Welcome back to Pixel Project Radio.

This is part two of our Clear Obscure Expedition thirty three analysis.

Been having a great time so far.

I hope you loved episode one.

We've got a lot of good stuff in store today.

I'm joined again by Frak from the three D zero Experience Thrack.

Thanks for joining me today.

Thank you, thank you for having me back.

You decided to bring me back in so thank you.

It's true your rates were just right.

Zero percent APR.

So we left off last time.

We left off at a bit of a weird spot, and that's my bad.

That's on me.

But we're picking it up today.

Plan is to hopefully get a little bit into act too.

We're starting on the world map.

I I'm such I'm so glad that they did this.

I love a good world map.

Yeah, and I feel like they're going away.

We don't see them as much anymore.

The world map here, it reminded me a bit of like the Tail series, you know, like where you have like or even like older RPGs where you have like that overworld, you know, where you can kind of roam around and get to the next areas that you need to go to.

Yeah, in some ways it could be going away because I also think of say, like the Persona games, where in A it's not really an overworld, it's just a bunch of connected areas but right, but yeah, I don't know.

It just it reminded me a lot of the Tail series, like when Tails has their like open world map kind of things.

You know, Uh, I don't because I've only ever played like two hours of Bursaria, but maybe one day.

No, this is great.

I love how your characters are kind of small compared to all of the nevrons around.

I love how beautiful and colorful this world is.

How it's it's fun to just explore, and you can find a lot of stuff on the world map too, like items, journals, merchants that you can fight.

It's fun to explore, and it's also like the right size.

It's not too big, it's not too small.

It has yet just enough little secrets to that you can explore in.

But also if you don't care about that and you just want to get to the next main area, it doesn't take you too long to get there.

And speaking of not long to get there, we're moving on to Flying Waters.

This is our first biome.

We're going to and that kind of reminds me.

I don't know if you noticed this, but I'm a big fan of how varied all of the biomes are, all of the levels, set pieces of however you want to call it, They've all got their own distinct flavor and identity, and it makes it makes exploring a lot of fun.

This one is water theme.

There's it's like we're underwater.

There's coral reefs, there's nautical themed monsters not like, you know, not like pirates, uh, but you know they look kind of like fucked up fish.

Yeah.

Yeah, Yeah, it does that thing where you know, you have all of like, oh, here's the water world.

Here's the you know, some of the later ones.

But I love the design of Flying Waters, Like, yeah, their use of colors is just absolutely gorgeous.

And yeah, like all the different vegetation that just kind of exists throughout the about this biome is just it's incredibly gorgeous.

Like it looks like a fish tank at certain points, but like a really cool fish tank.

Yeah.

The music is nice too.

It's much more low fi in this area.

And upcoming boss that we'll talk about shortly starts off with like the low Fi beats to Perry to Dodge and Perry two coming up soon.

That's a that's a fan favorite.

But we come up here first of all tons of dead expeditions expeditioners.

Yes, this is a theme throughout the game.

We're gonna be seeing tons of these, the bodies of the fallen of our former comrades.

It gets to different characters more than others.

Lune, for instance, is not particularly bothered by this.

She very much.

That comes to the when one falls we continue when not if Gustav is bothered by it a little bit.

Mayel is the one that it really gets to her.

And speaking of her, we're about to find her.

Gustav and Lune, they come across this hut with an ornate door and opening it sucks them in like Isa Kai style and transports them to this grandiose, Victorian esque manner.

Mm hmm.

What were you thinking the first time this happened, because this is the first time we go to the manor.

Right, Yeah, it's very early in the game, so, like my expectations aren't really set yet for like what it's going to do, but like when it sucks us into the manner, it's just like, oh, Oh, what is this new, interesting, exciting thing.

You know.

That's basically just kind of what I was thinking was, Oh, they're doing something different here, aren't they.

Yeah, more questions are being raised.

We don't have much context into which we can place this manner.

By the way, there was a fella standing outside watching us.

We get a camera shot over his shoulder.

He's observing us go into this manner.

Interesting too.

The flag here is from our own expedition.

It's thirty three.

This is something we see throughout the game.

The flags.

Let us save the flags, let us up greater our materials.

They've always got the number of a former expedition.

That's part of the game's identity is looking back on the past, the weight of the past, the past's actions influencing the present.

The flags are from previous expeditions, the journals obviously, the climbing, grappling, what do you call them, steaks, handles, They replaced by former expeditions.

This one is thirty three.

So one of two things is going on here.

Either Mayel is in here or we've got some freaky deeky business going on.

Oh yeah, some freaky deeky stuff, but it's not freaky Deeky Mayel is in here.

It's a pretty quick reunion.

It's quick and tender.

Neither of them really expected Gustav or Mile to find the other.

This reunion worked better for me on a replay, I think first time through, we don't have tons of context into their relationship.

This reunion happens pretty early on in the story, pretty quickly after they get separated.

It hit a little harder.

Yeah, on a replay now that we know a little bit more about them.

Yeah, I could imagine so, because I only played through at the one time, so like this early in the game, when you see some of that emotional stuff, it can be hard to really relate to it because the stakes just are not there yet.

But yeah, I imagine on the second play through it's much stronger.

Mile doesn't know who wrote that message.

This was at the end of the last episode.

There was a message on a tree of some sort that said, took Mile to the Weird Corals, head north, look for a door inside a hut.

Mile has no idea who wrote that, how it got there, or how she got here.

As a matter of fact, all she knows is that she's here with the Curator, and this is our first interaction with this thing.

I was gonna say, fella, but I don't think that's quite right.

Let's talk about the curator.

Yeah, what a fantastic design really, with the like the gaping hole where the face should be.

Yeah, and then when it talks, it's just like and then and they know exactly what they're talking about or whatever.

That's a very common thing you'll see in fantasy or sci fi is where like people are talking like weird languages, but then the English language persons like, oh, I know exactly what you're saying, Like of course I speak Wookie, of course you know so.

But yeah, just a really striking character that just sits with this consistently striking like art design for me, very.

Clearly not a Nevron, and Lunay kind of observes this as well.

She says that his chroma is different than all of the other Nevrons, So what is this thing?

We don't know just yet.

The I agree though, the striking visuals, the face that has been sort of carved out.

It almost looks like if this were like a replica wax figure and a child in their you know, childish fervor just grabbed the face and rip the putty off.

It looks almost like that.

And it has like, I don't know, maybe like a tinge of like Tolkien influence, like maybe just a teeny bit.

Yeah yeah, I could see that kind of kind of ring Raith esque.

Yeah yeah, I was getting kind of Ring Raith vibes.

Yeah.

The curator is going to give us a battle tutorial.

Here this on my replay.

By the way, this wasn't the first time I got rocked in one hit like that.

Was actually with my l in the very beginning, but I just wasn't paying attention and the curator just rocked my shit on a replay new game.

Plus everything is stronger.

It's pretty wild, but it's funny.

I'm sourcing audio from let's plays on YouTube, and it's so quaint to see hits doing eighty one hundred, four hundred damage.

Meanwhile everything on mine is well over one hundred always.

Yeah.

Yeah, the curator is gonna give us a tutorial on how to jump.

That's one of our evasive maneuvers.

There's that little icon that will flash jumps are I mean, with a few exceptions, they are always so easy to time and pull off.

I think yep, and They're my favorite as well, because not only are they the easiest to pull off, they're also the coolest to do because most of the time it's your entire group jumping, and then when you succeed, you get to do a really.

Big counter attack.

Yeah, the whole group bashes them, which is always like a fun site to have, and it also can shift the tide in a battle, Like if you're struggling a little bit sure, and then they decide to do a jump, you're just like, oh bam, and then it's like I'm back in a baby.

Once we're done with him, we leave the manor we also meet Noko.

This is going to be our first gestural Why don't we talk about the gesturals once we get there in gestural village?

What do you say?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, let's save the gestural talk for now.

Noko's a little guy.

To your point about the languages, they speak this kind of gibberish language that you're either hearing right now or you're about to hear, and everybody just knows exactly what they're talking about.

Yeah, play it right now.

Editor, Is that a gestural?

Sir?

I got stop that you bake?

Gary brush face yeah, thank you.

Yeah, give that guy a raise.

Moves on.

And by the way, Nko is a merchant.

That's kind of his deal.

He wants to be the best merchant ever.

You can fight the merchants in this game, which I think is a fantastic idea for the real world too.

I should be able to I should be able to go to my local mom and pop store and look at the sweet kind sixty eight year old gentleman and throw down with him to get a discount on my candy bars.

But if you go up to like a food truck and you want to fight the chef, you're you're probably gonna lose.

Oh I'm gonna get my ass rocked.

You can oh yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.

The more ethnic he looks back there, it's like I'm getting I'm getting fucked.

Like this is bad.

It's like, okay, I'll pay the twelve bucks for the chiloopo.

Okay.

Food trucks.

Food trucks give you a buff to bad assery.

It's it's just part of the table.

Oh yeah, yeah, And the food's always great.

The food's usually great.

Yeah, you're right.

We move on forward.

There's a city section of Flying Waters.

It looks kind of just like where we were, just with more building like structures.

There's also this gigantic Nevron, humongous that looks like he's got a foreskin on his face that I've called the foreskin monster throughout here my own No.

I mean, you know, I, I legit did not think that, but now that you mention it, and I'm like looking at him, I'm like, yeah, that is exactly what.

It's exactly what he looks like these I think that means he's Greek.

Sure, Miele says, do not approach them at all costs, So I approach them with no cost I go right into battle.

It's you.

I like these guys.

Their their gimmick is that they'll suck up with their foreskin.

They'll suck up one of your characters, and until you break them, you know, feel their stagger bar and then break them.

You don't get that character, and they can if you have the batt'll go on long enough without breaking them.

They will suck up your whole party and then that's it.

It's game over.

Yeah.

I was worried when that happened, because when, yeah, when he first sucks up one of your characters, my thought was, Oh, is there like maybe if I do a big enough move or like I parry something correctly, he'll spit whoever right back out.

But he never does.

Yeah, you just kind of have to deal with it, which I give the game credit for doing something that ballsy that early in the game.

You know, like if you're not paying attention, you can get caught off guard and lose everybody real quick totally.

And you know they mile warned you not to go near it.

You don't have to.

You have to go out of your way to get to it.

It's not so bad.

Like his attacks are pretty Yeah, of course I gendered it as a he.

The attacks are pretty you called them the foreskin monster exactly exactly.

It's pretty easy to telegraph.

Uh, he'll do combos like three four five hits and his left arm and right arm or different speeds.

Once you get that down, yeah, it's pretty simple.

