Episode 158: Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II - Gay Chicken

[00:00:15] Welcome to Gaming Together, Cooperative Podcast. I'm your host Phillip and I'm here with my co-partner Nave. Each pod we play through a cooperative experience and relay to you the listener. This game is a criminal workbook. This game is a criminal co-op or something better off playing solo.

[00:00:27] Hey Nave, what's poppin'? He did the reverse. I interrupted him like three times in like the last like five episodes during the intro. And he tricked me this time. We have a guest Phillip. Yeah, my voice is already giving out.

[00:00:39] We literally, we went ass to ass back to back. I was just on Friday Night Gamecast. I ripped him out to come over here to talk about Hellblade 2. Over there, we've talked about the Xbox whatever it is.

[00:00:51] What did we do? How about you tell us? Yeah, I forget what it's called. Nick from Friday Night Gamecast. Tell us what we just got done doing. What's up boys? We just finished recording an episode of the Summer Showcase Roundup.

[00:01:02] So we covered all three of like the big three. It's, you know, the Sony State of Play, Summer Games Fest, as well as the Xbox Showcase that just happened earlier today, which was incredible. Obviously the clear winner from all three.

[00:01:16] But go check out our thoughts on each of those. It'll be coming out this Friday as of the date that I'm assuming this episode is going to release as well. So we're gonna have that locked and loaded and ready to go. And so that was a fun one.

[00:01:27] We got Nave to like just unleash him towards the end of that episode. Oh yeah. And just be a complete stan of all of these awesome Xbox IPs that are coming. It's fucking incredible. Did anything? Yeah. Yeah. Did anything pop out to you, Philip?

[00:01:41] OK, yeah. So I watched it and I don't have a list in front of me. So I don't know the names of the games, but Mecha Robots looked really cool.

[00:01:49] I believe that. So like it looked kind of generic and not going to lie, but I'm into EDF, you know, like stupid like, you know, trash Japanese looking stuff like I don't even know.

[00:02:01] It's a Japanese company, but that aesthetic they nailed like I saw them like is this Gundams? I'm like, no, those aren't Gundams. They almost look like Decepticons. Like these aren't Transformers, though. But then they transformed and I was like, yeah, hold on.

[00:02:12] But this is the thing, though, during the thing, it showed you that you can have the different paint styles. One of them was a Gundam paint style. Like it was a Gundam. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm like, it's not Gundams, but it's pretty close.

[00:02:24] I'm probably like, you know, Game Pass, of course. That one caught my attention. It also caught my attention. I think there's like three different games that refer to themselves as souls like or souls like. I'm like, it's an epidemic. I know we can't stop it.

[00:02:37] I'm like, we didn't need three of these lot of shooting games, a lot of not shooting games, mostly shooties. There's a lot of shootings. And then they were like, oh, Call of Duty at the end.

[00:02:47] And then I turned it off because like I know I'm going to play the Call of Duty. Like, I don't know how long it went on with like covering the Call of Duty bullshit like like they did with Starfield last time.

[00:02:57] It was the same. Yeah, they they did a whole deep dive into it. I mean, it's weird because like I feel like I almost don't need to watch this because Microsoft has gone so hard with the push of going like if you're not on Game Pass,

[00:03:08] the preferred way to play, you're going to miss out on all these things. And so I'm like, oh, I'm just going to play Game Pass. I didn't need to watch this hour long commercial because I'm going to see every single one of these games pop up

[00:03:20] and I'm just going to play them then too. Like you got me. I feel like this is for like new customers. This isn't even for me. Like, well, I watched it. I think it's I think it's just as much for both because yeah, like the locked in audience,

[00:03:32] you and Nate both are you're going to be on Game Pass. You're going to see everything they show here. But especially like I think it was particularly important for them because of the two primary issues that Xbox as a business has been facing recently

[00:03:44] is specifically with the closures in the layoffs of a bunch of different people across multiple different studios and then just the closures of Tango Game Works and Arcane Austin. I mean, they really made people mad. I know that it looks bad in turn.

[00:03:57] It looks really bad, especially specifically after the fact. They said this is what they wouldn't do. And then they came back around and then they did that anyway. And it's a bad look on. And then and then they sent Sarah Bond out there to kind of eat crow.

[00:04:10] And she had to kind of she became the face of the Arcane closures having to do an interview with Bloomberg the day after they announced that shit. So, you know, it's like for her, but still at the same time,

[00:04:20] like they needed to like remind everybody, yes, Xbox is still here. We're still here to play. We're not going third party publishing at this point because that's still very much a conversation with the rate that Sony is outselling PS5 versus Xbox consoles.

[00:04:35] Yes, Sarah Bond came out on stage during this showcase and made it a point multiple times to mention that there is hardware coming that is going to be she specifically mentioned there's going to be another generation of consoles.

[00:04:46] And then you saw the new iteration of the Xbox Series X that's digital and stuff. So like they're they're putting their foot down, it seems for the time being, at least.

[00:04:54] Yeah. One thing that did catch my attention is one of the speakers is last name was like Butz or something or Rump. Matt Booty. Matt Booty. Yeah, that one really caught my attention. I'm like, Mr. Booty, that guy's been around for a long time.

[00:05:09] Yeah, Matt Booty has been around. Matt Booty is like number two under Philly Spence. So OK. Yeah, but like I don't know all the industry names or anything, but I saw that and it stopped me. It's better than the Bowser Nintendo guy. That's right. That's right.

[00:05:25] Oh my goodness. Yeah. But I mean, that's all I really remember from it. It's just game trailers. Yeah. But I mean, I would say more than anything else. And they played slow down Mad World. And I'm like, oh, come on.

[00:05:37] Yes. Well, they played slow down Mad World whenever they revealed Dominique Santiago on screen, which they had the motif. They had the motif in there. Yeah. Oh, and then another point there was like, what was it? It was like Elder Scrolls maybe or something.

[00:05:52] They played like that 80s song that always plays with the Elder Scrolls online. Well, yeah, it's awful. We'll be there together. You know that song. Oh, yeah. We belong to each other. Just real talk. Do you y'all know anybody that plays ESO still? Anybody?

[00:06:10] Yes, I know two people that like ESO. I mean, I like ESO, but I'm not playing it. Yeah. OK. That's fair enough. Oh, and then they did We Could Be Heroes for whatever that other game was. That other fantasy game Shrek 3.

[00:06:27] No, they did like a rock version of David Bowie's Heroes. Was it the Flintlock one? Man, I've been flow long. I don't know what I read. I'm just like, man, they're like I went for the ACDC to come on with like jet planes

[00:06:42] with Microsoft Flight Simulator to be like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like the planes like soar by or something like that. I don't know. Yeah, I'm excited. I can't watch trailers anymore. You couldn't you couldn't care less for it, Philip. Yeah, that makes sense.

[00:07:00] I watched it while mowing the lawn with like my phone in one hand. I'm pushing the lawnmower the other and Arthur's cheering me on. Right. So I didn't even have like, I don't know, a viewing experience with the Texas sun blazing down on me. It right.

[00:07:12] The screen is completely washed out of my iPhone as it's overheating. But, you know, it looked good enough. Yeah, yeah, I would say that the one the one game that made me pop off harder than I think pretty much anything. Obviously, Gears was sensational.

[00:07:29] I didn't even I forgot that it was rumored to be at the showcase. So for it to show up at the very end, I was like, yo, this is crazy. I wasn't even expecting it, especially after stalker and all the other awesome games that were there.

[00:07:41] But the one that made me pop off the most out of all of them was the clear obscure Expedition 33 game, which is like a western style persona game turn based combat. It looked freaking beautiful. It was amazing. It had fast turn based combat.

[00:07:58] I was like, oh, this is amazing. This is exactly what I want. That was one of the ones I couldn't see any of the visuals. But just listening to the audio of that trailer sounded pretty damn good. I'm like, man, I play this Dungeons and Dragons campaign.

[00:08:09] Well, yeah, they were lining it out. That's right. Anyway, we talked about that at length. If you want to go hear our in-depth thoughts, go listen to Friday Night Gamecast. But link will be in the description below.

[00:08:21] And this week we are going to be talking about and we get the title. Sinuas Saga Hellblade 2. But before we get there, let's just check in with what games we have been playing. Nave, what have you been playing? Is Sinuas Saga really before Hellblade 2?

[00:08:35] It's after it's Hellblade 2, Sinuas Saga. But it can go either way. It can go either way. That's the first thing that you see in the titling. But it's like the logo has it first. Yeah, that's right. It's weird. Like how it's Black Flag Assassin's Creed 4, not Assassin's Creed 4.

[00:08:51] Exactly. Right. Yeah. Or Black Flag 4. Speaking of 4, Star Fox 64. Star Fox. Yeah, I see that on your list. Did you get the true ending? Did you save your dad? No, I did not. I didn't know what I was doing. So I was just kind of playing passively.

[00:09:09] I didn't realize it was as short as it was because I thought I was going to go to the end there and then just turn around and go do the rest of the planets. I didn't realize they were paths. So I was like, oh, shit.

[00:09:18] Oh yeah, there's a path. Okay. Certain path to get the true ending. You have to like zigzag. You can't just go like all bottom. You'd like the hoops and shit. I don't know. I'm not doing that.

[00:09:28] The question that I have is that I know about Wolf because of Super Smash Bros, but is Wolf Fox's dad? No, no. Okay. It's like a bad guy. No, no. So the Star Fox boys and then Wolf is just the leader of the other guys. Okay.

[00:09:49] They're like the bad guys or are they like friends? They're bad guys. You kill them. You fucking murder them. No, they don't die. They do not die for the record. Despite their ships exploding into the ground. Yeah. I like to see you later. Weird monkey man or whoever.

[00:10:05] I don't know what's funny in those games. Like they have the fucking their legs cut like from the knees down and they have every time Star Fox comes up. Yeah. But Nick wasn't here. Wait, who has robot legs? Everyone. The whole crew has amputated legs. No fucking way.

[00:10:22] Yeah. Yeah. Seriously. Like people from having like that legs in Smash Bros. Fox kicks really fast and everything and is able to do is like they have robot legs. I never knew this. How did I not know this is insane?

[00:10:37] Is it because like they can't have legs inside of the spaceship? They need mechanical legs to operate the spaceships.

[00:10:44] No, it's because apparently it's because the blood would rush from their legs up to their brain and then rush back down and doing that repeatedly will cause them to pass out and die due to the forces.

[00:10:56] But so they clarified in the first two games like Star Fox and Star Fox 2. That's that was a lore. But in 64, they start the game where they have a new technology called the G diffusers. DG diffusers. Am I correct? DG diffusers.

[00:11:12] It was like the first line of dialogue. They're like activate G diffusers in the whole point is it defuses whatever. Defuses the blood. Yeah, the G forces. Something's wrong with the G diffusers.

[00:11:27] So they're not going to pass out from their extreme speed even though you're not actually that fast. Okay. So it retconned it retconned them being amputees. There's still amputees in 64. That sucks. I would be so pissed. I was like, you cut my legs off to fly this spaceship.

[00:11:47] But then you have the technology for it. What the fuck, man? Is Master Chief pissed that he's a eunuch or whatever? Because all the other because that's how it is. No, he keeps his dick. He just has metal bones and like adamantate like muscles and stuff.

[00:12:03] I remember there's some like reason why the new Spartans, there's so many of them because you don't have to kidnap children anymore because that's how Buck becomes a Spartan. They just go recruit him. They turn the Spartan threes are just ODSTs.

[00:12:15] They started like a recruitment campaign and they figured out like a formula to like inject the like the normal people that they don't need like the pinnacle human species. They can just inject like eight stories tall or whatever. Exactly. Exactly. That's why they're the lesser.

[00:12:31] They're the lesser Spartans. That's why Master Chief looks down on like the white Spartan in Halo five. Yeah, I love it. Anyway, Star Wars 64. I put it in B tier. That's pretty good. I was so I guess it pissed you off more.

[00:12:51] No, it pissed you off less than Ghostwire, but more than what is that? Hotline Miami. Miami. That's what the two games it's between. No, I would say that I was having like a moderate amount of fun the entire time. Oh, except I went to the sun level.

[00:13:08] Oh my God. Levels terrible is terrible. I was like, how do I how do I live? How did I beat this game as a child? And then I realized, oh, I could have just went to a different path, but I didn't.

[00:13:17] So now I've got to beat it because I'm losing. And every time you die, you restart. You don't have your good laser beams anymore. You have good shields or blazers or anything. So I had to tough it out, man. And I did. I beat it.

[00:13:29] But I didn't even use safe states, which are which exist on on the switch. But yeah, it was I had a moderate amount of fun the whole time, except at the very beginning. I was having a lot of fun because those are the levels I remember the most.

[00:13:41] The first two. But yeah, the game I played after that was Bramble the Mountain King. I think that's what I'm so so talk to me about this one because I really like this one. I also beat it last year.

[00:13:55] Nick, have you been it before we go into full spoilers? I have. I have. OK, yeah. OK, so yeah, what are you saying on this? The game the game just left Game Pass. So if you're listening to this, it's on Game Pass anymore.

[00:14:06] That's why I ended up playing it. And I remember specifically Jordan Berserker this was who was on our finals episode. He was talking really highly about this on Twitter. And so I went ahead and played it.

[00:14:20] This game is weird because I had an A tier like in my brain while I was playing. I was like, this is definitely a but as I played it when I got towards the end,

[00:14:28] the last few the last like 45 minutes to an hour like dragged it down to a B because like all of the last boss fight where they play the Peggle song, they do play the Peggle song. But the last boss fight is awful. It's so bad.

[00:14:43] It's not what you guys saw with the last boss fight was the best part of the game. Everything before that was dog shit. What? That's wrong. I feel completely I don't want to say wrong, but I feel completely opposite of what you're saying.

[00:14:55] Fight in the woods against that crazy looking chicken. You have to shoot the bodies off. That was easy. Oh, I struggled on that for like that was so hard for me. I love that boss fight. That was one of my favorites. I love that.

[00:15:08] I love that boss fight and the imagery of the the Watcher like the crow, I guess, death when you're rowing on the rowboat towards the mountain and he covers your eyes up. The like I did it cool. It was the imagery was cool.

[00:15:22] The mechanics of that boss fight was kind of weird and wonky. I died quite a few times on that, but I just love the imagery of that. And I still love the imagery of the last one. I just think that like they did not smooth out.

[00:15:34] Obviously, the game as a whole, and I'm sure Nave agrees with this, but like the mechanics of the game or were not polished barely at all. Once they published it, I did a lot of jumping at things and falling through the floor. I mean, like why? Yeah.

[00:15:46] And they just like for the last boss fight, they don't do a proper job of telegraphing the timing. And that really pissed me off for sure. And I died quite a few times trying because like Nave was selling this on our show as well.

[00:15:58] He was saying that like, you know, I knew exactly what I needed to do. I just was completely fucking up the timing every single time because of the jank. Yeah. Or sometimes what would happen is like so there's a fight attack where like stalactites will fall down.

[00:16:10] And that sometimes they'll fall directly behind you. And I'm like, oh no, I don't know where I'm at. And then I'll get hit by another stalactite. And I'm like, oh my God, there is no fucking possible way I could have avoided that.

[00:16:19] I don't know how or like some or like you'll go you'll do something like do the double swing. And I'm like, OK, I'll attack that right as it slams down on me. And I'm like, why did he attack so fast? Like that's so crazy.

[00:16:31] Like I didn't even have an opportunity to shoot back. That's great. But it didn't matter. I beat it and I thought it was good because BT here is good. Not that bad. Yeah.

[00:16:40] What? So the opposite of that, the game I played directly after that was Gris or Gris. I just talked about this on Friday Night Gamecast because Will and Nick have both been telling me,

[00:16:50] as a matter of fact, a bunch of people have been telling me to play this game, probably like eight or nine people. And this game was the opposite of Bramble where I had it in BT here for most of the time.

[00:17:00] And then as I got to the end, I pushed it up to a tier because I don't know. I was saying I was in a party at the end of it, but I cried a little bit at the end because it's just sad.

[00:17:10] But it's like I love this artsy fartsy pretentious shit. I fucking love it. I love it so much. It's my favorite shit. And so it was an easy A. And what's really interesting is that in the game Summer Showcase, the creators of Gris aren't.

[00:17:29] They revealed another game which looks similar to this. So I was like, oh, cool. We forgot to bring that up. Damn, we did forget to bring it up. There's just so many games. There's too much to talk about.

[00:17:39] Speaking of too many games, I started playing on my Switch after Starbucks 64. I started playing Golden Sun and on the Game Boy Advance. And then my fucking Switch dock died. So now I can't dock my Switch anymore. Like it charges. It charges. But now it literally.

[00:17:56] So when I put it down on there, it'll change my my HDMI. It recognizes the Switch is on there and the Switch recognizes that it's being in dock mode. And because I could push the buttons on the Joy-Cons and it'll move stuff around and click on stuff.

[00:18:09] But the TV is just black screen. And I don't. And I've updated the dock. I've reset the Switch. I've unplugged everything and plugged it back in. I've changed the HDMI. Nothing works. So I don't know what the malfunction is. I don't know if it's my TV or what.

[00:18:22] Like I even found this weird obscure thing was like just change the resolution to 720. Undock it, change the resolution, dock it again. And then undock it and then change it back to 1080 and then dock it again. And that should work. And I'm like, doesn't work.

[00:18:35] I don't know what to do. I will say that replacement docks on Amazon are very cheap. You can find them for like 20, 25 bucks. I think it makes me so mad. Yeah, I literally haven't touched my Switch for nine months. Yeah.

[00:18:48] And the moment I start playing it again, it decides to die. Like it's so far. It's annoying. Yeah. But so I'm not playing. I am playing. I'm still playing Golden Sun, but at a very slow pace now.

[00:18:59] And then I so instead of that, I've been playing Lost Judgment, which is the last like Ryogoku game that I haven't played yet. So I'm just slowly making my way through that. But I'm realizing that this game is going to absorb me and I'm afraid of that.

[00:19:14] It's the sequel to Judgment, right? Yes. This is the second in the Judgment series with Yagami, Detective Agency or whatever. And I love it. Holy shit. There's a couple of games and I need to be.

[00:19:28] We need both of me and Philip both need to beat Lords of the Fallen, so I can't I can't get super dunked into this because Lords of the Fallen is long. Are you think you're going to be able to beat it before next week or whenever you're recording?

[00:19:43] Probably not, but I will. Yes. I think I can unless the game gets harder. I think I'm like halfway through. And I know it. We're recording that with Nate of the Elder Trolls. And I know that he wants to play at least one more time.

[00:19:58] And last time we played, we beat like six bosses. So I was like, okay, I can probably just rush through this game as far as I can and then get him to help me through the last of it. I'm probably gonna have to help Philip backwards

[00:20:11] move forward up, which is gonna just take more time. But I mean, that's how these games go. Lord of the Fallen's multiplayer is really good though. Philip, you got anything to say? Cause we probably shouldn't talk too much about it.

[00:20:23] All right, yeah, not that we go too much into it. So far I just started up. I'm really enjoying it. I actually like it a lot. It has some rough edges. There's a lot of frame drops, like a very high amount of frame drops. Oh my God, dude.

[00:20:38] It's insane, especially at the beginning. Like there's that one area with, like the very beginning where you were at right before you fight the angel. Dude, there's frame drops everywhere. I don't know what the fuck's going on. I don't know why, but even whenever it's like

[00:20:54] such a low powered area where it's like, this is like a city with a, there's not even like crazy effects going on that I can tell. This isn't a huge, I don't know. I don't know why it drops, but it's just poorly optimized in the beginning area.

[00:21:08] But yeah, not to say too much about it. We'll be getting into that next week. But before then I've been playing another large chunk, like just like I bring up every week for the last, like, I don't know, five weeks. I'm playing Octopath Traveler 2.

[00:21:20] The game is so goddamn long. It's so long that it's come back, or no, it just released on Game Pass. Yep. I'm 44 hours in on the Switch version. So I'm not going to be switching over to the 4K Xbox version, sadly. But it's a good game.

[00:21:40] It's on Game Pass right now. Everyone, if you're Game Pass, which I assume most people have, go play Octopath Traveler 2. I can't really recommend the first one, but Octopath Traveler 2? It's pretty bangers. And the Japanese? Not hard. Go do that one.

[00:21:55] But it's like a million hours long, isn't it? No, it's like 64 hours long, I think on how long it'll be. Let me double check. But it's not bad. Oh, my computer's running really slow. So I'm not going to check that. That's okay, no worries.

[00:22:07] So yeah, that's all I've been playing besides Hellblade, which I threw on my tier list. Top of C rank. We'll be talking more about that later. So we'll just leave that there. Nick is making a visually stunned look. He is the emoji with the top open.

[00:22:25] I am disconcerted right now. I don't know if I'm going to be able to get through the rest of this episode, no. I'm kidding. Yeah, so I've been playing- It seems good. That's like a 7.5 out of 10 or something. You put this- Just for reference. Yeah. Resident Evil 3?

[00:22:41] I mean, have you played Resident Evil 3? Yes, I love Resident Evil 3. I've played all of our Rezi remakes. I thought you were going to bring up Rise of the Tomb Raider or Dragon Quest Treasures. Like you put it below Dragon Quest fucking treasures. Anyway, we'll get into it.

[00:22:58] I'm very curious to see what you have to say. But besides Hellblade, I have been playing a good bit. It's been quite a while since I was on Gaming Together. So I'm not 100% sure what I've caught up the Gaming Together audience on,

[00:23:10] what I've been doing for the folks who, the audience we don't share, of course. But obviously, rolled credits on Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, have stuff that plans in the work for that. This is motion in the background, a lot of stuff moving parts going on

[00:23:24] with the review for that. But the review is incoming. And I've also been working on a really, really good show with Rick from Pixel Project Radio. I played and I beat Xeno Saga, episode one, Derville Zemmacht. And it is an absolute mind boggling RPG, incredible freaking RPG.

[00:23:44] Get ready if you wanna play this game, you better like the Yakuza games because those cut scenes are 25 minute plus long experiences, but they are just jam packed with some of the most interesting cool writing that I have ever experienced in RPG.

