The Giant Beastcast: Episode 210

Alex is low-key the funniest Beaster. “Sadness parade” is such a pitch-perfect representation of a Yuke’s wrestling game.

I would prefer the alternative but neither seem like an option.

Kinda miffed at their dismissal of Ion Maiden, game's dope af.

I feel like they're really doing a disservice to Abby making her expect Death Stranding to be much more goofy/wacky then it will be. There's goofy stuff in Metal Gear, sure, but they make it seem like that's all it is. It also isn't gonna be an incomprehensible clusterfuck of a story like they act like Metal Gear is (and MGS isn't that either).

The Beastcast seem to have taken the 'President of Jack Shit' and the 'walls' stuff far more literal than they should have. It's basically post-post apocalypse, 'President' is most likely just seen as a title. The walls being the walls people build around themselves, closing themselves off to others. Like how the crew is with online gaming, no mics mute everyone sorta thing. Might be wrong on their interpretation of the president thing, but I've seen some comments around the internet take the wall stuff as literal walls (which is also possible, for protection and stuff).

Fragile is also a cool name for a character, regardless of gender. Mama will make more sense in context too.

Just because something is weird or incomprehensible doesn't make it "high" (whatever that means) art Abby.

@knoxt: You're probably my favorite comment on GB.

I think the argument of 'is X political' comes down to this...

When people say they don't want games to be political, they don't mean the philosophical concept of politics, they mean they don't want actual politics (usually western) in their games. They mean literal references to specific figures, "hanging chads" or "building a wall". They mean direct references to (usually) modern politics with a wink and a nod and a "know what I mean". It's entirely about how subtle the politics are or if it's delivered with a sledgehammer.

As much as nothing else about MGS is subtle, it's politics usually are. It's something more philisophical and usually something that no one really disagrees with like 'child soldiers are bad' or 'we have too many nukes'. Even then, those two things aren't referencing anything very specific, more about concepts and philosophy.

I also hate when people claim everything is political when that's not what is being complained about. No one complained about GoT being political because it wasn't about our world's government. Geoffry wasn't, for example, a thinly veiled allegory for Bush, he was just an asshole kid in charge. Of course there are politics in the book/series, it's basically what they're about, political infighting.

The reason people cringe at things like calls for Farcry 5 or The Division to be more political is because when the call for that goes out, it's usually people who people want these things to give their specific opinions about a situation and direct confrontation of current issues. If the game ISN'T taking sides or bothering to inject current issues into the game like those who call for it to do so, they opine that it's not 'political enough' because they brought to it the hope that it would bring their modern politics into it and do it in an overt way that makes them feel vindicated in their own opinion.

Many people use games to escape the real world for a short while, to NOT think about how fucked things are, so when they say they don't want politics in games, they mean the obvious sledgehammery references, not just the concepts of politics and philosophy.

We have reached new levels of Peak Dan-ism

I think that's a frequently-occurring component. As for "high art" and "low art", to try to avoid the trip falls of being insensitive to class, I've always thought of it as some undefined amalgamation of an artist's aim and the audiences perception. Which means I think it's highly subjective bullshit! But's bullshit I love.

Hideo Kojima is not a subtle creator and his metaphors tend to be a blunt force. That still makes him one of the few video game developers (especially in the budget range he fortuitously commands) that aims for something significantly different and, at times, difficult compared to his (similarly budgeted) peers. That counts for something, I think. What exactly... I'm not sure.

But it's exciting for me, none the less.

Dan is a terrible judge of whats bat-shit crazy. Sure MGS is in places, but just like his quick look of Saints Row, Abby wanted to see more serious (i.e. less bang bang wallop) aspects of the game but Dan failed to show this, despite the game clearly having a grounded (albeit comedy-based) plot. That game allows you to ground yourself in a story, as does MGS. MGS has always had crazier elements to it but its also got a bunch of subtle elements too. I saw the new Death Stranding trailer and my reaction was "Okay, this seems somewhat sedate".

In regards to the Win32 stuff. I'm pretty certain there were examples of games being sold on Windows 10 store and on Steam which didn't allow cross-client multiplayer of any kind. Allowing Win32 to be used on Windows 10 store means that developers can link their games together regardless of the client. Microsoft not talking about Epic Store is likely due to the fact Epic has taken a stance where they are actively making game's (timed) exclusive on their client. Saying that though, Epic is still a piece of windows software so it likely already has Win32 DLLs available to it. Regardless, Microsoft woulodn't actively be talking about Epic store if it already has access to the Win32 library, or they simply don't need to talk about it because they ultimately want their stuff, Windows 10 app or Steam to be connected across the board!

