Giant Bombcast 727: Gabe Juice

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If there's any funky business please let me know, had to do some frankensteining to get the pod together this week.

Thanks Jan

Tam rules. That’s all.

Platinum ain’t doing great.

It really is the Poochie of theme tunes

I'll listen later, but reviews are being discussed again on Giant Bomb so here's my take:

- Reviews are great. I like edited video reviews, I like written reviews, and I like discussions on them. Different outlets have different focuses and strengths and capabilities, and there's room for all of them.

- Day one reviews where someone's enduring pain to finish a game on time, that sucks but I understand the pressure to get that day one traffic. Been spending anywhere from 2 to 5 hours a day on Elden Ring and that's a lot for me, can't imagine putting in like 8 to 12 hours under time pressure. That part seems rough as hell.

- I like seeing a number or a star review. Goes back to when I read Ebert, and I would quickly get a sense of his thoughts based on a 1/2 star Adam Sandler movie or a 3 1/2 for something he really liked. I still remember some of those ratings, but it was his commentary that made the review worth reading.

Curious to see where this discussion goes, where Jeff doesn't think reviews are worthwhile while Tamoor just put in a ton of effort to complete one. It's like polar opposities coming together.

I can’t hear the word buck without thinking about Buck Bumble

Tam makes a very good pitch for Elden Ring. My mind has been poisoned by the modern trend of "progression" and unless everything I'm doing feeds into the progress somehow that gets closer to finishing the game, I'm wasting my time. Playing isn't its own intrinsic reward anymore. Perhaps Elden Ring will be the antidote.

I am a simple man that is enamored by grass kitty.

Please don't evolve in to something bipedal.

Spoilers for Jan on Elden Ring - there totally is a whip

I remember when the documentary Jiro Dreams of Sushi came out, everyone loved it and thought it was so great, when I saw it I thought everyone in the movie and the fans were all up their own asses. The Elden Ring discussions seem like that to me, really holding something up as being so great because of "Japanese simplicity. "

Love Tam!

Nice to have Tamoor on the podcast. He's really good at saying well thought out and smart things while refraining from sounding pretentious about game reviewing. Would be nice if Giant Bomb had more people, besides Jeff who, really pick apart games and spends time researching or learning about game design like Tamoor seems to do. Also agree that reviews are important and impressive how much Tamoor didn't do a "yeah ok" type thing at any points when people argued differently.

Theme song is still rough.

This might be an unpopular opinion but I think the design of Souls (Elden Ring included) games have leaned too far into the reputation of being hard. Everything after the original Dark Souls felt like they added more enemies to encounters and ramped up the damage they do.

I dunno, maybe my skills are just degrading over time but each new game I feel like I'm encountering more instances where I'm just frustrated rather than being satisfied by the challenge.

It's funny you say this, as I thought Dark Souls 3 was easier than the first one. Bloodborne was a different kind of challenge due to the lack of the blocking, and reliance on aggression.

I found Dark Souls the least 'forgiving' out of all the souls games I've played. I doubt the leaned into the reputation as that seems to have been stoked by publishers rather than the developers, though that could just be me.

Personally, absolutely loving Elden Ring despite getting my ass kicked.

Also the first bit of the new intro song is not pleasant to my ears, could just be my taste.

Tamoor is an absolute king

@vintaco: Might just be me getting too old for this shit, I guess. Or perhaps rose tinted glasses.

I think I'm enjoying Elden Ring more than DS3 but the amount of times I've come across 5 or more enemies, often with spellcasters or archers in the mix, is frustrating. It often feels like the game is pushing me to use ranged weapons or spells and punishing me for trying to melee. Sure, I could lob black flames and duck behind cover to deal with these numerous enemies but I just don't find that style enjoyable.

Upload a version without the podcast music, still trash. It's like a hack from Watchdogs used to deafen and distract guards.

I don't find the act of struggling in a game particularly interesting and will lower the difficulty with the goal of having fun.
I don't see how eventually figuring out a way to cheese an enemy is rewarding, like finally solving a difficult puzzle, i don't feel happy or excited just relief that it's over, and i'll be wishing i was doing something else the entire time.

Tam would be on GMA if Elden Ring came out in '99. I've listened to Tam on 5 other shows this week and am happy to follow his Elden Ring media tour.

@dijidiji said:

My take on Elden Ring so far (about 15 hours in), is that it has the widest disparity in difficulty of any Soulsborne game. Prior games were very authored experiences. You generally had two or three routes you could go down at any one time before you needed to beat a boss to progress. For example, you might have the "intended," the "expert player," and the "masochist" routes. However, no matter what you picked, you would eventually kind of scour those areas for items and materials. And because the items were designed to be roughly appropriate for that stage of the game, there was sort of a theoretical maximum power level you could hit before you needed to take on a boss.

In Elden Ring, you can go pretty much anywhere at any point from the jump. On the one hand, this means that it's much easier to completely break the early encounters by just zooming around to a high level area, picking up the upgrade materials, and warping back. On the other hand, there isn't anything to stop you from wandering straight into an end-game area and getting pasted.

