High on Life 2 with Alec Robbins and Julian Shine

This is a headgum podcast. Hey, Nick. Yeah. I don't want to freak you out or anything like that. I was like, hey, look, it's pretty high bar to freak me out. Okay. Well, it's just not very like me. You know what I mean? Sure. But I recently made a purchase. I bought a gun. Okay. Okay. But it's not normal. It's not like a normal gun. Honestly, more worrying. It's like a, well, I'll just show you. It's like a talking gun. It's like a sort of like, like almost fish like, like gun basically. Oh, wow. Yeah. No, that's that's that has a face and a mouth and it appears to be sentient. Yeah. It talks. It'll say it'll say hi to you. But it functions a firearm. Hi, hi, Matt. Oh my God. Hi. Hi guys. Hi. Hello. Hi. Wow. It's amazing. It's like a parrot. It's like a little thing. Well, it's more than a parrot. It like it has its own thoughts and memories. But the thing that I got it for is that, you know, I say this from time to time. Sometimes it's good to be bad. Yeah. Oh no, no. Oh no, don't do that. Don't be bad. This thing is going to help us be just a little bit bad. No, no, no, no, no, don't be bad. Just be nice. I just want to be, you got to, you got a gun. Just be careful when you're being bad. I'm not going to do this. Get yourself in trouble. Bad with it. Put me in a drawer. Put you in a drawer. Put me in a drawer. Just put me in a drawer and tuck me in under socks. Under socks. Unload, unload the bullets. Be nice, man. Well, it's like, they're not really bullets. Like sometimes it's like spit or like liquid or something like that. But you just, you did bring a loaded weapon into this workplace. I made you, I made you. Yeah, it's bad. I think that's probably like, I'm just a little alarmed. I made you some juice. Oh, let's see, that sounds nice. I made you some juice. I made you some juice from concentrate. Do you want that? What kind of juice are we talking? Orange juice. Oh, yeah. With a frozen kind. I have such a nostalgia for the orange juice from concentrate. Oh, yeah. Because that's what I've heard of juice to get. Yeah, you get, it's delicious. It's still good. Yeah, I don't know what I want. Why don't you put me in a drawer and drink some juice? If I put you in a drawer, okay, well, how about this? Okay. We drink the juice. Yeah. You said it came from a frozen can. Yeah. We could put the can up. Okay. And then we can put it in a drawer. I want to just shoot at cans and stuff. Oh, no. Maybe we could shoot. Oh, no. Don't do that. If you're going to shoot at something, Matt, I honestly think we should go to a less populated area. We're in a very busy neighborhood. Or maybe you just dig a hole and put me in the ground. Dig a hole. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Yeah. You don't want, you don't have a death wish, do you? No, no, I don't like that at all. So you're just worried about Matt's security. I think like maybe I'm just guessing going to that drawer with some blanket or with some socks that would be blanket sized for you. I'm almost thinking you maybe want to get a little shut-eye. Yeah, maybe a little. Turn the brain off. Yeah, you guys, I made a casserole. It's in the fridge. You did? You want me to do all this? Yeah, but me in a drawer, tuck me in in a sock, never shoot a bullet. Look, I may have got this thing to shoot it. Yeah. But it's kind of doing some other stuff that's pretty good, actually. Yeah. I mean, it seems like you kind of have like a personal assistant you weren't expecting. I was going to make a casserole. Now I don't have to. Yeah. Yeah, I did it. I know it's casserole Wednesdays when we're recording. We always eat a full casserole before we record. We bring, it's like kind of a fun system. We each bring a casserole and then we randomize who eats which casserole. Yes. Sometimes you get your own. Sometimes I get your own. That's just how randomizers work. Yeah, but it's like I made a tuna casserole last week. It got randomized. I ended up back with a tuna casserole. And you know what? Here's the thing. The fact that you can get your own is actually systemically a positive because it encourages you to make a casserole that you know you'll enjoy. Yes. Because if you don't make a good casserole, you could be punished for it if you end up having to eat it. That's right. I made the enchilada casserole. That enchilada casserole. It looks really good. I've got to eat the whole thing. Yeah. What the fuck are you guys talking about? We just like, well, we, if we're not going to do what we want. Fucking just what? We're just going to talk about casseroles. I'm going to tell you what I want. I want you to hold me to your head. I'm like, see? Now that's what I'm talking about. We speed on skateboards and talk to our guns as we interview developers of High on Life 2 this week on Get Play. Welcome to Get Played, your one stop show for good games, bad games, and every game in between. It's time to get played. I'm your host Heather Ann Campbell along with my fellow host, Tiger Weigher. That's me, Nick Tiger Weigher along with our third host, Mr. Games Madapadaka. Hello, everyone. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the premiere video game podcast where this week, people have made the mistake of coming on our show. I say no mistake at all actually because, look, this could be different by the time this is out. We're number seven in Leisure, baby. What does that mean? Number seven on the podcast charts. In the concept of leisure. Got it. On the podcast charts in the genre of leisure. So leisure, so like number one, jacking off. Yeah. Number two, reading a magazine. Pissing for a long time. Right. If you're only four below, pissing for a long time. Not bad. Pretty good. You know how some pisses are relaxing? There's something you have to do for function, but sometimes you're like, this is good. I do know. I might get it over with. You don't want to do it. I'm like, I got things to do. I'm overly hydrated as it is. You do drink a lot of water. I do. But you need a lot of water to be a big guy. Yeah. Well, he pours a lot of water. I don't know how much of it makes it into his mouth. It's interesting that you're so hydrated considering how much you spill. Yeah, refutation for spelling. They call me smellmonger. We're very thrilled to have our guests here. They don't call you that. People have been saying that. I don't know. People have been saying. I'll say it. If you want me to say it, I'll say it. Please just start saying that. It's the spillmonger. The spillmonger himself. Tiger. Wiger. Don't make it my intro. It's Canon, baby. Our guests are Narrative Director and writer at Squanch Games. Their new game High on Life 2 is available now. Alec Robbins, Julian Shine. Hello. Alec, Julian, thanks so much for being here. Our pleasure. Welcome. Thanks for having us. Welcome. What's up, boys? What's up, boys? I'm not much, fam. What's up, boys? Yeah. Answer the fucking question. What's up, boys? We put out a game and we're tired. We're tight on that. That's so exciting. No, we've all played a bit of High on Life 2. We've got a preview copies of it. We'll dig into it in depth later in the episode. But I wanted to start more generally. You're both here on the show for the first time. I assume as people who work on video games for a living that you are gamers yourself. That's a good guess. Yeah. Yeah. Give us a sense of your general gaming taste. Like some games that were influential, some all-time favorites, some ones that you play a lot. And I would say they don't have to be, don't think of them in terms of how they reflect on the game you've made. Just like games that you like in your life. All right. I can do Super Monkey Ball. Oh, hell yeah. I'm going to start with that. That's my big new, I've been revisiting that. You were at the GameCube version? Yes, that's where I started. And then, honestly, I think they've never made one better than that. Why? Because they've never made the best one and they've never topped it. That's like Pagle. It's another one. It's like, this is such a simple game. How can you not just replicate this? They lost the technology. They even, they remade that first Super Monkey Ball game and I played it. It doesn't feel right. No, yeah. It's wrong. They messed up just porting over a game. Anyway, that game. That's my favorite. Mother 3. Okay. Yeah. What else we got? I mean, Metal Gear Solid 2. Wow. I'm just picking the bangers. I'm just trying to be cool. I play cool games. You guys are cool games. Thank you. You're a cool guy. Yeah. Julian, what about you? I like the ones where it's like two pornographic images and you have to find the difference between two. Oh, yeah. Kind of a erotic, photo-hot sort of thing. Where'd those go? Like that and like Magic Eye. I'm like a visual novels guy. Yeah. I'm a visual game. Yeah. I was playing, you know Kix, you know that game where you like, it's like Jez Ball almost. Okay. Oh, yeah. Okay. There's, you know Jez Ball. Swingo, Swingo, Jez Ball, Kix. But there's a game that was an arcade game and it's so much fun. It's just a more cartoony version of Kix. And like this game is great. Why have I never heard of it? And I found out it's mostly a hentai game where you're trying to fill in these lurid images and it was such a good game they had to make a non-hentai version. Wow. Yeah. It kicks, if memory, it kicks with a Q, right? Yeah, that's right. If memory serves, yeah, you are like kind of creating a path and what that's doing is building some sort of, like it's kind of like Picross a little bit more active. You have to make a shape before the bad guys hit you. The one I was playing was called Panic Street or something. It's so good. And the Kix cereal used to come with hentai in it. Oh, wow. They had to stop selling it. Bring it back. When they brought it to the West. I haven't played Catherine. I feel like Catherine's the game you played. Catherine of Catherine. I love Colin Full Body. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Because like the, what was making me think of that is that that game is horny and weird, but the puzzle aspect of it is good that I wish that game was in something else. Right, right. You're weak. I am weak is the thing. Oh, I can't. I wish every game was hornyer. Yeah. That is true. Well, that is fair. I wish more games had a woman's voice commanding me to edge. Which is what she keeps yelling in Catherine. Absolutely. I feel like before we Terry further, I feel like I must mention. Yes. I know these guys. You know these guys. You know these guys. I was on a, I was on a, I was on a, the profiteer with Julian about 10 years ago. Wow. We were crushing, by the way. How about that? It's great. And I've met Alex socially at our good friend, Connor McCabe's house. Who's a great friend and he, he hosts a lot of games. You were saying, you know, the last time he started, it was like a fighting game party. Like what were you, what were you doing there? All sorts of crazy shit. They had set up like four TVs with different fighting games. You were doing. We were practicing our moves when we weren't up on the screen. What's that called when you do the, you were canceled? What was that? Cancel. You can combo. You can cancel a super into another super. We don't do that. We don't do that. We don't do that. We don't do that. We don't do that. We don't do that. We cancel a super into another super. We don't do cancel culture or anything like that. That's me when I'm playing street fighting. Yeah. They got to fix this. Alex, I'm familiar with your webcomic, Mr. Boop. Yes. Which is very funny. And I don't know how to describe it exactly. I feel like people should just like, check out Mr. Boop if they have it. Check it out. It's in the news again because Betty Boop has just entered the public domain. So I've been doing a little bit of press about this comic again, but it was about me being married to Betty Boop. And the Alec in the strip is a self insert character. It was an autobiographical. Yeah. It's about me and my marriage to Betty Boop and all the silly things we get up to and all the stuff that would happen if you were married to Betty Boop. It was a fun comic. It's done now. It's been done for a while. You can get a hard cover of it. Yeah. There's a really complicated arc that takes place. It goes some places, yeah. But it is at its core a wife guy story. Yes. Like the ultimate wife guy who's just constantly talking about how much he loves his wife, Betty Boop. At the beginning, it's kind of like a newspaper strip parody. It's kind of like Blondie or Chickweed Lane or whatever. Everyone's thinking in their head, I love my wife all the time. They're always saying exactly what they're feeling. And that's just. It's just good writing. It's just good writing. It's efficient. It's very funny. Speaking of like a comedy because like this is the I think of the challenge of making High on Life 2 and I think you both or your team succeeded with it. But it's like it feels like it's so hard to make a funny game. Yeah. And this is the thing we've talked about on the podcast before where a lot of like the comedy in games is sometimes things like someone falling off a bridge in Dark Souls. It's almost like. Well, that's like Looney Tunes. Yeah, like that's the kind of slapstick. I love that. I've said Dark Souls like Sense Fortress is a comedy