It's Very Well Avowed | The Big Deal

[00:00:00] Alright Steve, before we get started, we need to talk about something, okay? So, there's a situation we have going on in this little country of ours where a man murdered a CEO of a health insurance company in broad daylight. And this man is a modern day folk hero to a lot of folks. And, let's not mince words, okay? A lot of people want to fuck this guy. They do. And I don't blame them.

[00:00:29] Why wouldn't they? Look at this guy. He's a handsome Italian-American man whose last name starts with an M. But Steve, something occurred to me last week. You also have an Italian last name that starts with an M. And guess what? I as well have an Italian last name that starts with an M. So between the two of us, I feel like we should be able to parlay Luigi Mania into us getting laid. What are we doing sitting around here? We need to get the work on this.

[00:01:00] Babe, I'd kill a CEO for you. I've never heard anything hotter in my life. Let's start the show. Step into video game. Welcome to...

[00:01:31] Hello. America for America. Oh, sorry. Shut up. You know where that theme song goes. You do this on purpose. I swear to God. I thought I was still playing. Oh, my God. I... Should I leave that? Let's leave it. Hello, party people. It's your boy, Dre. And it is my boy, Kevin, who rudely interrupted me. Yeah. America for Kevin.

[00:02:01] How is Luigi Mania going up there? Do people like Luigi up there? Or what's going on? I think it's definitely a thing through osmosis. I mean, I also don't really leave the house, and most of my social interactions are just through looking at my phone. So... Okay. It's a little hard to define exactly how impactful it's been in Canada, but you know. All right. How are you feeling out there, Steve, on the island? Oh, well, you know, he is Italian, and we do have a very large Italian-American population.

[00:02:31] So, you know, it's not like... Even the more conservative people are like, hmm, he's Italian, so maybe I shouldn't say anything too badly about him. So... Mm-hmm. It's a lot of looking the other way in public about this situation. Is it like the Billy Joel status, or is it just like not quite that high? We're... It's unfortunately we're a bit more conservative leading out here, so it's a lot of looking the other way. It's like, eh, I don't see this Luigi business.

[00:03:01] Okay. Whatever he's doing is none of my business. Gotcha. His business is his business. I didn't want to impose on your intro, which obviously I eventually did anyways. But I wouldn't have guessed either of your last names are Italian. I didn't know they started with M. Now, are you guys certain that they're actually Italian heritage names, or are you just making a desperate reach to get laid?

[00:03:30] No, they are extreme. Mine is definitely extremely Italian. There are very few people with this last name in the United States besides me, my dad, and like, it's not very many. And if you look up, I did this one time. I looked up this name on Facebook of, like, you know, see who has my last name. They're like 98% of them were in Italy. Like, it is Italian as hell, apparently. There's considerably more of us, but it's Italian.

[00:04:00] We're Italians. Okay. Yeah. Hey, yo, gonna punch your face over here. Ah, ah, ah. Talking with my head sometimes. Can you give us a good, can you give us a good pronounced mozzarella in Italian? He did the finger. He did the pinch, everybody. I want everybody at home to know that. Yeah. I felt like I was watching The Sopranos all over again. You did like that show. I do remember. Great.

[00:04:30] Um, you never watched Mad Men, have you? Uh, I've watched the first season two times and I just like, I don't hate it, but it's, it's not, doesn't do it for me. Doesn't it for you? Okay. Is it one of those shows where it's like, you gotta like get past the first season or is it? No. If you watch, if you watch the entire first season, you're not into it. You're just not into it. It's a little, a little, uh, like, um, like drama-y for me. Maybe. I've never really sat down and given The Sopranos much of a shot.

[00:04:59] I watched scattershot episodes of like the first season and a half when they were like on whenever that one was at 99, 2000. Jesus Christ. I think it was 99. Yeah. Um, so I remember like I watched some of it and I was kind of into it. I would like to sit down and watch the whole thing sometime, which I've never done. We didn't have HBO, so my dad was borrowing seasons of VHS tapes from the library to watch The Sopranos when it was relevant. Yeah.

[00:05:29] That's pretty hardcore. Yeah. It's, it's a hardcore. Oh, well, I think, um, the guy at the reason why I mentioned this is the guy who worked on the last like few seasons of Sopranos was the guy who created Mad Men. I'm pretty sure. Oh, okay. The head writer. Yeah. So it's not like crossover necessarily. It's a totally different show, obviously, but like, you know, you could see it's kind of cut from the same cloth. He was trying to do a thing. Didn't HBO turn down Mad Men and that's like a sticking point. Yeah.

[00:05:58] And that's, I mean, like, I don't want to say Mad Men made AMC. It's probably more Walking Dead at the same time. Like that show existing gave them this sort of prestige, you know, that allowed for like other stuff on AMC. Cause like who the fuck was watching? Like who turned to AMC to like watch something that wasn't like a noir film from the forties. Right. So. But Matt Mad Men was before the Walking Dead. Is that right? Yes. Mad Men started in like 2007.

[00:06:28] Yeah. Okay. So, um, okay. We have all been playing the same game, which doesn't happen very often on this show unless there's like a big Nintendo release, but this is not a Nintendo release. This is an Xbox release, but only one of us has an Xbox. So two of us were playing on PC and the game of course is avowed.

[00:07:02] I think this is definitely the first time all three of us in history have played a Microsoft game at the same time. For sure. I mean, it has to be. I think this is the first time in fine time history. Microsoft released a game that all three of us needed to play at the same time. Yeah. Yeah. Because I don't know. I'm trying to think of something in like series X history that I would have played before I had this new PC. I'm trying to maybe I would have given Halo Infinite a poke.

[00:07:30] Maybe it's kind of about it. Love the Forza Horizon games. I think you would fucking love them. I think I might wait for PS5 since they announced it finally. I don't know why they announced it so years late. That's so weird. But like I might get that when it comes to PS5 for sure. Yeah. Because I've been eyeballing it, you know, because it's been it's on Steam and I see it for like 15 bucks sometimes. I'm like, might want to. Yeah. So we all play avowed. We've all played a bit about avowed.

[00:07:59] Do you Kevin, you've been looking forward to this in a way that like I don't think I've seen you look forward to any Microsoft game in the history of this show. Honestly. Yeah. No. Okay. So before I get there, I want to propose something to you because spoilers. We're talking about avowed and we also all played the Sonic racing crosswords slash crossworlds beta. Now I would like to propose a game to you guys.

[00:08:25] As we talk about avowed, you have to take a drink of beer every time we say the word Skyrim. And when we talk about Sonic racing, we have to take a drink every time that somebody says Mario cart. Okay. If anybody is breathing at the end of the discussion, they win. This was not even making it to air.

[00:08:51] So this, us in the United States, you know, endorse this, uh, these, this game by Kevin because you might die. All right. Well, I'll, I'll, I'll do that and we'll, we'll see, we'll see how that goes. Um, yeah, I was, I was fucking jazzed for this. Um, I think I've been, uh, like ready for a Skyrim like, and, and we'll, we'll get to that because this game is very much not Skyrim, um, in, in a lot of ways.

[00:09:16] Um, you know, but I, I think it's probably fair to call it a Skyrim like just, just given the nature of the game and, um, you know, that it's, it's a fantasy RPG. Um, and I really liked the aesthetic that was going on, you know, so I was always interested in it, but that being said, it's still, it's, it's, it's far exceeded what I was hoping to get out of it. I, I, I, I will get it out of the way right now. I love this game. I probably, I think probably out of the three of us, I like it the most.

[00:09:46] You probably do. I also really, really like this game and I was nonplussed by it seeing at like Xbox events or, or almost said state of play would not be shown there at a summer games fest or whatnot, because I was always me and Steve, right? We were always like, Oh, we were very avowed. Come on. Yeah. We were very, okay. You know what? Let's roll the clip. This is from July, 2023. Okay.

[00:10:16] I think it had to have been from a summer games fest or some sort of Xbox thing where we, where we saw this here's listen to Kevin's excitement and listen to me and Steve being like shruggy shoulders. I don't know. Here we go. Let's talk about avowed for a second because Microsoft seems to be hanging their hat on this one, Kevin, a lot. And I not necessarily sure why. Sure. It's obsidian. Okay.

[00:10:46] And I love obsidians games, but come on. Is this really going to be like what they think it's going to be? Also, this looks a lot different from the last time they showed it. I don't know about you. This looks like almost a different art style. It kind of looks like the same concept, but something has definitely changed. It definitely seemed a lot more like bright and neon. Yeah. I think. Which is fine, but I don't know. I mean, it looked fine, I guess, but. I don't know.

[00:11:14] Maybe, maybe system seller is pushing it, but I do think this is going to be big. I'm, I was kind of surprised that you guys seem down on this. I thought it looks really cool with this trailer. And I really like that idea of like this, like Elder Scrolls, like with, you know, more colorful, almost this kind of like fairy tale vibe to it. So I'm, I'm really excited. This is almost certainly going to be a day one play for me. And I, yeah, I guess it'll be interesting to see how it turns out.

[00:11:39] I think this is going to, as long as it doesn't turn out shitty for some reason, it's, it's going to at least give, you know, give, give Microsoft to that much needed boost that they need about 10 of in the next year. Oh, wow. I don't know. I'm not so sure. I hope it does. I'm not saying it looks terrible or anything, but it, it didn't really look like I thought Steve. I don't know. It looked like a fake game that you'd see in a movie.

[00:12:05] Like, come on, put, put down that avowed and come on, we got to go to work. But then they turned it down and they're like, fuck it. We're going to make this into a real game. It sounds like a. I feel that like that's, I'm, I'm, I'm almost offended. I feel like that's slanderous. I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm standing for avowed right now. Steven, you shut your mouth. I'm sure everyone will enjoy it when it comes on in game pass. Next, whenever Joey Tribbiani would have be very excited about his bit part in avowed on

[00:12:35] an episode of friends. I feel like, right? Come on. All right. Yeah. See, Kevin being the savior of us all. You were right. Fuck. I was wrong. Well, I don't know if I was wrong. I was just kind of wishy washy. Fuck. I was wishy washy. How about that? But fuck. I had sage wisdom. You really did. Steve, I believe you had a time trying to even launch this game because you're new to. Yeah.

[00:13:05] I don't want to say new to playing games on the computer, however, because you are a person who was alive on planet earth. However, like I said in our last show, I did play computer games as a kid, but I'm fairly newly returned to PC gaming and I'm definitely new to new PC gaming. So I tried launching about early, like 10 PM the night before local time.

[00:13:35] And I think I cracked the code on why Xbox isn't in the space it's currently in. Apparently the day, you know, whatever day your release date is, is actually at noon Eastern standard time and not midnight Eastern standard time. As indicated by a big fucking timer on the Xbox app that I was redirected to. Come on, guys. What are you doing?

[00:14:05] If you want to be stupid and let a half day pass in your home country and the digital marketplace before we can play a game, that's pretty dumb, but you're gleefully drawing my attention to it with a big fucking clock. Come on. You know, we talk about how Nintendo is no fun. At least they release stuff at 9 PM Pacific. You know what I mean? I can, I could just load it up and play like, come on.

[00:14:32] Now I'm curious as we talk about it though, in Japan, what, what time is a 9 PM specific? Is it like halfway through the following day in Japan at that time? Yes. So I think what they do is that's the North American time is 12 Eastern, 9 Pacific. Midnight Eastern, I should say. And then like it releases in different parts of the world at different times. I think it's what Nintendo does.

[00:15:00] It doesn't all release at once worldwide. Oh yeah. So they actually, I was going to blame this on perhaps being a regional thing, but, but maybe my plan is foiled. I'll be another old head here. If I'm going to wait till 12 noon, I mean, I, I go and buy a physical copy, but oh wait, we don't do that anymore. And we bought new computers and we have a free month of Xbox game pass, Xbox game pass. I don't even know what it's called. PC game pass.

