Ever wondered what it's like to devote 120 hours to a video game? Leashea will tell you! From her obsession with ARK to the synchronization required in TickTock A Tale For Two, we journey into the mesmerizing universe of video games. But that's not all - we also delve into Leashea's exhilarating D&D campaign and theri live Witcher 3 gameplay. We discuss the impactful decision-making in games like Witcher 3, and how it can determine different story outcomes.
Now, imagine a game that revolutionized the RPG landscape, introducing new mechanics and narratives. Yes, we're talking about Mass Effect! We discuss its innovative inception, the problematic launch of Mass Effect: Andromeda, and the infamous input lag. Plus, we evaluate the narrative evolution in God of War and how the franchise shifted from fast-paced action to a storyline driven by deep emotions. Finally, we introduce our new D&D campaign, set in the mysterious Southern Continent. Join us for an episode packed with drinks, games, design, and plenty of laughter!
As always, you can reach us on almost any social media and email us your ghost stories at drinksandthingspodcast@gmail.com
https://linktr.ee/DrinksandThings
We also have a buymeacoffee! https://www.buymeacoffee.com/drinksnthings
Music in intro/outro by Skilsel on Pixabay
Ever wondered what it's like to devote 120 hours to a video game? Leashea will tell you! From her obsession with ARK to the synchronization required in TickTock A Tale For Two, we journey into the mesmerizing universe of video games. But that's not all - we also delve into Leashea's exhilarating D&D campaign and theri live Witcher 3 gameplay. We discuss the impactful decision-making in games like Witcher 3, and how it can determine different story outcomes.
Now, imagine a game that revolutionized the RPG landscape, introducing new mechanics and narratives. Yes, we're talking about Mass Effect! We discuss its innovative inception, the problematic launch of Mass Effect: Andromeda, and the infamous input lag. Plus, we evaluate the narrative evolution in God of War and how the franchise shifted from fast-paced action to a storyline driven by deep emotions. Finally, we introduce our new D&D campaign, set in the mysterious Southern Continent. Join us for an episode packed with drinks, games, design, and plenty of laughter!
As always, you can reach us on almost any social media and email us your ghost stories at drinksandthingspodcast@gmail.com
https://linktr.ee/DrinksandThings
We also have a buymeacoffee! https://www.buymeacoffee.com/drinksnthings
Music in intro/outro by Skilsel on Pixabay
Hello and welcome to episode 32, Dreams and Things.
Speaker 2:A podcast where we drink and talk about things.
Speaker 1:I told you there was more in there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I told you those are the ones that fell out. I didn't say they don't exist, hi.
Speaker 1:I'm Lisha.
Speaker 2:I'm Carver. What are you drinking today, Lisha?
Speaker 1:I am drinking a Cottage Springs beverage company, Watermelon Vodka Soda.
Speaker 2:Which is basically it's like a white claw, but not made by white claw. How is it?
Speaker 1:Tastes like somebody's yelling watermelon from the other room.
Speaker 2:Yeah, nice.
Speaker 1:It's actually a little bit nicer than vodka, than white claws. I find it's not as staticky.
Speaker 2:Little bit like less artificial tasting yeah. Okay, cool.
Speaker 1:Were you drinking Carve?
Speaker 2:I found one at the store. It's called Tahiti Treat. Fruit Punch, soda and Vodka. Nice, you know what it tastes like the Tahiti.
Speaker 1:Treat Pop.
Speaker 2:I didn't know that was a thing. I was going to say it tastes like sparkling cool quenches.
Speaker 1:Like Kool-Aid Jammers.
Speaker 2:No, cool quenches. You remember cool quenches. No, you don't remember the commercial. The kids like I will arm wrestle you for the last. No, yeah, it's like frozen juice.
Speaker 1:Oh.
Speaker 2:Sort of yeah, I can't believe you don't know what cool quenches are.
Speaker 1:I'm lame apparently.
Speaker 2:Incredibly lame apparently.
Speaker 1:You know what I miss? What Juice crystals.
Speaker 2:What's juice crystals?
Speaker 1:They're like powdered juice mixes and they used to have like 13 or 14 different flavors at the grocery store and you'd get like a bunch of them and I had to beg my mom to get me pink lemonade all the time because she hates pink lemonade.
Speaker 2:Juice. So you're just talking about like powders.
Speaker 1:Powder juice, yeah.
Speaker 2:You can still get that, can't you no?
Speaker 1:They got rid of them like 15 years ago.
Speaker 2:Cause Kool-Aid made them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but they don't make them very much.
Speaker 2:You can't get Tang, yeah, you can't get Tang.
Speaker 1:But you can't get like those off-brand, like no-name ones that were like the best ones.
Speaker 2:I know what you're talking about.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, those were pretty good.
Speaker 1:They were awesome.
Speaker 2:Now, the only ones you can get are lemonade, iced tea and Tang.