game. Like I think about it that way. Like a lot of comedy and video games is environmental. It's slapstick and it's incidental. So if you're setting out to make a game that's supposed to be funny, I feel like the cards are already stacked against you. People have their guard up already. They're like, all right, make me laugh, which is the same problem you have with comedy in general sometimes, but like games especially people are combative sometimes. Yeah, sure. And yeah, I don't know. We we try to treat it like a toy or like like a surprise. We're messing with the player. You are our audience. We're in control. Sometimes we can prank you. That'll make you laugh. Sometimes it's just character humor. It is a challenge. Yeah. I'm curious just like as gamers yourself, are there any games that you can think of that you like you consider particularly funny? I mean, Mother 3, honestly, is pretty funny. Yeah, is extremely funny. I've used that as like a benchmark for our game before. Portal 2 is one that you just kind of like got it. It did it right. It's really tight. The writing is perfect. Like, but yeah, even I mean, we brought up Dark Souls like sense fortress to me is it's joke structure. They've designed traps that are meant to surprise you and make you laugh like you you walk around the corner. There's a guy who jumps out. You're like, next corner. I know and you look around the corner. No, God, he comes from the ceiling instead. It's just a joke structure. And I don't know like that. I'm looking for that too. When we're putting games or putting jokes together for our game, we're also trying to do some stuff like that from time to time. Like how can we make the design into a joke? You also get a lot of really good in Dark Souls, a little really good clash of context jokes where it's like you have a person who is has like the armor of evil and like it's like, you know, sweating red oil as they like head around the corner and then they're just like rolled over by a boulder. Yeah. Like it's like taking all of the gravity and seriousness and gravitas of like a Lord of the Rings movie and and making the guy die constantly. Right. It's part of what makes it so funny. Yeah, it feels like a wily coyote thing. Yeah, it's so fucking hilarious. I think that the other aspect is and I think you were touching on this is I worked in game development in my in my twenties, but I never like worked on like a game that was like that had comedy is like its core. But I but I imagine part of it is you don't want to this maybe speaks in terms of deck being stacked against you. You don't want to seem try hard because that's like such a that's such a tough thing in comedy if they see you trying, you know. And so and I feel like some of the games that have been like like that are notoriously and funny like Duke Nukem 3D are just like so fucking try hard. I'm fine. I mean, that's Julian's favorite. Yeah. Duke Nukem is funny. We think he's very funny. Yeah. The guy is funny. The guy is funny. His name is funny. Can we skip the what have you been playing section? It's just Duke Nukem the whole time. You're embarrassed? Well, I've been playing this really funny game. The vacation ones. I've been laughing my ass off doing this only. But I'm like I'm how did you each get into development? I had a friend who who was working in the in the industry and he kind of brought me in. I was a fan of Mr. Boop and I had made some smaller indie games on the side. I made this breakup simulator called Heartbreak High where you start dating ever. You're already dating everyone in the high school and you go through one by one and have to break up with each of them before the school day is over. That's funny. Thank you. And so I had some stuff like that where I'd already been messing around with it and I've been doing comics and performing comedy and I just hit all the right sweet spots when Squoncher's looking for someone like that. And I popped in and started working on High on Life 1. Then you brought me aboard. No hitting. Yeah. I get really excited. No hitting. You could have. You could have. You could have. You could have. You could have. You could have. You could have. You could have. You could have. You could have. You could have. You could have.哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎 with HLP TV, Go-Hun, really fun local community collective. When you're doing indie dev, when you're doing like a solo dev before you're working for a Squanch, like what tools are you using? What engines were you working in? All of the cheap shit. I mean, I did Game Maker a lot, I did, I did Flashback in the day. I used something called Construct 2 that I really like where it's the most sketch-like game dev tool I've ever used, where I think if you're using Game Maker or any other engine, you're doing a lot of coding, and a lot of them are trying to do this front-end where you can drag and drop stuff. Construct really is almost entirely all drag and drop, and there's no code, because what they do is they front-end it with like just flow charts, so you can just do it all, I don't know, it's great. I recommend that if it's still cheap. Right. But yeah, anything, you can make any game in any engine, I feel. Twine, yeah. Twine is huge, twine is really beginner-friendly, it's mostly text-based, so you can just jump right in. If you know how to type, you're good already. I recommend any tool that speaks to you. If you see a game that you like and you're like, what did they make that in? And that's affordable to you, give it a shot, because it's not that hard to actually get into it. It's just daunting if you have ever tried it before, I think. But the tools are so much more sophisticated than they were when I worked in development, and it was just, yeah. Things are accessible, yeah. Exactly, yeah. Like when I was younger, I used to use RPG Maker, and the way I was doing it, the way other people were doing it, you'd push it to its limits, people would be like, you could make that in an RPG Maker game, and it's like, yeah, really, any engine could be completely broken. And reshaped. There's stuff that people are still making in RPG Maker, and I'll look at it like, how the hell is that even in the engine that I was using 10 years ago? Anyone could do anything. Undertale was made in Game Maker, so it's Hotline Miami. Yeah, Hyper Light Drifter too, that's a really good tool. Hotline Miami's a cool game, I haven't thought about that in a while. It is really cool. Is that the top-down shooter? Yeah. It's pretty good. Do you guys remember Smash TV? Yeah, yeah. I like that game too. I played a bunch of Smash TV. Those are the good old days. That's it, I got no- They don't make them like they used to. Now it'd be Smash Phone, because of all the kids on there. They don't watch TV anymore. Yeah. That would be Smash Phone. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We've all had those nights. The ones where you laugh until the sun comes up. Where conversations go places they've never gone before. And you walk away feeling closer to the people around you than you have in years. That's still a assignment. It doesn't just open doors in your mind. It opens them between people. This episode is brought to you by Schedule 35, the most trusted name in psilocybin products. Whether you're microdosing for focus and clarity or taking a full recreational dose to reconnect with life, Schedule 35 makes every experience intentional, consistent, and precisely dosed. These aren't party drugs. They're connection tools. For your mind, your creativity, your relationships, and honestly, maybe your soul, go to Schedule35.co and use code GETPLADE, all caps, one word, for 15% off your first order. That's Schedule35.co. Code GETPLADE for 15% off. 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Shop plans at mintmobile.com slash get played. That's mintmobile.com slash get played. Upfront payment of $45 for three month five gigabyte plan required equivalent to $15 per month. New customer offer for first three months only. Then full price land options available. Taxes and fees extra. See Mint Mobile for details. The Mint Mobile I have one more question for y'all and for the entire panel. The question is, what are you playing? What are you playing? Hi, it's me, the resident evil merchant. And I'm here to ask all my new friends what they're playing. What? Nothing. I just, we're just taking it in. I was just looking at you. Matt, you gave me a weird look. I was looking at you with my normal face. No, no. What did I look like? Well, your normal face is like a smile. What was I doing before? You look sick. You do look sick. I look sick? You look sick. What, like green? Disgusting. Math look like that for 10 years. Yeah, last time you saw me I was sick. 10 years of 5, you're gonna understand. That's just how you look. I'm just a sick guy. Are you okay, buddy? I'm okay. All right, well, I guess I'm gonna ask you the question. What are you playing? Thank you for asking me. Look, I mentioned this last week. I was playing the resident evil 2 remake. I finished Leon's story. Wow. That game, very scary actually. A little too scary for me. I haven't started Claire's story yet, in part because I'm afraid actually. But I'm gonna get to it because I do wanna finish it. So I could, because I don't count it as, I didn't finish the game, right? You're the whole other part of it. Yeah, I can't say you beat it. I can't say I beat it. Sorry, man. Oh, I didn't say that. All right, just keeping you honest. I didn't say this, making sure you don't. But you never play it as Luigi. Then you haven't beaten the game. My whole life. You're not a real game. My whole life is a lie. That's true, and I'm really glad you brought it up. My life is over. This is awful. But I'm gonna get to Claire. I'm playing Dragon Quest seven reimagined. Which is just a nice cozy hang, really, really fun time. But last night, in the mail, knock, knock, knock. Who's at the door? But the delivery man. What does he bring to me? In the night? Not in the night. It was in the afternoon. You want the full truth? Wasn't even home for the delivery. Okay. I was just gonna say, this came to my house. Dude, just lying to us. I just lied. You're one of those people who orders Amazon at like 8.30 and now it's like at the 4 AM delivery. I need five pens now. I ordered Mario Tennis Fever. Cause my wife plays tennis and I thought it'd be an easy sell to get her to wanna play a game with me. And boy, do we have a lot of fun playing Mario Tennis Fever last night. We haven't had that before. How about that? Is that Switch 2 game? Switch 2 game. Ooh. You're going physical on Switch 2. We've said this before. Yes. I'm doing it, well, I'm doing it in the same way that I did in the previous generation, which was just at my own whimsy. I'll go physical or I'll go, if I want it really bad, I'll download it. Right. But if I want the physical, if it feels nice to have the physical one, I tend to go physical first party Nintendo. That's kind of just how I do it. But like, I know that the key card thing is confusing. That one's on cart. The key card one, I don't want to get into it actually. It's confusing and I know that I'm about to explain it wrong. But. So when Nintendo fanboys have to explain the company's crazy logic, start to shut down. I just was like, I could just hear. I don't say anything bad. It's on digital key card? No, it's physical on the cart. Because I feel like the discourse on the digital key card thing is like, well, the game's not even on there. And I was like, well, yeah, but on discs sometimes the game's not on there either. You don't get the outrage because that's how most disc games are. You're always downloading something anyway. Yeah. Like the disc or the cartridge is like the license to play the thing that you're downloading. Like, I don't know. It feels like it's cool that that's an option if you want to like, you know, resell the game later or like let a friend borrow it or something like that. Like you can't do that with a digital game. You can't. I remember when Diablo 3 came out, part of the backlash to its initial launch was the game having to be always online. And it's like, is there can you get a retail game now where like you can play it if your console isn't online? Like like like out of the box, unpatched. That still happens sometimes. There are games that are coming out every once in a while where like you can't play it unless you connect to the internet even though it's single player and not online. Yeah, right. I don't know why. I mean, I remember when Half-Life 2 came out. That was a huge controversy was you had to have Steam. That was, yeah, everyone's cool with Steam now, but at the time, yeah. Crazy to think that there was a time where people were like, what the fuck even is that? Well, Steam is such an anomaly because it is like on paper, it is bad. Yeah. They just won. Yeah, we can't forget. No, they're awesome. They're good. Yeah, sorry. Let's get that clear. They're billionaire owners just too available. I'm like too available. Honesty. Yeah. Honestly, the best place to get it. Any digital storefront. But as far as digital storefronts go, it's like the most benevolent option is the monopoly. It's like the second game Newell dies. We're all fucked. Yeah. Oh, Steam got sold to Saudi Arabia. As did his yacht that he