OSPlays: Ghost of Tsushima (Part 1)

going live hello everybody welcome to uh an os plays live stream of ghosts of sushima i am blue and i am joined by red hello and hopefully uh we won't have some crippling audio issues this time um let us know how we're going in the comments hopefully i'm actually uh able to be heard unlike uh last week when we played uncharted 2 and i could not be heard for the first five minutes of the stream that's okay two minutes it's only my own idiot fault uh but that's all right we're gonna have some fun uh just doing some samurai [ __ ] uh what else what else do you need um i am a little bit into ghost of tsushima not terribly far um this far if that means anything to you um we're gonna do some side stuff maybe a main story or two but i don't want to go too heavy on spoilers in case you haven't played it yet um the the first act of the game kind of splits you up into a couple different directions as you're uh put on uh go recruit a bunch of people to do a thing duty so there's kind of like five concurrent narratives going at once which is honestly a good way to do it it's uh sweet it's kind of um reminiscent of the ways that uh some kurosawa movies go where there's like a bunch of different things kind of happening at once it also feels very reminiscent of like there is an invasion in your homeland you got a lot of you got a lot of plates to keep spinning in the air buddy boy for uh for research purposes uh since this is an era of history that neither of us are super well acquainted with uh but the game itself doesn't seem to be super well i mean we can't really tell how historical it is because we don't really know like you know we can't tell a 13th century thing from a 15th century thing you feel me uh instead i've been studiously researching kurosawa films by which i mean i've been watching a bunch of kurosawa films so i'm well acquainted with the tropes at play here uh which is really i think all the information you need i mean you know history is it's ephemeral whereas tropes and stories are forever uh the funny thing about the historical basis for this game is that you know the mongol invasion of japan 1274 was a real thing but as anyone who has um studied the uh the great uh and all-important work known as the history of the entire world i guess uh you'll know that uh the mongols tried to invade japan and then died in a typhoon and then tried again and died in a typhoon the original invasion of japan was on uh three islands tsushima oh let's follow this fox hello little spirit what you got for us um it was the island of tsushima i think um and then uh two other places whose names i kind of like half remember but won't say because i will get them wrong and then it'll just be a doofus uh but it was another kind of middling island in between um korea where the the operation was launched from ends like main japan uh honshu island but never got that far onto the main island um the actual invasion by the mongols lasted like under a week because all their ships got you know blown to bits in port uh because that's how typhoons work um so it's kind of funny it's like oh the mongols have taken over the entire thing in real history would have been like all right wait three days they'll they'll leave because their ships are all gonna be junked uh they'll get tired and hungry yeah so i i don't think this game is really trying all that hard for uh historical accuracy but it is trying for is uh aesthetic accuracy to how you know we all understand like samurai movies and kurosawa films and they you know the developers of naughty dog are like look we're not we're not trying to fool you we're not making a historical documentary here we're making an homage to samurai cinema and that's exactly what this is so i could not tell you whether this armor is accurate to the 1270s or not it probably isn't because i feel like we don't have a lot of stuff from that far back um but it's definitely like pretty much samurai armor maybe not from that time but like that's what samurai armor looks like it's not you know uh like hyper fantasized thing like you'd see in assassin's creed it was that out loud deep pull there yeah but yeah yeah this is um because it's dedicated to recreating the aesthetic and the feel uh the historical accuracy is a little bit less um prioritized for instance you are following magical fox spirits to quest objectives uh no they're just wrong and the wind directs you to your next location there's nothing oh yeah just regular fox spirits do you not just like have them just forcibly eat you towards your goals in life well you know sometimes but it's it's not like a daily occurrence you know yeah anyway um the point is we're not really going to be like picking this apart there are plenty of much more dedicated more like weed channels that are going to be doing that in the coming weeks anyway they're going to be like well you see this kind of blade was actually unheard of until this year and uh that's why this game is bad or you know whatever i mean it's gonna happen we all know we've been on the internet for a while but that's not what we're here for we're here to celebrate storytelling and how good it is so uh this is probably just gonna be a lot of like colors and hey swords ah look at this so the fun thing about the way this game is designed is that it's [ __ ] brilliant um all of those smoke stacks in the distance are various mongol camps that you can go and liberate the um zoom in there that that little thing of steam coming up is um a hot spring bath that you can go into and just reflect on life uh and then see your maximum health increase we won't be going into any of those because the cut scene where you enter the bath shows jin's full ass as he steps in so we're not gonna do that on this stream this is a family-friendly operation we're only killing people we are not showing samurai butts sometimes i think we're just like too monetized you know sometimes i think we gotta stay humble is our financial situation too security we just need to like you know go on the wild side and and show some samurai butt just a little controversy yeah oh my gosh let's let's go let's go liberate this uh this camp let's go let's go beat up some mongols so you played through the beginning of this game but i don't really know anything about it because it came out like yeah so what's like what's the situation starts with standoff is the best basically you started at the beach he fainted me and i bought it basically the very first thing that happens in this game samurai on your own and the monsters are all of the longest with your attention you need to recruit some friends to help with uh getting your uh your your uncle free because uh the khan koten khan uh is holed up here in castle canada um and you need to go uh you go bust his teeth in uh game audio is too loud oh game audio is too loud yeah can you fix that it's all those dang quiet contemplative moments ah yes uh just cut this in half oh yeah because that entire fight that would have been when everyone realized it was too loud whoops just cut this in half but yeah basically this game spares no time in getting you right into it very first thing that happens is the mongol invasion and then it's like all right well gotta go rescue my uncle uh and then off you go cool well i can strongly respect the uh the less cliche differently cliche different it's pulling from a different well of cliches uh for the hero origin motivation of uh dead comrades captured family rather than a dead wife which is good uh like that with the most such crossroads it's a bit overplayed obviously the serious hairy dad genre that we live in now yeah anyway that joke i thought of someone in chat it just inspired a stroke of brilliance where if we did go to that uh that hot spring i guess we'd be seeing some steamed buns oh my gosh that's funny yeah wow i'm so good at this um stop yelling about the kurosawa filter guys we know black and white is cool but i like colors all right yeah i the kurosawa filter is uh is fun um but i i like being able to see everything that's going on um and i already have enough problem multitasking i don't want to make it more difficult by seeing [Music] that's what it looks like when you do it right is that you enter the standoff and then you hold triangle and then when your opponent draws their sword and they will try to faint you and i i bought it which is why i got i got attacked the first time around um they'll try to faint you and what you have to do is you hold triangle until they attack and then you release it and then you just cut the guy in half so basically it mimics this like idea of in the game world it's like it's this tense like you're holding you're waiting and then you pull the katana out of the sheath and you cut the guy in half and that release of like tension and energy and all this stuff happening is very elegantly conveyed in you're holding down the triangle button and then you let it go and then blood explodes everywhere it's such a good piece of game design and it's so well done that it like it captures through a mechanic the feeling of being in this standoff that just like pressing triangle at the right moment wouldn't do the the hold and release is what really makes it special sorry uh chat said i needed to turn up my mic so i've uh worked my game a little bit anyway uh one thing so so seeing that scene uh i actually know exactly what they pulled that from uh because i watched it last night so for context uh kurosawa made a whole bunch of films uh some of them are actually just basically shakespeare uh like there's uh i've played this blood which is just like i admire them macbeth but japanese but he uh did this movie called yo jimbo um about this wandering samurai a ronin as it were uh just kind of finding this town full of just like gang warfare and and just crazy [ __ ] and the the innocent town people are suffering because these idiots are just like you know having turf wars and murdering each other and he's like hmm i guess i can get involved and he ends up like single-handedly freeing the town through cunning and trickery and uh getting himself hired by bad guys and then killing bad guys and being like oh gosh you just missed him it must have been like 15 dudes to have killed this many guys yeah wow probably went that way this works like three times by the way um but you know what uh yo jimbo did really well and uh then this uh this next movie called sanjuro was based on this book that did not when i was protected about more political turmoil more crazy [ __ ] basically it's these like these nine young samurai are like oh man uh i think there's corruption in the court and i uh i told my uncle and he was like oh how do you know i'm not the source of the corruption so then i told uh like the the chamberlain and he was like oh gosh that's that's pretty serious have you like told anyone else about this like anyone who would miss you oh wow that's great listen you and all of your like friends should definitely come meet me in this uh abandoned part of the woods later it's great no yeah we'll totally discuss solving absorption problem and sanjuro who's napping in the next room of this abandoned temple comes out like all right i gotta step in before you idiots get yourself killed and i feel responsible and then the rest of the movie is just him like helping out these nine like naive young samurais who are like oh we'll charge right in and he's like or you could do literally anything else you know i don't know not like i know what's going on um but like in ultrasonic movies basically there is one dedicated bad guy who is actually serious business uh in yojimbo that dedicated bad guy is the guy who has the gun which is like a common thing in samurai movies because in the meiji era when swords were being phased out and guns were becoming like a thing it was almost this symbolic thing of like the old ways are dying the new ways are killing them and and you know you can be the best source in the world but if someone has a gun it doesn't really matter how skilled they are you know that kind of situation uh so that in that movie the bad guy is the guy with the gun and you're like oh this guy's bad news and he's also like smarter than the other bad guys he sees through sanjuto a couple times but uh in he's he's like the only other guy who's kind of on the same page as sanjuro like they've got a similar vibe everyone else is running around to boil the political turmoil he's just like yeah you know my boss sucks but i uh i am a loyal samurai to my lord so i'm just gonna kind of see this out i mean he sucks i suck it's really kind of a match made in heaven but when sanjuro tricks and defeats them and and you know saves the day this guy is like we gotta resolve this with a super kick-ass samurai showdown in the final three minutes of the movie so you can guess it's not going to be like a very drawn out fight and in fact what happens is like i don't want to do this i don't want to fight with a fence this is gonna die and by one of us i mean you and the guy's like my otter will accept no other outcome wait and then they stare at each other for 30 unbroken seconds and then the guy swings and sanjuro cuts them in half and he explodes because uh as many people pointed out to me on twitter um the blood pump malfunctioned and just like blasted out with like the pressure of a fire hose but the guy to his credit was like i'm just gonna roll with this and then fell over and everyone was like wow beautiful such high pressure blood uh oh there's lag um oh really yeah it looks like oh damn it ah we were doing so well it's okay but you know we'll live i mean there's nothing we can really do about it uh indiegogo but anyway he cuts the dude i did it again just in case uh but we will see ah sounds good um but yeah so uh so that exact scene where they're just like staring at each other for 30 unbroken seconds waiting for one of them to move and then the guy moves and then he just gets instantly like taken out slices and diced it's uh it's the quintessential samurai show that you've seen and it's it's definitely one of those things that would have been um less effective if it hadn't been in one shot really like i'm pretty sure they're a whole like i don't want to fight yeah well you gotta honor and stuff blah blah blah um i think that was just like a warner and then the 30 unbroken seconds of like staring it's it's like i don't know that that would have been really hard to act yeah like all right now i need you guys to stare at you say your lines stare at each other like you want to murder each other for 30 straight seconds and then the minute you move you move faster and cut through him and it's like jesus uh okay sure and how many takes do we get one this blood pump is crazy so yeah um i think there's a lot more quick cuts in modern cinema and it's not just to like make it easier on the actors but it it definitely does but it also kind of i don't know it sort of pulls you out you don't even notice how much more immersed you are when this actually has been one contiguous scene with complex blocking and the camera moving through this building while this stuff is happening you know i mean i i don't really know that much about cinematography so i'm kind of just talking in terms of like ooh pretty i like when they did the stabbing part but you know it's really good and uh it it's the samurai showdown that that defined the way they make it work in this game yeah um okay i'm gonna speak with the woman to end this uh this quest here where is she uh and then i'm going to see if we can play around with any settings um to make this not garbage uh skill sounds good nearly died damn everything's the mongols anger you oh sometimes crazy slideshow yeah i'm sure okay um let me see i should return things learn to