Speaker 1:And various flavors of Tang and Tang's not that great what happened for you this week, trevor, my brother loves Tang.
Speaker 2:Of course he loves Logan. He loves it.
Speaker 1:That's weird, I don't know why we should make him Tang macaroni one day.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's a great idea. The thing he doesn't listen to this. It won't be the worst thing that we've ever done to him, but that's a we, I mean you maybe. Not me. Actually, the worst thing that I've ever done, that was ever done to him was from my mom, but you know.
Speaker 1:That's a story for another day.
Speaker 2:Yes. We're talking about a prank. It's not like she did something bad, but yeah.
Speaker 1:I'm not very good at pranking people.
Speaker 2:Neither am I, because.
Speaker 1:I'm just like the whole time.
Speaker 2:They're like they get really suspicious.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they're like you're sour right now and I'm like what Me?
Speaker 2:No, oh man.
Speaker 1:What happened for you this week, Trevor?
Speaker 2:For me this week, for me personally, not a lot. However, something that did happen is our boy did it.
Speaker 1:Which boy? We have several.
Speaker 2:Yes, max Verstappen has won 10 races in a row.
Speaker 1:Oh my god.
Speaker 2:Bang, bang Broke the record.
Speaker 1:Broke.
Speaker 2:Making history. Hell yeah, let's see how many more he can do. Watch his engine will blow up.
Speaker 1:Watch his engine will blow up.
Speaker 2:Next race.
Speaker 1:Don't jinx him like that. We're all good, I'm not going to knock on your head too, because it's also made of wood.
Speaker 2:That's right. And unfortunately, before the race started, as they were doing the formation lap, the best boy on the grid, yuki Sonoda, his engine failed. Oh no, on the formation lap and I was like no.
Speaker 1:Yuki Sonoda, the short king.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was like no.
Speaker 1:Yuki Sonoda, he's my favorite.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I know, he's hilarious.
Speaker 1:He's so cute.
Speaker 2:And that's all the news I have for today.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 2:What happened for you, Lisha? What?
Speaker 1:happened for me. I made new sticker designs.
Speaker 2:How many?
Speaker 1:I made one.
Speaker 2:You got to make more than that.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I thought you made more than one.
Speaker 1:No, I'm working on them though.
Speaker 2:Because the mushroom house, that's the one you're talking about, right?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I thought you had like two or three that you showed me.
Speaker 1:No.
Speaker 2:Oh, okay.
Speaker 1:I'm making a mushroom house. Mushroom house. I made a mushroom house sticker. It's real cute actually, and I'm really proud of the way it turned out. It's probably like one of the best drawings I've ever done.
Speaker 2:It is a really good drawing, and you know what? Now that you mention it, I have to show you something here.
Speaker 1:Oh.
Speaker 2:God, look at this guy. Okay, pretty cool. I showed her a picture of a man with a mushroom forehead.
Speaker 1:Topical I made some stickers out of it and they actually turned out really good.
Speaker 2:And I printed a recipe book on some of your sticker paper. Two pages of my recipe book are now stickers.
Speaker 1:Like just the whole ass sticker.
Speaker 2:The whole thing. I guess I hope it's the two best recipes so you can actually put the sticker somewhere.
Speaker 1:Did you reprint them on regular paper.
Speaker 2:No, I ran out of ink remember.
Speaker 1:Oh well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I tried, okay, okay, yeah, I guess I should have mentioned this when I was doing that. But I bought these recipe books online Two recipe books and so I tried to print them off, and there are 120 pages each. I used up an entire cartridge of ink and I didn't even get one printed off.
Speaker 1:How many books do you have?
Speaker 2:Two.
Speaker 1:Oh, my God.
Speaker 2:I got most of the way through the book, but I couldn't finish it Brutal.
Speaker 1:That's a lot of ink. Yeah, I think it's because I bought the regular one and not the extra large.
Speaker 2:Does the extra large fit in the printer? Yeah, oh, I should have bought the extra large then, because I bought the regular thinking the XL wouldn't fit.
Speaker 1:No, the XL fits.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:Um.
Speaker 2:Welp.
Speaker 1:I'm going to be updating my online store and, yeah, that's basically what happened for me this week. Sweet, what are we talking about, krabber?
Speaker 2:We're just talking about video games. We're playing and or want to play and or have played.
Speaker 1:Yep. Very recently, I would say probably like within the last year Within the last well, since the last time we did a video game episode.
Speaker 2:Yeah, which was one of our first episodes, wasn't?
Speaker 1:it yeah.
Speaker 2:Nice.
Speaker 1:I think it was like the fourth one or fifth, one or something.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1:I don't remember, it was like two years ago almost. Oh, our baby turns a year old.
Speaker 2:Yes, bowser will be one year old on the 13th.
Speaker 1:He's a bird though.