lives on. Julian, what are you playing? You know, I am actually a little starstruck that the merchant is here because I just beat the Resident Evil 1 remake. Oh, wow. The Gamecube one. No, no, no, no, no, one. Yeah. I was debating whether or not that was a good thing. But I like that. But you're part of the franchise. Yeah, no, I'm grateful that you would call me the part of the franchise because I... You're the face of the franchise for crying out loud. That's nice. That's nice. I like that. The face of the franchise Resident Evil merchant. So the Resident Evil 1 remake, what did you play it on? I played it on illegally purchased. So I should say I have owned a legal copy of it. And if the original owner continues to be the owner long after it's no longer in the possession, I've owned this game for 20 years now. Yeah, absolutely. But I did get a rom. I did want to back it up digitally by getting it on ROM on my Steam Deck. Hell yeah. Oh yeah. So you're a Steam Deck guy? I'm a Steam Deck guy. It's awesome. It's most of the fun of the Steam Deck is just buying a bunch of games and never playing them and then downloading even more ROMs and never playing them. I just like to scroll through the library. That's what I'm playing. I'm scrolling through my Steam Deck library. You're tinkering with the Steam Deck because I do think that is like I will set myself up with my Steam Deck to, you know what? I want to play this. I want to play this. And I'll spend the long time it takes to do that because it's not necessarily the easiest thing to do. Put in some time to do it. And then if I ever get to actually do the thing that I set myself up to do, it's a miracle. I just never end up doing it. Yeah. It's like the Twilight Zone. You're going to drop it when you finally have time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I'm going to shatter my screen. Oh my games. Oh my ROMs. Okay, but that would be a really good reboot episode. Oh, good idea. Somebody better do that. You know what it is instead of the glasses? It's a phone. Oh yeah. Drops his phone. People are saying this. Yeah. Smash glasses. Smash TV. Now it's going to be Smash Glasses again with these dang Oakley's all the way. I didn't think about that. Glasses is kind of phone now. Glasses is phone. Glasses is kind of phone. Yeah. Speaking of which, Heather, what are you playing? I've been playing Dragon Quest. And let me tell you, Matt, you're right. It's a cozy experience. It is a very, very, I mean, yeah, I still play Fortnite. I'm still in it in the trenches. But what I've discovered is you play 45 minutes of Dragon Quest before you go to bed and just have sweet dreams. Oh, how about that? You have good dreams. It's nice. It's nice. If I don't, and this is not a joke, if I don't play Dragon Quest before I go to bed, I have nightmares about Jeffrey Epstein. You should put that on the box. I'll have full blown nightmares about some nightmare thing I read earlier that day in whatever the drop was that day. But if I play Dragon Quest, I usually dream just of the blue slime or something like really just easy breezy. You know, the slime was on the island. Oh, no. The slime was on the island. You heard that there's a Pokéstop on the island. Yeah, it did. Yeah, it's so crazy. There's a what? There's a Pokéstop for Pokemon Go. That's real. That's not a joke. That's real. That's real. And Nintendo removed the Pokéstop. But what it begs is why can't Nintendo release the information of everybody who ever spun the fucking Pokéstop? That's a great point. It's not Nintendo though, right? It's Neantic. Right, it's Neantic in the Pokemon community. Like you would have just a guaranteed locked phone. Sure, people duped their location. And I'm sure that if you were like... Now you're just giving them an out. Pam Bondi's going to come out tomorrow and say they're duping the Pokéstop. Well, I think that you could be like, okay, there's like a guy whose physical location has never left France. But he spun the Pokéstop twice. Then there are people who, because it's the only stop on the island, spun it like 300 fucking times and you'd be like, well, that person's probably there. Someone's the gym leader. The other layer of that is that you get to find out which famous people played Pokemon Go. It's like, oh wow, former UN ambassador Bill Richardson was a Pokemon Go freak. Chomsky all the time. Do you think Bill told Hillary about it? Like say this? Hillary, I got something for you. You got to try this. It's not this thing on the island. Pokemon Go is on the island. The kids are playing it. Nintendo just put it there in the hopes that someone would play it. We heard there's a cool island. We know the age range of who's going to be on the island. There's probably some Pokemon Go players. That's too dark, I'm sorry. So yeah, I've been playing Dragon Quest. It's so good. And every time... The only thing about it is, every time I go to play it, I'm like, I'm not going to have a good time because it's pretty simple. It's not like asking anything of you. And every time, like whatever it is about, like just the physics, the speed, how nice it looks when he like smashes a barrel, it just makes you happy. It's a panacea, is that the right word? Yeah, girl. Just a good ball. It's really just sweet. I do kind of like that it's easy. I don't need to be challenged every time I'm playing a game. Oh, sorry, go ahead. I was playing Shin Megami Tensei 4 before going to bed. Cool. Don't play a fucking... Okay, never mind. No, don't play a fucking hard RPG before you go to bed. Yeah. Play a comfortable RPG. You start your day with Shin Megami Tensei. Yeah, that's a clock and an hour work. It's like a coffee or video game. I also really like that the battle speed is adjustable. That's a quality of life for me. Every JRPG has been improved with these just small little quality of life. Anyway, you can skip its core gameplay mechanic. I know, it's always like you feel like an asshole doing it. You're like, I am kind of just playing less of the game. It does have a like, you could do like an auto battle basically and I'll be like, I'll just do it this one and I was like, it is fun and I'll do like five in a row. But then I'll get back into it. I was like, all right, that's enough. Now I have to play. Now I have to play. Yeah, you're like, my medicine now. I don't do the auto play, but I do like... One of my least favorite parts of a JRPG is after I select the thing, what should happen instantly is the number it did. I don't need any of the other stuff. I don't need to see him hop. And comparing. Yeah. I played a bunch of old stuff on my PS1 recently and I'm realizing how many of these games weren't designed just to compare stats. Yeah. Where you have to like open up a menu, close it, look at the other item, go back to the other one just to make sure you're using the right equipment. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I just so those quality of life improvements are perfect for me. I press attack and the number pops up on screen as how much damage I did. It's perfect. Yeah. What I wish would change is that I wish that it didn't speed up the animations on the monsters because they go from like kind of like they're like little dances to like just like a stutter step. I played Final Fantasy XI that way and that's a 3D game that they let you fast forward. So it's a very drama. That's not like one of the Super Nintendo ones. I could just play this game at double speed. I will say too, every monster design in the game so far is immaculate. They're all so perfect looking and weird. Big cat fuckers. They're awesome. It's got the 2.5D like the... No, this one is like a full, I guess it kind of is, but it's an isometric thing, but it's like in full 3D. Yeah, you can rotate the camera. It's like Octopath Traveler. No. No, that one's not. Yeah, okay, you're right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This one's like rotatable. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I didn't know that. You gotta check it out. It's smooth. If you're trying to get cozy. The Toriyama, right? Yeah, yeah, exactly. I think you do all of the monster designs, or obviously I don't think it involved in every entry in the franchise. I know a lot of the foundational ones are his. I think he did do all of them. He did do all of them. And then I think at a certain point he maybe was doing less for the games, but yeah, he designed all the monsters. Yeah. Some of the monsters at a certain point are like, here's this one, but now this one's green. And it kind of is like... But then you also see like concept art of what a slime looked like before he did it. Oh, yeah. And you're like, oh, he's the biggest genius in the world. Right. It's the simplest design and it is the most iconic thing you'll ever see. It makes me so happy just to see it too. I think I've been saying that it's just like so many games are dark and like, you know, like upsetting too. And like this game is just like bright colors and smiling faces. Yeah. It rocks. It's so nice. That's gentle. Alec, what are you playing? Absalom, most recently. Have you guys played that? Yeah, yeah. It's great. Like a beat-em-up roguelike I've been really into. And before that, I was playing through Final Fantasy Tactics, that remake they just did. Very, very good. That was like the perfect port. I love that game. You played the original, I assume. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I was... I literally replayed it like a year ago and then they announced this and I'm like, I'm gonna play it again. I just like the game so much. It's great. Have you played Final Fantasy Tactics Advance? Yes. That was like the first one I played when I was younger. And I liked it. And then I played the PlayStation one and I went back to that one. I'm like, this is for toddlers. I don't know what they were like. The gameplay is good. The gameplay is like at the same level. But the story is like elementary school kids get sucked into Final Fantasy and I'm like, the other one is a real like deep war story with some stakes. I think what Matt was trying to do is bait out whether or not you beat Tactics Advance because I have spent my life not beating it. I've never finished it. Thank God. Thank fucking God. Either way, no matter how it was going to shake out, the data is interesting. It's just interesting information. Matt, I finished it when it came out. Wow. What the fuck? Julien, is that true? It was for toddlers, I guess. What the fuck? Yeah, no one can beat it. No adults can beat it. If I try to do it now, I probably couldn't. That's... And then I beat Tactics Advance 2. It's like when the Rugrats lose the ability to talk. Yeah. Tactics Advance 2 is the one... It's like kind of like you circle. Wasn't that on DS? Yeah. Circles. Yeah. I think it kicks right now. They had circles to Final Fantasy. No, two was also on Game Boy Advance and it was just more of the same basically. You guys are lying. I'm thinking of Revenant Wings. Final Fantasy. That's a DS one. Yeah. That's I think a 12 sequel. Like it's been a long time. There is an Advance 2. It was for Game Boy Advance. No, it wasn't. Can we get clarity on this? You got it. I literally was looking this up. The question is, we just want to find out the platform for Final Fantasy Tactics Advance 2. I will bet you. I remembered it being where it's circle troops with the pen. That's Revenant Wings. You're right. But I thought that was Tactics Advance 2 colon Revenant Wings. Grimoire of the Rift is the subtitle of Tactics Advance 2 and I'm going to win this. I'm going to win this. I'm going to win this. I'm going to win this. I'm going to win this. I'm going to win this. 15 Gill. Final Fantasy Tactics A2 colon Grimoire of the Rift, Nintendo DS exclusive. That's what I'm saying. Wow. I kind of don't think I can do the challenge. I wish none of this had happened. I never beat the original Final Fantasy Tactics, but I played it like dozens of times. You played the baby one and destroyed the baby one. It was a baby. I couldn't beat the first one. It was exclusively for the Nintendo DS. Wow. I like takes it. Wow. I like the little jackpot. The first one was on the avoidance. With the. All right. This is a conspiracy. Nick, what are you playing? Heather, thank you so much for asking. You're welcome. I've put some time into Mugenics, which is the new game from Edmund McMillen, as well as Tyler Glail. Edmund McMillen, best known for Super Meat Boy, which we covered on the podcast and I finally beat when we covered it here, a game that was. I love that game. It's so good. I 100%ed it multiple times. Wow. I love a tough platformer. It was kind of a, I do too. I really like those precision platformers. I was, I just like, like never finished it back in the day. And so when we covered it again, I was like, I'm finally going to finish this. It's good. You know what? It's very satisfying to do that. You can do that with a game. You know, I never finished this game. I never finished Final Fantasy Tactics Advance. You can pick it up years later and finally, well, like get that monkey off. No, no, when you get older, it's hard to try. It's not possible. I've tried so many times. Easy way to retoss. I'm still playing the same save. That's maybe your problem. Well, yeah, because every time we started out again, I'm like, what the