EDIT- I admit it's an unnecessary demand to edit the Bombcast but my thoughts still stand

It's been a long time since I have played a game with writing so fresh, ambitious and deconstructive. Nier: Automata is a very special game, and I think as time passes we will see it talked about rather frequently

But the game is two weeks old, and now is absolutely NOT the time to bring up how the game defies traditional video game expectation, especially not when you spoil the ending of a 60 hour long game where the writing and story are, arguably, the most impressive part of the experience.

There were warnings, but the text warning didn't pop up in the RSS feed. There is a verbal warning on the podcast, but sometimes I listen to the podcast and am not paying incredibly close attention. The Bombcast is three hours long, after all, and has been a habit in my life for like six or seven years, but I have never felt so impassioned that someone said something they shouldn't have on the podcast until this moment.

To spoil such a thing, devoid of meaningful context, when there were countless other examples of breaking video game convention you could have takes about from the beginning hours of Nier Automata is not only unbelievably irresponsible, but shows a real disrespect to those that worked hard on the game, intending to consistently surprise players up until the final moment.

I realize Peter Brown is a friend of the site, but I think you have to admit this was a bit of a step too far. If he had blurted out the end of MGS5 two weeks after release, there would have been an uproar, but I believe the fanbase buildup of this game will likely be a bit more of a slow burn.

And anyone else reading this, play Nier because it is possibly the most ambitious game we are going to see this year.

This game has been spoiled by nearly every gaming site I follow. It wasn't that big a spoiler IMO since if you've played Yoko's games before, its kinda to be expected. I still plan to play it.

It's not that big a deal.

Myself, personally... do not understand why people care if things are "spoiled".

Does it honestly make you like something less?

No? They did it just right. He asked if he could, they talked about it, they warned the listener when it was decided, they put the exact time of the spoilers in the "notes" section of the podcast.

People are way to fucking uptight about "spoilers" and it has actively been detrimental to discussions on gaming websites and podcasts and the such. I for one would absolutely love to hear the Bomb or Beastcast go in depth to why they love a game, and hear them squeal over it. The few "Spoilercasts" we've gotten over the years have been a pure joy to listen to. As long as they give a good warning for those that don't want to hear it, they can and should talk about whatever they want.

I'm also probably never going to play Nier (though I wasn't interested to begin with) because it is easily this year's "I SWEAR YOU HAVE TO PLAY, PLAY IT NOW" game that crosses from excitement to unpleasant zealotry.

Yes I do. Because surprise, tension and mystery are all parts of why I enjoy experiencing a story and gaming experiences in general.

As to the podcast. It was probably unnecessary, but I think they gave a fair amount of warning and I managed to skip past it.

@retrometal: I think in this circumstance, yes, it can make you like it less.

I guess I'm taking a personal stance because this game took me majorly by surprise and I love it sort of immediately passionately.

The game is great regardless, but I've avoided spoilers now til the Bombcast, and I was just kind of floored with the recklessness of spoiling this damn fine game.

And I guess I'm a fucking art student too, so I've got pretentious opinions about auteur theory and whatnot, but I do have respect for Yoko Taro as an auteur and believe he deserves to get his experience delivered to audiences as untainted from outside influence as possible.

@secondpersonshooter: They put the spoiler time stamps in the notes and they gave a spoiler warning. It's your fault at this point for listening to the spoilers.

It was fine, he didn't flap it out without warning. And even if it was a good idea to cut it out, the damage has been done already. Brad probably has better things to do then edit a 2 week old podcast for something a small amount of people care for.

I consider it maybe a blessing that I've been taking a bit of a break from the Bombcast lately in that I managed to totally miss these spoilers. Due to time and other problems I haven't been able to put more than a few hours into Nier: Automata but from what I have played the story, world and characters are very unique and interesting and as someone who these days plays only a few games a year, I would really hate to hear stories or experiences on such a story-driven game spoiled on the podcast.

This is really where a spoilercast is needed the most; unfortunately those only occur when it's a really big game where there is some story involved. It'd be great site content if they did a small podcast where even if the sites' hosts had a guest who'd played a game and they dived in deep into it.

Maybe it's a bridge too far to demand it be edited and I did trim the OP, but I did at least just want to be vocal that this was not a great thing that happened, and maybe they should shut down spoiler talk in narrative-intensive games more frequently when it is such a new release

I'd be the first one in line for an actual Nier spoilercast

I understand why people don't want to hear spoilers but it's ridiculous for a video game podcast to be restricted from talking about cool shit in video games.