Speaker 2:Does that mean anything for dogs?
Speaker 1:I don't know. I told Kit that the only reason I remember he's a Virgo and when his birthday is is because my dog's a Virgo. He's just like wow, thanks, I was like you're welcome.
Speaker 2:Just shows the ranking of what's important in your life, I guess.
Speaker 1:Yeah, my friends or my dog. I remember everybody's birthday, though.
Speaker 2:That's right, you're like the opposite of me.
Speaker 1:You don't even remember when my birthday is.
Speaker 2:I don't even remember when my own birthday is At the time. I don't know until you say happy birthday.
Speaker 1:Okay, so we're going to jump right into the video games. So grab a drink and sit with us a while.
Speaker 2:That's going to take a while.
Speaker 1:I guess we can start off by talking about how obsessed I became with ARC for like a month.
Speaker 2:Yeah, works for me.
Speaker 1:So I don't know If you've listened. I've talked about ARC before, but I played. I sunk about 120 hours into that game over the course of a month and that's like really, really limiting myself.
Speaker 2:You're going hard.
Speaker 1:I know, and that was really limiting myself, because if you would have let me, I would have just played it indefinitely- Probably. I wouldn't have slept.
Speaker 2:Yeah no-transcript.
Speaker 1:I love that game to pieces and I finally got to play with like a tribe of people and it wasn't just me.
Speaker 2:So why'd you stop playing?
Speaker 1:We all kind of got like sick of it, I think.
Speaker 2:Oh, okay, could you make like a server and everything?
Speaker 1:I made like a discord server for it and all that, and I even made animated emojis.
Speaker 2:Nice.
Speaker 1:For the server.
Speaker 2:I think, why were you going so hard?
Speaker 1:I really love art.
Speaker 2:Just in one day, I'm done with you now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I had like. Now I have like three or 400 hours on that game.
Speaker 2:Total, total. So you put a quarter of the time on it. Yeah, Just there, okay cool.
Speaker 1:Yeah so.
Speaker 2:You played it on stream once or twice.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we played it on stream a couple of times.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:It was really fun. I just really like dinosaurs and I think the game's really neat. It has its ups and downs, for sure.
Speaker 2:Who doesn't like dinosaurs, though?
Speaker 1:People who don't believe in dinosaurs. I've actually met somebody who doesn't believe in evolution and doesn't believe in dinosaurs. She thinks that they were planted.
Speaker 2:By who?
Speaker 1:Archaeologists and paleontologists.
Speaker 2:Why would they do that though?
Speaker 1:I don't know.
Speaker 2:I must look into this, I will figure this out everybody.
Speaker 1:Okay, and I also played TikTok A Tale for Two with Fikit.
Speaker 2:That game's pretty interesting, isn't it?
Speaker 1:It's super interesting.
Speaker 2:Cause. It's like multiplayer but you're not actually like.
Speaker 1:Multiplayer it's like keep talking and nobody blows up.
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay.
Speaker 1:You know that game where you're playing at the same time but you're not technically playing together, like you're playing together but you're not technically playing on the same server like Arc.
Speaker 2:Yeah, cause you don't have to be connected to the internet or anything. You just put in a code and it generates the game.
Speaker 1:No, not even TikTok, a Tale for Two. You just click play and you choose player one or player two, and then whoever you're playing with cause usually you play with another person so you can't see their screen they just pick the opposite player and then you guys kind of sync up anyway, because you're like, okay, what do you see? And you just like go through what you see and then the next person like the same. The other person's like okay, what do you see? And you try to figure out these puzzles, because each of the puzzles there's like half the puzzle on your screen and half the puzzle on the other player's screen, so you have to communicate to figure out what the whole puzzle is.
Speaker 2:I thought when I played it with Tanner the one time I had to give him a code no, no, no, am I thinking of something else?
Speaker 1:Maybe, yeah okay, but like keep talking and nobody blows up, I think we should play, but I don't know how well that'll go, cause it's really really stressful.
Speaker 2:Oh, it sounds stressful.
Speaker 1:Do you know what it is?
Speaker 2:No.
Speaker 1:So it's a co-op game that you play. One person has this manual in front of them, so we'd have to print off the manual. Cause this is what we did when I played it we printed off the manual and then this other person has a bomb on the computer screen in front of them and you have to. You have to diffuse the bomb, okay, but there's like six different sides of the bomb that you have to diffuse.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:And each one of them is like different. And then you have to go to like, then you have to talk to the person who's holding the manual and looking at the manual and being like, okay, well, like this is what I see, what do I do? And then, like you have a time limit, so, like, the person holding the manual has to like furiously flip through the manual until you had to diffuse the bomb.
Speaker 2:I've got to figure out how to play that on stream, I think.
Speaker 1:I think it would be super fun.
Speaker 2:I think it would be super fun.
