Giant Bombcast 595: It's Always the Cute Monks

I sort of dozed off on everything that wasn't fire emblem but I can appreciate the change of pace

@shadow987: You said originally that you didn't want to hear politics in your video game podcast. Fine. But when they literally spend 70-80% of the podcast talking about video games and its related content, your claim doesn't make any sense. Then you turn around and act like an "outrage crew" got mad at you. No. No one got mad. It was, what, four or five replies? And all they did was point out that what you said wasn't factual -- remember, this is the same podcast that once reviewed energy drinks, talks about wrestling, and goes on many long non-video game related tangents regularly. Then you decided to make yourself a victim and claim you're actually not at all mad for being told what you said was silly and incorrect.

Everything I read about EVO makes me think that the scene exists to celebrate openly horrible garbage people and makes me glad I don't follow it.

I was almost willing to finish Youngblood until I went on one of the Brother missions and had one of the commander keys fall through the geometry of the level. It wouldn't respawn unless I restarted the entire damn raid.

I uninstalled it after that.

@mickdog524: I meanl, I watched Nintendo's E3 direct, listened to last week's Bombcast and Beastcast, follow Nintendo accounts on twitter, and am 15 hours into the game, and I do not remember anything about it and did not see it coming. I think the defense of "well I knew about it so it's not a spoiler" is pretty laughable.

I know it's their job to talk this stuff on a weekly basis and it will often involve spoilers, and I have gotten pretty good about skipping through sections of the podcasts for games I want to experience fresh and firsthand, but that is pretty difficult when, all in one breath, they say things like "no spoilers but it's pretty well known that [spoiler]." They are usually good about talking about a game more vaguely - even significant things like this - before descending into particulars, but here they were just sort of careless about it.

Anyways, it's not the end of the world, just something I think would have been fun to discover myself. I also didn't mean to add to the negativity in the comments here, I did not realize how off the rails it would get.

Brad is sure an anime wet blanket, huh?

For some garbage things that can happen in the FGC, there are stories like Arslan Ash. They kinda talked a little bit about his journey, but I recommend watching some of his interviews, he really is inspirational in his journey from Pakistan to the world stage.

Haven't gotten to the part of the podcast where they discuss any of this stuff yet so maybe I'm missing something, but yeah I think we should. Time has shown us that the old adage of "Don't feed the troll" is not effective. If anything, ignoring shitty people just allows them to fester and inspire more people to be shitty. We can't allow bad behavior to seem normal or acceptable.

Got a bit jarring listening to all the "woke slang" in the episode., I care even less about EVO than wrestling, and pretty bummed about the fire emblem spoiler. But besides that it was overall a pretty good episode. Though I miss Jeff.

The shooter from Dayton was actually one of my theatre students. I had talked to him at length about channeling and focusing his anger and depression into something constructive, like his performance of King Oberon in Midsummer Night's Dream. It seems that the lessons I tried to teach him were forgotten or discarded, or perhaps not as effective as I thought they were. I don't really have much else to say about it other than for all of us to work towards a future full of empathy and understanding and freedom of emotional expression. The shame and stigma that surrounds mental illnesses can be very destructive. Pointing the finger of blame gets us nowhere, and the future that I would love to see will take all of us working together and compassionately.

This, totally agree. "Don't feed the troll" doesn't work when somebody is being subjected to hundreds of abusive phone calls or being sent unknown packages. (TBH, I've always been surprised that GB does mailbags - I'm assuming they're doing some sort of screening off camera.)

I can't understand the chain of thought that leads somebody to decide "Oh, hey, it's alright if I call this person every four hours and threaten their family", but there are enough people out there who DO decide that is acceptable behaviour. It's time to stop that bullshit.

The ESA is currently a burning tire fire (actually, has been one for a long time now), and deserves to be sent to the dustbin of history. A new organization will need to be formed though, because, as much as I hate to admit it, the video game industry is still going to need some sort of advocacy/lobbying organization. You might not want to hear about politics, but, politicians have been known to do some pretty stupid things. U.S. Supreme Court precedents aren't inviolate, to both the benefit and detriment of society, and there are plenty of countries around the world without the free speech protections present in the United States.

Can't put my finger on why but the past few weeks of Bombcasts have been pretty dang enjoyable for me. I have my theories but I'd rather not say. I'd urge Brad to not take anime e-mails like the one on this episode however I'll let it slide this time because he had actual anime experts on hand to run with it.

Didn't catch much EVO live this year other than the saga of the Go1 v Sonicfox rivalry which was quite compelling. At the same time based on their team compositions I'm not digging where character tiers seem to be at with regards to DBFZ. I'll likely be watching the other Grand Finals at my leisure.