Wow

Honestly, yes it does. It makes it less enjoyable to play/watch, and just ruins the experience. To me most things aren't worth playing/watching more than once and the ending is the payoff(good or bad) take that away and there is little point to it. If the thing isn't story heavy then that's ok, like i wouldn't care if you spoiled diablo 3 or something lol.

They went from of talking if they should spoil the ending to spoiling the ending in about 10 seconds. Maybe the last 2 seconds was them warning about it.

I mean if you don't care about spoilers that's fine but lots of people do. I thought they went a bit fast. What if you where driving while listening? There was no warning in the rss feeds so anyone not watching on the website or youtube missed those.

Not worth editing the podcast but maybe think about next time. Spoilers in the middle of the podcast are wierd to avoid also since you can't really tell when they stopped talking about them. I would say don't spoil the endings of new games in the podcast.

Yeah no. They warned about as much as humanly possible. I'm on the other side where I get frustrated that the Bombers and guests WON'T talk about a game because they're nervous about spoilers. If you don't want the game spoiled, why watch quicklooks/listen to people to talk about/go online and read about it?

They did their part. Sucks you feel like your experience was devalued but that's on you.

@takyondg: the thing is I DONT watch quick looks for games I'm planning on playing, and almost all of them are early game anyways, before you would have already given numerous hours of your life into something you're really invested in

I would have spoiler tolerance for a lot of other games, but this one specifically is so obviously a game that screams "don't spoil the endgame content"

And the Bombcast is like the flagship content of Giant Bomb and is meant as a general "hot games of this week" podcast if you label it entirely professionally. There are circumstances where major spoilers are more acceptable but I just don't think the Bombcast is the place.

I don't think the podcast epi should be edited or anything, but while we're on the subject, this dude is extremely eager to tell people about things. He basically begged them to let him explain several different things in Zelda they him they didn't want to hear about, and I think he explained the endings to both Automata AND another game.

Basically if Peter Brown is on the podcast, prepare to skip if you are don't yet want to hear about certain parts of a game.

Isn't that getting a bit carried away?

I'm not some annoying spoilers denier or whatever, but this reaction's kind of intense.

Once again, sucks that you feel like your experience is devalued or that you think someone MAY have their experience devalued because I can't tell if it was spoiled for you or not.

On the other hand, I hate when the flagship "hot games of the week" podcast says things like "that one part where you get the thing and then it gets really crazy" about a game. I'd rather just have them talk about it. If I didn't want to hear about the game, I wouldn't listen to a video game podcast. Granted, story is the last thing I tend to care about in games. It's funny to me that people are this invested in a Platinum story but I get its not really their property or story.

No they shouldn't.

@rccola: look bro, thread has been a real journey of me gaining understanding that not everyone understands GOD DAMN ART like my sweet genius-ass does, but it's still all love my mans, it's all love

I don't think they should. It's pretty simple man, if you don't want the spoilers don't take the ride. There were warnings, you ignored them, the onus is on you.

@takyondg: I can understand where you're coming from, but I really like the experience of seeing something unexpected happen or solving a puzzle by myself for the first time. I listen to the Bombcast and watch Quick Looks to get a feel for how the crew likes a game or doesn't. Occasionally there are some games that I know I'm going to get 100% and avoid everything about it, like Nier: Automata, but sometimes I want to get their opinions because I value their judgement. I'll stop Quick Looks if they go on further than I want them to, and they are usually really good about telling viewers to stop watching if they think it's going to get into spoilery territory. All I really need in those videos is "I'm enjoying my time with this game", not an in-depth discussion about important, late-game story details or characters, especially not endings. I can guarantee you that The Witness wouldn't have won Best Moment for finding your first environmental puzzle, or at least I wouldn't have agreed with that decission, if it was spoiled for me or others on a simple Bombcast (and that game doesn't feel like it deserved a separate spoiler-cast). I really look forward to end of the year GOTY discussions because it gives me plenty of time to play possible contenders for almost every category and I get eager to hear their no-holds-barred opinions and thoughts and it feels like a more appropriate venue for talking about important story points for a game than a podcast the week a game came out (or before it came out in the case of Automata for the PC).

I do this with pretty much every entertainment medium, also. I don't watch RedLetterMedia's Half-in-the-Bag reviews until I actually watch the movie I want to see because I would rather not be influenced by their opinions, since Mike and Jay can be pretty polarizing in their views. Try as I might, I can't ignore or forget other people's opinions if I hear those before I watch, play, or read something, especially when it comes to specific details surrounding plot and characters. There is something to hearing a spoiler, slowly forgetting it as time goes on, and coming back to it months or years later and going "Oh, that's what they were talking about" as if you were suddenly let in on an inside joke, but I can't enjoy that feeling if I'm spoiled days before I was going to buy or experience something for myself.