master my emotions i i really like the idea of the audience actually being able to see what's going on um it would be nice it's a very pretty game um people keep talking about bit rate and i don't know what that actually uh there's a setting in in obs uh if the bitrate gets too high it struggles but like you have to set the cap for the bitrate before the stream starts and uh can i click the button that says stop streaming and then do that and then click the start streaming button i don't know that might just kill the stream dead um i i yeah uh i mean the thing is it's looking really smooth on my end now so whatever was happening it uh it might just be that the game like when when a lot is happening it gets a little bit taxing on the processor like how uncharted was lagging but like other stuff wasn't so much hmm i don't know why it was working and then suddenly wasn't that's internet man it's a cruel mistress those were good no yeah we're good now okay well sort of good it's a little bit it's uh i i feel like on a certain level we're like we're trying to control the weather here like yeah we do a sort of random things and then every once in a while the clouds part and we're like okay write that down whatever we just did worked yeah yeah hmm darn well let's uh let's just go past here and go to the coast and see if there's anything pretty to look at then we can go to a mongol camp and see if we can find anything neat to stab um come on jump fine um but you were mentioning like the position that guns hold in in those movies that are all kind of set in and around the uh the the meiji era i'm just imagining like the last surviving samurai at komodo beach jin sakai fights the mongols with only his wits and a gun yeah it's there's there's this very interesting like interconnected lattice of tropes about specifically samurai movies um and uh the the unique role of guns and gunmen is is very interesting uh okay uh you know what chat is saying like just try try turning the stream off and on again all right let's try that all right all right our audio is gonna dip but we'll be back in a second let's see if this works uh hopefully see you soon okay now we're going to click the start button again all right we are back in we're back we're we are yeah we're we're streaming again let's see okay okay hey we cut the bit rate hopefully it works if it doesn't i am sorry chat i'm a little bit disappointed in you i'm not gonna lie you're the ones who told us to briefly cut out the stream and now you're like oh my god the stream is over i mean like i wish that my internet was better that we didn't have to worry about this in the first place but i don't know i'd only started being a problem recently we were playing all kinds of games earlier in the year sad yeah who knows come on yep anyway it looks a lot smoother now so hopefully that stops being well sweet but mostly smoother you know what it's fine it's very certain you're just getting its bearings yeah after a certain point you're just polishing dirt all right there's no point yeah indigo was like hey let me know if you want me to make like a like a super cut of uncharted and i said i appreciate the sentiment however there is no usable footage from uncharted yeah like a great podcast but no footage yeah no footage i mean it's it's all right it's a little bit jittery but it's not like slideshow exactly oh yellow says that would kill stream dead briefly but if you want to fix it bitter bitter 220 is where mine's at also go to advanced and tick the box dynamically change bitrate when dropping frames ah let's try that oh damn okay wait uh so we're gonna kill the stream again uh i don't really need to oh i think we do i don't think it lets you alter the bit rate during the stream um where is dynamically dropped the thing while losing frames it might not be available on your kind of computer obs is a little bit finicky like that no yellow uses obs so well yeah but he might be using a different kind of computer dynamically dynamically change bitrate to manage congestion beta hmm i mean it can't make it worse it can't make it worse all right i can we'll be back in two seconds one more time we're going back and we are streaming again okay i think all righty all right let us see it looks like how this works it looks nice now that we're standing still yeah looks okay it looks okay on my end for for right now we'll see if that lasts and then if it's terrible then maybe we don't play as long but yeah no it's fine it's fine i want to show you all this fun game and here i am getting styled on by my own internet which had otherwise been so nice um oh no no she choppy she's choppy it's a little bit chunky but honestly like it's it's smoothing out sort so of let me jump off of this small ledge i know i'll lose health i have bigger problems it's the way of the samurai yeah i mean it's it's like a little bit chunky but it's it's dropping way fewer frames now okay we'll need to change osp stream bingo to uh slideshow remember back in the good old days when audio issues were only problem i mean our audio has been crisp today yeah except for the fact that the game was louder than we were uh you guys were like oh osp's audio issues are terrible if only they'd get better and a finger curls on the monkey's paw uh it's honestly way smoother now like it looks great all right see where we're going uh we are following the wind that way the mongol camp which will be where we're going the thing i love about this game and how it makes you navigate the world or how it encourages you to navigate the world is that there's no compass there's no mini map there's no quest markers there is only the wind which will gracefully push you towards where you're going smart let's do another standoff and it's great because there's so many moving pieces in the game world there we go that's smooth there's so many moving pieces in the game world that the grass will blow in the right direction the leaves will blow in the right direction everything will go in the right way beyond just like the actual wind itself beautiful i love it okay well now it looks incredibly crisp awesome so yeah i think we're good like any small amount of jittering i think will correct themselves which is good because that means you can stream without it being torturous on the eyeballs anyway we were talking about samurai tropes i think uh yeah samurai tropes and then everything went to right garbage every yeah yeah technology emerged and ruined everything and anyway uh yeah so so the role that guns play and swords play in samurai films is very interesting because it's it's like the simplest symbolism in the world for old world versus new mm-hmm um i thought i had made myself a river that separated indigo is messaging me fun facts about teenage mutant ninja turtles oh i see i don't know what could have prompted that actually it's about what we were just talking about indigo says fun fact teenage ninja turtles three turtles in time also used the gun to indicate its bad guy as a faithful homage to the films that inspired it the more you know wow i was planning for a [ __ ] post and that was actually very insightful i i shouldn't have been so quick to judge either indigo or teenage mutant ninja turtles uh yet here i was the awful person that i am um but that's actually really cool oh uh real quick uh just before we completely leave the the ninja turtles behind uh fun fact the creator of the teenage mutant ninja turtles is like super close bros with uh stan sakai the creator of the comic usagi yojimbo which i highly recommend and uh people who have watched ninja turtles probably know this character because he has cameoed in basically every single version because they are friends like they keep writing in crossovers that's funny it is so funny and it was one of those cases where like in the early days you know indie comics creators were all kind of sticking together and then ninja turtles got huge and usagio jimbo only got like pretty big or like popular in certain circles so it's it's just really cute that they kind of kept up this this fun little exchange anyway highly recommend it's really good also it is absolutely full of kurosawa references uh it was one of those things where like i would be watching one of the movies and be like oh they did this plotline four times and they did this bit twice and uh and actually at one point because stan sakai is such a good researcher i uh i used uh one of his comics as like a visual reference for the clothing styles of an era before i could find references for because somehow he'd found references for it and i was like oh amazing so yeah just super good look it up usagi yo jimbo it just means rabbit bodyguard in japanese it's awesome i love it anyway let's go stab this guy the funny thing is that uh in this game you use your um your little tonto dagger uh as the uh assassinated blade whereas typically the tonto is reserved for when you have to kill yourself uh if you if you goof badly enough that you have to commit um uh sepuku which i always confuse which one is harikari and which one seppaku i think they are the same thing oh okay they're all the same thing i wasn't sure if one of them might even be misreading the characters uh i thought one of them was like when you stab yourself and the other ones when the other guy cuts your head off but i i don't know enough to talk about this so i'm just going to stop but it is cool though the samurai finds a a different use for that typically ceremonial weapon um one of the interesting things about how the story in this game goes is that uh basically all of the uh flashbacks that jyn has is to his uncle being like and you know you only fight people head on because only like a cheap lying [ __ ] would dare to uh uh to just lie and sneak and be like assassinate and stab from the shadows because that's like a really garbage thing to do and jin's like yeah but i gotta um so there's a fun little cognitive dissonance there but it is a little bit wonky uh found a bad guy um there is a little bit of cognitive dissonance because there is like no you know getting penalized for playing sneakily but every single fiber of jin's body is trying to fight against like this ghost style uh combat where you're um you know sneaky and stabby and not you know yelling your position to everyone in a 40-mile radius to come and fight you head-on um a little bit of uh of of story uh gameplay friction but it's it's not that bad that's kind of interesting it's uh it's like giving you a soft moral choice system where you're like i won't i won't lose anything by doing this but i'll feel bad yeah um yeah which is kind of like i mean again that's actually a bit of like very good uh gameplay story integration because that's how the main character feels about this he's like i i won't lose anything except a certain amount of personal honor and comfort by doing things this way but i gotta they're mongols yeah and uh what's interesting to me actually is that's the first time where i'm like oh that's that's like directly contradictory to some kurosawa stuff uh because sanjuro that that protagonist character uh he's very sneaky he's like a full-on trickster hero uh there's some things he's upfront about but he like lies and misleads people a lot uh and there's this very interesting thing they do especially in yojimbo where uh he's completely honest and upfront with the innocent townspeople but he lies constantly to the bad guys but the audience always knows what he's really thinking because we've already heard it so like the audience kind of has this third person omniscient thing while the uh the the characters only know what he tells them but we know everything anyway it is uh but it lets us see like he there's certain things he doesn't do exactly like when he's fighting he doesn't like backstab people or cheat them but he does ambush people and kill them and kind of like it the fact is all of his fights are unfair because he's just like that good he's way better than everybody yeah there's a there's a scene in yo jimbo where he kills this house full of guards it's like i don't know maybe 12 guys uh and he just kills them all way too fast for them to react and then he trashes the house and he's like yeah it must have been like a whole small army it was crazy they went that way and then in san judo he one-ups that and kills like 30 guys in this entire courtyard uh because he has to rescue these idiots that got themselves captured and he's like well damn it okay i guess it's murder time um but it's it's interesting that this protagonist isn't quite fitting the mold of you know i i'll be honorable about certain things and in certain contexts and like if it's a samurai duel we'll do it the right way but these guys i can just like murk because they gotta die and i have a sword so whatevs um and i kind of like that actually like like it's not just picking and choosing different parts of classic samurai movies there's a certain amount of unique character to this guy uh and i like that my menu here and get some extra um bonuses here the visuals are really smooth man this is great yes um dash and strike oh i like that yeah i watched a uh a mark brown video from game maker's toolkit about skill trees as i was starting this game it's like how good are skill trees and basically all the things he said of like what to do with guild trees are basically being done here where it's like don't have your skill trees be like really crappy like you know minor percentage changes to the damage system on the game's underlying excel spreadsheet like actually get new abilities uh so that you feel like you are increasing in complexity as you go that's a lot more interesting than just like uh yes you've spent a skill point on a 0.2 increase to this very specific kind of damage um and then of course that's basically you know exactly what they're doing where all of the changes that you get actually have like meaningful impacts of different things that are changed or techniques you can use their benefits to your um like your sidearms and your oh no damn it no reinforcements um your benefits to your like archery and like tool pouches and stuff but then there's also different stances that you can use in the game sorry about that um so right now i'm in the water stance which is really good against shield guys i can switch to the stone stance which is very good against sword guys and then the moves that you use are different so if i hold triangle in stone stance it's this really cool stab whereas if i hold triangle in water stance it's this cool kind of like a quick combo so the way that complexity is dulled out is really really good um because uh it it manifests in all these different ways with like uh you know sheer sword upgrades new techniques oh wait hold on you thought you could get away um new techniques and uh and and lots of other things uh throughout the course that's cool yeah the one other thing that's worth mentioning is that um i was actually really impressed with how nuanced they've managed to portray the mongols even though they are unambiguously the bad guys um you meet uh coach coten khan uh very early on in the game as he's you know he's there for the invasion um and his big monologue his big monologue in the beginning is like what did you do this morning um when you're preparing uh you sharpened your sword but i was studying i learned about your geography i learned about your people i know which villages to tame i know which villages to burn i've learned everything i can about you which makes me so much more ferocious you know than if i was just some some big you know strong dummy you know marching in here and i really like that they actually go out of their way to portray him as smart when a lot of media could easily just go into ah yes these are the bad guys they're the mongols