[00:15:29] Oh, well, why don't we roll into that? Okay. Because of my bamboozlement, I have less time logged into this game about 24 and a half hours, according to the Xbox app. So a lot of time. Yeah. In the end. And almost none of it was on my computer because this was a double.

[00:15:54] I was wrong because in the end I'm like, man, Kevin ended up spurring me on like, I'm like, okay, I'll get game pass ultimate. I could stream on that thing when I have some free time. And it was a fairly painless process. So like, yeah, we'll just roll your subscription into this. And then by doing that, they just like took two weeks off of the thing. And like, oh, you can load it onto Xbox and you got more games and you can stream shit. Now I'm like, this isn't bad.

[00:16:21] And neither is the cloud gaming part of it. I'm like, this is okay. It's not, it doesn't look as nice as it does on the computer, but it's, it works. I got a lot of about time. Does game pass have a chance of sticking around for Steve post avowed for 20 bucks a month? It just may, if it keeps performing like this. Oh, that's juicy. So here's what I want to know.

[00:16:48] I got game pass ultimate for one month free with my computer. You only got basic bitch PC game pass. I got three months of basic bitch game pass. Oh, I got one month of, of ultimate. Okay. See, I would have taken, I would have just taken the game pass. I don't need the streaming or whatever. Damn. I got three months of basic bitch game pass, which I turned into almost three months of ultimate.

[00:17:13] Well, with my computer, I also got six months of Ubisoft classics or whatever on the Ubisoft app. I did not get that. I, and I got a free Assassin's Creed shadows. I can play ass Creed shadows. If I feel like it, I have no idea what I'm going to do with that. I may as well just play it since I have it right. I may as well poke at it, but the game isn't out yet. I'm sure they made this deal with Intel months and months ago when it was supposed to come

[00:17:39] out last October, but now I have it and I'm just waiting for it to come out. So look, look forward to Andre reviewing a Rayman game. Every big deal for the next six months. I still to this day don't know which one came out first origins or what's the other one? Uh, the ones that came out. Yeah. The ones that came out like 10 years ago. I still don't know which is which because they look exactly the same. I do either. I want to say origins came out first.

[00:18:09] You would like to think so because the name, right? But I actually don't know. Is it just the name playing tricks on me? Yes. Okay. I played about 30 hours and Kevin, how long did you play? I've played a little over 26 hours. However, I'm also a fucking cheater and I did pay for the premium edition to play five days earlier than you guys. And I'm embarrassed to admit that, but I did. Well, you're a family man. You got, you got stuff going on, right?

[00:18:37] So there's only so many hours in a day. Do they give you any other goodies other than early access? Um, I think there's like a digital art book and some skins, all stuff that I haven't even looked at. I just, I had finished another game like the day that it was coming out. So it did just the stars aligned and it was time. I'm really asking just because every time I log into the Xbox app, it's like, you know, it's nice that you're playing avowed included on your game pass.

[00:19:05] But if you give us another 25 bucks, you can play the digital deluxe edition. It keeps yelling at me too. And I'm like, dog, I would have just bought it on Steam if I, if I really, if I really wanted to do this, you know? Um, okay. Let's talk about our characters before we get deep into avowed land, the living lands, shall we say? Um, how are we approaching them? So I did the arcane scholar background.

[00:19:33] And by the way, if you think that scholar background saves you from all the colonizer dialogue choices, it totally doesn't. You can still manifest some destiny if you want to. I, I did not want to. Um, but yeah, my characters looks like just like an old black dude with gray dreadlocks and a gray beard, you know, too old to have a role like this, but that's what makes it funny. I always like making the old character and yes, his name is pizza dinosaur. Very funny.

[00:20:02] So yeah, that's, that's how I'm rolling. I gave, I gave my guy the war hero background, um, which is kind of funny because I made, he, I like did my best to make him look like he's been on a meth binge for like five years. Um, and then I named, I named him twig just cause I thought it was fitting. So I don't know. It makes me, doesn't, doesn't, uh, Marilyn Manson have a guitarist named twig or twiggy or basis or something like that? Yeah. Twiggy. Yeah. Twiggy Ramirez.

[00:20:32] That's what I fucking thought. I knew he had a real person last name. That's what made it funny. I was like, I knew the last name was normal. Uh, Steve, how you're rolling in, in avowed. Yeah. I picked a noble, sorry. I'm background. He's a bald guy with a beard because I figured I was going to cover up with a helmet. Not the case because usually that's what happens in these games, but I'm playing this game like a real asshole. I'm taking bribes.

[00:21:01] I'm disrupting crime scenes. I'm only helping you out. If it's on my way to the next objective, because I wanted to see as much of this game because before we get to this show here. And oddly enough, you are playing this game as a corrupt asshole. Like the, uh, the Scion specific choices are very self-serving. Like, well, whatever the emperor doesn't know won't hurt him. And certain characters, the ones that are Scion specific are very, Hey, that's a nice outfit you got on.

[00:21:28] They, they make those in bend sizes and so on and so forth. I'm very much playing this game like an asshole who's just trying to, you know, solve the problem. Maybe sort of kind of, we'll see. Hey, hey, got done, right? So, oh, I mean, that's kind of what I do in fallout. I just kind of sometimes do the quickest thing if it's quicker just to kill them. I don't care if it's good or bad. I mean, I could just kill you right now and, and get away. If I feel like I can reasonably get away with it. Sure. I'll just kill you.

[00:21:57] Or, you know, I don't know. I did do this one mission the other night where like I was sent to rescue this guy and like his attitude just sucked. So I killed him because I didn't like him. And then I went back to the quest giver and told her that I could not find, he was not there. I did not see him. I had no idea. I don't know. And then, uh, I got rewarded. The other, the other night I was out just walking outside town and I was assaulted by two bandits and one of them really didn't want to be there.

[00:22:25] And he was all, and I was able to goad him into basically like, look, you know, you don't want to, you're not really a bandit, are you? You're right. And after a few rounds of that, I'm like, you know what? I'm not. And then he just dopes out into an NPC. He just walks away and leave it, leave in the other one to be like, look, I guess I'm just wailing on you with my other two guys. Like, wait, wait, wait. Like, okay, well, I gave you a chance to walk away. I was like, bye.

[00:22:54] You ever see that, you ever have that happen to you in a fallout? Sometimes you're in a gunfight. Someone gets low health and they're just like, I'm out of here. And they just like run. It's like, bye, bitch. It's like, okay, I guess. Whatever. Whatever. That doesn't really happen in a vow because they're mostly creatures and not people that you're fighting. But okay. Let's talk about before we, I'm sure we're going to talk combat in short order here, but let's talk about how we're approaching combat because I think that's also important.

[00:23:21] I went full wizard, full ass magic. So like typically in these types of games, I go melee, even in games where it's predominantly guns. Like Fallout is all about the guns, right? I'll still find myself a sword or the biggest hammer I can find or something ridiculously heavy swinging, put on the largest, biggest, bulkiest armor I can possibly find and just go at it that way. Cause I think it's fun. Right.

[00:23:45] But no, in avowed, they let you try everything on what we can only call tutorial Island. And when I got the spell book, I was like, oh fuck. Yeah. This, this is what I'm doing. Absolutely. 100%. Um, I'm slightly minoring in bow and arrow though. So I've been taking some of those like attacking from distance perks, but for the most part, I'm putting an all in the wizard and I'm going full magic. So what are you, what are you doing, Kevin? Um, I started out with melee.

[00:24:15] Usually I would play a game like this melee and then, um, like splash some magic. Um, but as soon as I experienced the joy of guns, that is my class. The class is guns. I love shooting the guns in this game. Gunsmith gun nut. I feel like, yeah, it's not a perk and fallout gun nut. I feel like it's a thing. Yeah. Something like that. Steve, are you also using guns? What are you? Yeah.

[00:24:41] They don't cover everything on tutorial Island because I cleared tutorial Island. Then I saved and I came back to it later, but not before Kevin pops into the chat going, Hey, you guys try the guns yet? And I'm like guns. Guns. He's like, yeah, guns. Like I'm going to fire a gun as soon as I can get one. And it turns out that it's not locked behind some kind of quest or nothing. They're just selling them right there on the docks. You need to go and try. I'm like, yeah, here's my gun. And then, oh, this, this is great.

[00:25:10] We're going to just sell my bow and arrow and we're going to just carry around guns as my secondary weapon. You sold the bow and friendship ended with bow and arrow friendship. I'm a gun gunner now. I guess I'm technically a rager with where I'm putting points, but I'm wearing beefier armor too. I got sword and shield going for close range and the rifle for long. Steve and I are starting the avowed NRA. I was going to say you could just buy guns at the dock, just like America.

[00:25:40] Baby, I mean, God, it's very true to life. Yeah. You know, I lied slightly. Lied. I forgot. I put one perk into another thing. Like one of the I forget what was ranger or the other one where it's like in the level one section, there's like 20% more health. I was like, yeah, give me that. I'll take that. I could always use that no matter what class I'm using. So I did take that from one of the other trees. But other than that, all the points are in wizard, which is the second.

[00:26:10] Anyway, as we've been talking here, you don't have to make any commitment to any class or skill tree or anything. You can mix and match at your leisure to make the character you want with the skills you really want. And I know that sounds like kind of a basic thing to say. But honestly, Kevin, I don't think a whole lot of games have stuff like this. You kind of have to commit, you know, but in this game, you don't really have to. No, yeah, I totally agree.

[00:26:34] And it doesn't, you know, OK, so I was probably maybe 10, 12 hours in before I learned about the joy of guns. And I didn't have to like spend the money to like reset my skill tree. It was fair, you know, quote unquote skill tree. It was fairly organic just to start dumping points into making the guns better. And it didn't feel like it was like restricted build at any point.

[00:26:58] The guns feel like, you know, as good as you could want them to feel after leveling up and focusing on that for a little bit. I did get a kind of a baller unique gun early on, and I did like firing it, but I haven't really fucked with guns too much. Maybe if I find a gun that I really like, I will also friendship ended with bow and arrow. But yeah, I haven't really hasn't really hit for me yet. The gun chooses the avowed.

[00:27:26] Was it a pistol or a rifle that you were using? It was a pistol. OK, you got to get in on the rifle train. OK, I'll try. Is there like how how different do they get? Is there like a shotgun type or? The one the one I'm using and have been using for a very long time. I picked that one up when I was at the point when I was playing fine quality items and I've upgraded it like two tiers into what is it?

[00:27:54] Exceptional is the second from the last quality. I believe so. Yeah, so I'm so I've got it on. I think like tier two of exceptional and it's it's it feels fairly similar to a shotgun. It's not super fast to reload. You got to do the like musket rod fucking thing. But it definitely feels like it's got a real I can one shot kill most enemies. Wow. If I get a headshot. Yeah. Damn. OK. Yeah. See aiming like that. I don't know.

[00:28:24] Maybe if well, I don't I dare not play a game like this keyboard and mouse. I am just not equipped, but that would probably help in the headshot department if I did. Well, there's also there's also a perk where you can slow time when you're like doing like the power shot with the gun. So if you hold hold the right trigger and then it'll slow time by like you can go from 25 to 50 to 75 percent slower time and then just release it to let the shot go, which feels really fucking good. That is where a chunk of my points went to.

[00:28:54] And my points are in the slow time thing. It is great. So who needs vats, right? You could just you could just fucking do that. That's that's amazing. Super fucking satisfying. And it doesn't like when I'm killing my ears and it doesn't like feel like it slows down the pace either. Yeah, it really it really. I got to try. I see. I know there's a thing like that for bows as well, or maybe it's just all range weapons. You you get that. You get that perk.