Also, it's not a PlatinumGames story, it's a Yoko Taro story with Platinum combat and flair. People got invested in the original Nier's story and were excited to see another story in the same vein by the same guy but with more manageable combat and gameplay.

EDIT: I'd also point out that I was warned about the spoilery stuff elsewhere, on Twitter and tumblr, and was able to avoid any mess. I was lucky in that sense but this wouldn't have been easy to avoid if they were listening to the podcast live.

@burncoat: this guy nailed it after I gave up

I put too much emotion in my argument

A+ from me

I might've been with you in the first few hours after the bombcast was released and even that is a stretch. But now? It's been out for way too long. The damage is already done, no point in editing it now. It does kind of suck though, that's kind of a cool moment to have spoiled. If it had simply been deleting a savefile again without the extra flavor they added, I wouldn't have minded hearing about it. But the new context and stuff is pretty cool. :(

Well either way, there's plent of other reason to enjoy this game. It's not a one trick pony dependant on a single cool moment. It's an overall cool fucking game with many great moments and themes. I hope hearing about this doesn't dissuade anyone from playing it.

Um, nah. Maybe you can pressure them to put an audio warning at the beginning, but it's already been a couple weeks. Just move on.

I'm torn.

On the one hand, I totally understand why people get angry when things are spoiled for them. On the other, I really, really hate it when the Bombcast or Beastcast has an interesting discussion about some aspect of a game on the tips of their tongues but they can't say anything about it because spoilers! If it can be talked around, it should be talked around, but if it can't then I'm curious as to what they have to say.

I really think having a spoiler warning in the description and several very explicit spoiler warnings in the podcast itself before the discussion is the best way to go about things, though. If you aren't paying enough attention to what you're hearing to miss out on someone clearly yelling "spoilers!" two or three times, then why are you still listening to it in the first place? (this is just an example, I don't remember how clear their spoiler warnings were when it came to Nier Automata).

Unmarked and sudden spoilers are inarguably a dick move, though. I know that some people don't consider spoilers a bad thing and spoilers nudge some people towards a story, but come on. How can someone not understand that I want to find out about those story twists and turns by myself?

I am one of those people who absolutely hate spoilers as I want to experience everything for myself, not with some group zeitgeist.

That being said, there were plenty warning given fairly loud and clear in this bombcast. I didn't bother skipping because I'm probably not going to play the game for a long time and by then I will have forgotten.

I still have no idea why people liked the original Nier, because nobody would just come out and fucking say what was so great about it. What's so great about Undertale? No idea. Talk about games, people.

I just re-listened to that segment. It is in NO WAY unmarked or sudden. Also, it is barely about the story at all. It's a nifty mechanic tucked away in a credit sequence. There's no talk about the context of it at all.

I see where you guys are coming from. For me, Dark Souls / the Soulslikes are games where I know I am going to buy them. What I do about coverage then? I avoid it. I don't ask for websites to pull their coverage or anything. The onus is on me.

It wasn't even a spoiler, unless you think talking about a game mechanic is a spoiler in which case... I don't know what to tell you. I feel like people are getting so "spoiler" sensitive these days that it wouldn't surprise me if someone posted a thread moaning that they'd been spoiled on a new game because someone told them what genre it was.

"This game is an RPG."

"My I really love the leveling system in this game."

"Quick spoiler guys: It's L3 to run."

I wish they'd just stop caring about spoilers. They can't really have meaningful conversations about anything because they're always so worried about spoilers. It's also pretty silly that game's endings are considered the most taboo to spoil yet stuff that happens early in games is usually just as impactful yet they rarely worry about spoilers. For example, the best part of Mafia 3 was the beginning and it was spoiled by casual conversation during pretty much every every podcast that talked about the game prerelease.

I feel like people wanting them to spoil new stuff on the Bombcast don`t really get what that podcast is. With GB not really doing reviews it`s the main way the crew talk about the games the play and how they feel about them. It`s a weekly what I played, what`s the news kinda show. Not a let`s go deep on this game kinda show. That stuff is relegated to spoilercast and GOTY podcasts. There are not a lot of those and I wish they did more, but the Bombcast is not the place to spoil new releases. If they want to have those discussions on the Bombcast they should put them at the end of the podcast, so they are easily avoided.

I skipped ahead, but my response was "really?" From what I gather, Nier wants to surprise you so there was no need to go into anything.

The reason people don`t talk specifically what`s cool about Nier is because it`s mostly about a suprising reveal that doesen`t carry nearly the same weigth outside of the context of having played through the game. People can tell you why they like the game, but it won`t be that cool to hear and it will strongly diminish the experience of playing through the game yourself. If you want spoilers just google them. There are people out there talking in depth about everything if you just look.