[00:23:59] I didn't even know that people who were making RPGs back then had the capacity to go into like ideas of philosophy or psychology as deeply as they go into it in Xeno Saga. And my understanding is that it's a spiritual successor

[00:24:14] to Xeno Gears, so if you enjoy those, definitely it's something for you. But yeah, Xeno Saga, episode one, Derville Zemmacht, you got Cosmos and Shion and all the gang over there. Very, very fun game. Rolled credits on Dragon's Dogma II, more like Dragon's dog shit too.

[00:24:34] Fucking awful game, fucking terrible. Oh my God. I hated that game. I hated that game with a- Successfully divided all the Hellblade and Dragon's Dogma stands. I can't tell who's memeing or not. He's not. I am dead serious.

[00:24:50] I fucking, I did not have a good time with that game. I think that the level design or like the, actually the world design is like F tier garbage. I was running back and forth from checkpoints for no real reason. There is not enough enemy boss designs.

[00:25:07] They try to build multiple open world systems in that game and they fail to like come to fruition on each of those ideas. Like any, there's no faction quest, there's nothing. And yes, I understand it is an ARPG. It's not a traditional like run across the map JRPG

[00:25:23] or even WRPG, but at the same time, the combat is cool and flashy for the first 25 hours and then it's like waist deep in terms of being shallow. Like you do a million different classes, but even like the ultimate classes

[00:25:37] that you unlock in later game aren't even really that good because they're debuffed by other structures that are in place for those classes. So I can't really get too deep into it on the show, but we are gonna review it.

[00:25:48] We have Matt Stormregeddin that's coming on the show. Matt is great, does fun and games that they, Matt does fun and game podcast and they do a really, really great show over there. So go ahead and make sure that check those out. But yeah, that's incoming.

[00:26:02] Dragon's Domine, too, didn't have a good time, but that doesn't mean that anybody else can't have a good time, that's fine. I'm just not a Capcom shill like Will is. Oh, Will was shilling on the episode we are on. He was, he was, it's a bit now.

[00:26:17] But yeah, so I've been playing that. I rolled credits on Animal Well. Really, really enjoyed this. I heard you on different episode, Phil talking about this game. It is 110% a Philip ass Philip game. So you would enjoy it. You just play this cute little potato

[00:26:33] running around this well. There's a lot of mystery in it. You kind of learn about the level design and how the different enemies interact. There's not really traditional combat. There's just cool, interesting ways to learn how to avoid the enemies. But yeah, like incredible Metroidvania design,

[00:26:48] incredible like feedback loop in terms of gameplay exploration and the secrets, like the secret rooms to find them. Every single time you figure out there's a little like hole in the wall and you can go back there and find it.

[00:27:01] Be like, oh my God, I didn't know this thing was here. Like it's the most fulfilling, like serotonin rush to the brain. Yeah, so really, really good and good game there. And then the last one that I'm not super far in, I just finished act one.

[00:27:11] It's a Tales of Kinzira Zao. It's one of the new ones that people are just moaning about online with the sweet baby ink evangelizers and all that shit. But it's a really good game. I would say in terms of a like 2D, you know, Metroidvania platformer,

[00:27:27] you know, action platformer that it is. It's right up there with what I played from Prince of Persia, The Lost Crown. And The Lost Crown was a really excellent demo. I didn't play the entirety of that game so I don't have full thoughts

[00:27:39] but Zao so far has been really, really good in terms of both voice acting and just like the combat is really fresh. And it is polished. It's really well polished. I don't have issues with mantling. There's not really any jank. Like the enemies are fun to combat against

[00:27:55] and they put you in different arenas that you have to kind of figure out with a puzzle. But yeah, really, really fun. So that's all I've been up to. Not a Tales game. No, that was my first one. Like I've heard of this one.

[00:28:06] Yeah, no, this is based off of African mythology and specifically I think Nigerian mythology and it's kind of about the loss of a father and directly inspired by the director's loss of his dad. And so yeah, it's really, really good one. Nice, nice. All right. What was that?

[00:28:25] Nave, any purchases lately? No, console ticket, concert tickets. Again? No, no. No, Nave, you need groceries. You don't need to go see music. It's all right. You got AirPods on your desk right there. Well, you only say food will feed your body but music feeds your soul, right?

[00:28:43] Yeah. That's the spirit, Phillip. But no, I didn't, I really didn't buy anything. Well, that's okay. Oh, that's a lie. I bought Devil May Cry 5. Oh, I bought that a while back. Awesome. Yeah. Have you played it before or is this just for fun?

[00:28:58] No, but it was like $8. So, it's real cheap on Steam. Yeah. Yeah. And so I, man, Devil May Cry hard but the newer ones not so hard. So, you're waggling my eyebrows. Yeah, thank you Capcom. Showing for Capcom. There you go. The Capcoms did it again.

[00:29:18] Now, dear listeners, if you want to show for us we actually have a Patreon and here at Game Together we work hard to provide excellent co-op content for you the listener when we talk about games like Hellblade 2. So, if you have means, please consider supporting us on Patreon.

[00:29:31] The link is in the description. Here's a list of our current supporters. For those who are this, Kio Caffe, Mr. Quang, Insane Cracker, Nick Knight and the Intergalactic Pinecone. Thank you for all your support. He's even highlighted. Thank you boys. Thanks for doing everything that you do.

[00:29:46] I don't think that you get told that enough but I appreciate every week that Game Together drops and I have some quality laughs to listen to every week. Oh, thanks. We appreciate it. I always just imagine people are like, this sucks. Just laughing at us.

[00:29:59] Yeah, just clicks away. Which maybe you're talking about our stupid, what does it call? Like the statistics or analytics here on YouTube and you're like, somebody watched a whole scene of The Sopranos and then watched 50 minutes of one of our episodes.

[00:30:14] It is crazy what you can see on YouTube. You can see some really in detail shit. I could see somebody looking up like butter, like butter pecan recipes and somehow finding our hell, our fucking episode. All right. Now it's time for the aim of the asshole section.

[00:30:33] Moving right along. We go online, find some people that are in doubt if they are the asshole in fact, usually gaming related, most of the time gaming related and we weigh in to let them know if they're assholes. Now, co-op partners here in the studio,

[00:30:46] I tried to find some Hellblade related assholes. You want to know how much luck I had? None. Zero one. There's one I found from four years ago. It is linked in the notes. Just that you are all send you a sacrifice. It is asshole. This from Jordan balls.

[00:31:07] Who wants to read this one, boys? I got it. This one's mine. I found it. That's right. That's right. You did it. It's all you back off. Am I the asshole for throwing my boyfriend's phone four years ago? Reddit preemptively says everyone sucks, but I don't know.

[00:31:22] We'll see. Yes. I know by the title alone, I should be the asshole, but hear me out. Last Sunday, my boyfriend and I were sitting in bed. I was playing Hellblade game mentioned. We did it guys. Hellblade. And decided to switch to Minecraft for a while.

[00:31:39] He saw this and started joking with me saying, oh, was your other game too hard? And things like that. I started to give it back asking him, isn't he late for getting bodied and caught with his friends? Oh, damn. Damn. She got his ass. Got him.

[00:31:57] Right to the ego. This continued for a minute. We play and wrestle a little bit. I grabbed his phone and said, begone! And then toss it to the end of the bed, but I overshot it and ended up on the floor. No damage.

[00:32:10] He went quiet, grabbed his phone, showered and left. Wouldn't even look at me. Like she cast a spell. Yeah. What? All right. Next paragraph. Later in the day, I asked him what was wrong. He said that I threw his phone into the hall

[00:32:28] and told him to get out. And he wanted me to apologize for this borderline abusive behavior. I was surprised. I didn't see that way at all. And I thought we were both playing with each other like we normally do. I did apologize for the phone hitting the ground.

[00:32:41] I expressed this to him and explained that wasn't my intention to be violent in any way. He clearly wasn't interested in talking about it and just went back to watching a video. I went back to bed. It's been almost a week and due to our opposing schedules,

[00:32:54] we don't see each other. So there hasn't been an opportunity to pursue the conversation further. I've been thinking about it a lot and I'm trying to see it from his perspective, but I just don't understand how the situation got so miscontrued, misconstrued. So am I the asshole here?

[00:33:09] Now, before we begin our deliberations, justices of the court, I wanted to ask about the Reddit because I'm not as familiar with Reddit. I see in the comments, there's this Eden Gone Dark and they have Supreme Court Just Ass and then under this, NickyFrag69, it says certified proctologist.

[00:33:30] What are those labels? What is that? Those are the ranks or levels you can get on am I the asshole. Oh, okay. So the more you comment or the more you upload or whatever you gain levels. The more interactions you do,

[00:33:39] you actually level up on am I the asshole. The gamified it. Okay, okay. Got it. Reddit label this everyone sucks. Yeah they did. Oh, yeah. This didn't get a lot of traffic by the way. This got like three votes. And 26 comments over four years.

[00:33:59] So this is at zero interaction. That's crazy. I'm gonna give them one just for the, oh, I'm not logged in. Wait, I can't, it won't let me. It's archived. I think it's archived. Yeah, it's too old. Okay. Damn. Is it being an asshole for throwing the phone

[00:34:14] and saying be gone? No, it's dumb. Yeah, it's a real dumb. This is a dumb argument. It sounds like a little pookie bear got his feelings. He's a little bit hurt. He got hurt. Yeah. Maybe we didn't hear how she yelled be gone.

[00:34:29] Maybe she said it like a bitchy. Like a fucking horror creature. That's the funniest thing to say to somebody. Like if someone told me be gone, be gone foul demon. I would be like, okay, I'd like you but I'm leaving anyway. I don't know, man.

[00:34:45] Like yeah, it sounds like he got absolutely like he got, he went zero in 16 for like back to back games on Cod with the bros. And this just like right after that this just hit him real hard and he's being a little quiet crybaby.

[00:35:00] I don't think you can use be gone in a serious manner. No, I don't think so. I don't think so. That's not standard English. Go away with the. I actually yell at Molly. Be gone is one of them. Is that if she's near me

[00:35:13] and I don't want her near me anymore. She understands be gone. You gotta wave your hand dismissively. This whole thing seems like a Tumblr relationship. I don't know how to even. They gotta be like 2021 surely, right? Maybe earlier. This is four years ago too.

[00:35:37] I would say maybe, I mean, I don't know. Late teens, early twenties. I think they're just dumb. No one's an asshole here. No one's an asshole. Yeah, I mean, I think he's an asshole for overreacting. I think she was just trying to be jokey jokey

[00:35:53] but probably didn't read the room and overstepped a line and hurt little pooky bears. Ouchie part. Oh, poor pooky bear. All right, who wants next? Oh, you got one, Nick. We gotta pick the next one. Yeah, I'm happy to do it. Let me go to the sheet.

[00:36:11] The sheets, the toilet sheet. Let me access the sheet. Okay, so these are still available. These are all like up to date. Yeah, it's not grayed out. It's good to go. Okay. Number 19. I see it. Oh, this is a juicy one. Oh shit. Okay.

[00:36:28] Oh yeah, this one is pretty big. No warnings? No, no, maybe I didn't screen this one. All right. Please don't give me any crook. All right, so this one is, am I the asshole for telling my sister to check herself? It is a throw away. Yeah.

[00:36:48] The name being throw away two underscores 550. There you go. So it could be like a made up asshole, superficial asshole. I 28 female have a twin sister, Wendy, and an older sister, Anna 31. Wendy has a daughter under five. I have two kids under five. Why is this relevant?

[00:37:07] And Anna has five kids, LOL. Her first ones. I didn't say LOL. That was in the notes by the way for dear listeners, but her first ones were twins and I believe the last two were surprises, which is why she has something. Damn girl. They're all boys under 10.

[00:37:25] Anna is a wonderful mother. That's a war zone house. Crazy household. Yeah, Anna is a wonderful mother. She was told that she would never have children and I'm pretty sure she's had two miscarriages, but clearly she defied those odds. But yeah, she's always been very quote unquote motherly

[00:37:42] and her husband is pretty much perfect as well. Anna treats all her kids equally and makes time for all of them despite having a job. She makes sure they're loved and also well behaved. The boys are obviously very happy and sometimes I wish Anna was my mom. Haha.

[00:37:56] This is pissing me off. Yeah. Why is this so much preamble? Get to the asshole. Anyways, yesterday was one of my nephew's birthdays and he had apparently asked for a Pokemon themed birthday party and Anna and her husband went all out. Lots of his friends were there too

[00:38:12] and it was just impressive. Wendy was there, but I noticed that she was looking really annoyed. I asked her what was up and she just sighed and said, it's nothing before giggling to herself. Eventually she came up to me and said, do you plan on having more kids?

[00:38:25] Question mark. I said no because I'm done personally and she went, ah, so you're not insane like Anna. Good. I asked her what she meant by that thinking she was just joking as well as the three of us have made similar jokes before but she just went,

[00:38:40] oh, only selfish people have more than two kids. It's unfair to the children as they don't get equal attention and it's just a massive red flag when a family has more than two children. All right, hold on, pause. Who is she talking to? Her daughter?

[00:38:53] She's talking to her younger sister. Yeah, her twin. Oh, her sister. Okay, I was expecting, okay. In my brain a child is saying this and I'm like what the fuck? Yeah, there's the older sister Anna and then her twin Wendy and she's talking to Wendy at this point.

[00:39:10] And then Anna has a twin. No. Anna has twins. OP is twin with Wendy. OP and Wendy are twins. Anna gave birth to twins. So twins run in the family. Many twins have twins. There's multiple twins. There's multiple twins. I see, yes. Very, very cool.

[00:39:31] So yeah, red flag when family has more than two children. I told her to pull her head out of her ass because we both know that Anna would never do anything to her, never do anything to her kids. I'm assuming anything wrong to her kids.

[00:39:43] Those boys are all happy and love their mother and father to pieces. I know we don't see what's behind closed doors but Anna recently told me that she hasn't felt happy in years. So happy, so happy. She hasn't felt so happy in years. That changes the sentence.

[00:39:58] There's literally zero evidence of Anna showing favoritism, selfishness, et cetera. Wendy just went, I'm just saying I can barely handle my one kid. I really doubt she can handle all five of hers. See how extra this party is? It's all just to compensate

[00:40:13] and make people think she's a good mom. Man, this girl is chirpin', dude. Holy shit. She's yappin'. She's a yappinator 5000 at this party. Yeah, I got really annoyed because while no mother is perfect, Anna is a good mom, I just don't really appreciate shaming mothers

[00:40:28] unless they are actually terrible people either. I told her that this just sounds like a you problem and she needs to check herself because she's definitely projecting. Wendy rolled her eyes, called me a bitch before leaving with her husband and daughter. She also isn't responding to my texts.

[00:40:43] My friends say Wendy has had a point and that I was the asshole and I should apologize but I don't know. Oh man, this is intense. It sounds like a family squabble. No, I mean it's not that intense. It sounds like the sister probably,

[00:41:01] sisters talk shit about each other all the time. I think. I'm not a sister so I don't know for sure. I'm not a woman. I've been called out for trying to project onto women before on the show so I'm not gonna assume the way women think or feel

[00:41:16] but I know that sisters talk shit about each other all the time very blithely and they don't mean anything wrong by it. I just think that this was a very off colored remark in that she just kept digging. She kept digging deeper when she could have been like,

[00:41:29] oh yeah you're right and me. Yeah, yeah, yeah, she did. She didn't let up for it. What do you guys think? I don't know. I live in a family of clowns. So like we like, okay so one of my friends was over and I answered my mom's,

[00:41:44] my mom was calling me. I answered the phone. I'm like what the fuck do you want? And she's like, you're a fucking idiot. You know that? And my friend is like, holy shit. But we just talk like that.

[00:41:54] We're just stupid and then we just talk for like an hour but they're like I could never talk to my mom like that and I'm just like dude, I don't, yeah we're clowns. Do you get most of your personality from your mom? I am legitimately like 50-50.

[00:42:08] So all the angry screaming chaoticness is from my dad and all of the goofy laid back silliness is from my mom. I definitely like that. But yeah so it's really interesting seeing people like actually like kind of gossip because this is all this really is, is just gossiping

[00:42:26] because neither of these people could really know what it's like behind closed doors because it's like the moth on the party could very well be compensating for something or they could just like really, really like birthday parties. I mean I don't know.

[00:42:37] Yeah, it could be as simple as that. They said oh, do we know which birthday it is for the kid? Maybe it's like the, I thought maybe I read the fifth birthday party or something but either way they seem young and so it's just like, yeah he's asking

[00:42:52] for a Pokemon themed birthday party. He's clearly young and it might be like a fifth or a seventh birthday. I don't know, you probably know better than I do, Philip. Pokemon themed birthday party. I mean I wouldn't say no to a Pokemon themed party.

[00:43:03] Somebody wanted to throw it for me. I don't want to do shit for it. Yeah, I don't want to do shit either. But the thing is that I would go all out occasionally. Like some birthdays are gonna be more important than others, right Phil?

[00:43:16] I think that you put in that extra effort for like a Hallmark birthday party or something like that. Like a quinceañera or a sweet 16 or even younger, once in a blue moon and then other birthdays is like you're watching movie,

[00:43:28] you have a birthday cake and you go to bed. But yeah, no I think that it was definitely out of pocket for the twin sister Wendy to be like, she's yapping a whole lot about kids. Yeah, I feel like. Do you have to call her out?

[00:43:44] At the quinceañera? Well, I think they were both. It probably like it makes sense to get defensive over a family member, even though if it is to another family member, you know what I mean? Yeah. It's like you, if you, I mean,

[00:43:58] I can understand why someone would get defensive. Maybe you shouldn't call them out like multiple times because she definitely went back to continue arguing about it. But I feel like whenever you're with somebody who is just being aggressive, like just for no reason,

[00:44:13] cause you're at a birthday party and you're being aggressive about the birthday party, you kind of look like a fucking asshole right away. Yeah. Like you didn't have to come to this. I just, some people really do wanna come to the defense of people and I understand that.

[00:44:28] I don't know if, I think that cause there's an inverse thing here too, right? The what's her name? Anna has lots of kids. So there's the girl saying, oh she's compensating and stuff. But if I feel like the more kids you have,

[00:44:39] the more you want to go out for birthday parties because everyone, it's like, okay, if you have one kid and you throw a big birthday party, it's your kid, you and your husband all gaining, right? But if you have two kids, now there's two kids enjoying themselves

[00:44:53] at the birthday party. If you have three kids, now there's three kids having, you know what I mean? So the more kids that are involved, the more fun it is to do these things, right? So it probably, she gets a lot of fulfillment

[00:45:03] in going all out for holidays and birthdays and stuff. Yeah. Like it's probably, she's getting just as much out of this as the kids are getting. I don't know if it necessarily needs to be some kind of like whatever she said. I have- Go ahead, Phil.

[00:45:18] No, I mean we're in agreeance that Anna is not in the wrong in this. I think across the board, of course, Anna's fine for throwing a bad ass Pokemon party. That's fine. But I think the big debate in this,

[00:45:30] I know she wrote a lot, but it basically comes down to the details are Wendy's talking shit and ROP then went back and said, everything you just said, Wendy, that's actually you. You're the issue. You're projecting. You're projecting everything you just said. Your own unworthiness onto Anna.

[00:45:48] It bounces off me, sticks to you, your glue type bullshit or whatever. Yeah, and then Wendy rolled her eyes and went bye bitch and then left. Like I'm not taking this from you. I can't believe you said that to my face. Yeah. Well, something that they touched on

[00:46:00] that I think like I don't necessarily think that Wendy is 100% wrong about is the idea of having like, I don't personally agree with her outlook on saying, oh, if you have more than two, you can't pay enough attention. You just gotta be a good parent.

[00:46:16] You just gotta be a good parent, have attention to detail and be organized. And I would say if you're having like eight to 10 kids, yeah, then it's hard to give them individualized attention. But five kids, as long as you're a good parent

[00:46:28] and as long as you're proactive and productive and well organized, you can give your kids the proper amount of attention. They don't need to be helicopter parented all the time. But I just like, I think she's kind of casting this idea

[00:46:42] of it being morally reprehensible to have more than two because of the whole human population growth rate. Like we're going at an exponential rate. We're consuming resources too highly. But I just don't think that's fair to put that on Wendy, right? Oh, hold on. We got something.

[00:46:57] So this person commented twice and I don't know what she's saying to this, who she's replying to, but she said she's always wanted only one kid, but that's mostly because she's terrified of giving birth. So I think what you're saying kind of makes sense,

[00:47:12] but I think she's working backwards. She has a stance and now she has to justify it rather than working up through experience to have like, you know what I'm saying? Like going from top down rather than bottom up, which is usually where people start to get mad

[00:47:30] at each other because you don't have the ability to articulate the things that you think. And sometimes people get to conclusions that they don't have the necessary experience or foundation to fall back on. So I think it's kind of one of those things,

[00:47:48] which is why she just like, as soon as she gets called out, she's just like, okay, bye. And then she just doesn't talk about it at all. She already has this idea. She's not fighting. Yeah. And she already has this like internal like thought process of like,

[00:48:02] oh, it's selfish to have children because she subliminally is scared of childbirth. So she in order to justify to herself to not have more children has to project a morality onto other people, onto the people around her. Does that make sense?

[00:48:18] I don't know if I'm saying anything that makes sense. No, I understand what you're saying. All right, so Wayne in is our open asshole for checking her sister. I don't call her out. I'm on the side of saying that she's not an asshole.

[00:48:33] She probably could have handled it a little bit more gracefully, but I don't think she's the asshole. Yeah, doing it as a party is not an asshole. But she could have deferred it. She could have like kind of like kept the peace. Like, yeah, I hear you,

[00:48:51] but like we'll talk about it later or something. And just been like, okay, let's have Pokemon, Pokemon time. I want a Bulbasaur, give me the Bulbasaur. Well, I think another thing is that because we're talking about the morality and stuff like that,

[00:49:03] she is projecting this sort of morality onto not just her sister, but to every woman. Like all women should feel selfish for having more than one kids. The OP might actually be taking offense to this because she might be considering having more kids.

[00:49:17] Because just because she doesn't have more than two kids doesn't mean that she doesn't want kids in the future. And so she might not only be getting- OP has two. Yeah, but she might exactly as you're saying, she might want to have more.

