuff. What is what would be really cheery? Here's the problem, the rags. A Pikmin movie would be really cool if like you didn't have any characters talking, which is all of our interacting with Pikmin. But there's no like that, which they won't do. They got it. Chris Pratt will be the voice of all of our the all of our. Yeah, Chris Pratt is all of our and all the Pikmin. He's got in regard in regard to Super Smash Brothers. That feels like Nintendo's Infinity War and the Mario movie to me feels like their Iron Man, where like this feels like the start of a huge thing. And so before they do a Smash Brothers thing, it would make sense for them financially to sort of pace it out with a few individual. Let me introduce you to a little company called DC. OK, Fox. Yeah. Well, they blow, they blew their load. They tried to get Mario versus like one of justice. What's funny is if they did a sequel to Mario, it was a Smash Brothers type situation, probably would make a shit ton of money, though. They could skip like if they wanted to because they've got so much good will from, you know, this kid's millions of people throughout the world who absolutely adore this shit. You know, the Mario movie could have been like significantly worse and probably would have made a shit ton of money no matter what. Right. Oh, yeah, I think so. But the fact that it was well received, it's like, you know, it's it's cash in that check for the future. Yeah. But you're right. All the prep they take to build up the universe nice and slowly make you'll make a more money in the long run. I'll probably be more profitable if they pace it out with a number of individual focus movies first. Yeah. But I think that's I think I think that's inevitably going to happen because the Zelda movies probably not coming out until 2026. They haven't announced like that they're doing the sequel to this one yet. And so that's going to take a few years to materialize. Like I think it's just going to take longer, especially given that it does seem like Nintendo was very protective of their of their IPs. I mean, whatever deal it was that they cut with illumination meant that they were like the co producers of the film. They were credited before illumination, even though illumination was like the studio that animated the film. Um, Miyamoto was executive producer. I imagine that that probably is going to hold true for other ones as well. Right. We're like major creative voices on the games will have significant input on it. And that just means it moves slower, I imagine. But hopefully it yields better results. Hopefully as long as you have a good creative voice there, tell them what they can and can't do. But that'll preserve them, protect them a little bit. You know, that'd be nice. Was it Kirby, but extraction too? Oh, you gotta have maybe, maybe you do the Meta Knight film first and it's like a really intense action movie or something. I mean, you could do that with Star Fox. I mean, there is no Star Fox to make it pretty like with maybe. I mean, F zero, if you made like a standard racing movie, right? You could when you'd love if they take some risks or at least riskier. But like a Luigi's Mansion film, they actually did that. That would be that would be really could you imagine if they made a really cool horror movie, a really, really cool horror movie? Yeah, it comes out, you know, the end of one of the bigger Mario films is him getting captured, you know, and it's like, oh, shit. And it's the Luigi's Mansion film that you need to see to see how he gets back out of that situation, which I'm fine with that idea. If they're good MCU, I'm kind of a I'm a little bit surprised that they haven't actually just made like a Pokemon movie, not like Detective Pikachu, but just Pokemon with the standard beats of you got a kid who wants to become like the greatest Pokemon trainer in the world. Yeah, and then go on adventures and you just have it be nice and safe. Yeah, like you just have something with Pikachu and you get Squirtle and and Charmander and all that. I'm surprised I haven't done that yet, considering that Pokemon is one of the biggest things in the world. Yeah, because that one is not tricky because Pokemon is already a series of films that are much more closely tied to the anime. So I'm assuming there's going to be some sort of rights question that comes up. Maybe as I understand it, all of the Pokemon stuff is organized under the Pokemon company, which is like co-owned by Nintendo, but also other companies that might game or whatever. I yeah, because I'm pretty sure game freak is like they're not a subsidiary of Nintendo. I don't think like the Pokemon company is partially under Nintendo, partially, but I would just imagine it would just be as simple as the picture of just do like a standard Pokemon story. But I guess I probably want to again, make it live action instead of like 3D animated. And I guess like I like there have been many Pokemon movies already. Not like I don't want to say they're not real movies, but like, you know what I mean? That Hollywood wouldn't consider them to be real movies. Yeah, it's an amaze, so they'd be like, yeah, that doesn't count. What is that? But yeah, who knows? Who knows what will happen? I hope we start going out of a terrible video game movies already. Oh, yeah, we should. We know better than to get our hopes up. Oh, yeah, but it's always nice to speculate about a better world. Some people call that hope, you know. Hope is like the sun or if it's a dangerous thing, that's what Benedict Cumberbatch said in 1917. And maybe he was right. Maybe you're not trust to hope it's forsaken these lands. And they're just truth bomb in us. But anyway, yeah, I guess that's a big old. Oh, no, that doesn't take us to Guardians 3. Does it? Uh, I well, it depends on your film. No, well, we could talk about Zelda for a bit. I think that came out before Guardians 3. Here's a few stories. Oh, yeah, you guys have to talk about that one. I well, you finished it. I did. Well, I finished in the sense of the main story. I think I'm very far away from 100 percent because that game is chunky. It's a very chunky game. I mean, mechanically, it's like super fun. It's a lot of things to do. You can fuck around with all kinds of things. Lots of shrines do, which I think they improved over Breath of the Wild. They're much more interesting than interesting. Like Tears of the Kingdom feels like it kind of completely supplants Breath of the Wild. It does. Yeah. I don't know that I would. I think I think of you. So if you said to me, I play Tears of the Kingdom, should I pray Breath of the Wild? I'd be like, oh, fuck, I don't know. Actually, I would be too. Whereas if you haven't played any, it's like, yeah, play Breath of the Wild first and then you can play Tears of the Kingdom, you know? And that way it'll it'll sort of, yeah. I mean, the story is fucking stupid. It doesn't make any sense. If you want to know more about it, do the fortune and I try to make sense of it and it doesn't. But no, it's just a really fun game to play. It's just a really solid game overall. Lots to do, a lot of little Easter eggs you can find like armor pieces that point towards Wind Waker and Majora's Mask and all the other games you can find. Stuff. Yeah, just just fun, fun game. I don't know if I'm going to return to it ever, though. I don't know if it's a game I would like to replay necessarily. I don't know. Maybe boot it up and just fuck around a bit with the mechanics and torture some Koroks or whatever and shoot them in the atmosphere or whatever. That was fun memes. People that they just fucking crucified Koroks. That's what happens when you give players the ability to do whatever they want. You've seen so many great things. Meme wise, what they did to those poor, poor creatures. Can you help me get to my friend? No, you're going to space. I guess Breath of the Wild Anteas of the Kingdom is I feel like a really clear example of what happens when you have a really robust core framework and just like how much you can greatly expand that. If you give the player a like general set of tools that have a lot of like all purpose uses and you put them in a world that's a really big and dynamic sandbox where you can actually just think of creative solutions that seem intuitive and they actually work. Yeah, yeah, probably whether that be like like whether that be especially in this case of just like building these really crazy vehicles that are kind of like scuffed and silly, but they somehow managed to get the job. Yeah, I just built like a way too long bridge. It's like, I'm just going to start extending this until I get over there, even though there's other parts they want me to use. But fuck that, I'm going to do it like this and it worked. Yeah, that's right, because I give you all of the tools that you can. I mean, it's like and I remember because I've said a lot, it was like in Breath of the Wild, the idea of essentially oh, I need to get to a cold area and that there's a few options to get there. And then you just sort of I just decide like a fuck. I feel like it was like I decided that I just wanted to keep lighting torches over and over and over again to get where I wanted to because I didn't have like the suitable clothes to do it and that that worked. But it was just like, wow, that's like really cool. As like you to, you know, think creatively and that might actually be viable. Like the crazy idea was not very crazy. But the idea of there's a core set of tools, kind of think about like how these are going to be applicable in other situations, give it a shot and see if it actually works. And a lot of the time you can find a way to sort of get around a situation that feels like it's not a way that the developers intended, but that they almost certainly knew that people are going to do. Yeah, but with that said, I'm kind of over the open world Zelda now. I wanted to do something more old school again. Focused, better done because because I always liked the dungeons. The dungeons are pretty weak still overall. They're kind of lame. I've been playing off-stream. So now I've like done all the dungeons and those dungeons are real fucking basic. They're really on there. You know, it takes you like 30, 40 minutes to get them done. And I mean, it seems like the perfect, like perfect sort of setting and game type to make a proper dungeon crawling experience with an overworld that sort of connects the real experiences, which are the dungeons. Well, I imagine you're effort into that. That might if they did open world, it's got to be a totally new place. Oh, yeah, they've done a really good job of actually expanding the same area with all of like the Sky Islands and the depths and the caves and everything like that. There's a lot of new stuff to explore. But if they did another open world one, which I don't know if I want that either. I think I'd be OK with like, yeah, you did it. It's cool. I want to see what you do now with another more linear experience. But it would need to be a different open world map. I think it would need to be a totally different location, maybe somewhere we've never seen before. Yeah, I'd love a throwback style game with pixel art. That's a top down kind of game, really expansive, lots of dungeons. That would probably be really nice to see because I'm I'm not really I'm not a Zelda guy, but I played Link to the Past a lot as a kid. And I've even played because I'm one of the four people on the planet Earth. I've got a friend who has four swords for GameCube and he has four Game Boys. Oh, four Game Boy connectors that connect the Game Boys to the Game Cubes so that you could play four swords, which alternates between the GameCube on the TV and the Game Boy screen. So that's I'm I'm I'm really I'm really happy that he has all that shit because it's a very uncommon thing to have all of that stuff just to play essentially the full four four swords experience. But that kind of thing is really fun. So a very in depth, fun throwback style Zelda game. I mean, I think that'd be a really cool thing to do. Yeah, I love that like the DS and the 3DS. But then I got what they did. They did on Switch, it was the remake of our Link's adventure. Yeah. Which one was it? It was the Game Boy one that they remade on. And they made it look like kind of a toy set, which was cool. Awake and it links away. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's the one. Yeah, because nowadays, like with Octopath Traveler and stuff of that nature, you can have the pixel style, but have the modern effects and 3D kinds of details that give it such a cool look. So something like it. Yeah, and it would be Nido, Nido Toledo. Also, while I was taking a shit, I was thinking one of the things that would be really cool, a really cool movie for not this sorry for Nintendo to do. They need to make an elite beat agents movie. I'd watch the shit out of that. And I know it's a reference that a lot of people will get. But that was a fun ass DS game. It was like like a rhythm, a rhythm dance game where there would be songs and the elite beat agents would come in and dance to the music to like save people from generally fairly mundane issues. But you you drag and tap and do backs and forth with the stylus. That was that was on the screen in tempo and tandem with the music. And it was really fun. And they all had suits and they need to make an elite beat agents movie. I have watched I would watch it do it. Nintendo, you cowards, you cowards, you fuckers, make it an elite beat agents movie. Well, yeah, Zola's cool. But now it's about audience three, I guess. What is it? Three, the you didn't like it as much as everybody else. Yeah, that's probably a nice way to put it first. I enjoyed my first watch through, but it was still kind of like, I don't know. And then I rewatched it and I was like, no, it's pretty bad. Formatically disappointed. I'm sorry. I think that it I think very disappointing is an excellent way to describe it because pretty much everything in that movie that isn't the rocket flashbacks is very degrees of upsetting to me. A bad, honestly, I'm just like pretty bad. That's some really bad to catastrophic, honestly. If we're going to be if we're going to be real about some of the character stuff. Rock is the only person who comes out of an unscathed. Oh, Craglin. Craglin is my second favorite character if that if that kind of explains the state of that and I like the dog. Yeah, Cosmo. Yeah, it's great. There's also the the the fake out death. So many fake out deaths, which it's not the time to fake out death because we knew this was the last entry and we knew several actors are never coming back to these characters. Like, this is the time to commit to take it seriously, to send them off, to respect them. But instead, you do the thing, which I fucking hate, which is like, isn't it sad that this character is going to die? And you're like, yeah, that is. And then they're like, they're not there. Not well, there was a one of Peter in space turning to flume. Like, we're going to say a different one. The whole thing was well, I was good. I was thinking about that one. Is our yeah. Dracks, yeah, it's quite early in the film as well, isn't it? The tracks, I thought it would be bold. It would be really bold because it's a goofy caper that's that's having all these jokes and different things happening. And then it's like, yeah, but this is serious. You're robbing from like a facility that are going to use force against you. And then if you just got outright killed and they'd be like, damn. And that we talked about this, that how much of a different kind of film it would be if you put all of this effort into saving one of your crew member and like three of them die in the process. There's something there's a lot to be said. There's a lot to be learned. The amount of weight that would put on Rocket, especially with the history that he has. And we didn't get that. We go on for. Yeah, it's it's kind of it ended up being sort of his his saving grace. But the fact Rocket really wasn't in this movie much at all. It kind of protected him from the story. Yes, he got protected from all of the crazy stuff that happened and all of the terrible decisions that the characters made a lot of drama because he got to exist in this nice comfy world where he had good drama. And then when he came back, he made good choices and everything. Remember the the huge effort we put into saving the animals in the final act. But we never really addressed all the people who died on the planet on the planet. Yeah, that was really that really upset me. That actually upset me showing all the people and that are like families and the photographs. And they're being nice and they let you borrow the car. And then they all just die and no one talks about it. It's like, oh, those were people, by the way, that they all died. They helped you insane amount of problems in that film, like the writing at every connective piece was balls. Yeah. Yeah. It is I dramatically worse than than Guardians one and two. Yeah. Yes. It has basically the rocket stuff was good. Some of the comedy works. A lot of it doesn't. It's kind of a pretty hit and miss. And great F bomb. But other than that, I don't really. Yeah, that one was really funny. Well, actually, it was hilarious. Just because my memory and what it used to be a little bit, too, what do you think of Guardians three? Much the same. You still get people who will say, oh, no, but it's like one of the better superhero films of the year. Yeah, that's largely because its decline is just slower than all the other superhero films. It's still not good. It's a marked like depreciation of just the Guardians. Right. And the way I think because I'm struggling to recall bits of the film, but it isn't the end that the whole stick is about finding sort of family coming together. And then the end is that, yeah, well, we've done that now. So we're not going to all just fuck off in our own separate directions. It was going to go back and find it like a grandfather who's never even really been mentioned in any of the preceding films. So the family that you've been trying to build throughout this entire thing is just broken up right at the close. Yeah. And I don't really get what the point of that was. I would argue as well. Part of the frustration is that Peter did go to earth. We need to acknowledge that. Like, but but James Gunn's got such a fucking hate boner for Infinity War and Endgame, which fair on endgame for the better film. But the problem is we've thought it was for like, oh, hate. Hate the bad fucking art when it comes out. Sure. But like always try to use everything they give you. You could still use it. You can't just pretend it didn't happen. Like, yeah, like we try to do. You can't be like, oh, well, I destroyed him too. So it was never meant to. That was so weird saying like, well, I destroyed his mask in two. So that was like lame when they brought it back in Infinity War. Why wouldn't he get another one? It's really useful. Why would he not have a like several? You figure that he'd have more than one. Honestly, it was something I thought about with them. In case something happens, even with Guardians one and two stuff. I was always like, you should probably have a couple of them. They're incredible. They take up like no space and they allow you to breathe in existent space like. Exactly. But we needed him to not have it so that we could have the fake out death and then reference the. Yeah. The the Sistine Chapel. It's like, oh, you're OK. That was just dude. The that, you know, I sometimes I'll accept like the I'm out of sync with the film and that's totally fine. But I feel like that's one of the most conflicted moments ever with a film is saying like Star Lord Peter Quill. He's about to die and it's so tragic. He's the last off and it was like struggling to pick up the music that he just can't let go of would actually like bring him down. You're like, oh, shit, we're doing this. And then it's like just having some fun. No, no, not only he'll be back. He will definitely be back. They even said it in big, bold letters. He will return because Chris Pratt, of course, he is. Did we discuss this at the time? Like the obvious pay off of it? Or like he has to actually just give up the music sacrifice the music just to be with his family. Yeah, except they part in the end. They have it. Because the masses was like, oh, you know, I've always done what you guys do. But now I've got to go off on my own to rob other people of their memories. He's like, that's what she's going to do. Man, I can't believe how quickly they assassinated Mantis. That was that was horrendous. How could you ever trust being around her if she will take your memories away if ever they're too painful? Yeah, if ever she says something a little bit too harsh, it's like, oh, better, better. Convince you. Yeah, especially bad if it's my memories. Yeah, yeah. And what's his name? Adam Warlock was awful, too. Yeah, I was about to say. Why? Why? Why? Why was he in the movie? They didn't do anything with him. They were going to. They were setting him up for an obvious thing and they just didn't do it. I don't get it. Why? I don't understand. He was just sort of around when they were planning. I don't know, with his mom dying like that, I just figured they were going to do the obvious thing, which would have been fine by me. And then they just didn't. So it seemed like a really massive, significant event and he just fades into the background. So by the end of the film, you think, oh, oh, yeah. No, she did die, didn't she? Shame we didn't do anything with that. On the plus side for the film, the I was going to call him the ground inquisitor. That's not the one. The high evolutionary is that the one? He was OK. I love the actor. Well, the actor was quite good. That's the idea. And the concept was for sure that conceptually it was interesting. I don't think it started strong ish and then he just really got just the standard retardation stuff. I was just like, why are you doing this? Why are you doing that? And then isn't there a part in the final act where he just disappears for a significant amount of time? Because you don't get in the way because he's hyper powerful. And so it's like, yeah, we need to go for a bit. We'll bring you back when we got your payoff to come. Which is not not too great. Yeah, really like the actor. But yeah, it could have been a could have been definitely the potential for among the best MCU villains. Yes. But I think the real star was, yeah, the rocket flashbacks, which were really good. And I fucking love them and they made me cry. There's a quote from James Gunn. It was like, because you see the Guardians films, Rocky is really the protagonist is like, no, he hasn't. No, obviously, Peter. I don't mind. Yes, totally. I really like Rocky. I really like Rocky. He's one of my favorite. All right. I love raccoons and he's a raccoon and he's also an interesting lad. That's right. It's one of the starter Pokemon here in Arkansas. Well, I guess because Zigzagoon kind of he's got like, kind of a raccoon on Zigzagoon. God damn it. No, I'm just saying. I like the starter Pokemon change per state as well. That's right. So the starter Pokemon in Alaska would be like a cardiac bear or something. Yeah, here you can choose between a raccoon, a possum and an armadillo. So it's, you know, you've got your options. Cool. Do you have them in Arkansas? Armadillos, yeah. They're an interesting critter, aren't they? They are. They're a little roll up and a ball to attack themselves from the world. But yeah, Rocket, I kind of hope that they don't. I don't want to. Isn't it so I remember a couple of years ago, I was like excited by the prospect of Daredevil actually getting to like participate in a full sense. Now I dread it. Fucking isn't an echo coming out like like soon week or something. Yep, there he is. Hey, don't forget Madam Web. Oh, yeah, but that's. He can't forget Madam Web. Talk about the trailer. The trailer that has destroyed a movie before it's even came out. Yeah, it's like full smoke. She what was the line? She was researching spiders in the Amazon when he died. Mother was. Yeah, she was researching. My mother was in the Amazon researching spiders when she died. Echo would leave you out of that one when I'm home. What a treat. What a fucking treat to come back home to bottle memes from that one. Oh, man, that brought me so much. Now those memes will bring me more joy than the film. And I that there's no way the film can keep up with the memes. Now you need a meme of that mole, but with Madam Web. I was actually going to say the word right to, you know, like right before she died, like she's doing that research and then immediately the bad guy so up and killer. OK, it's just such a funny configuration of words. Yes, yeah. I was going to say, though, as a change of pace, we we went from like a lot of, you know, shitty things talking about how these these couldn't be. But then we got the boogie and wings fight. That was a huge highlight. I wasn't around for that, unfortunately, but it was fun because you would have loved watching the video I set up for us. That was that was surprisingly like yeah, people absolutely loved that coverage. And it's a boogie and what? Sorry, what was the second thing? The boogie and wings of redemption boxing match. Oh, OK, it was quite epic. They fight itself together now. What a crazy arc. Yeah, we had a whole episode about that kind of absolutely insufferable on it. Yes, and he's lucky as hell to have it. Yep. Is Wings of Redemption a YouTuber? He's a streamer. Yeah, he's a he's a YouTuber. Oh, he doesn't make YouTube, but he used to make. He made Cole and Judy commentaries back in the day, like during the machinima days. And then he played against Syndicate. What if you won on Bog? And he broke his controller and the rest is history. That would be such a huge highlight for the podcast. I think I get Syndicate to play him again on Bog. Oh, my God, buddy. Yeah, I think I saw that boxing match. I should check that out. Oh, you should instead watch our coverage. It's glorious. It's like a whole like history of it. The fight itself is like a minute and a half. But it was it was kind of lame, but just one round. Is that I want to spoil it? I want to spoil it. You do you know, it would end up being a fight. It was a fight. Yes. It was sort of a fight. It was an experience. They had 800 pounds between them. Didn't they? Yes, one ring, 800 pounds, four ring, the meme. But yeah, you know, you're so much better than the national anthem was the best part. Do you guys remember God? Yeah, did you on Gideon? That's the name of the guy. I don't know who it was. But that was what it was so awful. Props to the man for going out there and you did it. You did it. You did it. Even while everybody was going in for butchering. Never. But don't never boo someone doing their best to sing the anthem. That is an I think that is in very poor taste. How do you know when they're doing their best versus when they just don't give a shit though? Because like you got to you got to channel your inner patriot. And a patriot detector. Yeah, it's an American thing. You kind of pick up when somebody you know, if you know. OK, I'll have to you guys. I have to pull you out whenever I need to know. You like, can you tell? Let me know what you know. We need to know whether or not to throw, throw rotten fruit or not. But yeah, you can't throw like cartmaning because that's a delicious and healthy snack rotten. I'm a man. I mean, that's why you have to be fighting each other. That's why you got out of that. In cartoon wars, they get tired really fast and it just becomes sad to watch really quickly. You're just they did. Honestly, that that wasn't it. Yeah, that was the problem. You'll have to like I said, you have to check it out. But you should check out our video on it because I put in all the history and you get the wonderful reactions. I have a feeling that will be in the running for like favorite thing of the year and our next anniversary. So we'll have a lot of competition, like the Boogie documentary. Wouldn't that have been for the last anniversary, though? Wouldn't that have already been? Oh, yeah, you're right. It must have. It must have scored well, then. I can't remember now. I think it did. Yeah, because you guys love you also love. He is. We had because I mean, I'm not trying to mention every single thing we did, but I was going to say the cinema wars, the first episode. We still need to do more of them. Wins vs. Sins on Doctor Strange, Multiverse of Madness. That was a particularly interesting episode. The comparison of the power of both of those channels. Yes, a very good template that I certainly hope that we do in the future. Oh, well, we've already it's going to be last wish because I think it was at Winds that came out with a last wish video about a month ago. Someone was like, oh, here we go. Interesting. Yeah. Cinema Wars is back on the menu, boys. Oh, and have the easy task of pricing a very good film. Yes, because, yes, Sins won the Multiverse of Madness battle, but it was concluded that it was it was sort of weighted in his favor because that's why I'm waiting it in the other favor this time because good luck finding a lot wrong with the last wish. Exactly. But how can I I mean, it's next. I just want to even if even if there's some other release, we should talk about first, I just got to do a burst and talk about it. This is when the wonderful, the incredible highlight of the year for video gaming history Lord of Ring Golem was released. Yes, Lord of Ring Golem. What a game. What a highlight. You don't get many of them in a lifetime even a game that can provide you such because there are there are plenty of bad games that aren't at all interesting, fun or engaging to play. But like that one had just enough stupid shit happening that it made it incredibly entertaining. And then all the meta things about the release, the dev team, the the the apology. It's and then, of course, the memes are bad. Like the before the animations, the the mechanics, everything about the game, the fact that it was connected to Lord of the Rings. It's like, get out. Like, you know, it's been a really. Yeah, it's been rough to be a Lord of the Rings fan, getting that after Rings of Power. Oh, yeah. I mean, there was a time because I'd spoken to Wolf about Lord of Ring Golem ages ago, right? Back when it was like a flickering idea of something that might be developed. It was like, that's a strange choice to stay that way. Like, why would you make that instead of anything else you can do with the IP? And then it was like, well, what do you know? What about, you know, the things you could do with it? It's plenty you could do. Well, maybe that shows incredible artistic vision that this is really the game that they want to make. They knew it would work. I personally enjoy the return of the terrible license wear game. Oh, it feels like one of those dozen. Did they ever get this bad before, though? Did they ever get this bad? Oh, yeah, no. License wear games like the 2000s were in fact bad to be fair. There was a lot of great ones from that same era, ones that are remembered incredibly belovedly, if that's even a word. And listen, we can't all be return of a king for the Game Boy Advance. OK. Hmm. But, uh, yeah, I don't know, because I played plenty of license games. It was fun to be like, oh, I like that movie. I want to play this video game and then being like, oh, well. Could be better, could be worse, you know, that sort of thing. I almost miss that era. But this one, this game was calling it unfinished, doesn't really capture. I understand the premise of it, because like his ability to sort of navigate terrain in the movies, you could sort of apply that in a video game context to something like Assassin's Creed, where you just like, you know, you hold a button and navigate all across all this crazy terrain. And like, like the gameplay we're seeing right now, that's like straight out of Prince of Persia, basically, like jumping across the pipes, like you can do some like acrobat parkour stuff with it. But of course, they totally fail. Well, John, we've got the screen up right now. This is kind of a highlight of. I can see it. Yeah. Now, now I want to see it. I want to see the goal in the little Assassin's Creed hood running around, you know, with the hidden blade. Yeah, like run it around in our minister of or something and doing stealth missions and assassinating targets. Man, considering how unfinished this game was, how was it? Mission game. OK, considering how unfinished this this game was, it was very long. It was like 20 hours. Yes. Game play. This was not a short campaign. It was fucking bizarre. Fucking going and it's so boring, except the meme parts. Those are funny. This is kind of what I was getting. I don't think I've laughed harder. Maybe ever. I think it's the funniest eFap ever was watching the gameplay stuff. I I my face hurt. I heard all over. Yeah. Obviously, my soul had as it was dead ages ago, but my body just kept going and laughing. It was insane. And towards the end, they just was like, Oh, open this door. You need to need to glory things like, OK, then you search for it. You searchers like, what the fuck is it? I mean, when as is doing that part, it's hilarious. Like he's going in circles forever and I don't blame him because it's fucking stupid because nowhere in the game you had to throw a stone at a thing for it to drop down. That's not even something that comes to your mind. So at some point you randomly look up. There's like a glowing thing up there. I have a stone, maybe that wouldn't that works. It's like, oh, you just introduced a new mechanic, like an owl before the game ends. It's like if you're playing an RPG that has magic and you need to melt like an ice block to get through or something like that. And you've been using and there's no indication that you can use your fire spells to do something or literally Skyrim. Well, we don't. Well, maybe. Well, Skyrim ain't ready to do that. The cart section in particular, just how many fucking hilarious deaths there were for everybody who played it. Was it that made me that almost my soul of my body. It was when it makes it makes it through it clearly. And then again, it's like, no, you're not supposed to do it that way. It just dies. That shit was unreal. Yeah, the amount of times he completed it without taking a hit, but it just dies like I did everything you want