Episode Transcript
[00:00:10] Speaker A: Hello and welcome to from 8bit to 4k.
I'm your host this week. My good many names. I have with me my two co hosts. I have Jack Soman.
[00:00:20] Speaker B: Hello, it's me. I'm Jack Soman.
[00:00:22] Speaker A: And I have Pillow Pet.
[00:00:24] Speaker C: And I'm Pillow Pet.
[00:00:27] Speaker A: Thank you for joining us this week.
Still don't quite know how we're going to start off every, every week because it's a little odd jumping from us, but it's, it's fun to see things from a different side of things. Now you can donate to us at our Patreon. You can go to patreon.com theforwords or no, this it is the Forwards, isn't it?
[00:00:46] Speaker B: The Forwards podcast.
[00:00:48] Speaker A: Yes, the Forwards podcast. And if you donate to us, you can give us one buck a month if you like. Us five bucks a month can give you some exclusive behind the scenes audio stuff for the prop work that we do each and every week. And then 10 bucks a month gets you an exclusive feed. You get a shout out like you do with Codex, Ninja, Pillow Pet, Scapius, Esquire, Labana, Uncle Chrisco, and Yeet the Dab. Thank you guys for paying for the shout out tier. You'll also get some like interesting tidbits as we were talking about from before the show that that exclusive feed is on and off. Interesting sometimes. Very interesting sometimes. Just a little bit of prep work for us. Yep. You can also join us at our Discord, which is the forward discord. It's in the description below.
And this week we have a topic that we'll get to in a moment because first and foremost, something has been announced that is long overdue that we want to just bring forth. Yup, they have announced finally that star Fox 64 is getting a remake for the Switch too.
[00:01:53] Speaker B: And to be clear, it's already had a quote unquote remake on the 3Ds.
That's an enhanced port. This is an actual for reals remake.
[00:02:02] Speaker A: Star Fox is a franchise that hasn't essentially gotten anything new since the GameCube. And I think the game that killed it was the one with crystal, like Star Fox Adventures. I don't remember a new game from it since GameCube.
[00:02:19] Speaker C: The last one that I remember was like a 3D walk around, you're not in your ship kind of platformer.
[00:02:27] Speaker B: No. So Star fox Adventures was 2002.
Since then there was Star Fox Assault for the GameCube, Star Fox Command for the DS, then the 3DS remake of Star Fox 64 that I mentioned. And then Star Fox Zero, which was made for the Wii U, and a tower defense game on the Wii U that was a pre order bonus and then sold separately afterwards called Star Fox Guard. And then technically the most recent Star Fox game released is the Super Nintendo Star Fox 2, which was released in 2017.
[00:03:05] Speaker A: Okay. The rerelease of a Super Nintendo game.
[00:03:08] Speaker B: It's not the re release. That's the first original release of Star Fox 2. It was never released during the Super Nintendo era. It was canned.
[00:03:15] Speaker A: Oh, damn.
[00:03:16] Speaker B: As a finished game, it was canned.
[00:03:19] Speaker A: Okay, well that's at least interesting. But yeah, I actually played it like nine years since. A game in the Star Fox franchise.
[00:03:27] Speaker B: Yes. And 20 years since one that was an actual like game worth even talking about.
[00:03:34] Speaker C: There's a lot of hype around this.
[00:03:36] Speaker A: Yeah. For me, this is one of the beloved games in its era.
[00:03:41] Speaker C: I know Jax has got a lot to talk about with it, so I'm going to jump in real quick.
So star Fox 64 is one of the first games that I can remember playing before Mario 64. And what I remember I loved about it the most and it's been a while since I played it, was the replayability of it as far as all the multiple routes that you can take through your star map. And to me, like, as a kid, like my imagination went wild playing this game and finding all the tips and tricks and finding all this stuff out without any guidance of the Internet and just no help. Just being able to find this on my own through context clues in the. In the game, through dialogue. And that was so good. And you know, you play games like this today, we're like, how do people figure this stuff out?
We just.
It's hard to like explain. But you just did.
[00:04:42] Speaker B: It's. There are things in the Original Star Fox 64, in the very first level, there are two paths. If you just play the level and you don't do anything special, you will go to Medio. If you play the level and prevent the enemies chasing Falco from killing him and then fly through a set of rings in the water section of the level. They're like arches on the water, not rings. Falco will then guide you to a different boss fight and you can go to Sector Y instead. The game does not tell you this. You figure it out because eventually, if you've played star fox 64 enough, you realize this game is obsessed with flying through things.
Yes. There's rings, there's circles, there's arches, there's. You just kind of figure out, oh, when I fly through things. Stuff happens.
So then you get to that point on your next playthrough and you go, let's fly through these things and see what happens. And after you've flown through a couple, Falco says something which tells you, oh, I'm on the right track, I better keep doing this.
[00:05:45] Speaker A: And then you have to say, that's
[00:05:46] Speaker B: the way Star Fox 64 Dykes. You figure shit out dynamically throughout the game and it's trial and error. But I love Star Fox 64 so much.
[00:05:55] Speaker A: These are the sort of things with like they designed a game that is not particularly long. Like you can beat this game in what, six, eight hours maybe.
[00:06:05] Speaker B: Oh, a casual playthrough is seven levels. It takes about an hour and a half casually.
And that's like a. That a third of all of the levels in the game. There's like 16 levels in the game total.
[00:06:18] Speaker A: So. So that's like eventually you'll play it for 20 hours or so. And they explicitly built things within the game to steer you back and forth. Because game design had to be about stretching what you had available to you. Because they did not have, especially with an N64, it did not have a lot of memory to hold things. So they're stretching assets and they're reusing things and they're replotting things. And when you get to use the same level two or three times, but rearrange some things because now they're on a new path.
[00:06:50] Speaker B: Yep. And not just reusing like things within the game, but building art assets is complicated and expensive. There's stuff in Star Fox 64 that's also in Ocarina of Time because they just reused the art asset. They developed it for both games essentially.
If you've ever looked in Jabu Jabu's belly, there is an arwing in there.
[00:07:10] Speaker C: So just for context, for listeners that really didn't have a chance to grow up on Nintendo 64 and just actually play the games.
Star Fox 64, the original was 12 megabytes.
[00:07:23] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:07:24] Speaker C: Like it was 12.
That's it. Like your normal 4K picture or like a short length video.
[00:07:31] Speaker A: It's smaller than our voice.
[00:07:33] Speaker C: It's way more than that.
[00:07:34] Speaker B: Yeah. An episode of this podcast is usually around 150 to 200 megabytes, depending on length. Sometimes when we go long, it's more like 250. Star Fox 64 was 12.
[00:07:45] Speaker C: The fact that it had 15, 16 levels in it with all these multiple paths is just amazing. Like even like. Like this is what we're talking about. But Mario 64, the game size for what it is, it's amazing what they were able to do with the 64.
[00:08:00] Speaker B: So they're releasing a remake of it. First of all, I want to say it's going to be $50. It's not a $70 game. It's on Switch 2. It comes out literally next month, June 25th. So this was a very like, surprise announcement. This appears to be a from the ground up remake of Star Fox 64. That's why we started talking about Star Fox 64 so much. It is specifically the same levels, the same story, just modern graphics and presumably some gameplay updates. We don't know the full details of what exactly gameplay updates are.
[00:08:34] Speaker A: So this is more of a remaster than a remake?
[00:08:37] Speaker B: No, this is a remake, a full remake.