[00:49:27] Yeah, she might be getting defensive not only on her sister's behalf, but also on her own subliminally. She's not completely dismissive of the idea of having three children. So she is also included in the selfish woman archetype that this twin sister is setting up. I got a burp.

[00:49:42] That was awful. Well, my thing is that like, I think it's now, Philip, you have three kids. So I think you exclusively have a good looking glass into this whole situation. But I would never really characterize having a lot of kids as being particularly selfish

[00:49:59] because kids suck the soul out of your life. Like it is so much energy taking care of kids. Like they encompass, they absorb everything. You lose yourself when you have kids, right? So maybe, and people like big families. There are people out there who like big families.

[00:50:15] But I feel like it's like a little bit of cluelessness to say it's selfish for someone to have multiple kids. Well, I mean, you can do it selfishly or something. Yeah, I was like, what if I'm like, I wanna raise an army so I need as many bodies

[00:50:27] as possible. Yeah. Dude, the Louis CK joke where he's like, more of me! Pfft. That's so stupid. Louis CK, a piece of shit, but yeah. If we look at Hellblade and the Borg, they'd need as many men as they can get. So they'd be popping them out.

[00:50:48] Oh, the Bjork? The Bjork, okay, got it. I thought you were talking about the Borg from Star Trek. I haven't seen it. Wait a second, what? Okay, moving on. All right, but last round table, no assholes here, besides maybe the sister. Right? Yeah, everyone. Do you have one?

[00:51:08] Yeah, go to 28. 28? 28. I have to add no fours. Ha ha ha. I don't know if this is, so okay, so this isn't- Oh my god, just click on it and some of the words pop me out. Yeah, I hope. This is gonna be silly, I think.

[00:51:26] This embarrassed thinks 764. This is a throwaway account. And no comments either, so that's it. All right, so this says, am I the asshole for flirting, in quotes, with my friends? Uh oh. All right, I, 28 male, and my girlfriend, 29 female, Cougar. Generally, I'm just kidding.

[00:51:48] Generally have a pretty normal and stable relationship. I have this group chat of friends, all guys, whom I play games with once in a while. We used to do more. We used to do that more, but life kind of took over.

[00:52:02] Anyway, even though we don't do stuff together as much anymore, we still talk a lot and share memes. Recently, we've been doing this thing, oh God, where one person will share sexual content and everyone will re-share it in the group. Not porn, but stuff like, I just,

[00:52:23] I just jerked off to someone in this group chat. Or, it's not an orgy if none of the streams touch. And other such content that basically alludes to the group chat being a gay sex den. It doesn't matter if we're all straight. Say it, brother.

[00:52:38] It doesn't matter if we're all straight. If it matters, we are all straight. Okay, one day my girl, one day my girlfriend picked up my phone to do something and we have an open phone policy and it happened to unlock on the group chat.

[00:52:54] And I guess she got curious and scrolled. She got quite unhappy and we had a minor fight. Her position is that the content matters more than the intentions. And I guess she was like, more than the intentions. And I shouldn't be sending such things to anyone.

[00:53:10] Mine is that it's a joke. Admittedly not that funny to outsiders, but we think it's hilarious. All right, so OP has, you know, what was it? A gay sex den. A gay sex den. And, and, and, LARP chat or something, you know.

[00:53:28] Let me, let me, let me say this to you right now. If someone goes through the group chat messages and there is a bunch of like, obviously like gay, like joking, joating content that's in there amongst me and all of my friends in the group chat.

[00:53:43] You're basically just the goof troop, but just a whole bunch of gay texts to back and forth on Discord. And someone scrolls through that and they don't think it's fucking hilarious. I don't know if I want to be dating that person. She's not the one.

[00:53:55] She's not the one. Like what? Like why would you, why would you be like, oh no, you're not supposed to say this. Like what? Stop being gay with your friends. That's Brad. I've never touched his sword in my life. What are you talking about?

[00:54:09] Someone said two days ago in the group chat. Someone in the comments, my couch pulls out, I don't. Said, he said, nah, you're allowed to play gay chicken with your friends. Gay chicken is a great way to describe it.

[00:54:27] NTA gay stuff with the boys is important and healthy. Also, it doesn't matter if you're all male, male, female, say you're great. Your boys is boys. Yeah, so someone replied to this. That says if you aren't gay with your boys, are they even really your boys?

[00:54:41] It's like the Spartans thing. Seriously. Full on mouth kisses for the men. Yeah, high fives for the women, open mouth tongue kisses for the men. It's stupid. You can also say no homo if you're worried. Yes, good game. Good game. God, this is just stupid. This is awesome.

[00:55:00] I mean like seriously, all of ours were very stupid. Nave, like seriously, if you're dating a girl, you make a hinge match and you start dating a girl and then she like finds your phone and you and Phillip are like, oh man, I can't wait to get home

[00:55:14] so I can diddle your butt hole later at night. Like, and she gets mad and she gets like actually mad at that. How would you react? What would you say to her? I don't know. I wouldn't say, that sentence is hardcore. It's a bit full on.

[00:55:34] Maybe I disagree. Yeah, this is yeah. It doesn't leave a lot to the imagination, yeah. But I don't know. Like I, every now and then I'll message, I'll be like, oh nice cutie, thanks. You know what I mean? Just say it. See Phillip,

[00:55:47] Phillip remembers our friend from high school, Steven. Me and him were, we were flaming homos to each other and like we would be in lunch and we would sit in each other's laps and shit. Like we just acted like that. I don't know.

[00:56:01] Like there's just something about it. Like being like homoerogenous, is that what it's called? To another guy around a bunch of people. That just is, it's just a silly, silly joke. I don't know. If somebody was getting to answer the question, though if someone,

[00:56:16] if my girlfriend looked at my phone and saw me being gay with the boys and thought that I was, the person I'm talking to right now definitely wouldn't think that. So, but if she did, and that'd be very, that's just kind of not the person that I,

[00:56:29] I'm such a clown that it's so hard to not take anything I do as a joke. So it's like, it's so easy for me to be like that. How clear is that, that that's a joke? Like I say shit like, oh no my fucking,

[00:56:43] my arthritis is acting up. I can't do it. I don't have arthritis. Like I'm just fucking, I just don't want to do whatever is being said. I'll just say shit. So it's just hard for me to imagine someone getting mad at something that I say

[00:56:54] that is clearly like, I don't know, like not true. Yeah. Ah, ah. Oh, whoa, wait, wait, wait, hold on a second. What if there are other women in the boys group chat? No, it says they're all guys. What is it? It's, it does say they're all guys.

[00:57:14] That's true. That's true. Damn. I thought I had a good one there for a second. Cause that does, that does change it. That does change it. Are we able to be gay in the group chat if there were other girls there? Probably not. If you were,

[00:57:26] wait, hold on. If you're derogatory towards the women, I was like, wait, no, nevermind. That's not good. We can't do that. We can't be hating on the women also. No, we can't. We certainly can. YouTube has already banned us too many times. It's like. Hey.

[00:57:42] Where, wait, is the, did this mention games at all? Well. Oh, he says he plays games with the boys but not so much games. Oh, yes. Yes. Oh, games mentioned. Oh, games mentioned. Games mentioned. That's right. Oh man. Anyway, no assholes. I can have no assholes. Yeah.

[00:58:01] Even she's a little butt hurt but she'll probably rethink her stance later or something. She'll get over it. She'll get over it for sure. Is that a pun? Butt hurt? Yeah. All right, let's take a quick break and then we'll come back and hit Sinuas Hellblade Saga 2.

[00:58:13] Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, ba-doom. Are you guys saying Sinuas Hellblade 2 saga? There's a lot of words in this title. I don't even like the title. It's really not. Exactly four. Exactly four words. Dude, I just can't do titles of games or shows or anything.

[00:58:30] And then it's like, well, I forgot. There was a game that had a title. Maybe it was Flimlock and it had like a subtitle. There was another game that had like a really long title that I'm like, I'm never gonna remember this.

[00:58:41] Like, I don't know what it was. Yeah. And now I don't remember it. I, well, there was several. There was a Claire Obscure Expedition 33. No, that one wasn't bad because I just thought of Expedition 33. There's Flintlock, The Siege of Dawn. That's probably it.

[00:58:58] It was probably Flintlock and I'm like, what a title. Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. Now that one was okay because they explained, oh, you know what a great circle is. It's a circle. Yeah, they did! They did the thing. They're like, it's like a great circle

[00:59:11] and then he turns and looks at the camera. If you were to draw a line through these ancient sites around the globe, you'd get a perfectly aligned circle. The Great Circle. Exactly. You are in America watching American cartoons! Oh, it went so long on that joke.

[00:59:36] And I'm like, is this still the trailer? Yeah! And then at the end he turns and he's just like, yeah. I guess. He shrugs. Yeah, he's right. That stuff. That mouse in his little choo-choo train. All right. And we're back. Hellblade 2 Senua's Saga. Wait, that's probably the title.

[01:00:00] No, hold on. Hellblade 2 Senua's Saga. You got it right. Hellblade 2 Senua's Saga. You're over-cracking. The sequel to the award winning Hellblade Senua's sacrifice, Senua returns in a brutal journey of survival through the myth and torment of Viking Iceland. Intent on saving those who have fallen victim

[01:00:19] to the horrors of tyranny, Senua faces a battle of overcoming the darkness within and without. Very positive. Released May 21st, 2024. So super fresh. Very fresh game. It came out on Steam day and date. Looks like it. Holy shit. That's crazy. Ninja theory and published by Xbox. Yeah. Currently $50.

[01:00:44] Not even this isn't a 70. Just a little fee. Subscribe to Game Pass is free. It's also Game Pass Day one or whatever. Yeah. All right. So history preconceptions, mine for this game or whatever. You know, I really like the first one.

[01:00:58] This one looked pretty good besides, you know, there were shitty things in the first one, but I assume this one was going to fix all those. What about you, Nick? History preconceptions of this one. So I played Senua's sacrifice last year, I think.

[01:01:14] I actually have my backlog list. Let me go ahead and pull it up while I'm actually looking at it. It might have been 2022 when I played it. Yeah, it was the tail end of 22. I beat it in November of 2022, but it was honestly one of my

[01:01:28] favorite games that I ever played this year. And I was ashamed. Will had been recommending it to me for a long time, and I was ashamed. It took me so long to get to playing Senua's sacrifice.

[01:01:37] But when I did, I was like, I literally it was like when Nave talked about the first time that he beat signalist. I was sitting there in my room doing this. I was like leaning forward, hands on my knees, just doing

[01:01:50] the thousand yard stare for like two hours after I finished Senua's sacrifice because it was just the storytelling was so powerful and it was such an emotional journey for Senua and me playing as her along the way. So I loved it.

[01:02:05] And so as soon as I found out they were working on Senua Saga, I was like, I need this game. Last year was a really frustrating year because they kept showing this game over and over again. And I was like, no, no, I don't want to see anymore.

[01:02:16] Please stop because it's like it's a short experience. Right? Yeah. It's like I'm already locked in. I'm already captive audience. But they got to do their marketing. They got to do all that stuff. But yeah, I loved I loved Senua's sacrifice.

[01:02:29] I even like didn't the puzzles were the most jank, I think, for me in that game more than anything else. And I didn't mind the combat at all. The combat was just simple and straightforward to the point. You got through it. You did what you needed to do.

[01:02:43] They did. They didn't necessarily cue the players as much. But yeah, I was locked in for Senua Saga coming into it. Native history preconceptions. I played the first Hellblade because I got recommended to it for get wrecked on Playalong podcast where me and Jared

[01:03:00] talked about Hellblade, obviously, and then spec ops the line. So it was a very sad episode. And it was also like right after I had just like broken up with my eight year girlfriend. So I was like, I also was damn I was in a fucking sad.

[01:03:16] Yeah, so I was in a fucking mood when I played that game and reviewed it. But it was it was a great time. No, it wasn't actually was terrible time. These games are sad. These games are a lot. They're not fun.

[01:03:29] All right. So before we get into our full review, I see Nave has grabbed quite a few steam reviews. So let's see what the audience thinks or the massive steam goers, how they feel about this game. A lot of recommends I see you got.

[01:03:43] I'll take this first one. This is from Scott's Porridge Oats with an hour on record. He says, Drown yourselves. The voice has said to me, stop breathing. You're useless. They wouldn't stop. Then I shut down Counter-Strike and loaded up Hellblade 2. It's better this way. Oh, shit.

[01:04:03] It really kind of got us. He got it got us coming in the first half. All right. So the next one, Mr. Riddle, he recommends saying I can fix her by point five point seven hours on record. Yeah, it's enough to beat the game.

[01:04:17] So he at least finished it. You want to read this next one? Nick Alkin, Alkin Derry comes in at three point two confirmed hours saying I am watching a movie not playing a game. Do not show this man. You can use a good do not do not.

[01:04:34] And then one more from Mufasa recommend. Recommend seven hours. So you beat the game. I can't tell if those are her voices or my voices I'm hearing. Oh, oh, somebody has psychosis. All right. So going into it, this is a sequel.

[01:04:49] So I wanted to cover some things that have definitely changed from the first game that made it way better. No more adaptive difficulty that I can tell. I don't know if you guys remember that from the first game, but it was gratuitously overtuned. Yes, dude.

[01:05:01] You would win like three fights in a row without getting touched. And I'm like, this is dookie banana Lego combat. This is so easy. And then they'd be like, oh, you think that's easy? And then I would get my ass defeated for the next like 15 minutes.

[01:05:15] I just could not win. Just restarting over and over again. And it's like, oh, wait, hold on. You're a poopy baby. And then they were the difficulty back down for me and over. Correct. Where I'm once again, one hitting enemies

[01:05:26] because they all changes how much how many hits the enemies take. And so like, I'm pretty good at the dodge game. But, you know, I take a few hits now and then. And so like, they just make it so like, oh, you're now one hitting dudes.

[01:05:37] And I'm like, this sucks. But then I one hit everyone so often that now I'm just like, they pump the difficulty back up. And I feel like a yo-yo difficulty on me like three times in the first game. And I had none of that in this game.

[01:05:50] I never experienced that in the first game. That was really that's that's crazy. I don't know. It was it felt excessive in the first. It happened to me as well. I think I talk about this in the gate wrecked episode,

[01:06:02] but like I didn't like die for the whole game. And then at the very end in the last chapter, I was getting shit stomped forever. Like I just couldn't survive. And then the game difficulty flipped back on me by when I got to the last fight

[01:06:15] and the very last fight, you you have to lose spoiler alert mode. Yeah. Yeah. It's it just fights until you lose. And then I was on boo boo baby doo doo difficulty. So I was fighting for like 15 minutes and I'm like, how long is this?

[01:06:29] Yeah, that happened to me too. And I'm like, eventually, I'm like, I'll just stop fighting. See what happens. Maybe the game's glitch. No, you're exactly what happened to me. I was like, I'm just going to die on purpose. I mean, I don't know.

[01:06:38] Which is a real mood killer whenever you're like, wow, they fucked up when you're like right at the end. It's like this game sucks. Like what happened in like? No, it's just they kind of goofed it with this one.

[01:06:49] OK, another thing they got rid of is there's no more corruption, which was an interesting lie in the first game that they're like. I even put a little screen shots to pop up when you enter hell, it's like the dark rot will grow each time you fail.

[01:07:03] If the rot reaches Senua's head, her quest is over and all progress is lost. To us gamers, that's like, oh, it's perma death. If you die so many times like in Dark Souls 2, your health bar gets 10% shorter every time you die until you lose another humanity or whatever.

[01:07:19] And so it's like you are permanently getting debuffed every time you die. So in the world also, you know, gets farther corrupted in like Demon Souls. You go closer to black if you die in Demon Souls, right?

[01:07:33] And every time you kill a boss, your world goes closer to white. Yeah, it's like that in Dishonored. Yeah, no, that's the opposite. If it's key, if you kill people and anyway, it makes it up. Yeah, but whatever. So it's like, oh, man, there's like a permanent overarching

[01:07:47] metagame to this game. That's cool. Turns out, no, that's not a real thing. There's set story beats and makes the corruption go up, including at the very end. When you lose on purpose, you lose in the corruption or the corruption overtakes your head.

[01:08:01] And it's like, oh, no, all progress is lost. But then you have emotional growth and everyone cries and it's OK. Yeah, my favorite. Yeah, they don't even talk about in this game, except your boyfriend at the beginning. You see him and he's got the corruption on his arm.

[01:08:15] And you're like, oh, man, he's going through his own journey. Possibly. Maybe I don't know. It never comes up. You see the first time they draw attention to it once and then don't mention for the rest of the game. So the corruption does not matter in this game.

[01:08:29] They got rid of it. Also, in this game, Senua's voices are much nicer because they were really mean in the first one. Yeah, in this one, there are a lot more. You can do it, girl. We've gone through hell. We stick together.

[01:08:42] Then it's like us against them mentality. Every time we meet an NPC, they're more concerned about talking about the NPC than they are talking about Senua, which in the first one, you're only Senua. So they only talk basically about you. Yeah, they are very mean to Senua.

[01:08:58] I don't know if it's because of what she went through in the first game that they accept her more or something. I don't know. I mean, that's obviously not how Psycho's really works, but well, it's it's her.

[01:09:08] I mean, in the first game, she was just overcome with guilt. She was overcome with guilt with what she didn't do. It was like, you know, it pairs very similarly to, you know, what happens in this game. But the first game was her trying to like the adventure

[01:09:23] in hell is very much a Dante's infernal kind of, you know, metaphor about her trying to move past the survivor's guilt of, you know, realizing the person that she loved the most in the world was gone. Maybe she could have done something, maybe not.

[01:09:38] But she wants to take accountability. She wants to take responsibility for it. And so I look at a lot of the time, the voices are, you know, even with people with psychosis, I mean, even normal people who seem, you know, neuro-typical,

[01:09:51] well adjusted. We all have voices in our heads. We all look in the mirror sometimes and say nasty things to ourselves. And that's kind of what I characterize it as. And of course, that gets better progressively in Senua's sacrifice.

[01:10:02] And it's really interesting what they do here in Senua Saga. It is. And I want to make this point right here. This little stands for we actually into the story like we are going to do full on spoilers for this. But also just a quick feel like

[01:10:16] you know, to go into the final words or anything like that. But I was actually negative on this game. Like I waited it like I had to give it like a seven out of ten. But I think both of you guys really like this. Yeah.

[01:10:28] I'll just go first because I feel like I've been pretty vocal about enjoying it and I love this game. I think that I understand why people maybe weren't as high on this game, especially coming with the expectations and then being so many years

[01:10:44] since the release of Senua's sacrifice. I can't remember when Senua's sacrifice. I feel like it came out in like 2017 or something like that. Not sure. But it came out a while back. And so it's been many, many years, even like post

[01:10:56] Zenimax acquisition and all that when Xbox bought Ninja Theory and and, you know, kind of the expectation of Senua Saga. You were thinking, oh, this is going to be a really in-depth 20 to 25 hour story game. We're going to get a lot more.

[01:11:10] We're going to get a lot of depth and lower an exposition. And that clearly wasn't here in this game. But I love this game for all of the reasons that are opposing that. I'm on the side that games do not need to be 45 hour,

[01:11:24] you know, saga quest journeys, you know, every single time. Like it being a small bite size, eight hour quest and it being impactful is good. And I think that this game was a little bit more abstract than people wanted it to be.

[01:11:39] There's a lot that you have to read into and Senua Saga to kind of grapple with what she's going through. And maybe some of the imagery and the meaning of what happens for each of the characters in the game.

[01:11:50] And I also think we can get into this later that it bears multiple playthroughs to understand the perspective of different characters. I completely understand because after going like, I love the first one. Like I thought the first one was masterpiece. Incredible. Yeah.

[01:12:04] I come into this one and I was very disappointed by what it delivered me because I'm like, this is the Resident Evil three to the Resident Evil two situation. This is a a side quest spin off. It's not even like a core game.

[01:12:18] And I mean, maybe you got anything before we get into the story and we can really chew on this this beast. No, not particularly. I mean, the story is primarily what I was engaging with. So yeah. All right. So level one. Yeah, Rick. Oh, yeah. Good luck.

[01:12:35] Go for it. Read it. Ricky on this. Don't help him. Don't throw him a rope. Nick can help me with this. It's all it's all you feel if you got this all day, baby. Rick Janessa, whatever this is. So chapter one,

[01:12:51] Senua gets captured by slavers to make her way to the source of all the slavers and give kind of revenge, save the slaves. Real Moses energy. I appreciate it. Yeah, I like this great start. We're rooting in tootin. We're going to save the slaves. We're going to freeze.

[01:13:05] She's staring into the camera. She's like, you know, this shall not pass. Set my people free. Very serious, very hardcore. A lot of teeth, big teeth energy. Yeah. Senua should be showing them the actress. Yeah, the actress has one of those like gum profiles

[01:13:21] where her lip will come up really high and I'm just like, oh, OK. Yeah, she's very so senor. Even in the first game is very kind of animalistic. She's like snarls and like makes like cool, like weird sounds.

[01:13:32] So she's still that she's still carrying that energy over into this game. She's grimacing at people really hard. Yeah. All right. Now, did you do you also really quick before we jump into that? I don't know how often you guys played with a camera,

[01:13:45] but did you notice that you cannot get her to look in the camera? Like I've tried to get like I tried to like play with the camera angles without going into photo mode to get a picture of her like, you know, full on directly facing the camera.

[01:13:59] But unless you go into photo mode, she will literally turn away at every time. And they do it in some games where it's like they kind of want to position the camera behind the player. But even when you're stationary and you move behind,

[01:14:10] she'll like refuse to look at the camera. It's actually kind of neat. That is pretty neat. Yeah. I like that. While you brought it up, do the photo mode in this game is like probably one of the best photo modes I've seen in a game.