me to do. Damn, and then to climb. No, the fact they didn't really probably implement sort of death animations instead, it was just he turns to ragdoll. So that made it especially funny, like a combiner with, of course, the man, man. It was it was a very special game. It was a very special experience. Yes, one that we will likely never, ever, ever touch, ever get our entire lives. Any of the people who played it. It's a couple of it's still that's one that you would expect. When are you going to do a drunk golems? I'm never, never. This is 20 hours, guys. So long because there wouldn't even be a one off stream, even if you would do that. It's just I don't want to touch that. It's stinky. It's one of the highlights. So I jump into a cross a chasm and then I slam my head into wall. He goes in a blood splatter on the screen and then it activates a cutscene. Yeah. Oh, only the best. There's so much to learn from it. Yeah, how not to make video games or I don't even know what to say. And I fucking apology. Well, yeah, where they referred to the franchise as the Lord of Reg. The Lord of the Ring. Fuck it. I was just Lord of Ring. Oh, we call it Lord of Rings. It's funnier. Sometimes I remember which is what someone just mentioned. There was this tablet last night that the only way this is getting played again is like if I get cancer for charity. Yeah, we said to raise money for him. Chow would be like, well, we'll pay if you play Lord of Ring Golf. We'll pay for your cancer treatment if you play Lord of Ring Golf in medals like I'll just die. It seems in the development phase, they didn't put they didn't put any thought into the mechanics of it beyond a sort of loose, like assassin's platforming sort of clone. But not not even. I mean, I don't think Assassin's Creed is a particularly deep game, but it doesn't even have the of that, like by all indication, just looking at the footage of it. So like they started making it. It's just like, oh, shit, now what do we do? I don't know. Let's just have these, you know, ridiculous platforming mini games like this, like this cart jumping thing that you're showing right now. And it's nothing works properly. It's yeah, like a normal process of game developments. You have to play through in the QA testing that have been times for months and months, if not years, where they've played builds of this game in the lead up to its release. At one point, did they know they were fucked because they just carried on going along to me. You know, it just has to be the nature of license where studios that they don't really care. A lot of them are just collecting the check. Yeah, because Gollum doesn't do anything other than jumping and climbing over shit. Like I don't see any you know, menu navigation or leveling up things or like a skill tree or I don't know. Yeah, there's no ability map or like there's no. There's there's like zero depth to this game. Like beyond just like it being badly programmed. The fact that I'm in chat for Mel's clip right now, saying it doesn't work, you have to flume it. That's good advice for the game. Pretty much a lot of the stuff you do complete. You're like, oh, OK, I guess that works. But yeah, not going to forget Lord of Ring, Gollum, what an experience. That was those were streams for the ages. Yes. And then what was released soon after? Well, before the flash was in June, right? There, that's why I was going to be around for the flash. Another great landmark in the world of digitalism. Cinema, yeah. This is cinema. Truly, this is cinema. The one that assured that the DCE was absolutely finished and completely done and there would be no chance of it ever continuing. That was guessed to be low, but it was kind of like the models of people like, oh, I didn't think that low. It's like, yeah, no. And it was anticipated by one of brothers to make a lot of money and it ended up being one of the biggest bombs of all time. It lost over two hundred million dollars. I threw it on for my friends. I was like, come on, it'll be funny. It'll be like Justice League. We'll we'll have a laugh. And it was just such a drag the whole way through. And I apologize. I'm like, I'm sorry. I didn't like it when they ruined my camera. I'm sorry you put me through that. It is. I think it's laughable in the first like 20 minutes for that kind of format, but then you have about a stretch of an hour that's kind of air and then the rest is OK again. You have somebody there to explain Ezra Miller. That that would be part of the fun. Oh, you mean like the crimes or? Yeah, just just list them off while you're watching the movie. Yeah, but what do you mean list them off? You forget about those crimes when you watch the film. Who said that? Who was the one who said that? Was the director, right? The designer or something. Oh, yeah, OK. He said you'll forget about his crimes when you watch the movie. What? Well, they just such a great performance. Did Snyder say that? Snyder, no. OK. I think it was just some like. Oh, no, because it wasn't Snyder. Sorry. Yeah, I'm costume designer. I don't know who said it. Forget about his crimes when you watch the movie. Fucking brilliant. That's brilliant. No, no, no, it wasn't Grace. Why Randolph? No, who said it? Oh, God, was it great? I was going to say I could buy the grace at it. That grace would say that sounds like a racism. Who said it? Sounds like a racism. Oh, well, it's such a terrible movie. It's such a sludge, like a shitty movie. It is the crimes of Ezra Mitterer are a much more entertaining story than The Flash. Well, absolutely. I think they're really into a film out of that. Well, in the story of The Flash, as it sits in a in a meta sense, is much more interesting than The Flash as well. It's the especially this the CG reviving of dead actors coming to a head with that one being like, fuck you. Oh, gross, gross. That you just like drag them out and put them in your crap movie to try and crop it up. I hate it. So crap. Does you love how the whole point of the movie kind of was, oh, if you fuck around in the past, it's going to fuck everything up and then the anti just changes something else. And that's. Yep. Fine. Make emotional moment where he realizes he has to let his mum go because he's and then immediately said, oh, no, fuck it. I haven't learned the lesson at all. I'm going to do the same thing again because we need to somehow get George Clooney on the screen. Yeah. And I guess in this in this scenario, you got lucky that the whole world doesn't collapse in itself. Oh, something else. That means that Arnold Schwarzenegger, Mr. Freeze, is a possibility in the DCEU. Not anymore, I guess, because no, not anymore. Unless James Gunn is a genius, it's it's not. Yeah. Oh, you know, it's over. Also, I was noting before we move out of June, you got to remember Final Fantasy 16 was coming out. I had to buy it. Diablo 4 was coming out. I had to buy it. It's came out. Well, that's from the documentary. Yes, that's right. But those games did come out. And I think only metal and I played Final Fantasy 16. And none of us I quite enjoyed it. I did. Yeah, I like it. I did stop, though. It's like that where you enjoy him for, you know, a while. And then when you feel like you're not getting your enjoyment, you're just like, you know what? I've got my I got my phone out of it. Time to move on. That's fine. That's fine. But did anybody play Diablo 4, though? No, I haven't even looked at it. No, I got a really bad thing. I've heard many bad things, but no, I have not played it. It's going to. Yeah. Getting me to buy a Blizzard game is it's going to be a big ask. The only blizzard game I play a StarCraft 2. They got my money over a decade again. So they can. Oh, my God. Got him. But yeah, that's also I I think. Oh, wait, no, that's that's later. We didn't talk about a Cross the Spiderverse. No, I came out this year, too. Well, that it looks really good and was it was kind of weird. The whole no, the window was gone. That came out of that. That was we're in June and it's it's over. Well, you highlighted it for me. What did you think about it? There's no possible way to. Yeah, you guys have something to say, right? I just realized it has really good animation and art. It really is super impressive. That's true. I do really hope I do hope, though, that they actually do address that crunch problem that got talked about a bunch because that was really weird. Seeing people come out when that article came out, the same people who were saying that crunch was bad when it was visual effects guys going, oh, you know, it's just the price you've got to pay for art. That was a real. All of a sudden, we got a lot of whiplash fans in here. I'm like, OK, all right, people flip their entire position of that thing because it was a movie that they liked. But yeah, that's, you know, Pikmin 4. Did anybody play Pikmin 4? I haven't played the Pikmin game in my life. I haven't played any Pikmin games, but I played Pikmin 4 and like that was that game's really good. That's like a really good chill out game. It's it's a very chill. Well, at times it can get incredibly tense and like, oh, I know I'm losing all my Pikmin, but otherwise it's like this really chill game that has a cool aesthetic. I don't know what. What's it called the effect that that you can do where it's like it's kind of like. It's some it's it's like the effect that they used to make miniatures seem like a lot bigger than they are, but they still look worse. Yeah, where they do that kind of like with the environments because you're maneuvering around all of these like really, you're a really small guy in a really big place. And it's, it's really cool. It's like a really cool aesthetic. It's a really fun chill game. I had a blast with it. I nearly 100% of it, like 95% completed it. Really good. All right. I remember playing, I never played the first Pikmin, but I played Pikmin too a long time ago and I really like it. I thought it was super charming and fun and strategical. It was one of the first games I played where it was like, wow, this is like difficult. I got to really, you know, like try to win. So that was fun. I played the hell out of a one. Noting, my window is open and there's a bunch of birds outside doing a bunch of chirp and it looks like they've a family reunion. I'm not sitting with them up in the tree or anything. I'm not sitting outside. With a little, with a little laptop up there. Do they be way fucking louder if that were true? I'm calling a microphone while my fellow brethren, living brethren, not because I'm a dinosaur or anything, just chilling out. Birds are dinosaurs. They're living with dinosaurs, that's right. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. But it's worth noting, Secret Invasion came out in June as well, I wanna say. Yeah, that was June, I think. We got a bit before that for the Olifappers. I mean, the crazy huge highlight right now is of course, possibly the worst film of the year, be upset everybody for what they wanna pick from out there. Indiana Jones. Oh, boy. Ooh, what can be said about this? Yeah, absolutely horrendous. Fucking awful. One of the worst movies ever. Yes, yes. I'm getting tired of saying it, but it's true. It is. It's probably what's fault. It's not mine. It's not my fault that they keep producing movies. In this spot on my standards. It isn't my fault. Blameless. So was it really Nox Automedia? I feel like there's more redeemable elements of Automedia. Modoc. Yeah, Automadia had Modoc, whereas Indiana Jones is like, yeah, Indiana, he's a miserable loser. Nobody cares about his adventures or anything that he has to say. He's worse than his goddaughter at everything and he wants to die. That's this film. I mean, that's it. That's the movie. Also, he's a depressed alcoholic. Indiana Jones is a depressed divorce loser who wants to just die. I'm so tired. Why is why they're all like divorce losers? Why is that the way? They're always like divorced. Well, they're old. Brunks. Where else do you take that character? Where else? That's it. That's the place. Where the guy was divorced, of course. What was it? So it's funny you say that because I was editing it yesterday. Morbius, not Morbius. Morbius. Morbius. Morbius. They assassinated Morbius. Morbius. Yes. Morbius is the worst dude. Morbius is the worst and his kids don't like him. Yeah. Even Mobius. I don't want to say. Oh, my God. Oh, even in that shitty show, you can't get away from it. You can't just be happily married to a woman you love. You know? Boring. And after so many years after what they did to Luke and TLJ to do that to Indiana, it's just like, how the fuck's sake? They've done this to two different Harrison Ford characters, Han Solo and Indiana Jones. Yeah, he's a shitty father in both of them. That's crazy. I'm so lame that that's the only idea that you have. You can't have an old man who actually has something to say and offer to the world. You can't do a story of he may be an old, you know, an old dog, but he can still learn some new tricks. And his old tricks are really cool and interesting as well. Instead, it's like he's an old dog who has legs broken. He's sad. He doesn't bark anymore. Just waiting for the bullet. Yeah. Yeah. He gets hit by the bullet and then he carries on living for what feels like hours and hours and hours. Yeah. As they go up into the sky to find a sky portal that's somehow affected by continental drift, which sends them back 3,000 years instead of like, what the fuck was going on with that film? Again, though, I think that confused everybody. I assumed that that was just a troll by Indiana and that the truth is it was always going to send them to the place it did because it was going to make itself happen or whatever, right? But then why would he even... I don't want to answer any questions related to that film. Just kidding. No. Not even Oppenheimer was divorced. There is an interview from the pre-publicity material when it's Indiana Jones, Harrison Ford, Phoebe Waterbridge and the director. Who was the director for this film? James Mangold. James Mangold. He's the director. Yeah. And the interviewer says, what state you're asking each of them? What's your worst fear? Phoebe Waterbridge says bees. James Mangold says, I can't remember what he says. And Harrison Ford says, making a bad movie. And no one heard him. So James Mangold asks, what did you say? And he said, making a bad movie. And then Indiana Jones comes out. Yeah. Yeah. The idea of like immersing or like submerging your character in failure as like a way to make him interesting as if that's the only way to do it. It's such a fallacy because it just like depends on broader story that you're telling. You literally just don't have to do that. You wanted to... We talked about this. They're in a happy relationship, right? Mangold clearly wanted to deconstruct Indiana Jones in the Dial of Destiny to have the film address his legacy and who he is as a person, what he means to the world. I get that. People would argue that's exactly what he does in Logan. And people would say it's absolutely to a level of success. There's a hell of a lot fucking higher than what he did with Indiana Jones. And so there was like a precedent somewhat. We talked about earlier. The Last Wish is a deconstruction. It does address like Puss's fucking history, which is as crazy as that sounds. But so much more respect is given to not... I can't even... It's so weird to talk about it this way. It is the same approach. What is Puss in Boots? What does he mean? What is all the stuff he's done achieved for him? What personality traits does he have? What can he offer the world? All this sort of stuff. That's what happens in... How do you do that to a hero? Everyone knows they're great. And it's like, well, that's the thing. Is there a couple of questions left to ask? Is there a couple of things more they could learn? And I think we talked about it, but I was fine with the space age or interest in everything cosmic could overthrow archeology or in some way shape or form, or at least in the life of any other joints. It's interesting. It's cool. But they didn't really use that at all. And the direction they took him was so fucking gross. It's genuinely annoying to watch, especially if you did what we did, which I assume is what Little Platoon did. You watch all the ones preceding it. Even fucking Kingdom of the Crystal skull, as many people say, ends happy for him. At least he gets that. I know I made a point of doing loads of comparisons with the Crystal skull, because Crystal skull is not a good film by any means, but even Crystal skull gets certain basic fundamental aspects of character journey right in a way that Dada Destiny just does not. It makes it quite a useful comparison. Dada Destiny is so much worse than the previous worst film in the franchise. But on the deconstruction point, one of the important things is if you are going to deconstruct the hero, if you are going to knock them back, it can sometimes be essential to do that if you could ever go on. At least give them some agency in repairing themselves. At least have them learn the lesson that, say, life is worth living, there is some new realisation, and they can enact that, and so they've come back to the full glory as a result of their own agency. Indiana Jones wants to die at the beginning of the film. At the end of the film, Indiana Jones still wants to die, and he has to get swatted in the face by Phoebe Watterbridge and dragged reluctantly back to life. So, he goes back to life, and then Marian walks in and says, oh yeah, by the way, someone told me you were feeling a bit pissed off these days, so I'm back now. That's not a character journey. Did no one think to tell her this at any point in the proceeding? No? Madness. What a disgusting shame. Would have been nice if you just didn't bother at all, but we couldn't have that. Yeah, but then we can't sell it as a movie in theatres. Hearing the actress who played, what's her name at the end, she wanted a bigger part in it, but she was told, like no, no, no, it's just this end scene. No, we gotta make room for this new bitch. Yeah, but I was just like, well, if she wants to do it, yeah, like, bring it. Oh, hello? His discord flamed. A lot more satisfying, potentially, if it was written correctly. I agree. Hollywood decision. Well, a lot of the discussion about this film was everyone talking about how you could have done a good film, because nobody thought like you can't absolutely cannot. One of the first films that a lot of people had is surely he's too old, but then the second thought everyone has is like, oh wait, but you can still do something with him, even when he's that old, Indiana, of course. Well, this is just countless fucking things. The obvious move that everyone wants and they didn't do it. This was so horrifically shit. Yeah, and unfortunately, well, you could try and recast, even if you wanted to keep the franchise going, recast him and keep him young. Like, do a James Bond with Indiana Jones would be, I would say a better approach than trying to work around the fact that Harrison Ford is impossibly old. But they didn't do that, and then, even the interviews again, and then after that, Patrick Stewart's still kicking around as well. You get these points again in interviews where the two of the younger female members of the cast are asked what's it like acting alongside in fight scenes with Harrison Ford, and one of them says, you know, he can still get up unassisted. Oh, wow. Like a real action hero, yeah. He can stand up without assistance. That is Indiana Jones. Well done. Exciting. Very exciting. Oh, and don't remember, they fucking killed Mutt, too. Got the off-screen. And the one scene where Harrison Ford was kind of allowed to act, and we learned that Mutt's fucking dead, he went to go die in Vietnam despite Indiana Jones. Which doesn't with Mutt's character anyway, but yeah. No. Um, hey, we just, we did Dead Space 1991 at that point, by the way. Finally, we can go to the other spectrum of movie quality. Kino. Oh, finally. Skeleman Space. Great stuff. Everyone should have checked out that E-Fat movies, because it is just brilliant. It really is. Everyone check out our E-Fat movies on Dead Space, starring Brian Cranston. And Tin Pan. Our favorite character. Who got a rough end, but you know what, it was a heroic end. He came back. He got rebuilt. I don't know if that's Tin Pan 2 at this point, you know, I just don't know. Oh, yeah, that's getting pretty existential. I don't know if we're going to be on the suit and to discuss. Someone said it was boring as fuck. How dare you? What? No, it wasn't. That was when it was boring for us, but it wasn't boring for you. When the people turned into Muppets and got thrown across the rooms of their lifeless bodies, separated from their heads. That was just joy. Yes. I like how the main character hero threw Brian Cranston into the monster room. Why did they do that? Why did they do that, indeed? I think next up is Mission Impossible. Dead Reckoning. Whoa, that was really shitty. That keeps coming up. I have to keep being like, oh, it was so awful. Everyone keeps trying to speculate on why it failed and nobody's willing to do the whole like, it was bad. We do this with the MCU stuff. We say because there's shit. Because it was bad. It was poorly written. Lots of plot issues. Characters kind of suck. Everyone's an idiot. They disrespected the franchise with this one. As far as I'm concerned, they didn't remember their history, which is really weird. Especially because a lot of it was built by Macquarie. I don't understand why you wouldn't want to use it, right? And just the complete misunderstanding and waste of an AI villain. You can make that perfectly relevant. I just... It's very hard to do. When you're doing it, it's the all-powerful AI. It's infected absolutely everything. It can do everything. It can predict everything except when the plot needs it not to do that. In which case, it doesn't do it yet. And what the hell was the deal with the guy communing with it in the coffin on the train? We'll find out next time, okay? Oh, that was the... What did we call it? We called it the... Oh, the cyber... What did we call it? We call it... We called it something funny. I don't know, but it's broken now anyway. It just exploded. Someone in chat remembers what we called the funny cyber punk coffin. Please tell me. I feel like we had a funny name for it. It's the only thing that brought us joy. We forgot it. It's funny as well because it's like AI villain, terrible ideas. You can make it work, but it is really hard. And when the film opened with like, basically every system known to matter is like, it's over. You shouldn't have told me that. It's over. We got to unplug fucking everything and destroy everything and start over. You got to be careful or something like that. I hope you save those books on farming. It's testing my powers of recoil, but isn't it broken right from the beginning because they have to... So it's on the submarine as a key. It's a Russian submarine. The Russians made the key. The Russians know where the subs sinks and the Russians made the key anyway so they can just build another one and go to the submarine and it's done. It was the only, I think, legitimately kind of cool part was the Russians figuring out what the fuck is going on with this thing on the screen. I was like, oh, this is tense and interesting, and then the rest of the film happens. So that kind of stinks. There was a little clever bit there as well because the point they were trying to make is that we're so over-reliant on the technology and the AI are the only way they can see. They are completely blind and directionless. That was quite clever. But then five minutes of film and everything else happens after it. But if you watch it and you watch that first five minutes and then you just turn it off and go home, I mean... Maybe there was a good film there that I didn't get to see. Something to be said. It was weird that the only character work that I was able to appreciate was Haley Atwells rather than all the main characters having several moments that were fucking weird. I'm starting to remember the airport sequence where they were convinced that a bomb was going to go off that would literally kill everybody. You didn't feel that at all for many characters. I'm going to go disarm it. Oh, no, I didn't bring my tools to disarm it. Oh, gosh. I'm not bringing my tools and opening it. I armed it. The final spin on the riddle machine which could be done with process of elimination and Benji couldn't think about that. He couldn't come up with that himself. Remember when it sold itself? Yeah, all you had to do was twist the dial because you can brute force that. There's only one dial left. The idea of an AI that wants to learn about the humans it's trying to defeat is a really interesting idea that they in no way do anything with. You basically nailed it when he said it's the shitty version of like an AI villain story. They do nothing with that as a premise to the point where you might even forget who the villain is in this movie. And then as a weird aspect, but I kind of think it's at least somewhat true is that they marketed the hell out of their big stunt and it wasn't a particularly invigorating and shocking stunt. It was neat. It was really neat, but... It wasn't as cool as the plane in Rogue Nation or the helicopter chase or climbing the Burj Khalifa. And they have to add that this massive element of luck that comes into it as well is that he has to crash through the exact right window at the exact right second before he kills the person. The plane has to crash yourself through the side of a train. I don't know, man. I thought he was going to land on the top and do some fun action like fight on a train. It's a callback everyone. It's a throwback everybody to the first mission impossible. What a fun little quaint movie. Got that. The fact that it's part one which is apparently going to be careful doing that because... Well, now it's just part one of nothing. Part one of one. Part one of one. Which is not a lie. Then on top of all of that Ilsa's fate which I think most people are willing to agree even if they like the film was not well done at all. That was crap. It was very crap. She gets killed by some guy because of she wants to fight him when she doesn't have to. There was so much wrong with it. She didn't have her guns and she didn't pick up any guns and then there's all the convoluted crazy shit. Remember the Mantis and Ibgoon's fight Tom Cruise in an alleyway that's really thin. That was strange. That was a bad one. She like categorically in a deterministic way is seen by the AI to be traitorous because of that event being that she was spared. But then you're like, well, why couldn't you trace that back even earlier and know that that would happen? I don't know. Yeah. It's such a fucking disappointment that film. Mm-hmm. And Fallout is just this weird, anomalous, amazing film. Everyone needs to see Mission Impossible Fallout. It's incredibly good. One of the best action movies. One of the best action movies, yeah. I'm doing a rewatch. I haven't seen it in a long time. Really good. Next up, I believe, is Oppenheimer which is my second favorite movie of the year. Oppenheimer is good. Very, very good. We didn't do coverage of that. It's equal. We didn't, but we had mentioned we saw it and we really loved it. Well, we really liked it. It's been a long time. It does seem to be. It's a three-hour biopic. Very strong character study. Yeah, great soundtrack and filmmaking work and a good... It presents the series of events really well in a comprehensive way. Even if it has flashbacks and it's not super linear, it's easy to keep track of what's going on. They do a good job with presenting the stakes of what they need to do. Oppenheimer's state of mind is family situation. You know, who he is. I think so. It's an instance of when Nolan decided he wanted to do some kind of crazy little idea of narrative framing and when he's done it before. I feel like, dude, Dunkirk, man. I don't understand what the thinking was with that structure. I don't get it. Can somebody help me with that? It's a three-hour thing. And then try to trick you into thinking that it was like, oh, see, you think that all of the events are running together, but they're actually... They're in a different order. Isn't that kind of interesting? What was that? It's the kind of thing that makes you go, oh. I don't even know if it makes me go, oh, I think it makes me go, why the fuck do you do that? I feel like it makes you move even worse. Whereas in this case, the whole framing of you've got the scenes to the end of the film, you understand that it's essentially the difference of the perspectives of Oppenheimer and Strauss. Strauss' worldview is incredibly rigid. It's all framed through his situation and his aspirations at this particular moment, whereas Oppenheimer is more broad. It's also more confused and a little bit contradictory in terms of he keeps... It's kind of like hard to ascertain exactly how he feels about his life and the decisions that he's made and his achievement, his scientific achievement means for the world to essentially have a story set up where it tries to push you in the direction of focusing very heavily on the whole fight between Oppenheimer and Strauss only to sort of reveal that that wasn't what he was thinking about at all. There wasn't some game there that Oppenheimer was playing that it was actually that he was obsessed with and stuck in these thoughts that he had about the nature of his accomplishment. It's like, that's cool. That's cool. And then you've just got like a lot of standard beats, a lot of really great filmmaking like great cinematography practical effect and a great soundtrack and excellent performance by Killian Murphy. Excellent, like really strong performances from the cast all around. It's just like a really great film. It's a really cool film. Super impressive in the way that it was constructed and put together. I like it a lot. It's my favorite Nolan film in a long time. It's even better than Interstellar. Oh, yeah, it's better than Interstellar. Yeah, it is. Amazing. That's good. And yeah, it surprised everybody in the box office. Didn't expect it to make that kind of money. I guess that means we should talk about Bobby then too, right? Yeah, Bobby came out the same day. Yeah, Bobby happened. I don't like it very much. No. I gotta say, I kind of really don't at all like Bobby, what it says and how it goes about saying it. I think it unintentionally said a lot of things that it definitely did not mean to. It's a pretty incompetently written film that unfortunately wastes what could have been pretty cool. It's just like a little idea. It's two films jammed into one. The first half of it, which is sort of ladybird redux great ago, it's just working on familiar themes motherhood. The difficulties with young daughters and coming to terms that sort of humanistic overcoming of differences realizing that you are different people, but you are at the same time, you owe each other a lot. That's a theme that she's touched on in a number of other things. It's quite a nice theme. I don't mind that at all. And the film's semi coherent when it's sticking on that. But then the around the halfway point is when it decides, yeah, that's not enough. We also have to ironically create the best argument for the patriarchy ever put on the film. And we have to compare women's happiness to small parks and then we have to de-program them because being happy is not allowed. And then in the end, what's being a woman? It's having a vagina. And that's the thematically confused film, Barbie. There's some nice things to be said about it, but overall it's a mess. Oh, I'd say so. Yeah, it feels like the writers didn't even know what they were trying to say with it. I actually like the first act of it, even if I felt that it was missing a sort of prologue element of, like, maybe you could have the opening scene, the little girl who's, like, upset by some family dynamic gone wrong. And that's why she feels, that's why Barbie is feeling these weird things in Barbie Land where she feels like, I gotta go to the real world and find out what's going on. Even if it's missing that, I thought it was a fairly strong first act, and then it goes into the real world stuff, and then I thought it just turned into this mess. And then there's this distinctly, I distinctly remember this one part where, like, this girl character in the human world is introduced, and she's what? Oh no. Is that Barbie, like the actual Barbie that I used to play with? And it's like, what? Why would you see this human character running around? Oh, this is so much that didn't work. So much that didn't work. And then at that point... No, it carries... It tries to do a load of world-building mechanical stuff, and then it tries for about five seconds and drops it. So you have the whole idea that all the Barbies in Barbie World are being played with by real girls, that's dropped immediately. And there's a bunch more along those lines. But you get to that middle act when it is the daughter who's introduced, which gives that thing about Barbies are fascist, Barbies an icon of the patriarchal suppression of women kind of, which then got that discourse thing going is, oh no, Barbie's actually a satire, don't you know? Barbie is satirizing this line of thinking. It's actually a clever satire. And then you go and look at what Greta Gerwig actually says about it. And she says, of the same scene, no, no, I thought it was really important to articulate the obviously correct arguments by a very intelligent character. It's not a satire. I like that people want to think it is, it's not that clever. You know what scenes really annoyed me a lot in that film? The one that really annoyed me was how part of their ruse of destroying the society that the Kenseth built was pretending to like their artistic expression. They met a lot of jokes about how much their artistic expression was embarrassing and lame and that one really pissed me off. Like, oh, they're all playing the same guitar song so like what a bunch of losers am I right? And it's like, we're going to pretend that we're actually interested in their artistic expression. But really it's embarrassing and shit, right? That was really fucking lying. There was a couple of versions of the other examples of the same sort of thing would be like we'll rely on their interest in helping us with tech issues to trick them. And