[00:08:40] Speaker A: And they. So from the ground up. So this is like the Demon Souls,
[00:08:43] Speaker B: not a real imagining.
[00:08:45] Speaker A: It's a Demon Souls remake.
[00:08:46] Speaker B: Imagining this is a remake.
[00:08:48] Speaker A: Yeah, this is the Demon Souls remake.
[00:08:49] Speaker B: Yes. This is like Demon's Souls, PS5 type remake.
[00:08:52] Speaker C: Am I the only one of us three that has a Switch 2?
[00:08:55] Speaker A: I think you are.
[00:08:56] Speaker B: So. Well.
[00:08:57] Speaker C: And if this is a pioneer of
[00:08:59] Speaker A: this game, you're going to be streaming it to us.
[00:09:02] Speaker B: Yeah. When this game comes out, we're going to make pillow stream it on Twitch forcibly.
[00:09:08] Speaker A: Back to gaming this.
[00:09:09] Speaker C: Yeah, I'm going to have to get a capture card or something.
[00:09:11] Speaker B: We will bully you into it.
[00:09:13] Speaker A: All right, well, that was. That was our. We needed to talk about this because this is something that is near and dear to all of our hearts. But let's get into what our actual topic is this week. And we have an interesting set of topics because we're going to be talking about villains in gaming.
And villains may mean something different to one of us here than it does to the rest of us because he is also going to be talking more about the difference between antagonists versus villains. But we also just like are going to be talking about some of our favorites in this genre. So, Jax, since we're already talking about this, why don't you make the distinction with your first discussion?
[00:09:52] Speaker B: Okay, so I. I want to compare the Big Bad of Final Fantasy 6, Kefka Palazzo, versus the big bad of Final Fantasy 7, Sephiroth. Kefka is a villain. Kefka is scheming and conniving and heartless and ruthless.
He is evil incarnate. Something is wrong with that man. He does not care about anything but himself. Sephiroth, also, the Big Bad, is an antagonist. Sephiroth doesn't really seem to be scheming at all or really doing much of anything other than just being a force of evil. He's trying to destroy the planet by summoning Meteor because of all sorts of various fucked up backstory reasons. But I would argue that the villain of Final Fantasy VII is Shinra. Sephiroth is the Big Bad. But he. He's a victim of Shinra the same way everyone else is in that game.
And that's. To me that's the distinction is like Kefka is the character where he straight up lies to his commanding officer's face. And then the moment that guy leaves poisons the entire kingdom of Doma to murder the entire kingdom because it was easier than letting soldiers fight it out. Kefka is evil. He is truly malignant. Sephiroth is gonna bring about the end of the world. He's the Big Bad. But he's not doing it because he hates the world and wants the world to end. Because he thinks the world is somehow against him. In a way. He's just trying to achieve whatever. Like his personal goal is that destroying the world via summoning Meteor happens to be a process of.
That's the difference. To me, that's antagonist versus villain. I love Kefka as a villain. He is such a good villain. I cringe when people talk about Sephiroth being a good villain.
[00:11:52] Speaker A: I. I can understand a part of what you're trying to say, but I. I also straight up see that as. No, you're. You're distinction between states of evil. Because that's a state of chaotic evil versus lawful evil. And both are still literally that.
[00:12:09] Speaker B: Lawful evil is a villain. Chaotic Evil is an antagonist. They're both good guys.
[00:12:14] Speaker A: Chaotic Evil. No, he's. He's doing it for chaos sake. Sephiroth has a reason for.
[00:12:19] Speaker B: But Chaotic Evil is not about doing it for chaos's sake. He has structure and rhyme and reason to everything he does.
[00:12:27] Speaker A: That is law.
[00:12:28] Speaker B: Yeah. He's lawful evil.
[00:12:30] Speaker A: So does Sephiroth. Well, we're going to down the line with that. We're not going to go into that pillow. You got another classic on there. Talk to us about your villain.
[00:12:41] Speaker C: There's a lot of villains that I like and it was really hard to only come down to a couple.
Obviously it's going to come from a Zelda universe for me. And that's Ganondorf.
We're talking. You want to talk manipulative and just super power hungry. Doesn't care what it takes to get where he's got it. Wants to be as Ganondorf. I mean, he works his way back into the. The, the Hylian Kingdom, works his way into the King's good graces after their.
After the civil war.
And he's just working behind the scenes with a secret agenda to destroy Hyrule. And this guy does not care what it takes. He will kill or hurt anyone. It doesn't matter the age.
He has no sympathy whatsoever. Like, to me, he's just a great villain. And we were having a little bit of discussion beforehand.
So he has a counterpart, his demon alias Ganon, when he becomes the bull.
To me, they're one in the same. Like, they're pretty much the same entity.
Ganon's just the stronger beast version and Ganondorf is the human version.
But that's just, to me, is one of my favorite villains. Like, as a kid, he scared me.
[00:14:06] Speaker B: So the way you view Ganon is more like the final form of Ganondorf. It's just a transformation, basically.
[00:14:13] Speaker C: Yeah, that's all. I see it. But when you're in older games, it's a different.
Like he has a different. He doesn't have a human form in the older games.
[00:14:21] Speaker A: Different things in older games. Yeah.
[00:14:24] Speaker B: And that's kind of why I think Ganon is an antagonist and Ganondorf is a villain. Is starting with Ocarina of Time, the game uses different names for them intentionally. It is a distinction the game is making that Ganondorf is the man. Ganondorf has the ability to reason and connive and be manipulative and commit evil deeds. Ganon is where he has been mutated by the power of the Triforce. He no longer is sapient in the same way. He's just.
[00:14:55] Speaker C: He's just a destructive force.
[00:14:57] Speaker B: He's a force of destruction. And later Zelda games lean into that more. He's literally called Calamity Ganon in Breath of the Wild because by the time he becomes Ganon and no longer Ganondorf, he is literally like an apocalyptic calamity entity and no longer a thinking being.
[00:15:18] Speaker C: Yeah. So now that I understand more of, like, your distinction between antagonist and villain, like, I get where you're saying where Ganon, he's just a bad guy there. He has no rhyme or reason for what he's doing. He's just evil doing evil things.
[00:15:34] Speaker B: He is Ganondorf who has lost his sense of reason and ability to have, like, cogent thought.
[00:15:42] Speaker A: So I'm going to use mine, my character for this first portion as a counter argument to him. Because this character is under every known label under the sun at some point in time. And where I see the distinction that Jack says as antagonist versus villain, my first thought was Kerrigan, Sarah Kerrigan from Starcraft, who runs the gambit from you're a hero as the main. One of the main characters to an antagonist to a villain to who eventually becomes a antihero, anti hero who ends the game a hero. Again, Kerrigan is one of the best written villains that Blizzard as a whole, throughout their entire franchises has ever made. Because you can understand every single ounce of where that character came from in every single iteration across the entirety of the writing.
And there's never a point in that writing where when you read things, you go the fuck, right?
[00:16:48] Speaker B: Even when she's literally transformed into a monster, Kerrigan is still like thinking and planning and conniving and able to reason.
Reason is a big part of the distinction between antagonists and villains to me. Kerrigan, when she's committing atrocities, which when she is straight up murdering billions of civilians.
Because she does do that, by the way.
[00:17:13] Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
[00:17:14] Speaker B: If you haven't played some of the StarCraft 1 story or early StarCraft II, she's not doing it because she's hungry, for example. That would be an antagonist behavior. She's doing it to achieve an end. She has goals and plans. She's taking steps that she thinks will advance those goals and plans.