they're dumb and have no redeeming qualities you know you don't have to like the mongols to recognize that they didn't get where they were by being dumb um so i really appreciated that they they do actually show a good amount of nuance in their portrayal of these guys so i thought that was cool that is cool that that's kind of another uh samurai movie slash kurosawa thing where the the bad guy to watch out for is the one who knows what you're up to yeah uh like most of the bad guys will be caught up in political intrigue or their own motivations or freaking out or getting tricked you gotta watch out for the one who like lingers for a few seconds after the other ones have left and like looks suspiciously around and then leaves because that's the one that's the one with the brain and that's the one you gotta watch out for i saw a flock of birds circling in the sky my lord i went to see where they were and found the most beautiful place i sat do you like that you can get side quests just by like finding people hanging around in the world and it's not like a bunch of you know exclamation point quest markers dotting up your map you only get the side quests if you organically find them which is really really smart because then you you feel like you're constantly discovering things as opposed to oh i guess i'll do this one and i guess you'll do that i guess you know in assassin's creed it's just like ah here is icon soup that's strewn across your map but you only get the quotes or you only get the uh the quests uh the quotes you only get the quests that you find so you never have you know more stuff than you need and if you don't want to explore and you want to beeline the story you'll realign the story and you won't even get the distractions in your way you'll only get it if you go out of your way to find it oh can i upgrade my swords i can upgrade my swords all right cool all right oh blue uh chat is implying that you are a bit quiet um i can change that right did you hear me get louder because i upped my gain oh yeah i think you're louder cool cool i'm also standing a little bit away from the mic because i have to keep a couple things in front of me between the laptop the uh the microphone the uh television my mug of tea which actually i'm just gonna refill this real quick because i'm dangerously low on jasmine tea um oh that's the good [ __ ] yeah all right i'm drinking out of one of my favorite mugs which is a mug that is in the shape of an elephant so it's got a little snoot coming out the front oh that's criminal it's good yeah it's good cleo is napping somewhere she's she's hiding the little scam she's either in the closet napping on my shoes or underneath the bed which are her two favorite places to go and uh skulk away to ah magnificent yeah i sent uh i sent read a picture the other day i might post it on twitter later of uh cleo looking her most orbed that i've ever seen her like her hind legs were were tucked in um she just looked like the tiniest like chunkiest little sausage of a cat whereas usually she's very like long and like stretched out and slender cleo was just on the kitchen table like ready to ready to pounce like like a slinky scrunched up real tight it was hilarious she's adorable it's not fair oh wow chat with some real spicy takes about how jasmine tea's bad and other things are better you guys hmm jasmine tea is uh is undeserving of this slander oh [ __ ] that's a bear what you'll see in a second oh please tell me you can sword fight the bear uh yes but it doesn't go well well that's just true to life [Music] every bear encounter that i've ever had i have died yeah wow oh yeah see how you [ __ ] like it wrecked shop oh beautiful hey bear team team i also want to talk about samurai with bear that samurai can get it it's always i don't know why it's always that bdg quote that i find the most applicable and i uh i i have more bdg quotes rattling around in my brain but that's always the one i default to sorry 2000 concurrent viewers what's cracking how y'all doing [Music] woo let's find some more mongols i also love that since obviously like i have not finished the side activity there are some people in this camp who were completely unaware of the fact that a bear just stormed in and started wreaking havoc same [ __ ] as always it's back now because uh because i'm on a delay but i just saw the bit where like the kind of focus modes and urine color and everything else in black and white i really like that it's really good nope nope go back that's not what i wanted to do i recognize that that's the button i push but that's not what i wanted to do our r2 uh the right trigger in this game has a lot of responsibilities uh so sometimes you end up doing things you don't necessarily mean to um r2 is loot it's change stance and it's also uh crawled through little uh crevasses in the walls so sometimes you end up doing things that you don't necessarily intend uh so um just noticing some of this fighting stuff uh i haven't played like the awesome games but i've been told that that specific mode of like it's you versus a whole room full of moves has kind of been adopted by a lot of other games do you think it had an effect how it works i think comparing this game to arkham is a little bit reductive um because this game has a lot more complexity built in just by virtue of the stance system um i think there are you know certain comparisons that can be made in terms of like oh it's you versus big wall of goons but i think there's a lot more that's going on um with light attack heavy attack with uh the harry system which is a little more complex than um the way that arkham uh plays out i think i'm not trying to diss the arkham combat it's really good and it gives you the satisfaction of just mowing through a room of bad guys but this game is more deliberate and puts you in fights with fewer enemies so that each one ends up being more of a challenge to juggle as opposed to you know if if you're in a fight with 17 bad guys it kind of plays the same as if you're in a fight with like 10 bad guys because you're just gonna be juggling and bouncing and hopping between them all you know all fight long whereas in in this game um being wildly outnumbered is really really really bad um and makes it vastly more complicated um so i i think that there are certainly you know comparisons that you can make but i wouldn't read too closely into it because the combat in this game really is its own thing that should be there's a fly get out of here that that should be considered as its own as its own entity right no uh it's just interesting because uh i'm comparing this to you know kind of samurai movie style fight choreography uh yeah which is because it was done by like real actors with swords a little more grounded in reality uh and like what can actually be done and just kind of watching your dude like flip around and back handspring away from danger it's like all right that's that's cool but um yeah i'm almost wondering if the if the increased movement almost reduces the impact to a certain degree where like one of the things that kurosawa was really good at is like maximizing effect from minimal movement like yeah you know most of the showdowns were like not even the camera was moving it's like completely still and then the minute one of them moves the fight is over yeah um and obviously that that's that's something they incorporate in the showdown mode where you know you're like hold hold hold strike and then you win yeah but most of the like when it's just you versus a room full of bad guys yeah uh they don't quite do that thing where you're like dancing through them and each one is a single stroke battle because that would be you'd be too powerful you know like it can't work it can't work by movie logic because the the power of a protagonist is not one that a player is allowed to abuse most of the time yeah and it's it's just interesting you know watching the concessions that had to be made because uh almost like when i was watching you like you know fight and back roll away from stuff i was like this is a bit dark soulsy like they wind up in swing and then you roll too yeah it's it's a dance very much yeah i think people um in a classic case of uh misunderstanding um what a very influential piece of media did right the thing with dark souls is the thing with dark souls isn't going to get maul to death by three bears um the thing with uh they're back for revenge yeah uh the thing with dark souls is that it's not just that it's hard it's that it's a dance and that's what a lot of games that try to mimic dark souls combat miss so like assassin's creed slavishly tried to copy the the combat system of of dark souls but failed because they didn't make it work like a dance oh that's a bird wait golden burb golden bird tell me your secrets where'd it go oh there it is um whereas this game i feel like has more of the dance-like quality to it um you know because there's this there's this dynamic between like rolling and uh and and parrying and uh and attacking and juggling a very minimal number of enemies and you know adapting to which kind of person you're fighting at this very second and using stone stands for swordsman and using oh it's a hot spring oh boy oh no are we gonna do it i mean it's up to you man uh ah [ __ ] it we don't make money on streams anyway cover your eyes chill turn on the fans i'm getting a little uh toasty in here oh yeah and things are about to get pretty hot oh my god okay are you all ready okay the fan is on i'm sorry if it's loud but it it it got up to about uh 87 degrees in here oh cleo you were in the closet oh come out hey take a seat oh did i wake you up because i turned on the fan i'm sorry one of the things i like about this game uh is the implication that what a lot of people tell you when you're first getting started with um with these quests and learning about the uh like the hot springs and stuff is that oh you know even though you're doing a lot of important work you need to go to the hot spring you need to like rest your mind rest your soul the implication that even when there are mongols happening self-care is important and i i like that that is is hammered home in a lot of ways there's one guy who's like yeah you know you're doing a lot of like heavy heavy lifting in the fighting stuff but like have you ever considered just like sitting down to reflect on on nature and like do some haikus so there are places in the game where you can just compose haiku and it's really really cool and fun and it's a great way to break up the experience um beyond like helping people and exploring and finding things and honoring shrines and stuff so it's it's really neat that quest uh it's it's neat that the game actively encourages you and rewards you for not just like going off the beaten path but like framing it deliberately as like a self-care exercise i think that is very cool and we're doing a side quest and i kind of like how that sort of diegetically is like listen you don't have to but if it's ever getting a bit much just take a load off here's the places you can do it which is you know that that's equal parts for the character and the player because the player is like oh god i've just been mowing through dudes i just want to relax you know what i'll just park my butt in a hot spring for a bit and uh and that's the thing it doesn't force you it it integrates the gameplay and the story and the player experience oh are you having a big yawn because you just took a big nap oh i bet you are i had uh the uh the joy and um honor of playing uh some games with uh uh hello future me on uh age of empires two uh the other day and we were we were talking about uh cats for part of it he was uh very appreciative of the clio cameo on um on last friday's uh video it says the stream's current bit rate is lower than the recommended bit rate are we lagging no no we're actually fine they're like we recommend you use a stream bit rate of 2 which is uh honestly there is no winning with the stream widget it'll be like oh the bitrate's too high oh it's too low oh gosh i just don't know what you should do and i can't offer you a solution i'm just a widget and it's like well maybe you should stop yelling at me then anyway they've been drinking a straw i can't fault their taste is the pride of tishman especially slater uh in the comments asked if we had any thoughts on jk rowling and separating art from the artists we want to get into that are we leaving that be um or do we just refer them to lindsey ellison uh i think that's a good that's definitely a good approach but uh i don't want to like go full into this but i will say it's okay if harry potter was a big part of your life harry potter is literally the reason i learned how to read when i did but it is also a good idea to analyze a work in the context of the author i mean you know our thoughts on this that's literally all i do um you know you take the story and you put it in context so you understand the story better and if you look at the opinions jk rowling is putting forward and then you look at her books from that perspective a lot of things kind of jump out like how isn't it interesting how the gryffindor girls dorm will physically throw out anyone it perceives as male or isn't it interesting how that entire house elf subplot played out and isn't it you know it's just you know i'm not going to tell you like you are not allowed to acknowledge that you ever enjoyed this or that you liked it or that you even like parts of it it's just you know as an audience it's kind of your duty to critically engage with the stuff that you you take in and a big part of that involves interrogating the the context in which an art was created and in this case that context is becoming extremely clear because she will not stop tweeting about it oh yeah trans right sorry didn't want to leave that one out yeah in case there's any immigrants yeah my thoughts are pretty much the same hi cleo what are you doing here [Music] she tweets again again again just do do watch the lindsay ellis video i think it's called death of the author two rowling boogaloo yeah highly recommend uh she puts it into words way better than me and it's actually really funny because she normally does like highly scripted content and she just like she's like i'm very not used to just popping myself on camera and saying what i thought and then it's like the most eloquent video essay i've ever seen i don't think lindsay ellis can not be highly eloquent and like my academic quality in everything she says oh just straight up um but she she made this point that i i think is interesting which is just that clearly rowling is sure she is the good guy here like she she genuinely seems to believe that she is advocating for like these poor endangered these like or hapless or endangered people and there's i mean i i've talked about this before but there is nothing more dangerous than uh than a paragon with a faulty motivation because they are just as dedicated to their cause as any paragon but the cause itself anyway i just wish she'd stop tweeting and maybe get like an intervention from someone who's close to her who could be like no really this is actually terrible and here's why it's incredibly bad and dangerous that you're using your power for this yeah anyway that's that on that basically i like that i can uh deflect the arrows also you'll notice that jyn's armor is filthy um because i've been rolling around in the dirt during this fight a lot um one of the cool mechanics is that when it rains um and then you go into grass the grass will act like a uh ancient japanese car wash and basically buff your armor to being clean amazing so uh i missed the part where you were deflecting arrows can i ask were you deflecting arrows by slicing through them with your sword in