I feel like this character is a good sort of like not necessarily tutorial, but I think this is an early character to where you can kind of learn the parry system where it's not like tutorializing it or being like, oh, where it stops the whole game and be like, oh, Perry right here.

It's like it feels like this character is giving you the chance to really test out your skills to be sure that, oh, are you picking up on everything?

Because with all the little random encounters you get before this, you don't have to parry most of the time because they're like fairly easy early enemies.

But by the time you get to mister Foreskin, I'm just gonna call them that.

Now.

This is like where the game goes like, hey, have you been perrying?

Have you been, you know, doing your due diligence and if not, you know we're gonna smack you.

We're gonna smack you down.

There is a brief moment of respite here the crew comes to this grove of red flowers.

Once again, color plays a big role in this game.

Red.

I can't remember if we mentioned this last time, even though I just finished the edit.

Red represents home, right, it represents for us Lumi Air, but it represents home and this is going to become important pretty soon.

This starts a boss fight.

Go Blue is this boss?

This giant neverron jumps out as soon as we touch the flowers, Looney points out he attacks pretty simple fight.

This has that badass boss music that starts off like low fi beats and goes into kind of a more groove.

It's really cool.

It's a very popular one.

I'm wondering if you remember I am right now as we record this, I'm about halfway into act two.

I can't remember, for the life of me.

Do they come back to this idea?

Do they extend on the idea of touching the flowers?

Is what pisses off Go Blue.

I genuinely cannot remember if they do anything with that.

I feel like I can draw some interpretations and infer things, but they feel it feels opaque and hazy and maybe not what the writers intended for whatever that's worth, I don't think so.

Like I, yeah, I can't recall any sort of instance of like the flowers in Go Blue being like a legit thing.

You know.

It could just if anything, It could just be a coincidence.

I think I think so.

I think so.

The reads that I have on it would entirely spoil like a lot of the game, So we can maybe come back to it if we remember.

It's not it's not the biggest deal.

Yeah, Gustav wants to kill it immediately.

Myel and Lune kind of interestingly myele and Lune kind of real.

I'm back and go Blue does get Away a little bit of a flip flop role there, mm hmm.

And next up, I'm just going down like we're checking things off the list.

Next that's great podcast Patreon, Slash Picture Project, Radio Project.

Nice that night at camp we get miles first nightmare.

These nightmares are six.

I really like these.

Oh my god, yes, like this was probably my first like like kind of like almost like head turning moment, you know, like when the nightmare happens and the aspect ratio changes and like it almost like it looks like the Snyder cut almost though I'm probably giving I'm probably giving the Snyder cut too much credit.

And then yeah, it just does this very like to me, this is where the like European cinema influences really come into play a lot of what they're doing.

It feels like like French new wave.

You know, if you've ever seen any French new wave film, what.

Do you make of those aspect ratio changes?

They go to like a four by three, right, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a four by three.

I like it.

I mean, I you could make the argument that like too much media and entertainment the these days is doing four x three for like nostalgic reasons.

But I don't think this game is doing that.

I think it just it wants to sort of highlight the sharp contrast that Miele's nightmares have to what is actually going on in the game, and it's a good way of showing that that major difference.

Sure, sure, I can see that.

It's also notable too when when they go to four y three the screen crunches, it compresses into the center.

And I don't know, I've experienced dreams both ways where they feel sort of endlessly vast and wide and unfocused, but also very tight and small and singular, insular, especially nightmares.

Yeah, and I'm wondering if that constricted feeling is what they were intended here.

It very well could just be an artistic choice and it doesn't have to mean anything deeper than that.

And that's but now that you mentioned that, I think it's true.

I think thinking about the nightmares, they they have like a claustrophobic sort of feel to them, and that whenever you see them it almost feel like Mayel is sort of just like kind of trapped in her own thoughts.

So maybe that squishing of the screen is meant to convey that.

But I didn't think about that until you brought it up.

And that's part of what nightmares are, right, Nightmares and dreams are.

The are a collection of waking thoughts, both conscious and unconscious.

That it's I've heard it said that it's our brain's attempt to organize things so we don't go insane.

And I think that's a bit of a poetic reading, but I do like it.

And speaking of that, you know, unconscious and conscious thoughts, let's talk about the nightmare.

It's black and white.

Black and white again, that is important.

Does it feel like the frame rate changes that?

I don't know, okay, because there was something about like the movement in the nightmares that feels different to the movement in the normal cut scenes.

I mean again that happens to us in dreams, right, movements feel silted and jerky, or it's like almost like more smooth.

I don't know.

Again, it could be just my mind playing tricks on me, but I to me, it was just even the way things were sort of moving within these nightmares just felt different than what was happening in the normal gameplay.

I'm gonna come back.

I have a note on black and white later.

I'll come back to it in a more dramatic scene, but it's in black and white four x three aspect ratio.

Someone that looks vaguely like myel in the way that, like you know, animation avatars kind of all look similar, you know, standing there, sword in hand, about to fight this mysterious man, medium link, pair of white streak.

They're both covered in blood, maybe dirt, grime, detritus, blood.

The mile that we know collapses to the ground.

She's clutching a ribbon of some sort it looks like cloth, and screams at the paintress, who is just looming large in the background.

M We don't have a lot of context into which we can place some of these images, but very soon we will, because this is I mean, in retrospect, this is a beautiful, unconscious display of that angor and that anxiety that Mayele is feeling, even though she can't place it.

Yeah.

Absolutely, there's a nice little scene here.

There are a lot of scenes of character interactions where they're just sort of developing these characters as people.

We're obviously not gonna touch on every single one.

But they're very nice, They're very lovely.

I'm a big fan.

The older I get, the more I'm a fan of things in media, books, literature, stories that don't just advance the plot, that kind of flesh out the world, you know, world building.

Yes, I've heard it called yeah, yeah.

Yeah, or world building lore, all that good stuff.

Yeah.

They've got a nice bit of dialogue here.

It's a little long, what with the actual dialogue and the pauses and whatnot, So I'm just gonna read it, maybe paraphrase just a smidge, but here's some of what they say.

Miele says, death out here isn't like death and Lumierre, is it.

I thought I was used to losing people life of a foster child, right, but not like that on the beach.

Gustav replies, that's the insidious thing about the gomage.

It's predictable, almost gentle.

It makes Lunar complacent and accepting.

But death is just as violent.

Death is final, you know.

He comforts her in so far as assuring her that she's not alone in feeling total dread.

I mean, yeah, I mean what they're going on is a very sort of dreadful, sort of journey, so I think it's safe to have those feelings.

But you know, but also an interesting way.

It's an interesting way of comforting her, being like, hey, same, yeah, he's not gonna bullshit her, yeah, which I respect.

There's also back and forth here where they kind of poke fun at a JRPG trope where she calls him an old man and he says something like, hey, you know, it wasn't that long ago when thirty three was considered young, and she just she's just like, yeah, okay, sure, I love that.

I love that because that is interesting to think about, because like, in this universe you and me would be considered old.

Oh totally.

You go back to not like.

The jokey old way we do where it's like once you're like twenty two, you're like, oh, I'm old as fuck, right.

Like no, like that really bothers me.

It's it's something that's become like a pun.

Like you know, millennials will be like, oh yeah, my back's starting to hurt and my knees are going out.

It's like, I don't understand this obsession with wanting to race to the grave.

We are still really young.

I mean, thirty is not old thirty.

I'm thirty two.

Thirty two is not that old, and it feels like so many of my peers want to just race into the retirement home.

I mean, I will say my back does feel old, but you know, I guess to get personal.

It's like a year ago I was I was out bowling and when I was doing the movement on one of the frames, I did something to my back and it's never been the same.

Yeah, back pain is so Back pain and toothpaint are the two worst imaginable things to happen.

It's not even necessarily pain.

It's just sore a lot of the time.

Like I just have to like, if I don't do like five minutes of stretching, I'm just gonna be sore.

The whole day.

Well yeah, but hey, we're still young.

It's this confusing and perplexing thing.

I don't know why anyway, but I do like it.

I mean, you look at Final Fantasy x Orun looked like he was in his mid fifties and he's like thirty five.

You know, yeah, well that's on the game because I mean they give him like a gray streak in his hair, he has wrinkles on his face, you know, he looks older.

He does.

It's cool.

I appreciated that little jab at that.

Yeah.

This is also where the Curator becomes our upgrade hub.

We go to the Curator if we want to up our resources, give our characters luminum points and upgrade their weapons, which you can upgrade to level of course thirty three.

It's such a weird thing for them to do with the Curator, isn't it.

Like you see this like really striking image of this character, right, and then it's just like, oh, if you just want to like upgrade your luma points, go talk to him.

And it's like, wait, that's all he is.

Like, he's not like more important than that, you know, he's just like a border line like resume before merchant.

If I were in that group too, I'd be pretty pissed at him because he instead of sitting out with the rest of us in camp, he chose the most recessed, dark, ominous cave in our camp set and just hangs out there.

And also he's pretty powerful.

It's like, wouldn't you want him to help you fight a little bit?

Yeah, I mean you'd think, thankfully, he doesn't want to fight us, so that's nice.

Well, yeah, that's nice.

Yeah.

This is also where the social links are brought up for the first time.

They're not like, they're more.

Like they're not called social links though, are they.

Oh wait, no, this is not where the social links come up.

Never mind, but there are like social links.

No, they're not.

I think they're just called relationship levels.

Yeah, we've played Persona, we can just say social link.

Yeah, it's nothing like the Persona social links where you have to do like, you know, answer correctly to get relationship points.

Yeah, you know, yeah, but you know it's nice enough.

I didn't max out any of these on my first play through.

I'm trying to this time.

But they're nice.

I really like them.

We can't touch on all of them.

They're very pleasant, very cool.

Oh yeah, they're fun.

So now we get directed by Noko to go through the gestural village, the ancient sanctuary.

We're gonna go and try to get help from the village chef as she has known Golbra.

Okay, let's talk, let's talk gesturals.

Yes, so we get to this gestural village, very very red.

Lots of red color here, well, lots of color in general, but a lot of red foliage, a lot of red colors in the in the gesturals art and buildings and hair really neat gestural.

Let's talk gesturals.

They are, you know what they make me think of?

Actually, have you ever seen the like stock images for like acting where there's like that wooden doll, you know, wooden man figure where you can see.

The name may I can't recall.

You could probably find it on like clip art or Google if you just search wooden figure acting.

But they kind of look like that, you know.

They're made of what looks like wood, like tree wood, natural wood, and shaped together in vaguely human shapes.

Some are fat, some are tall and skinny, lanky.

Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, we got some.

We got some chunky boys.

We got some lanky boys.

We got some yeah, some tiny ones, some big ones.

Like they're a very diverse set of a wooden beings, right, and they've all got hair that looks like a paint brush.

That's I think the gestural comes from two different things.

Gesture.

It's a distortion of the word gesture, which is what you do with paint brushes.

Right to paint you paint gestures, you can make gestures.

It's also very similar to the word gestalt, which is which means form roughly means form in German.

It can mean like like the form of something, the whole of something.

Here's an interesting factoid that I found today on simplypsychology dot org, which as far as I can tell, is reputable and sourced properly.

I guess there's a I don't want to say movement.

I guess there is a subsect of psychology called gestalt psychology.

And I copy and pasted something from simply Psychology.

I want to read it.

They say.

Gestalt psychology is a school of thought that seeks to understand how the human brain perceives experiences.

It suggests that structures perceived as a whole have specific properties that are different from the sum of their individual parts.

For instance, when reading a text, a person perceives each word and sentence as a whole with meaning, rather than seeing individual letters, and while each letter form is an independent individual unit, the greater meaning of the text depends on the arrangement of the letters into a special configuration.

For that reason, the gestalt laws are appealing not only to psychologists, but also to visual artists, educators, and communicator.

I think that's really fascinating because it's tough to talk about this without spoiling stuff, but that applies to this game and our parties situation very heavily.

Especially.

Just keep in mind as you're going through this series, listener, keep in mind that this is important to visual artists, and this this applies to everybody.

You know.

We've got so many things happening in the game, with the paintress, with the gesturals, with the expeditioners, with the nevrons, and the individual parts are each their own unique situation, but there is a greater whole that we learn at the end that makes that that is greater than the sum of its parts.

And it's so fascinating.

It's it's so fast.

This idea of gestalt psychology and it and how it ties directly into this and the art angle is particularly nice because that's going to come up a lot later too.

Yeah.

I feel like something like gestalt psychology does make sense in a more sort of like abstract art full way, because if I'm trying to say, relate it back to what you know psychology does, which is you know, like study people's like mental health, right, I think the idea is it's trying to perceive like someone's whole life as like the whole thing, right, instead of breaking it down to like, oh, you had like here and here, we're like, you know, the problem parts.

It's trying to kind of see the whole thing, which I mean, I can understand that for sure, But I don't know.

If I'm thinking about it maybe in like a clinical way, I feel like it could have some it might not work as well, But I don't think gestalt psychology is something that like, you know, therapists are testing on patients.

I could be wrong, but you know that that's just my immediate reaction to it, you know, I don't.

I wouldn't say it's a bad thing.

It's just some I'm just thinking of, like, like, but how would it help people's like mental health kind of a thing?

Sure, yeah, I'm not.

I'm obviously I'm not a specialist.

It struck me as less of a methodology of an approach to practice so much as just a theoretical lens through which you can view existing practicing techniques, you know, kind of like I mean, not dissimilar to music theory, you know, I mean composers don't think about that shit when they're writing.

It's only the theorists that come after that put words to the techniques.

I don't know, I kind of saw it.

Yeah, that's probably the way to think about it.

It's just, you know, my por psychology degree started poking out a little bit.

I'll put it away.

Oh you have a psych degree.

I do.

Yeah, I have a Bachelor of Sciences in psychology.

Oh well, geez, I don't do jack shit with it.

Well, hey, that's the average millennial experience.

Man.

I love capitalism.

It's a whole thing.

Yeah, yeah, I use my other degree.

More.

We see the young boy here for the first time.

This young boy looks strikingly similar to the creator, except less horrific nightmare and more just childlike.

Even literally just looks like a child, but in that same grayscale smoke he are uh and notably no face like, just like the curator that plucked out face Yep.

And throughout the game we'll see more of these.

Generally, they'll only talk to my ow, which is fascinating.

Here I think they talked to whoever.

But this young boy says something strange.

As far as we can tell, he says, another expedition me a dream, an illusion.

I don't really remember what I did all this for.

I miss laughing with everyone ReCl What were their names?

Why do I forget?

Everything is washed away?

We'll learn those names.

Stay tuned.

The gest Rolls sound the alarm.

They think we're the Nevrons.

I don't see.

I think they mean us.

They must be gestures that cute but.

Fuck.

And this is where myle spends a not insignificant amount of time ship talking the gest Rols and calling them dolts, dumb, dense morons, buffoons, goufases.

Uh.

Mayo would ironically away a little bit, you know, Mayo would would unironically use clankers.

Uh today?

Which which is that's a joke that's going to date this podcast, like to the month.

Oh, I get that joke.

Akers, Oh, I was gonna mention you know, you know what the Gesturals remind me of.

It doesn't make any sense, but they remind me of like the toads from Mario.

Yeah, yeah, I could see that.

I don't know why.

Mainly it's like the smaller ones.

I don't know, I just got a thing from them.

I don't know why.

Yeah, I could, I could see that.

They're vaguely humanoid.

They have a lot of nervous energy.

Sometimes they're there.

They are not very bright, that's true.

They're genderless.

Yeah, oh's toad genderless?

Toad is genderless.

Yes, that is confirmed by Nintendo.

When what's up with todet, don't ask too many questions.

Okay, uh this this is gonna lead us into a boss fight with their Saccapatat roughly translates to like potato sack.

Yeah.

Uh, you can on a replay or maybe you can go back.

I don't know.

A later character can get this ability, and it's one of their best abilities.

It's crazy.

Uh more cool pitch percussion music throughout all this area.

Not a big deal.

We uh.

We shortly get into another fight though, with their Ultimate Sacapatat, which has an even cooler boss theme.

It's it's all not so bad fighting wise.

They'll mess you up if you don't dodge and perry, but you know, not not a crazy memorable boss fight for me.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's just I like, I liked the name, but it was just like, yeah, just another boss kind of thing.

Did you explore the village very much?

Yeah?

I did, probably more than I wanted to, because to me, I felt the Gestural Village is where the sort of lack of any map kind of became an issue for me.

Yeah, because I because I wanted to explore the whole thing.

But then I at a point I did get lost genuinely and I completely forgot where I was, and I was like, man, it would just be so nice.

Like they have the map in the overworld, which makes perfect sense that like it unlocks as you keep going, because you know they're an expedition, they're creating the map, So it just makes more sense to me that even in these sections they would want to do that, even if it was just for the Gestural Village, because it's set up in a way to where you want to keep going back to it as like a friendly hub type of deal.

So but I did like it.

It was a really nice area.

There was a lot of fun things happening.

I think it might be my favorite location in the game.

It's so funny.

These gest roles are a hoot.

There's one there's a doctor that just lays the around and doesn't do shit because he's got like the SpongeBob disease.

You remember the guy from SpongeBob where he's.

Like every day I wake up and I break my arms and then I break my legs until my heart attacks put me to sleep.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, this doctors bones and paper skin.

Yeah, this doctor is like my bones grow and break every day and it's so painful that you know he's taken on this like nihilistic personality where he just doesn't help anybody.

I think I reference that to myself when I was playing the game.

It's so good, dude.

There's a there's a philosopher one where he's like talking about how great his philosophy is and we're like, okay, what is it and he's like, well, you have to buy my books.

That's what a philosopher is.

You have to buy my books.

Hey, do you want out how I got this six pack?

Well, you need to buy my six week course by going to this link and then use the promo code to get ten.

Percent yea off.

It's just a YouTube ad.

Only ten monthly payments of nineteen ninety nine.

Golgra's hut is in the center of the village.

Golgra is the chef aka the chief gesturals, not very smart clankers, et cetera, et cetera.

Mm hm Golgra's hut cracks me up.

There's just a bunch of gesturls in there doing push ups around, like leading up to her like an honor of her.

It's great.

It gives me like a Queen Bee vibe totally.

They're all like workers serving the Queen.

Oh, I thought you meant Beyonce.

Hey if that'll if you want to view it that way, go right ahead.

I won't stop you.

Golgra.

You can fight Golgra fun fact, and she is wickedly difficult.

I still can't beat her, and I'm like high eighties.

I tried fighting her.

I think it was like twice, and one time.

I the first time I got really close and I was like, oh, let me try it again.

And I did worse the second time, so I was like, okay, never mind, never mind.

So Gogra.

Interestingly, Gogre knows the white haired man.

She doesn't know him, know him, but she saw him come through.

He's killed many gesturals, the ones here managed to escape.

Golgra is gonna direct us to the legendary creature Skia, whom Lune is very excited to meet.

He'll take us across the sea because we don't have a ship.

She gives us a password.

The password is just get out of my way, yelled as loud as you can.

It's pretty good.

But to get there, yeah, to get there, to get the password, we have to participate in this tournament, this gestural combat tournament.

The Gestrols are big on fighting.

That's like their whole deal.

That's their life force.

They love to fight their spartans pretty much.

Yeah, so we've got to fight through three gesturals with really good battle music.

Oh bertrand big Hands, Dominique giant feet, and Matthew the Colossus, who is the smallest of them all so cute, and after them the Stranger, a strong newcomer and their current champion.

And it turns out it is cl Ah, my favorite.

She's an expeditioner that survived the beach.

She jumps down off of a high overpass.

She's bathing in the fame and glory that comes with raw strength and boisterous showmanship, and you know it's a reunion.

She's like, holy shit, I didn't know that you guys were alive.

They hug and the Gestrils are like, hey, what gives?

What gives?

We payed for a fight.

Well, gives a to baitch out that boa.

The pro strat is to pick myoo for this fight.

Whoever wins gets a special weapon.

Mile's weapon.

I admit I have moved on, but I used it almost constantly.

It starts you in her virtuoso stance, which is just a crazy thing to have because Miele has abilities that will keep her in virtuoso stance.

This is such a good weapon the way, like you should set her up.

For people who haven't played the game yet, you should try your best to set her up so she can be in virtuoso as much as possible, because she'll do what like to is it two damage?

Yeah?

So, and trust me, later in the game she like in virtuoso.

Holy shit, she will do major damage.

So try to set it up early.

Yeah, she whips ass.

It's great.

Speaking of mechanics, let's talk cl What do you think about cl?

She she's actually my favorite character.

Really, I found myself maybe falling a little bit in love with her.

Sorry, sorry, She's very gorgeous.

But also I just I liked her sort of dynamic, you know, because I think when you first get her, she uses like the dark ability, and so once I got her, I literally just had like Charlie's Angels set up.

I just had the three girls and went through a good chunk of the game with just the three of them.