She's a great villain. I love Kerrigan.
[00:17:36] Speaker A: Kerrigan is the full gambit. So here's where I make my distinction. At points in time, Kerrigan is your antagonist, but she is not evil.
[00:17:46] Speaker B: Yeah, that's also the key here is you don't have to be evil to be a villain.
[00:17:52] Speaker A: I think I'm going to switch that around. You don't have to be evil to be an antagonist. A villain is evil.
[00:17:56] Speaker B: Also true.
[00:17:57] Speaker A: Because the other person, the character who you are facing when Kerrigan falls is one of the main heroes of the game is Tassadar.
[00:18:06] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:18:07] Speaker A: Tassadar is an antagonist to her. There not a villain. And then through Tassadar's intervention in there and Mansk being a Colossal,
[00:18:18] Speaker B: he's a villain for sure.
[00:18:20] Speaker A: Mengsk is a villain who is another interesting character. But Kerrigan is much more interesting than Mengsk because Kerrigan, she falls and then you get to see what happens to someone who's been spurned and still remembers it. Because now she's. She is still who she was. But every ounce of what that thinking was has been twisted. Yep. You are no longer human. You do not value human life in the same way. So what happens when you have distinct memories of someone who has betrayed you and not just left you to die, but left you to be obliterated and then torn from what you were? She's not happy that she's a Zerg. She embraces it by the end of her existence, but she's not happy that she was turned.
[00:19:03] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:19:04] Speaker A: And so she goes on a well, I followed Menx because he saved me from other people who I believed were villains, and to find out that that was part of this thing, she ends up making some of the most interesting and very well thought out plans to get all of her opponents to wipe themselves out at her feet.
[00:19:25] Speaker B: Yep. Kerrigan. Honestly, I'm realizing now as we're talking about it, she draws a lot on like why vampires make such good villains throughout various fictions. Oh yes, because vampires also have that thing of like they were human at one point and in most versions of vampire they remember their humanity and just don't care anymore. Blizzard they do care and they're vengeful for it.
[00:19:51] Speaker C: Early Blizzard I'm talking Warcraft 3, Starcraft 1 and 2 had some of the best writing. If when you're playing their games, you start to feel like you like the villains more than you do the heroes, it makes it such. That's what makes up such good villains. Because you can see why people are falling for their, their, their their traps.
[00:20:14] Speaker A: Menx is a perfect analogy of a smarter version of someone in politics right now, because Menx is actually smart. He's manipulative, he is everything that can be done wrong in politics.
Used to a perfect end to prop himself up in a position to become the power. And the only reason his plan ends up failing in the end is because he picked up one wrong person and that was Rainer. If he never picked up Rainer, he wins. He wins his plan. And maybe Kerrigan doesn't become the powerhouse she is, because part of that is Rainer pushing her forward. But I'm not going to go incredibly deep into Kerrigan right now because I will be here for the rest of the day just talking about one person.
You have someone who's not a video game character for your distinction.
Continue on with these characters.
[00:21:13] Speaker B: So my other example is from anime and I picked some of the most well known characters in all of anime. So even if you're not a Weeb, you probably have heard of Vegeta in Dragon Ball and you've probably heard of Frieza, the like recurring persistent villain throughout the entire Dragon Ball Z And onwards. Part of the Dragon Ball franchise, Vegeta is a bad guy. When he is introduced, he literally enters the show and starts killing people. He's commanding lackeys.
There is a famous scene of one of the Z Fighters dead in a crater because of Vegeta's actions. I don't think Vegeta was the one who dealt the blow himself.
[00:22:00] Speaker A: No, it was worse.
[00:22:02] Speaker B: Yes.
So he is introduced very much as like, doing villain things. He's here to destroy the earth.
But Dragon Ball Z takes an interesting turn. Vegeta is the prince of Saiyans, but he's not his own boss at that point in time. He is a subordinate of an entity named Frieza. And he does not like Frieza. And after he gets his ass beat by Goku, he starts re evaluating things because he views it as the prince of Saiyans. He's very prideful.
One of his big character traits is pride. He's like, how did this lowly common born defeat me? That shouldn't be possible. The only person who should be able to defeat me is Frieza. Because he, at this point in time, he does not have the ability to stand up to Frieza.
And so he starts thinking about and re evaluating his own place in the universe and trying to figure out, like, why did he lose?
Meanwhile, then we get the Namek arc of Dragon Ball Z. Frieza himself is introduced. And Frieza commands an army of bad guys. He is the Big Bad.
And Frieza is the villain of Dragon Ball Z and one of the best villains in anime.
[00:23:22] Speaker A: Period.
[00:23:22] Speaker B: Anime has a lot of villains whose motivations and actions do not make any fucking sense. Frieza's does.
Frieza is incredibly evil. Like fundamentally morally bankrupt.
He does not care about right and wrong. He knows what it is. He thinks it's funny. He toys with people's lives for his own entertainment.
He destroys planets because he felt like it. He is truly evil in a way that almost nothing else in Dragon Ball is. Like, he is by far one of the most evil characters in the entire franchise.
And the difference is Vegito, when he gets his ass beat, starts thinking about, like, maybe I was wrong. I get another chance. He didn't kill me. I was allowed to run away.
Maybe instead of plotting revenge, I should re evaluate my life. And then Goku defeats Frieza and becomes the Legendary Super Saiyan.
And Vegeta, the Prince of Saiyans, is like, why was he able to do it and I wasn't? What the fuck because again, he's very prideful. And Vegeta famously becomes Goku's ally. They are friendly rivals later in the series.
Vegeta always has that element of what? Wanting to surpass Goku. He wants to be better than him. He wants to be able to defeat him. But because Goku changed his life in a fundamental way, Vegeta stops being a villain. He stops being an antagonist at all. He stops killing people unless they really deserve it, and reforms his life. He has a wife and kids and is literally the best dad and best husband in the entire series.
[00:25:08] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:25:08] Speaker B: Which is wild. He is literally both of those.
Like I am not exaggerating. So I love Vegeta as a antagonist character because he gets that whole arc of realizing he was wrong. And even though in current versions of Dragon Ball, like Dragon Ball super and stuff, he's still very prideful, it's still acknowledged.
[00:25:31] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:25:31] Speaker B: He also acknowledges Goku's strength and that Goku is often right about certain types of things.
Even as he still wants to be better than Goku. Frieza, on the other hand, gets multiple opportunities to come back, knows how powerful the Saiyans have become and that they'll probably beat his ass. Does it anyway because he's obsessed and he just wants to commit genocide. And the Saiyans are his big failure and he wants to rectify it. So he keeps going to try to end them and creates new schemes and new plans and introduces new characters. And this is a funny bit. It is revealed later. Frieza did not have to train for his power. Training is a big thing in the Dragon Ball Z universe. Everyone trains to become more powerful constantly. Frieza never had to. For the first time in his life after he gets revived, he trains to to become stronger so he can go back to committing villainy. He wants to rule the universe under an iron fist because he believes it is his rightful place in the universe. And this is a world where gods exist and are real and he knows it.
They're apparently told on first name basis with gods.
What's that?
[00:26:49] Speaker A: This is where some of the fucking. Tangentially the story starts to break down because other people had to end up writing things because of the passing of our savior, Kiritoriyama.