I'd love to get into Fire Emblem but I can't help but feel that this might be the worst time to get a Switch. Between the weird Joycon drift issues, the impending lite version, and Nintendo generally having piss poor pricing control on software (I could be exaggerating but I feel like they don't drop prices on 1st party titles for what feels like 3 year chunks) I'm so torn on wanting to own one myself. I'm also holding out hope that Tokyo Mirage Session gets ported to it though it seems less and less likely with each passing day.

this was such a great bombcast, i've been missing jeff a lot lately but this refreshed my batteries.

Im really in to this "Say yes to the wizard" phrase

Great episode. Thanks to the crew for actually taking a stance on this garbage behavior in the community with the knowledge of the ire it will bring. Appreciate it!

Shout out to crack ball.

Oh and this was fun! I too felt old at times but love hearing that everyone is diving into Fire Emblem with the same fervor that I have been.

For the life of me I can't figure out why people are complaining about the guests. Great episode!

Awesome guests and a nice steamin' pile o' anime. Great pod!

@thedrumkid92: That is unfortunate and I'm glad that you recognize it early and tried to step in. Not enough people do that. :( A few people will always be angry and hateful and point their fear and anger at others who have nothing to do with the situation.

When Ben said there was "video evidence" of Michael being at the Smash finals, does that mean it actually was him that appeared on camera near the end of the stream? I thought I recognized him from the Ben's Lens program, but I wasn't sure. Surprised that wouldn't have gotten a more direct mention.

Everyone's all hype about FF14, and I started playing the free trial last week. What I'm trying to find out is if all the people who praise it like it for being an MMO, or if they like it because they like the story and are playing it mostly, if not completely, singleplayer. I wonder this, because like 99% of the discussion I see about it only mentions the story. That's fine if they are playing it that way, to each their own, but I have no interest in paying for expansions and a subscription to play a singleplayer experience. Everyone says that the beginning stuff pales in comparison to the expansions, so only getting to play 35 levels for free will not give me the full picture, it sounds like. I have played zero Final Fantasy games, so any references will be lost on me. I just want a good MMO. I'm a longtime WoW player, but currently am unsubbed to that because BfA is the pits. I will be checking out Classic in a few weeks, but I have no plans on sticking with it as of yet.

Listening to Jan genuinely lose his mind at getting a super rare Pokémon card was real uplifting, for real :)

I've never heard someone "shout out" to so many things before.

This is the first Bombcast that I really struggled to finish. Michael from Gamespot was challenging for me, I'm definitely not his audience. Otherwise, hey. Only genuinely disliking one episode out of nearly 600, only Giant Bomb could pull that off.

This episode made me feel old. Sometimes, I felt like I needed cliffs notes to know what was going on.

I think a lot of the hate about Epic store is a little overblown for sure but Brad skipped over a huge part of that story which was the statement the Ooblets dev made when announcing the Exclusivity was incredibly insulting and patronizing and in bad taste. Then the discord replies to genuine concern were so tone deaf it's pulled me against them on this. They did this as poorly as possible. Death threats and personal attacks are never called for, but being upset about the statement and reactions seems pretty warranted. Also Epic is a garbage store with no features and leans way to heavily to the devs as opposed to the consumer. I'll likely get Griftlands, but I've turned down so many free games just for how bad the store is. Nothing about Tencent or anything because they're everywhere. Just a really bad storefront and consumer experience.

Look at all the olds yelling at the kids on their lawns. Wow.

(Note: I am an old.)

I mean seriously, I almost checked to see if my folks figured out how to log in to this website and complain about everything. Old here too and love hearing new fresh guests.

I didn't understand anything that came out of Michael Higham's mouth but it sounded exciting!

Love the FFXIV love in this episode. Game's hella good and while it is a time-sink I think it's probably the best MMO out there right now and probably the best Final Fantasy game Square has made. It's so damn good despite having a rocky start.

The whole video game violence shit is just a smokescreen. It's worth asking questions about and challenging games that do indulge in shitty, racist politics, glorifying the military, othering non-whites, ect. because they don't exist in a vacuum and can reinforce or effect someone's worldview but there are far bigger and more important issues that should be discussed and dismantled. The US was built on white supremacy and the trash who commit these heinous acts of terrorism all have the same generic manifesto where they believe their way of life is under attack by non-whites and believe themselves defending it. The media and ruling elite don't want to address this shit because it will rob them a convenient shield against those who want equal rights.