they want to frame it as though it's an ego thing, right? Like, you're so good at tech that you want to help anybody out because you're the guy to come to. It's like, yeah, but there's the obvious other aspect of wanting to help people. Like, what do you mean? We want to share our hobbies and interests with you because we like you and we want to, you know, be closer to you. No, but that's not the case. I just don't understand how it's like, why would you construct a situation where the kens have no autonomy whatsoever and then they go get it and then it seemingly goes overboard. But then your reset is, well, we're still not going to give you like fucking anything really. You can have a few symbolic positions and they'll be like, ah, see, that's the real world. What are you making? What are you doing? Like, what is this story that you've crafted? What the fuck is this? I wonder what the real world is, which is the problem. So you have that scene at the end that I think you're describing is when the kens say, well, can we have maybe, you know, just one supreme court seat? No, you can't. You have to work your way up. The message you'd be forgiven for taking from that is that you have to earn equality, which I really don't think is something great ago we would agree with. But it's one of the fact that the film doesn't really, it never creates a real world for that parallel. You know, they have to invent that all of the motel board are men. They have to present San Francisco in 2023 as though it's as sexist as San Francisco in 1973. They have no real world analogy. So everything just seems a rampantly dishonest and be self-defeating because if you want to construct this parallel, if you want to try and give any kind of moral lesson about the importance of working hard and overcoming systems of oppression, which is what Greta Goeck's main sort of humanistic line is all about. All systems of oppression, keep everyone down. Patriarchy is as bad for men as it is for women. Okay, fine. But then you do kind of have to show us what that is really before you can try and deconstruct it. But the film has to parody, a parody of the real thing it wants to deconstruct and that just makes it confused even more. Remember the one of, yeah, trick him into, say you haven't seen The Godfather so you can try and explain it to you. That'll get him. Like what a loser expressing his interest in art. They try to frame it as narcissistic. It's like he sees himself as better off because he gets to explain something intellectual to the woman. And it's like that. Why are you so fucking cynical? Why does that have to be so cynical? Why can't it just be earnest expressions of passion for art? Why is it going to be culture? You think men can't have this? Only women can? That's kind of fucked up. It's written by a person who calls herself a filmmaker and back before it became inconvenient to do so, would wax lyrical about the influence Woody Allen had on her career, for example. So like she's talking about like film theory dismissively because, oh, the Ken's interested in The Godfather but Greta Gerwig herself must surely be interested in that kind of thing. That's why she's interested in it for the right reasons. Yeah, exactly. That's why she makes a multi-cajillion-dollar movie and sells all these tickets and makes the money. Not condescending at all. The speech. That big speech. The speech was horrible. Was embarrassing. That's all I just said. Are you overthinking this? All we've done is tell you what happens. Well, if the film gets nominated for an Academy Award which it probably is going to, then you know what? I think it's fair to actually analyze the film for being apparently like a very earnest and sincere and really intelligent satire. I guess I'm tied to that one. It's these films. People fall back on that. It's like, I don't know, man, it seems like everybody's talking about it like it's one of the best films of the year. It seems like everybody's talking about it as if it's like an actually excellently crafted brilliant satire. So in that case, then maybe it should be engaged with as though the points that it's trying to make in the observations in the satire is like earnest. The film likes to give the impression that it itself is thinking. There's a joke about Citizens United within the first 10 minutes, for example. It's not a casual throwaway thing. It could be a form of critique on modern society. All the interviews that all of the cast and the director have done tell you about all of the, you know, the systems of thought that underpin the film or the philosophy that it's supposed to be trying to convey. It's not a thoughtless film. It's just that it fails to think. But it's trying to think. So you can critique it as though it does. This feels like a neighboring argument to the whole like, why are you analyzing Star Wars? It's got space wizards. It's like, why are you trying to see what you can find in Barbie? It is Barbie. You know what that means. It's what got to get us. We haven't even done any kind of deep dive. We're mainly just telling you what scenes happen and what the points of views of the characters are and then they are affirmed by the movie. And it's like, what? Question mark? What the fuck is going on? It's not like we're describing them and going, that was a really funny joke. Or that was an interesting bit of drama. It was a point is made and reaffirmed and then we're sitting here like, wow, that point makes no sense at all. And that, you know what I mean? It's not particularly deep in terms of a dive. If you want to actually delve into the nature of the mechanics of this world that basically the film makes the statement that the Barbies in the Barbie world, they're just susceptible to having their minds completely subsumed by outside influences to the point that they're basically automatons. I don't even know what I'm supposed to do with that. They need to be inoculated to what was like inoculated to patriarchy. What do I have to do with that? It's like... Interesting, what are you trying to say about women, Greta? Weird, that's just like weird on so many levels to compare. As everyone points out that women are exceptionally happy of the patriarchy. I just, I don't understand what I'm supposed to make of any of that. That they are incapable of thinking. Getting introduced to like some idea is akin to an illness that killed a bunch of people in real life. They were happier under that, but then they construct a scheme that involves manipulating the kens by manipulating what seems to be earnest expressions of their interest in art because it's actually stupid to then liberate. I don't like talking about this movie. I don't like it. I don't understand it. Yeah, it seems very bitter against people like me, quite frankly. Well, we did almost skip over a secret invasion, right? Yeah, secret invasion is easier to talk about. As much as I hate secret invasion and boy, I hate its guts, it doesn't feel like that hates me personally. It does. That's sort of an improvement. There is a TV show at the Marvel Universe that a lot of people had no idea even existed that killed Maria Hill and Talos. They're both gone. Yeah. And in the process it decided to metaphorically, spiritually kill Nick Fury. Pretty much, yeah. That was like, that assassination felt systematic. It was very thorough. I kept telling us how shit he is and how he never did anything. Oh, all these things you made, that's actually, that was us. The aliens, we did that all the time. You didn't do anything. You're a loser, you're a sad, yet another instance of you're a sad, losing Fury. Like, that's the only way that they could perceive Fury is you have to knock them down to absolute, like, zero. When trying to prove the point about a lot of patterns we can spot in modern writing, like tropes almost, that one is possibly one of the greatest examples ever of reaching into the past of a character that everyone up to this point has quite enjoyed. I mean, obviously the first destruction of him was in Captain Marvel, but in this to actually go back and erase his achievements, it's like, wow. That's so retroactively destroying him. I can only do that, but to transfer them onto a group that is now actively working to kill all humans on the planet, which all of that are like that. The scrolls man is like an insane bit of world building that you've now made it to where the majority of scrolls are cool with, if not actively aiding the annihilation of all of humanity. They all told us apparently that over the years there's no millions scrolls apparently on Earth that just took over all the people's lives. It's not like you need to ask us people on Earth the citizens of the world for our permission and whether or not we're cool with a bunch of shapeshifting aliens coming and subverting democracies. Nope, this is our planet now all of you need to die, and horribly too. It would be a terrible death to die from nuclear radiation and stuff. One guy in Captain Marvel they cut a deal but they didn't follow through on somehow, somehow in 30 years couldn't find one planet known as a scroll bomb. People have mentioned not only have we not seen his reaction to the information, but Rodey doesn't know that Tony's dead. I was about to mention that. That's right, it's been a scrolls intro. That's horrible. They just stole that. No, yeah, because they announced very publicly that it goes back as far as Civil War, but they have the chance to explicitly not have that be the case when they get back to him in the actual shows which I have to imagine the next fucking creative would be like no. Throw on the other element as well of Amelia Clark is now the most powerful entity in the MCU. She has just all the genetics now. And it seems to be done so casually too that this is just for existing. This was just mentioned as well in the marvels. We are showed that Captain Marvel absolutely had a planet four scrolls, but oh well. Yeah. They really wanted to know. It can't really exist as a show in the MCU. It doesn't accord with anything before or after it. It's just there and everyone including the people in the studio themselves said that was probably a mistake that just pretended didn't happen. Yeah, I mean, normally it's not a good idea to ignore things but I don't know how you make an MCU movie that's set on Earth that isn't completely and thoroughly coloured by the events of this movie. One of the things to be like, can we give better deaths to these characters that people actually care about? Can we do that? Yeah. Well, let's be honest, this character has been in it for a while. It's Ben Mendelsohn. He's a great actor. Why the hell did we do that to him? Yeah. Absolutely, yeah. He's an entertaining character and a guy. I guess some real ones are kind of interesting. He's one of a few not evil scrolls. What's that? Yeah, but now he's gone. Now he's gone, so... Just the evil ones. It's like, isn't it really offensive the idea that it's like, oh, Gaia just gets all the powers? No. Participating in the scheme to end all humans on this planet because you're a little bitter? I mean, she personally, you know, did the whole bomb thing and the... And her rewarded all the powers. Killing those thousands of people. She will never answer for it. She will never answer for it. She's kind of like Valkyrie, in a sense. Instead, not only will she not answer for it, she'll walk around condescending to other better people than her about how much they suck. She'll walk around judging everybody else for how much they're losers. It's fucking awesome, dude. It's pretty funny. It's like how they just completely ignored how the powers work that she gets because she just uses the magic that's strange she uses and does the hand gestures which is no way of knowing how that even works. Part of the power... He gets his brain. They get his rings. Do you remember the jerk and family guy where Quagma discovers Wanking and then he walks out one day and he just lifts up his other arm and it's muscly. It's fucking ultimate veins and shit. I'm just going to go get my bail there. Considering we had a fight in here where two people have all the powers of all the Avengers, it's like a really lame and shit fight. It's really short. It's slop. It's pure slop. It's the shit that we... It's so awful. It's almost like peak slop, I would say. Which is ironic because Secret Invasion was being marketed as though it's like a return to a Winter Soldier type situation. It's going to be dark. It's going to be gritty. It's going to be on the ground. It's going to star a lot of human characters. It's going to be espionage. Ended like this. What is this? Thank God everyone hated it. I'm glad that the AI intro automatically just set everybody in this mood against it. It made our job easier. That's for sure. By the end of this everybody was done with it. I remember at the beginning people were kind of coping a little bit. When you get the G5 at the end everybody was ready to hate this. What a fucking disaster. The amount of money that was lost on this must be insane. Wow, I guess the thing is is that lost money on a streaming thing is a bit harder to quantify but I guess it would be viewership. There's a bean counter somewhere that can tell them what the return of this project was. It was terrible. I guarantee it. With the way that everyone was talking about it when it bleeds through that level and the public discourse is horrifically negative. I think Secret Invasion was a big part of why the Marvels. It was probably a big contributor to the even further diminishing of box office. Especially since Scrolls, that was something that was introduced in Captain Marvel so those were kind of attached. People might have been thinking that the Marvels would actually connect to our Secret Invasion. Secret Invasion up again with it's the most devastating world-building thing that they've done in the MCU is the Skrull Invasion and all that it implies. Earth has changed forever now in a way that you can never go back from. I don't know that anything ever topples Loki in terms of ruining everything like from a world perspective. I don't even know what that is. Maybe season 2. In your story. Yeah, if you're just having a story on Earth like a typical superhero movie you don't have to account for the ridiculous Loki stuff but you have to account for the Skrulls all the time forever and always. Doesn't Secret Invasion end with they pass this anti-alien act which basically says all aliens are hostile entities on Earth so they're not allowed to be there anymore. One of the questions over here kind of is based but one of the things I'm really interested in is what overlap, if any overlap was the script for this show because the Marvels was delayed wasn't it and so I'm assuming these things must have been written not very far from each other they may even have been partially written at the same time but evidently they haven't spoken to each other. You have the anti-alien act in this show and then the Marvels comes along and say where can the Skrulls be safe on Earth send them back to Earth to live with the new Asgardians who are themselves presumably subject to the anti-alien act and whenever I don't think ever going to see them again because that's kind of just speeding them but it doesn't add up that they cannot exist in the same universe. No, it's which is pretty funny considering that these projects get build as apparently connected to one another I'm pretty sure that the pitch a secret invasion during that like big investor thing where they announced all these projects the pitch was that it would lead into Captain Marvel two at the time then the Marvels but I mean obviously that's not true but they said that all the time it will lead into it and it's like what it leads in is detrimentally as in it raises new questions that will go unanswered or that contradict you know whatever whatever you can account for it No, I would if I was in charge I would there'd be a lot of things I would decanonize but this would probably be the first one that goes Oh easily without yeah absolutely there's like there's no way we can have the Skrull invasion happening on Earth it's just no we can't do it You've got a multiverse now so you can hand wave it away this one took place in universe 17D yeah I was just thinking that like this like what Platoon was saying like this the universe multiverse idea has cheapened everything where like we got our kicks out of it you know there's been a few benefits and fun stories but now by that I mean like everything everywhere all at once was good that was the kicks I got out of it but that's over now right but like in a pre multiverse Marvel phase they would have been much more selective over projects they got green lit but now it's just yeah yeah little green light anything and if it's shit and it's just like well that takes place in a universe where everything is shit it's all of them sir well that's the thing they actually they did get to a point where they could green light everything and it wouldn't matter and they enjoyed those what like three years of that actually happening as like a grace period but you had to then to generate another set of years for grace period you needed to have stuff that people actually liked but you didn't make anything anyone liked even you know Shang-Chi like there are people out there said that was great it's like nobody cares about Shang-Chi nobody tell me tell me one thing about that film no just there is no more Iron Man's that are happening there's no film that everyone's like oh shit you should get like for the MCU they didn't make one even we have the iron lady what's her name iron hard iron hard just gonna say just great no way home would be like the only exception but again that didn't help the MCU or Marvel in terms of like money and it's and it's almost like a bookend like it wasn't like a promise of future content it was more so just like an end and then it might go over to Sony's universe it's almost confusing how it could possibly help them and it's like the best thing they had I think I almost feel like people consider there's Spider-Man and then there's like Marvel even though obviously Spider-Man it kind of in the way that there's Batman like DC broadly Spider-Man is Spider-Man and when Spider-Man succeeds that doesn't say anything about Marvel Spider-Man especially with the whole rights thing that seems like a lot of people are vaguely then again I mean isn't the whole idea with the Sony stuff that they want to trick people into thinking that Venom is like in the MCU but now it's probably more advantageous to say no it's in the it's in our little universe with Morbius like when you I don't even know like oh shit we lied to you but we take it back we regret it it's like telling a terrible lie that gets you in more trouble yeah man all right there up on the screen it's amazing ohhh Emilia Clarke I had never seen that clip before so that was quite amazing to see that it looks pretty pretty stupid the only reason I was inclined to see secret invasion was I think Olivia Coleman's in it and it's just like maybe she's the type of actress who like would only go on board if the material was any good one of the best things in there she actually plays it as though she's having some fun she gets to do something competent which is rare in the whole show yeah she does a competent thing we were like whoa calm down and then they did something that we shouldn't forget about is that the new season of Futurama was starting to come out we didn't finish that did we we got near the end well I think two episodes left to watch yes and it was not like how do I put this it didn't put us in a position of I can't wait to see more but it also didn't piss us off no there were a couple episodes that were actually like fairly impressive there were a few there that were like oh yeah it had something to say jokes that worked and a decent story to tell felt like one of the things that struck me about the new season is how much it references all of very much deep cut references to stuff that you know you have to be a fan of Futurama to put that stuff in there I was like damn nice so for anyone out there who's itching for Futurama content it doesn't fill that hole but it also gives you something and it's nice a snack another meal as much as all the voices have aged very obviously what's funny is like his fad's worth is now probably better than ever but yeah you know it was it was fun there's some episodes I think we were like that was kind of bad but like yeah and then there's something like oh that was yeah also someone said I prefer older Futurama the theme of this conversation is that it is obviously worse older Futurama you're being pretty subtle there but mm-hmm oh yeah that's notable I think next up is actually Ahsoka Ahsoka it's worth a mention we had the React Wars saga the next chapter with all the XQC stuff happen oh jeez you're right it's not like there's a lot to say on the subject other than just wow that was crazy another sort of definition of controversy because the way for them to get away with doing all this shit is to just stay under the radar but people like XQC have no interest in doing that so it can ruin it for a lot more of the people around him if he was to do high profile sort of react bullshit but the conversation he had with Ethan Klein was particularly funny he's too selfish XQC only cares about XQC when he got on the ground hit the worm that is one of the funniest things I've ever say to my entire life that was so hilarious I'm not mad I'm not mad as he crawls around and rills around on the floor in silence the conversation that you had with Amala was particularly funny cause like you had both reached some kind of consensus on something and then he said like so you admit defeat then well he had accepted openly that he was a piece of shit he made it difficult for me to do anything with it cause he's just like I am a villain, I am evil he has to frame everything in terms of victory or loss cause he's been playing over a watcher he is a man of fortune alright I am a man I am a man of fortune he learned about condensation that was fun that arc was age of XQC cause it was a new player almost into this game and my god there was so much to learn and discover all the clips that I was sent in terms of just highlights of his streams as was mentioned could you believe that he was of a double digit age when he discovered the concept of condensation that stream clip is so fucking funny he thinks chat is lying to him and then he comes to the conclusion ok so water just appears out of nowhere ok so annoying it kind of blackpills you when you look at XQC and know that he's richer than anyone has any business being and he's this stupid and a legitimately bad person but like hundreds how many people watch him 20, 30,000 people are watching him at any time and it really is kind of like a human civilization blackpill if he can fuck upwards so can you fuck upwards yeah and you know just trying to understand everything about it and I feel like that's just the next chapter there will be another one eventually someone over on twitch will fuck up again steal in something and it will get a bunch of traction again it will be what it will be about Jaxfilms has been doing his thing and godspeed to him yeah but for me he was correct in terms of notable coverage was indeed Ahsoka Ahsoka Ahsoka Ahsoka you know that was something we think some people were saying like yeah and all would feel more like stars if it did have more lights it was that is true though it just happened it's all what happened though when it's pushed to the extreme you see Vader with his lightsaber and then you get people going it's just like almost makes you want to answer the question of how far can we get without lightsabers can we do it we can't get through the blast doors without them it's true I have to get the codes yes he did indeed Vader this is a part of the arc and then we were distinctly disappointed quite quickly I am so glad we can monetize that because jeez fuck this show well yeah of all of our like episodes coverage of a tv show our fans love Star Wars they just love it you guys are big fans of disney star wars aren't ya so no denying it it was that first ish scene of the balanship landing in that the new republic ship whatever was called and everyone was dumb and everyone was an idiot and there was a chance to be clever and subversive and we did the most brain dead 12 year old thing imaginable it's just a stupid guy let him on the ship for the rest of the show it was a clever ruse we were immediately asking shit tons of questions about how any of it works that's a good sign you just begun with the map and then the amount of time that's clearly being spent doing nothing cause they didn't have any story to tell which is incredible cause of the every episode is like oh you could have started here or you could have left that out why is there so many pauses in between your words and sentences it's so awkward lots of walk in, lots of landscape shots that go on for way longer than needed and then episode lengths even they are like how did they get this this long with how little that happened and yeah we could have began the whole season at any really even in the last episode that could have been where it fucking started to be honest with you a lot of that information that we got for the rest of the season could have been covered in a conversation I guess distinctly disappointing and yeah even fans of the clone wars were not happy with this and like I said it damaged Dave Filoni's reputation a lot cause he was given so much control over this which is what you can expect going forward and I think one of the bigger ones is like people are willing to concede that Ahsoka is out of character what's her name, Hera does she even have a character really other than being pompous insanely irresponsible bringing the sun on the combat mission to get the Sith there's just negative aspects that's it using her rank to try and supersede any situation she's in like a fucking bullheaded idiot tarnished Leia and Mon Mothma too yep just taking advantage of the political system to benefit herself which is exactly what we don't like seeing of our characters that's not good they don't even know if Dave realizes that that's like the whole issue that Palpatine takes advantage of is using the system to his benefit to gain more power is that what you're doing with these heroes but okay I'm becoming more and more of a separatist every day and what's cool about it is like in a good story that would be awesome like a good character doing that and then another good character being like isn't that well it's fine because we're the good guys and you know that if it was an ad door there would be like a subtle maybe musical track or there's expressions that give away this will be addressed again sometime this is not going to be forgotten the scene of Mon Mothma in the car with her husband like that was a legitimately subtle scene that I didn't quite even get until we like stopped it and that considered what it was about because it was really clever and subtle so would it just not work take advantage of that way you can in Star Wars it's not because I think the lesson that's been taken from the prequels is the most shallow the politics stuff is the thing that doomed the prequels the online Star Wars can't be doing the politics stuff anymore because we don't want that there's even that scene in Mando Season 3 when Doc Brown's character is about to go on a political speech about the virtues of separatism and independence and then Bo Katan just shoots him with the stun gun and says politics the best of the Disney Star Wars shows has been Andal which is by far the most political in the universe political of all of them it takes politics seriously in Andal and it's because the politics did not doomed the prequels it was the terrible story in the awful characters and everyone being stupid and the odd pacing and all sorts of all the other things if you're doing serious world building in the Star Wars universe particularly in this time period you actually do have to pay some attention to the political arrangements of that system like what is happening with the New Republic what is the New Republic even how powerful is it how far does it reach who's in charge all of these things are really vital to setup in a really compelling way again Andal is the classic example of how you can do that in a compelling way with a strong character driven story but Ahsoka comes along and you compare Mon Mothmarin Ahsoka to Mon Mothmarin in Andal they are not the same person Leia is not the same person none of these people they can't even fit together in the sort of the vague timeline sense when you get the beginning when the guy is giving the speech and he says it's been several years since the fall of the empire that's really helpful I love being grounded in this universe I love knowing whether we're before Mando season 3 or after it like incredibly important piece of information and they can't even give you that until the penultimate episode of the series and it was funny I feel like if Gilroy was told I know until they decide well that's probably the case like they didn't even know or like they weren't sure well we found that out with Captain America whether or not he's alive I was just about to say that this is not unprecedented shocking as it is he's not knowing basic information or being able to that's got to be a bit of a power play too because as a writer you'd be like I need to know that information and they're like you're not going to get it move on and you'd be like and I'll just have the character say I have no idea what year it is and we've heard about the many creatives that have left contact with Disney or working with them and it's got to be stuff like that like how fucking annoying would that be how would I write my story I need to know if he's dead you're telling me that you might establish later that he was dead the whole time and I have to write it as though I don't know whether or not fucking don't you think they're going to have an opinion to share if he's dead like it's going to come up well yeah you're just yeah don't bring it up yeah just yeah it turns the whole plan because I think it's the penultimate episode of Soka is when they reveal that it's all set after Mando season 3 which already causes problems because it means that Morgan Elsbeth's character has been on a prison ship for about three years at that point but then it gets even worse because you have the shadow council stuff well that's true but you have the whole shadow council stuff in Mando season 3 when it now, thanks to Soka we know that the Imperials plan is to divert all their resources to wait for a guy they haven't contacted and don't even know is alive because the witch magic hasn't been used yet and they're not helping Morgan Elsbeth anyway because they don't give her any resources if that fits together it can't actually work in that way and if the gap is truly three years how long has the gap been between Soka discovering the information about the location of the map device and going to the map device that doesn't make any fucking sense I know none of it makes any sense and it's funny because if you asked them they might actually they might actually go like oh fuck it's like oh you didn't think about that no fuck we didn't think about that they were probably like well to be fair it's like why don't you know why don't you know this is your life you make Star Wars all the time I fucking hate you you have the opportunity to create a television show do you have any few people on the planet earth have that incredible opportunity and you're squandering it and that's kind of what makes me a little bit mad it kind of pisses me off that you're wasting this insane opportunity that people would kill for zombie stormtroopers what the fuck they're ones ever truly gone they've got a whole army that they I dude that's one of those things where it's like I can't I can't I just can't do it I can't look at Empire Strikes Back watch that story and those characters in that world and imagine yeah and some years later there are going to be a bunch of zombie stormtroopers I just can't I can't do it I can't watch the prequels and be like oh yeah Anakin had this orange apprentice lady and I'm like that no he didn't he did not have that shit you made that up I will not accept the big why there's only so much that you can I think I'm pretty willing to accept it I can accept terrible things as being canon unfortunately my brain can just square those things away I've accepted the prequels so we're there but the point being I've said it because I think it was the first instance in Star Wars especially of like dude no no that didn't happen which is Han Solo dropping Cthulhu into a black hole that the Han Solo that we meet in a new hope did not I can't accept it my brain can't accept it as having happened it's just that's made up bullshit that didn't happen and the zombie stormtroopers is going to be another thing of made up bullshit that I totally will remove from my brain as being canon all of this is made up but some of it is way made up like I think there's one scene that sums up all of Ahsoka though I think it's got to be Maroc Maroc is probably one of my favourite bits in the entire show it's like all the episodes leading up and you've got all the rooms all who is he is he actually Ezra is he going to be Starkiller from like in Force Unleashed whatever it was is he going to be this person, that person, that person oh no no he's just a fart no he's a fart he's actually full of his blowing out like smoke up your ass he's like I mean smoke that's all he is he's not seriously you're talking about the people involved not knowing what they're doing the guy who wrote and directed that episode was actually asked specifically about that character and he doesn't know what it was because Dave Filoni didn't tell him so how do you you're writing this character you're writing the death scene how do you not know who he is can you make more of these fart people they seem to be pretty good with like flying and fighting and everything don't we've done the cloning Jedi thing we don't want to go there why did he why is he a fart because people do when they die they fart how annoying hey Dave what is this character I was like I don't know wouldn't you like to know just kill him off oh who is he oh he's just a fart oh okay he's still a better written character than Sabine