[00:26:59] Speaker B: That's very recent. I'm not even talking about anything that recent.
[00:27:02] Speaker A: But like with. With the advent of super, you learn that Frieza blew up the sands because Barriss told him to, not because he was scared of them, which ruins part of his character.
[00:27:13] Speaker B: It does a little bit.
[00:27:14] Speaker A: But as you're talking about this. The more I hear, the more I'm like, he's not scheming. He just doesn't like things. He's more of an antagonist than a villain in what you've been saying.
He's just thoroughly evil.
[00:27:27] Speaker B: Because. Because he is thoroughly evil, but also he is scheming. He.
[00:27:32] Speaker A: I don't know if a plan is considered a scheme.
[00:27:36] Speaker B: Plan and scheme are literally synonyms.
[00:27:38] Speaker A: Well then the entirety of the Diablo characters are schemers. And you're wrong.
[00:27:42] Speaker B: Sure, but we didn't talk about those outside of the pre show.
My point is, out of most anime bad guys are just bad guys. Frieza is a great villain. And even the fact that they keep going back to that well and bringing Frieza back, which is a little annoying, that's anime bullshit.
He at least still acts like the haughty evil son of a bitch that he is. He makes you wish you could punch him, which is impressive.
[00:28:12] Speaker A: Yeah, it does.
[00:28:13] Speaker B: Even. Even his first loss, by the way. He doesn't die when Namek is destroyed. Goku does not kill him. He escapes, comes to earth in Goku's absence in the intent to kill all of Goku's family and friends, and is
[00:28:29] Speaker A: killed by Trunks in like six seconds. Yeah, yeah.
[00:28:32] Speaker B: It's a funny moment, but that's how evil he fucking is is that he barely escapes with his life and is like, okay, but that motherfucker. I'm gonna go kill everyone he loves and everyone he cares about before he
[00:28:44] Speaker A: runs to dad and goes, dad, I need help.
[00:28:48] Speaker B: Yes, literally.
[00:28:50] Speaker A: But that's fun. Hey, pillow.
[00:28:52] Speaker B: I love. I love the overarching story of Dragon Ball. I don't love the moment to moment Shonen bullshit so much.
[00:29:01] Speaker A: Okay. Yep, it's a good one. Hey, Pillow, you have some interesting names that I don't recognize on this list.
[00:29:08] Speaker B: Yeah, who the hell are those?
[00:29:10] Speaker C: The next game I'm going to talk about is Conker's Bad Fur Day. The big bad in Conker's Bad Fur Day. And no, it's not the Panther King. And no, it's not the alien at the end. It is Professor Von Cripplespack. He is the crippled weasel that floats around in the chair who creates the teddy bears, who is behind all the bad things that happens to conquer outside of him just being hungover and going on his trip.
He is the.
He.
He is the professor. And he. He's the one that makes the evil teddy bears. He's the one that creates the zombie play. Or not the zombie plague the puts the alien in the Panther King to start that in last. Last boss fight.
He creates everything that goes wrong. And Conker's bad fur day and nobody like talks about it because I mean he. You don't see a whole lot of him. I mean it's. It's a Nintendo 64 game. You don't see a whole lot of anything really.
But he is just a low key villain that I always thought about like especially as a kid because he does while you know, conquers Bedford does most of the game is just a comical adult game to me. He comes off as a good villain just because he's like low. He's under the radar and he's making all these moves without anybody knowing. It is creating all this chaos trying to.
I forget exactly what he was doing because it's been so long.
But he's trying, he's trying. He's just the big bad of the game.
I was having a hard time because there's a lot of them that I want to talk about.
Like I'm going to give some honorable mentions because I don't have much more to go on after this. But the Joker in Batman, he is a good villain.
[00:31:00] Speaker A: Fantastic.
[00:31:02] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:31:03] Speaker C: He's an all.
[00:31:04] Speaker B: Which version of the Joker.
Mostly I would agree.
[00:31:09] Speaker C: I'm going to say.
Are you talking like timeline version or you want.
I want to say pre Arkham Asylum Joker. Like first version like of Joker when he's out on the streets and like is introduced to like Batman and doesn't know yet that it's Bruce Wayne.
[00:31:30] Speaker B: I would say basically every version of the Joker that isn't stuff like the Harley Quinn version. The HBO Harley Quinn cartoon. I love that cartoon. But the Joker is a dumbass in that. I want to.
[00:31:44] Speaker C: I'm talking like dark version of Joker. Like makes you smile with a knife kind of Joker and like kill planefuls or train full of people and manipulate
[00:31:55] Speaker B: gas an entire city.
[00:31:57] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:31:57] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:31:58] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:31:59] Speaker C: I mean there's so many.
I want. I was going back and forth trying to figure out the guy in Horizon Zero Dawn, Ted Faro, the one that's in charge of the entire robotics.
[00:32:11] Speaker B: Yes. He's such a good villain that literally you never meet because he died hundreds of years before the events of the game.
[00:32:18] Speaker C: Like yeah, like it's just there's so many good ones. And so it was really hard because I was trying to like think antagonist versus villain. To me an antagonist is someone that provides not only comical relief, but if the main hero was there, a villain would have no problem Just killing him right up front. An antagonist will let the hero live.
Like to me that's, that is just a cut and dry definition.
[00:32:47] Speaker A: Like Joker is always an antagonist and never a villain because he'll never kill that.
[00:32:50] Speaker C: Yeah.
But like Ganondorf would kill anybody in front of him. Bowser early, Bowser would kill Mario in a heartbeat. Later, Bowser lets Mario live and they're kind of buddies. They, they become. He becomes an antagonist. He moves together in my mind. Yeah. Like it's, it's silly. There's so many like ways to. You can. It's your own opinion, whoever you think is a villain versus antagonist.
[00:33:17] Speaker B: Yeah. There isn't a right answer here. To be clear.
[00:33:20] Speaker C: There is no spouting my opinions.
[00:33:22] Speaker A: He is an interesting, interesting opinion on antagonist for spilling the crippled weasel, the
[00:33:27] Speaker C: main big bad in Conker's Bedford Day.
[00:33:30] Speaker A: So I have, I have one more example that I think is if you've played the game.
Oh yeah, it feels this way is Glados from Portal. Glados is so memorable beyond even just the, the game itself. The way that she is like the prototype to what Handsome Jack becomes.
Glados feels like the intro into this, this, this villain who is omnipresent, who's always there sort of watching you, dictating you, manipulating you, forcing you into situations. And when you finally break out of the carefully constructed playpen, she has you in the death trap she has for you. She still is this menacing being that is in a weird sense with Portal 2 elevated in position into a person more than just a thing. Because if all you take is portal one, GLaDOS is, is this unfeeling robot. And how is a robot a villain? And then you get into the finer points of what Glados is in Portal 2 and it becomes this. Oh, that's all there is left.
And that's something without empathy, something that will sit there and toy with you again and again, over and over, only to toss you away or kill you. And there's nothing stopping that. And it's an hour long experience that I've never forgotten. And I think anyone who has played Portal will tell you the same thing. This was on people's best game and it was just a tiny sub thing that was boxed in with other games that you could get on a PS2 disc. And it became a legend because of GLaDOS.
[00:35:35] Speaker B: Yep.
Every memorable line, every memorable moment in Portal is because of Glados.