mid-flight kinda i think that's basically what happened i'm just you could drink as much sake as you want yes that is my favorite thing yeah not to look back but uh that's like inusagio jimbo that's like his signature move and every time it happened it made me think it was a lot easier than it actually is because he does it constantly and i was like wow arrows are just like fun little flying targets and then in real life i shot a bow for the first time and i was like oh wow that's actually way harder yeah anyway i also one of the things that i really like about this game is that after the quest ends it shows jin just kind of relaxing for a second it's just there's so many things about this game that i enjoy um in in how it presents like the idea of struggling to do something important it's not just like oh you go do it and then you go do it like you never see link take a nap uh but you see this character like have to work and balance what he's doing and take care of himself so that he can take care of other people because we often have this idea of like oh yes we have to set ourselves on fire to keep everybody else warm um but it's definitely uh not like that um let me upgrade so my ass dances do i want to increase the stack of damage damage oh i will say while you don't see link take a nap in breath of the wild you do say him like shelter from the rain and take a break to cook himself some food and sometimes the weather is just not good and yeah find a place to hide and you stay there and it's another game that kind of it it gave you a reason in game to take a break yes and that is a very valuable thing because it's very easy to get caught up in kind of the non-stop grind and like i've played some earlier zelda games and they are just completely non-stop like twilight princess is just one thing after another um it's like sorry there's no time to take a break you gotta you gotta run now you're stuck as a wolf oh no zelda's in danger ah nick is dying and i was just like i wanna sleep and do my homework what am i supposed to do yeah so yeah games with built-in break points are very it's not just games too uh like there are some books that i can't read because they are so tiring and there's nowhere to pause uh that that's that was like the main thing that kind of turned me away from reading the dresden files books i've talked about this before uh because they were really fun and urban fantasy and absolutely my jam but it's just like every book starts with harry dresden has not slept in 72 hours and by the end of the book he he still hasn't slept but also he's like hopped up on magic potion and has turned into a werewolf and probably been kidnapped at least twice and it's just like oh my god let him rest let me rest yeah uh on the subject of uh uh creative sometimes being very bad people um is that a bad guy i saw um an article uh about um ubisoft in the news this morning uh who's been uh notable for the fact that uh several allegations came out against uh many of their high level employees for being garbage human beings who treat the company like a frat house oh these guys are way more dangerous than the ones that i fought before okay we are going to die here most likely um but there was a whole thing about how um the uh the newest game uh odyssey was supposed to feature only cassandra as the playable lead but the director was like no women don't sell make it a man so they end up having the option which is oh god um which is obviously better than nothing but um in an early version of assassin's creed syndicate uh evie and jacob were supposed to have equal screen time but jacob ended up having significantly more um because the same guy who was uh running it was like jacob jacob's character is boring evie's character is actually interesting um so that ended up being more unfortunate for various reasons um but uh halfway through uh assassin's creed uh origins um bayek was supposed to either die or somehow be written out of the story and he was supposed to spend the rest of the game playing as uh his wife aya who is again a much more interesting character but that didn't happen and you only end up playing asaya in the very last act of the game um so it's like oh yeah i know i see this pattern of like the possibility of female characters getting consistently sidelined uh up until um you know now where it's great that avor is able whether you know he is a guy or she is a woman um and there's no judgment and the player can just make them who they want that's cool but like also like make a character that's like actually like just a female character and let them exist you know aloy is fantastic ellie is fantastic they're all these great female characters um specifically in the playstation umbrella um weirdly enough um that are that are really really cool uh and clearly sell fantastically so it's it's good that ubisoft is cleaning house and getting uh getting rid of some of the shitty people that have been running that show for entirely too long uh obviously it doesn't excuse the fact that it happens but sometimes you see companies just dig in their heels and be like no we're not gonna change not at all no deal with it but hopefully some good actually comes of this uh there's there's something i always find sort of morbidly humorous uh when i've you know perhaps unsurprisingly i am quite aware of the background radiation uh in this in this specific space where it's like you create a female protagonist and then like a million people erupt out of the woodwork like that's not fair you got to make another dude protagonist to counter balance it it's like oh that's not fair that tips the scales i'm so sorry and you know it's it's not like that's in obvious and then when it becomes clear like oh yeah that's because of one shitty sexist [ __ ] who's like no it's not fair they can't have anything if i if i can't have something too and you're like wow if only someone could have warned you or predicted this or pointed out for years that this is blatantly shitty and not cool if only someone made 70 games where someone like you is the protagonist yeah oh i'm so sorry it's it's just like you know it's the toddler who get who can't stand that anyone else has a toy because all they can think about is that they don't have that toy but it's a grown-ass man in charge of a major corporation and it's like oh this is so shocking except no it's not because people like this never grow up and we've been saying it for years so you know it's funny because if i didn't find it funny i would find it too infuriating to be able to function on a daily basis you know yeah so that was the article that i saw uh oh damn it faked me out okay the person in the chat saying i don't know it seems unlikely that the ceo would say something like women don't sell you have never spoken to a male boss in your life no granted uh that wasn't eve it wasn't him that said that it was one of the uh the creative directors um who's overseeing the ac brand i forget their name um but you can look it up you'll find out who it wasn't eve um he was actually like what in my company no which you know obviously you know it's it's your company dude you know there's only so much that uh that you can can can claim innocence on when it's your company and you're the one with power to get rid of it um granted sometimes people are deliberately shielded sometimes those things never go up the chain so people in charge genuinely never find out about it there are many different ways in which a system like that can be allowed to propagate but uh whether or not uh you know eve is responsible he wasn't the one that said it doesn't make him a saint yep but yeah just uh i have seen that that general attitude like no that that's too ridic that's like cartoonishly like malevolent and evil no one would actually do that no i promise people do that because they think it's just the fact that you think it's ridiculous is like a credit to you because there are people for whom it is their bread and butter and the world that they've lived in since they were born yeah and for those people it's not a controversial statement they're just stating the natural order of things and everyone else is being weird about it it is genuinely mind-boggling the level to which people will just like carve out a little space for themselves in how they think reality works and defend it to their dying breath without even realizing that they are working so hard yeah to keep up a delusion and not engage with reality so yes the fact that you think that's absurd no one would ever say women don't sell uh good on you look into any like yes good on you that's a good sign but just look into any historical advertising campaign look into like uh the the gendering of toys was like a movement in i think like the 90s um and that was a whole thing because yeah i mean hell just think about how how like it's a semi-recent development that toys like lego have been putting out like excited ah it's so cute you'll see it in like two seconds um i'm so excited um but yeah uh like toys like lego had for her versions and they were like why aren't these selling well we're giving them smoothie stands and and like horses and stuff i guess girls just don't like toys and then they were like maybe we should ask some girls and the girls were like can you just give me like a little like a ponytail attachment i want to play as this astronaut but i want to give her a hairstyle that i like and the lego people were like oh my god all those billions spent on the smoothie stand in stallman we could have just been selling them ponytail hats we made all these parts pink why aren't they selling i just don't understa so yeah basically the thing is if an advertiser wants to sell the women just sell the [ __ ] people all right women are people and they want to buy stuff but the thing is they're they're always like no it can't possibly be that simple there's got to be another way and then it doesn't work and they're like oh we'll never understand these seductresses and then it's just like part of it is it i'm sorry sorry if i'm a little heated no part of it's a vicious cycle because the idea of like oh well we don't want to cater gets wrapped up in oh well if we end up making something for women it will be dumbed down because in my mind the only way that anything could be for women is if it is dumbed down in this shitty way to these standards that we've arbitrarily set so it's kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy of like oh you know well we can make a game for for women but if we make it a woman protagonist the plot of the game is going to have to be about like going shopping yeah yeah whereas like no you can like you can make the main character a woman and have them be a character that's an option that you have uh it's starting from the faulty premise that's that's why all this logic falls apart and frustrates them so much like it really does confuse the hell out of them and you can tell it makes them unhappy but it's because they're starting from the flawed premise that like in order to understand the female of the species you must first imagine a man and then make him weaker and dumber and interested in stupid things and then cater to that and instead it's like why isn't this working i just don't understand them and like i mean the joke is old at this point the joke of like dudes being like ah women such mysterious creatures what do they want what do they think we'll never know and the woman's like well i think no no shut up [Laughter] tale as old as time it's great it's great being a creature of mystery because nobody listens to you yeah [Music] stop asking me sip five or six six obviously that is not a question that is i i've never played the sieve games i i i see this debate stop spamming chat happen in different places it's like the games are slightly different and are good depending on what you value in a game experience stop spamming although honestly we should stop answering the spamming questions and telling them to stop spamming because then that encourages people to spam so that's true if you spam we won't answer you yep we won't even acknowledge the question that you asked we will just tell you to stop spamming that's that's difficult um but anyway yeah yeah it's interesting honestly advertising as like a field often seems like it's uh it's like three generations out of touch with reality on some level um like because when your whole point is how do i sell product if you lose sight of product and audience for product and just focus on sell then you know that disconnect from reality will pull you farther and farther away from the actual reality which is why you get these you know people have been roasting pointlessly gender products since the first time somebody slapped pink on a gel pen and said for her delicate fingers but that doesn't stop advertisers from doing it nonstop a lot of bad dudes over there i don't know if you saw it but i almost got seen and then i like ducked and rolled into a tent and it was the coolest thing i've ever done in this game oh dude awesome well it's recording for posterity oh man just gotta just gotta let the righteous fury drain away real quick let's talk about something a little less inflammatory than modern ingrained sexism in our society and how every everyday good-hearted people are shocked and horrified that yes this has actually been a problem this whole time and we've been trying to tell you you didn't believe it because it seemed so out of the out of the possible range of reality because who the [ __ ] would really think that that's like yeah who would but some people do actually let him go [Music] [Music] we're in the camp let's try to oh now where oh so i i feel like the kurosawa mode well i'm glad it's included and i feel like i kind of had to uh we kind of take away some of the absolutely gorgeous lighting and how it makes it very clear what kind of environment you're in yeah i i think the curseau mode is a great thing to have it's not for me because i like the game being in in all these pretty colors so much like every once in a while i turn it on but i i don't feel like doing it for the stream partially because i'm trying to uh play and not make a mistake uh and having color helps me um but also because i feel like not everyone will want that on all the time and even still i feel like it's hard to to nope not out that way god damn it um it's hard to play with it for more than a little bit at a time without getting slightly lost yeah because when you're just you know watching a movie that's one thing but when you're trying to interact and make decisions uh every little bit of information is uh important yeah i agree i think um it's good to have like you said but uh for this for this specific purpose i honestly i think it's prettier this way you know like more colors better lighting like just looking around it's like oh it's dark and there's small like orange lights you're in a camp you know and it temporarily goes into kind of black and white for the focus mode and you can actually see like yeah that's really good for zeroing in on you but it the whole point is it kind of blurs out the rest of the environment makes it seem kind of monochrome god so for these like clearing up the camps thing is the goal just to like kill everybody i do like that sometimes you have the opportunity to just stab someone when they're on the ground it's fun and then if i want to clean my blade i just swipe right on the d-pad and the blade is cleaner sorry the touch pad this game does a lot of small things right in ways that i really appreciate uh it's basically one of the only games to make the touchpad useful for more than just a glorified big push to get your mini map button um or push to bring up what does it do so the touchpad has a lot of different functions one