Giant Bombcast 06/30/2015

Whether or not I'd buy the items in some made-up scenario is immaterial. What matters is what's in the base game, and Dota and WOW offered a ton of value there. Destiny is not in that boat.

Take it from me, you'll be a lot more comfortable with your appreciation for Destiny if you can be realistic about all the places where it's bad.

Is Jeff's seething hatred for consoles something new or has he always had that opinion? It's like an XBox ran over his dog or something?

Dan Ryckert said he's going to play through banjo!!!!! YOU ALL HEARD IT! That means it's going to happen right?

I knew, by osmosis, that Joker died in Arkham City. I did notknow, however that he had a role to play in Arkham Knight. I haven't seen too much pre-release footage or commercials, but I don't think it was heavily publicized. It's probably not that big of a spoiler, and I don't care much anyways. What I do care about is Brad's assumption that everyone else knows. It's barely been a week. As far as I'm concerned, any and all spoilers are off the table. For the love of God, control yourself.

Really would of liked to hear Dan talk about the Stones concert with his Dad-hopefully it's brought up in the Ryckert Summer podcast thingy. I wish they had more bullshit convo about their lives and or inane bullshit hypothetical inquiries on the podcast, but Brad strays pretty far away from that stuff compared to Jeff and Ryan.

@liquidprince: People lost it at the in game Blizzard store. Blizzard stuck to their guns though and now they keep putting new $20 mounts into the game because people will buy them.

If the Destiny shaders/dances sell well at $20 look forward to that becoming a standard for that game.

Value is subjective. I see very little value in DOTA, and yet it is one of your personal favorite games, in which you've sunk hundreds of hours into. On the flip side, I have spent more then 700 hours in Destiny and enjoyed it all the way through.

I know exactly what is wrong with the game; it has an amazingly rich world with lots of interesting stories, none of which are presented to you in any great way in the game itself. The problem that most people like Jeff had with this game is that they expected this to be a lot more like Halo. Which is to say that they expected a narrative driven experience that they can play through once and then move on. Destiny from the get go was not the kind of game that was designed to be lone wolfed. It's missions were designed to be imminently repeatable, which they are. And like I said before, there is so much content in the game now that it's actually fairly difficult to get it all done before each weekly reset. The biggest problem with Destiny now is the presentation of the story.

my friend and i would climb redwoods in his back yard (his backyard was a forest) and fire bottle rockets at each other between the trees.

also i am opting out of the tongue upgrade.

@mathey: No I think it's Dandelion in old age. Like he's sitting next to a fire and telling the tales of his old friend Geralt.

I went to see what Plex was, only to find that it has been hacked. :<

I...hmm. Odd that they'd release two separate games and call them both "Deception IV", but I guess that's a common thing in the Japanese market. (I was kind of interested in the Shin Megami Tensei series back in the PS2 days, but there are literally five or six games called "Shin Megami Tensei" followed by a non-sensical subtitle, so I gave up on trying to figure out which one I should play first.)

Hey Dan, good news/bad news.

Title four of the United States Code, known informally as the "Flag Code", §8 specifically states:

(k) The flag, when it is in such condition that it is no longer a fitting emblem for display, should be destroyed in a dignified way, preferably by burning.

So you're good on the burning of the flag bit. The bad news is that it ALSO states

(d) The flag should never be used as wearing apparel, bedding, or drapery. It should never be festooned, drawn back, nor up, in folds, but always allowed to fall free

And

(j) No part of the flag should ever be used as a costume or athletic uniform.

So basically what I'm saying here is that you should burn your flag pants. Perhaps on Saturday?

I kinda got my Batman fatigue 40 minutes into Arkam Asylum. Nothing about that Nolan inspired depiction did anything for me, and the Arkham Knight quick look certainly didn't sell me on that game either. I really only like the Burton era, his movies and the animated series that was inspired by them.

As for Superman games, someone on GB recently suggested that Platinum could do a decent Superman game, and I think I agree. Bayonetta or Azura's Wrath style nonsense would fit that character well.

Yes indeed it is weird.

@cagliostro88: The part of the quote "reboot" really makes me hope they're going in this direction. I don't think Amy Hennig is going to be helming a new narrative TIE Fighter with a visual style based on that anime-esque youtube reel, but I'd take it.

It's like an hour into the game, and takes up a majority of the game's story. At a certain point, it's part of the premise.

"I want to be a charming robot man so I can still do wiener stuff" was the line that made me cackle for inexplicable reasons.

And Dan, it's okay if you don't play through Banjo-Kazooie. I love that game and can leisurely 100% it in less than 10 hours, but don't feel obligated to play through something you don't care for.

@dudeglove: Entirely sure! Alex Zane is preferable to the shitty puddle of forced enthusiasm that is Zane Lowe.

@dudeglove: Westwood is a little twerpy, but he's got excellent taste, and is well respected. I can handle Westwood.

Next time just blow your nose on the air, Brad. People will survive the unpleasant sounds, chances are they heard a lot worse on this very podcast before.

@corvak: plex.tv? Seems fine to me.

At this point, everybody and their mother knows that Assassin's Creed is/was about reliving your ancestor's memories in a magic Animus box. That doesn't mean it would have been cool to spoil that the first week.

You guys actually tied yourself in a conversational knot when talking about how the investigation features in Arkham Knight compare to Arkham Origins. The time scrubbing holographic stuff was in Origins, it is not as elaborate or well executed in Origins but it did originate from that game. The video surveillance scrubbing stuff is brand new to Knight.

I actually just finished Origins a week before Knight came out and I am glad I finished it. The new mechanics WB Montreal add are not as impactful, the outdoor stuff doesn't look as good as Arkham City, there are some really odd design decisions about what you can and cannot grapple to but the story was well executed. In fact, I haven't finished Knight yet but I might say that Origins has the best story in the series.

The thing with Asylum and City is that they pay a lot of fan service to the history of the character. Paul Dini, one of the main creators of the animated series, was involved in the writing but they just kinda come off as elaborate excuses to throw a bunch of villains at Batman. I thought that Asylum does a great job setting up and keeping the Joker relevant through the entire thing but then you get to the end and they didn't know how to do anything interesting with the Joker so they just hulk him out because it is a video game and they need a big bad boss at the end, similar to what happened to Bioshock. City I thought tried to keep too many plates spinning with all the different villains and came off as too unfocused but the last 30 minutes were kind of amazing.

Origins starts out making you think its going to play out like another rouges gallery beat-down but then it turns into a fairly compelling story about the Joker and even manages to use Bane in a way more compelling way than what Rocksteady did with him. There is some good Alfred stuff in there too, he's not just tech support.

If you're that sensitive to first-hour spoilers of media like that, even stuff that is hardly a big revelation, you should probably avoid all discussion about it outright. Like if we were listening to an episode of the Bombcast the first week after AC1 was out, I think you kinda have to let them talk about literally the opening cutscene...

Kinda like, had there been podcasts in 2001 (2002?) I would kinda have to let them talk about literally 90% of MGS2? I don't care how integral to the story it is, or how minor a spoiler it is, it's shitty. Even Jason got all weird about it, which was the absolutely appropriate reaction, the it's-not-a-big-spoiler-but-you-really-shouldn't-anyway noise that he made.

@gryffinp: do the pants have 50 stars and 13 stripes?

Yeah that's weird, right?

Yea!

"Well, I'd want to be a handsome robot spider, because I'd still want to do wiener stuff." - Dan Ryckert