Deep Interview: Get to Know the Endurance Runners: ZombiePie

Deep Listens is a gaming podcast series I'm recording with a few of my friends. Every two weeks we pick and play a new game and then discuss it from a literary, philosophical, and game design perspective. Its kind of like a book club for videogames. We try to dig as deep as we can on an individual game every episode so check it out!

In this episode we talk to Chris "@zombiepie" -REDACTED- about his role in this year's Giantbmb Community Endurance Run. We discuss how last year's event lead him down the dark path towards playing a Final Fantasy game. We also discuss what he's going to stream for this year's event. He needs your help to pick between two great options: play every PC Final Fantasy game in order to rank them all, or play one PC FF game as much as he can in one weekend. Vote with your donations and tell him what to do!

The Giant Bomb Community Endurance Run will be running from April 15th to 17th and it will be raising money for Pencils of Promise. Be sure to tune in!

Deep Interview: Get to Know the Endurance Runners: ZombiePie

Edit: If for some reason you don't understand the context behind ZP playing a bunch of FF games, here's all the context you'll ever need.

Also here are the games ZP could play along with their current donation numbers:

FFIII, FFIV, FFIV: The After Years, FFV, FFVI, FFVII ($154), FFVIII, FFIX, FFXI, FFXIII ($88), FFXIII-2, Lightning Returns: FFXIII-3, FFXIV ($20), and a pupu platter of all of the above ($40).

Just for the record, I would be happy with ZP playing FF7, FF5, FF11, or the full gauntlet. FF7 is a cultural touchstone and it's worth experiencing. FF5 is the pinacle of the job system and it has the most hilarious villain in the series. FF11 has cat girls and is an absurd MMO. And I feel like playing all of the PC FF games might work out the same way as that time Hank Hill makes Bobby smoke a full carton of cigarettes in King of the Hill. I don't think there's a bad choice in the bunch... other than FF3 cause fuck that game.

Final Fantasy enthusiast Zombiepie.

ZombiePie loves Final Fantasy from what I hear. He's a Deep Nut about costume changing.

He might as well play them all. He watched the first episode of the FF15 anime so there's no turning back now.

You're a boss ZP.

Maybe he'd link up with the GiantBomb community still playing FFXIV? I know there are still folks playing

Worth mentioning that you can vote for FF8 if you want to see a live version of his blogs. In a weird way, it's kinda the only FF game he's equipped to play since his playthrough of FF8 largely avoided many of the gameplay mechanics that dominate the rest of the series.

I so very badly want to see him play through VII. That's where my dollars are going.

And FFVII is out to an early lead with $20!

@sparky_buzzsaw: I'm torn between VII and X or X-2. VII because of its legacy, X because of its voice acting and terrible plot and X-2 because behind all its faults its not actually a terrible game.

@jesus_phish: He can only play the PC games, so X and X-2 are out unless something drastic happens. Unfortunately IX is taking it's sweet time or else I would throw all of my money behind that. I considered shipping him a PS2 and a copy of IX for this event, but I couldn't justify the expense.

@thatpinguino: But IX is good? I thought he had to suffer for our entertainment?

@jesus_phish: If IX or X were out on PC, I'd agree with you because of that buttery smooth gameplay. And I'm sure he could tear through X in the time allotted.

@jesus_phish: Fair point. I just want more humans to play FFIX. For the purposes of this stream, I wholly endorse FFVII, FFV, FFXI, and the pupu platter.

I want him to play Lightning Returns. The plot of that game is already bonkers, but I'm sure it's even better if you have no outside context for what happened in the other FF XIII games.

I kind of want him to play XIII, just to see how he reacts to it. I hated that thing with a passion, but I know a lot of people really like it and I'm interested to see which side he'd fall on. I know he ended up enjoying VIII in the end, but XIII wasn't even entertainingly bad like that one was.

Also he'd tear the story to shreds and I'd love to see him use his smart English teacher words to explain how everything about the writing is miserably executed in that game.

And the bidding war is ignited! FFXIII is sitting at an apropos $13 while FFVII maintains it's lead at $20!

@teddie: I'm one of the five people that enjoyed FF-XIII.

@humanity: Would ZP be able to get out of FFXIII's tutorial in 15 hours?

@thatpinguino: 15 hours? Yah I'd say the game begins to open up around the 10-15hr mark. Maybe a little past the 15hr mark I can't remember but it's not like constant tutorials either. They sort of present you with a concept and then make you run through an entire area repeating the thing you learned over and over again. Seems ridiculous but back then that combat system was brand new and it's kind of weird at first so all the time spent very slowly letting you know what commandos do, what ravegers do, how the buffing works, how the burst system works etc etc it sort of helps. People were mostly upset that for those first 15 hrs you are following a very straightforward linear path from A to B with no towns, shops or any typical RPG elements to speak of along the way.

@humanity: Yeah I remember being locked into that linear path at around the 20 hour mark and I play JRPGs. ZP barely had to play FFVIII with the way I set him up. I have a feeling that he'd be trapped in the super linear portion of the game for the whole GBCER without extreme chat help.

Is a cat girl a playable race in FF XIV? If so he has to do that.

@daveyo520: FFXI and XIV both have playable cat girls. You can't go wrong as long as it's an MMO.

@thatpinguino: I just know how much he loves cat girls, so it is the least we could do.

@thatpinguino: Well I dunno how trapped he would be, all you have to do is just keep going forward? That one boss fight that grants you Lightnings summon is a harrowing leap in difficulty but thats about it.

@humanity:I'm more worried about him getting worked by the bosses in an uninteresting way, but I suppose that's what chat is for.

@thatpinguino: well as I remember it's really just that first robot summons boss that is real tough since you're still fresh to the mechanics and only have two party members. Everything up until the game opens up can almost be played on autopilot by setting up ravagers. I played the game after not having touched a JRPG in years apart from the EXCELLENT Resonance of Fate, and I did fine so he should be ok. But man Resonance of Fate - solid!

man, if only ffix was available

I hate all of you.

@zombiepie: You spelled "love" wrong.

@zombiepie: Hugs and kisses.

@zombiepie: Do you actually have a preference as to which game you play? I guess I never asked that.

Would you guys even really consider FFIV: the After years?

I love FF more than most and even I think that would be excessively cruel...

WORD! But @thatpinguino's response was essentially:

And my response was essentially:

A wild Final Fantasy IX enters the fray!