@dhuffman1180: No thank you. Dan and Drew already played all 5 main line games on the site, and it was awesome, but just doing that again with Abby sounds like the least interesting idea possible, imo. Personally I’d rather see them focus on new ideas rather than rehashing old ones. Or if they are going to return to something, do Shenmue 2, XCom 2, Persona 5 etc. Something in a series they touched, but a game they haven’t played before.

this is still hilarious.

The fact that Dan did not consider things like war political is absolutely insane.

I cant decide which is more crazy and bad: Dan thinking MGS and Kojima aren't political, or people thinking HIDEO KOJIMA, the dude that wields symbolism and politics like a fucking cudgel, Is actually not political at all.

He has written entire games about nuclear proliferation and child soldiers for fucks sake! What are you people even on about?

@twoarmed: It's an act to rile people up. Good, old rebel-rousing Dan. That schtick never gets tiresome. Never change, Dan. Because you obviously can't.

@tuggah: thanks.

Agreed, kojima is a perv and a shit storyteller

Kenny mentioned AKI at least 3 times last Sunday. He's been thinking about a game for a long time. There will be more rumblings of an AEW game soon.

But Gamepass is already on PC?

Some of the Gamepass xbox one games are cross buy, but this service will be PC only games that aren't available on console.

Panning the Stream has his wife constantly shutting him down when he starts going to far or informing him in a way only a spouse can when he's completely wrong about how something is/works. Makes it far more enjoyable than I generally find 100% Dan.

God bless you, Alex. Truly the voice of the people. I was just about to yell, "That's Politics!" at my phone but you did it for me. I hope your blood pressure was able to recover afterwards.

I'm glad you're enjoying the recent ones, but as someone who's liked a lot of the Yukes games I don't think the in-ring action in the current iteration is nearly as good as it was around the Here Comes the Pain through SDvsRAW era. Even the highlights post-switch to "WWE 2K" (probably '13 and '14), which I had quite a good time with, still felt sloppier and less engaging to me on the whole than those past games did.

The lack of win32 wasn't and isn't the primary barrier between Windows Store and Steam game clients being able to interoperate, but rather the myriad of back-end services that each store offers as part of their respective SDKs. The games that tend to most seamlessly support multiple storefronts are those that utilize their own back-end cloud services for authentication, friends lists, servers, match-making, etc.

This will continue to be an issue going forward between Steam, Epic and Windows Stores where you can't carry an expectation that buying from one store grants you access to the entire population of players across all stores. For the foreseeable future Steam will have the biggest userbase that encourages players to get their multiplayer games there, at least until the day comes where Microsoft fully merges their PC+XBox communities.

I’ll try not to overreach in my assumptions here, but it’s remarkable that Dan’s takeaway from MGS is that terms like “nuclear proliferation”, “information control”, etc. are simply a backdrop for Cool Guy Action Movie stuff. Sure, the MGS games have the bee man and fire ghosts and whatever, but starting with MGS1, every game has either a pointed political stance on an issue, or failing that at least has a pretty overt philosophical or ideological viewpoint to express. Sometimes it is impressive how far Dan pushes himself to absorb only the most surface-level aspects of something.

Also, as always, it continues to come off as unprofessional that Dan is so ready to praise a Kojima game that literally no press has had hands-on time with. He’s allowed to be excited for it and to hope that it turns out to be a good game, but he takes it like 15 steps beyond that every time. I really hope GB doesn’t have Dan review Death Stranding.

The politics talk in regards to Kojima and Metal Gear sums up nicely why I have a hard time taking anything Dan says about complex narratives and games with them (RDR 2, for example) seriously. It's amazing to me how successful he's been with the most surface level of understanding with most things. I remember being upset with his rationale on some games that get praised in general, especially with more involved storytelling, but the politics talk made it finally click with me on how to deal with it going forward: Just don't take his commentary on it seriously.

I don't think I've heard a more jaw-dropping, baffling statement about games or art in general then stating that Metal Gear doesn't contain politics. Wow... If anything, the fallout afterwards was both loud and extremely entertaining. :D

@y2ken: HCTP was a different style of game, for sure...more arcadey in nature and better fitting for those that like to run around and spam the same moves over and over, it was great fun to play with friends but wasn't a very good representation of professional wrestling. Something that the 2K series is at the moment as long as you don't exit the ring or use weapons/ladders (which has always been bad).

The biggest step forward was Yukes shifting things to favor defense over offense with all of the new reversal and reactionary animations which do a much better job of selling a match and delivering something like the back and forths that we see in NXT and the indys. We need a match speed slider option though, because right now matches aren't fast enough for those guys and a little too quick for the legends.

Also, WWE'13 and 2K14 were THQ titles so it's understandable why you like them more. Both were great, 2K14 one of the series' absolute best, but super buggy and the striking speed was set way too high which made playing as some of the older guys annoying. That game had some great modes though, particularly the Undertaker "Beat the Streak" boss fight.

Kojima is super overrated. Sorry.