though she's the worst she's like really really lame God she's annoying Sabine is bad Sabine is bad Hera's bad they're all bad I like the robot I like him yeah a robot David Tennant robot is pretty cool yeah I like him Sabine's got some doomed from the beginning is it the first episode where yeah obviously yeah but like when um when Sabine's got watching that hollow log of Ezra which is really just filling in for the audience who hasn't seen rebels or the clone wars like what the hell these people are and that audio log is when Ezra says like oh yes Sabine I'm your good friend Ezra Bridger you were like a sister to me and in that moment it's kind of screwed because like what's their attachment to each other it's just a vague friendship they don't even want to bone so she's going to go and potentially sacrifice an entire galaxy in order to get to a person that she doesn't really give that much of a shit about and then they meet and it's just oh hi oh hi how did you go here she really cares about this guy where's the Soka how did you get here he's like don't worry about it how are you doing I mean it was only two days ago that I saw her as far as I'm aware and it was my fault too also the guy you sacrificed yourself is trying to make his way back but don't worry about it let's have some fun adventures with those little turtle people adventures are fun she undid she reversed Ezra's sacrifice she put in Uno reverse cons like his whole his whole arc well that explains how terrified and you know Grim he looks when she shows up and not being thrilled to see his old friend my old friend being Ren cause it's funny he's like oh it's being kind of tough it's like dude it looks like it's been a breeze it looks like you're having a good time here with your little friend you look like you've been living very comfortably it's not like you've got a whole bunch of new scars because you've been at all of these really close calls and fights and you know malnourished or anything you just you chill and of course there's no repercussions for that they don't talk about this it's just they just leave and then it's like seems like a pretty natural way to implement some drama it's like wait what the fuck are you doing I just sacrificed myself and now you're back and he's going back to where you do fake drama he just he can't do it he can't tell stories he doesn't even seem to understand like what you're supposed to do in stories he doesn't understand the conflict and resolution you know like that sort of dance is like a part of storytelling he just can't do it and now he's in charge that's amazing how he gets put in charge poor Tony over there just like writing and redrafting well I guess the thing is that yeah but the problem is like I mean I guess in a sense it makes a lot of sense yeah it makes sense it's labeled as the guy who gets it and knows how to tell Star Wars stories and he's made stuff that is ostensibly successful so yeah but you know but now who are you gonna blame you know like if I mean it was all like he deserved to blame for a lot of the stuff that's already happened but now he's the chief creative officer so now there's no one to blame Chief creative officer of Star Wars yeah I believe that you only fail upwards I guess so um more black pill depressing nonsense about the industry well hey I think uh I don't think we know I don't think we know I think it's up in there maybe I think it's like a lot of things at Disney they're trying to figure out maybe what their plan is because you can't ignore the holes in the dike right now you gotta figure out how you're gonna plug them oh well Wikipedia says Ahsoka is a miniseries so it's done according to Wikipedia but hey interesting who knows you know it could stay in miniseries or it could get a second one but if it doesn't get a second one then that means it's canon in Star Wars that Ahsoka and Sabine are just cast away in a different galaxy it's kind of what they deserve so I'm happy with that yeah I'm okay with that I'll take that yeah they deserve to be stuck on a planet with each other for eternity yeah um I think one piece came out uh next one piece but I heard very good things I watched only the first episode and I didn't mind it but I didn't really continue but you guys all told me it's very nice I like it it's a really easy thing to point to as good it's good it's straightforward it's good it has characters who are all different uh and have their own journeys that they're going on that are gradually sort of resolved and developed on over the course of the season as they go to different places and meet wacky characters and uh getting some cool action scenes in a kind of fun world that um for as absurd as it is accepts what it is like with earnestness this would be like an example to point to of it accepts yeah we live in a crazy world with wacky characters and crazy powers and there's a bunch of pirates in all of these islands scattered around with zany wacky entities and it just kind of accept that as being what it is and embraces it with a smile on its face it's like a really fun show that's like a really easy one to recommend I don't really know much about the anime though so like all the manga so I can't really speak to like anything to do with like how faithful it is or whether they are I mean I uh I recognize a lot of things on that first episode I watched back in the day when it came out in good old Germany uh so I think it's pretty pretty accurate from what I know whatever I remember but that's me from years and years ago but I I think it's pretty the guy who made the manga involved in it so that he had something to say yeah that always helps something that I really liked about the show was the production design it had these really cool sets lots of cool like makeup applied to certain people like the the fish guys that were more involved towards the end and just like that everybody kind of played it off as essentially being like real in that world like the production design was super impressive it had a big budget though I'm pretty sure and they used it pretty well I'd say I really like the set for the uh for the um the big um restaurant in the middle of the sea that they went to like in the middle of the season I really liked that set and that was cool yeah it was good there's only a couple of fair like the only episodes I think I would say would duds would be episode three and four with the cat people villains um there's the the slightly irritating section that I have in mind anyway is like he actually does he wants to kill them he catches them he's actually got one of them in his clutches and proceeds to not kill them in order that he can live which is just kind of there it was still like fun it was just irritating as opposed to the rest of the show which I thought was generally fairly tight for what it was well yeah because you definitely got like some conveniences and stretches and stuff like that but um it hits a lot of the standard power of the beats literally some stretches in the show yeah stretches I like him I like Luffy a lot he's uh he's a cool protagonist um it's cool to have this sort of like relentlessly upbeat optimistic guy who uh extends that optimism to everybody that he meets in his life but at the same time when uh he means business he means business who will like steadfastly protect his friends and do what he believes is right it's just I like him a lot he's a cool protagonist hmm it's refreshing to have something that isn't at all cynical I think yeah he sort of embodies that which is it all of the people around him are individualists they will have their own motives and they are prepared at various points to double cross anyone they're with uh if the the team threatens to get in the way of the individual motive but it's the guy who is the most like blissfully naive and optimistic all the time who even though he is naive is the one who makes his naivety come true like he is the one who gives them the grander family he gives them the collective and it sounds like a really tween simple message but yeah friends will do things for their friends and so there is no necessary conflict between your individual one and and the one to the team um it's just nice but interesting true as that may be have you considered that I'm a loser friends suck and also divorced isn't that fun maybe they'll try that for season 2 isn't that pretty clever and fun something that was super interesting was that Zorro was like one of the first people to really come around to liking Luffy because he had no reason to dislike him he looked at him as a guy that had like no ulterior motives or schemes that he was playing at he was just a guy chasing his dream and that he found that immensely respectable like I found it cool that the guy who's like the you figure the one that would be the hardest to get on board was actually one of the first I like you a lot actually I'm gonna stick with you to the end um he's a bit of a powerhouse of a character and he wants to give that power to someone who's uh with while and suck yeah I mean Luffy proves himself a whole bunch of times in front of him so it's just easy for him yeah so whereas it was like Nami who was the hardest one to bring around because she had all of uh her basically plans that she needed to accomplish she had a lot of reason to be very world weary and cynical and structurally they do a good job of spreading out everybody's sort of stories and development throughout the season it's um remarkably structurally fundamentally normal it's uh it comes across me as completely recognizable as a structure even though it's a wacky show once again it's kind of stuff we were talking about earlier if that's the theme of what we've learned about media this year it's that take your shit serious it's it's a stupid wacky crazy world but all the characters are very much uh aware of just how bad things can go and what things mean they don't fucking wink at the camera every five seconds mm-hmm I I quite like the uh the I can't remember the captain they uh the the guy who was chasing him Luffy he's uh his grandfather right yeah I liked him a lot he was uh pretty entertaining his scenes were often pretty interesting good actor yeah I like the dynamic yeah the back and forth everybody there got yeah I like got yeah we'll be paying attention to season two the next season yeah and I wonder if this will be an instance of interest the general takeaway is that this is one of the best uh anime like live action western anime adaptations mm-hmm so I wonder if that's going to influence again but whether or not that would positive or if they learn the thing which is oh give them give them like colorful hair that looks like in the anime and that's good enough in and among disaster we have these little hints of like oh what's that you know in the little adaptations that aren't as cringe as you might think you know my god what does it mean going forward who knows we'll find out it goes back to the video game point which is you know this is successful because it does not run away from its premise there's a there's a reason all of these original properties are so successful and denuding them of those original aspects is not going to make them better necessarily so yeah even if it's a live action anime adaptation play up to what the anime did and that makes it popular don't pretend that because it's live action it has to be more serious and somber and adult well is it there's probably a very borked conventional wisdom of like well it isn't a games we can't just or film is an anime because it's just like why no and if you think about like Resident Evil that franchise was pretty money-making the pulled of us and some ones and they just they're just hilarious in terms of adaptations I could see people I could see pulled of us and tell you like you can't just take the games to make them into films that would never work you have to do what I did you have to fall we we would have plenty of imagine like a direct adaptation of Resident Evil 4 you could do it it would be great absolutely yeah that be even Resident Evil 1 like I'm convinced you can make a fucking sweet Resident Evil movie but I quite I haven't seen it done yet I think did you talk about Blue Beetle no I saw it I talked about it on FNT if anyone wants to see my take of it it was pretty bad I'm trying to remember it now the main thing I'm taking away is Susan Saranda's acting was so bad it was hilarious she couldn't give less of a fuck about being in that movie it was actually funny and almost worth seeing just for that the main actor did a really good job I bought his enthusiasm and you could tell he really took this role seriously and wanted to make it work but all your standard like horrific plot just everything's coincidental or holes there's plenty of like jokes that didn't work but like I guess it's it was better than like the flash yes that's something I guess the 3 out of 10 territory basically yeah I think there was some things I kind of like there's a lot of things I did not like at all it's but seriously that one has been flushed it's almost like you saying that maybe things like I did see that yeah by the way flushed films expend for balls also relates around that was so shit that was miserable that was miserable it was boy that was the most I assume it's like money grubbing just make another one yeah but this one didn't make any money exactly expendables is dead as an IP now thinking of that movie the thing that comes in my mind when I think about expend for balls is how Sylvester Stallone's in it for 5 minutes and 80% of that is him sitting down in a chair somewhere which makes me wonder like hmmmm oh this this information about something going on with him and the IP or the company's whatever behind us obviously from our perspective like we just is just a sad film that needs to be put down yeah it's stupid you can see us talk about it for 20 minutes on Meadows Forge while talking about a bunch of other things on the 3 hour stream we talked 20 minutes oh and I just remembered because I was playing a particular game we talked about it and we should probably mention at least somewhat would be Liza P that was good it was really cool to play an entry into the souls like genre that wasn't just funnily enough it did fall victim to a lot of carbon copy issues but it also did a bunch of new things and cool things created a will and also didn't copy some things that they definitely should have copied but for some reason didn't yeah it had the full selection it's like oh god I wish they copied that dude what do you have this whole stagger mechanic but you don't give me a bar that shows me how far this goes up surely that's been modded in now right like someone's got a mod for it it's gone I wonder if that makes the game like super good you know I was surprised to learn that it wasn't from software I was convinced it was for the longest time like oh it's a different company really it looks so similar the souls games well souls like is a genre for a reason there's so many derivatives of dark souls now that sure you remember the era of all video assays related to games would reference dark souls there was a time on youtube that was absolutely platforming every single fucking it would be cringe as hell and you'd almost collect them like pokemon like all the people saying it and then mark brown at the top of the list the episode would be like it's very similar to dark souls speaking of dark souls armoured core 6 came out this year as well yeah that was good too I finished that last week nice what do you think I liked it for the most part it's been ages since I played an armoured core game I think 3 was the last one I touched so a bit of a learning curve to get back into it I probably accidentally completed it more than strategically completed it but I did complete it still complete it, that still counts well I know there are a lot of games that came out in September because Starfield came out I played that for like two streams and I did that for yeah I didn't even had the intention to really play it was like oh it's on game pass I don't need to pay extra well I might as well give it a go and stream it and man this is a drag, it's just boring so what's the general takeaway boring it's boring all those planets are empty as fuck for the most part and it's poorly put together and the more you dive into its development just the more brain damage do you become tell us about that normally with those games I like to do a lot of optional stuff and I was like you know what I'm just gonna go to this place I'm gonna build a big ass base so I can get all these minerals and what not in one place and put them there but then you learn oh wait I need to unlock the skill tree all the way to level 4 on this particular one which I need to do specific things before I get to the next level and also level up before you can even get all the resources and grind your way through the specific skill tree so you can put bases on a hazardous planet oh you go through all that and then you realize that the outposts also are pointless because the number of resources you need for research is extremely low compared to the amount of time you invest into leveling it up I didn't even get that far I would have been very disappointed if I actually went through that man actually that was a common trend of reviews was they were praising the outpost system but none of them had actually played with it you mentioned that there was a story with the development what was the deal there so basically they didn't use a centralized design document when they were creating the game the design director has specified that they had a bunch of smaller little documents but that's still not supplemental so what you have is a bunch of these elements and mechanics that are all independent and working separate of each other and working against each other in a lot of ways and it results in this overall experience where there is no cohesion between any of the game's mechanics that sounds really stupid so the guy that's responsible for that is Emil Pagliarulo and he was also the lead on fallout 3 and fallout 4 which should explain the kind of decline in quality in those games some people get it confused and think that he was the lead on Skyrim he actually wasn't that was a pair of gentlemen Bruce Nessmith and Kurt Coleman and Nessmith came out recently and basically said yeah we made Skyrim and we thought that we were infallible so we just said fuck it did whatever we thought was good and it kind of bit us in the ass with fallout 76 something I would say is that it is now inviting people to consider just how dated Bethesda RPGs seem compared to a lot of their contemporaries and also how limited they are compared to a lot of their predecessors by way of player choice and interactivity I think one of the things that for a long time Bethesda games kind of had going for them was that they were kind of the only ones doing that kind of game there are ones that are kind of like them a little I could see why someone might compare the Witcher 3 to Skyrim or something like that but they're clearly different experiences but there's not it's almost its own genre a Bethesda game a fallout 4 and New Vegas and Skyrim they are their own kind of game kind of like in a way sort of like the Souls Likes yes as emulated as often the only person emulating Bethesda games is themselves and often very poorly but it just if you want that thing you have to go there they're not really competing with anyone else and no one's really competing with them but what has happened is they've started having to compete with CD Projekt Red and they are they're badly losing on that because they were resting on their laurels and that allowed them to be typically three to four years behind the rest of the industry and you can't be stuck in a 2020 mindset when you have Baldur's Gate 3 coming out a month before you and Phantom Liberty coming out two weeks after you I feel like Baldur's Gate 3 dooms Starfield in that it came out and seemed to blow like I've heard nothing but positive things about it yeah I've been playing it offline with a friend as I've said many times before and I've been quite enjoying it what do you think it has raised the bar for a lot of people's expectations for fantasy games of its general kind the point about putting it next to Starfield is really apt one because everything that Baldur's Gate 3 does well really just exposes how shallow Starfield is funnily enough not only in just a game itself but also in just fixing the game because like a couple of like a week for like weeks like every day they put out patches of things they got told by the community and I think just a couple of weeks ago they put out like another four gigabyte patch with even more changes and fixes so they've been just keeping on the game to just keep it keeping it up yeah I got people who tell me that they're really good and they're loving it and they're really getting into it super hardcore and that it's like finally realizing its potential and a lot of work got put into it so I don't I presented with the choice between Cyberpunk and Baldur's Gate 3 I gave Cyberpunk a chance maybe I'll do it again but it's probably going to be Baldur's Gate 3 whenever I get around to it because it just seems like out of the gate like Baldur's Gate 3's success is really important in terms of highlighting that genre that has for a long time essentially been declared by certain entities in the industry as being unviable is one of the most successful games of the year. I'm pretty sure it's still got like hundreds of thousands of concurrent players on Steam months after its release as a more old school turn based CRPG managing to outperform the newest Bethesda big budget like RPG I can check that 250,000 concurrent players at the moment. That's a lot of people that makes one of the potential for yeah the peak today was 287 and a half thousand players there's so much to do Baldur's Gate is massive size Starfield's great problem is not like mechanical bugs at least when I played it and I didn't get very far into it because it did become incredibly dull but Starfield's it's immense it's got a massive scope and there's nothing in it to justify the amount of space that you have so the first planet I tried to explore fully when oh there's a cave over there that looks really deep and complicated and there must be something important at the end oh no it's another procedurally generated craft that doesn't need to be there and then the main story oh well you've woken up and you've touched a magic artifact that's given you visions of a dystopian future and then you have to go and figure out what that is. I've seen that so many times before and your earliest mission go here pretend to get a job for someone else by going here to fill out a form to go back this is tedious whereas Baldur's Gate 3 it's massive but there's something to do wherever you are the player choice actually matters there's a huge range of it the characters are really well drawn you're probably not going to play it the same way twice no matter how many times you play it but there's always a reason to be somewhere the world feels alive and it justifies the amount of space that the world is taking up and we do seem to be in this phase of there are certain game developers who seem to think the bigger the open world you have the better but that's not true because you do actually have to have content to fill your open world if there's no reason to go anywhere there's no point having the place there to begin with something an impression that I've now alright I'm going to clarify I'm kind of talking out my arse here I've never quite understood the appeal of like the Bethesda RPGs at least not in terms of I can't understand why anybody would be interested in them but I always got the impression that like the amount of praise they got seem to outstrip how good they actually appeared to be the Bethesda games look at them I've really not played much of them I played I think like 10 hours of Fallout 4 I barely played any fucking Skyrim at all maybe like an hour I've only ever looked at it from the outside in and always wondered like it looks to me that there are other games with better open worlds that there are other games like with better combat that there are other games with better RPG elements that like there is no single aspect of what these games do that you can't point to another game that does that component better the Bethesda games are a collection of things that when taken together give you a particular experience but no single thing in them is really noteworthy they're often described as a jack of all trades style of game where yeah it's a game where you can have a stealth system that you can also be running around and doing action combat or running around and casting magic it's trying to give you as broad a spectrum as possible one thing I want to impress about Starfield though is that I realized this a couple weeks into working on my video on it that there were no memes about the game or if there were memes they were about the release of the game not actually derived from the game itself and it's the same with the state of the fan art and the porn that's been generated of it it just doesn't exist compared to something like Baldur's Gate 3 or Cypherporn it's about to say like at least I get the Skyrim stuff but like jeez on the Bethesda thing what I tend to hear is that it was the older games that they made like Morrowind and stuff that were cool and that it was sort of like later that it was starting to get but the thing that I consistently hear about Fallout is that New Vegas is like the best one of that era well what you have to understand is New Vegas was not developed by Bethesda that's upsetting and that the old Fallout games like Fallout 1 and 2 those ones are better than the 3 and 4 that's what I also hear um I can compare them I imagine they're very different from one another yeah they're very not just genre different but in terms of like priority as well with the people who had created them back in the 90s Bethesda Fallout likes to lean more into the humor like comedic aspect to it whereas Fallout 1 and 2 were more kind of serious I mean it was still you know retrofuture in the 90s Americana but they did take those concepts more seriously okay do you think that Starfield is going to like develop a really big modding community that's going to like improve the game well I heard the modded play people stopped because they said the game is too boring I don't know if that's true but I I had a 3 hour conversation with a gentleman named Lester who created the modding tool X edit which is significantly important for modding Bethesda games and it is his opinion that it is going to be extremely difficult for any modding scene to prop up around Starfield in part because of various changes that they've made to the file structure of the game itself making it very difficult for let's say you have two mods that change New Atlantis the game can't reconcile the difference between those mods and you can't stack them in terms of which one ultimately gets resolved first which one actually gets to make the change let's say let's say that you want to let's say you want to make your house on destroyed earth right in order to do that you can't just make your house and then put it into the game you actually have to replace something that's in the game already and then your house from then on can be pulled by that randomized system of the PCM so your house can show up on other planets I don't understand Bethesda should clearly know when launching Starfield and getting it ready that the mod scene is something that they need to encourage to blossom as much as possible for their games they're leaning more into the paid mod direction where basically they can put their syrup tap on it and just get dividends forever more or in perpetuity for other people's work how much if someone makes a mod that they put into the creation club what percentage of the money goes to the person who made the mod I'm not aware of the new creation system but I have been told by somebody who talked to one of the creation club modders they're under NDA of course so this is all anonymous but they were paid per contract which means they did not get any kind of royalties for if they were bought years after the fact so they were just paid a flat fee to make it I heard $800 to make one of those creations $800 which is not enough when you consider the amount of work that would be involved in creating a piece of DLC for them based off of the ones that you showed in your Skyrim video they got way overpaid I know what you mean creation club was certainly not a it was only a good thing for modders in so far as some of them were hired into Bethesda some of them as full-time employees and some of them as just temporary contractors here's a question do you think that Microsoft is going to be implementing major changes of Bethesda in response to Starfield which was definitely hedged by them as one of their big releases this they have already put in one of their executives to kind of be Bethesda's tarred wrangler from here on and there was a big exodus of employees on September 21st whichever day Pete Hines left there was also multiple developers who left okay well so for instance will shin who is the lead quest designer on Starfield left the company pretty much as immediately after launch so he's not going to be working on their DLC or anything is that a good thing or a bad thing I was just thinking Microsoft executive in it's like the blind leading the blind basically oh no absolutely they're going to just run it like it was 343 and they're going to run their new property into the ground 343 what a success story I don't know Microsoft is just so ungodly rich it's like it's like a sport what was the heavy guy seeing forget it but it seems like it's like a spoiled rich kid playing with extremely expensive toys who doesn't understand their potential value because like Halo is basically on life support in terms of its cultural significance at the moment when it used to be I mean like the phenomenon of Halo 3 living through that was nuts yeah it was that shit sold consoles and a bajillion of them first now it's like under this it's like the 360 game I mean you think you hear the words Xbox 360 in your mind it's just like I'd like to clarify for the chat that while Will Shin left he was just the lead quest designer there's still Emile Paglia Rulo above him and Todd Howard above him and they're making your Elder Scrolls 6 so now now I know who that is because I've watched a lot of your videos at this point but Emile Paglia Rulo is catch everyone else on kind of who he is this is funny he was a game reviewer at a website called Adrenaline Vault back in the late 90s alongside Pete Hines so what happened was Todd had hired Pete Hines for Morrowind's development as a as a producer and as like a marketer and then Emile had joined I forget their name but they were the company that made Thief and then they went under and he needed a job so Pete Hines got Emile a job working on Morrowind and he went from rinky dink quest designer on a DLC to like a lead quest designer on a major faction to like the lead designer on Fallout 3 like that those three steps boom boom boom and as soon as he hit that lead design position everybody in the industry was talking about how he's this amazing writer on Fallout 3 so he kind of let that go to his head to a bit and said well my shit must not stink and that's how we ended up with Fallout 4 and that's how we've ended up with Starfield as it's just the kind of degenerate way that he likes to make games has only gotten worse with time the degenerate way he makes games yeah it's funny how that works right you just sort of fail upwards in game design you want to talk about fucking upwards I know a few industries where that happens I think one of the big sort of like proof of the pudding sorts of thing is I played Skyrim when it came out I played it like everyone else except Fringy um but I played it I didn't play it I think I stopped playing it before the DLCs came out and I sunk a shit ton of time into it but I was finished with it as an experience before the DLCs and everything and when I look back it's almost like a black hole in my mind I remember it's like trying to remember a dream you just had you sort of remember bits and pieces but you don't really remember anything that happened whereas I remember a lot of the Witcher 3 I remember the Baron and a lot of the weapons and the armor and the quests and the experience I remember Skellige and all sorts of stuff I don't remember like anything from Skyrim nothing stuck with me I've been told often that when people watch my videos I remind them of a lot of things that they've done that they had no recollection of Yes, that's the feeling I was getting seeing the Draugr Crips and everything like that I was just like oh yeah in a previous life it feels like I played a game that took place here or I did this quest and I had to dig deep down for how I might have felt when it first happened to me it was a game that has figured out how to turn people's brains off and they've never been able to replicate that part of the formula that it's supposed to be just this comfort food of games you play it when you're on a depressive phase the reason there's so many Skyrim videos is just that those guys probably played Skyrim for two weeks and wanted to justify wasting two weeks of their life on something and so they just shit out a Skyrim video it lulls you into this sense of complacency for an experience because you just sort of you just sort of play it and it happens it's like you're mesmerized by it I think and then once you sort of snap you stop playing because you're just finished and then you just can't it's like you're snapped out of a trance and then you go about with your life as if nothing sort of happened Yeah, so what's funny with Starfield is that that's basically the broader industry of kind of realizing things that for a long time that Skyrim wasn't as good as you remembered and they're bringing like to assume that they're just keeping that level of quality is just because you don't play it out that often or something and they're kind of seeing it and also me shining a light on the development practices Mr. Pagliarulo has actually been getting a lot of tweets about the whole no design document thing and he's been he's posted multiple responses at this point kind of sniping