fuck is happening? This is Binding of Isaac as well. And they previously, the two of them, had collaborated on End Disney. The development cycle in this game was pretty endless, which they talk about on an episode of triple click. And they had Ed McWimel on the podcast, but it was something like 14 years from when this was announced to when it came out in its final form. I guess development kind of its current iteration was something like 2018 when this began. But it's worth the wait. This game rips. I'm having so much fun. It's a rogue-like, you dungeon crawl, there's turn-based tactical combat, and you maintain and upgrade a hub world in this kind of life-simmy sort of way. And Matt, all your party members are cats. It's a cat game. You could not be more of a cat game. I'm going to have to get this. I got to get it. Just for the cats alone. You think I'm going to like playing it though? How are you with a turn-based tactical thing? What do you think when you see a grid? I get scared. You get scared of a grid. It's just like Final Fantasy Tactics Advance. I know, but I've decided I'm going to leave childish things behind. No, I think I liked that Mario Rabbids one. That was sort of like an intro to tactics thing for me because I never really played tactics games before. I think I could fuck around and find out. That game was pretty scary. That game is so scary actually. If you guys saw a screen across the room like E3 or something, and on screen is your ideal video game, what is the image you see that brings you across the hall to engage with that game? I know there's hentai. I start there. Naked girl getting fucked. Naked anybody. And it's got to be like a good game. If it's a good game, I'm going to be interested. It is interesting that sometimes they're like, yeah, this is part of it, but the game is actually just kind of good. Like Sanran. Yeah, yeah, we played Sanran Kagura on the show recently. Oh, I know that's it. It's good. It's like a beat-em-up right? Yeah. It's like the Honey Pop franchise. Yeah. I put a lot of hours in those games because they're good match-three puzzle games. I can't believe this was the answer to the question, but it seems like that's the answer. It's universal. Anyway, I really, really am enjoying this game. Gameplay-wise, kind of a hybrid of Into the Breach, which is a game I love and called the Lamb, which was a game I really enjoyed. The amount of mechanics in this game absolutely overwhelming. If not scratch the surface number of possible status effects, it seems like there are just dozens of fucking things that you could be inflicted with and inflict others with. Also, the UX feels like it's intentionally trying to give you sensory overload because it's such a busy screen. But the art is all this hand-drawn with a marker, sort of aesthetic that you're probably familiar with if you know his other games. Also if you're familiar with his other games, you know there's a lot of gross out and edge lore humor, which was, for me, I was never the fan of it in like Binding of Isaac or whatever, but none of it like fucks up the experience for me. It's just like how much can you, if you have a low tolerance level for that sort of thing, there is a lot of it. There is a very dusty, speaking of Duke Nukem, chew bubblegum and kick-ass reference in this game, so. That's wild. But here's one thing that I- They did start making the game 14 years ago. The game's intro cinematic is like the Simpsons couch gag. It changes every time. Wow. That's just kind of remarkable. I didn't know that. Yeah. I love its ambition, love its playability, super duper fun. So that's what I've been playing as well as Dragon Quest 7, which we should, yeah, which I've started, which I think we're maybe going to do an episode on. Yeah, well, we have to do it. We should do it. We'll talk about it later this month. But the other gaming related thing is I wanted to share something I saw today via my buddy Mike Carlson of Podcast The Ride. This is Tori Wilson's finisher from a WWE video game ranch. If we can bring this up here. I think ranch is pulled up her actual finisher. Yeah, that's right. No, I sent you the link earlier. Oh. Did you get the tactics advanced to information from Wikipedia for chance? I just want to make sure. I feel like people are not trusting Wikipedia anymore. It's kind of, that's done, right? I'm bringing it back. You're rigging it now. As of now. You got to live with this, man. You messed up. I really did. I apologize. I accept that. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, I'll give you grace. Thank you. Don't do that. Oh, you know what? Don't give him grace. Don't give him any grace. What are you doing, man? If you give him a little grace. You can't give Julian grace. I give him grace. My buddy Mike Carlson of the Great Podcast The Ride sent over this link today that we all should just watch. I don't need to give it too much setup. The caption on the tweet is Tori Wilson might have the funniest finisher in WWE game history. So we're watching what appears to be, I don't know which game this is, but like a PS3 era wrestling game. Let's take a look. So Tori Wilson, who is a Buxom blonde, appears to turn around and wiggle her ass at, I think John Cena with such force that he is put on his back and then she can get the pin. Yeah, it like propels him backward. It's like he gets so horny that he has to fall over. It almost reads like it could be like a, like you could have that be the animation for like a Wario like fart move, but it's certainly not a fart move. Maybe we just don't smell it. Maybe that's what you have to ask BD. Well, what she's doing is she's spiking his cord is all right now. It's a dangerous levels. They should give this move to Ryo. I like that Cena's head goes back and forth also like he's being hit by invisible hands. It is good. A lot of fun. And I like that at the end too when he's pinned, he's like, he can't believe it kind of. He's like, oh, you kidding me? That was fair. That was cheating. It's not allowed. The signs in the background are great too. Tori is hot. The cheer gang is here. What's the one right behind her? I think it says word. Word life. High on life. Word life. Word life. Word life. Word life. Word life. Word life. Word life. Word life. Word life. Word life. Word life. Word life. Word life. Word life. Word life. Word life. Word life. Word life. Word life. Word life. Word life. Word life. Word life. Word life. Word life. Word life. Word life. Word life. Word life. Word life. Word life. Word life.哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎 They even offer a large collection of podcasts where babble experts reveal language secrets and offer an inside look at local cultures. 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It's super fast, no buffering, will streaming, and it stops your ISP bandwidth throttling and you can use one account on up to 10 devices. How do you even have 10 devices? Premium cybersecurity for the price of a cup of coffee per month. To get the best discount off your NordVPN plan, go to NordVPN.com. Our link will also give you four extra months on the two-year plan. There's no risk with Nord's 30-day money-back guarantee. The link is in the podcast episode description box. Let's talk about High on Life 2. Yeah, that's a great idea. Look, 40 minutes into this podcast with two developers and High on Life 2. We should talk about this game a little bit. We'll probably talk about it a little bit. Yeah, like we mentioned earlier, get to spend some time with this game. It's very funny. It's very fun. I did not play High on Life 1 and just found, did find it very approachable as a player new to this franchise. My favorite thing about the game off the top is I love any time live-action footage is used in a game. Yes, we love that. That is not, like it's not a night trap game, but you can walk up to video screens or you'll get the pop-up on how to use the skateboard. And it's just video. That of the jokes is the hardest laugh for me. The skateboard tutorial video is very, very funny. That's one of my favorites. That's our friend John Milstein, who is a real skater. Oh yeah, he's the best. He's a great comedian. We had that idea, kind of just like, wouldn't it be funny if it was a live-action tutorial? And I called up John and we went to a parking lot by the LA Zoo. We filmed that, that day, and at the end of the day it was implemented in the game. It seems to real because so many of my earliest gaming memories, I had an older brother and we had a PC and like playing the seventh guest and like, what was it, I want to say the 25th hour, but that's a Spike Lee movie. Maybe you just watched the movie. The 25th hour video game adaptation. But just like FMV point and click games, like Phantasma, Gloria. Right, right. Zork, The Return. Yeah. It's very of the use of live-action. That's like, that might be the most left-brained thing. Yeah. Anytime you hear somebody in our game say, want something, of course you do. That's a reference to that. Who's like us? Yeah, but these are live-action footage in like such a vibrant animated world. It's very wall-y. Like it's like, especially being kind of science fiction, it kind of evokes that. But it's also cool because like obviously you guys were talking earlier about, you know, working on things at like Highland Park TV and just like doing comedy things in general. So it's cool that you got to implement, like you got to use all the skills you've acquired over the years of like doing this and putting it into a product that people are going to see and play. It's like crazy. We know how to do it. We want to do it. So it's like, I don't think another studio has exactly that set up and know how we have our own very specific proclivities. Yeah, we both came from video production. You worked in TV production. I videotaped depositions. That comes through. I could seriously, I noticed the angles. They were really good. Yeah, they were some of the funniest. You were the Roger DeCase. Dispositive. I have confirmed how many hours are in the video game that is a semi-sequel to the seventh guest. Oh, wow. Do we want to guess over or under 25, which was your original? How many hours are in the title? It is the blank hour and the 25th hour was wrong. I remember it now. You remember it now. I'm going to go with 13th. 13th? I'm going to say, because some numbers don't sound good as the word before hour. You know what I mean? Like 31st hour doesn't sound good. No, they pick something juicy. Yeah, yeah. The third hour is not super exciting. I'm going to say. Unless you're watching Lord of the Rings. So the seventh guest, blank hour, I'm going to say the 25th hour. That's what it was for. That's the only one we know it's done. I'm going to go say. Absolute confidence. He guesses the only thing we know is not true. You know when Bryce is right? It's just copy the person next to his number. Look, I'm humiliated, okay? I'm going to say the 17th hour. 17th hour. I'll give you a guess. I think it was on the Nintendo DS. Yeah. Oh my God. I can't say another L. No, I go 46. 46 hour. Whoa. Why is that on the screen? Can I say what I think? Yeah, go for it. Is it the 11th hour? Oh. 70 years after the seventh guest's events. The year is 1995. The player character is Carl Denning. It is the 11th hour. Wow. That's a classic hour. Yeah. It should have been a more famous hour. They should have done, because it's 70 years. It should have been like the 3000th hour or whatever. Or just a multiple of seven. Yeah. The seventh guest, 70 years. We're not going to go with like 49 or like 21 or something. It remains a huge 14. 