[00:29:24] I have no idea. But like, yeah, that sounds that sounds cool. I like a little bullet time, if you will. Should we just talk about combat in general? I think this is where we're going to start comparing to Skyrim. Again, I'm going to say it, too.

[00:29:51] I don't think about is very much like Skyrim. Right. But like, I feel like that's going to be a touchstone for a lot of people and everyone's played Skyrim. So I feel like we can just use that as a base of operations going forward, even though they're not equatable, super equatable, in my opinion. Yeah. And I think a lot of these comparisons are going to be exactly why. Why is this different from Skyrim and how does it set itself apart? Because I think that's like not only setting itself apart from Skyrim, but the things that

[00:30:20] set it apart from Skyrim are just specifically what make this game fairly unique and stand on its own. OK, let's start with combat. Yeah, I think that combat is hands down, if we're comparing specifically to Skyrim, the biggest upgrade over Skyrim. And it needed to be because I think combat was one of the bigger weak points. And Skyrim is pushing 15 years old, I think, at this point. Yeah.

[00:30:50] What are we, 14 years ago? You know, so it did need to be better, but they really nailed it. There's a real flow to combat. And as we just talked about, you know, different weapon classes, it never really loses that flow. It's not like when you switch to one thing or try one thing, it feels like it cuts it off at the knees. You know, all of those styles feel equally satisfying and well thought out. I think that's what's I think that's what's important. Right. Well, two things.

[00:31:18] Yeah, no matter what you choose, you want it to feel validated. There's nothing worse, nothing fucking worse than a role playing game where it says, oh, you can do whatever you want. And then you find out you can't actually do whatever you want. They want you to do this one thing or you're going to have a really bad time. That is not the case in Avowed. Also, I don't personally, I don't think Skyrim's combat was much evolved over Oblivion or quite frankly, even Morrowind.

[00:31:44] I feel like that combat is ancient, ancient. So like even even by even by the time we got to Skyrim, it's just like, it's still the same shit. Right. So to me, we're talking about combat that is 25 years old. Yeah, it's definitely very like walk up to the thing, you know, mash the right trigger and maybe strafe. And that's kind of like the only depth that's there. Right. Obviously, those games don't live and die by their combat. And quite frankly, neither does Evowed.

[00:32:13] Evowed, evowed, avowed. But it's very well evowed. Evowed is very and neither does endowed. But it's I just got it. I just got his joke just now. It just it just hit my brain. I just understood. It's it's snappy, right? It feels snappy about. I don't want to say it's like kinetic. I don't want to say it's devil may cry.

[00:32:42] At the same time, it definitely feels good. Again, it's not I know I'm using a magic person and this is like my only frame of reference. It's not heretic or hexing or something like that. Right. It's not that like super fast pace, like shooty, shooty, bang, bang, like strafe around and fly around. But there's definitely something here. Right. It has a spark. It even feels better than the outer worlds. I would say their previous game. You definitely need to be staying on the move, I think.

[00:33:12] And that's a big thing that it's not. And I think because the movement feels, you know, so good and we're going to get there, too. There's a lot just about kind of how you move around the world that separates from Skyrim as well. But but I think that movement during combat keeps it engaging and it also gives a little bit of an element of strategy to it. Right. When we talked about, you know, Skyrim, you run up, you hit the thing with the melee weapon or the magic or whatever, you know, and maybe strafe a little bit.

[00:33:41] That is very much not the case here. You need to kind of be thinking about where you're going and the enemies fucking move fast. So you have to be moving around these areas. And there's a bit more strategy than usual. Right. Because usually the guys just come at you, whether it's a death claw or like a rat scorpion or whatever and fall out. They just kind of lumber at you. And that's kind of it. And whatever. Again, those games aren't necessarily all about the combat.

[00:34:08] However, in avowed, there's definitely things you have to look for. Like if they have a priest, look the fuck out. He's going to heal everybody. You better kill that thing. Right. So it's it's you got to you got to think sometimes. Not just like here they all are and kite them around and shoot them. So, well, I mean, even on top of that, they definitely have a lot of enemies using ranged weapons. And at the same time, you've got like the berserkers that are like rapidly rushing you.

[00:34:36] And if you're running around trying to get a good shot at something using a ranged weapon or a priest, you know, those things are like on your ass where you got to be fast. Otherwise, they're just going to kind of knock you back while you're trying to aim or, you know, do what you're doing. And the spells support this, which is why I really like using wizard, because like if like you said, if there's like a group of rangers up on a thing, I can blizzard their ass. They're going to be frozen and dealing with that. And then the foreground, if someone's rushing at me, I can fireball them or whatever.

[00:35:05] The spells just actually have like actual utility versus like, do you want to set them on fire? Do you want to ice? Like, here's your ice ball. Here's your fireball. Here's your lightning bolt. Right. It's not just like here are forward projectiles or it's a lot more than that, too. So it's very inventive and cool in that respect. I want to touch on the stamina for a minute. And obviously that's part of combat. But I and this this actually does integrate into the combat running doesn't use stamina.

[00:35:36] And this feels good during exploration. This feels good during combat. And I think this is the first there's going to be an ongoing theme of things that we're going to say that, you know, you could argue it has, quote unquote, reduced realism. But it does make the game significantly funner and more engaging, in my opinion. I think I think having no stamina when running is is, you know, I feel like the next game I play that does use stamina when running. It's going to feel like a deal breaker after this.

[00:36:08] I, I, OK, I think this is great. I have complicated feelings about this sort of about a lot of the systems in this game, which we'll get to some other like stuff later about this of like, quote unquote, quality of life stuff, which I, you know, me, I kind of generally push back on this stuff sometimes. Right. But when it comes to the stamina, I think it's great that you don't use stamina when you're running in or out of battle. And I'll go one further. I don't think stamina should be here at all. While attacking, while anything.

[00:36:37] I think stamina bars and video games in general are not that fun. I don't think they should be in anything. The stamina, the stamina, it's come to my stamina about the stamina bar. The stamina bar adds absolutely nothing to battle in a vowed. I really don't understand the point from a game design level. OK, I'm waving my wand. I'm zapping some guys. Now I get tired. OK, then what?

[00:37:07] So I can't attack for a little bit. I don't I'm not sure what it's doing on a gameplay level. Maybe one of you guys can tell me like I'm wrong here. I can't argue that because I think there's also the and I don't know the name for it. Like the enemies have like their fatigue bar or whatever it is. Right. And it builds up yellow. And once you get it to the top, you get like a quote unquote glory kill. Right. Where it slows down. Yes. Way more damage and it refills your stamina bar.

[00:37:34] And I think there is kind of a risk reward system going on when you're deciding, you know, do I keep pushing this guy to build up that fatigue bar? Or am I going to set myself back where all of a sudden I'm opening myself up to attack because I've depleted my stamina bar? There is that. But I feel like the fact that you have like you, you know how like you can charge the shot and shoot them with your no matter what you're using, you can charge up and attack. You're not attacking at that point and you are vulnerable.

[00:38:01] I feel like that's penalty enough in my opinion, but maybe not. I don't know. I think it's kind of funny when you get a full charge with the shotgun and then you fight, you know, rifle and then you fire it and then you give a very winded. Like, like, like you just did the most difficult thing in the world. I guess value of the stamina bar. I guess that's the price we pay for not collecting all the shotgun ammo in the world.

[00:38:31] Yeah, it's a, it's a, it's a delicate balance with using going full wizard because when you cast a spell that doesn't use stamina, your stamina bar is going up while you're casting. So like, but then using the wand or whatever, obviously it goes back down again. So it's kind of like, okay, I need a bit more stamina. Let me cast a spell. And then, you know, yeah. So it's, it's interesting in that regard, I guess. But honestly, I don't know what it's doing for gameplay or quite frankly, any other gameplay. But, you know, what, what do I know?

[00:39:03] Let's, let's talk about the world. We have to talk about the world of avow. This was the thing I was the most apprehensive about going into this. I just was not sold on the way it looked and like the weird neon colors and everything. And you were, so you want to, you want to kick us off? What do you, what do you, whether it's graphics, I was going to say graphics on PlayStation graphics on Xbox Series X or your personal computer or which doesn't have the same ring to it or wherever you want to start. Kevin.

[00:39:31] Yeah, I mean, I mean, I think, okay, if we want to go as far as aesthetics and art design and graphics, this game is a fucking looker. It looks great. And actually, I think when we're talking about aesthetics, we need to tie that conversation into also talking about the fact that there are multiple smaller areas that you can travel between in here. This isn't one super large open world. And I think that's what I was the most hesitant about because I knew that going in.

[00:40:00] And I think there's, it turns out that there's a lot of upsides to that. And I think aesthetically it was one of the biggest ones because, so I'm, I'm near the end of the third map and each of these maps feels very, very separate and distinct. And I actually specifically felt like as you go from each one, though, they are all very good. They get progressively better and better and better each time you move.

[00:40:28] And I think there, I mean, obviously, if you have one large open world, there's going to be a variance between these areas, but it feels like decidedly less homogenous than, than, you know, one large open world where you go between different biomes. And I think they've really done a lot, you know, it's not like the, the, the neon is quite often throughout there, but it's not like, it's just like glowing mushrooms in every one of these areas.

[00:40:55] They really, um, like have their own specific world building that kind of utilizes that color within each of these areas. I completely agree. 100%. And like, so I know you haven't really, you haven't played outer worlds, right? Not even a little bit or, um, I did play the outer worlds a very little bit. And actually I restarted it, uh, the other night and got a couple hours in because of this, but right.

[00:41:24] So maybe, I don't know if in a couple hours you would have seen this in outer worlds, but that game is also individual maps as well. Cause you're going from here to there. You're going, I don't know if you're, I don't remember now if you're going to different planets or if you're just like, just going to like different areas of the big same planet or whatever. But outer worlds also is separate maps, not one giant interconnected map. And people were had misgivings about that too, myself included.

[00:41:47] But I don't think it's necessarily a good comparison to avowed because the areas and outer worlds are much, much smaller. They're really small comparatively. And so, yeah, avowed isn't exactly continuous. And any individual map is not as big as a fallout four or a tears of the kingdom. Right. But it doesn't feel restricted. It doesn't feel, feel nearly as restricted as outer worlds, but that's not a diss on outer worlds.

[00:42:17] Outer worlds needs to feel restrictive. That's kind of the game it is. So it's fine that it's that way. So correct me if I'm wrong. I feel like this is the first major open world game in Unreal Engine 5. Is it? Because I cannot think of anything else that – because like even Rebirth is Unreal 4. I'm trying to think of something else. I'll uneasily not in agreement. Yeah. Thank you, Steve from Digital Foundry.

[00:42:46] Yes, our first in Unreal 5. But I bring that up because like, look, obviously we were impressed with Unreal Engine 5 at the beginning of this generation with the Matrix demo and other demos, right? But you can't make a whole game look like that, right? That's just a graphics demo. Now that we have a fully realized open world game in Unreal Engine 5, I think I'm super impressed. This is crazy good looking.

[00:43:14] And think about all the stuff that we used to see in games like this, like all the bad textures and all the shitty geometry. Oh, they didn't really get to polish up this part because it's impossible because the world's so big. I think these individual maps allow them to craft stuff that's a lot more interesting versus like this has to be one gigantic world, which also will be a lot more taxing on everyone's hardware. This game is already a pretty heavy game, right?

[00:43:41] So, yeah, I just think like the way to leverage this new engine and we're finally seeing like a fully realized Unreal Engine 5 open world game is kind of great. Yeah. Yeah. And I think it's important to note when you're talking about them having the ability to craft things in these areas. This isn't like just separate and distinct by area. There's numerous like one off things that you will see that are like really cool and really impressive that you're only going to see once.