Speaker 1:I played it. I was the manual person because I just memorized the manual.
Speaker 2:Because I'm sure we could have it, so that you could have both screens and then you could have two cameras set up, because we got this one here, we also got one over there.
Speaker 1:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2:So I'm sure we could make it work.
Speaker 1:Probably we. I've also started a new D&D campaign and we'll talk about that kind of closer to the end, because it might take a little bit longer than I intended.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:So what have you been playing?
Speaker 2:What have I been playing? So we've obviously been playing Witcher 3 on stream.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And that's going good so far. I've played quite a bit of Witcher 2. But I never played Witcher 3.
Speaker 1:Witcher 3 is going pretty good. You're actually doing a lot better. You're kind of under level for where you're supposed to be.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm extremely under level. It's fun. It takes forever to level up in that game.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's because you have, that's because you're just doing quests, like when you happen upon monsters and stuff like that, you're supposed to kill them.
Speaker 2:I do kill them.
Speaker 1:I know, but 90% of the time you don't.
Speaker 2:No, I do.
Speaker 1:How many monster nests have you blown up?
Speaker 2:I've blown up a bunch of them. I just never blew up the one we were chasing last night, because it was the nighttime and all the ghouls kept up.
Speaker 1:Maybe you should do some level grinding while we're off stream.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I should, I know.
Speaker 1:Don't do any of the quests, just run around and kill things.
Speaker 2:Just killing, yeah, just kill everything. Yeah, so far it's fun.
Speaker 1:It's really good. Obviously, we're romancing Yennefer.
Speaker 2:Yes, gotta romance Yennefer, yeah. And then the other game that we're playing on stream is Metroid Prime, remastered. Now, I love Metroid Prime. It's one of my favorite games of all time, absolutely stoked when they remastered it and I think I bought it. I literally bought the digital version that came out a week earlier so I could play it right away, and then when the physical version of it came out, I ordered that too. I remember that, so I have. So I bought the game twice and my physical copy I've just never opened. It's just sitting on my shelf unopened, which I'm happy with. Um, I love that game to pieces and I hope they bring the second and the third out, although if they're coming out with a new Switch console which apparently they might be, yeah, it might come out for that.
Speaker 1:One of our podcasting friends. I saw on their Discord that one of them bought a Steam Deck.
Speaker 2:I've never really been all that interested in a Steam Deck, to be honest with you.
Speaker 1:It's just like a Switch, but for like.
Speaker 2:For PC games right.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, although I bet you could mod it to be pretty sweet.
Speaker 1:I don't know. I think it's too expensive to invest in right now.
Speaker 2:Of course too expensive.
Speaker 1:What else have you been playing?
Speaker 2:What else?
Speaker 1:has come out and you've finished.
Speaker 2:Well, I, I bought Tears of the Kingdom when it came out. That was nice because I was in school and I was like most of the time in school what I've done, studying and everything, because I only do about an hour of it at night because my brain just doesn't work. After that I got to play it, so I had like lots of time to play it when it came out. It was kind of cool because, like last year when I went to school, elden Ring came out right when I went to school and this year it was Tears of the Kingdom. So it worked out really well and I was. I think I put about 200 hours into that game. That's accurate.
Speaker 2:Before I was able to beat it. I did not even get close to 100%ing it.
Speaker 1:Are you going to?
Speaker 2:No, I don't like 100%ing games like that, like 100%ing Metroid Prime Sure, but like A big, open world game like that. I don't have time for that.
Speaker 1:Oh.
Speaker 2:Especially like 600 core oxides, actually not more like 900, I think.
Speaker 1:Last time I tried to play Witcher 3, I tried to be 100%ed.
Speaker 2:Yeah, see, like that's just Fools errand.
Speaker 1:It's not a fools errand.
Speaker 2:Is Witcher 3 more reasonable?
Speaker 1:Witcher 3 has like a s, not like yes and no. It's like 100%ing Horizon Zero Dawn.
Speaker 2:Horizon Zero Dawn was easy To 100%. 100%. There was no like 900 core oxide quest or anything like that.
Speaker 1:But you also have to take into account the DLC For Witcher.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so that'll add some to it.
Speaker 1:The Blood and Wine and the other one I can't remember.
Speaker 2:Yeah, anyway, I beat Breath of the Wild two or three times.
Speaker 1:The vampire one and the other one.
Speaker 2:Yes, I beat Breath of the Wild two or three times. When that one came out, I was also, you know, doing nothing but playing it.
Speaker 1:I believed it.
Speaker 2:And Tears of the Kingdom is just like it's like, quite literally, breath of the Wild. Two Like it's based on the same map. But they added, you know the depths, which is literally just as big, but underneath, and then you got the sky, which is like enormous and like yeah, I was playing it for a really long time. I started to Go like maybe I should just beat it so I can move on to something else.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was like concerned for you because like you'd come home and just play it for hours and I'm like I'm gonna go upstairs and then I come back down and you'd still be in the same spot, Yep, and I'd be like, are you ever gonna finish this game?