Yeah, I thought it was bullshit that he spoiled that when the game literally just came out.

yea was bummed out with the spoiler talk but am glad i checked the site b4 listening on my phone

I really hate spoilers but they did give a spoiler warning so i dunno why theres a need to edit it.

@justin258: i personally skipped around it as i'm still playing, but overall it sounds like they dealt with it fine, if they felt they HAD to discuss it.

There's been talk for years for why people like that game if you actually look. It's enough of a cult hit it's not hard to find in-depth analysis on that game.

Peter Brown is just a spoiler dumping machine; watch the Final Fantasy XV quick look.

Genuinely can't remember this spoiler. Sorry for your loss though.

I listened to that podcast and I can't even remember what the spoiler was.

Some people are pretty crazy about spoilers. I had a friend that made a deal with me. He would beat a game I really loved (Deadly Premonition), if I beat a game I really hated (Dragon Age II). Well I beat DAII, and he started Deadly Premonition. But then somehow he got the killers identity spoiled and REFUSED to play any more, no matter how much I explained that it's not the point of the game or why it's so good. Nothing doing.

Total bullshit. (Or is it horseshit?)

I think I get more frustrated with talking around spoilers, i.e. "That moment was so crazy", then the spoiler itself. I think for me it's the fact that in my mind I hype up said moment (event, character death, whatever it may be) and when it comes to be revealed it can be a let down because I expected something more. And also for specific things being spoiled my short term memory can be pretty shotty so I forget specifics being talked about but remember more general talking points. So for me I would rather them just spoil something and not be let down by the hype of talking around something that happens in game.

I often listen to the Bombcast/Beastcast while driving on long trips, so asking me to skip the section is a little dangerous. I don't really care about Nier to be honest, but still it could happen with something else. Try to refrain from spoiler on something so new.

I will say that audio spoiler warnings aren't that useful on the bombcast because they don't give times. If they told me to skip 55 seconds it would be a fine but they don't. We don't always have access to spoiler stuff on the site because most listen through apps which don't have spoiler time stamps. I like discussion of semi current titles but I think it can wait a few weeks.

People saying you shouldn't care about spoilers really need to stop. Some people have a much harder time enjoying games when they are spoiled. Deal with it. Its like telling someone "you can enjoy a game that swings between 5 and 25 fps just fine!" Or that game play isn't important. Exploration and discovery are my primary motivations for playing games today. Not everyone feels that way but it's not a big deal that we would like such major discussions to come a month after release. The discussion still happens, no one is the worse for it.

I'm not sure OP's initial response was warranted entirely but it would be nice to have something in place. I wonder if inserting a recorded timestamp before spoilers would be particularly difficult for whomever edits/posts the podcast.

Or maybe some way to record more off the cuff discussions of new games with the expectation of spoilers. Mini spoiler casts from discussions in the office or something.

If you're so terrified of getting something spoiled maybe don't listen to the bombcast the week whatever game you don't want spoiled comes out? Or maybe the giant bomb guys should not talk about games ever just to be safe.

Hearing about "the spoiler" actually made me interested in playing this game, in a "WHAAAAT?! That's rad!" kinda way...

Are you joking? There is absolutely no way a site or games media in general should have to worry about ruining someones experience who is in your instance. Comparing it to actual game details, like FPS or gameplay is the silliest thing I've ever heard. No matter what, no subjection, you can mathematically determine FPS. This literally is just a subjective experience that some users dislike.

And it's not like I don't even get what the "please stop spoiling" perspective is. Yes, the sense of discovery you have over something can certainly enhance, and color certain perspectives about games. In some cases that sense of discovery is paramount to enjoyment. But anyone who actively chooses to engage with discussion of something should be warned that discussion is filled with spoilers. If spoilers bug you, if that sense of discovery is so important to why you play games then stop reading or listening about stuff you haven't played. Because the rest of us want meaningful conversations, some of use that for purchasing decisions because we can still gain enjoyment out of something even if we have expectations or foresight going in. And the "have to try to dodge spoilers" aspect of debate often gets tiring. It's why more and more they just throw spoiler tags up before they say shit. We are here to talk about games, that means what happens in them. And important details that could potentially help sell someone on a game are worth talking about. Deal with it.

Seriously though when did everyone everywhere start getting so uppity about spoilers? I remember for me it happening like once when I missed Game of Thrones for a week or so and getting mad, and then realizing that I should just watch this show as it airs or soon after to avoid spoilers. Otherwise I wouldn't, and I can't expect the rest of the world to revolve around my need to watch some fictionally fucking thing without having seen any prior discussion on it. To me this falls into the same category.