14th hour. It's right there. They should have to apologize publicly. Why not just call it the seventh hour? Seventh guest, seventh hour. Heather. You'd be like, okay. That would probably would have made it a little bit more or less of a commercial disappointment. Which I'll tell you. I'll tell you what. Re-release it is the sixth seventh hour. Kids will be playing this game. Yeah. I don't know. On their phones. The sixth, okay. The sixth seventh phone. Wait, no. Julian's right. Is that? It's pretty sure that if you did, the meme would end upon release. Like the action of release would end the meme. It could heal the nation. Yeah. So I mean like, as they mentioned, I did not play High on Life 1. Did you both work on High on Life 1? Yeah. And so, you know, sequels are so often a, I worked on a sequel when I worked in Game Dev. It's so often like a reaction to the previous entry in the series. Things you wanted to do, but weren't, didn't have the time or the budget to do and or based on the reaction, we're going to emphasize or de-emphasize this element. I assume, or from what I've read, it seems like the skateboard was one of those things. That's huge. Yeah. So, we had some skateboard ideas in the first one and there was some concept art of an alien skateboard and all these ideas that we just never got around to. And our design director and some other people on the team prototyped this like first person skateboard mechanic. And it was immediately the most fun thing in the world. Like we were playing like blockout levels before there was anything even built, just rolling around on the skateboard. We're like, okay, we got to build the whole game around this. Yeah. I was admittedly skeptical when that skateboard comes out. But and then it's super fun. It took us some iteration. Like at a certain point, someone had the idea to replace the sprint with skateboard. So it just becomes your sprint. And I think that's when it really all clicked together. Yeah. That feels great. It feels like the speed that I want a first person shooter to move at. And as the person on the podcast who's always like, they move too slow in the game. I'm so happy. And I also really like the way that the grapple grind like works in concert with one another. Yeah. You can just latch right onto a rail. Yeah. That you can grapple and then grind on any rail that you can see. All that was it's really smooth and fun. Another thing that that is that just feels very satisfying is like when you crest the top of a ramp and then you can just ascend to the next level. Yeah. Yeah. I didn't know you could crash the skateboard, which was. Oh yeah. Some stuff just didn't quite work in our game. At one point I swear to God it was like you would have to get more skateboards like you would lose your skateboard. That's funny. If you fell off you'd have to like go to a vending machine and get another skateboard or something. Yeah. I love it. Because like I'm a big Tony Hawk fan and I love those games and like doing it in first person you're sort of like how is this going to work and it just does. Which is really awesome. I also in playing this game I was like trying to suss out what the vibe was immediately and like for me it feels like. It's a goofy game. Well here's the thing. It's a little bit goofy. It's silly. It's a little silly. It kind of feels like structurally or like just even just how it looks it kind of feels like Cyberpunk and Ratchet and Clank which are two games I really really love. There's our art director Mikey and creative director. He has this scale that he developed for the first game which is like on one side is the Muppets on the other side is Blade Runner. And he's placed our art direction right in the middle. It's just like whatever that hybridization is. There was one specific joke that I want to get to but I don't want to spoil what it is. I say spoil it. The game's already out. It's the last joke in the game. That was the best one. It's like early on and you get this like you know well the story of the game is like well you first like play a montage which is extremely satisfying and funny sort of just like what's been going on and then you get caught up to the present. And it's a fantastic way of telling people who didn't play the first game the story. Yeah. And it's also a nice tone set because it's like oh I beat somebody. I'm famous now. I'm having I'm my life is falling apart. Yes. Like we want to do establish like kind of the status quo and then if you didn't play the first game like you said you'd be able to catch up. And Eric and I had played this game 30 flights of loving years ago which used some like French New Wave like jump cuts which I had never seen in a video game before. And some other games have done something similar but we're like we have to do our version of that. So the beginning yeah you're just jumping from scene to scene in that French New Wave style. Well again so like the onboarding is really great and then like just even like the tutorial like the or the like not the tutorial but like the yeah I guess the tutorials placed throughout the game where you're like learning new like systems like that. You know we weeded in it's there's there's tutorials in between some of the exposition. They're also done in like a funny way. Like I feel like there was like something in the hub in like your it's like an arcade or something like that. And there's like a there's like an aquarium or something and like the guys tell you like yeah maybe there's like like something maybe some system that but he's like laughing kind of to. That's me. I play the little digital clippy. Okay. Yes. Because you at one point you're like actually I don't give a shit about the mechanic. Here's the story with that is I don't write a lot of the lines for that character. Because I'll just I'm in a place where I know what we need for that character for any line in the game really. So I'll just go in the booth and improvise. And for that I was getting so annoyed because I didn't understand the fishing mechanics. Nobody had explained them to me. I felt like there were infinite lines about fishing and I'm like how many more lines do I need to do. And so yeah like that one I'm just I am making fun of that. That is really that was really funny. But then also there's a there was something in the game that I was like can they do this actually. It was like it's the the crane machine. Okay. Yeah. This is my favorite joke. Okay. So there's a a gacha machine. This is a bit of a spoiler but in your sort of hub like you can get there's an arcade there. So real games in the game that you can play. I think Bible Adventures is one of the games when it gets covered on this show. It's just fully in the game. Yep. But there's a claw machine. It's called the crane machine. And I'm looking at this. I was like okay that looks like Kelsey Grammer. Like it's like an artistic rendering of him for the game. I interacted that it says hi I'm the Fraser crane machine. Okay so they are just doing this and then the prizes in it are Fraser related prizes. It feels like this shouldn't be allowed. So it's so funny. We got John Daly to do the his Fraser impression. That's I think the line he says is like I'm Fraser crane machine. Yeah. I'm listening. Yes. I was like oh so just doing all of it. Yeah. But speaking of yeah John Daly you obviously do have voice too. We should mention Betsy Siddharo is our friend and is one of the guys. We love Betsy. Betsy is the best. She's so good in this. The coolest. But it is a thing yeah very early on you're hearing Betsy talk to you as a gun. I didn't know this. Yeah. Oh yeah okay yeah. And so I you know I'm playing the game early. I start playing it. I immediately text us as like guys Betsy's a gun. This is amazing. And then you know you have JB smooth and then you also have I have gotten to the point where I have Travis Camarino. Camarino one of our new additions. He's like what funny it's good. He is hilarious. Camarino is a genius. He did such a good job for us on this. Like the whole cast did but we worked him to the bone. He's in the game a lot. He has a difficult task. Looks like I mean I don't know the back stories of Betsy or JB's character but like you get the benefit of meeting Travis at a point. Travis is brand new and he's kind of going through some marital troubles by the time you find out. And he's just like he's it's a it's a perfect Camarino character. It's so so far. I was so happy. One of the best comedy performances in a game. There's got to be like five. Yeah. And most of them are in the top five. And most of them are in Simpsons hit in the run. But even if there were more than five it would still be one of the best. He's great. He's so so funny. Tim Robinson in there. Who else? JB smooth we mentioned. And Ralph Iyenson who he's from Game of Thrones, the voice of Galactus. Yeah. That's how you say his name. So I had to figure out we were briefed on that. Yeah. Because I had been saying innocent for a long time. I've been saying innocent too. I think I said it to his face. Wow. But now I know. Iyenson. Iyenson. Iyenson. Iyenson. I'm never going to meet him so I'm never going to have to. You might. You never know. You know what. That's nice. Yeah. It's fun to know how to pronounce people's names. Why did you hold up your hand for that? I was like no I wasn't doing the school way. It felt like you were like it was just a gesture. I think it's fun too. It's fun. It's a Christ. I find the whole perfectly still. That's what I mean. You're also a wanted criminal in this game which is a fun dynamic I feel like because it's I mean look it's fun to be bad. It's fun to be bad. It's fun to be really bad. I felt. But you're also good. Yeah. My like my agenda if I had one for this game was that you know like the first game you're a bounty hunter and I felt like I wanted I wanted to feel a little more dangerous like I love the idea of you being on the other side of the law and like the world is following the rules and the rules are terrible. Yes. And so by being an outlaw you're actually doing the virtuous thing. That's a little more interesting to me. I love that aspect of it but also like you'll be on your way to go do something and then there are like you know other bounty hunters being like hey it's that fucking guy. I will recognize you though too and I just that's just a funny it's just a funny idea to be recognized in a video game is interesting. Did you see the part where did you design your face at the beginning of the game. Okay. Yes. So I did do this. There's a moment where you can design your you're like signing an autograph somebody and you can draw a picture of your own face. So much time because I was like I know this is going to come back and I don't know when it's going to happen but when it does I want to be surprised at the drawing. I did a bad job and now I just I as soon as I handed it over I sort of I had the thought too late. I was like oh that's probably going to come back and I can at that point like had to just keep going and then when it does come back I was just like I wish I drew a better face. We're like stuck with the whole game. Yeah. That's just all what it is. It's like I wish I had taken a screenshot of it though because it's like I thought it was kind of like doing it for me kind of I was like oh I'm just kind of like I thought the nose looked kind of good. I was like this is for a drawing on a controller. I was like this is pretty good actually but then it's all just like it's just all a little bit wrong. Yeah. And it was extremely funny. I mean mine look really sad. Yeah. That's good. That's the right energy. I was playing I mean I'm playing on PC so I had the you know I'm using a mouse and I like eating. No. I'm very bad at FPS. But I do like I'm playing like I make my little fucking face or whatever the fuck. I make my guy totally expressionless. The thing that I'm impressed by is I like Heather took way too much time on this. Given him my haircut and my eyes which is usually when I'm creating a character in a video game I just click on the default and I'm good to go. So like I spent way too much time but there's so many quips that are being thrown at you. Yeah. Like how many quips are there in there do you know. That's a part where we knew people would take a while so we did more than we normally would because like it's framed that you can see the destruction in the background you're supposed to be saving the city from this monster but like you're drawing so the longer you take hopefully the funnier the image gets we're like oh man I really am just spending too much time. But yeah for for bits like that we will write as much as we feel we can get away with in the record session because there is like a limit there's there's only like it's it's literally just the finite amount of lines we write and record and it's a constant battle of like how much is too much how much is too much yeah how much am I going to regret later and sometimes we go a little too much but I don't know. Well that was like a funny thing to experience in the just to go back a little bit to the opening montage is that like there's a part where you're doing a lot of like bounties and killing and stuff and you know you can you can really hang on those scenes a little bit. Yeah some players are just going to mash through it they'll hear like a second of each line but you can listen to each person. I was doing that. Wait did you get to see how I played? Is that? We get that to you they send that to us. I was I was doing that at first but then I kind for some reason like let one go and he just kind of like kept saying like I'm this type of bad guy and I'm going to keep doing this you bet you might as well kill me I'm going to or else I'm just going to keep being bad. I call it opt-in comedy I guess is the phrase we've been using where essentially if if you like a joke you can keep listening to it if it's not hitting for you just skip it and move on the game will let you we don't care if you skip it. My favorite joke early in the game is when you try and kill people you're not allowed to kill and the gun says you really want to kill this. Yeah we require a lot of those because players want to do that. There are some characters you can shoot like I would say early on there's a character you're supposed to save and as a little hint maybe try to do the opposite. Yeah. Oh wow. Let me see what we've done. So like I played a little bit like further than this and like not too too far but I'm on the cruise ship right. Oh yeah okay. And so there's like or there's like an entry point to the cruise ship or something like that and there's like guys that like sort of recognize you and I just sort of noticed the you know like the what it's not called like the. No the like the sight thing. The reticle. Yeah the reticle. I just noticed it turn red. I was like oh I can just kill them. I can't kill them. Don't even listen to their. And then like then there was like the is it Jean. Yeah Jean then starts telling you like hey don't kill these guys