Like I know, she can be tricky to master sil especially later in the game when I started struggling a little bit, I ended up having to pull her out because her defense is just really bad.

Yeah, but you, but it doesn't show up as really bad until probably closer to like Act three ish, or like near the end of Act two.

So for the most part, I was fine, But but yeah, I really like her as a character, and for this like little moment in battle, I think she's really good.

But she can be tough to you keep consistently powerful with everybody else.

She was my first playthrough, she was my least used character by far.

Now now she is in my party a lot.

She fights with cards, she uses throwing cards.

And rands me a gambit a little bit.

She even has a bit of a gambit five.

A little bit yeah, or like sets her from f F six a little bit.

But she's not like a She's not like a gambler.

Her and Lune both have the abilities that make me think of trading card games.

So with CL.

She deals in this marker called Foretel.

You have special abilities that will add like counters to your opponent, like one Foretel, two fortel, ten Foretel, and CL's abilities then also let her consume those for extra damage.

She also deals with counters of her own, called charges.

Different moves will get her three Sun charges, three Moon charges, and once you have one of each or more of each, you enter Twilight, which is a special state that just gives you buffed damage.

So that's the CL.

Get her to Twilight as soon as possible, as long as possible, and many if you do that, I've my cel right now.

I found a weapon that lets every Sun skill automatically apply ten fortel, so I'm just stacking fortel.

Once I'm in Twilight, she's just cleaning house.

Twilight lets you add even more fortele.

I think the cap is ten, and for Twilight it's twenty, even though like I've applied over thirty at this point, I don't I don't really know how it works.

CL is really good.

Yeah, yeah, and she's I think your first character to have the like, oh, she can do like you know, dark damage and some of the enemies, like right after a really week to it so, and with her like area attacks, she can just like clean house.

Like there was a certain point where I had it set up to where each of the my three party members just did like a full like area attack, and most of the time, like probably through the rest of Act one, it would just clear out any enemies I was fighting.

Yeah, Ciel her disposition, she's kind of she's kind of gregarious.

She's a little happy.

I'm not happy, go lucky, but she's jovial.

She doesn't take things too seriously until it's you know, until it's time to get serious.

She's not as boxy, she's all boxy.

Yeah, she's spunky, she's she's not as dour as lunaang Gustav tend to be.

Yeah, that's probably why I liked her so much.

So you win, you beat her.

She's part of the party now.

Gustav says, no time to lose, we gotta go.

I appreciate also just by the way they Gustav and Cil will have a little conversation.

I appreciate how this team doesn't need or feel the need to over explain everything.

You know, Gustav and c will be talking and they make an inside joke about something called Aqua Farm three uh, and Gustav will ask her like, yeah, what have you been up to and she just says, no, I don't.

I don't really want to talk about it, you know, And you unless you do all of her side stuff, you don't learn about it.

You know.

It's more realistic, you know.

It feels like less of a cop out to you know, because because especially with amateur writers, you see them feel the need to flex as much as they can and explain everything as a way to say like, look at me, like aren't my ideas really good?

Versus something like this where they don't over explain it and just let the world speak for itself.

It's a nuanced and mature thing to do.

And I don't know, I really liked it.

I really appreciate it.

And it's something I've noticed in like JRPGs, where some of them just talk a little bit too much.

Yeah, this this game has just the right amount of talking.

It's not if you ever played Golden Sun, like my issue with that is that game talks way too fricking much like I got annoyed at certain parts.

Not everyone needs to be an expositorily open book for the sake of crafting a character exactly, so you get to camp.

Everybody's giddy over the idea of meeting Ska.

My ale falls into another nightmare, the tale is it true?

We see the we see a white haired girl for the first time.

We learn her name in a moment is Alicia, and there's a familiar melody playing.

So this is where I made the note about color.

Consider the color.

It's important.

Color is what defines this world, this game, Lumiere clare obscure, both in the scope of visuals and the terminology.

Remember color, painting, gesturals, it's everywhere.

A world without color then suggests the inverse.

It suggests the world without versimilitude.

These nightmares are not necessarily reflect rooted and the reality of Lumiere and the continent as we know it.

Not saying that they're fictional, but this is not our reality.

Something is a miss here.

This doesn't get revealed until act three.

But there is a reason that these dreams and these characters are not of our realm.

M And it relates back to what you had said about the writing, like, they're not explaining much of anything.

It's just enough to be to have intrigued to it.

You know because like, like they'll ask Mael about the nightmares and she won't say much about it.

And probably it could just be because when you have dreams or nightmares, most of the time you don't recall the events clearly, and it's a good way of kind of masking doing that, like, you know, having to explain everything that's happening, you know, it just sort of allows you to let it sink in and be like, what could that mean?

But yeah, later in the game we will find out what they mean.

In this nightmare.

The white haired man appears and he approaches them and he speaks to the white haired girl.

He says, Alicia, I told you to stay home.

It's not good for you to see this.

Alicia points to myel and he continues.

Yes, yes, I understand it's her fault and she doesn't even know it, but you can't be here.

Then he speaks to my own, what's my fault?

What is this?

You should never have common You're only going to make things worse for everyone.

Now take your.

Friends and go home.

Let them spend their final year in peace.

This is our only warning.

So she wakes up and she's in complete shock.

Everybody's trying to calm her down.

Lunae is Lunae is a bit cold and you know, uh, pragmatic.

She wants to get as much info out of her as possible, whereas Gustav is like, she's she needs to be alone, she needs to relax a little bit.

I like that.

The music here is the exact same track that was used with Gustav's breakdown when he like sat down, was gonna blow his brains out.

It is Yeah, yeah, that's serene like church like music.

It's nice, yeah, nice touch.

Well, after that we get to Ska's nest.

Beautiful.

This is really beautifully designed.

There's like bioluminescence from the flora everywhere.

Yeah yeah.

In purple, yeah, I love.

I love a good purple bisexual lighting and but seeing seeing just those like royal purple like kind of mushrooms sort of lightly filling up this like darkened cave.

Ah.

I always love that.

I mean, purple is my favorite color.

So it's the more I see of it, the happier I am.

I go back and forth between favorite colors that use.

Mine needs to be purple, I think now I would say pink or green.

We're both interesting.

Great nineties commed like purple, but it's like I lean more to like the blue side of purple.

Sure in the red side your indigoes, Yeah, Purple Mountain Majesties.

Yeah.

Is it weird to have a favorite crayon that was my favorite crayon as a kid.

Purple Mountain Majesties.

Yeah, I love saying it.

It's it's it sounds so good they put it in a song.

Sure.

Oh, we don't want to skip over this fantastic bit of like early final Fantasy comedy here.

Before we get into leaves the nest, we have to give the password, right, so there is a Gestrol standing guard, you know.

The the lore reason is that Eska is so strong he might accidentally eat people that go in, so you have to prove yourself at Colgris.

This does not track with the Ska that we know, but you know whatever, don't think too hard about So.

They're treating him like he's Lenny from of Mice and Men.

Right, or Sloth from a a fucking full metal alchemist.

I guess sure.

So Gustav is the one that gets coaxed into yelling the password.

He doesn't really want to do it.

He walks up to the Nevron rubbing his neck and he's like, uh, hey.

Hey, come, don't be shy.

So he screams the password, get out of my way, jeez, and the Nevron is like, whoa, you don't have to be so rude about it, geez, and he's like, no, no, no, I'm so sorry.

Like they said that we have to yell at as loud as they can.

And then never the gesturl is like, you know, they told me we had a password, but nobody told me what it was.

You know, whatever, just go through.

Yeah, she's just fucking with you.

And it's so funny, and everybody's looking at Gustav like wow, good one, dude.

That is a very classic comedy trope of like being roped into doing something that you didn't have to do, you do it, and then everyone's like, bro, why'd you do that?

And you're like, wo me.

He tries to apologize and Mael is like, gesturals are dumb as shit.

He'll forget in a literal minute.

I think he does actually, so, uh, you know, you get into the nest, beautiful nest.

Mael and c l are getting deja vu for some reason.

That's interesting and this is where we meet the big Lug.

He flies in cannonballs into his water.

He's wooing, he's woeing.

This is Eskia.

Mm hmm, all right, what did you think of Skia?

Oh?

He's great and favorite, he's a good boy.

He reminds me of oh what what's the name of the dog?

And Pickman four?

The dog and what Pickment four?

Yea, hold on?

Never played Pickman four.

I was you know, I was a little nervous about this at first, and I realized I'm being a little cynical SKA.

I was really hesitant of Ska because it's it's approaching this aesthetic that I really find kind of grating and gross of the like you know, heck and doggo oo wu good cozy sunamon bean shaped friend, you know that kind of millennial thing.

Is it that he's bordering on big the cat?

No, look, that's more of like a lovable moron kind of a deal.

I'm lovables in question marks.

But I.

Don't know how to I don't know how to explain it better than like, you know, the oo wu hecan dogo like friend shaped small cinnamon roll kind of like infantilization of I don't know, I'm being cynical.

Sga is not that though, I.

Think I get what you're trying to say that, you know, like the good boy trope.

Yeah, he's he's not that.

He is how do you even describe him?

He's he's sort of looks like a.

Big sack with legs, and and he has like it's like a it's like a it almost looks like a ceremonial mask for a face.

Yes, very much so.

Yeah, yeah, it has like a wooden carved out thing like I don't know, it almost looks like something you'd see in like I don't know, like Eco or something.

I And and his head is small, like his body is huge.

His legs and arms are tiny, his head is small.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, he's got a real tiny and then a stupidly long scarf that like goes all the way down to like his where his belly button would be.

And the interesting thing about about him, well, one of the interesting things to me is the way that he talks.

He has such a specific cadence, and I think it comes from the fact that well, I don't know if you know this this is true of the of the voice actor, but he speaks English like somebody whose first language is not English.

He's got a very distinct cadence.

Would you please help us.

There's a lot of Unicara, but I'm not that I will make Flory.

Who's Flory one of my.

Rocks, Maxine Cazorla, that's the voice actor.

Yeah, I hope I pronounced that right.

Well, they did a fantastic job, very convincing.

I like it.

It would be tough.

Apparently not only did they voice Esque, they also mocapped.

Some of the characters in the game.

Oh cool.

Yeah, I wouldn't even be able to do an impression.

He is such a unique and distinct way of talking.

Well, hopefully you put a clip in so people can understand how he sounds.

Yes, hopefully my editor did.

Yes, editor, please get on that, or I'll dock your pay I edit this show.

Everybody, don't worry.

Can you dock from zero dollars?

It's interesting sk seems to recognize us, specifically cl who he calls my terrible swimmer friend.

Nobody knows how he knows this.

