saddlebrown

I had not considered this.

well, damn.

@vinny I never realized until this moment but... is your "number one podcast in the universe" tag a callback alllll the way to when @rich was hosting the HotSpot? He called it the number one podcast on... was it just on the Internet back then? If that's a callback that's really sweet.

I remember getting so mad every time Rich would say that because I was still a dumb high schooler and I took it so seriously. Oh god, I think I even sent in an email one time to whine about how that's factually untrue unless you narrow it to video game podcasts and even then... Mortifying.

Wow, I didn’t realize how much this would hit. Undying appreciation for you Alex not only for carrying that torch alone (I cannot imagine) but also just for… you, man. Your sardonicism spoke to my core, I always loved you for pushing for “unsafe” topics on the podcast (social stuff yes but depression in particular), and for how SHARP and insightful your critiques were. Be well duder.

Vinny it almost broke my heart to hear you hope that people saw your positivity. Of course we did. Zero doubt. I’ve followed y’all since gamespot and you’ve never once failed to make me laugh or cry or just want to be a better person. Idk, maybe it’s weird but your relentless positivity, humor and ability to surface the good in ANYTHING—no matter how bad—was always inspiring to me. You and Alex were the flip sides to the coin as I battled with my own depression. The perfect duo.

Anyway, didn’t mean to break the streak. Couldn’t not dust off my old account and thank these guys. Carry on.

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@sub_o: Yo, what’s up?

@rorie any way to check on our fellow duder? Just want to make sure they’re OK.

I'm in what must be the end stages now into the argument for RDR2 being on most disappointing and I just want to say that even as a guy that finished and generally liked RDR2, I'm so happy Dan stuck to his guns on this one. It would've been so easy to just drop it and buckle but he's sticking in it.

RDR2 does some fantastic things and I think Brad is totally right about those things and I agree with many of them, but I think Dan's arguments are still absolutely solid. By the end of RDR2, I left a lot of threads unfinished because I just wanted it to be over already.

More than once in that game, I literally taped down the X button and left the room while my horse galloped across the map. So much of that game feels like it needs an editor to cut away the bad and mediocre missions, like the entire section of Guarma, Albert Mason's quest line, the circus folk, the lion, most of the Native American plot line (at least move it to a side quest), etc. Parts of that game feel super sloppy, both content and controls and mission design.

Anyway, good for Dan. Obviously lots of people are annoyed with him but honestly, again, even as a guy who shares some of the high praise Brad gave it (like Arthur having the most compelling protagonist arc ever in any game), I still think RDR2 deserves a Most Disappointing nod as well. It deserves both positive and negative awards.

@hippie_genocide: Ultimately yeah that's how I feel. I think Brad made a pretty compelling argument for why some of those elements, like the hard cuts, might fit the category, but I do think most of them, like the intricately crafted catalog menus, are ultimately more just styyyyyyyl...istic consistency. But again, I felt like he made a better argument for Red Dead than many made for other games.

I agree that the category needs to refocus. That's why I wish it was basically just "what's the most bombastic and crazy and weird game this year?" a la Hotline Miami and Vanquish, with the occasional exceptional game like Journey coming in to upset things. Honestly, I'd be cool with Best Styyyyyyle being a category that doesn't come up most years. I'd love for games only to get awarded it when it truly feels warranted, not a regular award that has to be litigated and doled out.

Man, Jeff just seems really bitter this year. Beyond the few games that really resonated with him like Donut County, it feels like every big game that comes along, he kinda just shits all over it—despite not even having played a lot of it. Like Red Dead and God of War. He didn't get super long in either but continually feels the need to reassert his own experience into the conversation over and over.

Jeff is normally my guy during these talks, but this year I just found myself wishing he would take a break from cynicism, lean back in the chair and let people be excited about the games that he didn't like that much.

The new format is interesting and I'm glad they tried it but ultimately I think it was a misstep. They wanted a way to give games that weren't going to win anything a chance to shine and they did that but at the expense of everything else. The nomination process should've just been a nomination process, not a "let's discuss every game in depth and hash all this out right up front." It should be one day of nominating and the rest for the debates. Spend time talking about the games that won't get nominated for anything, but the games that do get nominated for stuff, there's no need to debate it right then. If somebody wants to contest a nomination, like for Most Disappointing, sure, have a bit of that debate. But save the meat of it for the later days.

