Bombin' the A.M. With Cara Ellison

@jclane said:

Boy did I pick a good time to pause the video to go grab some food.

Throw that bad boy in the photo edit thread immediately!

FYI - I think you may have messed something up when you were uploading this podcast. This one got auto-downloaded in my Bombcast feed in Android.

@ricketsawn: ditto

Good show. Thanks for adding this to the podcast feed!

Jeff mentioned on Tumblr that this episode was flagged incorrectly and while it was changed really soon after, apparently if your RSS stuff pinged the Bombcast early enough for an update before the correction happened, that's how you would end up downloading it through that. It's otherwise archived in the proper part of the site now.

Sweet show!

I feel obliged to make this diagram

United Kingdom/Great Britain

> England

> Scotland

> Wales

> Northern Ireland

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom

I really enjoy this podcast, Patrick and Alex always keep it interesting!

Scoops! Give your guests more time to speak!

Hell yeah Cara Ellison! Gonna watch the shit out of this.

These game journalists are so nosey

It's ok. That meaning largely passed in about 1985...

Ah, c'mon Cara! Mice are cute!

I thought there were hints of an interesting universe in the first Borderlands, at least early on. They kinda lost it over the course of the game (and the DLC), and Borderlands 2 has pretty much none of it.

I'm really not sure what Telltale could do with it, the only good character in the entire universe is Patricia Tannis, and her background was explored pretty deeply in Borderlands 1's side missions. They'd need several more characters of that caliber to get a cast worthy of an adventure game.

Her accent moves between Scottish, central/southern rural English and American with seemingly every word. Also, crumpet is more a term of endearment here than anything, it's only assholes who have decided it can only be offensive and patronising.

Eh. Was okay.

The more I talk to people about Borderlands, the surer I am that I'm the only one who enjoyed the story and characters of that game here on Giantbomb. I'm starting to think there must be something wrong with me.

Thanks for putting this on iTunes

Most of my friends and myself like the idea of a Tell Tale Borderlands game.

I'm surprised that people didn't seem like like DR2 that much. I liked the original DR but couldn't really get into it based on the time stuff. Akin to Demon's Souls with Dark Souls (couldn't really get into it until I'd beaten Dark Souls, which took a couple tries) it wasn't until I really got into DR2 that I wanted to go back and play the first one. The original DR was fun when I tried it a second time and I beat it but things like the horrible AI of the survivors made it so frustrating I just wanted to go play DR2 again. I haven't started playing DR3 yet but it still looks like it'll be fun.

Enjoyed. Liked Alex's rant about the VGAs. I think the format could of worked if there was a bit more preparation and they concentrated on the awards more, but Joel Mchale was definitely not the right person to have as a co-host. They need to drop the dismal attempts at comedy and music as well. There's a lot of pretty irrational hate out there for Geoff Keighley but the guys trying to be the Dave Letterman of gaming rather than Roger Ebert and I just don't think many people understand that, or have gotten kind of fixated on the whole Doritos Pope thing, which in truth was kind of misplaced as the guy doesn't do game reviews Vs game reveals.

Thought Cara was a good addition to the show, and would definitely like to see her come back on a regular basis as she's an articulate voice and has actual industry experience which is always invaluable. Enjoyed her talking about the collaborative and critical process of creative endeavour, though must admit had a bit of a chortle over her talking about people needing to be receptive to criticism given some of the 'not listening' antics over at RPS (not necessarily her own I might add).

keep up the good work guys.

xxXtR33M3RXxx

There ya go, Patrick. :)

I saw a guitar effects pedal review I posted in '99 a while back. Apparently I was a proponent of all things Metallica at the time. There were also an inordinately large quantity of capital letters and exclamation points. :/

It's not about news vs. editorial/reviews. It's about keeping your 'real' job away from even the notion of being tainted by industry money. It's OK to do work for the industry as long as you firewall those industry dollars from the rest of your job. Everyone's favourite RPS writer, John Walker, will never cover the new Longest Journey title because he did work for Red Thread Games. And Geoff Keighley was totally in the right to take that sweet Doritos Pope money, so long as he never covered Halo after that.

The whole Lauren Wainwright thing exemplified that. She took Squeenix money, then reviewed Deus Ex: HR and tweeted about how amazing Tomb Raider looked in order to win a PS3. When caught, she deleted the damaging references in her online CV, set her twitter profile to private and used the threat of a lawsuit to censor the article that first pointed out her tweets.

You are definitely not the only one.

I loved the stories and characters from both games. I'm not really into the Telltale style of games but I'm willing to give their take on Borderlands a chance. Especially if it somehow involves Handsome Jack.

And an appearance by Mr. Torgue would not be unwelcome.

Great episode! Good job guys!