like their boss is so bad. I was like I like killed them all. Okay so now we're gonna like have these guys on my ass through the rest of the game. So much of the game feels dynamic in that way which is really like an exciting way to play a game because even like in dialogue choices like you could you know select like an optional conversation to somebody and then just like walk away and they're like oh yeah we just like me or that really yeah we have for every character we record interrupts and resumes which are basically just a set of lines if you walk away in the middle through talking they have a natural response to that. It's also funny because it's like so much of like modern video games is about like choices and consequences and I've been playing the Witcher 2 recently too and it's like you can tell when a choice is gonna have a consequence but you're not being told clearly like this is the good or bad choice so it's like really funny to just immediately after make your choice just have a care to be like that was the wrong decision. You're really gonna regret that. We also do something which is probably bad game design in the sense that we don't always tell people when they're making a choice or when there's other options which like if you knew you'd be more impressed with us as designers. Yeah. But we were showing there's a part in the beginning of the game where you have to get past a security guard and the game ships tomorrow and we had someone at Show and Tell in the company last week showing all the different permutations of what you could do to get past that security guard and most people on our team were like oh I didn't know you could do those four things and it's not really set up in a way that you would know there were 12 options. Yeah. Well I think I did too. Oh yeah. Because I... Yeah they're kind of mix and match. Yeah I froze time to get past him and then I was past him and I was like oh I guess... I guess that's fine and then I like shot him once I was past him. And he begs for a long time and I got on the elevator listening to him beg and that begging get farther away. That's a very valid way to do it. There's even like an old man too by the way. You can catch an old guy for that. You bet. We don't want anyone doing an old man voice. We want the authentic old guy. Wait you can give him a med kit? Yeah so there's like well the gag that I'll give away is there is a first aid kit. And you can get nearby and you can bring it over and then when you do your guns are like actually we don't know how to administer first aid. So we're sorry. You're all just leave you with this. What is your workflow? Because I'm curious in modern development like you work in the narrative design side and also writing the game. What is your interfacing with other departments? Yeah we work most closely with design I would say. There's a lot of back and forth like we have a story beat or a gag we want to do and design has a gameplay mechanic they want to teach the player or use here. Like you know certain levels are introducing new guns so we know design is going to be building the level around the new gun Travis and we're going to be writing the story around that new character appearing and entering and you know we work in tandem that way but there's so much push and pull. They will design a puzzle and they'll be like hey look we need 40 more lines for this because it's just not clear and we'll oblige and other times we'll be like we have a really funny idea and it's going to make you do like 12 more days of work but please do this for us. And they will usually oblige us too but yeah. Are there any when you're writing a game of this scope like is there any stuff that's like secretly like very annoying to do like very tedious and or is there anything that's like surprisingly fun to do? I want to hear your answer Julia but I have one which is for the annoying thing we have I think seven different guns you could be using in the game and for every single line of dialogue that one of the guns says you could have one of these guns equipped but we have to write a line for each of the other guns in case the player has anyone else equipped. I was noticing some sections like this like oh wow you've got you've got alts for all the different guns. Yeah and everybody who plays will only ever hear one of each of those seven lines for each line and in the beginning of the game there's less guns but the deeper you get the player could have all of them so it becomes really taxing to try to figure out how to write go that way in six different voices and make them all feel a little unique or something. Some of that's fun though because you almost get to write like a little joke for yourself and how the different characters answer the same question. There's a point in the game that I try to keep vague but someone is like you can like only get in here if you know like a sad pathetic person and every gun says Travis except for Travis who says I'm sorry I guess we're just not getting through. But you wouldn't know that unless you either saw the script or like played the game multiple times and saw that. That's so funny. It never occurred to me that yeah that joke really is more fun. It never occurred to me until later on in the development that oh yeah people aren't going to see the other options. But it made me laugh. I think tedious can definitely be writing the and this is probably true for so many video games is figuring out like 25 different ways for somebody to be like you're dead or how you hit me. Yeah like and the actors hate recording them too. It's like we're four hours into a session like I need you to say pick up some ammo one more time one more time and make a different. There's only so many ways. It's an interesting challenge though as like as a writing exercise to just sort of like either turn your brain off and do it or try to make a flight. You like how would this character say like pick up armor versus like how would this character and so much we have like our characters and our actors. We know them in mind. How can Reno might say this. So that helps a lot. But just the volume of writing that you have to do once you add interactivity as an element because it's like you know like a movie script. It's like a hundred you know around a hundred pages roughly. I did the math. I think this isn't the exact count but our game this one has I think 10,000 pages of script. Yeah it's wild. You know some of that is like you know one sick to hear. Yeah. This is for Baldur's Gate. You guys are scratching the surface. If someone told me hey you need to write 10,000 pages of script I would be like I'm not going to do that. Yeah. I know. But it happens gradually. Yeah. So we put an extra space after every period. Oh sure. It's like one point four. Our script is 40 font. Yeah. Yeah. OK it's like not that much. I got a job one summer many years ago which was writing spam emails for a video game. Oh wait wait it was like to be in the video game or to be in the video game because there was like a full UI and they needed like tons and tons and tons of spam so I would like turn in like 30 fake emails a day to them for them to use and they were supposed to be like packed with jokes like you know like heightened versions of spam emails so that if somebody wanted to go through the entire spam inbox on this game that they could go through and get a different joke or like chains of a story or whatever. And I did that for an entire summer and the game got canceled. Oh my God. And I was like I don't know psychologically what this has done to me. No other human has done that. You were the first person they should have been studying. Wow. When you guys are like writing the game and like writing things like for the game are you thinking about other games. Like are you like thinking like oh if we could do something like this other game in this can you write to that experience or is that like something that like the level designers and stuff like that are usually we have a goal usually there. We already know the story we're trying to write to or the mechanics we're writing for but there are we're inspired by different games all the time. I think like I am I am thinking about what's best for our game specifically and if I'm being inspired at all it's not it's not in any other way than just like oh man we should try to do like the level of of fucking with the player that Metal Gear Solid 2 does something. Like yeah I want to I want to strive to be as good as those games. Yeah plus I mean our game is very much like an interactive TV show or movie so it's like personally when I'm writing it's a lot of like film references and stuff like there's probably dozens of Sopranos references in this game. There is a big extended Pleasantville reference that I think I'd trim down. It's still in the game but like it used to be a lot worse. Yeah so it's like I don't know it's funny because it's like video games is probably like the third in the ranking of references. Important though yeah like we do reference video games there's little nods but I don't want to be the game that's like like do you remember when Guacamelee came out and it was all memes in the background. Yeah yeah yeah. There were ragefaces in the background and everyone got mad and they got rid of them. That's what I never want to be in danger of that of just doing it for the sake of like hey do you remember this. Right. Do you remember Mega Man. Right. Here's a Mega Man thing. Yeah it's really fun to like think of how you can take something from like a movie like I think like Twin Peaks Season 3. Oh yeah. Something that I was trying so hard to incorporate into this game. You wrote the line. You wrote the last line of Twin Peaks The Return into the game somewhere and I was like this isn't working. I hate to tell you this but we're getting rid of that. Yeah. Yeah I should have told David that. Yeah. How long was the development cycle overall and how long were you each on the project? We were on from start to finish. And I would say about two and a half years maybe three. We did like the first game then we did the DLC then we went right into the sequel. Wow okay. It's been your world for some time. Yeah I'm so happy I'm done with it right now. Like I just don't want to think about High on Life anymore after this. You were already on the first one and then I was hired as a writer's assistant and then I became a writer for the DLC and then this one so it has been yeah it's great. I got my four year anniversary mug the other day. Wow. What's the first thing you drink out of it? I haven't gotten an anniversary. My own piss. The life of a video game developer. Trying to get in the mind of the gamer. No probably he'll or factor. There you go. Depending on who's sponsoring this. Played gets you 20% off. You use that as a promo code. Honestly if you have something where you can type in a promo code just give it a try. Who knows. Just type in play. Just type in get played no matter what. You ever do the uh you ever go like there's like websites that just will give you the coupon code. Yeah. They never work. I do that every time I try to buy something. Is it called honey? It's honey. Every time I buy something I click it I wait for 40 seconds and it says no sorry. Yeah. It works. I'm not going to get through the March 2019 code. Work where I'm trying to buy a PlayStation game today. That's me at Grubhub. I'm like well I know this is for sure not my first order but this will probably work. Maybe there's a glitch in the system. Maybe I'm going to get through. There was a time that I ordered some special edition PlayStation and it was like a rush where like everybody lined up at the same virtual moment and I had to click to get it in your car to finish the transaction and I closed the transaction and it said uh whatever the PlayStation was is on its way and then like two days later they emailed me and they were like we're so sorry you actually didn't get the PlayStation. We're going to refund you and we're going to give you a code so the next time that you're at the PlayStation store you can spend 20% off and I was like I am holding on to that coupon until the launch of the PS5 because to get 20% off of the second console is huge. I waited and waited and then I was like oh here we go and I dragged my little code in and I dropped it and it had fucking expired and there was nothing in any of the emailing or anything that said hey make sure to use it in the next month. We're going to bring that up with our next meeting with Sony. You're fucking angry about it? We're going to let them know. Yeah. First of all we're very happy with you. Thank you so much Sony. Do that again. We're talking about the VO sessions and obviously a lot of great talent in this game that's already been listed off. What is the VO process? How many sessions do you get with like say a Betsy Cedar or a Ken Morino? So Betsy and Ken as main character talking guns in the game they have probably 10 sessions, 10, 4 hour sessions. It's a lot and we have to like bring them back when we make little changes. These are spread out over a period of months. But our record season is like 3 months and we're 1 and done. We do a little bit of pickups at the end but like we have to call our shop. We don't have enough runway developmentally to like keep going back into