He will help us swim across the ocean as long as we get his rock Floory back Froggy, his Froggy back right exactly.

He tells us it was stolen by his arch nemesis, the.

One whose every step shakes the foundation of the world, the one known as.

Who, it turns out, is his neighbor.

Yeah, and what and what does this dastardly Francois look like?

Rick tell me.

I mean, he kind of just looks like a giant turtle.

He's just like not even a turtle, just a shell of a turtle.

Yeah, yeah, a turtle shell that right.

Yeah, he's he's a cranky old turtle too.

He just basically literally tells you to get off his line.

Stop sending hooligans over air, stop being a meaning they're nice shoe ones.

I kicked them on your side of the cats.

They've done off my dog.

Yeah, is Grandpa Simpson.

It's they they have a frenemy relationship, right, Like they live next door to each other, and you know, Ska is like stop being a mini and he's like, get these kids out of here, and we end up having to fight him, you know, to get Flory the rock back.

So funny it cracked me up because you know, you don't You're not going into this fight taking it seriously, right, You're not respecting the Francois, which will be your downfall as it was mine.

He kicks your ass, and the.

Game literally tells you, right, it sets it up as a joke.

It he rotates, he doesn't, He barely moves because he's a rock, you know, And it says Francois uses the strongest ice attack ever, and you're thinking, like, okay, you know this is gonna be like one of those joke fights.

No, it one shots you.

Yeah, like it like at this point, the way the light heartedness gave me almost like earth Bound vibes, but like earth Bound, it kind of draws you in with that and then throws you something fucking crazy, you know.

Yeah, and this does exactly that.

Yeah, it's like the Shaungest ice attack.

You're like, oh shit, fucky, everybody's dead.

What happened?

Yeah?

I got party wiped my first time.

Yeah.

Yeah, you beat him and he gives you, you know, gives you the rock.

It turned well, no, he doesn't.

It turns out he doesn't have Francois.

He was just putting Ska on and giving us a fake and is like he got me good, got his ass.

Flori Flory is over at or around the Stoneway cliffs all the way to the north, just aim for the big thirty three mm hm.

So it turns out that's that's where we're going, he says.

He says something interesting too.

This is the first mention we get of this person.

He offers to help us find the stone so he can fly again.

These stones give him power, strength, you know, the in game mechanics you get new abilities, you get to fly, break coral, dive underwater.

For him, they just make him strong, you know.

But he says he misses flying.

He used to do it all the time with his best friend Verso, hmmm, who's that.

So that's where we're going.

We're going to Stone Stone Wave cliffs.

Mile's nightmares continue.

They are now featuring another younger man, the same young man that we saw before, and now a fire.

We're seeing fires in a manner of some sort.

In one of them, there's this really cool quote in which the masked girl, who is like being comforted by the white haired man, says the following in a distorted voice.

Him those who can see both and free forgotten and thus absorbed fresh down in that playground, while we live in shutters, swimming in ink, we are but a fragile dream.

While that distorted voice is playing, there's a music box the version of Alicia's theme playing, which just gives us such a nice contrast to hear something so simple and sweet and innocent next to like this distorted, otherworldly, ghastly sort of voice.

You know, I loved it.

Yeah, so much about this game is so goddamn good.

Yeah, it's all so like meticulously like laid out, you know.

You can you can feel like the passion they had for the game just kind of radiating off of it.

We're on the way to stone Wave Cliffs to find Flory.

We can see remnants of old Lumiere.

We can see apartments destructed apartments.

That is a ferris wheel.

See a big ferris wheel.

Cel kind of like jokes with Gustav.

You know, we said that cl is kind of the spunky kind of you know, jokes her and she's like talking to him like, oh, you want to go on a date, And we kind of learned that Gustav's a little bit awkward and when he feels awkward or uncomfortable, he immediately deflects to like history like he's like, no, actually, what I think that was is the Wheel from Expedition fifty and this is exactly what they did and how they did it, and he's like, he's a bit of a door.

That reminds it.

It completely off topic, but it reminds me of like the new season The King of the Hill.

There's an episode where uh like, Hank has to to lie for Kahn and he's trying to lie to Peggy and she's like, I know you're lying, and he's like, how can you tell.

She's like, because every time you lie, you take off your glasses and wipe them on your shirt.

He's like, I don't know what you mean, and then immediately starts doing what an amazing show?

I haven't I haven't watched it because I haven't seen the whole series of the original I did see well, one, the CON's voice is very distracting.

It sounds so strange.

But two I did see a great little what do you call it, like a couple of frames where Bobby is talking to Hank and he's like, you know, beers, you know, they tell the experience, they tell a story, and Hank is like, a beer doesn't need to tell a story, It just needs a fridge to keep it cold.

It's like, amen, Oh, yeah, you would love the.

New season because they haven't missed a beat.

I've heard everybody is saying it's a genuine ten out of ten.

Yeah, because it was a revival that made sense.

You know.

You can tell that Mike Judge did it because he wanted to do it.

And oh, it's so good.

I do feel a little bad about the whole John Redcorn situation.

Rip.

Oh, that whole thing is rough.

That whole thing is really rough.

Fucking horrible, horrible hate crime to have happened.

Yeah, very sad.

So remember when we said Ska is like the most powerful being in the universe.

We kind of see that happen here.

One of those giant foreskin monsters comes up again, and uh, Ska, who's saying that he's not powerful enough to swim us on his back, just fucking beams that thing in the chest and it just instantly goes down.

It's so good.

It's so good.

Yeah, dude, powerful but lazy, you know, just like Sloth or who was it that you said.

I don't think I was familiar with him, Big the Cat.

No, No, I think the Cat is not a fierce monster, but he is strong though is he.

Yeah, I guess he was the power in Sonic Heroes.

Well, yeah, and in Sonic Adventure there's a point where you have to like lift a car to go into the sewer, and he just yeats that thing up like it's nothing.

It's like, oh, but no, I who's the other character?

I said, I don't remember.

Yeah, I don't remember either.

Who cares?

So we're going through here, we see the young boy again.

The shadow of the young boy says, not voiced by the way, so I have to read it.

Sorry, everybody, I'll do my best reading.

Remember, I am eligible for hire.

I'm not sag, but you can hire me.

My rates are low because I'm an amateur.

He says, it's you.

You're not from here.

This place was made to bring joy, not pain.

Yet pain is everywhere, like the creatures of darkness at the end of this path.

It is but one of her many creations.

You ask him, why is the paintress doing this?

And he says, I don't know.

It's not like her.

She was my best friend, but she outgrew us.

Totally recontextualized on a second play through, and it's a great meditation from a child on the principal theme of this game.

You know this.

This is difficult to say without spoiling, but if you know, you know, if you don't just tuck this away, this escape, This is an escape, a simple pleasure.

This was the last fashion of joy.

But even it is not free from the ink splatter pun intended of grief.

Even this grief is everywhere.

It has a tendency to see into the crevices and the cracks, even despite your best effort.

It's really cool.

Can't say more because it would spoil a lot of the game exactly.

There's a shrine to the Paintress here.

Do you notice that?

No, I didn't, I must have missed it.

Yeah, it looks like it looks like someone just made a makeshift little worship shrine.

They have a little back and forth about it.

Gustav says, the Paintress destroyed our world, and someone built her a shrine Lune.

The weak minded turned to whatever they can to explain the unknown.

Cl When you're at the mercy of a power you don't understand, you might try anything.

Gee, what's that analegory for?

Yeah?

I know, I know, right, but in a way I can, I can I understand where they're coming from, you know where probably some of them were thinking, oh, maybe if we you know, like worship and hail to the paintress, maybe she will spare us.

I could see why somebody would think that.

You know.

It also shows their unique approaches to uh, I don't know, to the world, to grief.

You know.

Luney sees it as the weak minded turning to whatever they can the opiate of the masses, Right, that's yeah, lune sort of thing.

You know, Steel will whereas cl when you're at the mercy of something you don't understand, you might try anything.

Little bit of a spoiler, but it's not plot related.

You could skip forward about thirty seconds if you want.

This is interesting because cl had a suicide attempt previously, she tried to kill herself, and here she's saying, when you've got your back to the wall, whenever you're standing at the edge of a skyscraper and the flames behind you are getting so intense, you know you will try anything you jump, paraphrasing David Foster Wallace, my favorite author.

Did you guys know that Have I mentioned him before?

You know, paraphrasing him.

But when the fire gets too intense.

You jump not because you want to, but because the alternative is so horrifying.

And that's kind of CL's approach here too.

I think it's more it's more profound than it lets on.

It's one of those things that seems incredibly simple, but that's why it's profound, you know what I mean?

Do guys just sound like a sohole saying that?

No?

No, but I think it also like contextually, as you said, it fits with her character because she's she can have empathy for these people doing this, you know, totally, whereas Lune, you know, she's taken any sort of like empathy or human emotion kind of out of it, like she was, you know, kind of taught to not you know, think about it that way.

Right, we get to a fight, we're doing a boss lamp Master.

Oh yeah, all the lights, yeah you like lamp Master.

Yeah.

I think it looks neat.

Yeah, it looks kind of like a cross between a Pokemon and a dark Souls, you know, just just all all the dark souls.

Yeah, Poka souls.

I almost said dark in mind, but I was like, oh, that's that doesn't sound dark.

I'man Oh no, a cool gimmick, you know you can shoot down his lanterns.

His lanterns make a little pattern and you can use your free shot ability to take it down.

Very dark souls designed to two phases.

I think that's what you have to do.

Oh do you have Is it required?

I think so, because I think if you try to attack him not doing that, it just it doesn't do much damage.

Okay, it's that or or it might be a bossome thinking of later that has like a light source that you have to destroy before you can actually attack him.

It might be a boss later in the game.

It's telegraphed pretty strongly, so like I think you would know to do it.

Yeah, after the first phase it falls into the water and Mile says easier than expected, Hey don't jinx saus and I need to invite misfortune, and then immediately cut to the It's Always Sunny title card.

They invited misfortune because this is the gang.

The gang goes on an expedition.

Yeah, yeah, the gang invites men's fortune exactly.

Yeah, but you take it.

It's another fight.

You take him down.

That's where you get Flory.

So SKA, he's got Flory.

He hops into the water.

He's happy.

Lune Ay and cl jumped down on top of him.

From the cliff, they can finally set sail to the paintress and my own Gustave.

They hang back for just a minute.

She says, you want to throw one more rock, just for old time's sake.

Gustav throws rocks, you know, as a meditative activity.

They hang back.

I want to throw a couple more rocks, you know.