Speaker 2:And I was like probably.
Speaker 1:I think I asked you like three or four times like are you done this game yet?
Speaker 2:Yep, nope, not yet. Keep going. So yeah, it's a great game. I don't know if I'm gonna replay it, or I guess when I'm gonna replay is a better thing to say, although I did Play Breath of the Wild before it came out Like a few months, like legend, has held it out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, a few months before it came out, I decided to do another to replay through, of Breath of the Wild and I think it's sort of I was sort of bored of the game. It was weird. It was like I was bored of it, but I still wanted to play it.
Speaker 2:Yeah really bizarre. Anyway, I beat tears the kingdom. I Will probably be Beating it again at some point, maybe in a year or two We'll see you when this DLC comes out for it. After tears of the kingdom, I decided to try and beat the Skyward Sword remastered. So I'd started the game but I actually couldn't play it because Every single set of joy cons I have has like a problem, like I couldn't use the. I didn't like the Controller controls because they, when they did the remaster of Skyward Sword, they let you play it with a controller.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but I don't like I don't like how it feels. I like the motion controls with Skyward Sword, so I I had to basically use, like, like my joy con, my right joy con had connectivity issues so I couldn't play it like. It just didn't work.
Speaker 1:So that's so stupid.
Speaker 2:And then I tried them with my other set. Oh, it still didn't work. And then what I figured out is that the right joy con for my new switch, which is the tears of the kingdom version switch that right joy cons, actually good doesn't have a connectivity issues. Okay, cool. So I'm using that one. But I couldn't use the left side of the tears of the kingdom ones because that one just would not connect To the switch unless it was on the switch. So I have three sets of joy cons. All have Issues. So I used like one one joy con from one set and one joy con from the other set, and then I was finally able to play the game.
Speaker 1:That seems a little redundant redundant no no. Ridiculous was the word I was thinking, yeah.
Speaker 2:I have like ridiculous. I got like I Just said every set of my joy cards is messed up somehow. So yeah, I finally played through and beat that one. I I. A lot of people say the remastered version is a lot better than the original but honestly I found the? I like the original better because on the Wii, when you point the controller at the screen ahead an IR pointer and so just relying on the gyro and I found that the IR, the IR pointer, is just way better.
Speaker 2:It's way more accurate. You don't have to constantly like center it and yeah, it just works better.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Although the remastered version looks better. Yeah so there's that that's good.
Speaker 1:You started a new game recently.
Speaker 2:Do you want me to keep talking about games or do you want to talk about D&D now?
Speaker 1:You can keep talking about games.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:You also completed, like all of the mass effects, didn't you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, saw three. I beat. No, well, I beat. I Played through Mass Effect for the first time. I bought the legendary edition because it was on sale and I and I had a friend who really liked it who told me about it at some point when I lived in Kamloops and I just said, hey, maybe I should play that. And and yeah, mass Effect is probably One of the best trilogies of games I've ever played including andromeda.
Speaker 2:Andromeda is not part of the trilogy. Andromeda came out. I think they were trying to make a new trilogy with Andromeda, but they kind of fucked it up.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I've heard a lot of bad things about it.
Speaker 2:Well, when it came out, it was like totally Unplayable, like it was as bad as like what's it called?
Speaker 1:what are the new Pokemon games Like?
Speaker 2:it was as bad as the new Pokemon games in terms of like graphical problems. Like the Pokemon games, yeah.
Speaker 1:Which ones like? The newest ones, like scarlet and violet, scarlet and violet yeah.
Speaker 2:Like the game wouldn't run. The people looked awful. Yeah, it's just bad. No, it's terrible. Playing it now. Obviously they fixed a lot of the issues with it, although with Andromeda I always found like it has there's like input lag, so I could never actually aim properly you know a game.
Speaker 1:I really wish that they could have fixed a little bit more. What anthem?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think anthem. They were basically dropped it as soon as it came out. It's such a disaster, yeah. But getting back to the original trilogy of mass effect, which is actually really good, oh yeah, it's probably. I Well, I don't know if it'd be like my absolute favorite sci-fi franchise at this point, but it's definitely up there. What it was kind of like a. It was a pretty groundbreaking game when I was a kid. It was a pretty groundbreaking game when it came out. Like a lot of Stuff that I guess that we would take for granted in RPGs these days were kind of started in mass effect. Like Like romances is something that they did, like the Ability to choose multiple ones as well as like the the process in doing the romance.
Speaker 2:Okay where it's like you talk to them, you do something for them and then you unlock like flirty dialogue and stuff, and then later on you get like special scenes, depending on who you decide to romance.
Speaker 1:Oh. So it's kind of like one of those like Like room factory games, because you get special dialogues and stuff.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and witcher is the same thing.