They need to keep the nominations to a respectable minimum as well to focus the later discussions and avoid that same old problem again. Like right now I'm listening to the discussion for Best Debut and like Onrush is on there. Man, what? I bought that game, I generally like that game, seems like most people on staff generally like it too, but when you're nominating it, it needs to be able to pass a simple metric: "does it have a chance in hell of making it to the top three?" Onrush does not have a chance in hell of making it to the top three and should not have been nominated. They should have stuck to the point of the new format and said their piece about Onrush in Day One and said "yeah I really like it because it does X, Y, and Z and brings something new to the table but ultimately I don't think it's gonna rank so we don't need to nominate it." That would've been a fun discussion and would've freed more time in later days to debate the games that actually have a chance in hell.

It also means it's much less of a time slog for people on both Day One (you don't need a massive discussion on God of War or RDR2 for example because both will get discussed in detail later). So games that won't get nominated win because they get more time on Day One, games that do get nominated win because they don't get rehashed over and over until people are tired of discussing them, the staff wins because they get more interesting and less stressful discussions out of it, and we win because the podcasts are more focused. Day One through Three I literally just used YouTube timestamps to skip through most game discussions. I never used to do that in years past.

I agree with Day Four here, but he and Jeff were fucking insufferable during the God of War initial discussion and unfortunately the rest of the staff isn't as articulate so they were able to get away with murder. The number of times I wanted to jump in to explain something was insane. Some of the arguments going on were bafflingly shallow and reflected a real ignorance on both sides. Like Jeff and Brad talking shit about the combat and how they didn't find most of the unlocks useful and that there wasn't that much depth was ridiculous given that neither got very far in it at all; hell, Brad said he didn't even get to the part where Atreus is able to shoot guys with arrows and that's early as fuck in that game. But nobody who liked the game were able to rebut them by pointing that fact out or point to examples like the Valkyrie fights (the last one in particular) that really challenge you to use every tool and move to your advantage.

Or like how Alex said the hits didn't feel good or impactful so the rebuttal from the positive crew was simply that it felt excellent to them. Alex wasn't able to say why it didn't feel good and they weren't able to say why it did. Like, the devs talked openly about how much insane work went into making the hits look and feel accurate because the monsters react to the angle and speed of each hit in a true fashion rather than canned. Overall the whole thing was a shallow discussion.

Or like how none of them could explain why Atreus being Loki was a big deal beyond Brad's no-brainer assertion that Loki is big in pop culture because of Marvel movies. Like, what? The game has a lot of clues to what his identity really means and I can't believe none of them looked it up when they finished. Without spoiling anything, Atreus being Loki is a Big. Fucking. Deal.

So I don't know. Brad is always one of the best in the business when he's explaining stuff like why RDR2's music is fantastic or why it has excellent editing and stuff like that, but he has that opposite side where he can really just unfairly shit on something if no one is there to knowledgeably call him on it.

@hippie_genocide: Eh, I was actually really compelled by Brad's argument. I played RDR2 but didn't understand why it would warrant a nomination until he outlined it and I found it surprisingly convincing. The game isn't just devoted to realism; that's giving it short shrift. Some of the points, like how the music cuts out after cutscenes in Spider-Man but the proper editing in RDR2 means they persist, weren't so compelling to me (that's just a failure of editing in most games more so than a stylistic choice of RDR2—even though it is certainly admirable). But a lot of it, like the catalogues, some of the smart editing cuts, the visual framing, etc. I think absolutely warrants a Styyyyyyle nomination. Just because it's not crazy and bombastic in the vein of Hotline Miami or Vanquish doesn't mean it shouldn't be eligible given the terms they set this year.

The problem is with the terms themselves. It used to be a funny category meant to reward games that went balls-to-the-wall weird and felt like they came into your console having been fired first from a gun. Hotline Miami to me is the perfect example of a proper Best Styyyyyyyyle winner. Under the current terms they set this year I think RDR2 is an excellent choice. But ultimately I think this category has morphed too much and they need to take it back to its roots and just reward the weird and crazy games for being weird and crazy.

Personally the award I would cut is Best Music. I enjoyed some of the discussion there but like every year, it just comes down to playing endless quick clips and shitting on music they've heard 10 seconds of. I really appreciated hearing about RDR2's music but like ultimately this category is just a lot of tearing down the work of good composers because most people didn't play X game and aren't grabbed by the first five seconds of an example track. Also orchestral stuff rarely gets fair treatment here as evidenced by God of War's quick dismissal. Vinny made an excellent argument for why it was more unique and more of an accomplishment than they were giving it credit for, but still, stuff like that just never gets fair consideration because they tend to prefer indie chiptune stuff.