And boy, Dan's got... selectively ignorant opinions about Kojima, and anything adjacent.

so yall don't care that you're pronouncing "mads mikkelsen" wrong then

(mass miggelson)

Honestly I never associated Metal Gear with politics either. Mostly because I think Metal Gear is fucking joke of a series and I don't take anything in those games seriously. You might as well claim Police Academy movies are about police brutality or gun policy or something.

I was really surprised by the talk about rice cookers. They only ever seemed useful if you were cooking multiple forms of rice a day (rice snacks, rice meals, rice desserts) like some traditional Asian households. Otherwise, a pot, hot water, and 10 minutes is all you need.

I'm from the UK though so maybe their not considered a niche product in the US.

@zoofame:To be fair, Far Cry 3 and 4 absolutely were political, in the sense that they were about issues that affected Caribbean nations and the Himalayas. Piracy, religious suppression, cultural genocide and civil war are political topics but not necessarily American ones (at this time), but they are ones that people of those countries live with. And people tend to see the backdrops of psuedo-fictional nations as being entirely fantasy, whereas many of those same critics expect a game about turning their own country into an anarchistic playground to be treated with more seriousness.

But I don't share the view that "everything is political", because that renders the term meaningless. It redefines politics as "anything that exists"

Also is Alex okay? I hope Alex is okay. I'm glad Alex is okay!

I mean, I agree with you in that I find the overall narrative quality of Metal Gear games to be really bad, especially when they try to do anything series. However, I think Kojima is EXTREMELY sincere about his political and philosophical ideas in those games, he's just bad at implementing them with any degree of subtlety or without beating the player over the head with the concept aggressively to the point where it sounds absurd. The Police Academy movies were made to be zany, low-brow comedies that are so ridiculous they basically exist in a slapstick dimension (especially the later on you get). They're not movies genuinely trying to say anything about police brutality in the 80's or gun policy or gun policy or whatever. I believe Kojima really thinks he's creating meaningful art with a bevy of political and philosophical messages.

In the spoiler podcast they did for God of War last year, I recall Dan being confused several times over the plot, so this is probably a safe assumption.

I for one love MGS. I may be in the minority here, but MGS2 is for me, one of the greatest games. And I agree with Dan about the series actually making sense. Yes, it can all be weird and bizarre at times but Dan is right in that by the time MGS4 ends, it's pretty well wrapped up.

For me though, Kojima is not some god that I'll worship at this alter for anything. He absolutely fucked up MGS5 proving to me that he can indeed do wrong so Death Stranding doesn't get a pass from me. It looks like it's being weird and obscure for the sake of it. Whereas MGS, especially when you go back to the first game, was a well realized story with strong acting, dialogue and spectacle and yes, 10 minute cutscenes that I loved. And yes, it got really weird but it seemed to get gradually weirder. This seems like it's starting from 11 and the sky is the limit.

We'll see if that's a good thing or not.

Microsoft's historic moves in PC gaming were trash.

Their recent moves have been awesome. Game Pass, Play Anywhere, returning to Win32, partnering with Steam. It's been win after win.

Thought the same. Maybe just stress from all the E3 booking he does? Stay healthy!

X-Men Origins: Wolverine: The Movie: The Video game is not pretty good, not by a long shot. It has some fun visual elements and the combat is mindless fun but thing is basically Schrodinger's Video Game: you don't know if it will function or or until you play it. They also introduce some incredibly annoying enemies later on and the entire back half feels like a bizarre fever dream with only the most tenuous connection to anything that happened beforehand.

I got it for $5 and liked it more than I expected to, but under no circumstances would I recommend anyone actually play it if there's money that needs to be spent to make it happen.

@wildaggro: It's funny, I think that Kojima is a both a better storyteller than the others tend to say (which is to say that he tackles big, sweeping ideas with a surprising amount of nuance and societal forethought), but nowhere near as good as Dan seems to think he is (he's misogynistic, sloppy, self-indulgent in a way that harms his art and is too quick to incorporate trends and cliches into his stories without understanding why they work in other stories (for example people licking other people, which is never creepy or intimidating and is just stupid and lazy)). Dan is wrong because he likes these stories for completely superficial reasons, and the rest of the crew are wrong because they haven't spent nearly enough time with Kojima's products to really have an understanding. (In this case, I'm jealous of them; Kojima takes up a lot more of my mindshare than I'd like and it's mostly negative)

Dan has all of this reverence for Kojima but I don't think for even one sentence Dan could point out what is actually impressive about his games. Not the shockingly prophetic central message of government and media control of MGS2 nor the legitimately touching and heartbreaking sidequest in MGSV with Paz's memory or the mechanical expression of phantom pain that comes from losing Quiet or even Snake's slow turn into an outright villain that we see from MGS3 to Peace Walker and the way it convinces the player that they're somehow doing the right thing. As a game designer, he's very good at tying in mechanical systems to the narrative and using the player's self-expression to further the plot both in-game and meta-narratively.