Speaker 2:Kind of yeah and dragon age as well, was another one that came out, but I think mass effect did it before dragon age. I Know that well. Actually, the ones in the witcher three apparently work the same way. And then, and the game was also really cool because it was actually like envisioned as a trilogy, like from the very beginning they wanted to make a trilogy and they made it so that each of, like, your choices in the first game Actually lead into the second game and they lead into the third game.
Speaker 1:Oh nice so. You can do something similar with the witcher too. I.
Speaker 2:Don't know if the witcher did it to the extent mass effect no.
Speaker 1:They made it so that you can play it as a standalone game. But if you had played what you're to or the first witcher, there are certain decisions that you can make that affect the gameplay of witcher three oh, like what the interrogation with the General in Vizima when you first get to Vizima to meet with emmer bar emery.
Speaker 1:Okay yeah, when he's interrogating you right before like they shave you and you're like in the bath, he like says something and you can make a decision based off of what you decided. Like you can add a character or two to the game by just like Saying that you spared them in the last game.
Speaker 1:Okay, yeah, and then you add more. You can add more quests and dialogue With those characters, because those characters now exist in witcher three, whereas if you say you killed them or, like you, let them die, then you don't get those quests.
Speaker 2:Okay, yeah, yeah, that's all that makes sense. Yeah, the ones. But yeah that was one of the things that it kind of pioneered. There's also the fact that your squad mates, who are all like major characters like you, can actually have them all die on you, basically every game, like in the first. In the first game, one of your squad mates always dies and you have to choose who it is.
Speaker 2:That's awful but you can lose, but you can actually lose like Would it be one, so the one always dies. There's a second one, that that you have to kill If you don't do his Loyalty quest, because he basically turns on you. That's crazy, yeah, and you have to do his loyalty quest in order for him to you know, try to kill him.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you have to do his loyalty quest in order for him to you know, trust you enough to uh Want to stick with you, which is what I always do, because he's like the best character in the whole series. One of them.
Speaker 1:I lost my turn to thought uh, garak Garak, was that his name?
Speaker 2:Garak.
Speaker 1:I don't know, I don't know their names.
Speaker 2:I think you're thinking like gerald. No but you're applying something else to it. Oh, oh, you're thinking of garrus.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, that's not who I'm talking about. Oh okay, I knew it was like a garer or something.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I do, I know. So, no, it's uh, rex. Rex is the one that you might have to kill, but if you save him, he becomes the leader of the Krogan and he and then you can save the Krogan, you can cure the Genophage if he's the leader, because if his brother, if he dies, then his brother takes over and his brother is like insane. So, yeah, so that can happen in the first game. In the second game, you can actually kill everybody, including yourself. You play it if you play the last mission poorly enough and don't do anyone's loyalty missions.
Speaker 2:And then in the third game, a lot of your decisions from the first two games unfortunately don't really matter anymore, because in the first game, you have to choose whether to save the Citadel Council, which is like this intergalactic governing body I don't know Sounded like something fell. And if you save them, or if you don't save them and you choose the wrong and you choose one of the people, okay, where am I going with this? And yeah, I need to recollect my thoughts here. Okay, so if you don't save the Council, the Council has to be replaced in the next game. And if you choose the one human ambassador to be the human, what's it called Geez, like the human representative or whatever he basically, you know, appoints, he'll appoint new, new counselors from each of the other alien races, as it was before. But if you choose the other guy, he'll actually just replace the whole Council of Humans. And if you do that, then there's apparently a whole bunch of hate crimes taking place against humans on the Citadel in the next game, and so if you do choose to save them, obviously that can't happen and you know everyone's much nicer to each other, I suppose.
Speaker 2:So by the time you get to the third game, it basically doesn't matter who you choose. It always goes back to the other guy, because if you choose the one guy, he ends up stepping down after the second game and appointing the other guy to be in his place anyway. So there's a little bit of that going on between the second and the third game. But if you play but what's kind of interesting is that if you play like, you can play as a, you can be Paragon or Renegade or the two like Moralities that you can be. So if you play Paragon In the third game, you'll get like backstabbed a lot For, like you know, trusting people when you shouldn't. But if you play Renegade, you run into an issue where nobody trusts you and nobody wants to work with you. So it becomes really hard to assemble an army to save Earth. So that seems a little ridiculous. Why is it ridiculous?
Speaker 1:It's just a lot of decisions that I don't think I could make.
Speaker 2:Oh man, the whole thing. Games about decisions. The third game was really controversial too, because they kind of botched the ending, which made at the time a lot of people really angry, although nowadays it's not so bad and they're making a proper Mass Effect 4.
Speaker 1:Are they? They're making a Witcher 4 as well.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:And I'm very excited. So what games have you started recently?
Speaker 2:I started playing.