[00:35:43] Speaker A: So as that stands, I think I had another, another thought here that I think we're gonna hold off until maybe another time that we deal with villains here. So we're gonna go with the final portion of our game of our show here and we're gonna. We're gonna talk about what's been going on in our lives. Pillow you haven't had talk about much start us off what you've been doing.
[00:36:03] Speaker C: So I'm gonna talk about the one that I think we're gonna both end up talking about this.
So I'm gonna go ahead and go with my other Windrows is a game that just came out. I think I mentioned it to you guys maybe last time. I can't remember but we were talking about Black Flag, Assassin's Creed. Black Flag.
[00:36:22] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:36:23] Speaker C: You were talking about this is was supposed to be the get this instead it's better.
So I want you. Have you played Valheim Mike or Dragon Wilds or Runescape Dragon Wilds or whatever?
So this is a lot like Valheim as far as play style goes. It's a survival game with the story aspects to it. With the. With the whole main story to it that you're working towards.
You're just. You. You start off as a. You're this respected pirate captain and something happens that you end up getting stranded on an island and you have to start from the ground up basically and reassemble your crew. You get people that come and visit and like stay in your island, like in your own little. Your base. They do different things.
It's just a pirate survival game. And so far I've had like four hours of playtime in it. It's great. It's awesome. It hits every itch that I like with a pirate game.
I cannot speak on the ship combat yet because there's a lot of grinding and farming with these games to get the things that you want built as far as need to get the wood and the twine and the cloth, etc. Etc. Etc. It's just a fun little survival slash RPG game.
I haven't even got to go to like the main cities or anything like that. I'm just island hopping right now. I haven't even. I got the. I rebuilt a ship and. But I haven't.
I haven't went out with that ship yet because. Because I have no way to defend myself and no way to fight back. So right now it is just a large storage container for myself until I get it upgraded because there are lots of enemies on the ocean and they are ruthless.
So I was started off in this little one person rowboat and I started going to like a different island because I needed to Go over there to do something and I got attacked by four large pirate ships. So it's, it's. They're very ruthless, fun game. Haven't played a lot into it. Hopefully. I'll, I'll. It's one that'll stick. A survival game that'll stick and I'll talk more about it next time.
[00:38:49] Speaker A: All right, I'll go with the next one. And I'm going to start with the one that we're not going to talk about together.
I played a game that I have been talking about for probably a couple months now. I finally picked it up. It was on a good sale and I've been meaning to play this game for a while. I finally played Vampire the Masquerade, Bloodlines 2, and I have found a direct analysis for what I will talk about with this game.
So if you are a big fan of the Bloodlines franchise, specifically for Vampire the Masquerade, this is not the game for you because that is not what this game is. And that's the biggest unfortunate part. I think if they had decided to name it something else, this game would be much better received. But it's not a Bloodlines game. You are not a new character. You are a very established character who has a history, who has a name. You don't start off learning what means to be. You are straight up an elder vampire.
And it's fun in a way that really scratches an itch. If you are a fan of Vampire the Masquerade and wanted to get that feel of man, I've never been one of the older vampires. I want to know what it's like to have that kind of power. This game has that. This game has that feel of no, you're a monster and you can just do whatever, but don't break the Masquerade because that is still the primary thing that you are needing to do. Because this is a core rule that the vampire world lives by. Don't break the Masquerade because everyone in the world will kill you if you break the Masquerade. You've just killed us all. So that's the one thing you don't get to break. You don't go get to. You don't get to be on the. The massive killing spree of mortals. Just.
You don't get to play infamous as the bad guy. You don't go get around murdering everyone because that's not what this game is.
You're living in the world with the rules of Vampire the Masquerade, but you get to be that old vampire.
But Also, it has this really kind of stupid, but wonderfully quirky bit to it. That's right from the beginning, very early on. Like, within the first five minutes, you find out there's another person in your head with you. There's a second vampire in your skull. It's a Malkavian, if you know what that is. So they're kind of psychos. Their brains are broken. Fundamentally, every Malkavian is crazy a little bit. And this one is a classic noir detective. And part of the very first thing is, well, solve why I'm here. Cause this isn't right. Nothing should do this. And you get to go off, and then suddenly you're playing as yourself again. You have some fun. And then you get to a point you'll go, all right, we're getting into the what's going on? And now you're in a noir detective game, but you're still a vampire. So you get to do cool vampire stuff, but you're now a noir detective because there's this early 90s or 1900s noir detective in there who's got to find out what's going on. And it's really fun, especially if you like the universe because it follows the. The rules. Well, if you are a fan of the franchise, I think you should give it a shot. If you are not looking for Bloodline specifically, I have had a blast with the game. I have had a really fun attachment to the Malkavian character more than I have the main one, because I haven't learned too much about the main character yet. You get to make some choices. You get, like. You get to choose one of the bloodlines that you get to be a part of. So you're not, like, wholly dictated to, but it's really fucking fun. I'm having a blast being a vampire. Hey, Jax, talk to us about one of your games.
[00:42:45] Speaker B: All right. I must start with the one we already talked about a little bit, because after Nintendo announced a remake of Star Fox 64 for the Switch 2, I don't have a Switch 2, but since I love the original so much, I've been playing it again and also finally got my wife to actually play Star Fox 64. So that's.
I have spent quite a few hours on actual Star Fox 64 for the N64.
I am playing it on the Switch Online. So unfortunately, there's a little bit of input lag because Switch Online has kind of input laggy. But I am playing it with the 8bitdo N64 controller. So, like, I'm getting a Proper control experience for the game. And I stand by the statement that Star Fox 64 is the best aged N64 game, period.
[00:43:33] Speaker A: I don't think I can just holds up.
[00:43:34] Speaker B: It holds up better today than anything else on that entire generation of 3D games.
Like you have to go to 2D games from that era to have something that holds up better than Star Fox 64. I think it holds up better than Ocarina of Time does. I personally also enjoy it more, but just in terms of like how well it's aged, you can pick up and play Star Fox 64 today. And I know that because I made my wife do it. So my wife has played a handful of levels. She's made it to Sector Y instead of Meteor. She did manage to do the flying through the the arches in the first level. Eventually on like her third run after watching me do it, she's done Meteor, she's done Fortuna, Sector X, and she made it to the boss of Titania. And that's as far as she's made it. She hasn't played oh, and she played Katina, but she failed Katina, so she still got routed to Sector X instead of to Solar.
So she's only played a handful levels. She's not made it to Venom yet. She's not done any of the iconic Hard Route levels like Area 6 or zones.
She's not gotten to play Macbeth and blow up the train, unfortunately. But she seems to actually be having fun playing the game, which is of course the most important part. And she's getting noticeably better every time she plays it. I love that. I love that. That's the kind of game it is where you can actually feel like you are improving at the game rapidly.
My replay of Star Fox 64, this is the first time I've played the game in, I want to say, five years.
I replay it occasionally, but not regularly.
I'm having a blast. I have played through every single level in the game within the last week. I've gotten the medal. So if you get a high enough score and keep your whole party alive, you get a medal in Star Fox 64 on the level, I've gotten medals on the entire blue route. So all of the beginner levels basically all the way through to the end. And more than half of the Hard Route levels I have Solar, Macbeth Area or Sector Z, Area 6, I think are the only ones I have left to medal in the entire game. Oh, and maybe Katina. I might still have Katina to do so. I. I played it a fair bit in the last week. I fucking love this game. It's just as quotable today as it was then.
[00:46:02] Speaker A: The. The.
[00:46:03] Speaker B: The 90s dude bro voice that they gave Bill is so much funnier now than I realized in the 90s.