[00:44:09] You're not going to see this copied and pasted throughout that world. I remember all of a sudden I went up and there's this like giant, you know, installation that's very like satanic looking with all of these like people like reaching out of it. And it looked fucking gorgeous. And that's like a one off thing. And obviously this also has a lot to do with. I think I think it's fair to say that this team was definitely given the amount of time that they wanted to like really polish the fuck out of this and they didn't rush it out the door.

[00:44:39] You know, but I think that they're probably the technology that they're using to make the game had a contributing factor to that as well. But that allowed them to be able to not not get spend all their time getting lost in the weeds and just trying to like fix the shitty looking base of the world. Yeah, it's it's really cool. I mean, because you're right. You can see some really cool sites.

[00:45:03] Like, did you see that cliffside where you can see like the gigantic like dinosaur bones coming out of like the cliff side? I didn't see that. No. Yeah, it was in the second. It was in the second map somewhere. It was crazy looking like it was like literally like you're looking at some sort of archaeological like natural like not people digging it out. But just like here is this like thing that died underground billions of years ago. And now like the earth has formed where it's like you can just see the bones of it. It was wild looking. It was it was insane.

[00:45:34] I mean, the thing is, it's great to see stuff like that, like the size and scale. And also, it's just great to see all this like pastel color and like cool structures in a game like this compared to like the castles and villages of like medieval, which like quite frankly, you're never going to get me with that kind of art style. You're never going to get my attention looking like Skyrim or Dark Souls. You can get me with the gameplay. And that's why I like Skyrim, but not because of the way it looks. Right.

[00:46:03] So and Avowed does not really have that problem at all. So I did appreciate that, even though I did not appreciate that in its initial showings. Like it because overall, this comes off a lot better while playing it than any trailer presentation showed me. Because like it feels like a mash of things that should not work together, but they do. Like, for instance, I think the hairstyles look very modern. Right. Those look like very today. Mm hmm.

[00:46:32] And like, but they don't like they're not very medieval at all. And like the flora and fauna around almost looks kind of alien, like all the plants and like all the weird shit you can see. But also somehow like befitting of like, I mean, you're playing a person called a godborn who has like mushrooms and mycology growing out of their face. Right. So I think like all bets are off at that point. And because you look that way, I don't know. I think that feeds back into the world somehow.

[00:46:59] I know that might sound kind of strange, but I think I just think it all works. All the points connect to each other. It's cohesive. Yeah. Cohesive for sure. Fine time. Fine time.

[00:47:27] If I could talk geometry just a little more here, I think like I've seen some cool sites in caves and dungeons and stuff. But if I could have one criticism early on is that I don't think the dungeons are super interesting yet. Yet. I feel like they could be later on, but I've done very few like interior spaces that I think are like super cool. The Dawn Treader quest, of course, was like the pinnacle so far. That shit was crazy.

[00:47:56] I wish we could talk about that, but that's major spoilers. So we can't. Maybe we can during the break here. But I, I, that was really cool. But then I haven't seen something that cool since. I've seen stuff that looks okay. But like, I feel like as the game goes on here, I hope they have better ones because I feel like that's going to break up all the exploration and like overworld kind of stuff. Better. What do you think so far?

[00:48:25] Have you felt this the same way I have or no? Well, I was mostly going to say, I, again, I'm really just doing stuff that's on the way to other things. And fairly early on, I, I basically tripped on what could be best described as spider cave. And I went into spider cave and you won't believe what's in spider cave. You guys do tell a lot of dead soldiers and hope people because, you know, all the fucking spiders that are in the spider cave.

[00:48:52] And besides that, I'm like, yeah, I'm definitely picking up shit off of dead guys. And I'm killing the thing that turned out to be a bounty that I didn't realize I was supposed to do in town. But that was fun. I went back to town like, hey, I already killed the spider. You bitch. I'm like, okay, here's your reward, buddy. I'm like, no, that wasn't particularly interesting. Yeah. I mean, like it was fine, but I want something like better.

[00:49:22] I'm thinking of like, I don't know, like cool rotted out buildings. You find it fall out and you go in there and you're hacking all the computers and you're reading about stuff before the war and stuff like that. Like I want some really involved, like thing like that. And like I said, I haven't really gotten that from a vow yet. I hope I hope it does happen. I'm not saying it needs that to be a good game, but I would like some more in that regard, Kevin, for sure.

[00:49:43] I can think of a handful of dungeon or dungeon-y areas that I don't feel that way about that. I think from aesthetic and like flavor perspective, you know, they can stand on their own.

[00:49:59] That being said, I don't think that these dungeon-y areas are as good as the overworld exploration specific and not that they're a weak point, but specifically because there's so much verticality when exploring the overworld area. And the times that I've, you know, been very in the moment aware, like I am having fun.

[00:50:22] I'm having a fuckload of fun right now playing this is when I'm out exploring the overworld, you know, because there's a lot of shit to find. It looks really cool. And it just feels very good moving around it. There's kind of a, I don't know, would parkour type feeling. Is that, is that fair to say when you're, you know, they, you are expected to run and jump and like get to a ledge where you can grab it with your hands and hoist yourself up.

[00:50:52] And all of this feels very good, especially the animations, right? The animations, when you're pulling yourself up, the animations, when you're running and sliding the animation, when you're like going to a ladder and need to like turn around and go down the ladder. All of that stuff is, is very, it just feels good and it looks good. And I think that, that goes a long way, um, you know, in the exploration itself, along with just finding cool stories to tell yourself. Yeah. And obviously that's why I love these games.

[00:51:22] I do love to go explore around shit. That's why I love breath of the wild and tears of the kingdom. It allows you to do that with Zelda, you know, which is like my fucking dream. I don't need dungeons. I know people complain about that stuff. It's like, I don't need that shit. Just give me all the overworld stuff. That's what I always come to Zelda for. And that's what I get. And obviously that's what I'm getting with a vow. However, I just, I just do wish that they did have a few more, you know, I hope going forward, the interiors get a little more interesting.

[00:51:51] Not that they're boring, but you know what I mean? That's just kind of maybe my only real criticism of the game so far. I have one more thing I want to touch on before we move on from world design. Enemies do not regenerate ever after you kill them here. The blood moon does not rise again. And I really like this. It feels satisfying to clear out a kind of a swath of the, of that map and feel like you're claiming it.

[00:52:18] And this is just, you know, one of those other things on the list. And maybe not, obviously, I mean, enemies regenerating is not a realism thing, but I think they had to like go out of their way just from a tech perspective to not say, okay, we're, we're running out of too much memory, keeping track of what's dead and what's not. They built it so that the game knows what's dead and it stays dead. And I appreciate that. I think that's a good quality of life thing. Absolutely.

[00:52:44] I would like to talk about like weapons and stuff and the way you upgrade them real quick, because I think it's handled very smart. It's a really smart approach to something that is usually a problem in these kinds of RPGs where you have to abandon like your really cool and unique weapons or armor with that have like these unique attributes that you got in this quest. Because you found something several levels above it.

[00:53:12] And it's not nearly as cool, but you have to use it because it's so much better than what you have. You don't really have a choice. It's in avowed. You can upgrade everything to the top. If something you found something and it's only like common quality, you can upgrade that all the way to exceptional or superb or whatever. Like you can take that weapon with you as far as you want. Or of course you have the option of going to a shop and it's like, this one is the same thing I already have, but way better. And you can just buy it too. You have the choice to do that.

[00:53:42] And, uh, but again, of course, if it's a unique weapon, you don't have the choice to do that. But again, you can, you can have those things grow with you. And I think that's smart. I think in like looter shooters that I love, like division or borderlands, I think it's fine. You're tossing guns. Okay. You get a new one. Okay. This one was baller for a few levels. Okay. Here's this new shiny gun. I got that works in that in games like avowed. I think it's cool that you get to carry basically carry forward your equipment infinity. I, yeah, I fully agree.

[00:54:09] And, and even on top of that, the, the upgrade system. So there's, you know, this game doesn't drown you in a hundred million different things that you can collect around the world. There, there's a fairly limited set of things that you need to collect to upgrade these items. And even the, I'm sure I want to be able to explain this properly. So feel free to help me out. Even the subsets of items that you, or materials that you use to upgrade your items, you can upgrade those.

[00:54:36] So for example, if you have a common sword and it takes five steel to upgrade, once you get that sword up to fine quality, then you need five, like what, what, I don't know, fucking hardened steel or whatever it's called. And you can take the original steel that you have an excess of and upgrade that material into the hardened steel to then upgrade your sword. So there, there's not that many things and you can like break these things down and build

[00:55:03] them up the materials just to, to upgrade your, your weapons. And it just, it feels very organic where it's not, it doesn't turn into like, I've got to run around the world and spend a shitload of time trying to find these things just to upgrade this weapon. Or worse yet, if you find something that's not, that's like fairly low quality, you don't have to go back to like a old, old map and get like the old shitty things. You can break down your, your good stuff into like the, the less good stuff, which is what

[00:55:32] you need to upgrade that thing. So you don't have to like root around for it. You can, it goes both ways. You can build them up or break them down. Yeah. And when you find common swords late game, like nothing, nothing is a waste. It's not like, it's just garbage laying there because not only can you break that down, you can pick it up and you can break it down right on the spot. Or you can even send it back to your fucking inventory. If you're getting close to being close, if you're close to getting over encumbered.

[00:55:59] So it just like goes back to your camp and goes out of the, your weight allowance. You know, again, all of these things are, are quote unquote, less realistic, but just make everything so much more streamlined. Guys, I'm about to do something very, something I don't usually do. I'm about to admit that I'm an idiot on the air about a thing in the game. It took me an embarrassing amount of time before I realized that was what I was able to do with weapons and things.

[00:56:29] That you didn't have to carry them with you? No, no, no, no, no, no. That I was able to upgrade them so easily and so freely. Cause I'm, I'm just used to like, you know, other RPGs like, okay, I got to hoard all my gold and get all this, get the better shit at the store. But you can do that. See, that's valid though. You can play that way. No, but then, but then I finally figured out like, wait, I could just break down all this shit here and I can make it better right fucking now. Right. Yeah.

[00:56:58] But if you're, if you, I don't know if you take all those perks about getting more money when you from pickups or you have shit, I got like some sort of like shrink it that gives me like 20% more money. And when you pick it up or something like that, I'm like, hell yeah. You know? So if you have a lot of money, you can do that too. But of course you'd have to find a merchant and of course it doesn't account for unique items. So yeah, but that's a valid, that's not a completely bad way to play. I'm trying to save your face here. I don't know why.

[00:57:22] Um, I wouldn't think it is worth noting you do need whether you buy it or you upgrade it, you do need the better shit. And the game makes that very clear, very early on where they're telling you like, Hey, you need to go upgrade this. You're going to see skulls beside the names of the enemies. Um, if, if your equipment is, isn't at a good enough level and, and like in the early game, uh, that, that was probably the like most stuck I got on that game before I realized

[00:57:49] like, I really need to take the equipment upgrading seriously. Um, because on the main quest, like I was getting severely fucked up. And then as soon as you walk away, get the better shit, you know, it lets, you know, this is a very important part of the game. Yeah. There was some boss on map too. That was really fucking me up. And I was just like, I need to go do something about this. And I got a better one that I got just slightly better armor. And I wouldn't say I whooped their ass, but I definitely had a much easier time. And I did, I did beat them.