[01:14:21] And it's good like ever because like you can literally use it. Everything that ever happens in this game is in engine. So like you could be in the middle of a cut scene, like even a cut scene that's doing a big overshoot like of a forest

[01:14:31] or something, you could pause the game, go into photo mode and turn the camera around and like look at what's behind where you're at in the air. Like it's really fucking bizarre. So there's some really awesome. I if you go look at our Instagram gaming together podcast, Instagram,

[01:14:46] you go look at our Instagram. There's a lot of pictures that I took of Hellblade. A lot of those were during cut scenes, but I maneuvered the camera around. So like you wouldn't even know that it was the specific cut scene or not. Yeah.

[01:14:57] All right. So right up at the top. So you get control of Senua. There's a huge storm. She gets separated from the other slaves and starts to be like, I got to save people on the shipwrecked. You know, I got I got to be a hero.

[01:15:09] Now, this was already like an annoyance point is everything you interact with has bird poop on it like the. Oh, no. The yellow line infected the yellow markers. Infected Senua is not. It's not that I'm like trying to mean be like, oh, no, I can't have any,

[01:15:25] you know, gamer guidance in it, because I appreciate that in this game, because they light torches, they do the left for dead, like follow the light trail. They do the follow the bird poop. Everything has like a bright colors to show you where to go.

[01:15:37] I'm fine with that, but they're so inconsistent on every other tutorial aspect that they just don't say anything. So it seems weird that they give you such a Lego once again, the reference Lego, the Lego studs in a lot of showing you where to go.

[01:15:52] But then they don't tell you the combat controls until you're in a loading screen. They pop up for three seconds and then disappear. So I'm like, I don't know you could parry because I forgot you could parry until like two hours into the game.

[01:16:04] And all of a sudden, combat got insanely easier because I can just parry every attack. So I find their tutorials throughout this game very annoying because it's insanely like pandery to the lowest IQ of like follow the trail of bird poop to

[01:16:23] not explaining combat like at all or whatever. It's just like you figure out the controls yourself. There's no prompts to open doors. You just have to press a and sometimes show up in the door, and sometimes you'll just stand in front of a door like,

[01:16:35] no, that's not an interactable. Like, oh, OK, then I move on. So I was getting very annoyed with that. Combined with all talk was later, but the amount of waist high walls that you have to clamber over is just like there's a lot.

[01:16:50] There's so much of this game that is just walking and listening to people talk. And I'm fine with that. I'll just hold the controller and walk. But every three steps, you got to be like, press a to climb up

[01:16:59] this waist high wall or to go through this little gap or whatever. You got to remind you it's a game, Philip. I know we got to remind you, dude. They made those animations. They spent so much money on those animations, Philip. They're going to use those animations.

[01:17:14] They're very nice. The game looks really good. They're very great. They're wonderful animations. Yeah. All right. This is also where they do. You think so? Phil Spencer was watching. He watched a playthrough of it. It was five hours and he's like put more waist high walls in your

[01:17:26] way so that you have to clamber over there. I was going to extend the game gameplay to six hours. Each animation is like at least two and a half seconds long to clamber a wall. There's multiple sections where you're solving a puzzle

[01:17:37] and you're required at least like six to seven clambers to get like the fastest possible clear time of these puzzles. So I'm like, that is approximately an extra three minutes on the clock. You know, whatever. Just like trying to calculate.

[01:17:48] Like I spent maybe not good for my split. Yeah. I know. If I completely ruin my speed run because I got this animation opposed to this animation, which is a couple milliseconds faster. Like the amount of walls you have to climb is gratuitous.

[01:18:00] And I was very annoyed every time it happened. Here's what I'll say to that effect, to, you know, specifically your point about the walls and about the artificial padding that in this game, because that's essentially what it is. It's just patting out the gameplay length time.

[01:18:15] I have a theory that Ninja Theory, funny enough, is that they ran out of money and they ran out of time. Yeah, this game seems unfinished. I think that Ninja Theory, specifically because of the way that they displayed

[01:18:34] Senua Saga the first time, the beginning, like the first trailer, the first ever look we got at this at the like the 2020 Xbox showcase when they were getting people hyped up for the Xbox series consoles

[01:18:44] was the end of this game when you're getting ready to walk into the well, kind of the tail end of this game, when you walk into the second giant and you you're going into that cave and you're getting ready to fight him.

[01:18:57] And we were all looking at it like, oh, my God, this is so beautiful. Is this gameplay or is this a cut scene? We don't even know. We're all really hyped about it. I have a theory that that was actually the beginning of the game

[01:19:08] and that because of money and because of time and because of what are release dates or whatever corporate demands that they were making of Ninja Theory at the time, they had to pivot. And they had to rearrange the narrative or rearrange how they wanted this story to be.

[01:19:24] I I specifically because of the way that the story is laid out, it feels like it could have had another because it's exactly six chapters. I feel like it could have had another six right after it immediately following it.

[01:19:39] And I think that unfortunately, they made the decision to curtail that work with what they had rearranged, what they had. And then like kind of, you know, move it forward there. And then they realized, oh, well, you know, this is playing really quickly.

[01:19:51] I mean, we could finish this in three to four hours without the waist high walls or without, you know, the, you know, multiple different, you know, puzzle cut scene sequences where you have to find the symbols in the sand. Oh, man.

[01:20:03] I saw a lot of people that were I've never understood because once I realized how they work, I just do them immediately, like right away. And so I see a lot of people online that are like,

[01:20:12] I had to quit because I couldn't figure out where the last symbol was. So my brother in Christ is this whole area is like covered in giant red symbols floating up into the air. You can see it across the map. I'm like, oh, it's over there.

[01:20:25] Like, I don't know. I don't know what to do. It's lazy. It's lazy people. And I mean, uninterested people, to be fair, people who might be just uninterested in it. But yeah, I don't accept that as an excuse.

[01:20:37] The game has not given us a reason to play at this point, though, like his game is a great battle cry at the beginning. Well, it's free the slaves, then her exploring this coast, climbing waist high walls, listening to the voices, talk to her.

[01:20:50] And then it's like symbols mini game. Go look at you go stare really hard at different symbols. And this is not something you need to put in the forefront of your game. Like this is like you said, I think the symbols is just padding

[01:21:03] of you like, hey, go look around the environment for five minutes. Well, they just spent a lot of time and money on the environment. Philip, you're going to look at the environment. Yeah. Well, which I also like whenever I saw.

[01:21:16] So I would get into an area that was really open. I'm like, wow, there's a lot of cool directions I could go in and I would explore it and like the first area. And then it was like simple puzzle. Go back and go back.

[01:21:25] I just spent so much time exploring. And then the second time I got there, I stopped exploring also because I was like, oh, wait, I'm going to probably have to I never really explored to begin with, just because this is a narrative like linear ass linear game.

[01:21:39] So I was like, there's no point to it. No, unless you want to get a thousand. Yeah. If you want the podcast that's like built then you need to explore what we hear gave it together. Podcasts. We love podcasts. Yeah.

[01:21:52] We're like freaks that like to listen to podcasts. All right. So we learn we get combat. There's no real tutorial or anything. You just start fighting just mash x. You don't you don't need combat. Yeah. Yeah. The combat sucks, too.

[01:22:04] It's the same thing, the same comment as I like to game. What? I like it. The comments not that bad. Yeah, I think sometime it's almost as bad as the looking at the symbols puzzle. OK, here's let me continue taking the next cut scene.

[01:22:17] Here's what I'll say, Philip. I understand you're very heated about this. I don't know. I mean, like I can because a lot of the times when I come up to situations like this, I think of, oh, the combat should be like this game.

[01:22:28] I should I they should have chosen the combat in like, you know, Bloodborne or whatever it is and like put it in this and it would have been, you know, S tier perfect. But even as I was thinking about it, as I was playing this game,

[01:22:39] I was like, I really don't think that it needs to be any more complicated than it is the combat is a vehicle for the story to get to the next point. Could they have done it in a way that maybe integrated it more?

[01:22:51] And they kind of did it towards the tail end. There's the third act, of course, that we'll get to and we'll cover it in the story section. But like there's a third act where it's like she's fighting with her friends

[01:23:00] against the, you know, the droggers that are coming. And I thought that that was a beautiful. I mean, it's just another cut scene interspersed with player input. That's what the combat. But I felt like the parry mechanic was very fun trying to figure out

[01:23:11] when to parry, when to dodge. The parry is very generous, too. It is very, very is super generous. Dodging to and the focus ability they give you. I would have I would have liked more animations. I would have liked, you know, kind of more Assassin's Creed style,

[01:23:27] like Brit, like she has brutal finishes. But I would have liked a little bit more variety in terms of like every single enemy she kills. She kills differently. So you'll probably kill maybe like 15 people this entire game, right? Maybe a little bit more than that.

[01:23:40] But still, it's like I still think that I got a lot of duplicate executions. I heard a lot. So I feel like that's RNG because my I got a lot of kind of very duplicate. Yeah, I like towards the end.

[01:23:54] I'd maybe see like one or two that I'm like, oh, I remember this one. He's going to go for the collarbone or but like like for the most. I don't know if it's because I was fighting differently with each guy.

[01:24:03] I would like I was more of a reactive fighter than a attacking fighter. So if you're killing people the same way, it makes sense that you get the same executions. You know what I mean? Because I'm usually react.

[01:24:13] So if I run into a fire guy, I'm like, oh, I need to play this way. And then I run into an axe throwing guy. I'm like, OK, well, now I need to just wait for him to throw an axe

[01:24:20] so that I can use my which, by the way, I learned this on Twitter. So I didn't figure this out myself. But if if a guy throws like a javelin or an axe at you,

[01:24:27] if you use your focus when it's coming at you, like right before it hits you, she'll grab it, spin around and throw it back at him. Oh, that's fucking awesome. It's really cool. Yeah. And so I did that every time.

[01:24:36] I would always like I would the first guy I would kill. I would always just use him to farm focus focus. And then I would use focus in different ways each fight after. Yeah. And I would say that, like, obviously, we're coming up

[01:24:49] on this point here in the dock, but like obviously Senua confronts as you go later on towards the end of the kind of the tutorial and the prologue mission, because you realize your, you know, you were taken by slavers.

[01:25:01] You need to follow like the lead slaver in order to find who's that? The root of all evil who stealing people and sacrificing them. I think they say that right. Yeah, they might. They might. And then obviously it's this character, Thorgester and Thorgester. Or, oh yeah, Thorgester.

[01:25:17] He is, you know, obviously, you know, you come and you kind of have like a boss fight with him. First off, he's really cute. Like, you think he's handsome? Yeah. You fight like 20 dudes that are just like helmet boys.

[01:25:29] And then you bump into Thor and I'm like a handsome man in fall grief and no way. And I'm like, this guy, he is not a normal dude. It didn't instantly challenges like you're I assume you're going to go into

[01:25:39] when you fight him, you fight him multiple times. Yeah. He continues to be like, pick up your sword. We're not done fighting. Yeah. Which shows that he's like he's a man of honor. That's like, I'm going to kill you on your feet type deal.

[01:25:50] Yeah. He's very much a Viking. I mean, it's huge Viking energy from the dude. So you got to love it to that extent. Yeah, I had a good time with this fight. I mean, he seems like a very traumatized,

[01:26:03] you know, sad Viking man that, you know, probably just he needs a little bit of dental care, maybe a little bit of maybe a nice hot bath at some point. I don't know who's to say. I go for his butthole or whatever you said about like before.

[01:26:16] He did his butthole. Yeah, no, he yeah, he's he's really cool. But like I didn't like the one thing that I thought was kind of weird is in terms of the friction is that like, you know, he absolutely throws a haymaker uppercut and lifts Senua into the air

[01:26:33] and slams her the fuck down on the ground. And like he does that multiple times until like you finally pick up the axe and nail it into his meniscus, I guess, which is like, let's be real. You're not getting up from that, right?

[01:26:47] You're not you're not like that. It's your time. You're not ancient. Well, they're like steel. Yeah, patched up. Well, yeah, the the shaman patched him up. The other weirdo that is the kindred soul to our Senua. I like our band of merry men. I like her found family.

[01:27:07] You mean she's got the boyfriend. She's got the supportive dad that she never had. She's got the gal pal. She's got the girlfriend. She has a girlfriend. Yeah, like I felt like there was going well. There was a lot more sexual tension between her and and and ostrich

[01:27:22] than there wasn't with her and Thor Gaster. You just said that he picked her up by her neck and slammed her down like multiple times. I don't know how much more to get a lot of contact. I guess, yeah, yeah, that's right.

[01:27:33] All right. But yeah, so we get to the end. There's no real combat story. Will you fight the orchestra? Eventually, you get the upper hand on him and you injure his leg and you're like, take me to like I am Senua of the modern newie.

[01:27:45] You will take me to the the hook of Maui or whatever. Look at me. I'm the captain now. Yeah, pretty much. And he's like, all right, please don't kill me. You know, yeah. And he's like, you're going to get us killed because you're a crazy lady.

[01:27:57] And she's like, I'll show you crazy. Let's go. As she starts talking to her voice in front of him. Yeah, she's like, we can trust him. And then he's like, what is up with this lady? Yeah, what's going on this lady? I don't know. I fucking love you.

[01:28:13] Go to that that place that's clearly been ransacked and brutalized and everyone's dead and hanging from the fucking roofs and stuff. And he's like, we can't go in there. We'll die. And she's like, no, I'm going by myself in there.

[01:28:25] And he's like, that makes me feel even worse. Like, I don't know what is happening. All right. But yeah, that's the next place. Phrase log, I guess. Well, you skipped over a very important point. And it's the.

[01:28:40] Well, it's the fact that she realizes I'm if I'm not mistaken. This is the point when she realizes when she walks into that. Well, I guess you were coming up on it. I'm sorry. I'm jumping out here. But like when she walks into that village,

[01:28:54] she's realizing that it's a giant that is doing all of this like evil in the area that she's in. We do need to know at this point of her walking in the village with Thor. This is the first time with you. Thor's not with you.

[01:29:09] But the voices come to Senua and they remind her that Thor is her responsibility and she has to go back for him. This is the beginning of Senua's leadership, which is a core of this game is her leadership and responsibility.

[01:29:24] Yeah, I'm going to I'm pooping in this game a lot, but it is important to note that they are building. They are cooking. They're cooking here. Yeah, they're cooking. I want to give them fair credit back to phrase log. Yeah, back to face like we get another walking

[01:29:38] and looking at symbols, many game. God damn it. We. Hell yeah. Like it's so fucking good. But you don't like the kaleidoscope that everything does. I got. Yeah. I'll look at the pretty lines. When they did that in like, I feel like there's other games I've done.

[01:29:50] I can't think of them right now. But yeah, I go to great visuals. Yeah, it looks good. Meanwhile, this is where I got on the pod because I made to this point and I got in and talked to you. I'm like, hey, what's up?

[01:30:00] And you're like, oh, you know, senior cell blade. I'm like, the fun hasn't started yet. Literally, we have done like nothing in this game. You're smack dab in the fun right now. Bill, this is not the fun. The game fun has not started. There's literally nothing going on.

[01:30:14] So anyways, we do the symbols. We get a flashback to the first game where we fight enemies from the first game, more combat, which I'm not into. And they give you the mirror because you just get it. I don't remember why you get it.

[01:30:26] You get it because it's you have a vision of your mom. You know, she has the vision of her mom. And then she's like, she's like, oh, yeah, let me. Oh, yeah, I can do the focus thing. OK. Yeah.

[01:30:37] She gains her mirror back because she didn't have it before. So this is the first reality kind of break for Senua where it shows that her reality is not consistent with the natural order of things like there's no way that her mirror

[01:30:50] from her mother in childhood should be in Iceland after she's been taken as a slave. OK. But when we talk about like reality in terms in in terms of like the scope of Senua specifically and in like this world of Hellblade,

[01:31:06] everything is in question because she fucking died at the end of one. She became Hella like she embodied hell like like in the day. That was like one of the most important points about the end of Senua's sacrifice was that, like in order to kill a god,

[01:31:22] she had to take that god's place and she had to become death herself, which means she fucking died. And there was no indication at the end of it that she came back to life, though. Because like you could because you can take that physically or metaphorically.

[01:31:37] I because I the way that I talk about it in the get wrecked episode, it's something that I used to read about a lot. But like the idea of that this part of her that she's this part of her personality or her her her person that is

[01:31:54] in the grief filled that can't get past the loss of her of her lover. She that part of her had to die. She had to overcome that grief and become a new person. And that was represented by her dying after losing her.

[01:32:10] She leaves, she lets go of her boyfriend's head. Yeah. And then she dies. And then the the the thing that was chasing her, she is that. But but it's not that she was that. Yes. I mean, you know, I'm trying to wander circles around it.

[01:32:25] But yeah. So yeah. So I think that metaphorical interpretation is a lot more accurate. I don't think she was actually fighting Hella or any. I don't think any of that happened. I think all that happened in her head, like she was like struggling with.

[01:32:38] And it was all just an interpretation, like for us to experience through. Yeah. We're going to talk about this game as well. Like Chris. OK. Yeah. I need to replay that game, man. You're you're inspiring me. I'm going to have to go back for it.

[01:32:52] All right. So she gets her mirror. This is also where we first get access to, I think, a lot more of the podcast stones and the giant faces. I already missed like so many. Like, first off, I didn't know the giant faces were a thing that you collected.

[01:33:06] I would walk by. I'd look at him and be like, oh, there's a giant face here. Then I walk. No, you didn't focus on it. You know, you're supposed to focus on it and look extra hard at it. And then it clears away to a podcast stone.

[01:33:18] So by the time I did it to the first giant face, I had already missed like seven chapters or seven episodes of the podcast. And the other thing is the podcast, they force you to stand within like five feet of the. Yeah, it's not a Bioshock.

[01:33:31] You can't walk away. You can't walk and talk. No. And so I'm like, I'm not listening to any of these. I'll just go on YouTube later. I'm not going to get the thousand, Philip. You're not going to get the thou. They are literally trying to get the thou.

[01:33:45] Hey, you got to stop and watch an episode of Alan Wake TV before you can go on. Oh, to be fair, I would watch every episode of every episode at nights. I always stopped. Which, by the way, Philip, the fucking DLC, a DLC thing

[01:33:58] released on Alan Wake like yesterday. I saw him bought the game, the first one or the first. Oh, you son of a bitch. I forgot about that. I want to buy that. I want to see how much the collector's edition is from limited run,

[01:34:10] but they even have like the little thing for Alan Wake 2 that's going to include night springs. I'm so excited. Yeah, the Duracell batteries. Yeah, the giant faces, as we were talking about, are actually they returned. They're returning thing from Hellblade one.

[01:34:27] I think in my opinion, like the giant faces are a little bit more subtle here, whereas in Hellblade one, they kind of a little bit more foundational, a little bit more iconic in terms of the placement.

[01:34:39] There was one that was like underneath a waterfall that was super cool. And then there were some that were like built into like the rock faces of some of the environments that she was passing by.

[01:34:47] But here it was like I was looking for them kind of just like casually. But I was also running through the game at breakneck speed because I started it at seven last night and finished it at like 11 this morning. Oh, OK.

[01:34:59] Also, they don't tell you how to sprint. I didn't know I could sprint until I made it to phrase log. So no, no way. No one ever said they never tried it. So all through the beach, you didn't look at the

[01:35:10] you didn't look at the controller by me. If you hit, oh, no, if you hit start and you never pause the game, I guess not. It's like the it's it's in the middle. I'll show you. Oh, you're right.

[01:35:22] But if you hit the pause button, it is like the only thing you see is the controls of the game. I would dashboard because I, you know, the stop it from the time ticking or whatever. Oh, yeah. Usually when I was just dashboard.

[01:35:33] But also the first thing I do in every game is push every button. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I got to admit, the sprint is not that much faster than the walk. Yeah, I mean, it's noticeably. It's noticeable, but it's also like and you can toggle it.

[01:35:48] You can toggle it. So you can toggle the whole time. Bro, you go into the settings and look at all the settings. You have to look at it. That's the first thing I do when I go in these games. Yeah, but anyway.

[01:35:58] All right. So anyways, you you hang on the village, you fight some drogger and you rescue the shaman. Your new dad, Far Grimmer. This was a fucking tense moment where she's like he for me it was.

[01:36:12] Yeah, I mean, I know that you're shaking your head, but like it was it was like, well, the drogger were like really creepy and scary. And like, obviously, it's night time when she's in the village. And so she's creeping around and she hears them

[01:36:23] fucking eviscerating people alive and like cannibal. I can't tell if they're like supposed to be mythical creatures or if they're just people that eat people, you know, but like they were they were completely just brutalizing these people in the sky.

[01:36:36] It was like sitting there tied up and he was like, well, this sucks. And then she shows up and she's like slowly sawing away. And he was like, you know, you could go faster if you want to.

[01:36:43] Like that was a cool moment where it was like there was a little bit of tense. There was there was some tension there. The NPC in the actor or whoever Farminger is. I think all the actors are so good. All the actors are great. Far Grimmer. Yeah.

[01:36:56] The good Earth or fall this in. Jesus, you know, this is tight. The fucking the I agree. It was very tense because like the whole time you're sneaking around and creeping around and you see everything happening in the center,

[01:37:12] but it's all fogged up even though there's fire everywhere. So like you just see like there's parts where you you know that part, the Nazi part in The Lion King. We brought up Mufasa before. Now, like the Nazi part. Yeah. Oh, where they're like marching.

[01:37:26] Yeah, but it's like they're marching, but it's their shadow on the stone. There's a part where you're like seeing someone get torn up, but like it's on the wall, like you don't see them getting torn up. Yeah, really cool. Like you're crawling underneath a bridge and like there's

[01:37:40] like people getting decapitated above you and shit. I'm pretty sure there is a Nazi movie of that to you. But here's the other weird things is you do get in a fight. They do a lot of the action animations of people bumping into you

[01:37:50] and running past you and getting killed in front of you and stuff. And that's fine, except it definitely feels so scripted that they did not give you any flexibility in this. Like I killed an enemy and like, oh, that's the exact number of enemies

[01:38:04] I need to kill the NPCs in the background literally just disappear, just like proof in the space. And it cuts you over there saving farmager. And I'm like, OK, I guess we're just done with that scene.

[01:38:13] Like that happens in a lot of the fights where like, for instance, later on, there's one fight where you have to like cradle a lady on the ground after the fight. And you're like, oh no, she died because of me.