sideways at the issue it seems like such a disastrous thing that you obviously don't do everyone needs to be on essentially not even like the same page the same pamphlet if everyone has a general sort of thing that they're working toward and is directed towards like obviously that's what you do when you're making a new IP not just a video game but a new IP well the example like it was zero g combat none of the quest designers basically use that mechanic because if they didn't know it was going to exist why would they write a sequence for it while based on space remake is like yeah we're doing zero g combat it's gonna be fucking baller I mean it's been the year for games has been pretty good to where it seems like they couldn't just coast by you know like they had to actually be really good and to not be really good was to fall flat on their face I still want to see the version of Starfield pre-delay I can't imagine because I don't know if you haven't seen my video there is a Todd Howard quote where he says that they didn't figure out how to make the game fun in their in their words until 2022 I thought he said that the game didn't feel fun until it was about a year I think that's what he said by the way pretty fucking worrying but I guess generally in game development you figure out how to make the game fun first and then you build the content well known anecdote but I mean with Super Mario 64 they spent like a year just trying to work on making Mario fun to move around and have them jump around and control yeah you have to have that good core gameplay thing that around which everything else is built whether it's the gunplay of your shooting the movement of your platform the fun in Halo it's what they say 30 seconds of fun and you just repeat that over and over and you got a video game but if that's not fun like Fringy was saying that Nintendo method of like establishing a character in a move set and then perfecting that just have like developers endlessly running around a play test area just testing every single move going is this fun is this fun okay and then you move on to the next phase and building a world around that where it's like we can take advantage of the single jump the double jump like that'll let them take advantage of this move to get to this part of the world right are you trying to tell us the secret of Mario's jump there is something of a secret to Mario's jump in the sense that Mario games are consistently fun platformers that may have to be gone for like 30 years the development gets locked down it gets locked down in phases right where it's just like we're not going to move on until we fucking nail this part of it it's like okay are we done with this now we'll move on to the world design like that kind of discipline I think is key I will say ideas this was like the first Bethesda game since I don't even know when but I never had something about starfield always put me off like I never had any interest in it I thought some of the aesthetics were really neat but that's kind of as far as it ever went with me I never felt any desire to play starfield you mean during like marketing kind of they through until present day there's never been anything about it that like called to me to play it before which you know I for all of its issues I did enjoy that I modded the fuck out of that into an experience that I legitimately did enjoy but even starfield there was never that thing that grabbed me that encouraged me to to play I agree with rags I was like I wasn't that sore on starfield I was just like it looks okay it doesn't look terrible to me in fact it kind of looks a bit interesting and I'm looking for a reason to play it and then a friend of mine he like streamed this thing it's like some youtubers he follows where they just play through the game from the very start and I watched like two hours of it and I was pretty underwhelmed particularly at the part where you finally get into space and like I was expecting that there was going to be this system like no man's sky or even fucking starlink on the Nintendo switch where you can fly out of a planet's atmosphere and seamlessly go into space without any kind of loading screen or even if it's a fake loading screen it like it won't look like it and it'll feel like it's not a loading screen it'll actually just feel like you're transversing from you know a planet's atmosphere to space but no in starfield it's literally like press E to activate ship and then you it fades to black go to a fucking loading screen fade to black again, fade in boom you're in space and then you just fly around and it's like well that's it because like my limited experience playing starfield you're kind of disincentivised to actually use the space flying stuff at all because you can just fast travel to pretty much anywhere you need to go and most places you need to fast travel to so what you're just trying to figure out how you have less loading screens a lot of times it's like oh I want to go to the land over there but my ship is only allowed to hop to maxing it's about loading screens I'm only allowed to hop to systems at once because my ship has only that much fuel so you hop there hop to the next one so if you want to go to somewhere that's like top right of the map you better prepare yourself for some loading screens well that's the amusing thing too is Pete Hines was talking about how the grav drive was essentially designed to work in such a way that anything to do with space is supposed to be entirely optional the game is like weirdly designed in a way where absolutely everything in it is optional and so it just makes you wonder why you would play any part of it if you're not yeah if you're not getting me to engage with your systems then I'm going to go play a game that wants me to there's so many games that are I mean let's take a game that I figured that patrician was big that's what I'm going into is 7 Days to Die I got a lot of time in that I really enjoy that game the game is definitely um it is the best worst game I kind of love it there's a lot of weird strange things about it and they all coalesce into an experience that isn't really like any other and it's full of systems that you just feel like you want to engage with whether it's the leveling or the base building or the actually my favorite thing about it is the version design of 7 Days to Die or whether it's everything from I mean daisy to they're full of these little systems and you would figure out how does it work how do I get better how do I streamline this experience how do I do this that and the other thing but if everything's optional then it feels like they're trying to it's too casual if that makes sense like they don't want me to take it seriously all I gave was black flag black flag as a video game expects you to engage with it's combat system and expects you to engage with it's ship building system neither of those things are optional when you play that game which is why I actually I wasn't interested in those and so I stopped playing because of it but I can respect it you don't want to be in a position where Ubisoft is expecting you to actually play the game and you're not you know yeah there is some element of like I the ships fighting ships in this game this game just isn't for me and you know not every game has to be for me but the mega watered down nothing matters lol do whatever like this insistence that I have fun by saying that nothing matters is an interesting strategy um but I don't know these games just don't grab me give me the focus was the winner this year in terms of games and providing a very focused vision and experience yeah yeah um it's not what you wanted then okay I guess it's not for you then there is a specific tailored experience rather than just it's like the you know the kind of it's funny you bring up black flag because Ubisoft has that problem right the Ubisoft open world generic open world game that wants to be everything and ends up being basically nothing makes no impression yeah and that's such a it's a risky move to make because like I really liked origins I loved exploring and looking at the world and the combat was fine and I really enjoyed just going around and doing stuff and I never beat it I put like 80 whatever hours into it and I'm like you know what I'm done I I'm just done I've gotten my fun out of it I've enjoyed my experience time for me to move on I have no desire to beat the game or really do anything else but I'm glad I played it and it's not even like a you know Starfield doesn't seem like a game where I could say that I've gotten my thing out of it now I'm done like I can't like if it's a buffet normally you go to that and you eat your fill until you're satisfied but Starfield looks like a buffet I just don't even want to do yeah it's extremely it's extremely underwhelming for being a 200 million dollar game and supposed to be this flagship product for Xboxes yeah well I didn't sure Microsoft is not thrilled I didn't even understand the purpose of the space stuff because like you know you you're on a planet right you go into the ship you go to the pilot seat hit E and then it's loading screen boom you're in space and then at that point you can just fast travel to wherever like planet or section of a planet that you want to go to so it's just like what what is the actual purpose of the space part like what what's stopping you from just like fast traveling from just like one section of a planet to another section of a planet and just skip the space part entirely and so it seems like the only incentive is just like getting into occasional dogfights and then you might get some unique loot in the blowing up of ships that you fight with like I don't see other utility resources you only get like material resources you don't actually you can't upgrade your ship through doing ship combat you know you can't find like a new weapon or new armor or anything like that like you'd be used to in a traditional Bethesda combat formula right yeah and I was thinking like okay if this is how it works then I guess this space area is just basically a skybox where you're not actually traveling in any direction you know what I mean like where like you're not if you if you see something in the distance it's basically just a skybox where if you were just to hit W you're not actually getting in any closer to anything over time but you actually are which is but it leads to geometry that you can't actually interact with it was really weird there was this weird there's a streamer on Twitch I think that did this they basically held down the W key in space and they went to sleep and then they woke up like eight hours later to see where they would get and it's like yeah in fact you can actually travel to the geometry that you can see in the distance but it doesn't do anything once you actually pass through it you clip through it yeah and you basically just look around at the untextured interior of it and it's just like okay this is nothing like this is actually more jank than if it was just a skybox you know I'd actually prefer if that was the case sorry go ahead yeah emphasize for the chat you cannot fly in between planets manually you have to select that planet and then hold a button down to watch a cut scene of you flying to that planet if you want to fly to planets in a in a video game play Ratchet and Clank a Crack It Time released on the PlayStation 3 back in good old 2009 because Ratchet and Clank always had fun loading screens to contextualize going from one place to the other but in that one you can actually fly between between those planets and there's things to do in the in the system that you find yourself in you can go to a bunch of like asteroid fields and that's crazy that sounds like a real game pretty I think we've made it up I feel like there's something to be said about setting people's expectations where your game actually is and just owning it confidently just to say yeah we're gonna have a bunch of little maps and they're procedurally generated and you don't like fly around in space completely freely you know you go from place to place and just own it and say yeah that's what it is you know we have a you have a loading screen when you travel to a planet and then you land on it there's all this stuff to do and everything like that you know just be better for them to say that than to set everyone up thinking that this is a game where you could go anywhere and do anything just spend 45 minutes of their Starfield Direct saying very little accurate about the game but setting everybody's expectations high one thing I wanted to mention was in the game awards in the part that people could vote for they had accidentally leaked what the results of the poll were and Starfield was number 18 but number 20 was No Man's Sky for game of the year yeah for the players players voice game of the year yeah all right players voice what I liked about that was like traversing from planets to space seamlessly I thought that was really cool the other stuff I'm kind of meh on like you know there's like a meme about like the creatures generated in that game where it's all like procedural and it's just like you have arms put on these creatures with like these heads and tails that don't quite make sense they look kind of derpy and whatever it has it has an endearing charm now it's a much more functional game I was unfortunately quite broken when I went to review it a couple years ago but no the No Man's Sky fans they swear by the game is the experience that Starfield had advertised I've heard that a lot of work got put into making that game something like an actual game yeah you know another science fiction thing that came out in September that I think I might be the only person here or watch was the creator did anybody watch that no you're the reason they didn't watch that watched it did anybody did people in chat watch it the film came out there was a lot of conversation about oh look it's like an original science fiction film that has like a cool aesthetic he does have a cool aesthetic it just doesn't really have anything else no it's honestly pretty terrible I'm actually in the street with Cap talking about that film it's really bad like if you actually delve into the plot and how everything connects together it's a mess it's kind of unfortunate I would not recommend that film basically to anybody cool aesthetic but I think it wastes its premise and it's just filled with like shitty writing it's like really early on as well you think one of the most interesting things about having this AI villain is that you know you have AI which does sort of mean something you can do really interesting things if your villains are AI and it's conceptually fascinating and there are so many new innovative things you can do with that premise the worst thing to do besides maybe the mission impossible approach of never even bothering to define it is to say yeah these AI things the first thing we're going to set them up as being is just human they are that's all they are because what is even the point of them being robots at that point they are just metal human beings that's it but I guess it's nothing more than a little bit of world flavor at that point but it's like fine I guess but that seems weird the whole film it's about that that's what the whole film is who directed that movie Gareth Edwards really which is why I was partially interested because I do like the work he did on Rogue One between him and Tony Gilroy Rogue One wasn't useless and then it's funny you said it came and went it's the anthem of films remember that game anybody with that I feel like it's that one's almost been scrubbed from history anthem like the it just didn't have very much cultural stain no it's died straight away I know a few people who have tried to make videos on anthem because it's a live service game and so there's a limited amount of time with which you have to even make a video about it right wasn't the deal with anthem that they were going to do like a retooling to fix it up and then they quit they had a roadmap and they had a live year plan and then they gave up they just said oh no we're not doing it we can't justify it so yeah it's over it's done so the opposite of no one's going away then yes where they actually persevered through it but the problem is they're EA that's actually funny because their game before that was Mass Effect Andromeda which at its inception actually had a very similar premise to Starfield they were going to do a big galaxy full of procedurally generated planets I think maybe this is a I don't know part of me is hoping that it's a phase the procedural generation stuff but who knows maybe that just depends on how good it gets it works it works for No Man's Sky it works for Daggerfall but you have to have a very specific mindset when you're developing it and a lot of game developers don't have that mindset they have a handcrafted world so I think when I first saw Anthem come out the big wow moment was like its introduction of 360 degree traversal like you could rotate the camera wherever and go in that direction but then they spent so long getting the game out that other games just ended up doing the same thing and it's like even Dead Space did that of BioWare Magic where they were working their employees 80 plus hours a week for 18 months on end right well cause the story with Anthem is that they basically started developing the game properly like maybe a month before they revealed it to the world that they had spent 5 years in pre-production fucking around and then EA shut up and was like where's the video game and they didn't have anything to give them it's even better the guy that they were supposed to bring stuff to change in his mind of what he wanted at one point he just said he wanted an Iron Man game and so that's why the flying is in that game because oh right yeah yep sorry absolute disaster is what that one was nobody played Mortal Kombat did anybody play Mortal Kombat 1 this also came out about around that time nope no alright well I saw X though that was coming out saw X of course we did the Saw arc and saw X it was capped off with that which was a surprising highlight of the 10 movies they finally it took them 10 they finally figured out what they should be focusing on it's crazy not like amazing or anything but kind of is for a Saw fan like wow they did the things it's a Gooster movie I don't really take it too seriously as a scary film I don't think anyone takes Saw as a series of that series is scary rather than the many different ways you can enjoy it mostly just holy shit what are they going to do next and what would I do if I was in this trap more so would I be able to engage in the exchange we concluded that Six was the clear winner for the best Saw film and that it cracked the formula and it would have been neat if more of them would have followed something like that and we know that there will be a sequel and we'll be on the way so not only yeah which is going to be crazy because we've got to try and get that done while also doing the new arc and I was just thinking imagine they released another final destination this year and so we just have to keep adding to all of our different arcs while creator do slow down yeah a little bit but you know I don't blame anybody for being completely disgusted by Saw in general I understand it's alright well maybe they'd rather watch Five Nights at Freddy yeah a Willys Wonderland I came out around that time I don't think that's a 2023 was that also a 2023? no it was a couple of years ago it could stay there yeah Willys Wonderland sucked it was fucking horrible I hated Willys Wonderland and it was obviously just a Five Nights at Freddy's rip off a bad one when the real one came along okay well maybe this will be interesting I don't know yeah I don't care about Five Nights at Freddy's as a franchise or anything I haven't played the games they look like the opposite thing that I would ever want to do but the movie was fine yeah well ultimately those are not out yet but we have recorded we've recorded so many E-Fat movies it's like 50 at this point and you will see a lot of them in good time everybody in good time uh I got bored of Five Nights at Freddy's as soon as they started fully showing the animatronics and they're like working together with them and I'm just like I don't really know what to be afraid of anymore you know what I mean it just felt like it blew its load I feel like it should have started good is it even really a game adaptation? I almost think it's like an internet meme adaptation at this point so you could say either or with the limited knowledge I have of Five Nights at Freddy's I would say they did what I would have expected them to do when turning that game into a movie they even did some things that I think are quite wise in terms of being able to make a story out of it we went too happy with a lot of the choices they ended up making just for normal story reasons but the film itself does kind of take the story seriously it's not like it just memes they're probably going to try and build a franchise out of it for like a movie wing and dramatic payoffs like it's not just laugh my ass off, Robert kills you in goofy ways or whatever it made a lot of money further emphasizing that we're probably going to be seeing a lot more video game adaptations in the coming years yeah though speaking of video games Super Mario Brothers 1 there came out, am I the only person who played it? I still haven't played it I thought it was great yeah it's one of my favorite games of the year it's like one of the best 2D platformers in a long time, really really really cool easy recommendation hmm came out the same day as Spider-Man 2 actually well let me tell you Super Mario Brothers 1 is essentially like what I think everybody kind of wanted them to start doing like the new Super Mario Brothers games are cool, they're fun but they're very safe they're basically just trying to essentially like translate the standard template for what a 2D Mario game is the old Super Mario Brothers games to newer visuals but it's like a really straightforward 2D platformer they're good, they're really good but the fact that they sort of kept doing that without making any major changes I feel like by the time we got to new Super Mario Brothers U everybody was kind of done everybody was a little bit bored of it and then this one comes along with the same like core framework for a 2D Mario game but with a whole bunch of like new power-ups and the new like the Wonder Seed mechanic that like fundamentally changes the level in an unpredictable way like presenting with new platforming challenges and obstacles that you need to contend with really like vibrant art style good music as per usual cool new animations and everything like that it's just like a really easy great game recommendation yeah I agree man that was dope and it reminded me a lot of Super Mario World yes it felt like a sequel to that game in terms of continuing with that kind of like spirit yeah there are parts like lifted I felt straight out of Super Mario World like when you defeat a castle in Super Mario World you have that little like cinematic cutscene where it's like Mario and maybe a couple other characters I can't remember who who are looking in the castle in the background getting blowed up and it's just like well your adventure is not over yet basically whatever the text was I can't remember but it was just like in Super Mario World they basically did the exact same thing and then but like the saving grace I think of Super Mario Wonder is the Wonder Flower just like this game changing element that you pick up and it just drastically changes gameplay fundamentally of whatever level you're playing like you could be playing 2D at one moment and then you pick up top down the yeah exactly you'll pick up the Wonder Flower and you could be playing top down all of a sudden where all of a sudden the background is now the floor and now you're wandering around in like a top down space and it's a guy that has to cling to the walls to like navigate you can't really jump but you can cling to the walls and sort of maneuver through the area or like where it turns everything turns into a silhouette and you have to try and navigate the landscape only using the silhouette without any other additional visual information or you got to run away from like a stampede that's chasing after you or it's just like there's an immense variety I think they only repeated like maybe once or twice there's a lot of variety to the variations on the level there's very few repetitions there are a couple but startlingly few like it's pretty unique like going stage to stage what the Wonder Flower actually does which I found really impressive and it's like totally optional right you can go through the level and not ever find the Wonder Flower because sometimes they're very occasionally I mean most of the time you can sort of like if you're a skilled enough player you'll find the Wonder Flower like 90% of the time at least but like there's some levels where it's just like oh I didn't get it that time like I wonder where it was and then so like it's not strictly it's optional you can get it and then when you do get it it's just like whoa what is this like this is crazy what it's doing I was surprised by the Badgers I figured I'd just mention that well not Badgers Badgers like when I first saw it I talked about it in the trailer and I'm like okay this just seems like kind of just things that you can get that raise the skill floor essentially no like lower the skill floor just make it easier but there's like some good meaningful differences between the Badgers that you can get that functionally change the platforming in ways that can actually make it more challenging for you or easier for you which is cool I thought it was just going to make it easier make it harder for you which is cool yeah based on your play style like you can have a badge that gives you like a level up not like a level up but you know like the mushroom that increases your size gives you an extra hit or you can have ones that have it to be where you bounce higher um in like specific terrain or like it gives you an additional like wall jump um yeah you can glide there's one that shoots a vine vertically across to the nearest wall and you grab yeah it's really fun and it's just like holy shit I can't believe this is just one badge out of the complete array because it's such it feels like such a game-changing thing but a bunch of the Badgers have that quality to it you know which is really cool it's uh it's a really cool fun video game really that's that's like an easy recommend to basically anybody I can't imagine anybody playing it going I didn't enjoy that I just can't fathom it no it was a it's a joyous experience like I mean there's other games where it's like there's a bleak aspect to it that I'm playing currently like Resident Evil 4 and Cyberpunk where it's just like there's sort of a misery attached to these games in some aspect but like Super Mario Brothers wonder is just you're just smiling when they add full frontal nudity to Mario then we can talk about the atmosphere I suppose we're going to talk about the other game that also came out on the same day as Mario which was Spider-Man 2 who played that I never played that I never touched it but I'm aware of so much the discussion about it I mean I have to talk about it all on my own this was the game you were meant to discuss no it wasn't I don't have that much to say about it it's like a really it's just like you know that's like that game it's okay yeah it's alright I think I think the big thing that works against that game is I keep thinking back to Arkham Asylum is a cool game Arkham City is a better game that like blows the doors open on the mechanics that they established there presented with a big new open world that you can explore a bunch of like new challenges and sort of gameplay opportunities where Spider-Man 2 takes an open world makes it bigger but somehow makes the game shorter it's shorter you can beat it in like a weekend if you play it a lot that weekend it's only like 20 hours long to 100% that game I 100% did it like the weekend that it came out and was done with it it really like is not a very big expansion of what was present in the first game and if we're all being honest with ourselves like the mechanics are pretty straightforward and okay like it's a fun it's got fun combat but it's not like mind-blowing or anything and so like to only kind of add a few new things in after like five years probably not good enough kind of like they could have done more well they added you can play as Miles as well but really the main difference that that makes is in terms of like certain special abilities that you can use but it's not like otherwise they have a fundamentally the same mechanics that they mess around with yeah it feels like with the PS5 the flexing is the bandwidth of the SSD hard drive that they have in the PS5 where you can switch seamlessly between Peter and Miles wherever they are on the map but fundamentally in terms of gameplay in terms of what you're actually doing like fighting and swinging around there's not really that much of a change that's a shame because having the ability to switch between protagonists you could have and the other two did it with Emily and Corvo her name was Emily right? yes but they like their whole power set and it seems like the whole kind of way they wanted you to play was totally different where Corvo seems really like the like stealth and subversion oriented and Emily was a bit more like aggressive and going to get you but they had totally different like powers and feelings of playing the two something I want to mention about the game is in a lot of action games like the sort of third person action games you'd be thinking about like Devil May Cry and stuff keeping yourself in the air for a long time is kind of like a challenge and a testament of skill if you can like stay in the air like basically indefinitely because usually it's kind of hard to keep air combos usually be harder in these types of games and combos on the ground and Spider-Man like a reliable excuse me a reliable strategy to win every time is get up in the air hold triangle to pull the enemy up into the air, web him up and then hold triangle to slam them in the ground hold triangle pull the next enemy up web him up, fling him into the ground hold triangle pull the next enemy up web him into the ground one of the great benefits of playing it this way is that it means that you are invulnerable to the majority of enemies the only enemies you got to worry about is anybody that can shoot projectiles but you just get the spider-sense that goes ping and then you just press circle to dodge pull out their weapon pull them up into the air web him up throw him into the ground that is like a reliable strategy to basically win every single fight in that game unless you're dealing with a boss battle I'm pretty sure they removed there were less gadgets I think in the first game you have like a weapon wheel that you could select gadgets from whereas in this one they're like they're bound you got four that you can use they're bound to bound to the controller and that's it which I don't know how I feel about that but it's fun web slinging is fun gliding around New York is fun you know it's alright but it's not it just didn't make that much of an impression on me and then as for the story it's just got problems alright the plot it's got problems the character writing's got problems I kind of like Craven before you go into more depth I could say as someone who hasn't played it at all the impression that it made on you seems to be representative of what it made on the world it was like given a lot of press and sort of bumped up in terms of hype and everything but ultimately disappeared and people didn't really talk about the story at all compared to certainly to negatively well so I was going to say Spider-Man 1 I've seen around the block here and there I know particular scenes not necessarily the scenes as a whole but imagery right like him and Doc Ock I've seen loads of images of him and Aunt May there's things I've seen from Spider-Man 1 again and again and again people sharing big moments from the game that really had an impact on him Spider-Man 2 barely anything except of course the cinematic moment where Sandman throws Miles Morales and that a billion times because we will talk about why that got shared everywhere in a moment but what I was going to get out was just that the games it just disappeared it didn't have any longevity and all I kept hearing was that it was incredibly short I saw a couple of people I'm aware of saying check out my Platinum Trophy 100% after like two days and I was like wait what yeah like again I 100% cause the game came out on Friday I think 100% by Monday as in there was literally nothing more that the game had to offer me and I completed everything I had to offer it's really short and the thing one of the things as well is a lot of the side missions I think one of the things that makes for side missions like in an open world being more interesting is when you present people with like fundamentally different experiences they can add an easy one to point it was in Red Dead Redemption you can go play cards you can just go to like a place and play cards or go fishing or like there's a bunch of different side activities that you do that offer a different experience then running around and shooting guys completing a side mission so it literally just isn't the same for everybody yeah and then random encounters in the world that are kind of interesting and not just hey there are some bad guys there doing some stuff go fight them but like oh you encounter an entity in the world and then you can interact with them and then that will maybe send you on like a side mission with narrative and stuff whereas in Spider-Man it's like more or less every single side activity is you're gonna be fighting people more or less or not that it's gonna be like some traversal thing or like you pilot a drone through some areas like you just fly around a thing and then it's like they're really they're really straightforward and basic and you complete them really quickly and they're just like repeated across the open world so it's not really surprising that you can get through them so quickly because it feels like a checklist you just it's just like oh yep there's one there I'll go there the ones