[00:58:20] Um, which is like, maybe just briefly talk about the difficulty of the game. I feel like it's fairly uneven, but I, I feel like that's an impossible problem to solve in an open world game. Since we're like the three of us are playing three fairly different ways, right? I bet there's stuff I nuked using magic. That was like, you guys had trouble with, with guns and vice versa. Right. So that's always, there's always going to be bad matchups depending on how you play.

[00:58:46] So I guess it's kind of expected, but I never hit any things where I'm like, oh man, I just, I just can't fucking beat this or something like that. I always knew there was a solution. Okay. I feel a little less bad now because going back to spider cave, spider cave, no big fucking deal. Me and Kai, we were beating the shit out of all them spiders. Okay, great. We, we made it out of the cave. Lots of experience for our trouble. One of the other bounties, I forget his name. Something was rad.

[00:59:15] He has a fire knife and a whole lot of fucking goons that just keep coming at you. I'm trying it all kinds of ways. I'm trying to pop off the guy from one guy from a distance where I'm trying to sneak up behind another guy to start the thing going, no matter what I'm doing, I'm just getting fucking killed by the end of this fucking encounter. Because whether you, after you kill a certain amount of guys or after you kill him, more of

[00:59:43] these fucking guys, friends of his just pop in and start killing you. And I don't have enough healing to deal with that at this time. I'm like, okay, you know what? After an hour of this. Nah, it's okay. I didn't come here to deal with red brand or whatever. I came here to take bribes from the back streets of town here. We're moving away. You really are. You really are a bad person. Oh, Jesus Christ. I shouldn't send you to do anything.

[01:00:14] They definitely shouldn't have sent me to the living lands to deal with whatever this is. Well, your unseen king of a dad just sent you his god-born son to just be like, hey, go out there and do something about that, huh? And now you're just running amok. Oh, I'm doing something about it. I just didn't. I just don't think anyone's going to agree. It's whatever I'm doing. Okay. I have a little bit of a, let me soapbox for a second. Okay. Please, everybody.

[01:00:43] I've never done that on fine time before. Okay. I've never got on my high horse and said anything. This is the first time for everything. So here's what I want to say. And this is my favorite thing about Avowed. I feel like some people may see the approach of this game as restrictive, not just the maps or that it's not truly connected or whatever, which both of us agree. All three of us agree rather that it doesn't matter. But think about just about any other game of this type, right?

[01:01:13] Where you get into a town and you can buy a house and you can live there if you want, or you can steal stuff from people. But don't get caught by the guards or else you get in trouble, right? Or you could cause chaos in town and kill all the shopkeepers and innocent bystanders and run away. And no, I got away with it. Tee hee. Avowed doesn't have any of that. None of that. When I got to the first town, the very first thing I did was save.

[01:01:40] And it's like, okay, how much are they going to let me fuck shit up? And I tried to attack a random NPC that just gave me a quest and it would not let me. My wand bolt just went right through him. Attack the shopkeeper, nothing. Attack my companions, nothing. Avowed is simply not that kind of game. And I wonder about people who were weaned on that kind of like Elder Scrolls or Fallout type of open world power fantasy, right?

[01:02:10] May feel like Avowed is like tame in comparison. But I personally do not care about stuff like that in open world games outside of just like a little mischievous. What if I stuck a grenade in this guy's pocket and he blew up, you know? And then I reload my save, you know, a little bit of fun for 15 seconds. But that's it. I don't miss it at all. And I don't think most people will either.

[01:02:33] I feel like it's an outdated and practically juvenile idea of what quote unquote reality is in an open world game. And I'm sure Elder Scrolls 6 will come along and have all the stuff I just talked about. And that's fine. I'm not saying that stuff is bad. But by the time that game comes out, it's going to damn near feel like a throwback. That's it. Rant over. I completely agree. I've talked before about my frustrations with crafting being shoehorned into fucking everything.

[01:03:03] Not everything needs crafting. And so many of these things are applicable in the same way. I do think if a game has an idea where they can make it interesting and make it fun and make it unique, they should do that. When we think back, remember on Link's Awakening, the first time you tried to like steal something out of the shop and the shopkeeper was like, oh, don't fucking do that. That was cool. Not everything needs to, you know, there's no reason for this game to have stealing stuff. It adds nothing.

[01:03:33] If they had a really good, useful idea for that, great. But there's just been such a like feature creep of everything where I think a lot of developers feel an obligation to like pack all of this shit in just because all of these other games are doing it. And all of those are good examples. Why? And yeah, I'm fully on board that it doesn't unless they can do something with it. You don't need to do it. Yep. I need to push back slightly. And I mean slightly because I agree.

[01:04:00] Not every game needs everything, but and especially those the two big Zeldas that we all know and love really showed that we don't need all those features. But at the same time, I think it is weird as shit that no one responds to anything I'm doing around me unless I'm talking directly to them. Like, like I'm hitting a bar. I'm shooting a box with a rifle, not even a surprise from people around me in town. Like, come on.

[01:04:28] I just shot your I just shot your box of mangoes or whatever. Like pretend to be a little shocked. Come on. I sometimes they will say something in very specific instances. Like I saw some beggar on the street and he had like some cash in his like little thing right there is beggar's pot. And so I stole it. I quote unquote stole it. He's like, God, can't I have anything around here or something? Like he said that out loud. That's it. But it's not like I got in trouble or they called the guards on me or something like this.

[01:04:58] It's like we don't we don't need to do that. But I largely agree. Every game doesn't need every feature under the sun. We could I'd like to believe we're largely past it. Shit. I thought I wrote in these notes before I corrected myself. It's like, man, this game doesn't have a day night cycle. It does. It's just very, very, very long. It's just a day night cycle. It's very long.

[01:05:25] I did not realize there was a day night cycle until I seen that in your notes for the show. Yeah, I almost wrote there's none. And then I corrected. Oh, it's super long. But yeah, it's it's it's a lot. Because like, here's the thing. If you go into camp, you see it's night all of a sudden. Then you leave and it's day. If you can't frequently, you'll never see it. Bye bye bye.

[01:06:01] We talked a little bit about quality of life. And this is a term I kind of go back and forth on and sometimes reject depending on what we're talking about. Right. For instance, to give the list. I don't know why I assume every listener listen. You listen to every episode of fine time. Right. Listeners, every single one. And hang on my every word. Dynasty Warriors, the movie is my favorite. Why is that my voice now? Why is that my voice? Why is it your?

[01:06:29] No, that was the fine time listener voice. But OK. OK. OK. I thought that was me. OK, good. So like to give a to give a example, I really dislike when people call the stuff in re-releases of RPGs. Like you can buy Final Fantasy 9 right now on digital marketplaces. You can make the battles for X speed or you can kill everyone in one hit. There's like a little menu. That's not quality of life. That's just cheating. OK.

[01:06:59] Like those are cheats. Like you can and you can cheat all you want. I'm not looking down on cheating, but call it what it is, please. Right. That you are running the game and doing stuff in the game that is not intended. Save states are not quality of life. They're just they're just tools that help you save where it's not intended for you to do so. That's it. So like I kind of I don't always like to use that term for everything because I don't think it applies.

[01:07:23] And in fact, sometimes kind of malforms the integrity of a game in a way that I think it makes it worse. But that's a whole other discussion when it comes to games like this. Avowed or Skyrim or, you know, Fallout or whatever. I feel like there's a number of things that Avowed does or doesn't do that the other games do or don't do that I think is weird. So we can go over, I think, a few of them here. We already talked about stamina.

[01:07:49] Kevin, I want to talk about ammo in the respect that there isn't any. There's no bullets for guns. There's no arrows for bows. There is no such thing as limited ammo in anything. And I think that is bizarre. Why don't you guys tell me your thoughts first if you have any? Well, it's fine. They explain it away with magic, right?

[01:08:11] I mean, that makes slightly more sense than in Zelda 1 where it's like, oh, just you lose money when you fire an arrow. That is weird. They had to. I understand they wanted to take away something. But like, yeah, it was it was weird, Kevin. I think it's fucking great here. And I'm not saying let's do away with ammo for everything. I mean, obviously, if you're playing Resident Evil, there is a purpose to this in some games.

[01:08:36] But when I step back and I think about, OK, if they did have where you have to pick up bullets, you have to pick up arrows in this gun. You know, what is that adding? OK, I need to spend my time picking up every arrow or box of ammo that I need to see. I'm not getting anything out of that. Alternatively, I need to worry about not being able to use the weapon I want. And it feels good just to use the weapon I want as much as I wanted.

[01:09:02] I've talked about the like your peas and carrots game design thing before where they're like, you know, I feel like ammo restriction a lot of time is because it's like, OK, well, you need to try all of these different weapons that use these different kinds of ammo. And this is how we will force you to do it. If I want to use one gun and it feels that fucking good, then then let me use one gun. And you know what? If you make your game good enough and polished enough, I'm going to want to try the other shit anyways. Yeah, I think it was absolutely the right move.

[01:09:30] And yeah, maybe it doesn't feel, quote unquote, as realistic that I can just shoot my gun as much as I want. But I would rather be doing that than worrying about not. Well, Kevin, you still got to take your time because, you know, you use too much stamina. You know, you get winded and you need to take a breather. And then the other guys start overwhelming you. You know, that's the give and take in this game. I'm I'm torn on this one.

[01:09:56] I I think it's probably good for bullets, but I'm probably not as sold about it for arrows because I do think there is something to having limited arrows and like picking them back out of the dead bodies when you loot them. Or if you had a couple of misses picking me out of the trees or wherever they landed. I do think there is something to that. And I do think that's fun. I don't think that's busy work or like, oh, man, why do I got to gather my arrows? I do. I don't know. I think there is something to that.

[01:10:24] And I'm not saying there has to be something to that for a vowed if they don't want to have arrows. Fine. I'm not like sitting here crying about it. The same time, I would be lying if I said I didn't miss it somewhat. I don't know. Maybe I'm just being weird on that. Even when you say it's fun. I mean, is that fun? Picking the arrows out of the bodies you've killed over a 40, 50 hour playthrough?

[01:10:48] Is every fucking arrow you pick out through that, are you getting any actual satisfaction or enjoyment out of that? Because I'm not. Legitimately, yes. I do think that's satisfying when you're using a bow and arrow. I legitimately do think that. To swing this back to what Andre previously said, we don't need every feature in every game. And Avowed was clearly designed with this in mind. It's fine that it's here in Avowed. We don't need to look for this in every game that comes out after this. I swear.

[01:11:18] It'll be fine when we play another game where it'll be fine when we play the next game and we have to look for ammo or get arrows. I promise. We will live. Yeah. When I'm playing Elder Scrolls six, eventually, and I have to pick arrows out of something, I'm going to think back to Avowed. And I'm going to be like, I didn't have to fucking do this. Man, I don't know, man. I do think there's. Well, because like, and I'm not saying you guys are saying this, but it's like, you know how people are always like with Animal Crossing. Why can't you just make all the things at once?

[01:11:48] Or why can't you just craft? And it's like, because it's not an assembly line. It's not a fucking factory. You're making, quote unquote, making these things with your own hands. That's the whole point of the game like that, especially New Horizons, right? You get that handcrafted feel by doing things one at a time, quote unquote, realistically. And that's the whole point of it. It's the same thing of like, you know, people say, oh, you got to still stay at the end in a JRPG.

[01:12:14] You have to go to town and go to bed and pay some stupid 50 gold when I have a million gold. And it's like, maybe think about the reasons why they're making you do that. Huh? It's like, there's a reason why, but you know, whatever. I digress. The one I want to talk about probably the most, or maybe the one that kind of bothers me the most, it feels the most caught in between styles is item weight and the idea of over encumbrance.