Holy shit. He is such a. Like Fox. That's one of ours. Like it's. It's exactly the like dude voice you imagine from 90s cartoons.
[00:46:22] Speaker C: That was a pretty good impression.
[00:46:24] Speaker A: It is. It is the old style of voice acting where it is not. It's. It's not. Shall we call it standout voice acting? Yeah.
[00:46:33] Speaker B: The voice acting in the game isn't good, but it is iconic. And that is one of the things I'm most worried about. That is one of the things I'm most worried about is in the presentation for this remake. They did showcase a little bit of dialogue. It sounds and looks and is written like a modern game.
It doesn't. I really hope that they managed to recapture the personality and the full thing. And that was just a limitation of only seeing snippets because there is personality.
[00:47:03] Speaker C: What's your favorite level? Like your most memorable? The one that you think of the
[00:47:07] Speaker B: most absolute favorite with boss and boss. Including the. Including the boss or separately level end boss.
[00:47:17] Speaker C: Let's do separate.
[00:47:19] Speaker B: Okay. Separate. If we're excluding the boss then just. Favorite level is easily Area 6. This is the. The level before the. The true ending. Venom.
This is the hard route. Penultimate level.
[00:47:31] Speaker C: The 3D. I think you get to fly 3D in that one. Right.
[00:47:34] Speaker B: So it's. It's. You're flying through like a. An armada on your way to Venom. It is pure rail shooter. There is no all range mode in that level.
[00:47:44] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:47:45] Speaker B: This is the one that ends with the horrible boss where he opens up his things and you have to shoot the energy balls and then he has tentacles. You have to shoot. The boss sucks. It is extremely time consuming and annoying. But the level is fantastic.
As far as best boss.
That's hard because most of the bosses are not the highlight of Star Fox 64. It does not have great boss fights.
Just general.
[00:48:12] Speaker C: I was thinking like my favorite boss in this is the what's. Where's the one where the mothership comes down where you meet Bill?
[00:48:21] Speaker B: That. That's Katina.
[00:48:23] Speaker C: Katina. I like that one. And I also like the solar one because I like the waves and all. That was pretty cool. And then what's the.
The. The robot. I think that's Sexter X. Right.
[00:48:35] Speaker B: Andros Sector X has you fight the robot who's like destroy Destroy.
[00:48:41] Speaker C: Yes. And that just made me remember, after Sector X, you go fight the skeleton boss. And that one was pretty fun too.
[00:48:50] Speaker B: So that's Titania.
And one thing that star Fox 64 does really well, that I love about it is the branching paths. If you defeat the Sector Xbox quickly, you go to Macbeth. You don't go to Titania. Macbeth is the train level where you drive the tank. If you are slow at defeating that boss, he slaps Slippy out of space, and Slippy crash lands on Titania, and then you have to go to Titania to rescue Slippy. And there's so many things like that throughout all of Star Fox 64, where it branches in ways that are more than just, oh, well, you did a specific thing, but sometimes it's, oh, you succeeded at a thing or you failed at a thing. So your path now branches. I love Star Fox 64 so much.
Favorite boss, though, I. I think I'm just gonna have to go with literally the. The hard route Boss of Cordaria. He's simple. He's to the point. He has iconic voice lines.
[00:49:52] Speaker C: But again, I don't want to really want.
[00:49:53] Speaker A: No, that's.
[00:49:54] Speaker B: It's over the water.
[00:49:55] Speaker C: Field is.
[00:49:56] Speaker B: No, it's over the water.
[00:49:57] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:49:59] Speaker B: But again, Star Fox 64's boss fights are not the high point of the game.
[00:50:03] Speaker A: Like, just maybe they will be soon,
[00:50:06] Speaker B: you know, if the remake succeeds at making the boss fights good, then I will call it a successful remake. I.
I hope the remake is good. We'll know in a month. God, I hope it's good. I want it to be good enough and succeed so that we get more Star Fox games styled like star Fox 64. I don't want fucking open world shit. I want a rail shooter with maybe some open moments here and there, but, like, just make a good fucking rail shooter. Star Fox 64, by the way, is already in and of itself a remake of Star Fox snes. They are the same fucking story. It is a remake of snes.
[00:50:44] Speaker A: Star Fox didn't know that.
[00:50:46] Speaker B: Yeah, it's. It's literally the exact same story and mostly the same, like, concepts for the levels. Like, the boss I mentioned in Corneria is the boss of the easy and medium routes of Corneria in Star Fox snes. Just straight up, it's the same entity.
They are. They are very much like, if you've played SNES Star Fox and you play Star Fox 64, it is a remake of that game very literally. So I hope this remake is good and then maybe they'll give us Actual good new Star Fox games if this one does well. I just like rail shooters though. Like, give me more. I looked. Apparently there's an indie rail shooter in early access. I hope it's good.
I hope it comes out eventually. Called X Zodiac. That has like Star Fox SNES art kind of vibe, but with proper frame rate.
Looks interesting. I hope it's good. I want more of that. Like, I'm gonna check this game out now and tell you what I think when I get a chance to play it.
[00:51:45] Speaker A: Well, we can only hope so. Pillow and I have the same other game to talk about and I mentioned it last time we talked that I had literally just started playing. So I didn't have enough opinion to discuss the entirety of the game. I'd had like two hours. I have now not only beaten Diablo 4, but had a significant amount of time playing the end game.
Pillow, how far have you gotten in Diablo 4?
[00:52:12] Speaker C: Right now I am Mephisto. Mephisto just started taking over my mind and I'm headed back from that. So I'm not too far into it. But I'm enjoying the story so much. Let me preface by saying I don't play Diablo 4 or I don't haven't played Diablo 4, Diablo 3 for the end game with the Paragons and all of that. I have always played Diablo for the story because it has a great storytelling. Blizzard is just good at storytelling. Like they just. That's one of their great strengths as far as with their lease. At least with starcraft and Diablo. You know, the other ones I can have opinions on for certain things. But.
But I do plan on trying to get into the end game of this one and I'm excited to hear if you tell me it's good or not.
[00:53:07] Speaker A: So as. As I've said, I have beaten the story. I have played the game.
This is the best story they have had in a while. It fills in holes. It. It plugs things in. And if you play the entirety going through the whole tapestry of Diablo 4 to both expansions, it is one hell of a good story. The initial story with Lilith is fantastic. The intermediary story was notably intermediary with Vessel of Hatred. That gave us a really annoying end boss because it wasn't Mephisto and that really ticked people off. But knowing that this expansion was going through and how this expansion has ended, it has come full circle and become.
I don't know if it's my favorite Diablo game because it's really hard atop Diablo 2. Diablo 2 in its entirety is A really good game, but it is equivalent to Diablo 2. In my head, they have done a brilliant job making me care about characters.
This is not a good world.
Things are bleak and dark.
And it's not Earth. It never has, but it never will be. It's explicitly designed as this inherently flawed place that was made by demons and angels. And so it has a fundamental evil in its core. And it is truly dark in a way that a lot of other games can't do properly.
And the story shows this. There are things in the story where you expect some happy endings.
If you go into this expecting some happy endings, you're not getting a lot of those, like, you win.
But it's. It's still a Diablo game. Bad things have happened to a lot of good people, and bad things are going to continue to happen.