I liked was the Mysterio ones like you go to these Mysterio places around the city and then they give you a bunch of like missions that are kind of like unique and have specific challenges and you can get like a higher rank depending on how quickly you get through and it's like yeah that's cool but you know and I mean as for the story aside from just general like writing problems I think that the first like when you compare them the first game has more like big impactful moments big impact scenes whereas this one has less of those and the ones that are there aren't as they're not as good I really like Craven I think he's kind of cool as like a villain I feel like Venom is pretty severely underutilized though he's not in it for long and I feel like we don't get that much for him and Lizard doesn't really get that much either those are like the three main villains it feels like Craven got the most and then he's gone and then you know it's just like yeah then then you got Venom and it also feels like they're really struggling to figure out what kind of story they wanted to give Miles a lot of like the main plot things that are happening in that game related to like the symbiote and all of the shenanigans with Craven like most of that is about Peter and Miles it feels like basically the only angle that they could really work with for it is he wants to get revenge against the like Mr. Negative because he killed his dad and he works through those problems and then he basically goes on to like I guess like take over the role of being Spider-Man um well Peter's off doing something else and that's kind of where it's at and it looks like now Insomniac's going to be making fucking Marvel games for the next decade which I gotta say I don't know if he's a little bit lame it seems a little bit late to hop on that train they they struck while the iron was tooling significantly Marvel fans are moving away from the MCU into other into other formats they never seem to embrace the element of video games there doesn't seem to be that many like Marvel games that came out considering their dominance and you know the theater now they're catching up because they're making the Wolverine game and then I believe they're making they're making Spider-Man 3 obviously they tease that apparently they're making like a Venom game as well and they're also going to be making like an X-Men game and that's and they're making one Ratchet and Clank game and that's that's their next decade essentially which um I don't know and especially after Spider-Man 2 I think now like people will be looking at Wolverine a little bit more like let's uh let's like sort of wait and see on that one because I get the impression we've talked about a bit God of War Ragnarok is like the best of the snoy cinematic walkie-talkie you know like it's the best of that of that type basically um because especially with Valhalla I feel like it vindicates that Ragnarok has systems and mechanics that are reasonably in depth um and that there is something to master there with the combat system and then of course it's got an amazing story um it's got exploration um it's it's it's the better version of that whereas it feels like uh Spider-Man 2 is a little bit more like the you get into a bit of the lame version of uh the snoy cinematic game and I imagine that it's going to be the same Wolverine is probably going to be the same it'll have like you stand at third person Arkham kind of like action you'll run around and sort of open worlds and there'll be like a some amount of traversal and there'll be like a story and we'll see how good that is um and I wonder if that's going to be something that they can keep doing without people starting to get bored of uh that type of experience I'm not sure don't know but it looks like Spider-Man 2 is kind of it it sort of came and went um yeah well and the most notable thing that it did was have a huge war with Baldur's Gate 3 for some reason yeah because uh Spider-Man 2 uh it was in the same position as Horizon Forbidden West was that other year where it got nominated for a bunch of awards at the game awards but won nothing because of course it didn't it was a really competitive year where you had like Baldur's Gate 3 Tears of the Kingdom um Resident Evil Dead Space even though Dead Space didn't get nominated for anything unfortunately uh Street Fighter Final Fantasy 16 Pikmin 4 like there was a whole bunch of really great games that came out this year um you know so was that the the source of the rivalry between Spider-Man and Baldur's Gate was the game awards nomination they got nominated for everything and lost everything they didn't win at that time I just happened to be witness to basically all of the individual viral tweets by absolute chance right like the first one being holy shit look at this Spider-Man 2 incredible and it was the Sandman throw and the blah blah blah and then eventually someone would quote to that and be like you can tell the gaming industry is in like one of the fucking worst holes ever when everybody's blind blown by a fucking cutscene that went viral and then the next one goes viral of being like so I guess we're just at the point now we won't appreciate the absolute like incredible artistry of seamlessly tying this into gameplay you know into a cutscene and then the spectacle of it the graphics like that that's just something we can't appreciate about games anymore that went viral and someone else quote to you that being like oh yeah that's the discussion it's not at all about the fact that games have moved into basically movies with barely any interaction and no mechanics at this point that went viral then another tweet saying like that's ridiculous and absurd Spider-Man 2 was amazing mechanics then someone else quote to you that with I don't know if that's when Baldur's Gate 3 comes in but they start back and forth thing as to the mechanical depth of Spider-Man 2 versus Baldur's Gate 3 and you got everything you got the people showing like a selection of Baldur's Gate 3 that's like 10 minutes long with very little happening or what seems to be little versus like look at this sequence of Spider-Man 2 and you kill like 10 million enemies all in a row it's amazing and then you get someone else doing the reverse where Baldur's Gate has all this in-depth amazing options for dealing with one situation there's a girl who labels like 50 fucking options that sound really awesome and then the comparison is like Spider-Man 2 or so which uses the same move again and again and again again again again again again to win and so I was just seeing all of this like developed I was like how did why is this happening it is because of the game awards I think that's when I started to notice that because it was people were like it was robbed Spider-Man 2 to be clear Spider-Man 2 was not robbed of anything all the other games were better at all of the individual things that like Spider-Man 2 was trying to be like and the way that I approach this sort of thing is like it's I want to see good games and good developers get recognition in some way from the industry so it's like when like I don't care about like the Oscars really but I want to see someone who did a lot of work and who performed really well get an Oscar for their role because it feels like them getting the recognition they deserve it's not that something is good because it has an Oscar but if someone earns an Oscar that can be particularly meaningful and important for them and I want to get I want people I want the good rewarded start only got one nomination at the game awards let me guess one too many what would it be nominated the best was game well I'm going to go ahead and throw it out there I presume it was for best RPG only that was the only one yes okay guess what guess what happened boulders gate 3 wins I wasn't going to beat boulders gate 3 on that one and I think it showed the picture of Todd Howard like in the crowd that must have been rough having to go personally to the game awards like in your heart of hearts probably knowing we ain't going to win shit and everyone's going to ask me the questions and I'm going to have to tell them I've got to smile and say yeah we're really confident about our game and how it did and yeah we're going to do you see that stage you can go there but I can't because I remember talking to you about Spider-Man 2 another game that released around that time Lords of the Fallen I was thinking of something else tell me about it not much to say graphically pretty impressive mechanical addition to the souls like genre of having two worlds running at the same time and if you die you enter the dead world and that there are places you can get to in the dead world that are easier than the living world and that the dead world gives you more souls when you kill things stop talking about the dead world we already discussed Starfield we're going to have to keep this moving kind of cool kept me and Mel interested for maybe about a streams worth of time and then it sort of doesn't do anything else and dies out and you clearly see how much they were rushed and it needs a hell of a lot of polish you need a bit of a hulking beast machine to run it properly and just the further along in the game you go the more stretched out thin and crap it gets until it basically just sits on the floor struggling to live that's a shame it's already released I feel like I've heard of this game before Lords of the Fallen is an IP that did come out before it was one of the first copycat souls games and it was terrible I fucking hated it then they gave it another shot and this one was actually kind of neat for a moment and then it completely died out and it's like how's it compared to Liza P it's not even fucking close Lords of the Fallen I wouldn't even recommend it it's like a tutorial that gets you interested but then it just stops doing anything like it ends you know it's my assumption because we all know well you may not know but the story came out that they were rushed like crazy to make sure they got it out before Elden Rings DLC I think was one of the aspects and they also apparently had to change engines from I think Unreal Engine 4 to 5 which just seems like such a higher up decisions like just update to 5 flash this number just switch it out no problem as far as we're aware yet there was like not necessarily leaks but posts on 4chan I think from people who claim to be one of the developers or inside knowledge and it seemed pretty believable with the references and just nightmare scenario everybody destroyed by the whole project and the game itself was damaged significantly and it sucks because you can see there's a game in there that might be pretty awesome but we didn't get to see that yeah like maybe the first aid of the game is the most refined it gets yeah you were ahead of me and you kept telling me it's like yeah those bosses are not getting better and there's just poopy bosses ahead basically it's like oh the Fallen is a really appropriate name for it then pretty much both times I failed miserably thank you yeah that's about that for that no one will remember it and that's what happens when you rush the hell out of a game and destroy it that's its legacy then it'll just fade into nothingness you guys have to talk about Alan Wake too now that also came out oh you know what I was thinking of another game that you were going to reference but I don't know the timeline I don't know the cover of what it fucking came out I was going to say Kong Scully it was on the list it was last month wasn't it it was in October so I mean to be quick about that one it was an embarrassing it's even worse than Gollum probably oh my god really absolutely embarrassing I can't believe it got released it's a stupid meme game you should go watch my stream on it it was funny for about an hour and then it became incredibly boring me and Alan had the same experience it was again just I don't know how stuff like that happens and this is where I mean some people are like what a bad year for gaming it's like no it's been crazy we've had like everything everything has happened this year so much good lots of shit if you only tally up the worst games then no year is a good year for gaming you gotta take the highs with the lows I still think we've had a shockingly amount of good games in the mainstream high budget it's been a good year I'd say it's been a good year one of the really important things about it this year is that games that are representing underrepresented genres or better business models have been successful this year meanwhile I feel like almost the height of that might get more depressing if you find out how much money it actually made but the height of like live service annual release bullshit this year was Modern Warfare 3 yeah that kind of stuff is speaking of don't play them don't engage with them if you don't act like they're there they literally do basically go away just play all the good stuff reward the good a game apparently coupled together with pre-existing assets to the point where we'll actually ask you to insert the Modern Warfare 2 yeah Modern Warfare 3 Modern Warfare 3 began as DLC to Modern Warfare 2 that was entered into development about 16 months before about a year and a half before launch and that somewhere along the line Activision said no this is a full-price game but the problem is so as I understand it the campaign is comprised of partially of like warzone maps and elements all of the multiplayer maps are remakes of ones from older games which entails work but it means that there's you just got less of the whole fundamentally figuring out the core design of a brand new map compared to remaking all of the maps in Modern Warfare 2 so yeah it was DLC that got turned into a full game plain and simple campaigns like 3 hours long like that shit wasn't making enough money for Activision they needed more well I remember it got reported on by that Shryer guy that they didn't have a release for 2023 and then Activision's like no we have a full-price premium Call of Duty release in 2023 they said but yeah I mean next year there'll be like a new full Call of Duty game whatever that like I guess Treyarch's next one but I don't know how successful Modern Warfare 3's actually been it's been reviewed and received horribly but I presume warzone's still making a good chunk of money it's frustrating how short-sighted their profit seeking is you know we need something this year now now now get it out now but don't we want to establish a legacy that will pay off for generations to come fuck you money now but they could also make a shit ton of money pouring a few years into actually making something that was respectable no but the problem is here's the problem though they made Crash 4 which is a really good game a really good platformer and then make as much money as Toys for Bob was perceived to be making if they got gutted and turned into a Call of Duty support studio which is what they are now they got gutted after Crash 4 and got turned into a Call of Duty support the Activision don't make fucking anything except Call of Duty anymore every single other studio has been sacrificed on the altar of Call of Duty High Moon Raven Radical Entertainment I don't know if they're making like all but they got gutted Toys for Bob got gutted also make Call of Duty like support yeah I just don't if I was a video if I went into video game development and I worked in a big studio my first mistake I feel like if I got all my stuff got like taken from me and they said yeah you're working on Call of Duty now and I was like now I'm out I'm just out I'm out of it I'm gonna go be a farmer I'm gonna return to the land that sustains us probably wouldn't though it's a very risky industry and I think there was like 12,000 layoffs last year so I mean in terms of having income I mean working on Call of Duty at least you're gonna have a job every year I couldn't do it I couldn't bring myself to be a part of the Call of Duty machine like that it is kind of the big Asterisk for 2023 was a great year for gaming but a lot of people lost their jobs there was like massive contraction record profits massive layoffs the industry is actually always nice in the dire state despite the quality that has come out this year I mean it feels like we gotta be heading somewhere when it comes to the whole crunch conversation you know like that that's gonna boil over at some point what happens when the whole idea is that the new talent that comes in you know the people who start at the ground eventually work their way up to being leaders of studios you know project directors the people in charge but if those people are getting destroyed to the point that they're no longer even capable of like making video games anymore because they've been utterly destroyed by that process to just be replenished by new people who themselves don't get to stick with a company for years and work their way up and accumulate that experience at some point you're gonna be like leadership you know the people who are making like the big creative decisions on these projects it's not marble it's really a Disney thing it seems like they've completely lost touch of how they got to this point in the first place like at the top it's just completely lost them and this is of course putting to one side the destroying people in this way just to get these games out faster is bad like not just from a financial standpoint of it's gonna make it harder for you to make money in the future it's just like a bad way to do things it's a bad way to work for your competitors and they're gonna go make ballgame free it's more so just like you're just gonna run out of people to make video games yeah you'll get like the visual artists stuff I mean credit to Bethesda they actually are mostly immune to that side of the industry they actually treat their employees quite well oh that's nice I'm not gonna doubt Emil's passion the interesting thing is when you look at a place like Nintendo you look at a lot of the guys who are in charge it's like they've been with Nintendo for like 30-40 years people who work with Nintendo tend to stay with Nintendo and then the younger people become the new talent who then start making new things like Splatoon was made by people within Nintendo that was like a new thing that they managed to create but yeah I guess we'll have to see you gotta talk about Alan Wake too now nope not yet nope I can still leave it longer I saw a comment say what you said about gaming as an industry could easily be said about the movies as in my quote of well Rag said if you want to consider the bad then it looks bad and I said yeah we have plenty of really great entries or whatever and it's like oh yeah well I was thinking to myself like there's such a result of the binary thinking of how you don't have anything that's okay it's always great and terrible so you know like talking about Mario it's like so that's one of the greats it's like no no and then you'd be like ok so Mario 1 does not one of the greats I was like no no that is one of the greats and it's like oh you have to understand gaming as much as there's plenty of complaints to be made it's just not as bad a position as movies that's absolutely not like the the coverage this year has been a really great look into how Hollywood's just fucking bleeding all over the place while you know gaming's got blood in different areas but that it's it's nowhere near as bad to the point where they're like you know considering a complete refurbishment of absolutely everything that they do I'm not even gonna say like if you try and collect up a bunch of examples you know if we had like the killer Tetris Oppenheimer I'm already like sort of mainstream high budget things that we consider to be the topest of tier I feel like the listing is so much easier for games you can list them off way faster and the fact that we got this crazy comparison remakes of Dead Space and Resident Evil 4 it's like wow they were two of the top games of the year and then how are the remakes or you know franchise entries do into the movie side of things it's like oh we tried out to talk about it is there anything as bad on the gaming side in the same frequency as what we got on movies because we're like okay we got Lord of Ring Golem you're like alright the flash fine we got Skull, Cog Island, blah blah blah you're like Indiana Jones fuck we got um Redfall Redfall we'll go with that you come back with Secret Invasion you're like shit full spoken full spoken you didn't even play it you don't even know how bad it is but fine we'll accept that Ahsoka you're like ah shit I think it would be is there any company that you could could you point to like one publisher and just talk about how like every single game that they made that year except for one was successful that most of them failed and that all of them were bad well and the point I'm making is just like obviously I was trying what I was trying to do there was just that like the gaming one you have to remember them and then say them and you're like oh fuck my list keeps running out while the movies and TV show side of things is so easy it's just like I got another one I don't know another one the fact that there are so many video game adaptations that have A done well already and B are coming down the pipeline would suggest that even the movie industry recognizes that gaming is in a more healthy state than the movie industry is I didn't even mention Quantumane or Marvel's yet but go ahead what I'll say to that is that the gaming industry has very much invested into a smaller number of projects per studio because you have to remember that games are made now somewhere between three to five years per and I think films come out significantly faster than that so it might also just be a quantity versus quality debate it's also a matter of like which space you're looking at as well because of course it's like a huge indie scene as well middle market games like on PC well it doesn't even need to be a competition there is declines in all different aspects within their own industries as well as you were just kind of implying like with film we need to separate out into genres sometimes or mediums or companies or level of money involvement or eras or particular years or IPs there's all different observations to make because you know the guys behind like John Wick as a franchise are feeling pretty fine right now meanwhile you know the people in one of the biggest movie franchises of all time being the MCU are probably you know not not feeling as well not feeling as great quadruple A have we gone to that point yet I think that's what I think that's what the studio that Microsoft made to make perfect dark they called it quadruple A but that game the development on that game has been a disaster quadruple A means they have unwittingly coined the phrase in a very negative way I mean it's not funny that the first quadruple A developer had to recruit another like entire development studio to help them make that game Chris is a yes that's right so now it's a 7a game but but hey so metal what do you think of Alan wake to oh god Alan wake to go over again so I did not have any anything on Alan wake so I went back and played through almost all of the other ones I didn't play American nightmare I think that's the DLC I did you did yeah it was a good choice it's a standalone it's like zombie DLC I always think it's a DLC but no it's a standalone and yeah Alan wake pretty pretty cool nice nice little story has like the like the feel of a the season of television almost because they basically play like an episode each and like a little thingy at the end as well with those I think this is a song for everyone it doesn't matter and then you go to American nightmare it's like an extra thing you wouldn't what is that about me usually you want to do that it's mainly about Mr. Scratch it's the alter ego that Alan wakes dealing with and you kind of defeat him in it but it's unclear as to exactly what of all of the things that happened were real what it means for you what it means for the people around you I think it's a fun it's one of those like it'll tide you over between the next iteration of whatever story that comes and obviously it took him a long time but they got there eventually with Alan wake 2 of course in between there was control which I played as well which was very cool I really enjoyed that it's basically a little it's basically like an SCP kind of dealio with a lot of objects of power is what they call it they do different things and you have to cleanse them basically and collect them back which is kind of nice and those are even get mentioned in Alan wake 2 and yeah I played those I was like I was pretty happy I was like oh that was fun it's neat and so I was rooting for Alan wake 2 and then it came out and I did my first stream I was still pretty positive I was like oh you were but it's slow I think but you know what I'm interested to see what's happening and then I I saw you play the next day and I saw as his tweet I was like uh oh maybe I have to have to look what's going on and yeah it's fucking piss I was very optimistic about the beginning because I don't know I wasn't high I was rooting for the game and yeah on my next stream I was it was like yeah I watched back the beginning and it's actually pretty piss so we got we got Saga which you start the game with so you don't even start as Alan wake 2 no no you don't start as Saga you start as naked both fat man you start as a fat man on the beach right I forgot about that guy yeah you start with him that's the victim that Saga goes to investigate because she's FBI uh maybe I stand for metal metal booby inspector yeah that was by Irene ooh nice exactly and yeah we just do the thing look at the woods we're in it's like oh look this guy has been horribly gutted but we don't really care also there's some supernatural stuff happening later and our characters that we've been playing as American for us so you completed it right so if you do the broad after I do like a sort of the experience because I don't know a lot about Alan wake 2 I watched your pretty much full play through and I played the best six hours but the experience is very much bizarre like the way you started like I complain if you want to look at the stream where I go over all of it in detail it's what a lot of people have posted on the subreddit being like why is it small and not like Alan wake 2 I love it and I was like fucking hell I just watched my stream I really need the answers but I went in pretty good faith I was ready to go but I encountered cringe dialogue immediately being the our little team you know you're playing a saga and you get told immediately how awesome you are as a detective and you're sort of like okay that's fine and then like take the lead you're better than me I was already just like why did why why it's a really weird experience we've gone over this before but it just gives me a sense of what the writer wants and can do when instead of showing me what I'm capable of or letting me do things they tell me what I'm capable of and make sure I know how awesome I am I'm just like why would you have chosen to do that and I wonder how that's going to influence things going forward in terms of your approach but tiny thing a little piece of dialogue it's fine but there's loads of them cropping up all over the place instead of listing them all and just say that that's what was happening yeah we constantly get told how amazing she is and then she does things or like she's retarded that was retarded your crime scenes all over the place she has to take pictures make inferences which is the kind of things like oh that sounds kind of cool especially if you get your little board and you you pin up you know conflicting information that makes you think about things like that sounds like it could work yeah especially if you map it out you know mechanically and make it very um inquisitive inquisitive based and you can collect things to add to the story and stuff but she'll just like randomly conclude shit yeah the game is going to be like you need to push this over here and push this over here and then you'll get your conclusion you know like that don't even see how this connects and it's like you do it and it's like of course it was a clown and you're like how did you how did you know that it's like there's a clown footprint it's like you can't possibly know that I was a clown footprint we all know a clown footprint it's like a human footprint the thing about it is that 15 size shoe where I was I was thrown off was uh I always reference this there was among the crime scene there was there was a what do you call it like a cooler with a bunch of beer cans and she says like from this I can conclude that they were here for a long time and I was so annoyed immediately I was like you have no idea how long they were here you have no idea how quickly they drink beers you have no idea how many they were they could have been here for five minutes and drank all them why would you ever conclude something so definitive based on something that's so loose and then it's like what we call a possibility yeah you put it in the further it's like oh there's a lot of it maybe they've been here a while if anything I would say the only thing that can really conclude it's like it's curious that they did like a full sacrifice here but there's just beers like do they treat it that seriously are they willing to or which is something that they didn't even plan for I'm not sure because you could go both ways on that they had the beers because it was planned or they weren't they were just hanging out and then they took the opportunity to do the sacrifice I'm not sure and then like meters away there's this little I think it's a caravan type thing and I was like well do the bad guys live it there you go over there and there's a lock box you have to unlock by getting a code for it and inside there's all markings of stuff that relate to the bad guys and I was like how is this not coming up in my case this looks like their house looks like where they lived the killer the fucking murder weapon could be in here we have no idea and then she's like well that wraps up the case nothing else to do here now and I was like oh okay I feel like this is important but fine and then you know the one will always references when you get to the diner and the ladies talking about how your daughter drowned and you're just like anyway you know my name that was a part that you showed me and I was like this is fucking bizarre no human no to this this way the people who made this are not humans she I can't capture just how insanely stupid that that opening five six hours was that just threw me out of the game it grabbed me and just tossed me out mechanically speaking one of the things that we we talked about before I spoke about it is so fucking annoying with video games but you you spawn in the in bright falls and like there's a whole section of town that's just completely locked off I was like why is that locked off that's weird you walk up to it and saga will like you know pull on the chain on a fence whatever she's like I'm gonna need a bolt cutter for this I was like do I is that what I need do I need to go over there why would I want to cut what security on some fence I have no I have no goal other than going to like the sheriff right now why would why would and you be like you nitpicking I'd be like it's annoying when video games just do this shit where they just don't care I love it when they put the care in so that if you get to things before you have reason to get there that the character can account for that but she was just like yeah I want to break it here I was like okay but why yeah I just didn't know I had a reason to go here and if I do and then of course you have all the standard shit like I don't I don't need bulk as I can clearly just jump over this thing I'll move around it or can I at least ask why I would go there all that kind of stuff outside the whole game has that every single thing you inspect and I think I searched about a third of bright falls before I was like it's one of those games everything is soulless and hollow nothing here matters oh yeah you get to bright falls and it's like oh obviously I'm going to explore you let me go this way and over there and this is nothing it's intermittently there's that that object with the white dot on it that you click examine and it's like this is what the object is yeah if you know you know so they don't they don't give you any it seems to be made of wood this is designed for sitting this is a door it is used for the transversal through walls yeah that's good true true do they not give you any reason for exploring the environments like they don't give you like some kind of item or staggeringly little to collect and talk to people about sometimes you'll see like batteries and stuff but it was it was scarce everything around much less than even if it's just like ammo or something yeah okay well that's that's the other part so when you're in the woods you can go around and collect all these things right and when you go that's the real woods yeah it's just full of things that you can collect yeah that's as a boy scout I can confirm the woods is just a bunch of stuff you can collect it is so it's so annoying because me and Moller as well we like to like go everywhere and find all the things like oh I want all these resources so I can use them later you want to engage with all the stuff the developers made for you like a crazy thing with the saga sections in the beginning this like pretty empty and I was like okay it's like the first area they probably don't even intend for me to immediately go everywhere but I do that every time and no enemies have been introduced yet okay fine so I think okay now I got all these extra resources when I go next when I go here next time when enemies haven't introduced I'm going to be fighting a whole bunch because I have all these resources right wrong so you go around collect all these resources there's nothing to do with them that I've went stretches with saga for hours and I killed two enemies and it's just walking around finding things like what about how exciting those two encounters were because they were they weren't I think I showed rags you and possibly freeing you like the getting killed by a wolf it was like you showed me the wolf part the wolf part oh yeah ridiculous sorry I know I've brought up before but I mean it's a year in review so I'm allowed