[01:12:41] Because this is the one I wish they would have committed to or not committed to. Because if you can just send your shit back to camp automatically from wherever you are, that just trivializes the entire thing. Just don't have item weight at all. Just don't have it. Like, I get why they didn't really want to make encumbrance a thing, especially since, you know, Fallout is a survival game, right? You're surviving out there in the post-apocalypse. Like, you can only carry so much.

[01:13:08] And you can only carry these weapons with you. You only have bullets for this. Like, I get it. That makes sense in a game like that. But in Avowed, not so much, right? So just don't have it at all. Just be like, again, like a JRPG where you just carry like 99 potions and 100 swords or whatever. Like, it just doesn't fucking matter. Like, I don't know. It feels, the whole thing feels trivialized to me if you could just send it back to camp without actually going there, Kevin. I don't know. Yeah, no, you're definitely right about that.

[01:13:37] And I didn't even think about it. I was just like, oh, this is great. I don't have to, like, make the trip back to camp to put it away. But yeah, functionally, it's just changing from one menu to another menu that you're accessing. So that, yeah, it is. But don't shatter the glass for me. I'm already on the verge of, like, hyperventilating talking about this game. I like it so much. I don't appreciate your valid criticisms. Okay, sorry.

[01:14:05] Kevin has said more than once it's about to be game of the year and it's not even Marsh yet. I said it was a game of the year contender, which I do believe. Well, look, it's like me last year where I played Rebirth. I was like, this is a game of the year. I don't know. Fuck the rest of 2024. This is it. And I was right. That was the best game I played that year. It was for sure. Maybe he's just sure about it, Steve. I don't know. He can be sure. He's Canadian after all. It's fine. Only Canadians can be sure.

[01:14:35] Yeah, so that's the kind of thing that I'm like, eh, I just wish they probably didn't have it. There's one other thing, too, that I don't know if it bothers me or not, but it's just something I've been thinking about. So for those who aren't familiar, in Fallout or Elder Scrolls, it's more of a realistic bartering system when you go to a shopkeeper. Because the shopkeeper only has so much money and so much inventory. Right? So you have to exchange stuff. It's not like you have like 14 swords. I'm going to sell these to you for 10,000 caps. They don't have that much money. Right?

[01:15:05] So you need to be like, okay, I'll give you these four swords. You give me these three potions. I'll put this gun in the pot. And then you give me this other sword or whatever. We made a deal. Avowed doesn't work that way. All the shops have unlimited money. You can sell as much stuff to them as you want. Which is like kind of mind-blowing. Right? It's wild. So it's fine in theory. But like I think that in turn further trivializes the encumberant system.

[01:15:33] Because you can just sell as many things as you want to anybody you want. Again, it's not Fallout. It's not survival. I have to carry these things with me. And Fallout doesn't have like a camp. You better go find some fucking house that's empty. And you better go stash all your stuff in there. Don't you guys do that in Fallout or Elder Scrolls? You just find some random place in the world. It's like here's where I'm going to put all my stuff in this chest. Right? You better remember where that is. Yeah. So obviously Vow doesn't have that because they have a quote unquote real camp. But I don't know.

[01:16:02] Did you think about that? I know Kevin you've played other games like especially Fallout. Did you think about the fact that shops have unlimited money now? I did not realize it until you brought it up. Because I have not interfaced with the shops barely at all. Once in a while if I'm in town I'll be like I'll stop. I'll buy lock picks and I'll buy your health potions. And that is literally. I bought Adra one time in the early game to upgrade a weapon. Other than that nothing. Because I've only been like finding my weapons and upgrading them. You know.

[01:16:32] I don't know. Maybe just because I find it more interesting than going and seeing what the shops have. But I bought zero weapons or armor from shops period. Wow. Well we know what Steve here has been up to. Because he already confessed to us. So I guess we can not. Well after the. I only bought the one gun. Everything else I've been picking off around where I find it too. Okay. But then again I'm desperate for health potions all the time too. So I think I've done more shopping. We I think we all are. This is not Fallout where you can have like 137 stim packs.

[01:17:02] You know 20 hours into the game. Like that's not. That's not happening. I've got over 50 health potions right now. Just. Jesus. Fuck. Holy shit. Can you send me some? Because the game worked that way. And you all picked on me for my arrows and tears of the kingdom. Oh. This guy was the arrow master everybody. He had so many fun. I was like dude. How do you even. I'm running out of arrows constantly. I didn't have this problem in Breath of the Wild. This guy is like. I mean were you making them somewhere? Did you find like the arrow fairy?

[01:17:34] Obviously not. I'm not. I'm not getting into this again. What do you guys think about the resonant like sparkly sound when you're near like a treasure chest or like a weird like. Do you like that? Because I really like that actually. It makes the game feel more magical for some reason. I think there's a lot of stuff where it's. It's. Yeah. It's a magical feeling game. Yeah. I kind of am sad that there's not a lockpick game. You just hold the button. It's like this takes three lockpicks. And it's like okay.

[01:18:04] I kind of. I kind of like twisting around a lockpick and those kind of games. But maybe. Maybe that's just me. That's fine. Yeah. Let's talk story and lore a little bit. Obviously we're not going to spoil here. But I did feel overwhelmed by the lay of the land and the lore that they were throwing at you in the first few hours. Especially on tutorial island because it felt like I was watching like. I don't know days of our lives for the first time like today.

[01:18:33] Like the show has been on for 60 years. Right. And it's like what the what the hell is going on? Who are these people? Right. But they just. But I realized soon that that was a good thing. Right. Because it gets you up to speed like super fast. Also avowed does the glossary thing. And at any point you can press a button and bring up a glossary of highlighted terms that happened in the conversation you were just having. And I think we all praise this when we talked about Final Fantasy 16 a couple years ago. The act of war. Act of time war. It was good then and it's good now.

[01:19:03] Yeah. It's really good here. Especially since there's a lot of fake cuss words and stuff that I want to know what they mean. By the way, I love that this game has fake cussing and real cussing. It's really good. It's a fucked up world in a vow. It sure is. Got to invent more swears. You have to invent more to see how fucked up this is. What did you. Are you guys into the lore of this game? Kevin, are you getting into like all these like different like races and like all these.

[01:19:31] I'm into the overarching story. I really appreciate that this feels like there is an established world. There is obviously plenty of lore behind it, right? All this is like the same world as the pillars of eternity world, you know, and it makes it easier to like buy into the story. But that being said, I'm also I do feel like a lot of, you know, the dialogue in this game gets overly verbose.

[01:19:59] So I am at the point where, you know, I'm scanning through what they're saying unless I'm really invested. And, you know, I'm getting the gist of it, but I'm not listening to them read aloud every single line because it's getting to be a little bit much. So I don't think the story in lore is the selling point here for me, but I do appreciate that it's there. There's definitely a lot of depth there. Yeah, I think you're right. And I think they don't expect you to care that much. You know what I mean? I think they expect you.

[01:20:24] It's like, OK, you can listen to this if you want to or not, because, you know, that's obviously a lot of the dialogue choices where it's like if they're telling you about a quest, you can ask more about it or you can just say, hey, OK, tell me where it is and go do it. Right. So you can kind of choose your own adventure there. Speaking of dialogue in general, I do think that voice acting in this game is really good. Like in games like this, I typically don't think much of it because it's usually just OK or serviceable. There's a lot of things to voice, so it's not going to be like super good. Right.

[01:20:51] But I do think the voice acting in Avowed is super good, especially your companions and like all the NPCs. I think they're very well acted. It also doesn't suffer from talking too much when you're when you're out in the world with your companions, because, you know, I hate that shit in a lot of modern games where it's just like sometimes I'm like, shut the fuck up and let me absorb the game. That doesn't happen in this. So, yeah, I thought that was worth mentioning since it's something I bitch about a lot.

[01:21:17] Steve, how many lore books of living lands did you did you buy and are pouring over on eBay right now? Oh, you know, I can't be stopped. So what do you mean? But what do you I mean, are you are you into it on that level or are you just like go here, do that? I'm trying to do go here. Like I said, I was trying to do as much of this game as I could before coming on. So I'm trying to hear everybody out, but it's a lot of. Yep.

[01:21:46] I'm totally going to do this thing for you. And then a good chunk of it's not getting done. I mean, what are these people going to do? Vote for a new Avowed? Come on. I wish we could vote. I wish we could vote for a new Avowed right now in America. I tell you that much. I'll take an Avowed over what's happening right now. I don't know if there's any other random bits and bobs before we get to like some some other stuff. Let me think.

[01:22:15] We talked about day night cycle. Nick, I love that you get so many unique items from side quests. I think that's super cool. I think the only other thing I can say is that like as it goes on, not just the dungeon wishes I talked about. I want this story to go somewhere like super fantastical, like somewhere insane. Like you get to go up to heaven itself and fight angels or something like you get to attack and dethrone God.

[01:22:44] You get to go up there or something. Right. Like I want I want some wild, wild shit to happen. I don't think it's going to be that kind of game. However, and of course, I'm not going to say what it is. And I but I think you guys will know what I'm talking about here. At least Kevin will. There was an event in the second map that felt very seismic in a way that you don't usually get from games like this. I think it feels like something you would get more like from a JRPG.

[01:23:13] That kind of big when you're when you're leaving the second map. Is that yes? Yeah. Yeah. There's something. But but it was here right here in a vowed. And I thought that was refreshing and cool. I'm trying to think like I don't think games like this usually do stuff like that, you know? So I thought that was very cool. I'll just say that. That's all I can really say. Thanks for not saying it to me, by the way. I'm still stuck on the second map. I figured you were. So I'm obviously not not saying it.

[01:23:57] Let's have some more spoiler free discussion, because like if people have played about and they're listening to this, they might want to know some of our decisions so far. So we can talk about a couple of them. There's again, I wish we could talk about Don Treader, but there's no way to not spoil when talking about that. So I want to ask you guys, let's just put it this way. How did you resolve the first map, Kevin? What did you do? I let him live. You let him live.

[01:24:28] Steve, what did you do? Live and let live. Live and let live. So he died, but I did not kill him. That's all I can say. You know, because I was kind of indifferent. I was like, I'll let him live. But then when I had the chance to be like for him to die anyway, I was like, sure, that's fine. Doesn't matter to me. So I just felt like being an asshole in that instance. Did you pass up to it when when you were asked? I kind of played dumb.

[01:24:58] I didn't know that would happen. I knew exactly what would happen. So that's how I played that. Yeah, I don't care. So also there's a voice in your head in this game. Let's just say that there's a voice in your head. Do you trust this voice, Kevin? No, and I was playing like I didn't for, you know, maybe through the first map and a half ish.

[01:25:26] And then I kind of I'm still curious and I'm still trying to get a good understanding of how much your decisions in this game are going to affect the outcome. They definitely play some sort of role. And I feel like usually the game is kind of funneling you into like questioning this voice in your head. But there are definitely opportunities to be like, oh, yeah, OK, fuck, yeah, I'm with you.

[01:25:49] So I started at a certain point, like wholeheartedly buying into those decisions into those those choices and being like, yeah, I'm pro head voice. OK, Steve, do you trust the voice and what are you doing about it? If anything, Andre, I've played enough video games to not believe in the, you know, otherworldly voices that might be in my head. So, no, I don't trust the voice in my head.

[01:26:16] And much like the other NPCs, I am trying to fuck with it as much as I can. OK, I am giving very half assed answers to it and only outright disagreeing with it when I really feel like I have to. OK, yeah, because sometimes I say some fucked up shit and I'm like, that is not how this works. Like, I need to let you know that is fucked up what you're saying right now. And then they're like, but why? And I'm like, I can't explain it to you.