[01:38:25] Sad. But I just happened to kill a drogger in that area. So there's a dead body that I laid her into. It is happening to me also. And I'm like, oh, what is this like? Philip, I think you might have had a wonky build for the game.

[01:38:38] I really do. Did you play in the series X? Yeah. Did you play in the PC game pass? OK, I believe in the series X, too. I think you rolled rolled a negative die on it because maybe we get. I did have a cut scene.

[01:38:50] I did have a cut scene that had a dead body like fucking like ragdoll on the ground and laying there. But it was only there for a second polished. Mine was completely. I didn't have any, any jank or any bugs.

[01:39:03] The pop outs that I saw was just wild, like I might pop out pop out. Really? Like they just despawn enemies when it's like, oh, we've done enough. Yeah, he just disappears. They're like, whatever lights over. And you know, it happened to me when you kill an enemy,

[01:39:17] their body despond the moment they're off camera. And that's why like I noticed that towards the end, because I died in the last fight like twice. And then at that point, I'm just like focusing on fighting now. I'm not like vibing anymore.

[01:39:30] But then I realized I'd kill somebody and then I get into a fight and I kind of circle around like blocking. And then like where I was just standing that I just broke somebody's collarbone in half, there wouldn't be a body there anymore.

[01:39:41] Well, no, specifically like the there's tons of animations every time you kill an enemy because it's always one on one fighting. You're never like in the first game, you were always surrounded. In this one, it's like always a duel, always one on one. You wish to be honest.

[01:39:53] I like that more. I like what I want fighting than fighting a bunch of people, because it's just the only thing that that added to the game. It made it more more scary, like kind of, but it made it just frustrating also.

[01:40:04] Like there's the only time I'm ever frustrated in this game is whenever the berserker guy goes ham and then starts hitting me too fast. I'm like, oh, God, I'm fucking up. I'm fucking up. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah.

[01:40:18] So in like so you kill an enemy and then it does an animation that makes the camera whip around. So you face another direction and you'll see like the body even like on the edge of the screen, just like just poof.

[01:40:28] Or if it is the last enemy in the whatever the series that they want you to kill, because I don't know if it's like a time thing where they're like because there's some fights where I'll kill like like 16 dudes.

[01:40:38] Like I'm just fighting for what feels like a really long time. And then it's just like, all right, the fight's over. And I'm like, all right, I'm glad we can move on from this. You know? Yeah. Whatever. So we rescue farmager, but we also get introduced to

[01:40:52] every time you call him for a picture. Just I can't I can't feel it. But it's great. No, continue. Sorry. I think that's like the name of the king sword in was like Final Fantasy 15 or something like that. Yeah, it's like farmager.

[01:41:05] I just I just think Harbinger and then there is a ratcheting clink gun in ratcheting clink deadlocked. That's called the Harbinger every time. And it's like the best gun in the game. It's amazing. The Harbinger is like the big bad person in Halo five also.

[01:41:20] Yeah. Yep. Anyway, a lot of things are getting crossed right now. Yeah. So we also need a Talga here, which is our fire giant. And she bursts out of the ground and she's real spooky. It looks so cool. Yeah. Love her design. Yeah. She's great.

[01:41:34] You'll tell what you didn't read the name of this next chapter. Oh, next chapter. Rattle hall are we don't have in our alphabet? How do you know? Yeah. Rolled all along. All right. So at this point, Senua no longer cares about revenge

[01:41:53] or really freeing the slave. She just wants to kill giants. No, no, she wants to kill the giants because that will make the slavers stop slaving. Exactly. Yeah. So the she real she moved free, assessed her goals, and it's no longer to stop the slavers.

[01:42:09] It's the stop the reason for the enslavement. Yeah. Is the job which is stopping the slavers. Yeah, it's just a juxtaposed position. I think like this is again, like kind of to your point about the theme of like leadership.

[01:42:21] I didn't realize it until towards the end of the game, that how important of a point that was going to be for her journey this time around. But this is kind of like the first mark for her where she she notices that she assesses it.

[01:42:33] And like early on, we didn't necessarily talk about this, but even in the intro level, but the first two chapters, she's feeling still hearing visions of her dad, which was a huge issue in the first game, which was like her dad

[01:42:46] was part of the negative dark thoughts of her personality that were like, you know, talking to her and like convincing her. She was an insane maniac. She was a bad person. All of that. And just like her mother. Yeah, just like her mother.

[01:42:58] You think that, you know, one of the coolest boss fights in Senua's Sacrifice is you fight this like death hound, which is like the embodiment of like everything her dad represented, which was very cool, but fun boss fight.

[01:43:10] But like this time around, he's like, you thought you could get rid of me? You can never get rid of me. I will always be a part of you. And so but like the thing is, is that, you know, it's interesting because he's consistently second guessing her,

[01:43:24] but she realizes and she recognizes, no, I have to help these people. Let me pivot at this point in rid them of the issues that are causing these problems up front. So then when I can work my way to the settlement

[01:43:39] that Thor Thor Gaster is from or Thor Fender, whatever his name is. You got it? Yeah. Yeah. He like then that way, we have something to bring to the table, which I thought was cool. Yeah. Yeah. And it's also a thing that like, you know, this guy,

[01:43:53] the voice is usually second guessing and stuff like that, but it's also usually very grounded in reality in a lot of ways. Like, yeah, if she were a normal person, she probably wouldn't survive fighting these giants. And I think that the father probably was in general

[01:44:08] like more of a normal person than Senua is, but Senua has these gifts and that she's starting to understand more and more, which is what she ends up showing to all her little fucking Scooby Doo gang. Yeah. After a while.

[01:44:20] So well, I'm sure like sorry to get her up there, but if I'm sure he also believes in like Senua's abilities and notices that she's talking to people that aren't there. And she's like, oh, you know, you're a chosen one pretty much. Like you're special.

[01:44:35] You know, he's like, I also know. Have you heard of Dark Plagueis the wise? Like, no, damn it. Damn it, Philip. Yeah, he was the one that recommends that she go to the hidden folk. He seems to be like a because he's an old man by Viking standards.

[01:44:52] So he seems to be like the wise man, the one who's like, you know, and maybe potentially the shaman of whatever his, you know, little village was. He came from that, assumedly is all wiped out by the draw. It's a lot of the draw. Yeah, exactly.

[01:45:07] But the thing is, is that he's the one that recommends that she go to the hidden folk because they're the ones that understand the weaknesses of the different giants. Yeah, and then this is where she connects it to the first game.

[01:45:18] Like you got to have a god killing sword if you're going to kill a god. OK, that was going to be my question for you guys. This is the section where she goes into the hidden folk.

[01:45:26] I guess this is the next chapter is the whole whole the folk. Yeah. Hold the folks. Hold the folk. There's a little bit before she gets there. But yeah, go. OK, OK, OK. Sorry. Yes, I was going to ask.

[01:45:37] I was like, do you guys think we got a hell blade in this game? The hell blade. Yeah. Yeah, because we definitely didn't get the gun. The gun. We didn't get the blade that was in the first game for sure,

[01:45:50] because the blade that she uses, she just takes off of the first. You think so? No, not literally. I don't know. I think it's also just a cool title, but it is an awesome title. But like, yeah, I mean, that's what I was thinking, too.

[01:46:03] I mean, this is legitimately like what you were saying there is that she she gives she she sacrifices the blade. They say, you know, you sacrifice what makes you strong and then you're able to, you know, proceed further into the darkness.

[01:46:14] But like I was curious to think that was like, is this really the hell blade? Like, because it's the name of the game. It's very important. It's like it's the hell blade is how you overcome the darkness. Right. But like we didn't necessarily

[01:46:26] it didn't feel like we had that moment that we had in the first. No Master Sword moment. No. Yeah. It'd be kind of weird because it's like it's like if you're named after like Lord of the Ring, well, no Lord of the Rings is named after the rings.

[01:46:39] If Star Wars was named lightsaber, you know what I mean? Yeah. All right. So she's on her way to meet the hidden folk. But this is where we get like the torch and the water or tutorials before we actually get into the zone

[01:46:55] where we learn how to pick up orbs and place them on pedestals. These these puzzles were so fucking good. I had such a good time with these puzzles. Wait, OK. The puzzles weren't necessarily good, but the everything around

[01:47:08] you're like the way the environment changes and stuff like that. Like you see the mirror world like above you and you're moving things up and down. That was really cool. I enjoyed all of the environmental aspects. Yeah. Getting the torch on the floor.

[01:47:20] And it's like this vortex that's like sucking the fire like into this like black hole. It's so the imagery is just 10 out of 10. Great. Even if like the mechanics of doing the puzzle like aren't as good as you would want.

[01:47:33] The thing is, is that like I still think that doing the puzzles, the fact that they aren't mind breakingly difficult. I appreciate it. I enjoyed because it's getting me in and out of the game.

[01:47:43] And it's like it's just a vehicle for me to get to that next chapter point. Is it or is it just like a timeout zone until you get the next cut scene? I thought I mean, I feel like well, it's like her voices are continued.

[01:47:56] Like this is a similar game is like people complain about God War Ragnarok, how the NPCs wouldn't shut the fuck up. Like that's the same same thing for this game. Like their voices are constantly chattering in the back of her mind.

[01:48:07] And so it's like, in my mind is that like, you know, she's they're talking to her. You're solving these puzzles and you're getting a little bit more context. Which, by the way, I did either of you turn subtitles on.

[01:48:17] Yes. So we also I think that's really what's really cool is that the game is in the letterbox the whole time, like the black and the white. I actually don't like that. I think I don't like that. But that's that's in my complaints down low.

[01:48:27] But the fact that when you turn the subtitles on, all of the real dialogue is in the game, like at the bottom of the game screen. And then all of the voices are underneath in the letterbox. I think that was really cool.

[01:48:38] And then you even get the voices like you get. You have like three voices because they'll it's just different spots in the bottom where they'll talk. So you actually like it's like the three hyenas and fucking. In life, you know, helpfully to Lion King, you know.

[01:48:58] But yeah, I forget what I was just saying. But you were talking about. So something that I was talking about, too, you know, obviously we talk about the comparisons of the combat. We talk about comparisons for puzzles.

[01:49:08] I don't want a Resident Evil to have to find the root. To go into the other plug to find the king plug. You know, like I don't I don't want the chess puzzle in this game. Like, I think it's fine as simplistic as it is.

[01:49:23] I didn't get turned around. I knew what I needed to do. I knew where I had to go. It took maybe just one wrong path or something, and then you figure it out. Well, there's so many points there like Sinua special.

[01:49:32] She can see the world in a different way. Well, let me use that in a puzzle somehow. Like portal is all about looking at things with portals. Let me like we have the look at symbols puzzle, which is OK.

[01:49:44] Once you know, it's like that we had to do it like five times in this game. But Philip, if you if you have a portal puzzle and help, leave this game is automatically 25 hours long. You know what I mean? Yeah. Well, OK.

[01:49:54] It's like eventually we start getting time travel puzzles, which isn't a puzzle. It's just something that happens and you're there for it. It's because there's no actual input required from the player to trigger that part of the puzzle.

[01:50:07] And it's like, how are we going to get through this? It's like, well, it doesn't really matter because it already happened because time travel. And it's like, OK, I don't think it's necessarily time travel. But yeah, I just thought it was just alternate dimensions.

[01:50:19] I didn't even think it was her. I thought that it was just like, no, these are the people that came before you. Well, yeah, I was who was here with a sword. That's a good question. Who was no way is there's no way it was her.

[01:50:34] You literally talk to each other and say the same things like you talk to yourself. Yeah, you know, I think it was her lover. You don't think it was what is his name? Dillion, Dillion. No, it wasn't Dylan. It was her. They said the same thing.

[01:50:48] Dylan. I don't think it is time travel, though, is what I'm trying to say. I think it was her. I think it gives her I think the whole place is playing mind tricks on her. Like, I don't think most of this is happening.

[01:51:00] I think that the people are making her doing all of this. And then she is just progressing through. It's like she's walking through a place over and over again in real in the real world. But she is hallucinating all of the shit happening around.

[01:51:15] You think she's pacing back and forth until she feels like she can. Well, she physically does that because that's what makes the the the sage guy go, oh, shit, you're different because we were standing on the cliff and now everyone wandered off.

[01:51:28] But you're still standing on the cliff talking to yourself and thinking about all this shit that happened. You know what I mean? And like time passes when she has these hallucinations. I think that that's like part of what she is special,

[01:51:39] which makes which can tie to what Philip was just saying, where she sees the world differently. You doing these monotonous puzzles that if you interpret it as in the real world, then yeah, it's stupid and dumb.

[01:51:49] But if you interpret all of this as shit that she's seeing in her head and she's just yeah, she's not actually doing the fire puzzle. She's like thinking about like it's like this is a metaphor in her head. She's working through something, I guess. I don't know.

[01:52:02] Like if you think about it that way, then because if another thing is that she usually ends up in the same place after these moments or she's like there are moments where she's in a zone and then she does a puzzle and walks to their area

[01:52:16] and then she's in another area. But like it makes sense when you look around, you're like, oh, yeah, that was where I just was. You know what I mean? Yeah. All right, so, you know, the puzzles aside,

[01:52:27] moving on to like the actual hidden folk, the hidden folk are testing you so that you can be accepted or whatever. And Folminger is like, hey, everyone comes back change. Just deal with it or they don't come back at all.

[01:52:40] I went and saw them myself and they gave me a great sandwich recipe. No, wait, hold on. See, I'm thinking now I'm not really thinking about this. So like her giving her sword away was a test so that she like had to give it.

[01:52:53] She had to become defenseless and surrender herself to the hidden folk. And then she was rewarded at the end of it when she was tested, if she would fight for whatever. I don't remember what happened at the end of that area, actually.

[01:53:03] But like it's a lot of that was just like teaching her to let go and surrendered all that stuff. It's just to make sure that she was like the scene with the torch where she put a torch in the hidey hole in the.

[01:53:14] Yeah. And then the other person came and got it. But then she's like, I don't have a torch now. Then past her comes up and puts the torch in the hidey hole. And she's like, oh, I just need to trust myself.

[01:53:24] This is a leadership like test of saying like, I need to believe in myself to press on and not be, you know, held back by doubt and worries of like, oh no, I can't do this because what if I'm wrong? But do you not find that profound, Philip?

[01:53:37] No, it is profound. It's just boring to play. It is boring to play. But I was just saying that I don't think it's time travel. I don't think that was actually travel. It's her in a different, different point of time. No, OK.

[01:53:55] I just I think I'm on definitions again. My whole thing is that like in terms of like what you're saying, I get what you're saying, Philip, and I don't think you and I don't want to like come across as being a show like I think that the puzzles

[01:54:07] are probably the biggest failing of this game in terms of making it integrative. I just wouldn't know how to fix it within the vision or I wouldn't know how to adapt it or change it within the vision of like what that team wanted to do.

[01:54:20] I guess I'm not sure, but I almost think they need to take away more of the puzzles or make them more complex. But this middle ground that they're in is just not enough for me. Like we'll go on a little bit later in the hidden folk.

[01:54:31] Another I think this is a leadership test. She has water that is different than the other water in the game. This water is full of the people that she has failed in the past. The darkness. Yeah. Yeah. This is basically all her haters and ops.

[01:54:45] And she has to ignore them using light. She ignores them, holds the torch, keeps her safe. They don't touch her. And she presses on despite her failings in the past. That's what I think this is representative of. I think that's how they're testing her.

[01:54:58] Like, can she be a leader of man? It's interesting. I mean, that's that's an interesting take on it. I I felt this hidden folk section was I mean, that's a wonderful interpretation. I never really even thought about it until you brought it up, Philip.

[01:55:15] But like I looked at this entire sequence as obviously on its face. The idea of her going to the hidden folk was because she needs to learn the name, the true name of the monsters, because they explain this to you

[01:55:26] to understand the true name of something is to control it, which will allow her to eventually defeat the the the the excuse me, the giant that's been plaguing these lands. Il Toyga and you know, which is actually really cool little lore bit that they dropped in there.

[01:55:42] We kind of glazed over it. But she's like following Fargrammer and his tribe, like wherever they go. Like they'll move across like the country and she'll just like show up within days and like start eating their cattle livestock. Really cool little like dark Eastern,

[01:55:58] you know, European fairy tale type situation. But I interpreted the whole sequence of her going into the hidden folk as like they were checking to see if she truly learned how to let the guilt of what she failed in these other people pass, which, you know,

[01:56:15] does also feed into what you're talking about in terms of like the the leadership abilities. Is this a person that is going to be passing the test? I felt that the hidden folk were one of the most important moments

[01:56:25] in this game because they are the ones that were determining is she truly worthy, but also has she truly healed? And I think that like one of the facets of this game is the fact that her father has come back.

[01:56:37] And I think her father plays a much more important role in this story than they kind of let led on to, because like he's still so prevalent and almost every other cut scene is speaking to her to follow up on, you know, whatever she's doing.

[01:56:51] He's still talking down to her. He's still second guessing her and what she's trying to do even to the end of the game. And I think that they were trying to determine the hidden folk as she's going through this section and she's solving the puzzles

[01:57:03] as she's written in tootin against the zombies inside. You know, are you going to be able to push on? Are you going to be able to like push past that? Or have you actually learned to let these things go from like your first journey?

[01:57:18] Yeah, and I think I make a lot of sense of that. Another thing. Well, I was just like thinking that another thing, because I wasn't really thinking too much in this area. I was taking a lot of screenshots, honestly. I just wanted to take pictures.

[01:57:29] Beautiful, beautiful area to do. The whenever you're fighting the enemies, even the enemies like all the all the other areas, the enemies you have are very humanoid and this one, they're very underdeveloped, small like creatures that you're fighting. Yeah, it's like there. It's a chaotic new area.

[01:57:44] Like it's a brand new area for Senua where she's like exploring this idea that she can depend on herself, even if she doesn't know that it's her like her that she's helping with the decisions that she's making. I think and then whenever you go back.

[01:57:57] So then she learns the name of this monster that she does know, like these monsters that she is familiar with to go back and like find different ways, because most people try to kill the spoiler alert.

[01:58:08] I mean, I guess. But like most people try to kill the giants. She has a completely different way of empathizing, relating to the giant and then meeting the giant on its own level. She learns all of this in this area where like it's not only the name

[01:58:21] that she learns, but she also learns the motivations of the giant as well. And I think that that is like necessarily like the mental journey that she was going through to not only understand that, but to incorporate the things that she's learned throughout her journey

[01:58:37] about fighting her own demons and incorporating that. Because I don't think she necessarily came out of Hellblade one completely unscarred. I think she probably came out of it a little bit more. Definitely not healed. So she's using that and like bringing she's using that

[01:58:52] and helping other people with their demons. Like it's not necessarily that there's a giant destroying the lands and everything, but you can take that metaphorically as the the sage guy has the sage guy and his group all have done this thing.

[01:59:07] And that is collective guilt rather than a giant physically. Like there's a collective guilt for them. Yeah. Something I want to ask you guys, since we're on the topic of Iltoge and like what she represents to Senua, it was when she they first

[01:59:22] revealed the face of the giant, because you kind of see it. You see it like fucking up some shit. But eventually you see it like, you know, exorcist crap crawling. Does the head flip back? But the first time you see its face, like the voices in her head

[01:59:36] says she's suffering too. And I was like, I was looking at his face. Doesn't it look like I could have sworn the face looked like it was a mirror image of Senua's. Did you guys see that or does it look different? It probably was.

[01:59:47] It could have been something like that because it would have to to empathize with somebody is to see a part of yourself inside of the other person. That's generally beautiful, Dave. Well, that's just what I mean. That's just the definition.

[01:59:58] But it's like so it would make sense thematically. I didn't notice that because I was too busy going, holy shit, this angle and the camera is fucking awesome. Like I was doing a lot of camera work was incredible in this game, especially during cut scenes.

[02:00:12] She was doing like this head. Her head was upside down looking at her and then she was slowly turning and the camera was just keeping in line with the upside down head, no matter where Senua was. I love that circle. That's awesome. Yeah, I interpret this game, apparently.

[02:00:26] Yeah, apparently. Where do we leave off on the on the storyline, Philip? OK, so we have reached the center of the hidden folk. They have deemed us worthy of knowing the truth about the giants. And they tell us to this true name and also our backstory,

[02:00:41] which is apparently times are tough in the land. And man is being inhumane towards man. And she tries to leave her baby with the hidden folk. But at this point, the hidden folk do not seem to be the baby carrying types. So we find a skeleton baby.

[02:00:59] I don't I don't think that's how that goes, because I know how I know. So Iltoia was yeah, there was like war amongst the land and she had her baby, but there was like a sorceress that was casting spells of like corruption on the land.

[02:01:16] She was basically turning everything to fire and poison. And like the like woman had her baby and she was trying to go from different people, different social groups to social groups to like, you know, live, survive or something. And like they were all like shunning her, rejecting her,

[02:01:31] trying to actively like eat her and her child. I you know, I might have phased out at a summer. I might have looked at my phone, but I'm pretty sure her kid just got killed or died naturally of like starvation.

[02:01:43] And she had to leave it behind and realize I didn't. I thought, yeah, so I don't know why all of us have this blank spot in our brain. But like, yeah, I thought it was like she surrendered it or something. I don't remember she surrendered it to people.

[02:01:55] And then she came back and it was dead. I think she specifically surrendered it to the hidden folk. Well, that might have been the case because like at some point she loses the kid and it's the assumption is that the kid just fucking

[02:02:04] is dead or dies like right after that happens. And then that's when she goes back to the sorceress that says, give to say, give me the strength to prevail. I want I want to win this world sucks. All I do is win no matter what.

[02:02:19] And then she turns into a giant. Yeah. So that builds on top of the thing I was talking about where they're like you could say that this is more of a metaphorical thing of collective guilt from the people that shunned her.

[02:02:33] You know what I mean? Like no matter where they go, this this dark cloud looms over them that they let this person go crazy because they her her baby died because they wouldn't help her or whatever. And it's yeah. Yeah.

[02:02:46] There's a lot of ways to look at this. So she goes back to farmager and she's like, I know her true name and farmagers like I know a bit of wizard wizardry. I can do a ritual and summon the giant if you want to talk to her.

