Giant Bombcast 611: "jedi council pink floyd"

They didn’t hate the game. Rather, they disliked the way DE fans were treating people who didn’t love the game as much as the fans do.

@benpack I yerb every day! The bodega on my corner orders 7 cans of Guayaki's Orange Exuberance every week just for me.

Hair-Yoda looks like William Fichtner

@thoseposers: Abby didn’t enjoy it and Vinny actually did end up liking it but I wouldn’t blame you for not knowing this since he wrote about it on Reddit. He also wrote about it being hard to enjoy a thing when the community around it can get so shitty which is also fair. I’ve never played Undertale but the community around it became obnoxious to the point where I irrationally started disliking the game despite having never touched it.

@jeff Heck yeah, the Tangerine/Mango Guava/Starberry Pure Zero Rockstars are my shit going on months now.

Jeff Have you tried stormland or asgards wrath those are two pretty big story vr games that came out recently for rift. We won't need omni directional treadmills once facebook can read our minds as zuckerburg promised was coming in the last oculus connect.

Man. I feel like every week Jeff says "I don't want to do this anymore..." towards something and it bums me out. Perhaps feelings like that are unavoidable when you've been in the business for such a long time. Big Jeffrey has seen it all!

Waiting for "I Was Battleborn Yesterday" series.

All art is political? How political is Mario? And don't give me bullcrap about Peach feminism.

Oh look! The person that only shows up to be a jerk at the site they dislike and consider a shadow of its former self! You REALLY need something better to do with your time if all you can come up with is continuing to visit a place that you don't enjoy, listening or watching content that you don't enjoy, and then feeling like you absolutely MUST share your thoughts with others. Don't watch or listen, don't come to the site, scream into a pillow, SOMETHING other than this current shtick because it is as sad as it is annoying and rude.

@aegon: People are fond of saying “all art is political” or some variation thereof, and it’s a bullshit claim that either misunderstands art, misunderstands politics, or both. For that claim to be true, you have to redefine politics in an incredibly broad way.

Some art is political, for sure. But there is plenty of art that is more about trying to capture some concept, essence, or feeling of the human condition that really has absolutely nothing to do with any political/ideological stance, explicitly or implicitly.

That said, if you’re making an artistic work that is either pro-military (most military shooters) or anti-military (really only Spec Ops: The Line?), given that military action is by definition politically sanctioned violence, then your work is probably political in some way. So Bobby Kotick is full of shit in this case.

Battleborne is easy to goof on but I had a lot of fun with the demo before release. Never bought into it because the lack of map variety, but the core concept and characters were really fun. There hasn't been anything quite like it since, as the Epic game (Paragon) and others of its ilk are much more complicated and slower. I think it's unfair how it's talked about. It's not that Gearbox made a bad game. They just didn't properly support and market it, which is always going to be tough when you're trying to launch a new IP in a new style of multiplayer game.

Been looking forward to Ben talking about DE and he did a great job with it. I value the perspective of someone less familiar with CRPGs (since I haven't played all that many either), and seeing Abby's take vs Ben's shows how it can either win people over or alienate them. I don't think either response to Disco is invalid, it is designed to make you feel kinda icky after all, but this was a great discussion!

My first CRPG was Planescape: Torment, which I just played last year. I do think Ben would like it, since that game won me over to the genre in the same way DE did for him. Just be prepared for some really bad combat (that you can ignore quite a lot if you spec correctly and engage with the dialogue system).

What's sad is that you remember the guy who shows up once every month or so and it triggered you this badly.

Look at those exclamation points, lol.

Agreed. Though to a certain degree, sometimes people just like playing and making shooters (or whatever), without necessarily endorsing war. Like Quentin Tarantino loves violence and torture as a paintbrush for his movies. Is it a political statement about torture?

If someone says they don't want their art to be political, it probably means they don't want it to be about a political message, rather than just containing an element that can be interpreted in a political way. Eye of the beholder.

@aegon: What can I say? I have a good memory. But great burn, essentially praising my ability to remember things! And you managed to work "triggered" in too! I almost have bingo! And assholes tend to stick out, so you have that going for you.

@jeff I'm with you on "Ninty", "Speccy" and "Resi" but we now live in a world where "selfie" and "doggo" have become common parlance so maybe it's time to let it go.

@benpack hair cut looks good! Glad to see you back on the podcast!