[01:26:46] If you don't know, I really don't know what to say. Right. You're the otherworldly voice. You should know some of this shit by now. Right. It's like really. So I do not trust the voice or I did at first kind of. And then we got to a point where I'm like, oh, actually, I think this is really bad news. It's really bad news. So I I stopped. I was like, now I now I don't trust you. And I've been playing out the game in accordance to that, because I think that will be more interesting story wise.

[01:27:16] I've had I think I've said all the criticisms I could. Kevin, do you have any before we start wrapping up here or? Yeah, I've got I've got a few ran. You said bibs and bobs earlier. I got a few random bibs and bobs and some criticisms. I I hate to even give this airtime, but I can't help myself in this in this circumstance.

[01:27:36] I especially I signed up for the avowed subreddit and there was definitely a thing where this game was getting review review bombed on Metacritic, you know, with that online group yelling about it being woke. Do you what? Like, I I can't I can't even. OK, so Kai had a gay boyfriend. OK, I'm trying to like even a step back and assess like what like what are these people even complaining about about this game?

[01:28:06] Because it doesn't. Can you because I can't figure it out. Kevin, you I'll put it this way. You are woke because you do this podcast with me. I just I'm not even joking. Like, that's how they think. That's how they think. I don't know. Kevin, I found the house and the thing and I thought they handled it pretty damn well. I don't know what else they they or you could want.

[01:28:35] Yeah, I don't know. It's just it kind of like floored me. Like, why are why are they going after this game? Like, what is what what is that group of people finding egregious about this? Black people exist. Just I mean, that I know that sounds overly simplistic, like gay people exist. Other people exist. That isn't whatever their narrow worldview is or what the one third narrow worldview to be.

[01:28:59] And typically it's like you said, we don't usually talk about this stuff or these people on this show just because I hate to even give them airtime or give that kind of mindset airtime. But yeah, I think it's important every once in a while to be like, fuck those people. So but yeah, but here's the thing. Their favorite game of the world. New Vegas has hella gay people and they never said a word. That was 15 years ago. So you tell me what the difference is nowadays. Right. So what can I say? I don't know.

[01:29:26] It just it just I mean, obviously, you know, I am very far removed from these people. But I also, you know, it's like for anything, if you're saying everything is a fucking problem, like I don't know. I can't wrap my head around it. Like they're just looking at like all of media and being like, you know, there's anything other than straight white people 100% across the board. Like what do you what are the what is there? What are the what are they looking to achieve? Yeah. I don't know.

[01:29:55] It's it's specifically stuck in my craw in this in this circle. I use a blue lizard, man. What the fuck do you want? It's not even a real person. Like, what do you I mean? What are you? What are we doing? I mean, it's wild, man. But that that's how they that's how they think. Dude, remember, like six months ago, we found the woke list of like games on Steam. Remember that, Steve? Where it's like this game has no woke. This game has LGBTQ plus something. This game has a black person. I mean, like, you know, I remember it now.

[01:30:25] Yeah. Yeah. Like so people again, we didn't we this didn't happen a long time ago when we had just as many gay people or or non white people in these other games of this type. So but, you know, hey, what what can I what can I say? Those people sit and they play the first Uncharted over and over and over and over again. Yeah, that's that's the shit you want. Impossible white man. Definitely just play it Uncharted for sure. Absolutely. All right.

[01:30:55] But I'll move on from that. I made a comment last episode and we weren't really talking about about we were talking specifically about Microsoft and, you know, them failing this generation when I thought there was a chance they were going to succeed. But I did make a comment saying, you know, even with avowed coming out, if even if it's great, it's not going to move the needle for them. And I want to withdraw that to a degree. I don't think it moved the needle hugely.

[01:31:23] But I think this game is exactly the kind of exclusive that they've needed, you know, three of per year for the last six years. Yeah, this is this is their best game of this generation by far and their most impactful one, I would say. Maybe like I think if you were to go like up and down and pull people, people would say maybe like Forza Horizon 5 or something like that. It's like their best game of like this current period.

[01:31:53] And maybe that's true, but I think avowed is doing it for them right now in a way that I like. Can you think of a single thing that has moved? Not Hellblade, not that we ever thought it would. I mean, I mean, a generation from now, people are going to be talking about avowed much more than they're ever going to be talking about Halo Infinite. And Halo Infinite was what they were really fucking, you know, resting on their laurels. And, you know, that that's what's going to fucking sell this machine. Mm hmm. Okay.

[01:32:21] To bring us back to the top, it got the three of us to talk about the avowed game while it was relevant. Yeah. What more impact do you really expect from a Microsoft game? I mean, shit, I would have I like if I even if I didn't have this new computer, I would have tried on Steam Deck. I would be like, okay, maybe I can run it at 30 and like maybe, you know, just like kind of how I was thinking for South of Midnight, you know, like.

[01:32:50] But now I don't have to do that shit. But yeah, I think you are correct. This is their most impactful game in years and good for them. Fuck. They did a great job here and this came out great. Yeah. A few minor criticisms. We talked. This is really solid from a tech perspective. There's the odd graphical things here and there. Andre found a missing penis. If you haven't seen it, go look at it. That was just incredible.

[01:33:18] Who holds her dick like that when they pee, man? That's so weird. Nobody does that. It was concepts of a penis. It was concepts. But the hair bob, when you skip, when you skip forward in what they're saying to move the dialogue along, if they have long hair, it always jumps. Have you guys noticed that? Yeah. Always. It gets on my nerves. Why is that still a thing in 2025? They snap to a, because they kind of like pop into view instead of like moving. Yeah. I know. I know why it happens.

[01:33:48] I just like, like, come on, we can fix this. Make the hair heavier. That's kind of an open world thing, though, because like, have you ever warped somewhere in Fallout or Elder Scrolls and like everything's like a foot off the ground and they all just kind of like hit the ground? Yeah. Yeah. I think they're kind of doing it. It needs to load in and like reset to the physics. Mm-hmm. So I think they're kind of doing that with the people as well a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. We talked about how good it looks. The faces do not look good. I don't think. The people. Really?

[01:34:17] The human faces. Yeah. I don't know. I think I've seen games where the faces look much better. The less human they are, the better they look. But I don't know. The faces are not doing it for me here. I don't think they're that. Then again, look, in open world, I don't really have much of a much of an expectation. So I just kind of take that as it comes. It's just what it is. But yeah. Yeah. I get you.

[01:34:45] It almost seems mismatched when everything else, you know, you look at the horizon and like the scenery looks fucking so, so good, you know? So I just want everything to look that good. So it's not that the faces are that bad. It just in comparison, maybe they don't stand up. Oh, can I ask you one more spoiler free question? Okay. Because Steve hasn't done this yet. When you left map two, did you kill her? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Okay. I told her to.

[01:35:13] I thought that was like the big thing you were talking about. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. The thing that happened before that, that led to the whole thing. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah. I got you. That's what I was talking about. Yeah. But no. Okay. Yeah. I killed. I wasn't, I wasn't really looking to, right? I wasn't like, but she, she just wouldn't shut the fuck up. So I was just like, I mean, she, she was fine at the end of the first map. And then she was like, just such a needless cunt.

[01:35:42] Like she really was. So I'm like, you know what? I don't care. Whatever happens in this dialogue choice. If I kill you, fine. If not, whatever. But I, I'm glad I did. Cause I got, you get a cool, unique. Anyway, go on. Now my biggest criticism, this fucking pissed me off. Who says envoy like envoy. And they don't even all say it. Like the on one will say envoy, but like, like numerous NPCs more often than not will say

[01:36:10] envoy has anybody like, this isn't like a regional dialect thing. Is it? They're just saying it wrong. No, they're just saying it wrong. And it's not even like the people over here say it this way. And the people over here say it that way. Like, because like I was in, I was in one town and I was having conversation with two different, like two people in the conversation. One was saying envoy. One was saying envoy. So like, I think they got the wires. I think like 75 to 80% of the NPC say envoy.

[01:36:37] But in real life, even is, is there somewhere in like the Midwestern states where they say envoy for some reason? I've never heard anyone say, I've never heard anyone say envoy. I've only ever known that word to be envoy. We say envoy here on the East coast. Yeah. I've only ever heard envoy. So I don't know. That's, that's weird. Well, it's weird that they didn't unify that in the, maybe it was just too late. Some people were saying envoy. Some people were saying envoy. It's like, well, fuck it. Maybe we just have to roll with it now. I don't know.

[01:37:06] Where did these voice actors come from that just like defaulted to envoy? This is by far the longest we've ever talked about a single game on a big deal. Like ever. Like we didn't even talk about tears of the kingdom this much. And that's fine. That's, that's fucking great. So yeah, I think that's about it. We got any parting words. We got any parting words for the avowed Steve? Oh, I guess I'm going to have to go back to it soon.

[01:37:35] I've definitely beaten this game ASAP, Kevin. Yeah, me too, man. I think, and not only that, like, cause I definitely have left a number of side quests back and I want to, before I finish it, I want to go in like really flesh out my, my avowed experience. For sure. All right. Oh baby. Something you probably don't get to do in the living lands very much is take a shower. So definitely I'm getting in the shower. I don't know about you guys, but I think it has to happen. I know it's a bit late in the show for this, but let's do it.

[01:38:05] Shall we? You guys going to scrub my mushroom? Hell yeah. I don't even know if I could stand up after all this time. Don't, don't, don't make that sound until we get in the shower, please. Okay. We'll be right back. It's time to hit the showers. We'll be right back.

[01:39:10] Oh baby. Oof. Give me that towel. I worked on my towel snapping, Steve. I hope you don't roast me this time. You know, you're working on it. It's improved, but you know, every, everything can always use improvement in our lives. Kevin seemed to like it. Oh, I got a little, little red mark that might persist till tomorrow. Ooh, hot. Okay. Um, okay. We all got into the Sonic racing cross worlds, closed network tests this past weekend.

[01:39:40] And we just want to talk about it briefly. Cause we just thought it was hilarious that all three of us got a code. Kevin, Kevin checked his email. Oh guys, I got in. Hey, I got into Steve. I regretfully got in. Yeah. I can't get into the Nintendo switch private event in New York a month, but no, no, you want to go play Sonic crosswords. Here you go. Yeah. Oh man.

[01:40:06] Um, so I guess I'm more interested in what you guys have to say, cause I play this series, you know, so I'm going to kind of let you guys direct this while I, you know, kind of chime in here and there with my knowledge of my Sonic knowledge, I guess. But before we get started, let me, let me say this. The first two games in this racing series were not just Sonic, but Sonic and Sega all stars, meaning that you had characters and courses from super monkey ball and Billy Hatcher

[01:40:36] and somebody amigo, et cetera. Right. But cross worlds brings the focus back to just Sonic and friends. And personally, I think that's great because like Sonic has so many characters and stages to pull from at this point that it feels endless, right? You're not going to run out of material, you know? So I love the Sonic focus, but I absolutely understand why people would miss the general Sega fan service because that shit was so good in the first two games, like especially transformed.

[01:41:06] But I appreciate the focus here because you guys know how I am about Mario Kart eight. I'm like, I'm like a Mario first about that. I don't like all the cameo shit. Get the Animal Crossing out of here. Get the squid kids out of here. Get the Zelda. No, I just called Link Zelda, didn't I? Get that green tunic Zelda out of here. I don't need that shit. And I don't need your saxophone F zero levels. I don't care how much Steve likes them. No, get your excite bike out of here. I just want Mario.

[01:41:35] That's how I feel. And I don't know, you know, maybe the excite bike one can stay. Maybe I'm being a little biased. I do love that one. But regardless, that's how I feel. And I don't quite feel that strongly about the Sonic racing games, but I am glad that it's just Sonic. What are your guys' thoughts on that? I know you have big thoughts. I mean, I would have raced as, how do you, I, I, A, A? How do you pronounce the word? I say I, I.