They finally won, and that's when the familiar knocking of the white haired Man's cane can be heard.

And I love this, dude.

I love how this is shot.

The knocking.

It's it's ticking down like a clock.

Yeah, and and how apropos that is.

The scenes cut back and forth, like from black to the white haired man, cut the black to my own Gustav, just back and forth and mid sentence like it's not cinematic.

Well, you know, like I always say, it's not about the rock, It's more about the spears.

Gustav right through the chest, immediate cut to black.

It comes back.

Myles's face is just covered in blood.

Shocking, if you you know, maybe weren't paying attention to the to the gores.

So far, genuinely was not expecting this to happen at all.

Yeah, Like it's it's pretty intense and but intense and like just the right way to I think, really show that, like to show the stakes and show that like, oh, the the enemy is powerful.

Yeah, totally.

I'm not gonna say this every time, because it comes up quite a few more times and I harped on it last time.

Enough.

I love this whole scene, all of this, all of this for the next few minutes.

It's great, voice acted great, it's shot blocked great.

This is a case though, of extremely light bright's casting long shadows, because it becomes so obvious that the technology cannot keep up with the facial expressions of the actors, particularly with Maeu in the eyes and the brows in the cheeks.

It's not as expressive as I know Jennifer English's being, It's not as expressive as I know Andy Serkis's being, or Charlie Cox's being.

That's again, that's just an inherent con of pursuing hyperrealistic graphics.

It's not a you know, it's not a con against video games.

That is one way that theater and film just have a little bit of an advantage.

And that's okay, you know, but.

And also this is more of like a independent kind of production as well.

So I think even if there was that technology that could more accurately represent their faces, right, they probably just didn't have the resources to get that technology to use it in the game.

Well, you know, yeah, you're right that being said, though, you know, just coming off of Death Stranding, I don't remember Death Stranding being like that much better in that respect.

I don't know.

Have you played it?

I mean, I was gonna use the play Death Stranding yet, I've been.

I've been.

It's it's sitting in the backlog.

It's a mess, but it's a lot of fun.

I was thinking, I thought, I've heard so many different opinions.

I'm like, game, it's crazy.

I thought back to Detroit Become Human and like, I vaguely remember that being a little better.

But also so much of the acting there is meant to be like robotic because they're androids, you know, so I don't even know it.

And also it's it's David Cage.

I think the way he portrays emotion can be a little uh if he at.

Times fucking David Cage, dude, I cannot I.

Love him like I love Heavy Rain to death, like for the kind of wacky goofiness that it can be, but also the trip.

Become Human is wacky and goofy in its own way.

But it's like I'm able to like enjoy that, probably like in an ironic kind of a sense, you know.

Listeners, we did a whole three part analysis of Detroit.

I don't like that game.

I think it's writing is really bad.

That series was a lot of fun, a ton of fun.

I watched a friend of mine play through the whole thing, and that was an experience, especially that like twist near the end of the game.

I'm sure you know the one I'm talking about.

I'm a little worried.

I don't know.

I don't want to spoil it for people, but like because I didn't know when it happened, but I legitimately was like, this is the dumbest thing they could have done.

When the prompt came up that gave you the option to sing, I was I fucking through the controller.

Oh so good, let's get let's get back to it.

This is I mean, this is kind of epic.

Gustav has a hole through his body and he's still he's not letting go.

He's going to fight the man and he's asking him like we should be on the same side, why are you doing this?

And you get into a fight with him.

For a moment, I just wrote my own randomly in the middle of a Okay, that's weird.

For a moment, it looks like you might have won, right, Gustav gets all of his energy, fucking sends the white haired man into the side of the cliff, just beams him in their dragon ball z style.

Gustav's prosthetic arm falls off because you overdid it, but the man spears Gustav once again, and that's it.

He's dead.

They don't play them character themes and moments like this for survivors.

It's really emotional.

Ciel and Luney, by the way, aren't able to fly up because down in the water like they're on Eska.

The lamp Master has come back and presumably they're taking care of that really emotional scene.

Yeah, and honestly, I this might be a bit of a spoiler for later, but I genuinely didn't expect Gustave to be like dead for the rest of the game.

I thought they were going to find some way to bring him back or do something with that.

But no, he's gone.

He doesn't come back.

And it's telegraphed, you know, his skill tree is completely locked out.

I am really glad that they didn't bring him back.

I've been vocal about this before, so I don't want to be a parody of myself, but I think it's so cowardly when character deaths are hand waved away just for the sake of making the audience happy.

You know.

No, I completely agree.

I think it's No.

I think it's a good thing that they did that, especially because it's a character that they used to like advertise the game, you know, and I was like, oh, he's got plot armor, they'll do something to you know, he'll be fine.

But no, he's not fine at all.

They psycho us the whole Janet Lee thing with that, and I and I think that was great, Like that was an amazing move.

Now, I will say I don't know if I'm prepared to argue this as if I believe it, but there is an argument to be made that they did resurrect Gustav.

And this is a spoiler only for like five minutes from now, So I'm just gonna say it because he's immediately replaced with another kind of serious white guy lead that uses a similar weapon and gets all of Gustav's lumina points, so functionally they kind of do resurrect him, kind of.

But also I think that like the personality wise, they are distinct enough to be different characters.

That's true.

He is also like a brother figure.

Yeah, intentionally chosen words to Mao just like Gustav.

Yeah for sure, But I still feel like they are just different enough.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm I agree more with you than I do with that.

I just you know, I wanted to play Devil's advocate, you know what I mean.

That's okay, it's okay.

I see those horns.

The white haired man says something interesting to to myl.

You won't yet understand, but this is a kindness, not the crew.

And this is where even more questions are brought to us.

He attempts to knock myle down.

But what happens is she goes into this out of body experience, like her nightmares, black and white everything.

She hears a man and a woman arguing about letting her come along.

You hear them say, my sweet child, what you were supposed to stay home?

I told you not to worry.

What are you saying?

You must go home now?

This does not involve you.

This seems to surprise the white haired man, but back in reality there goes gravity.

He says, this won't make sense to you now, but we both want what's best for our families.

I'm sorry you're caught in the middle, but I did try to warn you.

And he tries to attack her, but that attack is blocked by the younger man who just jumps in that we saw from Myles's dreams, the guy with the longish hair and the white streak, voiced by Ben Starr.

There's your star power, everybody's favorite.

A lot of folks said that they saw Gustav's death coming because they were like, Ben Starr is not here, He's probably going to show up soon, and then when it happened, they're like, oh, okay, makes all the sense of the world.

Yeah, well, it's interesting because Gustave I remember when the game was coming out, Everyone's like, he looks a lot like named Robert Pattinson.

Yeah, which led to like a rumor that he was involved with the game's production or he was going to be.

I don't know how true that is.

It's possible that maybe they wanted him, but maybe they just couldn't get him for whatever reason.

So and I think it probably would have been even like more impactful if they actually did get Pattinson and it's like, oh, this big star, but they only got him for just like this a little bit of the game.

Hmm, Yeah, I could I could see that.

Yeah, I should look into that.

So this new white haired no, this this new fella from Mile's dreams.

He blocks the attack on my ole.

The white haired man says, stay out of this.

You chose to walk away.

You don't get to come back now and interfere.

He've lived more than a lifetime.

He's turned to that a a lifetime, a lifetime with my family torn apart.

No, I want my family back.

The white haired man just wants his family back.

This newcomer says, says in retort, it's not your family, but she is.

He points to Alicia, the white haired girl on the cliff.

Yeah, first go through.

None of this makes sense, not at all, just family drama.

Right, recontextualize though, this works great, Like you know exactly what's going on and it's perfect, like it's it's really well, this game is this game is extremely good about recontextualizing things on a second play through.

It's great.

Mm hmm.

Yeah.

That's the power of like really good storytelling where it kind of encourages you to go do it a second time because then you see how all the pieces kind of line up.

You know, you get that initial experience of not knowing what the heck's going on, and then when you get the second one where you know what the heck is going on and it doesn't devalue experiencing the story again, which can be hard to do.

Right, So, this is verso.

Verso means reverse back or reverse recto.

Verso describes the left and right of paper.

Think also, what reverse implies reverse is sort of like a reflection, an imitation, and that's going to apply to this character extremely as we move forward.

This is also maybe a mild spoiler maybe, but I really like when characters in games and in fiction lie to you or obfuscate the truth for their own purposes.

He keeps the intrigue there, So tell us about Verso, thrac, what'd you think of Verso?

I don't know.

In some ways I kind of preferred Gustav as a character.

I don't know, maybe it's just because we didn't get as much of him, so I was kind of like hoping to see his character arc get resolved, but it never does get resolved, and instead it feels like Verso is just for most of the game, feels like just the placeholder instead, you know, Like, in my opinion, I don't think he gets really interesting as a character until much later in the game.

Yeah, but at first he's okay, I don't know.

Some about him just like stuck out to me, you know, like he didn't fit properly with the rest of the team.

But thinking about it, that might have been intentional.

It takes a while for his personality to come through.

Yes, yeah, very much a sheltered off kind of person from that like.

Me, he was.

He was my second least used character my first play through.

Now on my replay through, he is like decimating everything he is.

He is a champ.

Yeah in Battle, I don't think I ever used him unless I had to.

M If you replay it, I would be interested to hear because he can become extremely useful.

He his gimmick.

He uses something called perfection like the nineties, like the hit nineties board game.

I was like, wait, what the heck are you talking about.

Perfection is a letter grade that ranges from D all the way up to S, and when you deal damage, your perfection rises.

When you take damage, it lowers.

Perfection will change how strong your abilities are and sometimes how much they cost.

So like some abilities might say, you know, if at rank C increase damage, if at rank s this skill instead of costing nine, only costs five.

So again it's in your best interest.

Because this games battle system is like focused on deal high number damage, is in your best interest to get that damage or to get that perfection as high as possible and not take any damage.

So it remains there.

It's pretty great.

I man, and he here's something interesting.

Verso has the light affinity.

Mm hmmm.

He attacks with light opposite to Ceo.

Well yeah, actually it's more opposite to something else that we find later.

But you know, so we all sit down and talk with Verso.

Everybody at first is pretty mistrustful of him because you know, he didn't save Gustave.

He's working with the villain.

What the hell is going on?

He tells us.

If you want to reach the monolith, best path is through the quarium north.

And where did you get that expedition uniform.

Stretch way to say thank you.

I'm sorry I couldn't say good friend.

I'm wearing an expedition uniform because I too, I'm an expedition man.

What what do you mean You're an I've never seen you before.

First expedition, Expedition ZERA, the Expedition ZERA.

The very first expedition.