the booth whenever we've got a couple more months in. So like whatever we get with them is mostly just got to be it and it happens fast and we're stuffing everybody into these periods. So like they're pretty taxing. I know like for Betsy and Ken especially they were in there like just daily just throwing lines with us and their work courses they're amazing but like video game voice over. I don't know if everyone's always prepared for it especially comedians. We brought in a lot of people who have never done games before and they're used to doing like a TV show, a little cartoon where they come in for a 4 hour paid session but they're probably doing like 30 minutes and they get to go home and we're like sorry you got a say ouch 4,000 times. Yeah we tested and ouch isn't reading so you have to say yaoi. There was a part where like Ken made a big choice to there's a part where you can go to a stand up comedy club in the game and actually perform some stand up. And Ken made this choice and I thought it was really funny. I'm like yes let's do it. Where he played it very hokey is like he's putting on a voice and pretending to be like a really hacky comedian and we put it in the game and we're like this doesn't work at all. It's so funny. We had to just release that as like a stand up comedy album. That was so funny. And then I had to direct a session right after that and I was like so we're going to have to have you tone down the comedian thing and he was just like they didn't like that. I can't believe it. It was like so obviously everyone's gay. On the first game we had JB smooth do like a vampire voice and then we cut that whole bit so there's just hours going I won't do so. We didn't use it. He loved it. He was good at it. Well that's going to be in the new Dracula. Yeah. Wasn't there a new there's a new Dracula and it's called Dracula. They made us for every recently but then there's now just one was called Dracula but I don't know like I don't know anything about this. It was like an invisible movie. Shouldn't Dracula be a little bit of a first time hearing of it because they don't want you to know that JB smooth is the new Dracula. They wanted to sell a ticket. They would tell me that. Yeah. I would be going if JB smooth was. Yeah. Well it's Andrea speaking to the like video process process. It can also get very stressful when you're working with celebrity talent that's not necessarily used to the like sessions of video games because like you have somebody like JB smooth who is like an international celebrity. And you get and he's amazing to work with but there's always the stress of like you say goodbye one day I'll see you tomorrow and then he's like oh sorry I got to go to Milan tomorrow. Yeah. There's so many times. And it's like we don't know when we're going to get him back. Yeah. Yeah. Depending on like the level of talent we got we got amazing people but a lot of it we're busy and games move fast. So yeah. Oftentimes where we're like just squeezing people in at the last second and just flying by the seat of our pants and it's it's good. It works but it is stressful. Yeah. And some of the funniest stuff comes from when you're like rushed trying to get through a bunch of stuff. Yeah. You're always always on your way. Wow. Well it's kind of like what you're talking about of you reach a certain point in any sort of creative enterprise where like you're coming up with 30 different alts for the same thing. You just get a little silly and sometimes we'll discover something funny. It's the same thing with like recording something. You know you do enough takes of something eventually you're just going to make some completely divergent choice just to mix it up. Exactly. And it might end up being what works the best. I would have to imagine because like when you're working in like TV or film production on a comedy by the by the 10th time you've heard the joke it's no you can't even tell if it's funny anymore. It's like meaningless. Yes. Yeah. With the amount of time that you guys have to spend on this game how do you like how often is it that the the thing that ends up being in the game is the most recent thing you recorded or or a lot of is that stuff like pretty concrete once it's in. It's it really depends on the bit. Like there are so many things we put in and then we play it and it's just not working and we'll we'll retool it. But there's a lot of stuff where we thought it was funny on the page. We recorded it. It worked and we don't want to touch it. If it's working let's just leave it. But yeah I mean that's that's like that's part of it. I don't know. It's also yeah there's also the stress of like something is funny on the page something's funny on the booth but you're playing so many iterations of the game where there's like barely any graphics for last lack of a better term that just kill the joke. Yeah. Until you see it like months later and it's like oh now it's funny. There are there are jokes that I just had to trust. Yeah. I only saw for the first time like a month ago and they work but like that's that's just part of the process where I'm I'm kind of praying. So sometimes with the art department and especially without time consuming animation is you're like maybe not even getting a chance to consult on the the comedy of sometimes visually. Yeah sometimes like a line just isn't hooked up yet and then by the time it's hooked up we have to move a designer off that level. And so it's just going to sit there not funny for months until someone finally gets back onto it. So there's some ticket in Jira waiting for someone to adjust the timing and I'm I'm persnickety about it. I'm like it's not going to be funny unless it's three milliseconds earlier and you have to pick those battles. Because if I were doing this for a TV show there's only like 22 minutes. It's a very finite but this I literally don't have enough time to fine tune everything like that. So it's we're trying to pick the moments that we're most worried about and the ones that we feel like that's going to be fine. We just don't touch. Here's a I always feel like I as a writer I always find this an annoying question but it always feels like it feels almost like an obligatory question. You have very funny people there were there opportunities when you're going through all these alts for like some improv. Yeah. Well that's like a big thing we try to do with our game because I feel like not a lot of games have improvisation. It's just a very controlled type of medium. So as much as we can we like to let people go off script. It's really a grab bag because some actors don't play video games so they don't have the language and understanding of exactly how much freedom they have like really early on JB kept mentioning his legs and I had to keep being like you're a talking gun. You don't have them. So you can improvise. But don't mention legs. You have arms. You're the only gun with arms. But you know if it's someone who does play games like we bring in Michael Cusack from Smiling Friends and our friend Joel Haver who does a lot of really great animations online. They're like big gamers and they're great improvisers. And with them they totally get it. I tell Joel you're playing a fishing rod and he knows everything about the limitations of what that role bring. And we just immediately have like the most open environment for improvisation. But then there's people like you know Richard kind. Oh yeah. I do not think he's ever played a video game. A dream to work with. John Waters is in our game like people like that or I'm like they can improvise but they don't know what games are. So if it's not usable we just won't tell them. I'm coming out of the television. I mean you're living room. John Waters kept saying yeah. So these are things that come to life. It's like the girl from the ring she comes out. Congratulations again. It's such a cool game. And we always have the situation when we have developers on the show where it's like you know you want to you hope you like the game. But the thing we always say is like if we didn't like the game we just wouldn't do the episode. Hey guys sorry we all have diarrhea. Which is also funny for the people who are game developers who we haven't done the episode. Because if they listen to the show they just think God fucking damn it. I'm on the Patreon. They ate my game. They'd like take their get played merch off and just throw it in the trash. Two nights later in the dumpster. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm scraping their factor into the trash. I'm done with this. Is there anything I mean I guess you don't want to spoil it but like was there anything you got into the game that you were like I can't believe we actually got to do this. But you mentioned the Fraser Crain mission that almost got cut multiple times. There is the entire last mission of the game is kind of it's really hostile I think it's going to be very divisive. It kind of grinds the entire game to a halt. In a good way. In a good way but also like it's a bold move. And I don't want to spoil it but like we did commit to a crazy ending that I saw one reviewer who. They were like I can't decide if I hate this or love it. That's exactly the reaction I wanted. There's a secret ending that I just honestly can't believe has made it as far. There's a lot of weird secret ending. I mean I mentioned one or I hinted at one earlier but yeah anytime we like there's something I'll say there's paperwork you can do in the game. Yes. And if you want to literally do paperwork there is an ending associated with it. And it's not worth it. You shouldn't do that. In fact my original pitch was to make it take 12 hours. And our QA team was like hey every hour you can knock off of that is going to make our life so much easier. So I think it's four hours now. It was a big negotiation. But they're like we would have to test it fully 12 hours like 40 times. And we just don't have the time for that. That's so funny. It's great. It's got a blessed QA. For real. Heroes. Thank you for your service. I did work QA. I'm not tripping I'm not trying to say it. He's not doing stolen valor. I'm not doing stolen valor. He did do it. It's not stolen valor to say. To say thank you for your service. Thank you for your service. But also I did work QA. And yeah it is a punishing job. It was I honestly the toughest game toughest job I had in games. It's the PA gig. It's like it's the monkey's paw of childhood dreams. Right. You're like I want to play video games for a living. And then they're like here's a broken video game that you have to play every moment you're awake. By the time this game is finally good you're going to hate it. You're going to play all the worst versions of it. Sounds like podcasting. Yeah. High on life too. It's pretty much on everything. People can get it out. It's on everything it'll be on switch to in April. But on everything else right now. There you go. Well guys I have a segment for us and it's a brand new segment. Wow. Brand new segment in this segment. Well I was going to tell you what it is. I'm excited about it. I texted earlier guys I came up with a new segment. I think it's good. It took me a long time. OK. Matt has such a shitty name grin right now. Yeah. I've never said it because I typed out a word and I know it's a portmanteau. OK. But I've never said it out loud. So this is the inaugural pronunciation. OK. It's Weperty. Wow. Weperty. Matt I love it. That's good. It's Weperty. So the premise is it's just Jeopardy. Yep. But all the questions are about weapons video game weapons. Oh cool. So I'm going to read answers in Jeopardy style about video game weapons and then you guys have to buzz in and give me the question of what the video game weapon is just like Jeopardy. That's how Jeopardy works right. That is how Jeopardy works. So you buzz in with a what is blank. You got it. Great. I think this is going to be a lot of fun. I'm excited. I'm like I get in my head like they're going to think I don't know video games. No no no. Oh my god. This is every every time there's a quiz segment on the show my fucking nightmare. Yeah. Sometimes your recall is just not working. That's the thing. I know it all. I know it. But I already fucked up the final fancy thing earlier. That was that was a real. That was a special interest moment for me. I don't think I came off. You're you're fine. I'm like actually you got this game. Well man I'm a school teacher from Iowa and I'm really. Those ones where he like would be mean to the people. So funny. They're doing your thing. You mean to me. Made them do this. Iraq. The famous clip where it's the woman who's the nerd core rapper. And he's just like you're a loser. It almost felt like like a slip and he's like now whatever. Too late. I meant it. Yeah. Tell me a little bit about yourself. Oh shit that sucks. Okay here we go. Here's the first answer. A sacred sword set to seal away darkness. Usually we. Oh Alec master sword. Oh what is this. Wait for the question. Heather buzzed. Heather buzzed. What is the master sword. Heather gets the point. Does that work. You get an opportunity to rephrase it. I fucked up. You'll get to wow. That's not Weprity. No. Heather got that ferret square. So Weprity is differing from Jeopardy in this. Oh because I'm a fucking hard ass. Meantime at Jeopardy they will give you a