of them is swipe up to get a gust of wind to tell you which direction to go swipe right to either take out or put away your sword you can swipe down if you want to bow to anyone alive or dead and then on the right or on the left you can play your flute but you can't do that when you are in a combat encounter uh and then if you push it in you'll get this like sneaky hearing mode thing that i've been using on and off during this uh encounter nice yeah it's really really smart design died so just like overall what's the overarching plot of this game uh i know it's mongols invaded but like what's your goal uh right now your goal is to rescue your uncle who got captured by uh protein khan in the very beginning after that i genuinely don't know um because this seems like a fairly uh localized uh plot point um um and certainly the entire game can't be about um rescuing your uncle but probably not uh i'm sure there will be other things that come up but right now the most important thing is just assemble your team of people uh try to clear out this part of the island and then you will uh be on your way to rescuing your uncle that's all i'm uh i'm giving i'm giving even odds on that uncle surviving the rescue oh well yeah i mean you need something to motivate you in the second half of the game right surely to unlock wind stance come on fight me or just unfortunately you must kill the dogs she's very sad ow no okay sorry uh this isn't related at all to the game but a person in the chat had an interesting question about a thing they did in american gods uh and i i actually kind of do want to talk about it um so the the question the question was about uh mad sweeney one of the characters in the show who was like a very minor character in the book but then i think they cast someone like way too tall and way too handsome to be a bit part like he was in the book so he ended up getting a more expanded role especially in season two um and uh the thing about mad sweeney in the book is that he's a leprechaun uh and he shows up a couple times and then he basically dies and that's it and it's kind of part of the uh the general layer of mild depression that that book is kind of steeped in the show spices things up a little bit gets a little more dramatic and it does this interesting thing with uh with what mad sweeney's deal is uh and the the short of it is obviously as a leprechaun he comes from irish folklore and mythology but anyone who knows anything about irish folklore and mythology will know that there was this whole thing about taking gods and and rewriting them to be people or like fairies or spirits or dead kings so in the show matt sweeney is actually kind of mad because he doesn't remember who he is yeah because he's been rewritten so many times oh gosh he's like got all these histories yeah it's really freaky he's got this one where he's like he was a king and he was driven from his castle and defeated and his family came to visit him in the woods because he was kind of living like a wild man and sort of coming in and out of lucidity and then in one he was this warrior who battled this uh this one-eyed monster and in one he was this uh and the the thing is he he ends up being lou the god like the sun god the really big deal god but he got rewritten so many times and reduced and changed that he just ended up this mad little leprechaun man and it was really depressing um but also very interesting and i thought that that was such a cool kind of existentially horrifying approach to um to because you know when the mythology gets rewritten you're like oh yeah i mean it got christianized and valorized and changed but when those mythologies are full of like living people who are affected by their own stories then you have a recipe for some really existential messed up stuff and i kind of really love it it's so it's really clever i was i was just reading the uh the scroll there conversations with the khan which is one of the a handful of collectibles you can find uh it's it's this one guy who's like this coaching con fellow is pretty interesting i'm going to write down his things and write down what to talk about uh it's you know him basically strategizing of what he's going to do with your character's uncle and how he's of more use alive than dead um and it's is cool stuff all right destroy the powder cache where's the powder cache uh these cams are so big they're kind of easy to lose track of there we go uh person in chat lou is a god of the arts uh does not appear to at all be a storm god sorry uh but he is affiliated with the sun a lot um and he's mostly known for his skill in combat and with a sphere so nothing about the storm yellow chimes in luge is complicated yeah oh he is i mean everything in irish mythology is complicated trust me i read the book of invasions recently um good stuff uh yes my samurai uh legend has grown in prominence i am now the unyielding wind ah cool what's up oh yeah and uh person uh sorry person in chat uh yes the one-eyed monster that he remembers fighting was balor but he also kind of conflates him with odin because he also has one eye and is kind of a major player in american gods but uh there's some possible truth to that uh in terms of offshoots from the proto-indo-european mythology balor and odin might be drawing from kind of the same source it's very hard to tell but that's mostly because we don't have any uncorrupted records of that time i guess it's very frustrating it's fine it's fine i'm not mad why would i be mad it happened like 1500 years ago that's a long time to hold a grudge anyway hold on i spilled uh i i i'll i'll be right back oh no uh okay i guess it's just me and just me and you chat uh how y'all doing having a good having a good day keeping keeping things going staying in staying in the air conditioning wearing your masks when you go outside all that good stuff cool cool that's great um anyway uh man i am tired i i normally sleep a little bit later than this so well not later than this but i normally sleep later than i did today so i'm running on like you know 85 functionality firing on like most of the cylinders you know how it is um but uh yeah this is a really pretty game you guys this is like not fair i i kind of i wish i weren't on this delay because then i could be reacting to things timely when they're happening but uh but instead i'm just kind of like oh wow bear i'll keep an eye open and then the bear shows up and i'm like oh [ __ ] that was a pretty cool bear hello good i was running out of things to talk about uh if you needed any indication of how hot it was getting before i turned on the fan i had a piece of chocolate uh it melted no it's okay a new ghost weapon available oh yes do we want black powder bombs which explodes and staggers nearby enemies we already kind of have a sticky bomb um smoke bomb which helps us escape or wind chime which distracts i so huh [Music] so they're just straight up making you into a ninja yeah that's that's the whole ghost track so you have two broad play styles one is the uh let's do the smoke bomb stealthy you have the you know the samurai stuff and then there's the uh the ghost which are play styles that you can you know use uh together it's not like you have to choose one or the other like some games make you do you you're supposed to be working with both um but every once in a while when you when you level up enough you get a new uh ghost weapon so let's see do we want uh some more can i ah i'm gonna save uh my points here and then spends to get an improved standoff streak so after we win a standoff we can kill more people heck yeah all right where do we want to go it's interesting that they're ooh look at that they're giving you the opportunity i like that they're giving you the opportunity to do all this like movie ninja stuff without having to pretend like ninjas were historical oh yeah yeah i'm glad they don't call him a ninja because that would that would end up uh getting a little confusing um yeah but yeah oh look at this beautifully burned out camp ah good fire weapon swapping while holding our two used yada yada to switch ghost weapons yes the many functions of oops well so much for those the many functions of r2 yeah okay cool so we are going left okay i can't call our horse and be on our way okay uh so a person in chat asking about uh what books to recommend for irish mythology as always i recommend you go to the primariest source you can find so uh basically look up the book of invasions and read it there's a copy a multivolume copy on archive.org highly recommend it's very confusing the version i found basically just tries to to compare every fragmentary version we have because it's one of those things where we don't have the original we only have some like copies of it kind of like the edits so it takes all those versions and it completes them and it compares and contrasts and points out like this one expands this whole thing into one substory this one summarizes it in one sentence moving on there's like an index it's very useful it really kind of gets across how utterly confusing and bonkers it is but yeah would recommend i there was an email from someone uh asking us about basically that same question uh celtic and norse the answer is usually go to the source wherever possible but also the sources are complicated so sometimes it's hard to dive into that first thing there are a lot of good books on the subject written by various people um oh hey i have a new resolve me here so i can uh save myself from death slightly more often um so if you you know go to your local library school library you know uh city public library whatever or a bookstore someone will surely be able to recommend something for you but if in doubt go to the source yeah there's uh there's a lot of secondary literature on both of those mythologies of trying to analyze them because they are so confusing and frustrating and all of our primary sources were written post-christianization which is immensely frustrating for a lot of researchers because it's like the um the the prose edda the like the archetypical source we have written most likely by snorri sterlson in the 1200s that's like 200 years after the area was fully christianized that's like three four generations um there's there's just nothing there's like no original and there's a lot of people trying to figure out like you know contextualize the author figure out what biases might have been present try and reconstruct the the the original that snorri was writing about because it's all we have to work on and it's very frustrating um and uh there's see here's the thing uh i i was like oh it's norris darlson he just wrote a bunch of myths down that was cool with him and then uh yellow pointed out to me that um or directed me to some sources and some like literature on it and basically snorri had like a very specific motive for writing the ettas uh he was working with uh king haikon iv i think of norway uh i think i'm gonna feel real dumb if i'm getting that wrong but basically king haycon was like listen i want to unify with iceland um and you're like a big deal right you're like a bard and stuff could you maybe like kind of help help with that and and snorri's like yeah probably uh and he writes up this etta this book that is basically saying hey everyone listen we're all christians here but you know what we're also norsemen and here's our shared history and then he writes up this book uh basically drawing on on the the now defunct norse religion in the area and like oh man he covers his ass a lot uh he's like no no they weren't gods they were uh trojan heroes whose superior technology caused them to be worshipped as gut yeah he ancient aliens is himself it's [ __ ] crazy um but then after he gets all that out of the way he's like and lo did odin do this thing and and loki what a jerk am i right but also maybe not that much bigger who knows it's crazy how that is i had to write him like a biblical scapegoat which makes me think maybe he's supposed to be more sympathetic in my version and oh he starts ragnarok but we're living in a post-ragnarok world so maybe that was a good thing and oh it's just it's so much it's a lot and everyone's like what does this mean what did he want and um you know creating this shared cultural norse identity uh would have been a pretty good thing in service of trying to get iceland and norway to be like one thing and it would also explain why he was writing it the way he did framing things in such christian terms to to make it like palatable for his modern audience while drawing on this older source that they'd spent so much time trying to stamp out it's a lot and then it's like this is the only first source we have and it's very frustrating that it's so politically loaded it would be like if the first text we had about what was going on in america right now was one of those like shitty political cartoons with labels on everything and we were like now what does this mean about the cultural landscape of the time i have boxed myself into the upper room of this house um with basically no way to leave um i keep trying to shoot people on the head and they keep not getting shot in the head by me and it's very frustrating hmm interesting use of passive voice there i know what i said oh yeah uh researching anything like runes is a huge pain in the ass for two reasons one there's all this stuff about like magic and neopaganism which makes it very complicated to research two a lot of it has been co-opted by white supremacists so it's like yeah it's just two different minefields every time you try and research this stuff it's all just well no use just hiding out here the entire time let's see who i can murder oh god there's so many of them can i air assassinate this dude yes you bet i can hey [Music] effective against shields i recognize that i am not trying to kill that guy are you tutorializing in the middle of my fight there we go i wanted to kill the leader let me kill the leader get rid of the big guy first oh cleo's taking a nap isn't that adorable there we go see now i'll kill the shields man so does the combat in this game like feel good oh it feels a little bit slighty kind of a slidy fighter in these games because i like to dodge a lot and i'm bad at parrying it would look a lot cooler if i was good at parrying um i will say that uh because i haven't really nailed the window so actually let me let me try and fight in a way that would look more cinematic rather than the way that i actually fight um and we'll see if that uh ends up looking a little bit more compelling for this uh genre that we're trying to avoid all right so you die uh i'll take it not exactly what i wanted but uh i won't say no um let's see where did the people go you sir unfortunately i can't actually parry this guy because the halberds are unparriable there's a good emphasis on you know if you do it right you won't be sliding around everywhere but you'll be just like you know dodging slightly to the side dodging slightly to the side rather than me who just rolls out of every single scenario because i'm uh a scaredy cat when i fight in this game i do think for the the samurai combat aesthetic less is more um oh my god i just got down the door to this house and stabbed this dude in the face it's a power move heck yeah uh but yeah i think um for samurai stuff sometimes less is more like the less you move the more in control you seem to be like that that vibe of like who's controlling the situation that that's a big part of what makes that specific samurai archetype so cool yeah so that's what happens when i get a good parry it looks like that yeah so it is incredibly satisfying when you get it right but usually i die so i don't do it as much it does look real cool i will say that beautiful a really good feeling sword impact can be in