And from there, it doesn't seem like he'd be able to talk about why even those impressive moments are riddled with problems. Kojima, as a storyteller, is a fascinating figure because he tries so damn hard to cover so many things from so many angles, and he missteps as much as he succeeds; moreso than he succeeds, I would say. Dan thinks that Kojima is impressive because Snake is a cool-guy-action-man and because his stories have a lot of things going on, even though these stories feel like Philosophy 101 with a budget and a significant male bent to anyone who hasn't dumped dozens of hours into thinking about them. That's not at all the case, but it's frustrating because Dan is the only one who has experienced enough to talk about it in any detail, and he can't express the things about it that are actually cool and worth discussing.

I regret typing this.

- Measure your rice
- Double that (plus a little bit) of water/broth
- Put liquid in pot, with lid, on stove and bring to a boil
- Add rice, stir once or twice
- Replace lid, bring down temperature to a little over halfway
- Wait twenty minutes
- You have cooked rice on the stove

@the_nubster: I agree and disagree with you in some sense.

On one hand, I think Kojima tries to actually create something with meaningful voice and massage through a medium he obviously loves. He tries to make games to be more mature, cinematic and bombastic. Truly, MGS 1 and 2 were mindblowing considering the level of attention to detail and scope developed within those games. Uncharted, Gears and many 'cinematic' games exist because MGS paved the way.

On the other hand, I honestly think he has no to small talent as a designer, writer, producer or even a story teller. he can't produce games that are fun to play mechanically (they are deep and have an interesting mechanics within them, but they aren't fun to control... well until MGS5), his writing is laughably simplistically bad and childish with no sense of character realism nor is it nuance or subtle when he wants to be philosophical. His production are haphazardly amateurish with no distinctive connection that bridges the gap between narrative and gampley. it feels that MGS stories and gameplay were entirely created separately in a vacuum, and his story telling.... is well evident.

Does he deserve the accolade he is getting? sure, just simply he raised a bar that wasn't high, aimed for the top, and in some aspect succeeded. His games on surface level were great, sold really well, and created a whole new aspect to gaming that wasn't possible.

But does he deserve the accolades he receives that he is the best? No, fuck no, and thats OK. but his fandom gotten so big that just blinds to his issues at hand, as Dan, demonstrates. and at that point, it hard to objectively look at his games critically because he divided opinions on what he is.

So in short, its hard to talk about Kojima because you either love him or hate him.

Fuck, I regret writing this too.

@faridmon: The worst thing about Kojima is that to really express why he isn't great, you have to put a lot of time into that opinion. I think we're on the same page. He really does reach farther and with more gusto than nearly any other developer/designer out there, but he falls flat in almost every way. His successes are wildly successful, but for every notable and unique success he has, there are a million examples of weird misogyny and bad level/gameplay design, laughable writing, philosophy and thematic exploration with all of the subtlety of a jet hooked up to a tank of nitro, so on and so forth. People who blindly follow him as a gaming messiah are so frustrating because he's not but... there is also a lot to talk about when it comes to things that he's genuinely done a pretty incredible job with. Even a blind squirrel finds nuts; this blind squirrel mostly finds frozen dumps and bones and then occasionally it pulls out a diamond and then everyone ignores the turds.

Everything is political when you make everything political. Making everything political has the side effect of making you insufferable because everything becomes an opportunity to proselytize. I don't think the wall thing is necessarily a Trump reference it seemed more in reference to the idea that we are becoming socially isolated.

…Remember when Austin was on this podcast?

@toadie: Just finished listening to this, and I actually had to sit down for a few minutes during the whole "it's about war and nuclear stuff not politics " bit - I used to think Dan just preferred to look at a lot of things superficially, not that he actually misses a lot of superficial things and everything that's below surface level in the stories he watches/reads/plays through.

But then every once in a while I still find myself wondering "is he doing a bit?" Just a deep, years long, perfect bit...

Am I just misunderstanding this PC game pass talk? I've had game pass on PC since Forza Horizon 4 came out and it's inclusive PC and Xbox?

@rocketraccooncmro: People do not "make things political." Things are political, and you can either choose to ignore them or engage with them. Metal Gear is political even on a surface level. It would actually take effort on your part to deny its politics.

I agree with Abby on Kojima needing an editor, P.T. is probably the best thing he's worked on. While I hope it turns out great and everyone enjoys it, my concern for Death Stranding is it'll be an over indulgent mess of a game because there is no one to reel him in.

"Metal Gear is the most perfect thing entertainment ever created"

"I didn't know there are politics in Metal Gear"

Incredible. Just incredible.

It was kind of questionable for Alex to make a joke about divorce rates going to 100% when there's three married people on the podcast with him...