Hmmm.

Well, if that's the case, he should be dead by now.

So why isn't he old?

He answers, I don't know.

Some of us just stopped aging one day.

It'll make sense soon.

This is where he tells us that the white haired man's name is Renoir, and he was Expedition zero's commander.

He is immortal, and he's stopping everybody that goes for the Paintress because taking care of her would remove his immortality and he would die.

Pretty standard villain stuff, right, Yeah, makes perfect sense to me.

So he asks to join our expedition.

He wants to take down Renoir and the Paintress.

He's on our side, and that takes us into Act too Verso it's quite a long act too.

What Act two?

Yeah, yeah, a little bit, a little bit, but it's good.

There's a lot of good stuff in here.

Oh yeah, it's it's basically the meat of the game, you know.

Mm hmm.

I've saw you know, I saw some folks saying that when they saw Act one was titled Gustave, that that was a spoiler that he was going to die.

I don't.

I don't see how that tracks.

I didn't think that at all.

No, me neither.

But anyway, Act too is Versa, So I guess Versa is gonna die at the end of Act two.

I think it's just people want to be clever.

Yeah, they're like, oh I knew that was coming.

It's like you can just say you didn't.

It's okay.

It's okay to be wrong.

Yeah, it's it's okay to let it's okay to let like a piece of media surprise you.

That's okay that At the camp, this is where the relationship meter is revealed.

Here is where Versa and Ska.

This is Remember Ska said that Versa was his best friend.

They know each other very much.

You can talk to Ska and he asks them, uh.

So, how did these expeditions convince you to leave O Cave?

They're all so nice?

Well, they're super nice.

One died.

But yeah, they're so cool too.

You can make some friends too.

It's been a long time since you made new you and friends.

Oh, it's pretty fu He's such a sweetheart.

Yeah, it's really good.

There's a line here.

I'm gonna combine this with a line that comes later.

Versa will try to comfort my Ole because Miele is still in shock that Gustav has gone.

Yeah, like her, like her one, like her last true, like connection to the world, basically.

Right, And speaking of that, I mean, she says, I don't need condolences.

I've lost so many families now because she was an orphan.

Remember her parents died when she was very young.

Yeah, what I mean.

That's a gut punch of a line there, but even more so on a replay when you get her full background and the line that I'm gonna pull from a little bit later, they're they're having another camp conversation.

At a later time, Verso says to myel about condolences.

He was like, you know, you're right.

We offer them because we don't know what else to say, but there's no comfort there.

All we can do is carry them with us.

I feel that so deeply.

Yeah, I mean, you always could just hug emuji.

Well, that's that's exactly when I put this line down.

That's exactly what when I jumped into the discord.

There's there's something about condolences that does feel more like an obligated act than genuine feeling.

You know what I mean.

You know, when we say my condolence is we've been conditioned now to you know, heart react on Facebook and say I'm so sorry for your loss.

But what does it actually mean?

Are we do we genuinely mean this or are we just signaling to the recipient and to everybody that you know, I know this is the polite thing to do.

Well, it's the issue where sometimes I think people are more concerned about comforting themselves than the other person, because like, you see something like that, and if you don't say something or don't acknowledge it, you feel like you're like a bad person because of that.

And so people will offer their condolences or thoughts and prayers or whatever to just make themselves feel better, and not necessarily because they genuinely care about the other person.

Yeah.

I don't think that's.

Always the case though, because, as I would say to anybody, it's like, well, what if you did something like that and then you got nothing, like no reaction out of it, right, you would probably be like, what the fuck's go?

What?

Like?

You probably be more upset about that, I think, And.

It's because it's because it's ingrained in us, right, Like, like this is something that I said in that conversation in the discord, I wouldn't be pissed at somebody or call somebody out for doing this because it's been ingrained in us to the point where that's just how you do it.

You know.

It's like in America, if you say, hey, how's it going to somebody, you know that you don't actually care.

And two if that you're just saying it to you, it's a friendly greeting.

And too if that person were to say back to you, not so good lately, Actually I'm really I'm not doing well.

That's disarming, that's alarming, that's uncomfortable.

You know, you don't want that.

You just want the yeah, good you you know, because it's it's functionally, it's just a greeting.

That's kind of like what it is here.

And I agree with you, it can be pacifying, like self soothing in that way.

Versu's line that he says after that, you know, we offer them because we don't know what else to say, but there's no comfort there.

All we can do is carry them with us.

That kind of works two ways too, write.

You know, if you receive the condolence, it doesn't help you.

All you do is carry that weight with you.

Then you're carrying the weight of Now I'm just now I know what happened.

Now I'm thinking about what happened.

Yeah, the person giving the condolence would do better to carry it with them, right, They carry that sadness and maybe use it in a more productive way.

I forget who said this in the in the server, but you know, being more personal about it, that really that's really difficult.

If you need anything, let me know, right yeah.

Yeah, But but I would also argue, like if you don't want condolences, then you wouldn't like say that thing to get them, you know what I mean?

Right, Like that's another thing where it's like like I think it was like I saw a threat on like Blue Sky or whatever where someone was like, you know, I spent all this time putting like saying this like you know, thoughtful thing, and then all I get are just these reactions and nothing else.

And it's like, well, you went out of your way to type it, so clearly you wanted something you did, right, You wanted a reaction out of it, right, which is fair.

Yeah, I feel like, but I feel like if you are like wanting a reaction, it can be difficult to then judge whatever reaction you get back, especially if it's like, oh, you're telling somebody like, hey, like this, you know, relative of mind just passed or whatever, right like, and then if you're getting mad at how somebody reacts to that.

I feel like that just it makes it come off performative, sure, you know, and it's like, what do you just want everybody to be like sympathetic to your cause?

You know what I mean.

It's just people handle like grief and all of that just in very very different ways.

But I do agree with that one person that discord you said it's probably better just to be like, you know, hey, if there's anything I can do, like, you know, let me know.

That gets into the social media ification of it all too, right, Like, yeah, you don't post about your cat dying if you don't want people to say I'm sorry.

Yeah, that's implicitly what's going on.

There Very very few people I think, genuinely post stuff like that because they want to let everybody know, you know.

So you see that sometimes with like small families on Facebook that have like twelve friends and it's just their family.

That makes sense.

But for somebody like me, if I were to post on Instagram that my cat died, that's yeah, I've you know, I don't have a ton of followers, but like what north of seven hundred, that's me looking for people to say, I'm really sorry to hear that.

Yeah, it's just and I'm not saying that's good or bad.

I don't think I am.

That's just kind of in the social agreement of using social media, which is a bigger conversation than I think we have time to get into.

But yeah, we could go into all that, like you know, social media stuff, but you know that that might end up being longer than this podcast.

Yeah, let's go a little bit further, just a bit.

Yeah.

Uh So we are moving forward to get to the Paintress.

We're going to go through the forgotten battlefield.

Many this this is an insane amount of corpses, just so many mountains and hills of dead former partners expedition members.

Yeah, this was I think of all the areas, it was probably my favorite, just in terms of like how striking it was.

You know, like just those those hues of orange just to kind of show more of like a sunset kind of look.

And what's interesting is that it's not like gory or bloody or anything like that.

It's not like gross at all.

It's just like just as you said, just piles of bodies everywhere, just kind of like showing how many times this expedition has been tried and failed.

You know, I feel like that's really where it sets in, especially with everything that had just happened prior.

It kind of even sets in that's like, oh, you know, there is there is a chance you may not survive this.

Oh yeah, yeah.

We are reminded of death at every turn, and this death is old.

You're right, it's not bloody.

No, this has been here, This has been going on for a long time, and this amount of corpses really weighs on my ol.

She I mean, she has a mini little freak out here and she's saying, you know, everywhere we go is death, death, death, which is fascinating because the player on your first time through will assume that you know, she's sixteen, this is tough for her, which is true.

Ye, but comma, but there is another reason that subconsciously so much death is weighing on her.

And you know, again spoilers, so we can't talk about it.

But this is just another way that they're recontextualizing things in a very nuanced way.

That is, it just makes this really worth a replay.

Yeah, you don't have much time to reflect though, because the never on what killed all your past comrades, the Duellist is here to fuck shit up.

He jumps down and does this crazy attack on you with with like a bass drop, like a dubstep bass drop as you hit you.

Yeah, and you land in this like this is really grimy.

You land in a pool of muck blood, which is just fucking metal as shit, and you fight the Duelist, which is like a fan favorite boss of this game, very dark Souls.

Yeah, yeah, that's definitely where.

Yeah he he feels like he's ripped out of a from Soft game.

Oh yeah, and he's challenging.

He's another two phaser.

He gets two phases.

That makes me think of you know that it's always sunny.

Episode two wars fighting twos.

I've been rewatching.

It's always sunny and it's so.

Good, perfect show.

Yeah, this this fight can be tough.

Is this the first fight where multiple defensive maneuvers like dodging and parrying plus jumping or required?

It feels it feels like it.

I mean, I'm sure there have been other instances where they happen, because I know up to this point, I would try to like go into like the little side areas, even the ones I would say danger, and I'm like, oh, what's so bad?

And then you fight you see like a like a side boss or whatever, and you're like, oh, let me see if I could do it, And they do one hit and it does no damage, and you're like, oh, I'm fucked right.

Yep.

I had that moment with a sprung very recently, the Nevron that's like in the water.

Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah.

That fight took me about a half hour.

But thankfully those attacks are very easy to get down to a rhythm.

Yeah.

Du at least is sick.

That's the Nevron that Versus has killed everybody else.

And then afterwards he's like, well that wasn't so bad.

Huh.

Yeah, pretty good.

Yeah, before they leave the gang, bury's Gustav's lopped off arm in this sunlit, serene field, under the watch of a red tree, red leaves everywhere, beautiful, verdant, sunlit little meadow.

They bury the arm and they each give their little goodbyes.

They say it out loud, kind of to themselves, a nice little send off for our guy.

They waited till they found a place that they felt was safe to give him his party burial, you know, and probably like seeing all of those dead bodies just kind of strewn about in the forgotten battlefield, probably made them think that we need to do something proper for him.

We don't want to add him to the pile.

Absolutely, that that would be so disrespectful to his memory, exactly honor.

Not that it would not that it's not disrespectful to all of those other folks, but you know, they didn't have the chance to be dignified and sent off in such a sweet way.

Yeah, this is where Versa gives that condolence.

Is line the camp meeting, like band meeting, just camp meeting.

Before they get to the paintress.

And maybe this is where we'll stop after introducing this character.

They're going to recruit Verso's friend Minoco.

Minoko lives at Monoco Station.