Speaker 1:Dad of Boy.
Speaker 2:Dad of Boy. Yes, I started God of War Ragnarok. That's the game I'm playing through right now. I started it like literally the other day Right after I beat Skyward Sword actually and so far it's pretty good. I've played every single God of War game and obviously the first five of them, six of them, it's the first six. I think the first six are beat-em-up, hack-and-slash type games Like Devil May Cry or Bayonetta.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Like that kind of game. Yeah, and then the two that have recently come out are a lot slower paced. You know A lot, a lot more emotion. I don't know if there's more emotion.
Speaker 1:Or depth to them.
Speaker 2:No, I wouldn't even say they have more depth than the first games. It's just a different gameplay style. Oh, it's like over the shoulder. The combat's a lot slower and less over the top, I would say, like the first six games. A lot of people will say that the new ones are more story driven or whatever, but the old ones were too. Just the story was different. Like, obviously, the first games all take place in Greece, because Kratos is a Spartan and he ends up killing the entire pantheon of Greek gods by the end of it, because, well, they're all scumbags. And then he travels, I guess, to the north, where it's ruled by the. The Norse pantheon turns out they're all pieces of shit too. So now I'm guessing that we're basically doing the same thing.
Speaker 1:Hmm, you can only hope, hey.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and in the first, yeah, no. It's actually kind of a Weird story because, like you find, the first game opens up and you learn, kratos makes a deal with Ares and Ares, I guess, makes him kill his family. So he slaughters his children, his wife, everybody Because of Ares, which turns him onto this killing spree of gods, kills Ares, becomes the god of war and just keeps on killing other gods because none of them are any better. And then later on he learns he's actually the son of Zeus. So naturally, after he learns that, he decides to kill his father. And you know, new games open up and he's kind of started a new life with a new family. So that's nice.
Speaker 1:How many families is this dude had?
Speaker 2:Two. He had one in Greece that he slaughtered and he started a new one in what is it? Norway, I don't know where it takes me. Sweden, I don't know, but yeah, hmm. I've never played a god of war. No, maybe we should play them on stream. We'll start with the first one.
Speaker 1:That's a long time.
Speaker 2:They only take like five hours to get through. New ones take longer because they're more like RPGs, but like the old games you could actually beat very quickly. Short and sweet.
Speaker 1:Maybe, Okay. But you know what game takes poor fucking ever to play? What's that? Dungeons and Dragons.
Speaker 2:That's right.
Speaker 1:We started a new campaign with different people, which kind of sucks because our last campaign we were supposed to fight the BBEG in the next couple of sessions. We were literally at the end of the campaign.
Speaker 2:Too bad.
Speaker 1:Sad, sad but anyway. So we started a new campaign, but in order for you to understand, so after the events of the first campaign and after the fight of the BBEG, because the DM decided that we fought him anyway and dealt with him.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:So after the event, the fabled southern continent appeared out of nowhere.
Speaker 2:Nice.
Speaker 1:It didn't just appear out of nowhere. It was just suddenly remembered by everybody. Oh, it was forcefully forgotten by one of the gods, and so for a thousand or a couple thousand years it just hid, and everybody in the southern continent forgot about the rest of the world.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:And vice versa.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So, starting my character, who's from the southern continent. She was born after the events of the godslayer calamity.
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 1:And she's in crossing.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:And she has a Leonin companion named Lodge, a small 16 year old girl named Dotty or daughter she doesn't actually have a name.
Speaker 2:Oh.
Speaker 1:Her name is daughter, but we all call her Dotty. And then there is Lauren, who's a knight. So the way that we started this campaign is we, because there's four of us, so we got paired off and we did like a little mini session before the campaign. Yep, like none of us really know what the others campaign like mini session happened, like what happened in it.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:But mine was basically just like I bought a deck of cards I ran into Like when I say ran, I mean like I turned around and walked smack into this lion man and then he was trying to like calm me down Because I was like freaking out, because I realized he's a bounty hunter and there's a huge bounty for me right now because I am a princess.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:I am not a lost princess. I am an on the run princess.
Speaker 2:Nice.
Speaker 1:Because my father was killed and the kingdom was taken over by my uncle, who is absolutely insane. And so, yeah, he wants me to come back so that he can kill me, and so he's put a huge bounty on my head and I walk into a giant six foot eight lion man who happens to be a bounty hunter.
Speaker 1:So I just pick up my stuff and I just turn around and walk the other way without saying anything to him and he just follows me to make sure that I was okay. Like he just follows me down the street and he's like, hey, can I? And I'm just like I really have to go right now. I really don't need to talk to you, I'm fine. And then I go into an alleyway and then I popped into the next alleyway with face step.
Speaker 2:Nice.
Speaker 1:So yeah, and then he found me because apparently I'm really smart or really stupid, but I picked the only language that he speaks Like I picked Leonin as a language.