video games because that's the whole point man what's the point of playing a video game if it doesn't feel good you know like that's the thing that makes me a little bit wary about this new ac game is because from all the combat that they've shown and yellow and i uh we did a stream uh with uh sarcastic gm from the discord uh uh on his twitch channel ludo history check it out um where we were talking about the historical accuracy or lack thereof uh in the newest assassin's creed and what kind of problems that creates one of the things that we didn't talk about was the fact that the combat doesn't look very good because there's no hit stop on any of the attacks so usually in in game design hit stop is a thing where you program in like the like two or three frames of let's see what's down to gito's point you usually program in a couple frames of the character models completely stopping to show this pose of an impact being made or in the case of god of war the characters still move but kratos says axe has hit stop so when it lodges into someone it stays completely frozen for like two or three extra frames to show like this axe is embedded in there because look it's not moving it's so it's so hard in there and it's very like specific abstract kind of stuff that like on paper is a little weird and esoteric but ends up having a really big effect on the way the game plays um currently the build of all hollow does not have hit stop darby mcdevitt lead writer has said there will be hit stop we hear you loud and clear we're working on it um but also oftentimes it's like ah yes we see that the combat in this assassin's creed game looks floaty and boring don't worry we'll fix it so it doesn't look floaty and boring and then it always kind of looks a little floaty and boring um the the prime example is assassin's creed syndicate which had like the most archemy arkham combat to ever arkham but it didn't have any weight to it and the characters weren't agile enough to get that sensation of like batman's just flying around between people so it wasn't light enough or heavy enough to feel like good arkham combat which is a really weird needle to thread um but it ended up not working uh so hopefully the combat and valhalla ends up feeling okay the other problem is that there's this emphasis on dual wielding combat because they think that uh all vikings dual-wielded no uh this this myth exists and has been kind of perpetuated for reasons that uh yellow and i could not figure out why uh but there is no surviving anything on viking battle tactics beyond they showed up and burnt our stuff and left um so we have no actual like insight into the way they fought and fighting with two weapons is a pain in the ass and is really hard and doesn't work um the only actual tested um manuscripts that describe two weapon fighting is um italian and french but mainly italian fencing manuscription uh manuscripts and you know instruction books that have okay so in your dominant hand you hold the rape here you hold your big weapon and then in your off hand you hold a little dagger to deflect your enemies weapon if it ever gets too close because you can't like full on general grievous it by just going out and you know lightsabers blazing um but you can you know use one long and one short weapon that's an established thing but it is just annoying of like why why did you think that you had to do this it's not it's not real it's like sure it's kind of cool um if you look at it for two seconds and don't think very hard about it but no please don't please don't do that so if i play that game i'll probably be using a one-handed weapon to avoid the nonsense of of going two shields into a fight which like sure it's kind of interesting to think about it's you know a little humorous but don't fight with two shields that's that's not how a shield works unless you're sharpening and putting like a razor blade on the edge you're not gonna get anything out of it i love finding controversies that i didn't know existed everything about that conversation is just pure gold like hit stopping dual wielding vikings is like a thing now okay just oh beautiful it's like when you stumble onto like a really heated twitter thread that you have no context for but you're just there for the popcorn yep no context no stake in it you're just here to watch the sparks fly it's just beautiful i like i went from not knowing what hit stopping was to knowing that apparently it's enough of a thing that fans raise to stink about it and they're putting it in the game come on fight yeah well i mean it's a thing that should be in a game i mean this game has has hit stop in it um but i love read the idea of like i don't really know what hit stop is just something like oh my god i can't believe these these casuals didn't put hit stop in their combat system yeah oh what are you thinking how are we supposed to beat the weight of the impact [Music] oh i love when you can get an attack on someone right before they get their their swing in it's extremely satisfying something about the i guess movement it might be because everything else is so beautifully recreating the whole samurai thing and then you get sword slash and fly 10 feet back and i'm like okay all right you know that might be it it's it's because it's a video game and they can't really do the whole one-shot kill thing yeah like it normally works it kind of feels like you flail the sword at somebody and take a chip off their health bar which like that's the only thing where i'm like that's really not that's not how it should feel yeah and obviously swords are swords are weighty things yeah um one of the things is that you know in all those samurai movies nobody's wearing armor except for very rare circumstances but in this the mongols are mostly pretty heavily armored so granted you know swords are sharp sure but like armor is designed for swords to not go through them um detailed analysis here at osp um but it it ends up being weird when yeah it's like it's not a one-hit kill um because in real uh you know in real fights when a sword goes through you that's it you know swords sword fights and movies don't last that long oh we're composing a haiku this is great we are reflecting on the invasion um i'll i'll read out the option so the way this works is read you'll see it in a second but we look around and take inspiration from the world um and then we we make our haiku so our options are uh calm before the storm towering above and overwhelming force i kind of feel like overwhelming force is a good way to open this haiku oh absolutely yeah okay overwhelming force and then as we look we have a constant haze envelopes doesn't scan very well overtaking all its seas i like that one uh and then heading to uncertainty i kind of like overtaking all its seas wait heading to uncertainty doesn't scan wait no it's not wait yes it is adding to uncertainty heading to uncertainty yeah i don't know why that felt sorry i i like overtaking all at seas yeah yeah agreed the seven is really where you get the punch in these haikus and last one is rushing to the end fleeing warmth and light or reaching from within none of those makes sense huh actually if you use reaching from within then it changes the meaning of the poem from being about the mongols to being about you and your own inner darkness oh yeah let's do it reaching from within cool heck yeah uh someone asks what's your opinion on short dagger and long dagger dual wielding make one of them a sword using two daggers is dumb it's like sure you use a short sword if you want to you know keep it uh you know keep it uh low profile but there's no reason to give yourself two short weapons make one of them a sword unless you're really pressed for space all right let's let's see our special uh um gear we one of the fun things is that we get headbands from our haikus which is very fun so this one actually yeah red and gold i like it you know let's wear our headband of the invasion overwhelming force so we're taking all at seas reaching from within very moody we can't upgrade our armor and whatnot but i figure i'll do all that stuff off camera because it's less interesting okay all right cool where to go next beautiful you can videogame what haiku minigame i'm sorry it just hit me all at once i mean it was a haiku minigame it sure is let's all right yeah let's go over here and let's go over to this blue thing to try and learn the heavenly strike uh that'll be neat so let's get on our horse and ride along this river first we have to climb up though this game is so much fun to play around in some people in the reviews have said this game doesn't really bring a lot to the table and it's fundamentally the same game that we've been playing since like the witcher 3 which i feel like is is a fine criticism on paper but misses the the point that this game is so highly polished and is this no it's empty um this game is so highly polished and is such a refinement and elevation of that type of gameplay from what we've seen into something very different where the fundamental way that you interact with the world is so much better than any other game because the world is guiding you through the world rather than waypoints and compass markers being the thing that that guides you it's so much more of an investment in the open world than other games before have done so i feel like the criticism of like there's nothing fundamentally new with this game misses the point because it's done so much better that it becomes a different experience and it's not just clearing icons off of a menu but it really is uh hold on i need to [Music] about open world maps that are covered in icons because what that tells you is that the icons are the important thing like the map is decorative you go from icon to icon the map doesn't even need to be there yeah it's it's just there to look i mean you know skyrim has that bag because it doesn't even look all that good but if you have if you give us a really pretty map and then you sprinkle it full of icons that just tells us go to these locations that's where everything is just by taking that away and adding a more like integrated mode of navigation then we don't need to worry about like you ignore the journey because you're focusing on the destination just that one thing changes the way you engage with the game and i think that that can't be overstated i see that we've uh we've dropped right yeah a little bit it seems like these duels are what really taxes it oops last time we started lagging it was doing that too yeah maybe it's all these dang picturesque flower fields maybe although i feel like i feel like what's going on in the playstation shouldn't affect what's happening in the thing yeah oh well uh okay um oh and there's our uh there's our gross and messy armor um but let's get back on our horse and continue to our destination sorry for the uh the lagginess everybody hopefully it uh oh it's all gone the variable bit rate gets better soon oh okay cool yeah it seems to just be the dual i don't know why yeah well i will take a different approach this time okay i can't assassinate that man on the horseback that's unfortunate [Music] you know what i kind of like about this big grassy field in some video games this would basically be like now make sure to hide in the tall grass but because it's like white and you are very dark colored overall instead you just super contrast again yeah it produces a very like like effect rather than now remember you can sneak because the grass is the same color as alois bright red hair yeah yeah i do like that it's it's specifically always this type of flower that grows out of hideable grass which is a good visual cue to like what grass is tall and what grass is grass they take everyone who passes by now it's a good way to do it is there anything oh god i got so many emails now what is happening we'll deal with it it's fine yeah oh my all gosh we are getting there oh we're unflogging that part of the map nice oh beautiful let's go horsey boy and this game is just so damn pretty oh there's a fight over there i wonder if they're nice having a bad time with a bear so are there like wild animals that aren't bears or do you just have really bad luck with bears specifically i think this part of the map is just bears but there are presumably other wild animals in other places okay see if i can parry this guy yeah oh it's so satisfying when you get it right oh it's abandoned fighting don't worry you'll both lose yeah fear not i've come to make things worse for both of you yeah one thing that is very cool is that uh as far as language goes in this game um all of the the japanese characters will speak in english but all of the mongol characters except for smart boys like koten who are implied to know japanese um all speak in mongolian uh so it reads as foreign and different so it's a really cool way to here's the word diegetically uh make the outsiderness of the mongol character's evidence to the player um through language even for someone who like me understands neither japanese nor mongolian we could switch it to japanese just for the full weeb experience yeah i think i told you uh after playing the opening part of this game where it's like all of the samurai like getting ready to fight against the um the mongols i'm like [ __ ] no wonder there's so many weebs this stuff is cool yeah no man classic samurai stuff is like peak aesthetic oh it is so satisfying when you get a counter just right so you can just jump out of the way and then style on a person yes satisfying when this game works it's so satisfying it really rewards you for for getting things right yeah there's a very noticeable difference between like you're flailing your sword at someone and it's not doing what you want it to and like you hit them just right they stagger back so you can hit them again from a different angle and then they fall over and it's like yeah so it uh it doesn't like punish you for flailing it just doesn't do what you want it to do so it it it's it's positive reinforcement only it rewards you for doing the right thing without smooshing you into the ground for getting it wrong yeah it's it's a good you know intrinsic motivation where you know sure mechanically it doesn't really make a difference whether you look cool or not but the game feels so much better and playing in a way that makes you look cool is its own you know reward or some games would be like oh if you do such and such without taking damage we'll like give you bonuses or or something or we'll give you like extra points and stuff and sure like this game kind of does that too sometimes but the motivation to play cool to like you know be cool is is not uh to be underestimated yep get [ __ ] oh way too far away aha take that there we go yes oh out of arrows but yeah the game makes you want to be good which is good yeah there's always a small amount of like diegetic or gameplay and story no luna narrative dissonance that's the word i wanted sorry so many buzzwords uh for if you're care if the character you're playing is like cool like by definition but you know you're you are but mortal and uh sometimes you goof up and accidentally blow yourself up and your character has to dust it off like it was his idea and it's like no sorry that was on me buddy actually speaking of buzzwords i think the last time i used the word diegetic i used it wrong um sorry forgive me well i mean i didn't notice if you did so i gotta go across the river although speaking of the word diegetic i maintain that the best disney song um all is found because it exists in the world of frozen it's not just a song that people sing it's like it is a song that exists to the characters as a song rather than like yeah that one time that elsa went outside and and started yelling about you know ah into the young man like