[02:02:58] And we were like, he says he can summon. He can summon the sun because no, that's later on. That's later on. Sorry, ignore me. So he does his little like drum circle and summons her. Did you read this word? That was so fucking cool.

[02:03:12] That scene where she's in the middle of a circle. Yeah. But which one? And I took a lot of pictures in there. I went a little too far ahead. Am I thinking of the right one where she's like got to

[02:03:23] she put the new face paint on and she's like it was like a cut scene that we got from one of the ones where she's like chanting and it's the music. It's like the Icelandic band that they got to actually do the music in this game.

[02:03:36] And she's like doing some type of like Icelandic chant. It's fucking sick. It's pretty cool. So cool. I think that is at the end. I think that's close to the end. Is it? Oh, fine. OK. Yes. All right.

[02:03:46] But this where we get our first kind of boss battle section, I guess, which I love this. All of a sudden, the game was like super meat boy. You're running super fast. The giant fireball explosions, the drums are pounding

[02:03:55] and you have to run to these little points and dodge the fire. I'm like, holy shit. The game is good. You know, it's hilarious is that there's this boss fight is the same as in like as an exact boss fight in Bramble.

[02:04:07] Yeah, it is where there is like a thing happening and you have to hide behind a thing before the shockwave comes. It's like so funny. But whatever I got, I was like, oh, my God, it's the hell blade fight.

[02:04:17] Isn't this the one at the with the fiddler, the fiddler in the pond? Yes, that's the one. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's great. It's the same fight. So I love this section. I'm like this guy has tons of spectacle. This is fantastic.

[02:04:30] By the way, this is four hours into the game at this point. And I was so bored like every point of this one. There's nothing in this game. How do they fuck it up? How do they fuck up this game so bad?

[02:04:42] And then I made it to this part. I'm like, they didn't do it. They were cooking. They just needed to get here. I'm like, the rest of the game is going to be fantastic. This is great. Sadly, this is the highest point in the game.

[02:04:50] Everything after this is just snooze. We'll get there, too. You guys like the boss battle? I love the boss battle. I love this fight. I loved the moment where she makes it to the chains and she fucking like chops off

[02:05:02] the red hot iron chains and you see the giant whip back from being held down, which is really interesting. And then it was like, you know, each of the giant's deaths were equally as underwhelming as like I feel like emotionally significant

[02:05:19] because they didn't like they weren't really trying to kill Senua. They were just looking for help. And that was like super clear at the end there where she was like, I know your true name. I know what happened to you. Like she was kind of trying to convey.

[02:05:32] I forgive you. You're like released from this pain. And then you see Iltoiga turn to stone and she had the baby. And she yes, yes, yes. Exactly. That's the thing. Like also besides that, you're just literally physically destroying chains that are holding her down.

[02:05:47] But this weight of grief that she feels over losing her kid. I think that the whole thing, the whole thing with Senua talking about, I know your name and stuff. I again, I feel like it's metaphorical of the it's not that you know your name.

[02:06:00] It's that I know you. I know the grief that you're going through. I have been where you are. And I am losing your love. Now was like, I am here now. I survived and you can too.

[02:06:10] And instead of the giant dying, I think that it's more of like overcoming grief and accepting that and like being and seeing somebody who is a strong leader like Senua is or who she's becoming like to like being able to look up to that.

[02:06:25] It made it easier for her to overcome her grief, you know. Agreed. All right. So that boss fight is wrapped up. Farminger says he she he wants to join the crew. He wants to support Shepherd. He joins the support.

[02:06:41] And so now we have the boyfriend in support of dad. We go to the sea on our way and farmages like this is the only way we can go if we go through the north past the mountains

[02:06:50] freezer in the winter, another Lord of the Rings type thing or whatever. It's like the mountains, we can't go over and we got to go under them. We go by the sea and we get jumped by Astrid and her men. Her Mary and. Yep.

[02:07:03] And Astrid then explains more backstory about the Borg and how fucked up it is that they keep sacrificing people in that maybe Thorxen is not a great dude and Thorxen's like, we did what we needed to do to survive.

[02:07:18] And Senua was like, look, I'm just here to kill giants. Like, I don't know what's going on with you guys. OK, let it go. So I I will say this, and I don't know if you guys agree with me,

[02:07:27] but I have never like or not never, but like it has been very rare in video game movie or otherwise that I have come so one eighty and from absolutely hating a character to being like, I see where he's coming from. I actually kind of like this guy.

[02:07:43] This guy turned it around for Thorgester. This guy turned it around so quickly as to being like a good guy. But even though like he was trying to absolutely just like brutally destroy Senya Senua in the very beginning,

[02:07:56] like he turns around so quickly where he's like, well, you know, my dad's kind of an asshole. You know, it was not even just that, because I think he believed what his dad was saying before as well. It's just that until he realized that Senua could kill them.

[02:08:11] Yeah, he was under the impression that the Giants literally couldn't be killed. So like, yeah, like because of the things that his dad was saying, even though we learn later his dad is possessed by the yada yada. But like, like, and also the Giants are more.

[02:08:22] Yeah, there's so much. A lot of things are going to tie up at the end. But yeah, so with the work. Yeah. Yeah. He definitely comes out. He comes out swinging with the idea that they're literally just trying to protect their people.

[02:08:35] All every faction is doing their own to protect their people. Yeah. In their own different ways. And you his his thing is protecting his people. The Giants aren't killing their village because they're offering sacrifices. And it makes sense because you have to sacrifice in order to maintain

[02:08:52] like civility, you know what I mean? Like, and this is a literal sacrilege. We're literally sacrificing human beings. Hey, you people on crucifixes in the front yard. Yeah, it's a little on the nose. But like a lot of that imagery, but yeah.

[02:09:06] Well, I like going back, Thorg, at the beginning, he does have the corruption on his arm like Senua did at the end of the game. He does not have the corruption anymore. And that is after he goes through the forest section where supposedly he changes.

[02:09:20] So that's one thing to note as well, is that he is going through his own journey. I am so fascinated and I know you like we can get into this, you know, obviously at the end of the game.

[02:09:29] I don't know if you guys had the chance to start new game plus, but I am utterly fascinated to because I just started new game plus and played like an hour. It was wild late to the show. Yeah. Played with Thorgester as it says.

[02:09:42] Well, it's technically the others as the narrator for this second playthrough. And so instead of having it Senua narrating her own journey, Thorgester began the journey narrating for it. And I cannot wait to get back to the forest section

[02:09:56] to like find out what happened to do in that forest. Like what did he do to like remove the darkness or remove the evil? It's very interesting, very cool stuff. That dude had an ego death on LSD. He was crying on the rock.

[02:10:10] I was like, oh, my God. Oh, he just took a bunch of shrooms. He just. Yeah. I mean, exactly where you are, my friend. Oh, this is a Viking shrooms. Yeah. And also, like, you know, when she gets jumped,

[02:10:22] you were probably about to jump into this as well. But like when she's jumped by Astrid and her band of merry men, she realizes, oh, hold on. There's another giant that we got to deal with this giant. I can do it.

[02:10:32] And Astrid's like, if you can do it, I'll trust you, you know, because I can't trust anyone because our village has trust issues. And then Senua is like, oh, man, you know, me too. Yeah. And then you learn you come to find out,

[02:10:43] oh, I wonder why they have trust issues. Maybe that's something to do with why the Giants fucking terrorizing them. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know if this is something that you guys notice, but like all of the character models in this game are like beautiful,

[02:10:55] stunning, like eye popping, like the most beautifully rendered models I have ever seen, like in engine, in gameplay. But Astrid or specifically freaking gorgeous character, like, oh, my God, like, you know. Anyway, moving on anyway. I like the I like the sage guy.

[02:11:13] Every time you look at the camera, I'm always watching him. He's yeah, he's he steals the scene. That's what I was saying. Like he sucks up all the screen when he's out. You think so? Yeah. He takes up some screen space.

[02:11:22] I don't know if it's the ponytail bun thing. It's something that he's got going on. He just looks like a samurai bun. He's got the samurai bun. I look forward to where he's from. Do you remember in the quarry, the police officer guy? Oh, yeah.

[02:11:35] Yeah, that's that's Sam Ramey's brother. He's like, yes, Josh Ramey's. Oh, you're talking about how he takes up the screen. Yeah. So no matter where he is, you got to look at him. Yeah, we're going to watch him. But I think that that's because he's a little crazy.

[02:11:47] He's a little wily. You know, he's a little got to keep an eye on him. Yeah. All right. Anyways, Senua was like, yeah, I got to go talk some hidden people. She does not a rune puzzle. And then instantly, like there's no like this is what I'm saying.

[02:12:00] Like we had a big journey last time of her, like, you know, not listening to the haters and stuff in this. She does like a couple of ledges, a rune puzzle. And instantly the sea giant is like, hey, here's the sea giant backstory.

[02:12:14] So you go figure out the name. And I'm like, so there was like, I guess they already tested her, so they didn't need to retest her thing. They just told her and she walks back. And I'm like, we are. Well, that's experience. Said it.

[02:12:26] You know, the second way, the second time to kill the first giant. It was 15 minutes to make it to the second giant. And now you're ready to kill them. Did it take you super long to edit the podcast the second time you did it?

[02:12:37] Or did you have an idea of what you were doing? Got it. Got him. Slam dunk. Nave got his ass. Anyway, she goes back to the village talks to Asher and she's like, hey, this is what I learned from the hidden people. Does something happen? Yeah, it will.

[02:12:50] And Asher. Absolutely something happened, actually. Asher explains it. And I'm like, oh, so they make a big deal about showing the sea giants fingers in one of his like ring fingers. Yes, cut off. And I'm like, oh, what did you think about that? There's some technology.

[02:13:07] Astrid like remove the finger when she banished him or something morbid like that. No. That didn't happen. You know, it's just they just kicked him out. It could be. I mean, it could be interpreted the fact that he lost his lover

[02:13:21] because like so so the subtext that Philip glazed over is the fact that, OK, so this giant, this giant basically was a man that was part of Astrid or sell it settlement. They're their group of people that they were there. And he at some point they have a

[02:13:37] they have a rivalry or like basically they they hate the björð that that the people for. Yeah, that Thor Guester is from. And so sorry, I'm just messing up the names all over again. But yeah, it's they have a huge beef with that tribe.

[02:13:54] And obviously, because that tribe is like enslaving and sacrificing people. Yeah, they're not really so that they're they're fucking bad people. Right. But the thing is, is that he is, you know, put in a bad situation

[02:14:03] where he gets cornered by these by by the björð by the Borg. I'll just call him the Borg at this point. Philip has turned me he's turned me and they basically forced him to give up the location or they to betray the settlement.

[02:14:17] And at first, you know, Astrid or like gives you the red herring. Oh, he you know, my father was betrayed. And then, you know, Senua has to go later on and dig the, you know, reel the truth out of her and the fact that because she

[02:14:28] she even stops from admitting it in that moment because she was in love with his man. And she was like, he betrayed us. He betrayed my father. He betrayed me by revealing us. I guess we missed that. Yes, they were lovers.

[02:14:43] They were they they she was clearly an emotional attachment between Astrid and the in the giant. And so when he came back and they found out that he, you know, had ratted them out, they banished him from that.

[02:14:56] And he was so distraught from the grief of not only losing his tribe, but also losing his lover, his wife, whoever she was to him. He cast himself into the sea. And that's the grief turned him into a giant.

[02:15:07] We say similar. He's like a he's like a I thought it was beautiful and interesting because it like almost perfectly juxtaposes Iltoiga, but just from a different lens, just from a different point of view, different, you know, course of events to get to the same destination.

[02:15:22] Both of it, you know, they they are overcome by the grief to that. It's always grief. Mm hmm. Yeah. But yeah, so it's like you talk about the fingers, like it kind of makes sense to me now that you talk about it because he clearly has lost her.

[02:15:36] Yeah, they do ring finger. I don't know. I don't know. I think the ring ring is a really old thing. Like that's an old traditional thing, but I don't know where it comes from. But it is cool. It's good imagery, even if it's not in the Viking thing,

[02:15:50] because that's that's a subtextual imagery that like you would pick up on in the second playthrough, like, oh, the ring finger's missing. That makes sense. You know what I mean? It's just it's contextual for us. If you're playing the game in a fourth wall, he way.

[02:16:04] All right. So Senua and Astrid have a character moment and then the village get taxed by Draugr and cool. It's coolest fight in the game. I know. Yeah, probably, because it's like an Avengers fight where everyone's going back to back. That's all it counts as one.

[02:16:19] I'm a fucking sucker for that shit. I'm such a sucker for that shit. I love it like like a slaver boy saves her and this is like over there. And you go, huh? And you turn around. And that's the thing, too.

[02:16:30] That was when it really hammered home to me. I was like, oh, there are absolutely no fighting multiple people. It's only a one on one thing. And I was like, as I was playing with that contextual with that lens,

[02:16:40] I was like, oh, I kind of like this better because I was like remembering I was because it was cool having the having the voice go, look out in your right ear and then block the right. And so it's like that was cool.

[02:16:51] It's also frustrating because you have to like be on 100 percent the whole fight. Meanwhile, in this game, you can kind of coast in the fight until you start getting your ass kicked. And then you have to like, oh shit, sit up gamer mode.

[02:17:01] I can lean lean forward. Yep. All right. So since we have badass Thorgson with us, we beat the shit out of all the Draugr and we're like, we're putting a plan together. We're going to go kill a sea giant. He's in the sea cave, right?

[02:17:14] And this is where it just seemed like it went completely off the rails because Fulvinger is like, I know a bit of magic myself. Like you said earlier, I can summon the sun and I'm like, why do we need to summon the sun?

[02:17:24] Can they only be defeated in sunlight? Because the clouds follow the so so basically be the curse that happened to the the giant. He's followed by storms anywhere he goes. So he completely cloud covers every step. Does that matter? Yeah.

[02:17:41] Because the so because the light is what defeats the Giants. The fire and the light is what defeats them every time. What tomorrow was covered in light or whatever her name was. Did you say tomorrow? Well, no, but you're right.

[02:17:52] But I think it is sunlight because like the thing was is that she retreated every night or shoot. Yeah. Every night. Every day she comes out at night. Yeah. Or at the day, I mean, and then at night she came out.

[02:18:05] And then so it was something that would do with the sun. I don't remember. But it's also another thing. It's like if you you have to expose your problems to the sunlight, you have to like sanitize your problem.

[02:18:13] Yes, they do say that they're like secrets grow in darkness or whatever. Like they hammer that home very hard. And I'm like, yeah, this feels unnecessary, but whatever. Thanks, Fulvinger. We received to ignore him and we go into the cave ourselves to like drag him out.

[02:18:29] And this scene is just it starts out kind of cool. But then because she even has the face paint everything. But once again, this fell flat for me because it's a highly scripted kind of running away. Quick time event. OK. But pause pause really good.

[02:18:44] How would you change it? Change it. And that's just it is like, I don't know how this could be. You're making like a real boss fight like, yeah, maybe like a like a souls boss fight, a dodge button that you actually have to use or something.

[02:18:56] So many games will be improved with the dodge button. I agree. Just look at like the boss fight earlier when you're dodging fireballs and stuff like that. Like, holy crap, I actually have to be involved with the gameplay.

[02:19:05] This is that in this you have that in this with the copy and paste and do the same exact thing again. Yes, I do have it again. But it's different this time. It's never been so good. You got a whole lot of them. Yeah.

[02:19:17] You get a whole lot of this time. And I'm like, God, this is the fucking laziest unfinished bullshit like they could ever throw in here. I felt I felt disrespected as a gamer whenever that one of that duplicate. I'm like, wow, it's like the oblivion gates and oblivion.

[02:19:29] Once you do one, you don't need to do another one because they're all copy and pasted. I can't. I got you, man. It was fucking I felt so crushed and let down after loving the first game so much coming here and they spit in my face with this.

[02:19:44] Maybe you need to come in and make it make it better. She needs to relieve your relieve your grief. That's right. Maybe. Yeah. And then it's like, this is where you hold the person like after you defeat the giant or whatever. And you're like, oh, we forgive you.

[02:19:57] Whatever. There's like a dead lady on the ground dying. And then you was like, you died because of my choices. Maybe I'm not fit to lead. And the voice is like, yeah, you really goofed that one.

[02:20:07] I mean, you did what you set out to do and all these people agreed to follow you and now they got hurt. And then I'm like, yeah, OK, I'm glad we're doing this. Yeah, I will.

[02:20:18] I will admit, I think the voice has got a little bit much with the like the back chat, like the chatter, like the negative self talk. Like, I understand, like it's a representation of like what people do in real life.

[02:20:29] And it's this is like a very real thing that folks do to themselves. But I agree with you to the extent of like, you know, we maybe could have used a little bit less of that, especially kind of towards the end with the heavy handedness of it all.

[02:20:44] All right. So final chapter, Borg of your we stop off on the way, though, on our way to Borg of work. We have Astrid join the team and she's like, and you have my sword and my axe and all that. We're all going to go.

[02:20:58] We're going to talk to King of the Borg and convince him to stop slaving and start giant killing. It's all going to work out. We are fellowship is formed. I love this shit. And then we go with this galagical thing in here.

[02:21:10] That's all I can think the whole time is like she was doing a little queen speech. Yeah. So we got our fellowship and on our way, we got to stop off in the lost woods. And there's they're like, hey, we shouldn't go through there.

[02:21:22] And she was like, no, dude, no, we're going balls deep. We're going in. I am the boss. I want to go that way. It's so funny. And then like they're going to like, no, this place makes you crazy. You hear voices and Senua is just dead. Just. Yeah.

[02:21:38] So like, what are you talking about? OK, what's the bad part? You guys are here in these voices. Like I love it. And farmagers like people come out changed when they go in them woods or they don't come out at all.

[02:21:50] Meanwhile, God, this was what's pissed me off too, because like it's such a great idea. But then it's all there just to punish you and be like, I can't believe you're forcing us go into the woods. Senua, you punk ass bitch. This is all your fault.

[02:22:03] And it's like now Senua make another choice. Look, we all got lost because of you. Are you going to go talk to farmer? You're the wizard or you're going to go talk to Astrid, the mean girl that kicked the guy out of the village.

[02:22:13] I'm like, I'm going to go talk to the wizard, you know, like and it forces you to do this. No, I'm going to talk to the girl. What are you talking about? Crazy. There was a choice. There was a choice.

[02:22:23] Yeah, there's like, I guess there is a choice. There is. There's a moment. Choice doesn't matter is the joke. It doesn't. It doesn't. Yeah, because you meet up with the other one two seconds later. Yeah, two seconds. I didn't know there was a choice. No. Yeah.

[02:22:36] Like the wizards on one side of the river and Astrid's on the other. And it's like, who are you going to help? The voice is like she has to choose. There's only one. She has to make a choice here. What if she chooses wrong?

[02:22:45] You know, they will always be changed forever. Senua, you're going to fuck this up. It's a must to become numb. I have my own voices to deal with. I don't even recognize. I don't even listen to that. Nave deals with psychosis. Really? I went to the wizard.

[02:22:58] You know, you went to Astrid and then you also went to the girl. It does not matter. Yeah, two seconds later, you meet the other person. They're like, oh, hum a Dark Souls character. I'm a little sad and I'm like, great.

[02:23:09] Whatever. And then we bump into crying boy on the log or whatever. And he's like, maybe life ain't so great. You know, he's real sad. That's it. And then you leave the woods and the narrator is like,

[02:23:22] they will be forever changed after the journey through the last woods. And I'm like, this is so fucking annoying that they are trying like it feels like they're trying to manipulate me so hard and it's just

[02:23:32] falling flat with like, I can't believe you had to choose between them. Senua, like your leadership skills are being called into question. And I'm like, they're not like, I don't feel any regret. You know, you know what I think might be happening?

[02:23:45] Right. So there is this I talk about this one game. Oh fuck, what is it? Oh, it's back off the line. We've already brought this up before. Where if you try to play outside of if you try to play outside of the box

[02:23:57] and spec off the line and you accidentally like see the matrix, you see like, oh, fuck, this is just like they're making me do these things. Like I'm not the one doing them. It like you that will destroy your your immersion,

[02:24:10] immersion with the narrative for the whole rest of the game. Like it's another thing with The Last of Us Part Two, where if you don't like Ellie or if you like Joel or you don't like Abby, that destroys your immersion

[02:24:24] the whole time because the game is forcing you to do this thing. We're like you were playing this game and you're like, oh, this is just like none of this matters because I really I have recognized that the game

[02:24:33] is just railroading me into this one thought process that I don't have. Like I'm not thinking this way. So it doesn't you're getting a cognitive dissonance with the whole time you're playing it. Yeah. I think this is another example of another

[02:24:46] another piece of the puzzle that kind of leads me towards feeling that a cutbacks, budget issues, time constraints. They had to change this game. And this was a scene that was in like the original cut, the original idea of it, where this there's this moment

[02:25:05] and it's earned so much more because you have five hours with Astrid or you have another, you know, eight hours with Fargrimmer. And then there's this choice like, oh, my God, I have to choose one or the other.

[02:25:16] And then instead of it being just two seconds later, haha, J.K. It's like the other one fucking is dead. And you have to live with those consequences or something. It would have and it would have made it would have hit even here.

[02:25:28] Like even in this, like to the extent of like, you know, earned or not. Like I feel like it's a little bit of a I don't want I hate saying let down because they survive because they are instrumental towards the end of the game.

[02:25:39] But like you did in my mind, you don't necessarily need one of them because it's like you're depending on the narrative of the story you're going. Yeah. At the end. Yeah, like after this. Yeah, it's true. Yeah, you're right. You're right.

[02:25:53] So we could have gone down to one person and it would have not changed the story at all further on. Yeah. All right. So we may get through the Lost Woods. The team has one last meet outside of Winterhold or whatever.

[02:26:07] And they see all the people hung up. Borg Castle, the Borg Castle. And they see all the crucified people. And she's like, oh no, the slaves. It's almost night time. The giants will come and eat them. And so she's like, hey, you two side characters,

[02:26:20] I don't matter anymore. Go release the slaves. Me and Thorxen are going to go talk to dad. And they go in and they're like, hey, man, maybe we shouldn't, you know, be people to the giants. And this is where things get really

[02:26:38] what we call it, not judgmental, but like each person's interpretive. Like after this point is basically up to interpretation. Yeah, the way I saw it, Godi expresses, I think this is his name. That's what I wrote down. Go to the chief.