He's got his own station.

He's a radio DJ.

Yeah, this is like a snowy area.

It's really nice too, Like cel gets really excited about seeing snow, which I guess they don't get in air very much ever, Yeah, I guess not.

I mean, with how fucked up everything is, I imagine the weather is probably just as like messed up, you know, like it even like it even looks like it doesn't rain that much.

Yeah, that's true.

I didn't really think of the environmental implications of like a fucked up world like this.

I mean, yeah, like if you looked out your window and saw like those like, you know, crazy things in the sky, you're probably not thinking to yourself, Oh, it looks like it's going to rain today.

Yeah, probably not.

I would probably be worried about getting zapped out of existence.

Yes, next year exactly.

Monoco Station, it looks I mean it looks like a deserted, dilapidated train station, kind of in the deconstructed tim Burton sort of way, to like trains are sort of sticking out of the ground, tracks are twisting through the air, there's a final Fantasy seven nod up around here somewhere.

If you like, look at the trains just right, it looks like the meteor.

Oh oh interesting, it's kind of interesting.

But we meet our final character, Monoco, who jumps down challenge is gonna challenge us to a fight.

Minoko is.

It's a gestural, but he's a special gest roll for two three reasons, a couple of tree reasons.

One, he can speak English, vers so says, Yeah, we had a lot of time together, so I taught him English.

Good.

I can't interest you in a jewel.

Definitely a gest uh.

Two Monoco has like white fur, like white gray fur.

Looks like a monkey.

Yeah, yeah, he has a monkey.

Looked at me.

He has got a little beard on the bottom.

Yeah.

Uh.

Third reason why he's so special, well, okay, for four reasons.

Third reason why he's so special he's a blue Mage.

Functionally, he learns enemy abilities, turns into enemies and uses them as his abilities.

And then the fourth, I mean, just listen to this music that's playing.

This is such a fucking dope track.

This is so good.

As soon as the fight starts with the talk box and then the saxophone comes in.

Oh so good.

That that is some rick coded music right there.

Oh dude, it's fucking tight.

There's another really saxophone heavy track in one of the gestural beach challenges actually funny enough, the one that you complete to get Monoco's swimsuit.

I was gonna mention his swimsuit.

Yeah, he's got a little banana, his little speed out yeah right, yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

It's so weird seeing him without fur.

He just looks like a fucking wooden doll.

Yeah, it's like, how do you grow that hair in the first place.

Minoko is like a gestural insofar as he really likes to fight.

Yeah, like him and him and versus relationship is so funny, like they have little back and forths.

He really loves fight.

He wasn't gonna come with us until versus like, well there's gonna be a lot of fighting, and Minoka's like, yeah there will, yeah.

There will, Yeah they will, yeah will.

I feel like they don't play into their like little humorous relationship that much after this, you know, it feels like it takes a back seat to some of the more serious stuff, which I get, well, you know, anymore, it would have got a little bit to Zack Snyder, Joss Whedon, Marvel Coding.

Yeah, yeah, I don't know.

Maybe just like a little bit more splotches of humor here and there between the two of them.

I think would have been nice, just little bits.

Did you use Monoco a lot?

No?

Actually, And I regret that because, as I'd mentioned, you know, I had basically Charlie's Angels for most of the game, but then once Siel was dying a bunch, I swapped back to Minoka.

I was like, ah, let me give him a try.

And I'm like, oh, this guy's a beast.

And I felt so bad because it was so late in the game.

I was like, ah, man, like, if I ever do replay it, I would use Minoco like immediately, because I feel like there's for me.

There was a lot of untapped potential with what this character's like capable of, And I was able to learn some stuff while I had him, which was like really cool.

And and he has like the most variety of any of the characters, with like you know, all the different things that he can do.

And I imagine you can probably make some pretty wacky builds with this guy.

Oh yeah, dude, my my Monoco like for a long time.

On my first play through, everybody talks about ma l being broken.

Monoco for me was like outclassing everybody and he still does.

Like on this play through, I only need like two more abilities with him and I'll have his whole skill set.

Oh wow, that he gets crazy powerful.

Yeah, because I remember when you see his skill set and it's just that giant like grid of like was it like six by ten or something of just like all the different stuff.

It's like, man, that's awesome.

He uh.

He learns abilities by being in battle when you defeat an enemy with a certain icon over there or under their health bar, and the in game lore is not explained, and it's funnier that it's not.

He cuts their feet off and he carries them with them just carrying their feet around, which leads to like the best screenshot of the game where folks will talk to Lune back at camp and the screenshot is heard of saying feet really, they know, doubly funny because everybody's horny for Luna's feet.

That doesn't surprise me.

I wonder what a RICKI feet rating is.

My guess is with Minoco, how he's able to learn all that stuff is because you know, the gesturals are such a like they're they're born to fight, and maybe like when they're fighting, he observes what the enemy is doing and then like you know, through some weird gestural brain magic, he's able to like copy it directly or something like that.

But again, they don't over explain it, which I think is the correct way to go, because kind of any explanation would just be really stupid, you know.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I like Monoco a lot.

He might be my favorite character.

And well no, I mean, Myle's my favorite character for sure, but Minoco is still pretty good.

His uh, by the way, his battle gimmick, he uh, he is a blue mage, but he's got this wheel, this wheel that he uses, and the wheel has different masks on it, like there's the balanced mask, the castor mask, the heavy mask, the Almighty mask, and each of his skills has a condition attached to it.

Two conditions attached to it.

One will spin the wheel.

If you use this move, it spins the wheel x number of times.

The second condition says, if wheel is on this mask, you get this bonus.

So maybe the bonuses you apply powerful to all of your allies maybe the bonuses increased damage.

Maybe the bonus is you know, ad shield whatever, Uh, very very good.

I don't pay attention to this a ton like I don't plan my wheel spins.

I check to see what there and then if it's beneficial, I'll use it.

But I don't like say, okay, I need to in two turns, I need to spend four times, so I need to use this, I need to use that, like I don't.

I don't think of it that way.

In a way, I think it's maybe a little bit too complicated because you'll have all the different skills that you know will benefit from certain spots in the wheel, but it can be like difficult to keep track of that wheel, especially when you're only really observing it in battle.

So unless you're like swapping the abilities out with him like Lande left and right, I feel like most people aren't really going to use it to that degree.

They're just gonna like have the set of skills with him that they really like.

And then, as you said, when you get to the spot in the wheel where it'll like where it gives it the bonus, it's like, well, I guess I'll just use it here, and then if you don't have anything.

You're like, I'll just use this because I think it works the best.

You know.

Yeah, that's and you know that's what I did too.

It's definitely an idea that could use some refinement in like a future game.

I think, yeah, yeah, so it wasn't offensive to me.

I will say I did exactly what you said.

I used like the same skills for seventy percent of the game.

Yeah, but on a replay.

So when you do new game plus your characters, you still have to get these characters in the story, but you can use them in battle.

From the start, Minoco can learn the Sokka Patat's ability of fire, and it is like one of his best abilities in the game.

It costs nine but it does like three fires.

It stacks nine burns.

It's crazy power.

It's it's great.

Yeah, that's one of the best ability, the power of the burn.

Yeah, I do the power of the Sokka Patat.

Minoco.

Also, Minoko is not dumb like the gesturals.

Mael doesn't ever call him dumb.

He'd probably whip her ass if he if she called him dumb.

Uh, But he's he's relatively smart.

Sometimes his gestural shines through, Like in the beginning when when he meets everybody, he like kind of flirts with the the ladies.

He's like, ladies, can of interest you in a duel?

But he smacks himself in the head with his staff.

I love that trope.

It's a very like Johnny Bravo kind of trope.

WHOA, Mama, are so good?

So good?

Yeah?

I think you know, I think we'll cap it here.

This is pretty good progress.

We're gonna do two more episodes three and four.

That's plenty of time to get through the story without feeling rushed.

This is not too far into Act too, but you know Act three is comparatively shorter.

Think like World of Ruin and Final Fantasy six.

You know, you have opportunities to do side quests.

You don't have to.

But we'll pick up here next time talking about the Grandest at Monoco Station.

But until then, thank you everyone for listening.

If you're enjoying this series, please consider joining the Discord server, joining the Patreon, et cetera, et cetera.

We'll talk about that in a second.

Fhrack.

Anything new with the three d oh podcast or any other pod casts.

Well, if I think when we did you record your guest appearance with us by the time of the first episode?

Uh?

Maybe no?

Okay, Well, for those who haven't listened to The Three D Experience, which is my main podcast, A Rick guested on an episode of that quite a while back talking about the game Virtuoso.

So y'all should go check that out because that was a that was a fun a fun listen that game.

I'm fonder of that game now that I'm looking back on it.

I think it's kind of cool.

It is kind of cool.

Yeah, but everyone can find out that for themselves and they listen to it.

That's my main podcast, and at the time of recording this episode, I am early into my new side project, Call of Duty thrack.

Ops, I cannot take credit for that title, where I am solo playing through basically all of the mainline Call of Duty games.

Why why not?

You know?

I like Shooty Bang Bang, and I think a lot of people in our sort of podcasting circle don't really talk about those kind of games that much, so I kind of wanted to fill that niche.

So at the time of recording this, I'm about three episodes in.

When it comes out, they'll probably be hopefully more up.

So yeah, wherever you're listening to this, you can listen to the three Do Experience and thrack Ops.

So y'all should go listen to that as well.

I would very much appreciate it.

Absolutely.

You can find links to thrack Ops and the three Do Experience in this episode description.

Definitely check them out.

Virtuoso was fun.

If Call of Duty is your thing, check out thrack Ops.

Yeah.

As I mentioned, please consider joining the discord, which is free if you are enjoying the series.

If you're enjoying the show, also consider joining the Patreon, which is the best way to ensure that more of this work is created.

Podcasting is you know, it's tough and it would be much appreciated.

You can check that out at patreon dot com.

Slash Pixel Project.

Radio ratings and reviews are also much appreciated.

That is free, and along with sharing this podcast with your friends, is the best way to show that you care.

Free.

It only takes a minute.

You can share your feedback and all ratings and reviews help get us higher into Algore's rhythm and gets us discovered by more people.

That's an inconvenient truth right there.

So with that, thank you listeners.

For sticking around to the very end.

Thank you Thrak for joining me and devoting so much of your time.

Well, thank you for having me with that.

We're going to leave it for today and as they say, tomorrow comes, the next episode will come.

I think that's what they meant by that, Aixel Project Radio will come again.

I think that's what they meant.

Oh, thank goodness, exciting off for now.

Take care everybody, as ass ding building as a DW