Now, progressing from this into the end game, this is the first time I can honestly say that I like an end game more than poe2s, because it has just enough of the things that poe2 or not poe2. I'm sorry, poe. I said poe2 just as a habit because I'm always expecting other things. Path of Exile.
The base one, not the expansion, not the second one. There are too many things in Path of Exile. There are so many things going on in Path of Exile that it is not just overwhelming, but it's overly complex to the point where I think it's complex for complexity's sake. And I don't like how it feels.
Diablo has hit that sweet spot for me where the end game. I'm not talking about every system entirely because there's a couple of things that I think are done better in other games, but the systems that they have added in the end game, how they function and what you can do there, is, I think, my sweet spot.
The only thing I would change was if I could steal Last Epoch's skill system and bring it in, because I think that is the more interesting way of doing skills, and the amount of customization you have there feels better.
However, the update that they have made to Diablo 4 skills has made it significantly more fun to play. They have just enough tweaking customization that I have seen no less than nine separate builds on the one class talking about one skill, and all of them are claiming they're the best.
So I've seen a bunch of people talking about nine separate ways to build one class skill. The new class they've added, Warlock, I had a huge amount of fun with. I went through. I played Paladin as well, all the way through the end game that is also immensely fun. I think it's distinct enough from Crusader that it is back to being what a paladin should be. And that Warlock is the most fun class because it's the newest. They did a damn good job of making Warlock fun and they made possibly the single best feeling skill I have ever played in an arpg. With Apocalypse, I can get that ability to make a screen wide explosion that can hit things slightly off screen if I angle it correctly to the point where it makes a massive million damage nuke that clears the whole screen. And it feels fantastic because I have built towards my super.
[00:57:36] Speaker C: I've been playing Warlock as well. So I've built but I've went into the summoning and I got the giant dude that comes out of the ground and swings his sword everywhere. And I'm really enjoying him because it just makes those survive the wave events super easy because I just put my little ritual circle on the ground and he also like I got a skill that increases his summoning time or his active time as well. So with this like he stays forever. And then I get times to the point where I can have two of them and they're just sitting there and I'm just. I'm just safe because I put a wall up.
[00:58:12] Speaker A: Yeah it and you played a completely separate manner with the same class. And I know I can do another different manner entirely because I was doing a different thing.
[00:58:21] Speaker C: I'm doing it specifically without guides till I hit to the point of like maximum level where then. Then you gotta start looking into a guide like where the optimize the build.
Because I want to play this class organically by my design, the entirety of my campaign.
[00:58:41] Speaker A: Through the first playthrough. I did not use a guide. I had a blast. When I went to push into the end game, I went all right, what can I do to start optimizing things? And the things where I needed interesting help, where like I went and looked through help was I don't know what specific items have been created and dropped for everything. So I needed to figure out what were farm things that I wanted to go look for, where those things drop, how I can find them, what things are build enabling creations, etc. That's where guides help and that's where the end game point has really started to hit.
I'm as of today, I finally fixed my build. I've got my items and I I finished the set bonus that makes it so that it's complete and it feels so good. But now I need to start bringing my toughness up because I explode as fast as the enemies do.
And they have ways of now tuning this up so I can go in and tweak my defenses and. And build.
Build a customized item exactly for what I need. And that is something that was missing was itemization was just find things. And sometimes that's correct. You will just find things on the ground there that are your best in slots. Fantastic. Awesome. But you can craft individual pieces to fill in holes and. And boost yourself up to two points where, man, I needed something there. And the crafting system that they have modified and added in is just complex enough that I feel good when I specifically find things that I am missing and add them in. But it is not complex that I need to go and search for every ounce of information to figure out what I need to do to fix a build. I know I'm exploding. I need more life. I need more defenses. How do I find those defenses? Well, I get either a specific resistances type, if I know that's killing me, or I get a barrier type because there's multiple different health layers you can get on yourself.
So the. The other thing that is good is that there are more than just one thing in the game at the end game. I have pinnacle bosses that are some of the best boss fights I've ever played. Mephisto's boss fight, one of the most fun things I've ever done. That's not even his pinnacle fight. His pinnacle fight's better. And I love the Mephisto fight. Lilith's pinnacle fight is super fun. They brought back Belial. They brought back azrael from Diablo 3. And there are better versions of their Diablo 3 fights. So they took things that were, like, poor but still fun to, like, reference from old things and bring them back.
There's an infinite dungeon that you can go down that scales. So you have something that you can like. There is a world's, like, actual meter that you can compare yourself against everyone else in the world do. It's.
I believe it's called the Tower, not the pit. And the Tower has just a leaderboard to it. You can race to be the best person in the tower. There's by category of class and there's by category in the world. You can figure it out. There's even, like, individualized man, you're doing this skill. Bam. Other people are playing this skill. That's where you are versus them. If you're someone who's competitive, you can go in there. There's open world content. There's world bosses. There's so much stuff and they're different enough in playstyle while still being go there and kill the thing because that's what ARPGs are and I really finally have enough systems that it is fun to play and I never find myself getting bored of just killing things. Do you have Anything else for Diablo 4 for your pillow or is that where you're at?
[01:02:28] Speaker C: Nope, that's where I'm at.
[01:02:30] Speaker A: Alright, I hope you have as much time finishing that game as I did. Jax, you got one more game for us to finish this out.
[01:02:37] Speaker B: All right, so I've been playing through the Quintet Trilogy and and as of earlier today I finished the second game in the trilogy, Illusion of Gaia. This is the one that by far the most people have played in the US out of the three. It sold like half a billion copies on the Super Nintendo. It took me about eight hours start to finish and I have opinions this game is not nearly as good as I remembered.
I hate to say that it has elements I really like.
First of all, I want to emphasize despite how it's presented and what the perception is, Illusion of Gaia is not an rpg. I'm sorry, it's not. It is a linear top down action game with story elements. And I'm going to put story elements in scare quotes because the plot of this game is fucking gibberish.
It has puzzles in the like. It has the form of puzzles throughout the dungeons of the game, but there is no thinking involved. They are extremely brain dead puzzles.
This is not a Zelda game in that regard, even though Zelda is probably the closest analog in terms of gameplay.
But okay, the the plot of this game you play as Will, who went to the Tower of Babel with his dad to discover its secrets. And something happened on the disaster on the expedition. There was a disaster of some kind. Will returned to his hometown. He has no idea how he survived it. And so you're just this kid who like a year ago your dad died on an expedition exploring the Tower of Babel and you're still here for some reason, you don't know why.
And you stumble into this dark space where a being named Gaia tells you that you're the hero and you need to leave your home and save the world from a comet that's approaching to bring ill fortune to the world.
And that's about the most that the plot makes sense. Through the course of this game you meet a bunch of people who get introduced and removed seemingly arbitrarily. At one point, two of the people in your group fall in love.
And I say that with a questioning inflection because it just kind of all of a sudden, one of them is like, yeah, I love this other character. And they're like, I love you too. And then they decide to stay in the town that you were in at the time where one of them found their. Their amnesiac dad. And they're never heard from again. They're gone for the rest of the game. It's really, really jarring.
And that's kind of the tone of the whole game. Some of this I'm gonna chalk up to. It's a 1993 or 94, whatever it was translation. It sucks.
The translation sucks. There's a lot of lines that just make no sense or are really awkward.