I mean, just look at the response to Ilhan Omar and AOC getting into office and saying anything. It's wretched.

Great podcast. Both Michael and Kaillie were a great change of pace and the talk about gameshows at the end had me rolling. This had some really good energy. Congrats to the crew for keeping the guest chair stacked while Jeff is out.

@lazycon: "incredibly" insulting? It was joking and a bit condescending at worse, but hardly worth any sort of blowback that they got, especially given we're talking about freaking Ooblets here. It's a niche game that I doubt would be on the radar of most of the people attacking them. And a lot of those screenshots from Discord were fakes, it turns out.

@mister_v: This is irresponsible, the body cannot survive that much alcohol

Thought these guests were dope, great episode! I'll never get tired of hearing other people gush about Fire Emblem, it's so good.

Great to finally see Kallie on some GB content! Yay anime!

Really liked Michael and Kallie on this episode. They brought a bunch of enthusiasm and energy to the whole thing that I appreciated.

@benpack To play devils advocate, how long should Infiltration be banned from EVO? 5 years? 10 years? Domestic abuse is horrible and anyone who commits domestic violence should be held accountable to the fullest extent of the law, but to ban someone from a fighting game tournament for life because they committed a crime (a shitty one, i'll give you that) seems a little extreme to me. Should anyone who has ever committed a crime be banned?

I do not know anything about this guy. But I am assuming he was convicted and served his time. At that point does he not deserve the chance to re-enter society?

I am a convicted felon (possession of a controlled substance), but I managed to pull myself out of that shit and change my life. I would not have been able to do that if people weren't willing to give me a second chance.

@youeightit: I felt the same way. It was rough. If Michael was on this show regularly I would have to quit listening.

@obikwiet: For some reference about the domestic abuse people are referring to, Infiltration had what sounds like a messy divorce. At one point while in South Korea, there was a heated argument where they both threatened to call the cops on each other, and there was some struggle over the wife’s phone or something. The public record regarding this is that A) the wife later submitted a medical report where she was noted to have “bruising and an injury to the wrist”, and B) Infiltration received some kind of criminal violence charge as a result, and it seems the sentence carried no jail time and the equivalent of a $630 USD fine. I don’t know anything about South Korean law, but I think I’ve fairly stated how the incident has been reported by English media. Not sure the severity of the charge, and it seems like all the details of the case aren’t fully disclosed for privacy reasons.

Infiltration withdrew from competing and was dropped by sponsors I think, because it’s probably somewhere in the contracts that they can drop your ass if you exhibit public criminal/immoral behaviour that tarnishes the reputation of your sponsors/esports team/the Capcom Pro Tour. I think he and Capcom arranged some sort of minimum time where he would not compete in their events.

Beyond that, I have no idea what else has been said and what is hearsay/fact. That’s just what I recall from reading the articles a year or two ago.

@mobiusfun : I dunno, the Giantbomb crew have been getting toxic messages and borderline-threats for over a decade now, and they've opted to ignore them. The times when they did directly call out trolls was when they were harassing other people who were asking for support.

Personally I can't think of a time in internet history when people were generally better-behaved. It's easier now than ever to find well-moderated communities and discussion boards. None of that invalidates any of the garbage currently produced, but previously it was a much larger share of the internet

Almost forgot, I can't let a talk about cute Fire Emblem monks go by without bringing up Lucius of The Blazing Blade (titled just Fire Emblem overseas)!

Yo where do we donate for the Jan, Ben, Kallie & Michael anime podcast?

EVO was real goddamn good this year. REAL goddamn good. Those Dragonball Finals. Man. Those Dragonball finals. I wish the moneymen weren't slowly strangling that game out of a community, cause man. MAN!

Shout out to the shout outs...

So they can understand video games don’t kill people but somehow fail to grasp guns don’t kill people? I guarantee no one in that room has ever hunted. When you have no clue what you’re talking about you sound like trump blaming video games. Stick to your field of expertise which are video games.

@obikwiet said:

I'm not looking to start a fight, and this is not meant to be shade thrown your way, but can you clarify why you think that would be an extreme measure?

He's not being denied a home, he can still (presumably) get work, he can still go outside in public, shop in stores, read in libraries, use the internet, date other people, vote, hell he could still go and WATCH the tournament, or probably compete in other, less high-profile tournaments. If he were permanently banned from participating, it would be because those running it don't want to associate their brand with his personal history, and that's perfectly fine, and their decision in the end.

What seems extreme to me is treating the participation in a video game tournament as an inalienable human right, and a slippery slope to denial of re-entry into society.

0/10