to repeat things it's the she kills the wolf when it comes after that she's like the wolf is turned against me because of the darkness the only reason that a wolf would attack me Disney princess that I am is because obviously there's some kind of an evil force yeah and she deals with everything way too well like that nobody feels real in that world and a lot of people like oh it's not supposed to feel real because everybody's like written in a book or whatever but it's like yeah well they felt fucking real in the first game and that was the same situation so I don't buy it and again plenty of people are kind of almost normal and then plenty of people absolutely aren't I think correct me if I'm wrong but the five six hours I played I killed like four things and I was like I'm done yeah yeah handle this like the pacing is absolutely excruciating then there's the sheriff's department office I feel like we'd be remiss to not mention all the absolute insane shit that happens in there several offices and a corpse go down and then things happen noises happen gunshots and screaming and if you came down what you would find is all the offices are dead except the FBI from out of town and the corpse is missing you're under arrest you're a very under arrest you are all of the under arrest right now you will never sleep again because of all the arrests you are under and you that's what these two are the two characters we have been introduced by two that's the first time they see anything supernatural happening like that's their first encounter with us they take it pretty well they take it pretty well like okay yeah I guess that's happening right now brother was there the sheriff just disappears when he's just fucking vanishes he's now in the darkness world where you could talk to him as Ellen wake and when they open the door there's the corpse of the woman that's their friend that they've worked with forever they're just like oh geez what's going on yeah take care of the corpses we have to go back to the woods take care of our friend Ginny who's dead they're not devastated when they should be nobody gives a shit nobody acts human it was too much at that point I was just like I can't fucking I don't want to waste my time on a video game like this and then you know over the next few days and weeks everyone's loving it it's great and it serves awards nations like wow everybody loves it but I don't I don't know like it doesn't seem like people are talking about it much no not really not really no what I see is a really weird thing going on with it because like I'm a huge survival horror fan and like I was never a huge Ellen wake one fan like because I mean I played a little bit of it was okay but the horror of it is a little too flashy with like you know shining light on enemies and sparks I prefer the horror I prefer horror a little more subtle for it to actually like have an effect on me but I didn't think it was a bad game but like I was particularly intrigued by Ellen wake 2 and I saw that it was getting all these accolades by mainstream outlets but then I heard people like metal and and Mahler and other individuals saying like this isn't that great is actually borderline are you recounting the events a few seconds ago just to be clear no no no not only seconds ago but like before because I had been aware of their opinions I had been aware of their opinions beforehand and I was just like what the fuck is going on with this game like what why do you think it's getting all these 10s out of 10s from these mainstream high level production very autistic it's doing a lot of boxes for a lot of people that I don't think actually have much substance and the thing I get to see shared a lot is the song they made for it I forget the name of it but that's that song I see shared I don't see anyone sharing any of the major story points from the game at all well the thing is the game has seemingly not sold very well really which isn't really surprising to me because Alan Wayne is niche yeah that's fair maybe need to explain as well so someone's like what would you expect to see in a game that is good and so when Ragnarok came out I had to avoid spoilers and work through the games takes fucking ages to complete in a good way by the way I love the pacing of the game but when I was able to just go around seeing everything the scene I mean I can yeah I can say it this is where Fibers was the scene where Tia is revealed to be Odin that scene was getting shared everywhere when they first go to Asgard to begin Ragnarok right like that was shared everywhere I remember seeing the scene where he speaks to a traitor about like his nature to him as as his father obviously the one with the Norns that was shared because it was huge for like trying to understand the game's point of view on fate and then there's the several scenes at the end that were getting shared and I was just like yeah that's kind of what I expect when a story that hits hard is hitting lots of people is to see it celebrated and shared but like Alan Wake I haven't even seen the I've seen a lot from Mel's playthrough. I didn't even see the you know the sequence with the metal band and killing the horde mode that you nearly drove you insane though I saw that part and I saw you playing that part I've not seen anyone share that as like a video and for the record it would have been shared but I've never seen it like in a viral tweet or someone saying like this was the fucking best part of the game The thing that I have predominantly seen is people say I love the game but not with any specifics or any different references I can't be understood how shit the story is and how it progresses they keep telling you saga is so amazing but she has like magic powers she can profile people randomly she speaks to the ghost she speaks to fucking ghost that's cheating and she doesn't really retarded moments because that's cheating she doesn't retarded moments as well like in this diner in the beginning the one guy was like oh I also found them and then his partner or whatever gives him a little nudge like oh no never mind and then she's like oh what's going on here and then the game forced you to go into your mind place to do the profiling that's what they call it that's where you do your little case board it's basically your imagination but it's also magic kinda I don't know who cares all imaginations are magic but that's true is it like a real place like a place you walk around in Sherlock the fucking metaphysical mind palace that they have Jimmy Neutron's brain blast sure it's all of them put together it's an incredible experience that does sound amazing I gotta buy this game now so you talk to everybody and it's like oh what am I gonna do now so you go into mind palace go to the little table and then you have like a little I don't know like a yellow marker on it it's like no I need to profile it talks to the ghosts of the people or just the people's brains they didn't never explain it it's just their magic shenanigans that they do yeah which we kind of like gave a pass for a long time but then they just never really give you strong reasoning and acceptance of that the fact that her whole career she's just had magical powers I guess like yeah and the way she gets those informations is based on nothing in the real world but apparently the FBI has just been going for it for years because the partner is like oh you've always been really good with these cases like yeah that would be an interesting premise of a story though if you had a detective who had magic powers but because the law is the law she couldn't just use the magic powers to say yeah we have to go to this one house and check the basement and in this drawer there's a thing they have to come up with the reason to get the warrants to do the things and all this stuff and then you also have the element of hmm would someone get really insecure that they are a renowned detective but they owe it all to their powers and not their natural intuition yeah like Nick Fury how he stole all of his achievements from someone else so it's also annoying on top of this so control this is like the whole thing placed in the Alan Wake universe where they deal with all kinds of magical bullshit and objects of powers that do all kinds of weird shit why don't we play as a control agent guy I just forgot their names no they have like their own agency name it's just the FBC because we already if you play control a bureau of controllers controlling it's actually a bureau of control so you weren't far off a joke for themselves because we have a through line already there if you play control the DLC that is set to be contact to Alan Wake he sends you a message it's like one of his attempts to get out of the dark place from the first game and this somewhere there in one of these little file cases that you can find and read for a little bit of work building you see that there's like an agent STFS I think was her name sent there to check this shit out and has been I assume in charge there for a while because she's actually in the game later on going like you can't do that that's bad because they actually look at this fucking whole place this whole time there's like stations everywhere that go off with alarms like if shit goes down down bad so I don't know why we don't play one of these guys instead of an FBI lady that has never had any contact with and didn't they in continuity race swap saga because she showed up in a like IRL cutscene I heard about that too she used to be a white chick that's the name saga but they changed her to a black chick because I got current people believe it's to do with the baby sweet baby ink I think it's the company who make a lot of weird additions and systems to things I don't know more about it but I know that I remember being shown it the character was previously white which is like damn how many times do they like race swap something in like a the same content you know what I mean like not an adaptation it's like shit is that like one of the first times we've seen that and it's like the FBC when they actually are in the story introduced they suck ass to just get wiped out even though all they need is a fucking flashlight and a gun to beat these guys which they should know there's like some sounds like some pretty exotic equipment there not just stuff that you know you'd have access to if you were in government basically all get killed in the police station which definitely will never have any flashlights in there or guns so we now guns or flashlights in the police station no never budget cuts this is British you might be wondering wait saga is fine and dandy what about Ellen wake oh we get to play as him I was gonna say that that's all this discussion we've had about it you mentioned Alan wake is like what game are you talking about like oh I'll wake to they also said oh it's 5050 it's not 5050 it's way less life and the way parts actually more entertaining to play because you actually get to shoot enemies for once the dark place is kind of neat it's more interesting than just the woods or wherever you go but it's like small puzzles here and there they have like something going on where you you have like a night stand lamp or what was it and then you can charge it up and switch the lights on and off in different places to change the area a bit a little bit could have done more with it but it's this more gameplay going on with him for the most part you go around through areas and shoot some enemies and instead of the you also have kind of a mind place but you're in this little in the hut that you end up in an Alan wake one and that's your writer's room and you have like a chalkboard I think it is where you can change the plot of the story you currently in and then the area changes a bit so it's alright it's nothing crazy but it's more interesting and yeah there's like some some highlights here and there but I will give you a lot of the highlights are just things functioning as you would have expected nothing like yeah you actually get things to do and can use the ammo you collect in these areas yeah so incredibly disappointing experience I don't want to go anywhere near it I got a full blast and then I watched Mel finish the game and I was like fuck me it's just just pain has couldn't finish it either and yet it won best narrative good good good for you yeah well done you want to see me lose my mind stream that's so you wouldn't right so you wouldn't recommend it to anybody even if they were like really love that genre no it's no piss okay that's just a fucking nightmare of a narrative and game because I don't think the game functions very well in general because they changed up the shooting mechanics like you look like they were super clumsy and clunky yes yeah the things that were super useful and in Alan wake one we're kind of useless in this one which made the this is hard more specifically a nightmare to actually get through especially on the hard difficulty I get the impression that what happened with that game in terms of it's like controls and combat is that they were really really concerned with making it animate well and they didn't care as much whether it played as well as it could it's a it feels worth pointing out but like Resident Evil 4 Remake is a really well presented game in terms of having like yeah animation the animation doesn't feel like it over Leon yeah you know I never feel like he's getting in the way because he needs to complete the animation cycle that they would happen you know a little bit in the movement maybe a little bit a little bit movement yeah but it's not like you can sort of like you get used to it and watching metal do that horde sequence was just painful like it just looked painful oh something else on top of that what I figured out or realized only the horde mode drops are randomized as well so every time I died at different things in those boxes and I'm pretty sure I cucked myself by opening the boxes beforehand because there was nothing in them oh god all right so I think if I would have let them be closed and done it every time there would have been stuff in there but yeah it's a like there's probably not going to be an Alan Wake 3 I imagine because the accolades don't pay the bills you gotta the games gotta sell well you know to justify getting a sequel and it seems like the game's not selling very well which is also funny because in the end Alan Wake is still in the dark place and nothing changed for him whatever maybe it'll be like DLC or something yeah fucking probably it loves me hard I was super happy with the other games they were very fun especially control control is really fun to play just mechanically as well sure but I mean will epic front the cost for a third one like how well did it do for the epic game store this game's on the epic game store I played it on the playstation it was epic exclusive on top of that which is also a bit of a crime because so many people were looking forward to it again oh yeah that just qualifies in immediately from me playing it pretty much I was like I'm not installing Chinese malware on my computer willingly if I do it it's gonna be by fucking accident it's gonna be by accident downloading a game I want to play to move on from Alan Wake 2 cause I'm totally fucking done with it we cannot possibly not mention the marvels that's around this era that was a weird one yeah that one was a pitiable film a disastrous mess that was chopped to hell and back struggled to crawl out of the box office with anything looking like a brave sell the marvels are supposed to be after a secret invasion right yes yes which is weird because this fury was not in secret invasion it wasn't in Avengers a little platoon said earlier a secret invasion doesn't sit in continuity with pretty much anything it's just like its own little island of insane nonsense Nick Fury is not in secret invasion I thought he was no no no it's a little it's a little joke the Nick Fury in the marvels is back to being sort of like a jokester who doesn't really care about much and doesn't really mention anything to do with the scrolls or the entire adventure he's been on or mentioning the hyper power that's been released onto the world in the form of what's their name? Kira something Ikea Gaia yeah none of that gets brought up even though it's like the first axe final big plot point is to do with the scrolls right like the planet tarnax I think it is tarnax so yeah like all of that was fucked but then the film itself is just completely fucked it's a sad entry into like a something they would have decided to do a long time ago and just had to commit to it's a writing problem right he's like phoning it in in terms of performance it's funny it would be both that and the lack of communication between projects I don't even know that the two projects know each other exist I would say the marvels felt especially hollow multiverse and madness is like truly awful and worse but it felt like it was trying to do something one of the things is that at the very least someone could point to if they wanted to defend it and be like look at that scene where Elizabeth Olsen is acting look at that scene where Dr. Stranger saying oh Christine I like you a lot it's at least got those scenes that are very poorly written not earned at all but it has them it has like the standard emotional beats that you the model is particularly thin by way of characterization like the character writing is like basically non-existent everything about the film is non-existent so like you can say up until this point I think I would even I would include multiverse of madness Thor Leaventhunder and Ant-Man as being awful films but still technically important in that you do need to see them to understand where you are and where the story has gone and where it's like to go next the marvels you don't there's nothing there's nothing on the level of character plot world building theme whatever it's completely redundant the close of the film actually sets up that practically nothing about the world state has changed from the beginning of the film you've got potentially four destroyed planets and there's a line of dialogue to begin with the film it's like now they're all fine oh okay fine great so there's all of that stuff we just watched what was the point of all of that the only thing you need to know is the fucking moniker is with the expert that's it beast and everything and that's the post-credits scene isn't it you have to go all the way to the post-credits scene before the first bit the most progress that's made for the story of the whole MCU is in a post-credits scene yes in the prison arc in Andor that explains to Andor that like there's a little hose that he can get food from but it has no flavour you get flavour from like working and winning at the game that they have to play the point being that the marbles is like that it's just calories that it's nothing it's like no matter how hard we work we don't get any flavour no there is no flavour it is just empty calories in the true sense of the word it's terrible but it's like the kind of film that's hard to muster anything from me by way of an emotional response I guess the post-credits scene is like the the jangling's like there might be flavour in the next one at that point what's happening there is they're jangling their keys very hard they're like standing on a fault line throwing their keys around like look X-men the X-men are here come on please watch our movie please the way they did it is so stupid as well because like I need to close the rift now and then she flies through the thing and closes from the other side it's like why did you do that just stay on your side that's a huge missed opportunity in that scene as well because there was the chance for it to actually give you a scene that makes you feel something if Carol knows in advance that she has to choose between sacrificing effectively her friend or the universe which would be like a moral parallel to the problems that she had at the beginning of the film where she wasn't prepared to make these tough decisions then she would actually be able to make a positive decision to get rid of one and save the other and get some sort of the conclusion to her arc in that scene but she doesn't because I don't even think the writers knew until they got to that scene that that was what was going to happen and Monica Rambo's character doesn't know until she does it that seemingly anyway that that's what's going to happen so she flies to the other side of the portal and she doesn't tell anyone that she has to stay right until the moment like the two seconds closes it and then she's like now I'm going to stay actually sorry and then by there's no chance to feel anything Carol doesn't really feel anything there's no yeah there aren't any characters in this film so there's no resolution to any character arcs in Mount Vellani is a decent actress and it would be nice if they gave her something to work with because she's very enthusiastic Freelassen is capable of a lot better she clearly doesn't give a shit and that's about it like everyone else is sort of around do you think we're actually going to see like her show up in another Marvel movie in any like meaningful capacity or she'll just show up Captain Marvel? Yes I feel like they'll have her turn up in Avengers yes but in terms of cameos she seems to have been willing I don't know if she will be after this I don't know what's going to happen now I mean I because I don't know that I imagine they're not going to be offering more money I'm sorry I'm probably your biggest incentive to participate and if they're not going to offer you more money then why you can do you can like work on real projects yeah just imagine being the studio behind that though because you can tell that the ideal was the close of the Infinity Saga that you know Captain Marvel is being set up to helm the post Infinity Saga MCU I'm sure that's what they wanted her to be she's so unpopular it didn't happen but the launch event for Phase 5 this is one of the reasons the Marvel's just doesn't another of the many reasons Marvel's makes no sense is that it feels like there's a film missing the launch event for Phase 5 Kevin Feige says that I can't remember which film he's referencing but he says it will pick up from the story in Captain Marvel 2 so like this is well after he would have known that Captain Marvel 2 wasn't a thing but apparently in the backs of their minds there was a there was a film before the marvels and that should have happened and so we are picking up I'm sure with bits and pieces of an older script for an older film in the marvels and none of the connective tissue because that film was discarded at some way along the line we talked about it a bit but Phase 5 was not something we were meant to be in Phase 5 was arbitrarily drawn forward because I'm sure that they saw that the sentiment for Phase 4 was pretty bad and to try and label it as Phase 5 was kind of like a cheap attempt to convince people that something can change when all of the films had been made under the same conditions with the same general production same approach to scriptwriting these were all meant to be part of like Phase 4 including the marvels it explains why there's no Avengers film in Phase 4 I guess doesn't it because normally that would be the clues for any phase definitive end is the Avengers team up movie and there wasn't one then and it draws to a close with Wakanda Forever which if you know where you're going from that then well done Wakanda Forever is just like dude it's so crazy how that film just came and went nobody came shit that was wild nobody cared nobody remembers anything about that film which um it was marginally less racist than the first one I think there weren't any people making gorilla noises wearing animal costumes take your wins where you can get them thank goodness if it was like with the marvels that felt like man I feel like it was kind of uniting because so many people were rooting for it because of what it represented if like a Marvel movie failed and a very spectacular it just feels like everybody's tired and it's kind of like it doesn't just broadly all from all across the place like in terms of looking at the film landscape everybody's about ready it's like can we just like fucking this marvel shit's getting really fucking annoying can we can we cut it out can we stop nobody was interested it didn't must or any excitement there was no there was no like counter narrative of how it's going to be really exciting an interesting film because everybody understood and knew you know like how what like a dozen consecutive awful projects puts a bad taste in people's mouth you know there weren't even that many pre-emptive defences of it because normally you would expect if it was still a hot button issue you'd expect to load of people before it even came out saying the only people who hate this are going to be evil like bigoted sexist types but there weren't even that many of those around the film got written off it felt like everybody sort of saw like there's there's like blood in the water when it comes to Marvel I mean the fact that you had that like variety article coming out just like very publicly and thoroughly essentially saying that like marvel's in trouble the way that they're making things isn't working they're course correcting and more of those articles coming out and the VFX stuff happening that all of that had primed it to where nobody was on that film side regardless of whatever narrative Marvel wanted to run with it almost seems like in the way the act to strike was beneficial because it allowed them to move past it really quickly well Kanda forever felt really aimless almost definitively as if that was the point of the movie because it's all about like the aftermath of the death of T'Challa and it's like well now what do we do and if there's no main character that comes later on you're just meant to be like oh I guess all of Wakanda is the main character of this movie and the bad guy is whatever Aquaman or whatever it's meant to be like Shuri is meant to be the new protagonist but didn't really pan out it was the tremendously brilliant introduction of Riri Williams as well as Ironheart in a starring performance that I remember absolutely nothing about it's kind of funny how like Ironheart keeps getting pushed back to where by the time she shows up it'll have been like two years who the fuck is this yeah exactly it was shit too so nobody cares it's kind of like how Miss Marble got introduced what nearly two years before the marvels obviously everything started going wrong with their production everything got thrown out of whack to where the project stopped lining up and they just pushed their head anyway because they thought that they could get away with it they thought that they could get away with pumping out shitty films oh yeah remember how they tease the kids avengers as well I don't think that's gonna happen I don't remember that the end of the marvels when Miss Marble recruits yeah I got ya and I'm pretty sure she says the same thing that Furi said after Iron Man 1 she was in the room she was there she knows exactly what he said to where she can reference it verbatim I said Lee but Nick Fury still in this universe right Nick Fury still exists it's time for him to move aside there's a person named Nick Fury but the amorphous concept of what he's supposed to be as a character is ever shifting if Miss Marble is taking your job then there is no point in you existing you might as well just retire but she's not taking the job because they're not gonna make that I would be so shocked if they made that young avengers film how could you justify it at this point well I'd say we've seen precedent for this after the stars falling the fuck apart they're committing to a ray movie that's one of the worst decisions you could do so who made that decision that boggles the mind of all the things that didn't stick from the sequels the protagonist man the question is how can you justify it is not the right question to ask as they will always find a way of justifying the worst decision imaginable you could say the same with the marbles how do you justify putting a musical number in this film you can't technically but they did they put it there anyway it was a terrible decision and it's still there and it still wasn't so much fun it's more so just appealing to you can't indefinitely lose money at some point you have to start making money again money is actually a finite resource I'm sorry they can't just keep burning money on these projects that keep failing which uh in terms of major releases uh hold on Aquaman we haven't even so there were two movies that we won't be talking about we could talk about which would be Aquaman 2 and Godzilla 1 because both of them will be getting episodes soon enough gentle, gentle EFAP chat and so in a way we will talk about them in the next year's catch up of overall because that's what they'll be it'll be weird but it'll be nice to mention how like our years started with Godzilla minus one not to say that we really like to move through anything but um there's at least one more movie for us to talk about yes the thing is is that really there's actually a few that could just get glossed over here's a list of films that have come out in the last couple of months that are noteworthy Napoleon, the new Hunger Games movie Wish The Boy and the Heroine, Chicken Run Oh we still need to check that out oh yeah that's great good old Rebell Moon Rebell Moon yeah The Killer came out in the last two months oh that's what a way to finish The Killer and Rebell Moon okay do you want to talk about this well I mean we can be relatively quick on the killer we adored it I'd say yeah very good awesome it's my favorite movie of the year also mine it's one of my favorite fincher films actually yeah it's pretty fucking high scored for myself I thoroughly enjoy everything that film has to say about the topics it covers it is well beyond a hitman procedural as much as I think it can be appreciated for that got a hell of a lot more going on under the surface to the point where if you dig in hard enough you'll find that it being about a hitman isn't that relevant to the point it's trying to make about human nature I love the performance isn't it I love how it takes it's time Gilda Swinton was super impressive in the like five minutes that she had yeah and Michael Fassbender every last micro expression is so important and then the cinematography and the soundtrack are just bitching and as one of the best fight scenes I've seen all year that fight scene was talk about it it's so it's so finely constructed down to like every minute detail not just from a production standpoint but from a writing standpoint it's like so deliberately paced and structured leveraging the narration of the killer and the world view and philosophy that he presents and systematically breaking it down and analyzing it and exploring like what exactly is it that he's looking to achieve here what exactly is it that he believes and what is his actual status and position in the world what does his life really look like it's a really fascinating idea for a film of this like hyper focused character study it's so impressive especially when you rewatch it and you see that structure for how important and intentional it is gradually bringing that character to where he ends up at the end of the film and I know the a lot of people felt like it was too boring or it wasn't and by the way I don't I've never had a problem with someone finding something boring or exciting when I find it the opposite it was totally chill but it would be a mistake I think to assume you're going into a Taken slash John Wick slash Equalizer type film and Drinker's made videos on this he kind of feels the same way that it got shafted at a slight bit by people expecting something that they didn't get and I think a lot of people would blame it for being called the killer but it's super relevant to the point the film is making both in character and themes I wouldn't change the name for the world I guess maybe in marketing I don't think I ever saw much of the marketing so I don't know if they tried to sell a film that it absolutely wasn't maybe that was part of the problem but we read a lot of reviews and we were like holy fuck I don't know what film I saw that was really depressing it's weird to me as well because I didn't even pick up on the whole character study thing because I'm stupid but I just really liked it as just I don't know thriller I don't know what the genre would be I'm thinking of but just as a it's just great details in how he does his things and how he waits like he shows like all the boring things that happen when you are an assassin it's like oh you gotta have to wait here for days and see if I have an opportunity to actually do a thing and I'm gonna I'm gonna be this German tourist because nobody wants to talk to Germans because that's actually kind of true from what I know as a German tourist yourself right now I barely talked to you can just grab on the surface I don't like the surface level but just the literal events that are taking places that it's very good at building it's super tight it's just pretty easy to follow the fight choreography is awesome I just love a fight where both parties get beat up to shit and just have to grasp for everything to actually win the fight in the end yeah it's just really good so I wasn't very confused when I heard that it was like boring and stuff like why is it cool I think one of the most baffling things when I watched it with bringing in another friend and we were going through it and we were just noticing stuff and we didn't know what it was playing into exactly but at first of course we were like man it's amazing how effective, efficient and planned out everything is for this man but then we'd be like that's curious remember when he was first on the plane he had his cap on his shades on and he'd be looking around everywhere but right now he hasn't even got the shades on like he's letting his face be seen a bit more man by the third time he's got an injury that's very evident on his face no shades no cap and he's asleep and we were like what the and it's just like oh oh and you uh it's just one aspect yes the statement that not to be caught on some cameras these days just try to look you know non-suspicious non-interesting by the end of the film he's staring into a camera and he's just like and then it's just as you're watching