it's oh i'm gonna get eated oh okay um it is a song that exists and i think that is very cool that like the world has music beyond just what like people are singing that there are also songs that yeah does that make sense yeah no it does although i think the diagesis of all the songs in frozen 2 is a little bit confusing because every song elsa sings is because she's hearing like a magical siren call yeah true so we can assume that her singing back to it which she does and causes it to respond must therefore be happening in universe yeah it's so that that's confusing i think the only number that we can guarantee is non-diegetic is lost in the woods which is also the objective best number it's uh it's definitely uh not uh uh uh anything that happens in the realm of reality uh because yeah poor kristoff is clearly uh losing his mind the reindeer backup singers kind of take it out of the realm of reality but like i don't know if you boy like uh or i guess our boy because we are viewers and he is a character uh like found some some shrooms in them their woods but uh he's not in his right mind well i mean you know sometimes your girlfriend leaves on a magical adventure because her sister left on an even more dangerous magical adventure and you just gotta sing your feelings out oh my gosh look at this very view i think it was just payback for the fact that they cast you know noted broadway singer jonathan groff in the first movie and the only song they gave him was reindeers are better than people so for the second one they were like all right how about a 70s hair metal ballad in the style of queen and he was like only if i get to do all the parts oh petting the fox it's so good the fox smiles and it bounces because it's so excited ah oh this game is great let's see what's going on let's go what's going on here i got a buck shrunk a thing yes we're going over to get the heavenly strike all right coming up on uh coming up on two hours here not bad yep not bad at all definitely not probably uh wrap it after we finish this little side quest because uh ah sounds good i might need a break at some point although if we feel like we're or we're doing good then maybe we keep going i don't know baby baby we're also going to stream this on thursday so we're not in any rush yeah we've got plenty of game to go yeah to a certain extent i think this is like the chill one because not much plot is really happening and we're both like oh yeah game stuff but i think once once like the twists start flying it'll be like oh okay uh all right i already oh it's this way what oh man i got all turned around yeah let's see i think science is just about finished with her work day so she'll be back at some point ah beautiful oh that didn't go very well no there is oh wait it was dark earlier i remember all right let's try that again and suffering then you clean your blade and bow no bow there we go be polite and then let's get that upgrade to where where'd it go um tactics yes improved standoff streak yes so we can kill three people in the standoff awesome beautiful so looking at the um looking at the the combat it seems like the game kind of punishes you for swinging too much yes which is good that that's that's to fit the aesthetic yeah you're supposed to be like careful watch wait move around and then strike only when you see you have an opening which i think works really well let's see prefecture new area needs oh yeah it changes the uh biome in the world that's cool yeah yeah when alana pierce of uh of funhouse and inside gaming and many other things reviewed the game she said that one of the downsides is that sometimes enemies aren't quite aggressive enough and you're waiting for a counter that doesn't come but she said that otherwise she really likes the combat and i i can see why um because ow [ __ ] i died i didn't die but like um it's it's easy to kind of flail and not do it right but to do it right makes it really good oh okay that was three attacks all right i'm learning um sorry just checking the chat apparently your dualshock battery is low oh did it flash that i didn't see that well i've got another one i guess ready just in case oh that's good that's an okay perry perfect pair reserve good oh why are they running away face me cowards maybe you freak them out doubtful they were styling on me for most of that fight ow all right arrows in here there we go that's a perfect parry the part i just saw is the bit where there's just like a dude and i don't even know why he's not moving i'm guessing he's kind of stunned and you're just like slicing through him and i don't know it's so like nice and samurai movie and realistic looking everywhere else and then the minute you start stabbing a guy it's like just blood particle effects coming off and he's like ah ooh and then he falls over he's like okay yeah usually it's good it's in those scenarios where you just have to lay into a guy to get their uh um to get their health to go down because they're so like stacked on um they're so stacked on hp that you just need to wear into them um that's where the uh the game gets a little wonky i always feel like to make a fight more difficult make the hits harder so you have fewer chances to make a mistake rather than making it a contest to just like whittle down this person's health bar over the course of 20 minutes which is what the recent assassin's creed did and something that sakuro is really good at another you know samurai type game um where the the whole point of the combat is that the fights won't last very long but you cannot make a mistake otherwise you will die yeah there we go want to fight me buddy boy oh so satisfying that's a perfect encounter oh beautiful well almost beautiful nope still no bows that's fun i i like how it slows down to really let the moment ring when you pull off a perfect strike like that i do like that every time you really get a good attack on someone and they die jin just takes a second to pose it's good was that a golden bird did i see oh golden bird let's follow the golden bird bird yeah let's do it come on all right burb show me what you got oh look at that hold on that's that's some some uh some screen cap nonsense right there yeah all right i do like that this game's photo mode is very accessible um that's where i was going anyway all right golden burp um it's just right on the d-pad and then boom you're in photo mode and i like that when you're in photo mode the game keeps moving it's just that all of the characters stop so you still get the beautiful particle effects and you can just look at this for hours and it's not just like a static thing it's it's constantly in motion which is uh something that the uh the old channel every frame of painting talked about with the reason that curacao movies are so cool is that even when there's a 30 second static shot everything in frame is moving because of the wind because of you know mostly the wind it's good he didn't hear the answers more as like movies with more interesting character motion or more interesting camera motion sorry i still end up feeling kind of dull because nothing on screen is moving um oh we're watching uh head never lost 1820s american huntsman with a rifle showed up and destroyed the beasts of lightning strike an attack that struck quicker than the eye could follow i think this is where another part of the combat shows up is with these big strikes but i don't know how they work i just know that they exist i mean we're we're learning one now so we'll see before too long all right that dude in the flashback it's literally just kosher mafuna began a life of seclusion few students found him and only the bravest and most red don't be silly it's not toshiba it's a completely different person completely different person oh super cool samurai oc do not steal from beasts of nature it sounds dangerous in the wrong hands which way did he go a woman fled toward a nearby bridge he chased her he'll answer for what he did here what will i do when 30 to 50 feral lightning beasts are invading my yard oh yellow that's a deep pull from like wow that two days on twitter three years ago god the the half-life of memes has gotten so short oh it's it's days at this point yeah oh just my brain is flashing back to that bit in pacific rim where the scientist is like soon we'll be seeing a double event every five minutes it's like soon the next top meme will cycle out within half an hour return to the search area i want flowers i want to dye my armor different colors okay i gotta go into the bridge there was one really cool mission that i did early on where there's a bridge that's been attacked and there are mongol archers down like in the like in the river below the bridge and you have to like go scaling down the walls um and it's cool because you're kind of like bouncing between the two sides of the bridge and there's guys on all these little like rock terraces sticking out um it was really cool uh level because the geometry was interesting more than just like here's a field here are some mongols go have that it's like the the way in which the world is structured impact how you actually you know fight the thing it's cool it is shall i say a good game design wow good game quick everyone mark that off well there are no dragons in this stream so we might be might be coming up on uh whoops might be coming up on bingo uh that one's definitely been marked off already examined yep that's dirt all right oh horse tracks never mind what more do you know everyone needs to stop pointing out memes from january this year has lasted both two days and three decades at the same time remember when we almost went to war in january oh god i don't want to think about that there's not enough space in my brain for all of these things uh a quick uh horse tracks pretty flowers uh sun poking through the trees very very beautiful stuff oh right here's uh uh speaking of uh vaguely uh japanese things uh with this game that we've got going on uh remember when we went to that convention and i think we told this story like twice on stream we went to the convention earlier this year earlier this year god oh my god and there was that guy who was going up to the booth at the foam stores and he was like excuse me could i please see that katana oh god and then he tried to take the sheath off of the katana but he couldn't because it was a foam katana and the sheath was the thing oh my god i'd forgotten about that guy that was also the convention where like uh okay because you you hadn't really been to that kind of convention before so you've never seen the uh the quintessential con experience of the con goer wearing the sweater covered in lewd anime faces oh yeah there was a pack of the the aha sweater there was a bunch of them like every time we turned around they were more it's like they were multiplying and i kind of heard like a sigh from the guy who's running the store like they're my clientele yeah i mean listen if you're selling phone swords at a convention you know the kind of clientele you're going to attract this is clearly not new no of course not like you see all kinds at a convention but some of those kinds are pretty predictable oh that's so satisfying when you get the perfect hairy oh i love it oh you can shoot nests of bees in fights which is very fun where are you oh you know what that's that is one of my favorite game mechanics because clearly somebody like eight months into development was like hey listen we can patch in a really simple aoe with a very simple trigger can we drop the heads on people and they'll be like ah [ __ ] it it's three in the morning yeah what else are we gonna do tonight yeah check this camp in here let's learn this uh this ancient technique you're suing a man i want to learn how to do the heavenly strike he just left he's been staying in the watchtower working with the mongols yes so it's it's possible that the result of the low bit rate is that the uh the resolution comes through because people are talking about pixelation i mean as long as it's smooth and like legible i think we're fine yeah i'd rather be a little low res than choppy yeah so again sorry hopefully uh uh internet will improve eventually whether it just happens to get better or i just get better internet in the next apartment um sorry i wish i knew what specifically it was because we never really had this problem before not with you know breath of the wild or anything like that so breath of the wild was through the switch so yeah it does seem to be ps4 exclusive he's looking for it yeah see what's up here come on anything up here for me no all right time to go there's anything else you historical influences for this game and uh what not i'm running a a little slim on ideas yeah i'm running a little slow today just because of sleep and stuff yeah so maybe after this quest we uh call it yeah call it a day refresh and renew for thursday yeah just trying to remember if i have any other goofy-ass con stories oh now i have full arrows again thank god i kept pulling up my arrow to shoot people and it's like nope your bow has no bow you cannot shoot must recharge bows shrine neat yeah these uh they follow the tour gates and there's a little little parkour puzzle kind of kind of dealio parkour also samurai game uh yeah well like oh the path is blocked and the tour gates are burned you have to find another way up so you try to get to the top through various means so it's a little bit of uh of an environment exploration puzzle which is another reason that i feel like this game is what assassin's creed kind of wishes it was um because it's very much a a similar like archetype of game on paper but the execution is so different and of such a wildly higher quality um that it it ends up being a a totally different league uh of game in my opinion even though it's both like historical and you know open world and all that stuff this is this is the feudal japan assassin's creed game i always wanted yeah you know what i feel like with something like this it's often better to just lean into the uh the narrative side rather than the historicity because it's i don't know i mean obviously historical games are dope but it's almost like it's almost like those like unnecessary high budget remakes disney's been doing like anything you change people are going to complain about anything that stays the same people are going to complain about for different reasons so like if you try and make a game that faithfully yeah if you try and like faithfully recreate a period of history for a game then people are going to be like that part's not right and then they're also going to complain about the parts that are accurate because it's like oh this is boring there's no tall buildings to swing around it's 12th century london yeah uh uh ninth i'll do you one better oh yeah yeah i jumped to that i one of the things i was thinking about um of reasons the new assassin's creed isn't assassin's creed in the way that i like is because there is no ideological conflict at all and like the whole point was a conflict between assassins and templars and we haven't had that in like four years um and that is frustrating it took me like what is it about these new games that oh there are no assassins right right that's the problem that yeah that's been kind of a running gag like half the protagonists just like find their standard issue ac hood and then just go about murdering people but they're not actually assassins yeah and it's like you know sure you know obviously you know the assassins as an organization as described in you know the middle ages not a thing in ancient greece obviously um but like the philosophical concept of the root of the game of like this conflict between order versus chaos was where all of the story nuance and interesting world building came in and they're just like no yeah