[02:26:53] It's not his true name. We find that out later. But we find out that he does not want to kill the giants. In fact, he likes the giants and he likes how things are. He likes being king. Yeah, he likes being king.

[02:27:05] You realize that he has been manipulating his tribe, his his faction of people into doing what he wants because he loves the power and he loves that fear. It basically is like the ideas that fear will allow you to make other people

[02:27:18] do everything that you want them to do, which is something that Senua has been able to do this entire game. Yeah. And she is she is manipulated, not necessarily manipulated, but she's utilized everyone's fear of these other issues that they're facing with to allow them to follow her

[02:27:36] with the idea that she's going to be the one to lead them. And again, like this is another situation where it's like she like even during the fight, she's making a direct comparison to, you know, Godi alongside her dad.

[02:27:48] And she even says it to Thorgester at one point. She was like, you know, he was she was saying, you know, my father was like your father at one point, but you don't have to follow too closely in their footsteps,

[02:27:59] even before you kind of make the realization that his dad is like the big bad. I was really curious as to like how you guys interpreted this. And because obviously they say it like upfront, like, oh, he is the giant.

[02:28:13] But you never visually see him be the giant and you fucking destroy him. He's like way easier than Thorgester was when you fight Thorgester in the very beginning, which was kind of like odd to me. Like I didn't have any issues with this guy at all.

[02:28:27] But like you never see him. He's never depicted in the story as like becoming a fucking giant and going and chomping on people and like eating them and killing them. Like what's that all about? Would you? There is some scenes where we see

[02:28:41] he references the tyrant, which is the king of the giants. Yes, a dark cloud over the city. So I believe that cloud is just his influence. And so he does not have an actual like giant form per se or whatever. Really? So what happens to all the people?

[02:28:58] What happens to the slaves? I don't know. That's the weird part. This is where we start breaking reality. I don't know what happens to all the slaves as they get executed, unless they aren't actually being sacrificed to the giants and they're just being human sacrifices or something.

[02:29:09] There's no murder. And then like he goes to kill them at night. Yeah, they just dumped the bodies. That's that's almost even darker than the idea of him turning into a monster and eating them somehow. I don't know. It's just more insidious.

[02:29:21] It's like the point of them existing is to capture slaves, but for an artificial reason, like the slaves like aren't like or just the sacrifices aren't real sacrifices. They're just a vehicle for him to maintain power.

[02:29:34] Well, maybe he believes that they're real or something like the Giants are. Because his influence seems like you talk about the tyrant created all the other giants. So there's a lot of speculation as to what the other giants actually are, assuming that, you know, these are real disasters

[02:29:51] and not giants like the volcanic activity in Iceland. And a lot of a lot of storms to talk about. Formager repeatedly moving his village and repeatedly losing things to volcanic activity. Like maybe like because the volcanoes aren't just lava.

[02:30:08] It could also be poison gas, that type of stuff that keeps killing off their wildlife crap like that. And a wildlife there are farm animals. Yeah. Yeah. Or a hurricane for the sea, the sea giant or whatever. Or not. Probably the like a sea storm.

[02:30:25] I absolutely. Yeah, no, I mean, 100 percent. The Giants are depicted as real environmental consequences of what it means for people to be living in these areas. And it's like a direct comparison. I mean, this is this is exactly what the Mesopotamian civilizations

[02:30:39] who lived in Babylon or just like the Mesopotamian Peninsula at that time. You know, with the two, you know, you learn about it in world history and class, you know, about the the Tigris and the Euphrates constantly flooding. There's earthquakes, there's pestilence, there's locusts constantly happening there.

[02:30:55] People are living in uncertain times and their environment is actively trying to kill them. And so they create multiple gods to, you know, create a reason for their suffering. And that's direct. That's a direct comparison to, you know, what you see in the two giants

[02:31:11] that are in this game, as well as like who he is at the very end of the game. I just thought it was like it was an interesting stylistic choice, I think, from Ninja Theory to be like, you're going to physically,

[02:31:21] you know, we're going to talk about the Giants in the first two times and you're going to show the Giants to you guys. You're going to kill the Giants. And then you're going to recognize that they were people at one point along the way and realize that.

[02:31:33] But like you see, maybe it's like their artistic interpretation of him being the like like him being a man in just a man is infinitely more horrific than him turning into a big monster. Well, you talk about how he beat his ass

[02:31:48] and how like Thorgyster is much stronger when we fight Thorgyster. He is the lead slaver in Senua's mind. Like he is. Yeah, he is the top tier. Yeah, I go be here, go to your whatever his name is, the chief.

[02:32:01] By this point, Senua knows that the Giants are just people that are suffering or suffered at one point. And so she sees him as just an old man, just a man. Just interesting. Yeah. So he's easy for her to defeat. Yeah. That makes perfect sense to me.

[02:32:18] It's the Dark Souls thing. Dark Souls one where it's like the final boss is easier than like four bosses before it because he's the man that's burned out. Lord of senders. Yeah, exactly. It's it was curious as to like what you both thought about

[02:32:32] him killing Thorgyester at the very end. How did you feel about that choice? I was like, oh, fuck this. I was like, oh, really? Yeah, yeah, my great. So we don't have to worry about him being in the next saga.

[02:32:45] You know, I kind of want a boyfriend to live. But yeah, do you think that part of like do you think he'd let himself get killed? Uh, because like he was like, if he failed the corruption type deal

[02:32:58] or something like maybe well, like there, that's a part of it that I didn't even think about. But it was just like you think that like he loves his dad so much that even though he recognizes that he's like acutely evil,

[02:33:10] that like he like just he realizes that he failed and there's nothing else he could do against him. And so he allows himself to die to give Senua the ability to destroy the old man. Yeah. Oh, I don't know.

[02:33:23] It did suck that he died, but also I kind of didn't. I was pretty tuned out kind of at this point because you were so mad about the previous situation. I in battle at the end. It's like it's yeah. All right. Well, I mean, I didn't like it.

[02:33:37] But this goes right into probably the more important scene. This is the last little scene where Senua basically is reflecting on everything up to this point. And she's like, oh, I'm a leader. We get the scene of the hands. Incredible scene. Beautiful.

[02:33:53] Touching her face like just reaching over like, oh, oh, yeah. Yeah, we're reaching out for her. And this is the first time that she's reaching back. Yeah. They're taking a hold of her. And it's it's kind of scary because it's like these hands aren't just supporting her.

[02:34:08] They're holding on to her. So they're like she is now being held down by everyone. She's helped along the way all the slaves. She's freed her little fellowship that made her to this point. Everyone that's died is her fault. Everyone that didn't die is her fault.

[02:34:22] And now she has to deal with it. And she has a moment where she does the Lord of the Rings thing. I got put the picture in there. It's like in the place of a dark world, you would have a queen as beautiful and terrible as the dawn.

[02:34:33] And she's like, I could be. And then she starts to look like I think she looks like hell from the first game with like the full the full face pain and everything. Like how she held me in. Yeah. Hello.

[02:34:44] From the first game, she kind of looked more back then. But then she's like, yeah, I don't know. Maybe not. And then she turns good for half a second where she's just like perfectly clean. And then it goes to black and it's like,

[02:34:54] but that's a story for another time. And I'm like, what the fuck was that? Like that was so. And then like I put it here, it turns out the real giants were just the friends we made along the way.

[02:35:06] You know, it's I was I was lost at this point. I'm like, OK. So in terms of interpreting this game in a package as a whole, and this is something that like we've, you know, kind of we've we've, you know,

[02:35:23] massaged over the course of this episode is the fact that like I believe that the story that they chose or the route that they were presented with or the options they were presented with in the route they chose to go with this game.

[02:35:34] I don't think it has the same impact, doesn't have the same punch as Senua's sacrifice because Senua's sacrifice was such a deeply intimate personal story. And it was it was a traditional hero's quest. That's, you know, real real talk. It was an archetypal hero's quest.

[02:35:51] She's going into hell. She is Dante Alighieri and she's going to save her husband, her lover, whoever Dilian was, you know, before he got eaten. Question mark. Did you have to get sacrificed? You know, whatever happened to him and she got the head back

[02:36:05] or if she ever actually did. Yeah. Or if she ever actually did. A good question. But like the whole idea behind this game, I feel like is more difficult because they're not dealing with something as personal or as grounded. They're dealing with like stuff like emotional growth over

[02:36:22] the sort of the game or like exactly. You said one of the more important themes that I didn't pick out until you said it, Philip was like becoming a leader, like what it means to be a true leader of men.

[02:36:31] And like that's so much more of an abstract concept than I have to go save my lover or I have to go avenge my lover spirit in hell. And it doesn't help that like I feel like the first game

[02:36:44] had a lot of different hallmark locations, like the iconography and imagery in the first game. Like there was yeah, there was like you're going there's the one with the castle when you go into hell is like keep at the end and then, of course, kind of towards

[02:36:58] the beginning, like where there's this like dock and there's this massive ore house, this Viking ore house that's on the like cusp of this massive ocean area. It was beautiful and like distinct and like visually striking in each of the different levels, whereas here it is distinct

[02:37:14] and beautiful and visually striking, but it also blends into each other in a way where it's like what I this is pretty. Yeah, this is pretty, but this is just Iceland. This is this is literally just Iceland. And I mean, I don't I think that that's an achievement

[02:37:28] in its own right, where it's like they did so much cool photogrammetry work that they were able to depict something so realistic. But the problem, but I think that like unfortunately everything just blend in together. Like the only thing that I thought was iconic was like

[02:37:43] when she was in the dungeon and she was meeting the hidden folk or kind of towards the end when they go to the Borg castle and you know, she's confronting him. Those were really the two most iconic areas in the game.

[02:37:54] And I think that it kind of suffers from that. Yeah. But I still liked it. So I really enjoyed it. You know, I like it in the thing. It's such a struggle. It's a it's a hard thing for me to balance because I like it

[02:38:11] in spite of itself because I acknowledge everything you say. I acknowledge everything you say, Philip. And I think that like a lot of people are critiquing it in a similar way where it's like they didn't improve the combat. The puzzles are meaningless.

[02:38:23] Every publication is like nine out of ten, ten out of ten. Like, no, no, I've heard so many people kind of like talk down about this game, which kind of got me and my feelings, but like you can't talk bad about Hellblade. Hellblade is my franchise.

[02:38:37] You know, no, I think there I think you're in the majority here, Philip, where people were very disappointed with this game. I did general. Yeah. Oh boy. At least at least in the in the gaming community. What do you think, Nave?

[02:38:50] Yeah, it's it's I think more people like the game than dislike it, I imagine. But I'm looking at the Metacritic right now and it's 7.4. Which is pretty low. That's pretty low. Well, I mean, like the the Metacritic itself is 81, but 7.4 is the user score. Yeah.

[02:39:07] And then I'm trying to find that it's this place looks different from last time I saw it. Fourteen hundred ratings positive, 400 ratings negative. So, yeah, it's like it's mostly positive, mostly positive. But I don't know, I think a lot of people are are poo pooing the gameplay.

[02:39:23] A lot of people are pooping the game length. I mean, I I kind of just I'm the type of person that will just play anything. So like when I'm when I'm doing the the puzzles, it's like whatever.

[02:39:34] And then when I do the call, I'm like, OK, whatever, I'm doing that now. And then walking some time. OK, yeah, we're walking, swimming, I guess. It's like I I just take what I get whatever the whatever the developers are giving me.

[02:39:45] And then I judge the game kind of like as a full package. Yes. Why? I think I'm generally more more up on it than Philip is. Philip, you seem to like you. You take you take home a lot more the gameplay side than I was,

[02:39:59] because I was kind of just experiencing the thing. I mean, the experience, though, was pissing me off when it like the walking simulator. I'm fine walking. I played Danganronpa. I'll play visual novels. I can chill and walk. I can read.

[02:40:10] I can listen like I can listen to the audiobooks. But for me to be like. It's trying to like force a narrative on me that's not actually happening, at least in my playthrough. It doesn't seem to be happening.

[02:40:23] It's like I'm like you're talking about, like, I think it's unfinished. Like, it feels like there's cut levels where it's almost like, hey, you remember all that character development that didn't happen? Or it's like there's like three or four different narrative

[02:40:33] cores or lessons that they're trying to teach. Because I think there's like the leadership one, I think is the biggest one. The other one is like self-confidence, which I thought like they were going to do like a recursion. What's it called whenever a regression with?

[02:40:47] Yeah, she's going to have. Yeah. Yeah. No, she's perfectly strong the whole way through. She never stumbles except for maybe one point. But then she gets her mirror and everything's OK. And then we move on and I'm like, OK, so Senua is an unstoppable master chief now.

[02:41:01] And that's just how I mean, I wouldn't characterize it as a master chief, but she's a killer machine. She is a killing machine for sure whenever she push comes to shove. You know, she's not going to back down. I kind of towards towards Nave's point is that like

[02:41:17] I came into this game with I had listened to previews. I had listened to like early on spoiler free reviews of the game, kind of talking about some other things we're talking about now. But I also went into the game expecting the scope that I received.

[02:41:33] I went into the game knowing what the how long to beat for this was and understanding that that was kind of the scope of this game, not necessarily expecting more. And I feel like I'm happy that I did that because I feel like

[02:41:45] if I went into this expecting a 20 to 25 hour Hellblade experience, like personally, I wish we got I would have been more let down than I am, but kind of to what Nave is saying is that like I am willing because of the IP, because of Ninja Theory,

[02:42:01] take what they're giving me in this point and just being like, I'm sad that we didn't get more. But I also really greatly appreciate what we did get because I think and I mean, I'm just going to say this and I don't want I'm knocking on wood

[02:42:12] because I don't want this to be reality. But there is a infinitely high probability that Ninja Theory is going to be shut down by Xbox. And you know, yeah, I like eating up or the they're going to redistribute

[02:42:25] the employees like I this is not going to be a profitable game, nor should it be a profitable. I don't think I think like these are important games to have in their catalog. But I think there's a problem with the redistribution part

[02:42:38] because of the location of the studio, because the studio. This is something that I said before. But yeah, well, yeah, you don't have a whole lot of studios like we got Austin, whatever Austin, Austin got distributed because it's here in America.

[02:42:50] You can you can distribute those pretty easily. But the Japanese studio, everyone just got laid off and no one got redistributed. Even the really high, even a big talent that was there. So it's like I think that I think one of the reasons why Tango

[02:43:02] was one of the first on the chopping block was because they're done with their game and also they're not American. So it's fucking and you wanted to build a multimillion dollar high five rush to that was going to give us zero dollars back. Yeah, which is a shame.

[02:43:17] I don't know. That does kind of linger over all of these games now, nowadays when. Yeah. When they fail or if they just don't. I think I think I think my my my my thought process through this is that now that they have made the game,

[02:43:35] I'm hoping that they use all of these assets and all of these like all the experience that they've come up with. We're making this one right here because this is the this is the first game of this caliber that they've ever made.

[02:43:45] So I'm hoping that they take all of that experience and it makes it the development time, like half of the time, similar to the Final Fantasy seven, seven, seven, seven. Yeah, because rebirth is like three times bigger of a game,

[02:43:57] but was made in like an eighth of the time. Right. Because they because they kept all of the developers to like the whole team was kept on. Yeah. Game really open that that's something similar here. That way we get a lot of this as like like a trilogy

[02:44:13] or anything like that, too. Yeah. So so you want to help way three. You're in the camp for help. Three like, yeah. Even if they're just like, you know, they come up with these another six hour adventure, eight hour adventure, and that's it.

[02:44:24] And they just pump those out every two years, which would be impressive if they kept the same assets, maybe not as impressive, but it's something they could do. And I play every single one of them because I also love the IP.

[02:44:36] It's just I wanted more from this than what they gave me because it's been, you know, so many years since the first one. Right, right. I yeah, it's it's it's such a hard line to balance here. I mean, and I hate it.

[02:44:48] I hate to like sit here, you know, in the postmortem of Hellblade 2 and be like, oh, well, you know, how many units is going to push? Is it going to drive console sales? Is it going to do this and that? I will say this.

[02:44:58] I think that Senua is a hallmark character. And I know that, you know, we got gears E day. So like, you know, Gears of War is like fucking we're back in business, baby. You know, all we need is a good hit.

[02:45:10] All we need is a good Halo game in the fucking Xbox is winning again. But like, I feel like I feel like, yeah, like, you know, is is that, you know, Senua is such an important character to the Xbox brand

[02:45:23] is that I really, really believe that she should be marketed on the same level as a Marcus Phoenix, as a master chief. She should be on boxes and stuff. And I know we kind of mentioned that earlier is that like

[02:45:35] you would hate that name because it kind of diminishes the artistic integrity. Well, no, because before in your episode and Friday, I gave us you said on Doritos bag. I give her a bag of nacho cheese, baby. Nacho cheese, a bag of Cool Ranch with Senua's like face,

[02:45:51] her terrified face fucking plastered on that with her big eyes. I got issues. I got them. You know, it's like I just put like that. I mean, first of all, this game was terribly marketed. So like anybody who's not like us,

[02:46:06] who's not like the fucking like hardcore Giga gamers going back to play trials of mana and fucking playing Star Fox 64, like they're not going to know what the fuck a hell blade is. Right. So that's that's one of my issues with that.

[02:46:18] You know, I feel like Xbox is in a position of mishandling IP. Like it's like at least give it a little bit of push. Like, like we there. I didn't even see any YouTube advertisements for this game. Nothing. It's like it almost had zero marketing budget at all,

[02:46:33] which is again another kind of like damning, scary facet to the overall Xbox pictures that like is is Ninja Theory and the plans for the next five years. Like is it we need to know Philly Spence? Let us know.

[02:46:47] So there was a true achievements article going around that was saying that according to what using the telemetry from the achievements, it says that 90 90 percent of people who turned on Hellboy 2 didn't complete the story. And I think that there was another statistic that one of the first

[02:47:04] like chapters that you get through, I think a very significant, like maybe 70 percent or so didn't get past like the second chapter or whatever. And I think that that's something that's weird. With this game is that it's very intense.

[02:47:18] Like, I don't think we've hit like how intense this game is. This game is intense enough that I had to put it down after like three hours sleep for like the first four hours. There's like no head. Did you play? That's the thing is that often on

[02:47:32] have headphones on. Well, see, that's the thing is that like if you I'm like putting myself in the mind space, I'm like I'm playing the game. I'm here. I'm I'm sitting here. I'm hearing these things I'm doing. I'm like I'm exploring looking at things.

[02:47:45] I'm not like in my brain. I'm not playing a game. I am like in an experience right now. And after like a while of that specifically, it was after we met the sage guy and saved him and we did that fight.

[02:47:57] And then we there was like the oh, it's daytime and we're standing around and we got to walk to the thing. I'm like, I got to put this down because I'm like getting stressed out, like with all the screaming and all of the pain and like it's like

[02:48:09] when you turn on God of War, which is what this looks like to people on a surface level, you see that you go, oh, God of War. You play it. This God of War. You're like, we're rooting to lumberjack. Throw the ax. We got a shield.

[02:48:20] There's my son. Kill that guy. And then you're playing Hellblade 2. And it's like you're worthless. You're pathetic. Maybe you can't win. These people hate you. You're enslaved. All the people you've ever loved are enslaved or dead or they hate you or you failed them. Also, they're dead.

[02:48:34] And it's like I'm like, wow, I'm like this is not rude and we are very sad. And it never lets up ever like the whole time. And this was my problem with the first game to not a problem.

[02:48:45] But it's like the first time I played the game, I was like, dude, I I live in negative emotion city. Like and so what I've got all these negative emotions entering my head. It's like after a while, I'm like, dude, I'm ground down.

[02:48:57] I got to like play Katamari or something like I got to get away. Like there's something there's and I think that I think that that that makes sense for a lot of people that play games that like. Especially surface level people that play games as aesthetics,

[02:49:11] like, you know, people that play dead by daylight, even though it's a fucking piece of shit garbage game. Oh, people, you know what I mean? It's like Overwatch players, they just like the aesthetics. So they just play that.

[02:49:19] It's like the the people that will play this, they get there. The aesthetic is depression. Like so I don't want to be sure. Yeah, it's the same reason you watch like horror movies. Like I was definitely playing this as a very

[02:49:31] under an examining lens and like, oh, what does it mean for me to climb this waist high wall? Like how does this connect to Senua's character in her redemptive arc of failing people in the past or whatever? And then that's how you watch horror movies.

[02:49:45] No, well, it kind of I mean, I do. What does Jason represent? I was like, oh, it's a man's inhumanity towards man or some. Oh, my God. Have you guys seen this fucking in praise of shadow shit? This episode is three hours long. I can't get into this.

[02:49:59] Sorry. Sorry. I did it again. This guy was going to be long. It's a horror movie guy. He tried to go after a bunch of YouTubers and everyone collectively took a giant shit on him. And that's like the most recent YouTube drama shit.

[02:50:11] Oh, I saw that. Oh, my God. I saw I don't know if you linked that in the Goof Troop chat. But yeah, he was like, he was basically saying that like, I don't know, people were people were transphobes or something like that for disagreeing with him

[02:50:23] or they he was anybody who disagreed with his like garbage takes were like, you know, they they weren't they weren't progressive. They were like conservative, like that's the thing. Yeah. So he's like a he's like a literal communist, like far left communist guy and everything.

[02:50:37] He all the videos he reviews are all the movies he reviews are under like that lens. Now, the reason why people were shitting on him is because he did a review on the Hills have eyes. Right. And then that is about cannibal people.

[02:50:50] And he was like, you could you can you can you can imagine the Hill people as black people or Native Americans being encroached on by the white man's land. And then the white family who one of them's like related to a cop or something.

[02:51:05] So they're bad people. They deserve to die. Actually, it's racist to think that the Hill people should have died at the end of the day. I was like, yeah, that's like very people were the people in the in the family that they were eating or the the encroachers.

[02:51:19] Yeah, it was a perfect example of somebody who has their head so far up their own ass and can't see the forest for the trees. And it's called way too much weed and way too much to it.