I would ultimately argue that the defining feature of Soulsborne games isn't actually the difficulty, it's much more that it's a "no safety rails" series. There are plenty of other games with very difficult encounters, it's just that those games have things like Gear Score, or level ranges on the map, or even the "There is a boss beyond this point. Are you sure you want to continue?" message that sort of guideposts players. Souls basically has none of that. You want to ride to that far corner of the map? Fine. But you are responsible for the consequences.

What if From made a personal yarn wall for quest tracking on your own. They've named all of the locations and NPCs, I WOULD SIMPLY give a list of these on a blank space of that can be rearranged and have player-drawn connecting lines added between to show relationship. Maybe an option to add annotations as well. This is probably a bad idea for any number of reasons.

Tam coming in hot on the review talk. "Pick any game, I'm better at it than you" haha

Damn, Tam bringing it back to the souls is Mario 64 discussion again, bravo!

I second the notion of the magnificence of discovery in elden ring is just something that has been missing from games played as of late.

@garnsr: Weird take imo. The two have nothing in common beyond coming out of Japan. I'd hardly call Elden Ring simple.

SMDH, trust me you don't want a genuine open world game. Try playing the non-linear RPGs from Japan where you get no help at all. You have to figure out what to do completely on your own. Many people including myself couldn't finish Saga Frontier without a guide. And Elden Ring does have a way point that points to where to go next to engage in the main story. It's the light guide from the campfires you find throughout the game. It's more subtle but it's still there. So by the logic Tam is using, you're still not really playing an genuine open world game.

And this game is far from easily accessible, in fact it has perhaps the most difficult bosses in the whole series of From Soft games. I honestly believe the bosses were designed as a big F U to speedrunners. And it seems difficult to build a strong character without grinding, because the bosses are way overpowered compared to the player character, regardless of class chosen. In past From Soft games, the player character was at least just as strong or less so before facing a boss, who was challenging because of a lot of RNG and some cheese here and there. Not so in Elden Ring. The fact that the common enemies are mostly easy to deal with unless you let them gang up on you, but the bosses are over the top seems unbalanced. But with all that said, its still a great game. Soulsborne is a term many fans use, but this game is the first example of a genuine Soulsborne game.

Jeff G saying "a diaper has to be changed" followed by the words "deliberately wipe" ... teehee.

Souls games are just the definition of anti-fun to me. The gameplay loop of dying and (potentially) losing shit you've worked for does not appeal to me in the slightest. Elden Ring does not seem to change much/enough of the things I hate about those games.

I lol'd when Tam was like "I don't want to sound like a fanboy" in the middle of a ~15 minute rant about why Fromsoft games are the best ever. Too late for that one.

love you Tam

@eribuster: The odds of grass kitty evolving into sexy bipedal cat person are extremely high. Game Freak can’t help themselves.

Wow Tam really did not like Elden Ring

Souls games have had difficulty modes since the beginning.

EXCEPT Sekiro.

This is one of the best episodes of the Giant Bombcast that there has ever been and it's all thanks to Tamoor.

@cikame: this. I feel the exact same way and I’m happy for everyone that likes this game and From Titles. But watching hours of footage and playing Elden Ring myself I also don’t see the appeal because I just glitched into big enemies with my sword and clipped in their feet and to be honest there was almost no immersion for me because of that? Why is nobody talking about that, it just looks so janky and weird fighting a Big Monster / Dude?

In horizon the fights feel and look great.

Totally agree with the open world stuff though. Get rid of quest markers, waypoints etc. and let me find solutions by myself. That’s great.

And I totally get why he gave a 10/10 and his arguments are absolutely valid, I love his passion and wish I could just feel the same way tbh.

Love when Tam is on. :)

Damn, I've been trying to tell people about the Wizardry (Wizardry II primarily) to Souls lineage for like 13 years now, good to finally see people starting to get it.

Tam was absolutely brilliant in this episode. He knows his stuff and does such a great job of articulating his thoughts. Would be good to have him on more often (time/workload permitting of course).

@fisk0: I never thought about it until it came up in this podcast, and it makes so much dang sense.

I have to say I wholly disagree with Tam on the "quest" design in Elden Ring. His example with the Onion knight was great because you could decipher all that from what you are shown in the game. In Elden Ring 9 times out of 10 you just stumble upon these characters. They don't go on journeys insomuch that they go to the next area and wait for you. The trouble is they don't even remotely hint at where they are going for you to check in on them. Not even vague directions.

They disappear and it's up to you to find them in very random places. It'd be interesting if they appeared in unique spots that made sense but a lot of the open world places they show up at are the copy and paste ruins. How would you even guess that they were there? The best quests in the game are the ones that give you items and when you look at them they give you an idea of where to look.

His point about the open world was neat, though. I think it's too big and filled with copy and paste things that are detrimental to the experience overall (the game could be half the size and not lose anything, in my opinion) but having a short ride after a boss is pretty nice.

Love the game to bits, don't get me wrong, but its obtuseness can get in the way of things at times.

I love Tamoor, but his From Software thing has gotten quite toxic to the point that he just shits on the many devs making Souls-like because it's not enough that he can praise Elden Ring since he has to put everything else down with an equal amount of force. That just comes off as some childish BS.