mythical creatures that's what people want i don't know yeah i mean that's a thing like uh an artist doesn't automatically know what of their art is resonating with people so often when they try and continue it or like make sequels or or reboots or whatever they focus on the parts that they thought were good and end up losing the parts that actually drew people in yeah it's it's just a hazard of of continuing something past maybe it's shelf life because sometimes you do something really good and sometimes you just don't hit on the right things and you lose people yeah and leaves us here at the uh shrine to just enjoy the view not that there's really anything to see at this time of day but oh well golden bird show me your secrets heck uh cool i can't go that direction it can go around nope can't go around either uh i can go around i think there was an easter egg in shadow of the colossus where like you could actually jump up and grab that bird that's always following you and it'll fly you around somewhat it would be kind of fun if they could do that in this game you're just like cliff dive and grab the golden bird and it flies you straight to its shrine or whatever that's uh that's zelda that would that would fit really well on that kind of game god i am so disappointed with skyward sword every time i think about it oh yeah it had flying islands and birds you could fly anywhere and they were like sorry there's nowhere to fly and you can't have it on the ground where you would actually want to fly places it's like you're you had one job man all right tell me your secrets goldiebirds ah all right well jin's ass around two here we go oh boy osp out of control right so the bird was like take a look the burger's like take a load off take a nice dip it's like gin you stink take a bath you're drenched in blood and mud [Music] birds like i know it's rich coming from me but a dust bath is not a bath creature comfort's favorite foods what do we want to reflect on let's uh see what jin's favorite food is when the mongols are yeah i'm curious let's get that good character development that's important to think about good food oh man now i want to go to the thai restaurant nearby and get some i'll do that tomorrow for lunch cyan and i have a little a little magnet board um next to the fridge where we plan out meals in advance um so we have like a little menu where we like write stuff on and dry erase markers um it's very fun magnificent oh god i developed a sudden craving for uh burritos the other night oh because i was watching an episode of duck tales where burritos are a thing anyway i couldn't end up making them but i did make cheese quesadillas but i had to make the tortillas from scratch so that was a learning experience uh but i i don't know if i did them wrong or something because they tasted good but oh man it felt like i'd eaten a brick oh i was like one quesadilla in and i was like i could stop and not eat for like four days and probably be fine so yeah maybe they were a little bit unbalanced but there's a lot of experience and that's really what matters is the white leafed tree that thing that i was looking for when i got distracted and did the tory gage shrine instead white leafed in theory this should be easy however i'm dumb and bad at video games it's a lot of good osp out of context that you get from these streams sent me a clip about someone finally appreciated the genius of the uh the gag that we've been doing where every time i swear and bleep it out i use a quack and then we somehow integrate the goose from goose game into the stream most recently uh for um for the plagues video uh when i say eat the [ __ ] out of their plague infested corpses which historical note i'll mention that in a second um we we have the goose uh go careening across the stream uh across the screen as if getting uh lifted by accountability it's hilarious but i i i goofed a little bit on the uh plague video because turns out modern research and scholarship on the plate has evolved a little bit in the past couple of years to the point where the catapulting corpses story probably not actually true um and usually i'm not always the quickest um to jump on new research because the last thing i want to do is read some article about oh someone says that this thing is actually this thing and then end up you know parroting somebody's uh you know unsubstantiated hot take but in this case actually a case where uh the research has moved on from the original wow i moved on from the original story uh gabriella de musica um who was the chronicler for uh our early plague uh documents um probably not uh actually plagued corpses getting thrown into the city um because some epidemiologists aren't entirely sure that you can actually spread the plague from a corpse which to me feels like a corpse reigns from the city smashes into the ground and spews blood everywhere that has to be a hazard but yeah apparently uh person-to-person contact uh is done through the um not bubonic plague but the pneumonic plague which uh transmits um through like you know air droplets mood uh relatable um but the bubonic plague uh is done through the rats and fleas and stuff so the research isn't fluxed it's moved on from um from catapulting corpses to the point where uh probably was rats coming in through the city the old-fashioned way um and then storing out in grain shipments so the the ships leaving were fine but it was only after they opened the boxes in port that they're like oh we have the plague now um which would explain why the ships were able to go so far because you'd imagine that the ship was full of plague they'd get you know a little held up um but in any case white leaf tree leaf tree is this it uh some of the chat says it was by the shrine i don't know that's legit though um yeah but i don't know it's i totally buy that it was mostly through rats it's just i mean it i don't know if i buy that it wasn't being spread by bodies because that was like a whole thing like you know oh we gotta real quickly dispose of these things or it's gonna get way worse we gotta move them out of the city and if we don't things get i mean like it's not like you magically stop being infectious like just because you're already dead you know like yeah i just i don't know and the thing is like the the rat factor meant that it was still bouncing around for a really long time because there was a non-human vector but you could also catch it from people and like proximity and plague doctors oh hey cyan um anyway i i i'm willing to buy that it was mostly the rats spreading it around from like place to place through trade but i don't know i mean that whole like it can't be caught from a body thing that doesn't sound right to me with my super expert opinion of i read about it in the the the comic history of the world when i was six and it really stuck with me so you can trust me i know about stuff where on earth this hold on let's see if i can look for the white leafed tree i don't see any tree can i cheat and look this way hmm okay white leaf tree i don't i don't see a team yeah [Music] okay is that it that looks like white leads okay let's try that heck yeah now let's climb our way back up to the uh shrine oh yeah parkour part two all right then after this we'll uh we'll call it because this uh my inability to quest uh is indicative of uh the fact that we're going a little bit towards the uh the end of stream capability but we'll be back on thursday we still got we still got stuff to finish up here so we're not we're not quite yet there's plenty of stuff which which way do i go up i i did this before and this is what happens on hour three uh chad is becoming frustrated with me well they i don't know they're all giving conflicting directions but some of them are like you walked around in a bunch or no it's to the left and i i don't know oh let's let's go up to the top and see if we can't find anything try to use my powers of observation all right we go here we go faster the second time real impressive part is that you're doing this parkour in full armor all right let's see aha that looks like it uh-huh but how do we get to there let's see oh we just we just jumped parkour presumably wow i wish i was less of a [ __ ] hey we got there and that's what matters i like these little bits of the game where you just kind of look around and have to assess the situation before you go in it's cool encourage you to be uh smart that is cool good game design come on now we go yeah yep that's it let's get into this white tree grove i wonder where this game hides its load times because these are some pretty sophisticated environments yeah and the draw distance is kind of absurd uh so that is a good question uh i think it's a case of uh the game has by this where do i stand up who am i standing off with me uh the game is you know so far on the end of the console cycle that they really understand how the playstation works and can be extremely efficient with it [ __ ] oh i i thought oh god that was that was poor it was a poor showing i should have known better than that i thought he was faking me out and going really fast uh-huh did you get your ass kicked into showdown oh yeah instantly oh jesus yeah that's not blockable attack whoops there we go it's great when it works i look like a dummy when it doesn't love that they framed this tree in the foreground here was this not where i'm supposed to be or was this just a random event that happens to be okay no we're still going still going this just happens okay there we go this is the actual someone's being tortured wait so the mongol fight was just like this they just happened to be hanging out with the quest line okay oh [Music] so real quick i know we were looking through the tree yeah but like um you know it's a good question uh broadly removed and then we we found it and it's here and we need to fight these now okay all right that's all i need all you need is the checklist okay [Music] let's just hide because somehow they didn't hear all of that uh okay now we free the and i think they teach us the thing oh good i've lost the plot here i streaming you're not conducive to following what's actually going on in the game it just becomes a a case of like yeah go do things kill people okay and then i turn into blindly following the objective markers as opposed to taking in the full beauty of the game yeah i mean yeah it's that multitasking problem yeah and i don't really hear anything in the game because my volume is down so i don't have like double audio coming through my mic and the the game capture so usually you can hear the mongols calling out because they're going to shoot um and i can't so i just kind of have to guess uh when the um one of the things can happen oh also i'll show you something fun uh one of your abilities is playing the flute and what you can do is change the weather with the flute yep so it's raining you know what you just have wind waker powers you got wind waker powers and then suddenly the rain stops so the way that you can kind of like dynamically change the weather in this game is linked to this and the first one that you have is clear skies and then later you get ones that like make it stormy i think there's one that turns it to um and and makes foggy and stuff so oh huh i guess it's it's raining too much and my flute didn't do it oh okay oh well i i might be misinterpreting but that seems kind of uh kind of like a game changer wouldn't you say i oh yes i'm just a lone samurai warrior it's me against the world and also i have magical weather and day control powers jyn is a low-level magic user he just doesn't really know it's like yeah whenever i play the flute like the weather changes whatever i want it to be but that's oh here we go now now the game catches up and turns into daytime oh thank you i love this white tree forest it's so pretty so were you uh learning something new or did you just did you already learn video no we're going to a place to then learn something new oh man yeah this is a longer quest than i thought it was going to be it's got a bit of a like carrot on a stick situation you know they're oh i can't change the weather because it's in the story that it's lightning storming right now oh of course yeah i'm sure there was a plot i just wasn't paying attention i'm afraid that the magic weather changing flute is not historically accurate i know i'm disappointed too yeah well it seems to be a fairly simple sidecast see if i can do any work with uh can i do it can i do it can i do it can i do it myself yeah wait are we still doing that like lightning strike yeah thing at the cut scene okay i'm on the same page all right that explains why it's keeping that mythic vibe uh yes all right and hope we go and then theoretically we'll have a duel we'll get the magic and then that'll be what does yesterday have been doing poor man killed by yes that all right that's a sword in the earth bad for your edge retention still fresh but very dramatic man there's some really dramatic stuff going on only i knew what [Music] it's sort of in character you know jyn has his own priorities but he's like all right i'll do the sword thing all this crazy [ __ ] is happening and he's like yeah all right can i go rescue my uncle now yeah so this is one of the few places where it read it it basically turns into a kurosawa duel where it's explicitly like here we go long set up close-up shot on jin's ass and then very dramatic obviously it's not a one take uh it's long and drawn out but there are many different cuts and he does a little flick of the sword yeah oh that's so cool oh man yeah honestly there's a level of extreme drama that you can't really get away with in a live-action movie made in the 50s you know what are you waiting for not waiting studying learning uh no he's a samurai but he's uh i i don't know what his deal is i i'm gonna be entirely honest with you okay awesome oh i did it oh my god wow the very end i i pressed uh circle and triangle and unleashed the heavenly strike and then he exploded oh that's the best kind of ending for a duel neat oh well i know what i'm using all my uh my resolve points for so i guess that's what it is you can use the uh the little yellow orbs in the bottom left corner of the screen to either heal yourself or use bonkers attacks like setting bad guys on lightning yeah he literally exploded into like a little firework oh samurai on the mongol side okay cool gotta say watching him explode is hilarious because i don't have the game audio so it's just like sword fight sword fight super fight then he just goes i'll watch a cutscene of someone fighting that fight better than me and then i'll i'll get the full experience later oh my gosh all right well i learned a technique point isn't that swell uh cool yeah well that was fun uh sword kit oh new sword kit oh oh that looks awful oh cool i hate that uh i'm gonna stick with the storm um awesome well this has been really fun uh to play around and see where we are oh we're all the way over on the map there oh look at that look at all this empty stuff that we haven't filled in yet i'll have to do some more exploring later but yeah and then of course there's the entire top two parts of the island as well um so yeah we're having fun um thank you all for for coming on the stream uh having a having a watch uh enjoying uh this game with us uh we'll see you on thursday uh before we uh before we bounce i'm uh i'm looking forward to more game more kurosawa more samurai goodness good stuff all right enjoy your uh tuesday evenings wednesdays and thursday morning and afternoons and we will see you then later

Channel: Overly Sarcastic Productions

Views: 181,468

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Id: LuMfvARnR5o

Length: 163min 55sec (9835 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 21 2020