[02:51:29] Like, you know, I mean, he doesn't even look like he smokes weed. He probably needs to, honestly. But yeah, I mean, that's that's what I would characterize people in terms of approaching Hellblade being like, I want to play as the sexy

[02:51:41] Iceland lady and go kill some draugr's like that's what I want to do. And like they come in and they get to chapter two and they're like, what? I have to I have to walk and talk.

[02:51:50] I got to sit through a cut scene. What the hell is this bullshit? I killed three people. Yeah, I was worried that I was going to come in and be like, oh, you know, this game, it has a lot of bullshit in it.

[02:52:00] And you're going to be like, you just don't like women. There's something like that. I think about it. I think about it sometimes. You know, I know. They have a new program. That's great. Yeah, I have friends that are women. You got to believe me.

[02:52:14] I promise. I promise. My daughters are women. Don't say that. Yeah. But yeah, no, I just like I that's that's one of the issues is that and that's one of the things to you guys is that like, I am really concerned.

[02:52:31] I don't know if we talk too much about this. And I again apologize for uploading this episode. Feel free to edit as much as you want out. Whoever has to edit this episode. But I am concerned that about like gamer demographics as a whole.

[02:52:45] I don't think Gen Z most of I don't think that the back half of Gen Z is going to even think twice about playing this game. And I don't think Gen A is even going to consider downloading this application onto their consoles.

[02:53:00] And that's one of the issues that I think that we're facing as like a gaming market right now is that I don't know if you experienced this with your teenagers, Philip, but all they play are Apex Legends, Overwatch, Fortnite, Roblox. And that's it.

[02:53:15] And the problem is, is that like, you know, the space that they have or the willingness that they have as kids were when we were in high school, we were playing fucking Mass Effect 2. We were crying our eyes out because like, you know,

[02:53:27] Sergeant Johnson got killed in Halo 3. We were playing Portal like we were exposed to, you know, Left 4 Dead with the boys. We were exposed to a diaspora of different artistic influences during the peak Xbox 360 PS3 era. And I just don't think kids are.

[02:53:43] And, you know, when Naive sits there and he talks about the statistics of like the true achievements of people getting to Chapter two and shutting that shit down or not even making it through the prologue of Chapter one, it's really it's it's tough to imagine that.

[02:53:55] And I I also look at this game and I don't see it as a game that is easily accessible to the wide audience. The people, the Call of Duty's, the FIFA players, it's just not. Yeah, you know, I'm with you like my daughters

[02:54:09] when they do play video games only for night. I mean, my youngest only not even Overwatch. No, not even Overwatch only plays for night and she'll play it every day, too. So much so that like I set a timer because I'm like 14 hours of four nights too long.

[02:54:24] You don't need to play 40 hours of go outside touch grass. And you know, can I play this switch? I'm like, yeah, you know, play some Breath of the Wild, Tears of the Kingdom, all that type of stuff. You know, something that's right for night.

[02:54:34] Yeah. So then she downloads Fortnite on there and she's playing Fortnite on the switch after the time. No, no. And I'm like, I assume that's what she was doing because I physically turned the Internet off on the switch,

[02:54:46] but she was able to circumvent it and figure out how to because of. I mean, what's her age? I was how could she? How could she? I mean, I'm not surprised. These teenagers, these teenagers. Google. Yeah. Yeah.

[02:54:58] She fucking she she, you know, bootleg to VPN to piggyback off the network. I was using those proxy websites to get on new grounds and shit. I'm fucking school computers. And I was sitting around like people like, Naive, how are you playing?

[02:55:11] Chainsaw Kid massacres the entire elementary school. And I'm like, oh, brother, let me show you the proxy website. And then that one would get taken down. And then you had to go to the next one. Yeah. You define another one. But I had a list, dude.

[02:55:23] I knew I was in the fucking know. Yeah, I was playing my games during computer class. I didn't want to play that stupid tank game that was just worms. My dad is like, Naive, please just turn in your schoolwork. Yeah. Was your dad a teacher?

[02:55:36] Yeah, he was a teacher. Wow. That's awesome. I was a horrible student and he would just be I would go home with Philip to play Halo and then I would be in the car with him. It's amazing.

[02:55:51] He's like, is Naive, did you do to finish that assignment that you had? Yeah. I was like, oh, yeah. I'm not doing that. That's beautiful. OK, so let's get into the nitpicks. All right. So tiny nitpicks. Not so tiny.

[02:56:05] It has a wide screen or cinematic view for like the whole game where you just you're only using the center. And I get that for artistic design. This is what they're going with. But also were you so like a big field of view in modern games?

[02:56:17] Like, I don't know why they bothered with this. Like, yeah, I get it looks cool, but it's also really distracting for me. It's not so bad in this game because not a whole lot happens.

[02:56:26] This the fucking the game that made me angry about this was the evil within because it took years to patch that shit out. Like whenever I beat it the last time, there was a toggle so that I could turn those stupid bars off.

[02:56:38] But the first couple of times I played that game, those bars were there. And you are actively like avoiding enemies and dodging and not getting hurt. It's like it's like Resident Evil 4, essentially. So it's like it was it was infuriating.

[02:56:49] And it feels like it's more relevant in the first game because I don't remember the first game did this, but because you're claustrophobic, you're you are Senua. You're like super in your own skin. I get why the camera is so close where you're only seeing like,

[02:57:02] you know, your torso and up or whatever. And the cameras locked in and you zoom in even more whenever you hold on the triggers like that seems relevant here. It's like there's lots of things just popping in and out of screen all the time.

[02:57:13] And so it's like if we were shooting a movie, usually you have like cool wide screen shots during fights and stuff like that. But even here, they make the fights claustrophobic by zooming in super tight.

[02:57:22] And so it just feels like the camera guy kind of fell asleep at some points during the fights. Meanwhile, every other scene, you have perfect camera angles swooping around, seeing the twisting head on the giant and all that other stuff.

[02:57:34] But some situations, the bars just don't make sense. At least I didn't like them. Hmm. Yeah, never, never really bothered me. You and my wife like is like, I'll boot it up. I'm like, why is it letterbox? They're like, what's happening? Like, you know, like you.

[02:57:51] Like actually, I actually quite like it, Philip. Oh, my God. Yeah. Well, I don't work around as much, you know, smaller part of the screen. Your eyes don't get tired of looking all the way up. Yeah. All right. Short game. We've kind of talked about this before.

[02:58:07] I don't think there's a reason to rehash it. I don't mind that we especially for the lower price of the game. Short isn't bad, but it's also not what I expected. And there's no rumor of like a trilogy or anything like that. Right? Yeah.

[02:58:21] So it just feels bad. It's like this is this is the tiny proof we're going out on. It's not quite the tiny proof. I think this is a pretty defined statement for them. No, I think no. This game is legitimately like, you know, if if

[02:58:39] if Ninja Theory exists 10 years from now and they put out a game between now and 10 years later and they look back on their catalog, they can look at Senya was soggy and be like, yeah, we did that.

[02:58:48] I think this is an achievement for the team, even if it is, you know, not as critically as acclaimed or in terms of like a game user reviews, you know, as critically well received as it could have been. I still think that there's there's a lot here.

[02:59:03] I do love that you talk about this documentary. I just booted up this documentary when I was on my break after the we finished our pod and then jumped into it. And I started watching it.

[02:59:12] And I was like, as soon as it got to like the doctor who was just like mass, he was literally just doing a circle. Trick of the I'm a doctor in this, but I also I also work in a clinical setting and, you know, do studies and stuff.

[02:59:25] And I'm just like, oh, I wanted to make a joke about about something, but we've already gone past it. Because you're like, we can look back at the manual help blade and be like, yeah, we did that. And I was like, yeah, like how rare who made

[02:59:39] it's not funny anymore. But yeah, you know, how rare. Rare made very replay, but they look back 10 years and be like, yeah, we made connect sports rivals. No, I was like, yeah, three was great. And but then they made Halo four and doesn't make Halo three less great.

[02:59:57] You know, I know because three, four, three may have a four. I had to three, four, three meet those car, whatever, four or five games. Anyways, documentary, ten minutes of defining psychosis. And basically just this feels like the their way into like,

[03:00:12] I don't know, the mass population or whatever. They can be like, look, we're we're gamers that are responsibly handling the touchy subject of mental health. And we have all that we have. We have people with mental health conditions on our staff and doctors.

[03:00:27] And we did all this research. So, you know, we can be trusted. We're actually really good at our jobs. Then I'm like, OK, I don't care. Like the game's still not fun. I saw a tweet that's kind of brutal, but I saw a tweet

[03:00:41] that somebody sent out that was talking about Hellblade even before Saga came out that was talking about sending you a sacrifice. And it was like it was like a hot take, dude, who was just out there that saying that, like, I don't think that Hellblade handles mental health.

[03:00:56] As good like they as nearly as good as they like talk about. Oh, they're so good at talking about it. Yeah, they're very good at talking about mental health. And I've been like, I honestly was thinking about like it fucking pissed me off

[03:01:08] when I read it because I fucking love send you a sacrifice. Right. And when I read that on Twitter, I was like, you just douchebag. You doesn't even know what he's talking about. Like, he probably didn't even play the game.

[03:01:16] But I like it dug a hole in my brain and I was thinking about it as I was going about this game. And I was like, is it fake deep? Like, is it fake? Like, is it like is it more like?

[03:01:27] I don't know, like, or is it more self obsessed with the idea of portraying mental illness than actually like handling mental illness in a real way? I think the first game is a lot more about mental illness than this game is.

[03:01:40] I agree. The first game, I talk about it a lot in the I brought this up a million times. Go listen to the get wrecked. It's like two years old. So I'm terrible at podcasting at this point. But the the first game is a lot more about psych

[03:01:53] about more like schizophrenia than this game. She has voices and everything. But I don't it's definitely focused a lot more on more general ailments, like like grief, like we brought up grief a million times. It's it's very hard, like aimed at grief.

[03:02:10] And I don't know if like each game is going to have like different like not tropes, but like archetype, whatever, like the motif, if they're going to have different motifs in different games. So it's like the first one, schizophrenia. This one had it was grief.

[03:02:25] And then the next one's going to be like something else. But I don't know. It's it does feel very pretentious in a lot of different moments, but I didn't feel it nearly as much in this game. That's because I thought that I feel like the first game

[03:02:41] I complained a lot in the first game about the dad voice, like the demonic voice, because it made me feel super stupid. Like it was like a fucking it was like why it's like the game is super serious

[03:02:51] and like very like it's it's like the the ideas that they're they're working with are working. And then I have fucking shredder from Teenage Mutant Ninja was talking to my ear. I mean, yeah.

[03:03:02] And the fact that the voice came back in this game, I was like, oh, no, I don't like that. But then it's barely there. So it's like it's only every now and then. And I'm like, OK, well, if it's just like another one of the bunches of voices,

[03:03:12] it's not the main fucking thing that she's struggling with. Then I don't mind too much. Yeah. Yeah. I know. But I feel like this game was too preachy. A lot of points like when I talked about when we came out of the forest

[03:03:23] where they're like your choices matter and all this other things that didn't matter. Oh, yeah. It's preaching, but it's not preaching about mental health. No, it's really just talking about it's talking directly about her and like working with like the things you were talking about,

[03:03:35] like like leadership and like being able to sacrifice things. The choices you make, you got to depend. You got to fucking go with it. Like it is OK to have preachy games like we talk about spec ops. We've talked about Hotline Miami, even the Stanley Parable.

[03:03:48] Is hotline preachy? Yeah, it hotline is pretty preachy. I have no idea. I've never played before. So, yeah, interesting. But yeah, I think that. Yeah, no, like I think that like when a game has a very serious and pointed conversation or or it has a specific question

[03:04:05] or a agenda that it is trying to address throughout the vehicle of the plot of the game. I think that like it can be really impactful. And I think that's exactly what Senua Sacrifice dealt with in the first game so beautifully and why it hit home so hard,

[03:04:21] because it was like a game that was about love. But it was also about like grief and forgiveness and learning to forgive yourself and all that within this one. Like we've been through that emotional journey already. And so now it's like, OK, but like what's the next step?

[03:04:36] And you had to dig deeper to find that stuff of like, like, you know, this is a game in the Senua's like, do I have the right stuff? Do I have what it takes to be? Am I her? Yeah, I think and I think that that was something

[03:04:48] that we were hitting on. Yeah, I have. They must have amnesia. But I think that we were hitting on those from two different directions because, oh, no, I think I forgot my point because I said that. No, because I was saying this. Philip was like, it's about leadership.

[03:05:00] And I was saying that it's about using the things that she learned in the first game and partially in this game and to help other people, which is leadership in a way. But like Philip has a lot more of a pointed one

[03:05:10] where I mine is like a generalized like she what can I do with the things that I've done and the things I've been through to relate that to other people and then actively help them? Like that's like the whole point of this game is that Senua

[03:05:24] is learning how to help using her abilities and using her experience. And so I think the third game is going to be a lot more of that. But it's going to be like the problem with this game. It was meandering. It meandered to get to that point.

[03:05:41] Like it took her so much to get there, to figure out like, instead of it being like one long, focused conversation, it was juggling three different concepts at the same time, which is why I think like to what we've already covered,

[03:05:56] is like why it didn't land, why it didn't stick for people is because of like, you know, she's using all of these issues because she, a, she wants to help the people to avenge them back home. But then she realizes that she has to help people here

[03:06:08] and then she realizes she has to help the Giants. But then the Giants were the friends we made along the way. So like it's, you know, it, you know, there is a lot of ground. They always do. Yeah. The missile. Exactly. Oh, God.

[03:06:19] You know, it's they they had to cover so much. And again, to what we were saying, I think they had a lot more planned for this game that they didn't get to do. It feels like a Metroid game, but you know, in every Metroid,

[03:06:32] they take away all your powers in the beginning. Oh, yeah. Bothered doing it this time. So it's just like the end boss rush or something where she's already full power. Yeah. Yeah. She had a mirror. She had a mirror, which is useful for making combat easier.

[03:06:48] Yeah. You don't need to use the mirror ever. That is the oh, the mirror is the oh, but yeah, like, oh, fuck. I'm about to lose. Yeah. You're like on the ground. Time out times. Oh, God. And it's like they they they don't I don't think

[03:07:03] they ever mention it in the first game. It's a big deal. They're like, hey, because of Senua's different view of reality, symbols have meanings. The runes mean more to her enough to change her reality. That's why she looks for the keys or whatever

[03:07:18] are the symbols in the in the space to open doors and stuff. Her finding the symbols gives her the power to pass through certain places. I don't think they've ever talked about it in this game.

[03:07:28] It's just like, hey, go on a Easter egg hunt and look for this symbol. Tell me when you find the letter Y and I'm like, OK, all right. Here we go again. I don't know. I think this game was just rushed, like you said,

[03:07:42] multiple times we've talked about it. Well, I wouldn't say rush. I think that they just had it was difficult for them to get it took forever to come out. We like I. It's hard to say we're like, man, this game

[03:07:52] that took nine years to come out was rushed. It's like, oh, I think I think that the technology they were working with, they just didn't know how to use very well because they're this is the first game in Unreal five on the Xbox from first party.

[03:08:04] I mean, right. It's so these guys were kind of the the fromer. This game looks so good. I don't I mean, wait, is is Forza in Unreal five? And it was its own thing. I don't know. This is the most I would say of this generation.

[03:08:17] This is the most beautiful game. This is this game looks better than Spider-Man two. It looks better than God of War by a country mile, honestly. Yeah. And you know, it's it's it's definitely like you can't compare it. But that's because of the 30 frames.

[03:08:31] It's because of like the camera and the visual style in the colors that they're using. Like if you went for a different aesthetic, this it may not have looked as good as what we got here.

[03:08:42] But yeah, I mean, like you could you could say that about all kinds. We can see that. Yeah, yeah. All right. One more thing to highlight. The first game is on super sale right now on steam with the release of this one, I guess.

[03:08:54] It's only three dollars, nave, three dollars for Senua sacrifice. The first game on steam. Can you believe it? Wow. Or you played on Game Pass. Yeah, you can do that as well. All right. What a deal before we take a break and hit our final words.

[03:09:09] The music plays. All right. Senua's saw a brain. My brain is microwaved right now. I'll do this first final word, son cooked. This is going to be a hesitant to recommend to me. I think you should really pick up this game if you have played the first one.

[03:09:26] Go play the first one if you want more than come to this one. But I don't think there's a reason to jump the first one for this one. Unless you just want to see the fancy art.

[03:09:38] Yeah, I mean, if you're a virtual tourist, this game is the game. Yeah, 100 percent like I was saying before, or did I mention that? Did I mention the photo mode in this? I know I did it on Friday night. You did it. No, you talked about it here.

[03:09:49] Yeah. But yeah. So the photo mode is incredible. The photo mode's crazy. And so you could take all kinds of different insane to pictures. You don't even need to take pictures of Senua or the creatures or anything. The environments are insane, especially whenever you're getting

[03:10:02] into the more psychedelic or more like introspective areas. Like I am a virtual photographer. I would like to consider myself because I just love, love, love screenshots. I'm always taking them. And so I do want to return to this game.

[03:10:15] Probably after Rachel gets over here, I'll probably play this game for a new game plus with the new dialogue that I didn't even know. So there was an achievement for turning for starting the game with new narratives. And that's all I did.

[03:10:26] I didn't I didn't even I didn't know what it did. And I didn't fuck with it. So I just I got the achievement and then I turned it off. Did you already get a thousand? No, I did not.

[03:10:36] But I started to, but then I was like, I don't want I was watching a video where the you have to watch a fucking YouTube video and just do what they're doing. And I'm like, I'm kind of outside of the game.

[03:10:46] So I was doing that with Gris as well, where I was watching a video and I was like, fuck this. I'm just going to play the game. This is like, yeah, I can't just keep staring at the thing. So right. Right. But yeah, the game's fucking beautiful.

[03:10:57] And like there it's it's trying to tell a story. The it glins on like a cliffhanger. I don't know how much we we talked about that. I kind of zoned out towards the end. It's like the the the game itself.

[03:11:08] You don't get a fulfilling narrative whenever you play it. So like in the first game, you get a complete arc and it is very insanely satisfying. But in this game, you don't get any kind of resolution. You just kind of you're presented with problems and you are aware

[03:11:23] that Senua can deal with it. You get some kind of like like some character arcs get wrapped up. But you yourself, your character, aren't you have a lot to continue to do. So that doesn't feel very satisfying.

[03:11:35] Also, like we said, the game meanders a little bit too long, which is unfortunate because it's so short. So I would definitely recommend the game on a lot of different merits. But if you get stressed out during games,

[03:11:50] I don't know how much you're going to like this game or if you are like sensitive to like subjects like there. There are some things that are talked about in this game that are like they go into like graphic detail, they beat them into you like

[03:12:04] like to the point where we were saying before it gets kind of preachy. You might not like the game in that sense either, but I think most people listening to this podcast would be the type of person that would like this game. Yeah. Make final words.

[03:12:20] Yeah, help me to send you a saga. Really, really good game, as we've said before. I think I think this is a must play and I would I would go the opposite of what Philip says. I think that to understand where Senua is in this game,

[03:12:36] playing the first game is mandatory. And because my personal opinion, I think the first game is stronger, especially in terms of writing. So just just on the writing front, I think the first game is stronger

[03:12:46] that it bears playing it first and then jumping to this game right after. I feel like you could play it, you know, one a one b. You could probably finish it in a weekend. It's a Saturday and Sunday type experience. And they're both on game pass.

[03:12:59] So there's really no excuse to just jump in and check them out for sure. But yeah, no, like we didn't even talk about the fact that she spared the guy, she didn't even kill him at the end.

[03:13:09] She picked up the rock and then like went into this like, you know, self like mind palace situation. And that's where the game ended. Well, it was full circle. Like it was she spared. She spared his son. Yeah. And it was the same exact like scene

[03:13:23] like whenever she was about to kill him and then like in both scenes, she's like in the same position. Yeah, pretty cool. Yeah, she didn't crunch his head in with the with the boulder. But yeah, no, it's it's so it's interesting.

[03:13:35] This is a thought provoking game and I think that it's worthwhile exploring. Even if it doesn't hit for you, it's just a short enough experience to like go check it out and see if you like games like this.

[03:13:46] If this is something that's new to you to try and experience, go ahead and jump in here because the the bar to the bar to entry is so low that it that it bears playing. So, yeah, definitely check this game out.

[03:13:57] Well, at this point, Nick, I want to thank you for coming out for another very long episode of the game together. Quite cooperative podcast. That's our show. Yeah. Absolutely. Thank you guys for having me. I'm really grateful to come back here and review this episode.

[03:14:10] And thanks for like playing like not a co-op game, you know, with me to review for the part. I don't know how often that frequently that happens, but, you know, I'm honored that we were able to do this one for the show.

[03:14:20] For less than 10, I think in our hundred and 58 episodes. Crazy guys, you pass 150 EPS. That's fucking incredible. So shout out to you boys. Oh, thanks. When it happened, we we didn't realize I think we realized like three or four episodes later. Yeah, we're like, oh, that's OK.

[03:14:39] Number when you guys hit 200, y'all got to see each other. You got to have like a celebration, like an in-person 200 episode gaming together celebration. That would be hard. Yeah. In Alaska, then. Yeah. Damn. Are you still going there? OK, we'll talk after the show. We'll talk afterwards.

[03:14:57] Look at this. This is the video I was talking about before with the Xbox, like the star field or the star version. Yeah. Yeah. The stars kind of sprinkle. Beautiful. Beautiful. All right. And with that, Nae, what are we playing next week? I don't know. Wait.

[03:15:13] Hell, lords of the fallen, fallen lords. That's what we should be playing for next week. Yeah, it's what we should have been playing last week, like all last week and we only played once, Philip. We're fucking that game was long. We put too much time.

[03:15:28] We waited too much time for we wasted time. You know what? That fills me with some serious grief. It may be next time, dear listener. We can all say goodbye to our griefs and regrets together. Thanks for joining us. See you. Join us gay sex chat.

[03:15:44] That's right. That's right. Get a plunder those butt holes.