the film and he keeps repeating his mantra and then his mantra something happens it's like huh that contradicts what you just said huh that contradicts what you just said no that me and Fringy end up talking for like an hour about everything we think it means and what they did he watched it with Theo and rags because I adored this film love talking about what everyone's taking away from it right like that I'm watching it with and then I was like I'll check out Chris Stockman's review of it no hey he praised it he thought it was great there's just one quote I want to talk about in his video that it's not even a quote I'm going to paraphrase but he basically highlighted the killer himself the character is presented as hyper-competent and he has a list of like sort of rules that he repeats and that you're seeing him be very competent however there are several parts in the film where you see that he is incompetent you see him fail at doing particular things you see him not take the precautions he says he should take you see him getting involved in making decisions that he says he shouldn't I'm not sure if the filmmakers have noticed these kinds of contradictions but I did enjoy the film oh no this is your job you almost got there are you fair? several reviews I spotted are people saying it's absolutely retarded they want to convince us this guy's got his job considering all the mistakes he makes and I was like oh shit the points it's gliding I don't know what you're supposed to do in a situation like that because you're like okay wait but like that's not what you're supposed to be taking away you're not supposed to think that's a contradiction they failed to characterize him correctly he said it was really good but he thinks that those things are contradictions and problems with the film which makes me think Chris what is this movie trying to say what's the idea of this movie then what is it that you really liked about it why would you say that it's good he said that he likes it because it's David Fincher from when he asked he's also not allowed to be negative remember he can't be negative that's true and especially if it's David Fincher which I mean again I think David Fincher is a fucking excellent filmmaker but I get the impression that he would look at other Fincher films that he likes that he actually likes and he could talk about them but with the killer it's probably a film that he'll never think about or watch again that's the impression I get and like I said after seeing it if I'd seen no one's reactions to it I still would never recommend this broadly I'd be like this is gonna be a film that's enjoyed by a select amount of people totally fine I love this niche films that I hate so like I get it but it was disappointing to see how much people just do not like the killer I was like oh fuck damn our particularly favourable opinion of it is uncommon to where unfortunately it's probably not gonna get as much credit or recognition as it deserves it's gonna be remembered as one of those Fincher films it's like yeah I mean it's good in the way that Fincher films are typically good but not in the same way as you know the best films but I really it is one of my favourite films that he's made it is really really really high up there alongside stuff like Fight Club, Gongo, Social Network yeah I was about to say it's probably with actually your set of his favourite films it's probably a club that's like 5 in like it's not a small club it's a big club cause 7 is basically in there as well it might as well be he is an incredibly he is an incredibly consistent filmmaker but this film is really good it's a really well crafted film it really lends itself well to his style which is everything is incredibly deliberate and meticulous that there's an immense amount of clarity in terms of the visual language but also in terms of the general structure in there and the intention and purpose behind all of the major creative decisions and story beats that they happen like I can't I can't imagine parts of the film where I'd be like you could get rid of that I can't see that because they're so essential or ways that they could be changed around because the structure is so it's so tight you know another film that couldn't possibly have things taken from it and instead would have to have a whole other film added on top are you talking about Rebell Moon oh my goodness Rebell Moon so I suppose to close out the look back on the wonderful year other than we peaked at the end because we did Launderings alright that's just true of which more stuff is on the way for that not new stuff but I'll explain that in a bit Rebell Moon it was a complete and utter disaster but kind of expected so we've got a very strong handle on what Zack Snyder is capable of as a storyteller Rebell Moon matches it quite well we did a three hour breakdown of it you can check it out if you want you guys seem to very much thoroughly enjoy it as well as the whole world's rejoicing in just realizing that he's a very shitty storyteller well I say for some reason we talked about it and I think Fringy was right when he said that Army the Dead wasn't enough of a reveal to the world because Snyder kind of overshadowed it in terms of what people were talking about and thinking about Rebell Moon is standalone here I am everyone the stage is yours, Zack good luck this is me with complete creative freedom making a brand new science fiction world with all of the money that I could ever ask for to realize my vision a long sense removed from all the stuff going on with the DC films and it's just fucking terrible in a way that's very apparent it's not like one where it can fly over yet I don't even know what people would be pointing to as the really exciting and cool things about Rebell Moon Rebell Moon slow motion the slow motion shot of her scraping her hand across the dirt was really artistic it was a really good use of slow motion that was pretty brilliant we wouldn't want to miss that can people please stop giving him creative freedom yeah all the reverse memes that are really funny like do not release this Snyder cut I beg you don't release that's become a conversation as well as him saying you know really it's the R rated cut the director's cut they all come together you can't go on record before your movie releases oh by the way there's like an 18 hour cut that's R rated with a completely different vision and it feels like a completely different movie it's like what are we doing at this point all it's going to do is add more shit just like the Snyder cut that's not true apparently there could be titties so you get that and you extend the vision there you go I will say though you have to tolerate two hours of Zack Snyder's work oh it ain't worth it porn's free on the internet man it's probably worth thinking about waiting until you get a movie that comes out that people respond to well that they really like before you decide and ordain from up on high that this is going to be a franchise of multiple movies like comic books and anime video game the most forced you know IP shit I've ever seen and the same thing got done with army of the dead but that's just dead like I mean it's good to have that title I guess why would you even try to connect it up and I guess Zack for a moment there was like I'm going to be making so many things all the time everyone's going to love this is going to be great and I don't see a future for like these huge projects that he keeps getting you know someone's got to give the debts will come in eventually of like man we put a lot of investment into your stuff you know this would be Netflix and they'd be like what's going on the engagement's pretty low and I think you could be fooled into thinking like Rebel Moon has got relatively good engagement but like has it not disappeared already it's absolutely awesome and the really relevant part is what happens in four or five months when part two the scar giver comes out and had way way way lower viewership in all likelihood than part one it's going to be so retarded it'll be a cult classic it's going to be all of them trying to convince me they could defend their little like settlement against the mother world or whatever it's called mother something yeah it's no way I'm actually waiting for part two before I review it just because it's such an empty film the fact that the middle third is about going around picking up really important characters who then don't speak until the end of the movie there's a lion of dialogue from some of them they don't share their opinions on anything they're just there and it's also completely unnecessary because the guy who's leading them to all of these people already knows where they are and wants to capture them and portray them none of it makes sense but the staggering thing I think is just how empty it is nothing about that film is characterful or plot even is barely there you can cut the middle third entirely if it wasn't for part two needing these characters they're picking up the middle third doesn't need to exist you can just skip straight from she meets bounty hunter guy bounty hunter guy betrays her final fight end which would probably have been a better film because it would be like 45 minutes long because like I said we were watching Firefly recently and like the format for those episodes even though there's only 14 in season one and that's all they ever got you know they still did your normal like they're on the ship and then alert there's a thing happening and they're all in a room and it's like what does the doctor think what does the engineer think what does the priest think what does the fucking crazy girl that we have on the board think what does the leader think what does the first mate think what does the muscle think you get around all the thing witty dialogue bouncing off each other all great rebel mood is like what does does anyone did anyone share a fucking opinion about any of the events that even happened it's like hello let us go here remember when we were almost blown away they had like a scene for the sons of anarchy guy and her she goes to the room and he's just like you inspire me to be honorable and we were just like what where did this come from what are you even talking about the fact that he turned out to be evil is just funny like he was just like no motivation to do anything that he was doing in the whole thing but suspiciously helpful and then it's just like I'm just bad you're like oh right the scene isn't there when all the heroes are sort of trussed up and captured and he goes around effectively narrating their one thing says you are you are the woman who lost her children you are the person who lost his soldiers yeah that's the entirety of their character work you've just summed up there in that one line of dialogue that's all it takes luckily it's a good thing he reminded us because I had there's we needed that oh yeah what an awful attempt at launching your big old Star Wars knockoff which by the way I say Star Wars knockoff every person who watches this sees something he's stolen from in here but only enough a lot of firefly clearly was stolen from as well it's a it's a Firefly Star Wars Warhammer ripoff that is terrible in every way even Harry Potter these steals from Harry Potter's from how to train your buckbeam also that it's a film made by a Hufflepuff basically oh got him Zack Snyder is absolutely a Hufflepuff but he thinks he's a griffin he thinks he's a Ravenclaw but he's not he's totally captured by his own ego like I've mentioned this a few times about Zack Snyder already but like I just cannot get over the fucking lens thing like he did Army of the Dead he set it in Los Angeles and he decided to use these like sort of vintage Japanese lenses with such a narrow depth of field that it blurs out the entirety of the background and you can only see the subject of the frame and it's like why why are you even doing this why don't you want to capture the visual splendor of the setting that you're setting this story in surely you would want to take advantage of that yeah but have you considered that what if instead everything was blurry except for this woman I didn't think of that the opposite of what I'm talking through one and a half out of the two characters in a scene are in focus which is better than the half characters that are in focus in Army of the Dead so he is improving it's so crazy that he got away with Army of the Dead he made that piece of shit and nobody had just like generally like half of Dave Bautista is clear that piece of shit was walked on so much by people without having even recognized it that it's just milled it into the floor just to exist at all there it is just I'm sure they're going to keep making more of the Army of the Dead universe with that anime and the sequel that's definitely going to happen yep I'm sure that'll happen these things only exist when they exist it's something you've been saying a lot rags and it's really true it only exists when it's out it's going to be remarkable when the sequel comes out people will be like oh shit Rebel Moon oh yeah the first one did have a story I guess we can finally see how all of this tits out or something if they have a showdown with her and bad guy again and she beats him again he's so boring what else would they do the guy should be dead but they used magic bullshit to bring him back to life obviously it's so that they can fight again yay he's going to seem to win at first but then she's going to do a thing and kill him it'll what else would he do that's the thing that's my big fucking mistake because I'm trying to predict the actions of a madman a lunatic you never know what he's going to do maybe the guy will die in the first 5 minutes and it'll be a big subversion and I'll think that's super cool and then I'll be like but you fool why did you bring him back at all guys what you wanted to think this metal did indeed call it Snyder's blurry vision I did shockingly true you can only hope that the Snyder cut means many things will be cut from the movie it's going to be long it's going to be the opposite unfortunately it will be a much longer movie it's not a cut in holding each shot for as long as possible like right until the end of the take and then doing the next shot right until the end of the take and then cutting it that's like that it was crazy how long he drew out just a scene of somebody like grabbing something or you know walking up the stairs you think he'd be Dave Filoni or something they should team up and make him look 6 hours long it's well it's just all attempts to make it as long as possible to convince people that they are dramatically different films when they are only partially different films with a lot of queries than all the scenes it'll be so easy to make it a dramatically different film there's so much stuff that you do need to add with an extra 2 hours of runtime the problem is he won't add any of the stuff the film needs to see because there are so many awkward cuts away from what you know is going to be like a really long slow mo gory death of someone's head being smashed in but in this version there's a really janky cut away from that's the stuff that will pad out the extra runtime we probably might get 2 extra lines of dialogue if we're lucky but the rest of it's just going to be gratuitous R rated stuff that's what the film really needs more tits, more blood, slower deaths a mess one thing made me laugh recently about Snyder, it was pertaining to him it was actually a quote from Christopher Nolan Christopher was saying you're going to say Christopher Stockman but carry on no no no he said I really I sense through Zack Snyder's filmmaking I sense his love for the potential of cinema and that was just like to me that was just like Christopher Nolan basically saying that he missed the mark you know like he's not really making cinema here he's just like he's trying his best that's how you compliment someone when you have nothing nice to say oh well you know he has such potential and he really loves film and filmmaking and no one makes movies quite like him yeah well yeah you could have someone be like what do you think of my thing it was like you tried really hard exactly that's exactly yeah which you know kind of gives us that was the highlight the end of the year of course not at all the actual highlight which was the eight hour Lord of the Rings coverage that was the cool thing and then followed up with a wonderful chat with cinematic venom for any episode that anyone isn't aware of you should totally check out it's a great little book end to Lord of the Rings being covered on this channel don't to say that that would be it I'm sure it'll be more in future especially when Rings of Power season 2 rolls around that's right oh boy but oh yeah I guess we should passing mention of course to Valhalla we did mention it earlier I think a little bit but just really banging DLC all of me Fringy and Metal have streams of it you should go watch to see our thoughts in depth on everything that they do for what it does for Kratos and essentially giving yeah well I was gonna say it's like it's just a big old end point that adds on to Ragnarok really well yeah that's free one of the best kind of DLCs you could ask for free DLC man that's hyper mechanics focused and has incredibly meaningful story beats to add to it it was really nice to jump back in to God of War Ragnarok briefly and be like oh well and there it goes can't wait for them to bring out whatever they bring out next even if it's not God of War to be honest with you which I guess we'll have to see it's probably gonna be a while before the next one oh and I did mention Robocop excellent well I mean we also didn't mention Loki season 2 that's okay all the fall of the House of Usher oh fall of the House of Usher actually yeah that's actually that's an easy recommendation as well as Robocop Rogue City for being faithful and fun as a FPS fall of the House of Usher is I mean if you liked the other fighting shows you're gonna like Fall of the House of Usher I would imagine it did piss some people off in terms of an adaptation of pose work I don't know myself whether I know people who are very familiar with Edgar Allen pose work that don't mind it at all as an adaptation in fact they quite like it so it's kind of hard to have an opinion on that definitively that is representative especially because he's not adapting the stories per se as much as he's adapting the spirit within them and it's up to you whether or not he nails it I guess with different ones all of the House of Usher sure just put in the word it becomes funny one of the things that's most I think shocking about that show is the main character is all reshoots they lost Frank Langella for reasons I guess I won't say anything about because I don't know the validity of any of it but it seems to be some kind of controversy and then Bruce Greenwood came in to redo everything and it's fucking amazing it's kind of nuts yeah I think if it was one element that I'd like the most about all of it it was him he does a fantastic job in that season and it's unreal to know that most of the time he's not even acting across from people necessarily I mean he probably still is in a lot of the instances but he's filling in for scenes that got cut and everything and yes it has an ending that we liked so there you go it sucked to the landing that's a hard recommendation just from that alone we don't have coverage of any of the shows except Hill House maybe that'll change someday there's just so much for us to do we're still catching up on all kinds of different things well maybe just a rather awful list we covered a lot of things yeah I think we're fine there's still more on the list of things that were notable oh yeah and there's plenty of things that we didn't get to see but there's plenty of things we did see and didn't talk about people are asking is the killer gonna get some kind of coverage like probably not it's really not like a full on breakdown whatever because we just I don't know how much time we have to do any and everything right now but we've got Godzilla minus one is done and Aquaman is in theory gonna happen as well no promises Aquaman too the end of the DCEU oh my god yes so there's plenty to talk about with that and why even Arcane Season 2 teaser just don't talk about it yet it's still so far away it's like a whole year but you know we'll try and wrap up there in the sense so before we even get close to saying goodbye say thank you all for hanging out that was a big long stream Aquaman look at that everyone's still here big thank you of course to patrician tv because you know John and little patrician they know what's up they know how this goes they do long streams of their own I'm sure but this guy he's his first time here and so I really appreciate hanging out with us and bantering about different things thank you and yeah we've come to understand you're very much a long man in your own right so why don't you tell chat about where they can find you and what you get up to there's a link down in the description to my channel I primarily do I jokingly call them video novels because I have a distaste for the term video essay can't imagine why let's see what am I what am I am I 52 hours of Bethesda coverage across five videos noice peaking at the 20 hour Skyrim video that I did but I'm actually closing the door on Bethesda stuff for now well so you're saying you got very long videos covering a lot of Bethesda's historical library and the from what I've gathered they are incredibly detailed and they go into a lot of subjects that a lot of people find very fascinating I need to check them out myself I know rags have probably sell it a little bit better than I can well you haven't seen them oh I think I meant to you Jesus Christ yeah that was they are very good I would highly recommend them if you like the e-fap style of looking into things I think you'd particularly gel with these videos you do have to watch them in one single sitting those are the rules you must know they were designed that's right absolutely so just pick a free day clear out a block and just watch the videos are very good would highly recommend a very insightful a lot of passion there I love the research and I've been enjoying watching your research streams that you've been doing that they definitely have an e-fap kind of vibe to them that I appreciate I like it it's good stuff yeah on the stream side I tend to look into any articles or interviews on the subjects that I cover and for Skyrim I watched almost all of the kind of Skyrim videos that were made that were above 10,000 views took about a month to do I mean that's quite impressive I will say thank you I do recommend my starfield video though I've been told it's the best I've done so far it's only 8 hours though so we're definitely slipping wanted to do a short short man for that one that's okay no judgment here I think if you wanted to you could do like a 24 hour video on starfield I have a list that's like a thousand words long of just ideas that didn't make it into my cut because I really didn't want to work on the video about that game anymore it was soul sucking I from what I've heard from other people as well I don't blame you it does seem like the kind of game that just like I think you and I had some life different you and I I think had slightly different experiences with fallout 76 I played it when it came out and the game was so busted and broken and bizarre that that kind of like entranced me and fascinated me to keep playing because every over the next hill there were bugs and glitches and nonsense that I'd never seen in a video game before so where it and then myself in private sessions our perspective was on a more complete product that they have finished and supported over the years because there's quite a number of people who will say that fallout 76 is good now but it's actually just a different kind of bizarre it looks like because I just played it for launch and I haven't touched it since because of course fucking not so watching you play it as a more I guess complete and comprehensive sort of experience it was interesting to compare what I saw to what was there at launch and that launch experience and it looks like they've just added more crap to the pile they haven't made the pile better they fixed a lot of the bugs and that's about it I hope so yes the channel is patrician tv link in the description covers plenty of things definitely something you're going to cover is going to interest at least everyone in chat somewhat so you should really check it out I think it's Star Wars theory 7 hours you need to look at our backlog okay we used to stream 12 hours every single time we streamed 9 and a half last night we did it was great we'd be doing the long John CJG what are you up to what's going on in the world of you not much I'm boring John Graham on youtube I did our being the chief I'm working on a new show taking me a while getting something new rolling out but I'm working on shit I got nothing right now sorry but yeah that's the channel on youtube John Graham you're very well known in the house of EFAB at this point so anyone who hasn't subscribed is just a big meanie bobeanie but there is a link they can grab you no problem thank you little platoon what about you sir much the same not much going on sort of holding pattern until the echo echo is coming out soon isn't it so I'll be I've been on other writing projects but I will probably be covering that at some point la la la that's dropping all on the same day isn't it I fear it is yes oh my no that's going to be I can tell they really believe in that one the load of confidence is to get it all out of the way as quickly as possible hopefully no one will notice if Disney were like a person they'd be like here it is echo and then they walk out of the room or walk off the stage so it goes what's that going to go what's what I don't even dead pool dead pool the echo is bleeding on the stage they're just like oh that's cute put the curtains back down it's fine but yes link also in description always a pleasure mr. platoon of course metal where have you been for the past week and a half oh god I've been I'm right below you I mean you it's like true this time poopin everywhere oh my gosh I mean we've just been doing stuff getting drunk I mean you've seen us online getting drunk it's very fun I mean I'm leaving in two days ish from now and as I just figured out as a gift I'll get echo when I'm back home so that's cool uh yeah I don't know I don't have anything new lined up get the machine back up as soon as I'm back home but the next stream I'm going to do at home is going to be Robocop I'm going to be playing that so people want me to play that and I want to play it and yeah it should be fun I don't have any topic for next watch or anything but yeah as I need to get the machine back up running I'm real sorry to interrupt apparently the Emmy's happening right now hmm yeah I'm getting a few headlines I think it's also in my email I just follow up Twitter it's like oh yeah the fucking Emmy's just happening what is it something notable well I suppose what's interesting is well I don't know I'm just scrolling through that's okay collect the notable things that we could mention it before we it's not done that's the thing I don't think it's over yet I think it started so it's part way through um which means that maybe we'll find out if shows that we like got stuff well hey we can find out if succession season four wins a whole bunch of Emmy's up wait I mean just Matt all is he was he did a stream recently doing drug Simpsons hit run drug blood board you can find the blood buy playlists on live but he will be back doing all kinds of metal related things and the I will be rather fun to see what you think of it link also in description then bring in rags what do you guys would you which way to average um nothing nothing really sort of things are sort of lined up but but we'll see what happens I don't want to announce anything yet at the moment you know the deal I'm just working but I guess the only thing that would be noteworthy is that uh Loki is getting close to being like totally done finished so that they can all sort of come out really quickly uh obviously a lot of the rings in the mix kind of delayed things but yeah catching up now so uh soon should be pretty soon honestly um I probably just gonna get back to work on it after we're done here and otherwise I'm just working on stuff you know the deal yeah and then the quick update just on my end is that uh Lorda rings the new plan with it is to tear it up in a good way I'll make sure it looks as smooth as possible into particular topics and conversations I've gotten all the time stamps done now I know where and how and when to chop and I've um what I'm gonna do is try and account for copyright again upload a version and keep it just you know offline I guess for another it'll probably two weeks I will prep all of the individual smaller pieces and then they'll go out once per week and so it's technically stuff you've seen if you've watched the whole thing but you might be interested in hearing it again or maybe you'll be interested in checking these out rather than the big ones because they'll be smaller for example a video that's all about maybe Gollum and it's just us talking about how well Andy Circus did the characterization, his start, middle and finish what he means to the whole thing how he was used in the Hobbit why not the Hobbit things get their own video so you know you'll have that and then maybe next week it would be our thoughts on all of the world building that sort of stuff split into what will probably end up being 10 videos maybe 10 to 20 that's a pretty broad amount so I can't possibly be wrong I will be and then when they're all out I will try one last time to release the 8 hour of us watching the trilogy but this time chat will be edited in from the first time around this version will be unlisted and linked in the description if you want to go back to that comment section I'd rather keep that alive and well this will be the final attempt to keep it somewhat monetized because YouTube is a prick but I think at this point it's so I can't tell what's going to get hit with copyright anymore no matter how hard I try so it's something weird that happens I guess when you get 8 hour videos that's filled with visuals from films it just gets tough yeah that'll be happening and then obviously we're going to be trying to record the other bits of coverage that we're going to make episodes for we've got to do meme faps we've got to do super chat catch ups and we've got new episodes planned along the way I think the next coming year is going to be a lot of fun the next thing of course is 300 EFAP movies the beginning of the war arc that'll be out I believe Monday I think that's the plan or Wednesday I'll say Wednesday that's the we'll go with Wednesday just in case there's something that hiccups it but yes that should be next one of those the promise is one to two of those per month and it'll end on the end of the month then you'll get a new trailer for whatever the next year's arc will be like I said you got that, you got Loki hopefully Gotham Knights if we can get that going at some point they're all getting processed so to speak so yeah I mean there's just so much on the way we can't wait to show you guys it's going to be great boy oh boy other than that is there anything anyone wants to say about in any way should perform no I think we've covered enough today I would like to add one thing in regard to patricianTV because I just realized that it's his streams that me and my roommate watched when we were first watching Starfield and we both really appreciated his input on that and my roommate's a huge Bethesda Morrowind guy and he loves your videos dude so there you go I just thought I'd mention that I was like 99% sure and I'm like I gotta verify this and now I think I'm like just about 99% sure it was you that we were watching so like you make good shit dude thank you I was gonna say that I watched RV and the chief back when it came out I was much younger hey yes I was about to say this is the magically on point we had a stream where Trud Logic was talking to John for the whole thing and at the end he went are you the RV and the chief guy that's great I get that sometimes on Twitter I used to watch your shit when I was 12 okay I mean that I think I've included one of your bits in my Skyrim video actually and part where the Xbox explodes awesome when did you when was season 2 when was season 2 of RV and the chief I think that's when I first saw it I'm trying to calculate how old I was Jesus that was probably 2009 2010 so I would have been something like 16 that's pretty funny that was like really early days of YouTube that era here was a different time sure was a different time yeah yeah anything else I want to make sure everyone has a chance to say anything they want to say grungo oh nice thank you for that alright then sorry I didn't talk about the project that I'm currently working on go for it I'm currently working on a classic world of Warcraft video as my next quick retrospective like a big big old video it's going to have to be it's a big old game interesting I played World of Warcraft for about maybe 2 or 3 months it just wasn't quite my thing thank you for your service I see the appeal I think this was I played I played some thick panda priest and I remember like disliked it and I think I had a taran paladin and I think I enjoyed it but it was like okay this is fine but it's not really grabbing me so it'll be interesting from what you described you probably played in the post cataclysm era which is when it was largely started going downhill in terms of its design I maybe I guess my window into that game is really narrow Guild Wars 2 is really the only MMO that I play and I played that at launch and I still play it and I enjoyed a lot but it's the only one I've stuck with it jails with me a lot but wow I just could never get into wow but great porn though I will say absolutely thank you Blizzard for providing us once again with an excellent source of pornographic material you are doing God's work thank you I'm looking forward to your next IP in the models therein and then it was silent and then it was silent yeah there we go we completed the journey I suppose are we are we live I think so but not for long goodbye everyone we'll see you later no the water gun should have tails god damn it