What I was getting at with the original comment was that TellTale made a pretty good game within a generic zombie "universe," so in my opinion, a Borderlands game of the same ilk has a lot of potential. Zombies are boring and overdone, I'm looking forward to a game with some decent humor.

Rest of your job for eternity? Wainwright gave Deus Ex an 8/10 in the sun. That was one of the lowest scores that game received anywhere. Please feel free to explain how if she was 'shilling' for them (as you're basically implying) why on earth she didn't give the game 10/10 or a 9/10 Vs (and I'll repeat) one of the lowest scores the game ever received anywhere. It's not like anyone would of blinked an eyelid about a perfect score in the sun (a fairly low brow daily newspaper) in truth. So why give it 8/10?

I get that people like yourself have a hard on for rooting out corruption in the games biz, but when the facts don't necessarily fit the fiction then perhaps it's time to reassess the initial assumption and see if they hold water.

Given the witch hunt that occurred once Rab Florence pointed the finger at her and a sea of rabid man babies screaming bloody murder went scampering around the internet trawling for evidence of her 'corruption' I'm not remotely surprised that she shut her twitter down at the time tbh. As regards the CV, does everyone keep theirs up to date at all times? Could the fact that she had her wallpaper set to tomb raider perhaps also not be because shes a genuine fan of the series? Now I'm not saying that any of what you've said might not be correct. But before drawing any conclusions is it not also important to weigh up whether there could be any other reasons/motivators that might explain a situation?

I loved that Joel made fun of the corporate bullshit behind video games.

It made me hopeful that maybe someday publishers won't have so much control over how everything is received. His jabs at Geoff for talking nonstop about Titanfall were music to my ears.

Great episode. I really enjoy when via guest they introduce me to someone whose work I am unaware of. I will certainly check out some of her writing now, as she seemed to be into the sort of high-level thought about games I don't find enough of.

Finally listened to this. Cara seems extremely pleasant, interesting to listen to. Have her on the show whenever. Disagree with her about the Hotline Miami 2 thing, but that's the nature of open discourse, I suppose.

What I really wanted to point out is the Charlie Brooker thing. He is MASSIVELY under appreciated on the internet, I think. Been following him since the early Screenwipe episodes, which I feel were some of the best things coming out of British TV at the time. He does amazing work and has some of the best commentary on TV, movies, games and media in general. He has (or had?) a column in the Guardian. Really should be more known, I feel.

I found out about the documentary filmmaker Adam Curtis from him. The Power of Nightmares by Adam Curtis is a must watch, in my mind. Still very relevant.

I like this show and everyone on it, but Patrick, for the sake of your audience and your guests, don't interrupt someone who's talking when they mention a game or an article to give a 5 minute explanation of why you think this or that about it! Save your thoughts for when they finish theirs or you severely alter the course of the conversation!

Other than that, love it!

I love the show in general but you need to stop doing the whole "Well this happened, and we're not going to get into it so let's not talk about it." like the thing with VGX. Talk about it or don't. I'd rather here what you have to say about it and WHY than "you know how I feel, end of discussion". It's so so common in games media -- "I'm playing a game I can't talk about", or "something happened at some event but I don't want to talk about it". Not everyone knows or follows everything that happens everywhere on the net, hence why people listen to podcasts. I dunno ... minor complaint I guess.

So it's a vehicle for spin behind a wall of personal attacks it seemed at first glance?

Woop! Great episode.

TELL ME ALL OF YOUR SECRETS!

Is there a lot of talk about Thief? I want to hear Alex's opinion.

I just remember that as soon as she mentioned Earth Defense Force and it didn't seem completely positive, the EDF propaganda machine shut this thing down!

Thanks to Anna Anthropy for the graphic!

FINALLY!

Been waiting all afternoon for this.

What if I'm a fan of everything except seagulls? Because fuck seagulls.

Cara's Embed With...London Indies is a great read, haven't finished it because it's quite long but the scene is interesting and something I'd like to experience.

Oh nice, love her art like in Tride.

17:22 to 34:00

He thinks it's pretty bad. He didn't like it one bit. Bad stealth, bad action, bad AI, awful storyline, all the looting is in side quests rather than main missions. Not enough opportunities to use other things like the different arrow types. There are only two enemy types, SwordBro and CrossBro (thanks Kotaku).

I should finish up Dishonored and work on the DLC.

I just realized how much smarter it is for Microsoft to get behind Titanfall. You HAVE to have Xbox Live Gold to play it. That means more money right away for Microsoft.

Dishonored had a terrible premise for me. "You're a wanted man in a city of people that don't wear masks. Here, wear this mask. Nobody will know who you are as the only mask wearer."

I wish the opening theme was included in the video archive.