But even if I give it a pass on all of that, where the plot winds up, I'm gonna spoil it because who cares? You learn that you're actually like the reincarnation of a line of Dark Knights and the princess who traveled with you is actually a reincarnation of a line of Light Knights, and the two of you unite together and turn into the ultimate warrior being Shadow, who shoots firebirds to defeat Dark Gaia, which is the entity controlling the comet. I am not making any of that up. And that's about as much sense as I could make out of this fucking gibberish plot.
And then after you defeat Dark Gaia, you see that the Earth is now reverting to its natural state, which apparently is modern society, because you see, like, cities and like a modern as of the 1990s Japanese school where your friends have all been reincarnated into it or something, and no one has any memories of the events. And I don't fucking understand what the hell the point of this game was.
This game is fucking stupid. I actually think the plot is worse than the plot of Soul Blazer. That's saying something. Because the plot of Soul Blazer was essentially this dumb fuck king made a deal with the devil and sold out the entirety of living life for gold.
Like, that plot sucked, but at least it was coherent. It was just dumb. This plot was incoherent. This plot felt like. This plot felt like Neon Genesis Evangelion, but with none of the, like, time or effort to actually flesh anything out. It is just throw ideas at the wall and see what sticks. And nothing is well rooted. Or like there's no foreshadowing.
It just kinda goes. I am very disappointed in Illusion of Gaia. I am probably never playing this game again.
My memories of it have been tainted by this replay. It is a worse game than I remembered. And some games that frustrates me because
[01:07:40] Speaker A: it has to be replayed.
[01:07:41] Speaker B: Yeah, apparently because the actual, like moment to moment gameplay is a lot better than Soul Blazer. Other than the boss fights. The boss fights suck just as much as the boss fights in Soul Blazer sucked. But the actual plot is just absolute gibberish.
And it has a lot of like, frustrating elements to it as well. Like there's annoying bits of like, oh, well, this dungeon you need to. I'm going to use an example from like the penultimate dungeon of the game. You need to collect these six tablets. Well, this means you go to the like branching hub area and go into the six different zones, Some of which require you to play as will, Some of which require you to play as Ship Shadow, this new character that's introduced right near the end of the game. So you can get through them because you can only use that character's unique ability to progress. That's as sophisticated as the puzzles get in the game.
And then you fight the boss of the pyramid, which is a terrible boss fight. And then immediately it goes to the Tower of Babel and you refight all of the bosses of the game, including the boss of the pyramid that you literally beat five minutes earlier.
I am not kidding. It's stupid. At least Mega man games, when they do their boss refights, have the decency to have three fucking stages between the last boss that's going to be in the refights and the refights themselves. So you have other gameplay in between.
Not literally. Oh, you beat this area.
[01:09:10] Speaker A: Cool.
[01:09:11] Speaker B: You're immediately in a boss gauntlet that ends with the boss you just fought. It's fucking stupid. I hope terranigma is better because I am playing that next. And Terranigma has a reputation as being one of the best RPGs on the SNES, period.
It never got a US release, but it has an official translation. It was released in Europe, just not in America, because Enix US was already shut down by then. So I've found a version of the game that is the European release of the game, but converted to run at NTSC speed so you get proper frame rate. Because PAL was a thing back then. So this is supposed to be like the best way to experience a as the game was intended if you were a Japanese audience, basically.
I hope it's good. That's what I'm gonna be playing next. I will finish the trilogy. Unless Terranigma somehow is God awful. In which case I'll quit partway through and you'll hear about it. But I don't think that's gonna be the case because Terranigma has a reputation for being genuinely good. But so did this game. And that's what annoys me so much. Like, this game got like 80s and 90s out of a hundred on every review when it came out. And Illusion of Gaia just. It's not good. It's not a good game. Don't go back and play it. If you have fond memories of Illusion of Gaia, do not replay Illusion of Gaia. Just let your fond memories stay fond memories. That's where I'm ending it.
[01:10:37] Speaker A: Yeah, well, that's where the end of it is. Let's. Let's hope that this one doesn't feel as bad for you. And realistically, like, if. If this last one doesn't live up to its hype, what else has been tainted by time?
[01:10:50] Speaker B: Yeah, I think the thing for me is like the first game in the trilogy, Soul Blazer, I had fun. The plot is stupid, but the gameplay was. I mean, it's an old game, but it was fun. I like a lot of elements of Soul Blazer. Even if Soul Blazer is kind of Act Razor ish in its overall plot, which is another Enix game from the same time frame.
Actraiser's really good, by the way. Actraiser is the one I would actually recommend. If you want to play a game in this, like, paradigm, don't even fucking play Illusion of gaia. Go play 1990s Actraiser on the Super NES or the relatively recent remake that it got.
Renaissance was released in 2021, which is a perfectly fine game. Like Actraiser's great.
Soul Blazer is fine. Illusion of Gaia honestly is not very good.
[01:11:44] Speaker A: These games make me think of worse versions of Soul of Mana.
[01:11:48] Speaker B: Worse versions of what?
[01:11:49] Speaker A: Soul of Mana.
[01:11:50] Speaker B: Soul of Mana. Do you mean Secret of Mana?
[01:11:53] Speaker A: No, there's a Soul of Mana game, but Secret of Mana is the better one.
[01:11:55] Speaker B: Do you mean Sword of Mana? There isn't a game called Soul of Mana.
[01:12:00] Speaker A: I might mean sort of mana.
[01:12:00] Speaker B: Sword of Mana was the GBA one.
[01:12:02] Speaker A: I definitely mean Sword of Mana. Secret Mana was fantastic. Sword of Mana was great. Yeah.
[01:12:07] Speaker B: Sword of Mana was the Game Boy advance one.
It's fine. It's a remake of the first game in the Seiken Densetsu series. Secret of Mana is the second game in the series. Secret of Mana is phenomenal.
And then Trials of Mana is the current English language. Version of the next game after Secret of Mana. The SNES version is really good, but suffers from that late SNES jank that a lot of late SNES games have of being kind of weird.
And it has a remake that I've played. It's perfectly fine.
[01:12:43] Speaker C: The.
[01:12:44] Speaker B: The remake was released in, like, 2020. It's a good game. It's not an amazing game, but, like, trials mana is good. So I wouldn't even put this in the same boat as, like, the mana series of like, has aged poorly. Because I can go back and play Seiken Densetsu 3 or Secret of Mana and have a blast.
[01:13:01] Speaker A: Yeah, that's what I'm calling the better version of this. There's something that, you know, definitely still holds up.
[01:13:06] Speaker B: Yeah, like, those games are old and they're jank, and there's a lot that, like, hasn't aged well in those games. But, like, my wife and I played through all of Secret of Mana, I want to say, six years ago, and that was her first exposure to it. She had never played it before, had no nostalgia, and she had a lot of fun. Like, Secret of Mana is still a good game. God, I wish Illusion of Gaia was better. I'm. I'm so disappointed. I played eight hours to beat this game and I don't regret it. Cause, like, I got to talk about it for the podcast, but I would have honestly quit like two hours in if it wasn't for this podcast.
[01:13:42] Speaker A: Yeah, it's not good.
[01:13:43] Speaker B: I'm sorry, listener who wanted me to talk about Illusion of Gaia. I'm sorry.
I wish it was better.
[01:13:51] Speaker A: Well, on that soured note, I guess we'll end today's episode.
Guys, it's been a great time.
Thank you for listening to from 8bit to 4k. I've been Mike of many names. Rjax Ohman for pillow Pet. Have a good night, everybody.
[01:14:06] Speaker B: Bye Bye.
[01:14:07] Speaker C: Night.