second to rephrase it. Then I give up my point. I give up my point. Alec you get the point. We can buzz before the answer is finished. I guess so. See that was a little rude of me but I thought you know. I did kind of have a lot of fun writing the thing. We're so good at this. Usually wielded by a silent hero. It was good. Yeah. But also savvy of you to buzz in early because silent hero really gives the one. I'm the real gamer. We're not competing for the prize of who's the real gamer. We're all real gamers. I designed one. I designed one. I designed one. To weed out who is and who isn't a real gamer. Okay okay. Okay great. Okay. This alien pistol embeds tracking shards into its target. Because the needler. What is the needler? We can do this every time. I said the needler. That is fair. That is fair. The needler. You'd be like the needler. You should just let you say the thing. Julian gets a point. It is the needler from Halo. I almost buzzed in on that but I realized what I would have said is the Halo one. I probably wouldn't have got a point. What is the Halo one? Halo one. The needler which is referenced in your game. That's right. The description of the Betsy gun. Okay here we go. How can Julian are on the board? Wow. It's also a little bit different than Jeopardy because there's usually three people playing. This is different from Jeopardy. There's like a special four people. Two ways this is different. Video game weapon related. Yes. And four people. I'm a hard ass. I would imagine also that it's the same set so I'm just standing off this. You got a milk crate with your name written on it. I was going to put the three white men on stage. That lady can stand over there. Okay here we go. Woke Jeopardy. Oh man. Just got him. Just pitched a two million view on two more videos. Cut that out. I got to take that. We'll mail it to you. Don't worry. It's yours. It over哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎 What is, oh wait, the name of the weapon. What is the Buster Sword? That is correct. Nice. Thought he was gonna whiff it. I thought I saw it. I thought you were gonna mess it up. I almost said what is Cloud Strife, and then you remember what it was. I almost both did the same thing. All right, here we go. So boy, having a weapon that's the same name as you, that'd be cool. I wonder if it does the Hatori Hanzo. That's pretty good. Oh yeah. Blade from a kill bill. What was the answer? It was who? The Buster Sword. Wielded by a... A beautiful mercenary? Oh. We started talking about how he's... You're editorializing. I did sort of add a little flair to it. He is beautiful. He's beautiful. He should have said a beautiful, silent hero earlier. Beautiful Mako Green eyes. He's got Mako Green eyes. Dude, that's yours too. We gotta cut that out. That's yours. No one knows what it's like. This is the parody section of the show, where we get our little parodies out. Here we go. Here's the next one. Twin Blades wielded by a warrior seeking revenge. Buzz. Heather. Buzz-Buzz. Hmm. What are... He's getting... No, they do that on their show, when you don't have the answer in time. That was a really good impression of the sound of the show. I've seen... Look, I watched the fucking show. I've seen it, but I can't do that. I've seen it, but I can't do that. What are the Chains of Hades? No, I'm sorry. What, Weigur, what are the Chains of Olympus? That is also incorrect. Can I do it the way he would do it on the show? Yeah. Nobody has it? Wait, wait, Buzz. What are two master swords? Okay, Alex gets the point. We're looking for... Oh, Julien, do you have an answer? I have nothing. Okay. The Blades of Chaos. The Blades of Chaos. The Blades of Chaos. That's chaos from God of War. Those are the chain blades of the Blades of Chaos? You were both close. But Chains of Olympus is a subtitle. That's what I was thinking. Yeah, yeah, the peace be again. And the Chains of Hades are a Fortnite weapon. Here we go. This single shot weapon eliminates opponents instantly. What? Beep, beep, beep. Were you gonna buzz in and say Weigur? I was gonna say what? Buzz. And then I did the beeping. I'm all fucked up. It's okay, Julien. You're doing great. What is the BFG? That is incorrect. There are multiple words. I was also thinking BFG. BFG is correct. What is the Golden Gun? It is the, I have the Golden Gun. Oh, nice. You said pistol. Oh, I said single shot weapon. Oh, single shot. Oh, yeah. But BFG should have been correct. But BFG also counts. Technicality. Heavy sniper in Fortnite also would have been a correct answer. There's a lot of one hit kill weapons. I feel like if you were in the Jeopardy! Writer's room, maybe a thing you could do is just a little bit of specificity, like this glittering weapon or this shiny weapon. Let's give him notes on his first ever version of this. Or how about this? This single shot weapon eliminates opponents, leaving them shaken and not stirred. There we go, that's really, that's pretty good. That's a Jeopardy! style. That's perfect. I'm just trying to get a job over there. You should have seen me. I did this for, I mean, admittedly too long, it was a lot of fun. I met some Jeopardy! writers in the WGA Picket, which I've talked about before. Absolutely lovely people. The best. It seems like a fucking awesome job. They all love Jeopardy! so much. It's a WGA job. It's like, they're gonna be on forever. They make so many episodes. It's just like, it's about as good as you can get as far as writing for a living. Just consider this. We have other segments that we do a lot that are sort of easily refillable. I didn't have to do this. I had a blast doing this for them. It was so far, I loved it. It's just so pretty as it doesn't get paid either. This is like turned into your reel. You're like, everybody's laughing. You did an awesome job writing these jokes. Yeah, just talk about how good they are just a little bit. Yeah, yeah. This is a lot of fun. The other thing is, I guess the Jeopardy! is would be when people find out they read with Jeopardy! there's an emotional element for a lot of people because it's like, oh my God, I watched that show with my mom. I've seen so many episodes. It's like this kind of the parasocial side that you wouldn't be expecting. My parents are too dumb for that one. Do you watch it? What's the robot's name that did the show? Oh, Watson? Yeah. Have you met Watson? Do you ever see the Conan bit where Watson fucked Andy's wife? It's really good. That's perfect. That's perfect. Okay, last one. This weapon can seal and unlock worlds and is wielded by only those who are de-worthy. Weigher. This is of course something you can see on the body of Maddapadaka the Keyblade. It's not really how you're supposed to answer the question. I'm gonna give up. What is the Keyblade? Weigher gets it. It is the Keyblade. I believe that sets our game at a tie, but wasn't that fun? That was a blast. Everyone wins. Thank you for putting that together. See, that's what Jeopardy is wrong. Everyone should win. Other big difference, there was no money attached to that. You guys don't get any money for that. Other differences, I didn't have a podium the whole time. That's a change we're keeping. That's This Week's Get Played. Our producer is Rachelle Chen, ranch. Twitch.tv slash yard underscore underscore start. What are you streaming, ranch? I am indeed playing Silent Hill F. Nice. I just beat that in January. Back in January. It's gonna stay over our winter break. You guys know it. We didn't have the same one as you. Yeah, yeah. What is your assessment of Silent Hill F? I really, I did enjoy it. I don't want to taint any experiences, but I do think that I found out originally it was not supposed to be a Silent Hill game, and they added that on like part of the way into the game. But I did like that it was like a new take on Silent Hill, because I think after four. It's kind of like what they did with Cloverfield. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, this is kind of fucked up. But I like the game. It's Cloverfield now. There's a lot of fun to be had. And some scares. I was so bummed that the new Silent Hill movie apparently just sucks. Yeah. I like the first one. I just watched the first one. The first one's good. For the first time. I have some allies in the podcast for once. No, no. The first one's good. So I'm in theaters, and I said as a child, this is great. I can't wait to get home and beat Final Fantasy Tactics. Yeah. Yeah. Wrench, what's your streaming schedule? Or is it just kind of a whenever? It's pretty random. Yeah. Usually late. Could we try again? Just. You don't have to keep that in the episode. It's random. Just watch out for the Instagram. Awesome. Check that out. Yard underscore underscore start. Music by Ben Prunty. Ben PruntyMusic.com. Art by Duck Brigade Design. Merchantkinshipgoods.com. And a bonus episode every Wednesday on our Patreon. Get Played DLC. Matt, what are we doing this week? This week, we're going back to 1998 and drafting games from 1998. Wow. How fun is that? 1998 draft. A good year for gaming. Great year for gaming. Famously not one of the big ones, but a lot of good games in there. It's not one of the big ones? I feel like people, we had this debate. People talk about 1997 as like sort of like the bigger one of those two years. 1997, 2004. Yeah, 2023, honestly. You don't know the good years. Look, I'm not a real gamer, okay? Wait, did we, maybe I'm thinking of a different one we recorded. 1998 was a good year. No, I think we had this argument and I think you said 98 and then we looked it up and it was 98 was bigger. Oh yes. But on our podcast, we could name more things that we specifically love from 97. I think it's just for our personal, just. That was the whole episode. We just talked about it. That was a worthwhile tangent. I'm glad we covered that now. Patreon.com slash get played. It's so fun to talk with you guys. Allie Grobbins, Julian Shine, High in Life 2, available now. It's great, it's fun, it's funny. You guys are so funny and thank you so much for being here. Please feel free to play with us. Oh, plug. Go plug, come on. What you got? Plug something. Looking forward to the NBA playoffs. Who's your squad, Julian? You're not gonna like this. Why not? Well, I have two squads because I've come from Indiana. My favorite team is the Indiana Pacers. Fun squad. But then my B team is the Los Angeles Clippers. Okay, all right, all right, fair. I'm a Lakers lifelong. I'm from SoCal, but the Clippers are fine. I've made peace with the Clippers being in the city. Now that they're about to be in a ton of trouble, all of their draft picks removed, I'm cool with them. And I hope your Pacers are, I mean, like, there's a whole thing you're dealing with now where the Pacers- We can have a whole other podcast about this. Yeah. But there's a trade involving the Pacers and Clippers and is contingent on whether or not the Pacers have a draft pick next year. I watch the draft lottery every year. I'm like a NBA sicko. And I look forward to it. It's so much fun. And this year, it's literally like life or death. It's so stressful. Yeah, there's a trade. Our pick is contingent on where it falls. It's literally like a 50-50 chance if they get to keep what? If it's in the top four, it goes to the Pacers. What are you talking about? Yeah, it's cool, huh? There's a thing ostensibly for balance in the NBA, the draft lottery, where the draft order is randomized every year. And that happens in a thing where there are literal ping pong balls coming out of a machine. I'm looking this up. I'm looking up. I'm looking forward to that. I had to text my wife, my wife texted me that our cat stepped on her grill piece. Yeah. I had to answer that immediately because it was very funny to me. But they put the condition in the trade that if it's picks one through four, it goes to the Indiana Pacers, if it's picks five through nine, it goes to the Los Angeles Clippers. And those are your two squads. How about that? I know, I was so delighted on trade day when it was like my two best friends are swapping players. You still get to root for Zubac. Yeah. And boy, do I ever. Alec, any plugs? You can read my comic Mr. Boop if you'd like. I have another comic called Crime Hot that is a little more risque. And you can follow me online at Alec Robbins. Wow, there you go. Thank you both so much for being here. And check out High on Life too. It's all fucking glass. I should mention High on Life. That's a great call. Thank you. If you haven't bought it already, buy it. If you've already bought it, buy it again. Buy it two times. I don't know if you know this, but we get more money the more you buy it. Yeah. Thank you both for being here and you got played. You guys got played. Do we say something? No, I guess. That was a hate gun podcast. Hi, I am Mandy Moore. Sterling K. Brown. And I'm Chris Sullivan. And we host the podcast That Was Us Now on Head Gum. Each episode, we're gonna go into a deep dive. From our show, This Is Us. We're gonna go episode by episode. We're also gonna pepper in episodes with different guest stars and writers and casting directors. Are we gonna cry? Yes. A little bit. Are we gonna laugh? A lot. A whole lot. That's what I'm hoping, man. Listen to That Was Us on your favorite podcast app or watch full video episodes on YouTube or Spotify, new episodes every Tuesday.