Ep. 368 - Are You There, God? It’s Me, The Witcher
Frank, Ash and Brandon design games based on historical events, explain the plot of Earth Defense Force, and discover why women have hollow bones. Hosted by Alex Jaffe, with Frank Cifaldi, Ash Parrish, and Brandon Sheffield. Edited by Esper Quinn, original music by Kurt Feldman.
I have to say my favorite Roman historical figure was Elagabalus/Heliogabalus, the trans Roman empress (r. 218-222AD). Was she a good empress? not really. Do I love her still? Absolutely. Do I believe the Crisis of the Third Century was divine punishment for her reign being cut short? I’ll never tell.
As for a title for Ash & Brandon’s Wolfensteinization of the Raid on Harper’s Ferry, I propose “The Crimes of this Guilty Land,” from John Brown’s final letter before his execution.
Here’s a review/preview of Make Your Own Video that was mentioned. Looks like there were different editions: Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch, Kriss Kross and INXS.
I just came across this a few days ago while perusing my new old GamePro issue from the VGHF. Timely.
I’m glad I listened to the very end before jumping in about the Witcher 3 mix up. That actually was one of the few I guessed right pretty early on, after Dragon Age was guessed, since the narrative there was that Dragon Age Inquisition was released to great acclaim for a few months before being pretty much completely eclipsed by Witcher 3.
It was so fun listening to Ash totally wipe the floor during the lightning round. Good at guessing + working in games journalism recently really pays off!
Favorite Roman: Pliny the Elder, who died while trying to rescue people during the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius. One of his last words was, “Fortune favors the bold; head for Pompanianus [his friend],” to his helmsman as debris is falling from the sky. Some of them lived; Pliny didn’t. Incidentally, rescuing people from that eruption could be an interesting event to recreate.
Game I like that the most may not: Dungeon Encounters. Whenever I’ve encountered internet conversations about it, they tend to knock the minimalism as being cheap and accuse the game of being brutal or unfair or “ATB” (some people really don’t like ATB combat). But dang, I like going through 100 levels of maze, acquiring skills to navigate it more efficiently, and trying to break open that combat under conditions where I could easily lose my party and have trouble retrieving them. It was such a satisfying experience, and I don’t normally go for games with high difficulty.
Jaffe is correct, this undertaking is fully possible in Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 with it’s 1:1 scale recreation of the entire planet, and with the addition of a 3rd party addon Lockheed Electra plane
Love how Marcus Aurelius was just a good ole peepaw writing his Meditations and then FUCKED EVERYBODY UP because he was the last of the Five Good Emperors to have a blood son.
WAY TO MISS THE POINT MARK!
Kitaro mentioned in 2024, wow. I haven’t listened to them since late 90’s, i used to like that a lot but i moved to other things and forgot they existed.
I have a friend who remaps keys/buttons in EVERY game she can. It’s like, the default is never for her. I don’t know if it’s something from her childhood where she learned to play a game a certain way and all other games had to have similar controls or what. It’s such a trope with her that even if she doesn’t remap keys/buttons in a game, our game group just assume she did.
Personally I rarely remap. Maybe 1 game out of 50 I might need to remap one thing, but that’s usually after reading about everyone else playing the same game recommending the change. I guess Helldivers 2 has something like that where you rebind strategem keys away from movement so you can call things down while running, which isn’t the default for some reason.
Real FFXIII-heads will know Dysley / Bartandelus isn’t the final boss there, either. He’s the primary antagonist, but the final boss is the fal’Cie Orphan
Xenosaga also has an evil pope. If I had to make a D6-based “generate your own Xeno game” routine, then “evil pope” would definitely be on the antagonist die, along with “God” and “stylized secret super sentai group.”
The two prison sequences that stick out for me are Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy XII. The former is a pretty lax affair in hindsight but when I first played it in my early teens it had a real impact, especially as I’d just recently been shown all of my crimes in court!
Final Fantasy XII isn’t particularly special but it’s at a point where the training wheels have, or are just about to come off and you have Balthier joining you and as bothered Hugh Grant noticing that one of his shoelaces has come loose.
In terms of games that I like that the highest number people don’t like, I’d have to say that it’s comfortably the Final Fantasy XIII trilogy. I have noticed a little bit of revisionism on how many people liked it at the time in recent years but it’s hard to forget just how much that game was piled onto because of its first-half linearity. I got the second and third games close to, if not at, launch date and I fondly remember them being some of my more favourable experiences of the 360 / PS3 gen, even if they all ran terribly.