[01:42:06] I, I. Okay. I would have, I would have tried a few, I would have tried a few rounds with I, I, but. I'm a Gongon person, Steve. I like Gongon. Yeah. I generally like Gongon too, but that's just me usually leaning towards the heavies in these situations. Yeah. Baby is too small to race a cart. He would get hurt. I would use the baby. I would use the baby. But to steer our conversation back to the, you know, the game we all tried. Can someone tell me what the hell's actually happening in this game?

[01:42:35] Because. No. No, I can't. I'll tell you what I, my experience was generally like. I picked a character of, of handful. I picked a car. I, I certainly couldn't tell what was going on in the 40 seconds. They let me have to look at the stats and things. So I'm like, okay, here's character. Here's car. Here's level. Okay. Then we finally start driving the car. Okay. I know how to drive car. I drive car every day. Okay. We drive car.

[01:43:06] We get item. What does this fucking do? I guess I will push button and find out because not, I guess you could call it Mario your car brain, but I feel like Mario sort of also informs you just by existing. What the items do shell. Okay. I will use throw shell a thing. That's what that does. Banana peel. You will slip on banana peel. That's what that does. Mushroom makes you go faster because you know, it makes you go bigger in those games.

[01:43:36] Okay. I can piece all those things together. How am I supposed to piece all that shit? Whatever the hell this game is doing based on what this is doing. Yeah. Look, I'm not going to sit here and pretend that I knew what was going on or that I followed everything because this is one of the most chaotic games I've ever played. It's easily the most chaotic racing game I ever played. This is baby park times 10. Like what, what is happening? Because so yeah, it's not just you.

[01:44:05] I'm not, I'm not going to, I could have gone on here and been like, uh, you know, if you had played the first four games, you know, you might've had a little bit. No, the Sonic all-star racing lore. Yeah. Chaotic might be underselling it because chaotic can be good, but this, this felt messy at times for sure. Yeah. Was that, is, was that your general assessment too, Kevin? Like it's just messy and like, you know what? I had fun, um, for the most part. And I'm not saying that it was just like a complete disaster and I didn't know what was

[01:44:34] going on the entire time, but there were times I didn't know what the fuck was going on for, for sure. And it did feel a little bit too messy. Like it just needs a little bit of fine tuning. Um, but for no, for the most part, I did think it was fun. I think my biggest problem, um, when we talked about this last, I said, you know, I'm not going to be stupid and say that this is coming from Mario cart because it ain't, I was really like thinking what, what, what is like really holding this back? And I think what holds most cart racers back from achieving that, that same good feeling is the drifting.

[01:45:03] The drifting does not feel very good in here. Like no, no cart racer. The drifting feels as good as Mario cart. I don't think I'd agree with that. So like, I think the drifting in this game feels pretty good and like, it feels the same as the other games. It's kind of the exact same thing. So maybe it's just something I'm used to versus like Mario cart where they kind of like change it a lot depending on the game. But I don't know, Steve, I definitely liked the drifting in this.

[01:45:31] It took me a few races, but I figured out what they wanted for me as far as drifting was concerned. But again, I think I would need more than the 30 to 45 seconds. I had to look at cars to figure out what I really wanted to want it from any of these vehicles. Well, I feel like before you get into a race, you can kind of look at all the stuff and set something up. But then like, they don't give you enough time in this beta. Yeah, it's it's it's wild.

[01:46:00] It's like you better just pay. That's why I like the first race I did. I was like, I think it was Eggman and a monster truck or something like that. I was like, I don't know. I don't know what this is. You guys didn't spend enough time in the menus because I looked at all these cars. There's there's a fairly like decent car customization system that I spent probably like 45 minutes. I made my own special Green Hill Zone themed car. You know, yeah, I like overly they give you like different decals you can spend your

[01:46:30] coins on and I kind of like made the texture so it looks like the grass and like different tones of brown for the dirt on the wheels and stuff. So it's in there. Kevin, that is a lot of work for a thing that they are not going to let you carry over to the full time. But you can still just go into those same menus and look at the cars and what they do in the stats and the class they're in. I understand. But like I should have just picked basic bitch Sonic in the racing cars, what I should have done. But I did not do that. I want it to I want it to be weird.

[01:47:00] I don't even remember the characters to pick now. But yeah, I'm interested. I'm probably going to buy this. But man, that's oof. That was that was a lot. But there's a lot of there seems to be a system where it's like the more rings you get, the faster you can go. Almost like Mario Kart's coins. You know, you get up to whatever coins and then you have like a higher top speed. But this game is so wild. It's like, good luck. I don't like I couldn't even play into that.

[01:47:28] I didn't even have time to pay attention to the rings because it was so wild out there. So yeah, it was it was a lot. And I guess I agree with you guys. It's a lot. It's chaotic. But I feel like it was in a good way. I actually did enjoy myself. I don't know how. I don't know why. But I did. So yeah, I mean, it sounds like I'm doing a lot of complaining because I am doing a lot of complaining. But this is definitely this wasn't bad.

[01:47:55] But this is also something and I'm going to wait for Royale with cheese to get like one day where it's gonna be like, this is now available on Sony premium plus or whatever. Like, yeah, okay. Now I'll get it. Basically how I waited for Sonic Team Racing because I saw that from the beginning. I was like, nah, nah, this ain't it. So we we got to talk about the world switching because that was super fucking cool and it looked good and it felt good.

[01:48:21] Do you guys remember we had a we had a big question maybe a year or two ago where we were saying like Nintendo has like really hit their stride with so many of their franchises, you know, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, Smash Ultimate, you know, what should they do next? And I think, you know, if if Nintendo did this with Mario Kart 9, you know, that would be enough of a hook to drag me in where they're like, you know, on lap two, you switch into like a total, you know, maybe it'll be one world, maybe it'll be another world that, you

[01:48:50] know, that's that's a great mechanic. And it was implemented really well in here. I 100% agree. In fact, you know, it'd be cool. You know, be really cool because you know how like throughout Mario Kart history, you've always had classic tracks, I guess, starting with like Super Circuit, right? If you can go through different versions of the same track. So you go through Baby Park GameCube, then you go into like Baby Park, like Mario Kart seven, even and it looks like a 3DS game. Yeah.

[01:49:18] Like, and then you go into, you know, like, yeah, like the Bowser's Castle multiverse. That'd be so. Like Bowser Castle in 64, right? I feel like that's done at least a couple other times, right? Like you go through different ones. Yeah. So you start out in Waluigi Pinball DS and then go to like, you know, some actually it's never been remade, has it? It's in the Switch version. Yeah. It's on Switch now. Finally. Yeah. But yeah, that I think that would be cool because it celebrates their history in a

[01:49:47] way that would be like super rad. Plus, of course, new courses. So, yeah, that's that's my hot idea. That won't happen. Or maybe it will. We'll just have to wait for April 2nd when they show us this thing. And actually, though, they're showing. See, are they going to they better show us Mario Kart in detail? Because last time it was just like ears abort. But like now they got to they got to really sell us on Mario Kart again. They're going to have to do some shit. It's going to be cool. I love how we just talked about Mario Kart. What we want in the next Mario Kart. So to talk about Sonic Cross Worlds.

[01:50:20] Come on, Sega. Do better. All right, guys. We've only talked video games here, by the way. Sorry for the lack of variety in the show. We talked about we talk Sonic and then we're about to get out of here because it's been long enough. However, I don't want to let us go without a game. And we got to play the game that put us on the map.

[01:50:47] OK, we have to play J.A.V. titles real or fake. And you guys know how this works already. You at home and the two of you, Steve and Kevin. I'm going to read Japanese adult video titles. That's what J.A.V. stands for from the Blue Sky account of the same name. And some of them I made up.

[01:51:16] So you're I'm going to read one and you're going to tell me whether that was real or fake. All right. You guys ready? You feeling sexy? Big sexy. I think I'm big sexier than Kevin. Oh, wow. OK, fucking challenge accepted. All right. You guys really keeping score this time. Shit. OK, you're out for blood. You're out for sex. Never. They did not keep score. OK. OK, here we go. First one.

[01:51:48] The giant butt job that feels better than sex. A world buried in ass. Real or fake? Fake. I think the problem is he's getting better and better at the fake ones. I think it's fake, too. Fake? OK. Steve, fake? Fake. This one was real. You can really be buried in a world of ass if you want to, if you buy the right tape.

[01:52:19] Giant butt jobs. I never get invited to these giant butt jobs. I mean, you know, one of these days you have to meet the right people. OK, next one. Her library orgasm is against the rules. Real or fake? I didn't give that a real. Real because I want it to be. Well, that's fake. I made that shit up, so.

[01:52:49] See, he's really, like, gotten in the mind of a Japanese porn producer at this point. I mean, hey, you gotta get him where you fit in. Maybe I have a future in this, huh? OK, next one. Which religion is best? Keiko fucks every temple in Fukuoka. Real or fake? That's real.

[01:53:19] You did not make that up. Yeah, I'm saying real, too. I made that shit up. That's fake. Son of a bitch. I made that shit up. What are you doing every night? OK. I can't tell you. I cannot tell you. OK, how about this one? Sexual president's lewd plan. One man's cock reined over by female supremacy.

[01:53:49] Real or fake? Fake. What are we doing with our lives? We're having fun on the radio is what we're doing. Yeah. And the next step I'm taking is saying it's fake. It's fake. I'm going to say I'm going to say real. Real. OK, split vote here. Kevin, it is real. You are correct. That is a real one. I'm laughing already. OK.

[01:54:18] Hmm. OK. How about this one? How about this one? Oh, my God. I hate when I can't even read it. OK. Got it. OK. Lock it. Lock it down. I got this. My female boss's big prestigious pussy. One more time.

[01:54:49] My female boss's big prestigious pussy. Big prestigious pussy. Man. I've never seen Steve think about one this long, actually. I think you made that shit up. You're getting depraved. OK. You guys are on to me. I made that shit up. I made it. I made it up. I made it up. You got me.

[01:55:21] OK. Couple more. OK. Couple more. How about this one? Damn. OK. All right. The middle aged woman from the country who moans in her dialect. Real or fake? It's real because if it's fake, we have to put you on a list.

[01:55:51] Well, not me. Government agencies will need to put you on a list. All right, Kevin. I think that one's fake. OK. That one is real. It was absolutely real. One hundred percent. OK. Um. OK. One more. One more. Got it. One last one. Fifty year old mom saw her son's dick on Mother's Day and got all excited.

[01:56:23] Real or fake? Fake. Fake. I'm fake, too. That's real. Absolutely real. True story of a 50 year old woman who saw her son's dick on Mother's Day. Got crazy excited about it. I didn't know they had Mother's Day. That's why I was thinking it was fake. I think they. I mean, I don't know. They could be role playing in the country where they where they have that, I guess. I don't know. Could be. Yeah. That's a good. That's good thinking, though. That's good thinking.

[01:56:53] Thinking Japanese culture that way. Your fake ones are indistinguishable at this point. I've gotten real good at it. You have definitely improved your craft considerably since we've since we've begun. Thank you. Whenever we first did this three years ago. OK, shit. Now that we made this show filthy, I guess we can get out of here again. Sorry for the lack of variety today. But damn, we just wanted to talk about it.

[01:57:18] And as you can tell, there was no news at all unless you want to talk about shit. What happened? Fucking just. Yeah. The more layoffs. WB just killed three studios and including the one that made multiverses, etc. You know, who wants to talk about that shit? Maybe we could talk about, you know. Playing about playing about. OK, we'll see you guys next time. Check the description of this podcast to find our links on social media. And we'll see you next time. Bye.

[01:57:49] We'll catch you next time. This has been.