Speaker 2:Nice.
Speaker 1:So my character was like speaking Leonin to herself, and he found her. And then some thugs were like hey, look at you, you found the princess. And then he proceeded to scare them into submission by using his ability to roar at them.
Speaker 2:Because he's a lion.
Speaker 1:Because he's a lion. And then he turned around and my character just fainted Because she's just so anxiety-ridden and he just roars and then turns around and she's just like faints, just like out.
Speaker 2:That's it, I'm done.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and then we meet up with Lauren and Dotty and it was pretty good, except for the fact that Dotty is a follower of the 13th God. Nice, not a follower. Her magic comes from the 13th God.
Speaker 2:What's special about the 13th God?
Speaker 1:You didn't know this, but your character was supposed to become a Knight of the 13th God or a. Squire.
Speaker 2:So the 13th God is Waldrick.
Speaker 1:No, waldron's a Knight of the 13th God. I gotcha so you would become a Squire.
Speaker 2:Nice.
Speaker 1:So yeah, and then right now we're either going to the arena or on the hunt for the goddess who's known as the Orchid of the Crossroads.
Speaker 2:Hmm, it's always orchids with you.
Speaker 1:I'll give you three fucking guesses on who the Orchid of the Crossroads is.
Speaker 2:Dale, I know who it is.
Speaker 1:Okay, yeah, so we're. She's supposed to help lost people find their way, essentially by bringing them Kouricks. Hmm, I'm sorry, is this boring you?
Speaker 2:No.
Speaker 1:It's just late.
Speaker 2:We're recording really late today.
Speaker 1:Anyway, I get sent a Kourick, I follow the Kourick, I get called crazy because I end up following a cat with a stick in its mouth instead of a cat with antlers. And then I get called crazy by Lauren. And then we go into this tavern that it helps us, that it navigates us to, and then I see it on the counter and it jumps off the counter and guess who fucking walks out of the back room of this tavern.
Speaker 2:The big lion man.
Speaker 1:Merck.
Speaker 2:Madrovis. Who's Merck? Madrovis?
Speaker 1:Merck Madrovis from the Hagwilt Brewery.
Speaker 2:Nice.
Speaker 1:And Tavern.
Speaker 2:Cool.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay, and then we take some Hagwilt. It's great. Yeah, it's fun, I love it.
Speaker 2:Is that everything you've done so far?
Speaker 1:Yeah, that was yeah. We're just trying to find a time to meet now.
Speaker 2:Okay, it's a wonderful start.
Speaker 1:Yeah, hagwilt's always a wonderful start.
Speaker 2:Yes, very good.
Speaker 1:Very good.
Speaker 2:Is that all we got for today?
Speaker 1:I believe so. So, as always, you can follow us on TikTok. Oh yeah, tiktok we have a TikTok we have a TikTok. We've posted exactly one video. We have a TikTok. Follow us on the bird app X. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Follow us on X Twixster.
Speaker 1:Twixster. We'll just call it Twixster from now on. Follow us on Twixster, follow us on Instagram and also follow the show so that you can get notifications when we release new episodes.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:Follow us on Twitch. I drink some things. Podcasts.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we stream once a week, if not more.
Speaker 1:We stream at least once a week.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:If not more times than that. Yes, we are available to do so. We're playing the Witcher 3, the Wild Hunt, metroid, primary Mastered and possibly Baldur's Gate, who knows?
Speaker 2:Yeah, we'll be playing Baldur's Gate 3 here and there, although we really are trying to get through Witcher.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we have a Buy Me a Coffee page where you can become a single, double or triple ounce member. Single members are a dollar Canadian, which is like what, 63 cents American.
Speaker 2:Something like that.
Speaker 1:Support us for 63 cents American. Don't quote me on the conversion rate because it changes every hour, but yeah, support us on Buy Me a Coffee. Follow the show, join our Discord.
Speaker 2:Yes, we have a.
Speaker 1:Discord.
Speaker 2:And look at all of Lisha's shopping pages, because she has a few of them now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but that last one you don't really have to do.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:I just feel awkward plugging my own stuff in my podcast.
Speaker 2:Isn't that what we're doing right now?
Speaker 1:I guess. So, alright, we're gonna update the Redbubble, the Shrop Spring Tea Redbubble.
Speaker 2:Yes, the.
Speaker 1:Redbubble Eventually we're not sure when Sorry.
Speaker 2:When we have designs.
Speaker 1:When we have designs, ie when Lisha has the time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because you don't want to buy something that I designed.
Speaker 1:Actually use. Some people might.
Speaker 2:Maybe I'll do something, I don't know.
Speaker 1:We're not allowed to use my iPad.
Speaker 2:I'll figure it out Just.
Speaker 1:MSPate.
Speaker 2:MSPate yeah.
Speaker 1:Okay, we'll see you guys later. Bye, bye.