The Giant Beastcast: Episode 69

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Ah ha! Just this morning I was thinking it was about time they had Danielle back on!

Nice! Danielle is awesome. I love idle weekend.

The description makes it sound like there's gonna be a lot of video games in this episode. What kind of site is this!?

I know they moved past the Jeff Bakalar puns, but I strongly feel these episodes where he is away should be called "Lackalars."

Let's go!

That thumbnail looks to be using a pizza which is not a taco.

Jr. Mints!

great!!

Danielle! What a treat!

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I've never even heard of Halcyon 6: Starbase Commander. Give me the scoop!

A lot of the menus for P5 are in English, but the subtitles are all Japanese.

Never a better time to listen to podcasts.

Danielle being stoked about everything makes ME stoked about everything!

Yeah, Tank Abbott talk!

Petition to move game of the year to July as summer is always dead for games so reckon would work best especially as more games are moving in December etc.

Great, now I want a huge taco.

EDIT: Omg! Didn't see that Danielle was one this episode. It was a sad day when she left Idle Thumbs. Idle Weekend is a bit too serious for my podcasting tastes.

OMG Danielle is back? Awesome!

Bring him Bakalar!

Yes, Danielle is back! This is excellent news.

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(hooray, Danielle back on the Beastcast!)

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@beyondstrange: I couldnt agree more.

Excited to hear from Danielle again, but I sure do miss me some Baby Got Bakalar :(

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When Vinny said they had a special guest I said to myself, "I hope it's Danielle" and it was!

Considering his approach on games he plays seems to be to try and break them, I get why Vinny feels it's the dissonance between what the player does and what the story says. But I feel the much bigger problem is that the stories are such an afterthought or made by so many disparate people. Assassin's Creed 2 has a long gap in time and an empty town just so it could have DLC for it. The Tomb Raider reboot has messed up cutscenes where Lara is constantly pushed around and loses all her weapons for the sake of moving her around setpieces. Mass Effect varies widely between individual missions AND individual games, with very little coherence. The only big but not-that-long games that even approach a coherent universe is stuff like Metal Gear where there's one really clear voice because of Hideo Kojima. If there was _one_ Deus Ex person with not only the Writing credits, but creative control, you bet your ass that game would have something to say about something.

I feel like there's a reason I love campy stuff like Resident Evil 4's story much more than Tomb Raider: It's just as dumb, but it's making me laugh at least.

I don't know man this is where you lost me.. Well you kind of lost me at Tomb Raider but this really nailed it. I loved Metal Gear and I hate it when people say "oh it's all bullshit nonsese" which is something Patrick used to say whenever MGS was brought up. That said "coherent" is the last word I would use to describe the Metal Gear storyline or universe.

@humanity: The better example might've been Ken Levine's control on Bioshock 1 and Infinite.

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@bisonhero: I actually think that the Tomb Raider reboot had a very coherent and strong, straightforward story. A young woman crash lands on a mysterious island and through a gamey coming of age story makes her way off that island, in the process becoming the explorer she originally set out to become. It was a very clear A-to-B narrative and one of the reasons I actually prefer it to Rise of the Tomb Raider which despite it's title felt a lot more wishy washy and a little aimless with adventure injected sporadically for the sake of gameplay.

Bioshock is also a great example of solid single minded storytelling of course. People turned on Infinite but I really loved the story there as well - so much that I bought a collectors edition version of the game the instant I beat it and started to play it all over again just to get those little tastes in the early goings of that game scattered about here and there of what you come to know later on in the story.

The Tomb Raider reboot story sounds good when you just type out the pitch, but the execution was of a D-grade made-for-cable movie. I thought the gameplay was excellent and I had a lot of fun, though. Was one of my favorites of that year, despite the story.

DANIELLE RULES.

Hell yeah, Danielle Riendeau. IT RHYMES WITH NINTENDO.

Vinny going on about Taco night reminded me of his GOTY segment, which reminds me I want a Vinny Cooking Series

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Am I just using the word wrong, then? Maybe "consistent" is the word I'm thinking of. Because what I meant is that you can feel Kojima all over every scene in those games. You play a Metal Gear game without him(like Rising) or see the trailer for that new 4-player one, and it's instantly apparent that it's no longer the same person holding the reins. I'm not saying the tone or lore is consistent, because that's retcons all the way down. But it's a series with a very specific feel if I've ever seen one.

I'm not gonna write an essay on Tomb Raider, but I'm gonna say I was a bit less impressed than you were. The whole survivor arc was done by that radio tower she climbs early on in the game and from then on it's all rescuing Sam in between explosions and shooting dirty russian hobos.

Get these dang videogames out of my podcast!

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That's a great ending.

Yay, Danielle!

Vinny you bite your tongue. Transformers: The Movie is a god damned cinematic masterpiece! This is one of the only unwavering, hard-headed stances I will ever take regarding useless opinions on dumb kids' media, but I will go down with this (burning) ship.

Oh my god, it's Junior Mint! Beastcast and Idle Weekend - back to back Danielle!

Great to hear Danielle again. Come back anytime!

@i_speel_my_dreenk: Vinny merely needs to be indoctrinated to 20 years of Transformers lore to allow him to embrace the joy of the Dinobot puns.

But seriously, Vinny should get into the IDW comics run, specifically More than Meets The Eye.

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@redhotchilimist: @christilton hey fair enough! I enjoyed the story well enough but I realize a lot of people had issues with it that I personally didn't. I've certainly been on the other side of that fence before.