I actually fell off of Outer Worlds be cause it wasn't Bethesda enough. At least the npcs in Skyrim walk around, instead of just... standing there... forever.

@brenderous said:

I agree, buggy as Bethesda's RPGs may have been, their characters and environments were always super strong. They are great world builders.

I agree with Jeff's opinions on VR. Hearing about all the inherent problems of VR reminds me of 3D and how people eventually got tired of it. That was a working technology too.

Edit: Jeff, Game Pass is only available in select countries. In my country I can't use it so I'm glad for having Steam.

I'm feeling Jeff's views on Outer Worlds. It was a good game and all, but it felt kind of... safe? Bland? Like, I have no desire to go back to it because I feel like even a polar opposite replay would end up largely the same. I expected it to branch a lot more and have way more dialogue options but it ended up being pretty much in line with F3/NV/4.

I can see Tony Hawk cracking the strand game.

Thank you for answering my question.

I'll look for a Yaddle sticker at the next Ottawa Comicon. 🤷‍♂️

Idk what Ben triggers in me, but I cant endure him explaining what a game is about. I get so impatient as he wonders about, lol. Brad just goes to show you that unpolished games get punished in GB. Stadia is still a damn mess....

I don't think Tony Hawk 5 was a hugely damaging blow to the mainstream opinion of that franchise. Like you can still go back to those previous games or a SSX game to realize that arcadey trick-based sports games like that are extremely fun to play. Just as long as that developer (Robomodo?) is not involved in any way. They have been given multiple tries on the franchise and proven to not be good enough to make one of them. I'm still open for a trick-based combo skateboarding game though.

It also feels like THPS5 was flawed in such obvious ways that most people never got burned by actually buying it.

I know it’s a thing on this site to dump on Battleborn but I honestly thought it was a better game than Overwatch. It simply suffered with very poor timing where everything about the game was compared to OW. Maybe it was because I had a group of friends to play with and didn’t rely on ransoms but the gameplay was just more interesting to me. I feel like if this game came out today it’s probably be viewed a bit differently with how poorly OW turned out as time went on.

@zoofame: I hope everyone’s secretly been playing and loving astral chain and that takes the top spot

Ben if you want another CRPG experience that isn't too clunky, you can buy KOTOR on your smartphone.

Once you get used to the combat I'm guessing it might hit some of the same buttons Disco Elysium did though it doesn't branch so much.

I just finished KOTOR 2 for the first time on PC (which is even better than KOTOR now you can add the Restored Content mod) and that has satisfied my Star Wars fix for this year I guess. I actually almost ended up liking the auto-pausing semi-turn based combat better than twitch combat in "modern" 3d RPGs once I learned all the damage/defense modifiers.

Feel like Baby Yoda is a spoiler flying under everyone’s radar, Ben has mentioned on 2x podcasts now 😂, its literally the best thing in “that show” no spoiler.

Jeff's dismissal of people being disappointed that the Half-Life game is VR was... kind of condescending. Tons of people either can't afford to drop hundreds of dollars on new gizmos (especially for one game), or they simply don't have the space to use it properly. "Then don't play it" is a rather privileged dismissal. I'm not saying Valve should be forced to cater to everyone, but... being disappointed about it is totally understandable.

I stand by it: Battleborn is the best $5 game I bought from Five Below (use to be a $5 or less store) and it's a shame I could never find people to play the PvE with. It really isn't that bad.

Also if this year's GOTY becomes mired in standards, sequels, and remakes then I'll be down as long as the discussions are fun and REmake 2 somehow ends up onto at least the top ten.

If Jeff thinks Vader Immortal is lame, then VR might not be for him (as he said). Over a dozen of my family and friends have gone through the episode 1 experience, and every single one of them has been blown away, myself included. You kinda of need to accept that, at least currently, most VR games are going to provide a "Disneyland ride" type of experience. You strap in for an extremely curated, linear experience. I'm sure that will change in the future, and I respect Jeff for wanting things to be different, but that's not really where the technology or industry is quite yet.

That said, I'm glad Jeff is on board with the Oculus Quest. I still can't believe that thing only costs $300/$400. The fidelity of the motion tracking, screens, etc is just so damn good. The ability to connect it to a PC to run Rifts games is just icing on the cake.

the Oculus Quest can't play Half-Life Alyx unless you tether it to your PC with a cable.

@liquiddragon: Ah cool I think I must of got Death Strandings review score and this mixed up in my head...