The KD Ratio!
The KD Ratio!
Elden Ring Theories, FromSoftware's Game Design, and Gaming Nostalgia
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What happens when FromSoftware's cryptic storytelling meets our unfiltered reactions? Strap in as we dissect the Elden Ring Shadow of the Erd Tree story trailer, throwing around theories about Mikola and Mesmer while marveling at the stunning visuals. We also debate potential gameplay enhancements, including a much-anticipated multiplayer mode, and share our character builds and readiness for this new journey. Join us as we eagerly anticipate uncovering the secrets of this expansion and discuss our current game progress.
Ever wondered how FromSoftware crafts its delicate balance between nail-biting challenge and sheer enjoyment? We dive deep into the design philosophy behind their games, focusing on iconic bosses like Margit and Radon. Listen to our analysis of post-release tweaks, such as the infamous Radon nerf, and hear us vent about our frustrating yet exhilarating experiences with multiplayer boss mechanics. Whether it's modded co-op chaos or unpredictable AI behavior, we detail what makes these encounters both maddening and memorable.
Relive the nostalgia of console hunting during the PS5 launch debacle, and ponder the future of the PlayStation ecosystem with us. We reminisce about the golden days of the PSP and speculate about its potential comeback. From there, we shift gears to our excitement for upcoming fantasy series like the new Lord of the Rings trilogy and "Rings of Power" Season 2. We wrap up with some tech talk on groundbreaking server mesh technology in gaming and humorously commit to our daily live streaming schedule, all while poking fun at ourselves and cherishing the joy of our shared gaming adventures.
If you enjoy our episode's content, come check us out on twitter @KDratiopodcast, YouTube as The KD Ratio Podcast! or on Instagram KDratiopodcast
Elden Ring Trailer Discussion
Speaker 1Oh Jesus, and we're live. Look at that, Gentlemen how are we doing?
Speaker 2Hello, look at that.
Speaker 1Look at that. Look at us. How are we feeling?
Speaker 2Good Feeling, pretty good Audio's, good Gentlemen you look beautiful today.
Speaker 1The summer light is reflecting well.
Speaker 2It does wonders for my pale skin. We're going to start out tonight.
Speaker 1We're going to switch to the second monitor here. We're going to start out tonight. We're going to switch to the second monitor here. We're going to watch the Elden Ring Shadow of the Erd Tree story trailer. I watched it already.
Speaker 3They haven't. I'm still confused. It's from software. It's from software. You'll never understand. Let's watch it in that discuss Armored Core. I was kind of able to understand. That was a little more straightforward. You'll never understand. Let's watch it in that discuss Armored Core. I was kind of able to understand.
Speaker 2That was a little more straightforward.
Speaker 1A little more straightforward. It ain't souls.
Speaker 2Got no soul.
Speaker 3How loud is the audio Billy, compared to us?
Speaker 2Super loud Blow your ears out Started bleeding on camera.
Speaker 1Oh, the login.
Speaker 3Mikula the Kind spoke of the beginning.
Speaker 2Who's talking?
Speaker 1look at that the seduction and the betrayal. You, yeah an affair from which gold arose you think that's america maybe and so too was shadow born. What followed was a war unseen.
Speaker 2What followed was a war unseen. I cannot wait to fight that thing. Who Mesmer? No the Bastion.
Speaker 1Oh, Firebasket, A purge without grace or honor. So what I gather so far is they're going to introduce a multiplayer mode where you see this castle right.
Speaker 2Yep, it's going to be at least 300 players, it's actually online, only you have to be logged into their server.
Speaker 3And you have to be playing the MMO and you have to subscribe to the Battle Pass, right? It's not even Battle Pass as much, as it's just like monthly subscription monthly subscription to play like wow, I think so it's called the miyazaki vacation fund.
Speaker 1Right that's the subscription.
Speaker 2They're gonna completely change the tyranny of mesmas flame.
Speaker 3They put a lot of effort into this story trailer cutscene.
Speaker 1That's the shadow of the Earth Tree Whoa.
Speaker 2Dude, I'm digging this so far and so kindly, Mikula would abandon everything.
Speaker 3Do you know? Is that his rune Kyle?
Speaker 1His golden flesh, his blinding strength, even his fate.
Speaker 2But we are not the king we chose to follow.
Speaker 1There's a multiplayer right there Good, we'll use your critics.
Speaker 2All right, I'm so ready.
Speaker 3You guys fully understand it.
Speaker 2Absolutely.
Speaker 3You didn't I did. I just wanted to check in make sure you guys understand what's going on.
Speaker 2Did they change the?
Speaker 3date.
Speaker 2No.
Speaker 3Because people are always memeing that the main character in Armored Core Is named 621. Oh really.
Speaker 2I was probably intentional then, more than likely.
Speaker 1That's why they did it. They were trying to sell more Armored Core.
Speaker 2I'm sure that's the most wild marketing strategy I've ever heard but if you liked elden ring, go play it's at the end of the credits roll, yeah.
Speaker 1So what'd you guys think it's gonna be awesome? I did none. Of that really gets me juiced up more than I already was, and I think did they have uh?
Speaker 2yeah, that gets me more juiced up than the first trailer, Because the first trailer the gameplay aspect of it was awesome and I'm super excited to play it. But I love a good cinematic and that was legit. I still don't. I'm joking when I say I know what's going on? I would love to. I can't wait to try and figure out what's going on I want to play the game.
Speaker 1I'll let, uh, I'll wait for a video to tell me what's going on I'm not even gonna. I'm not even gonna attempt.
Speaker 2You say nvidia what?
Speaker 1no, he's gonna wait for a video.
Speaker 2Oh, they said in video, I was like the graphic, the graphic like they make videos on shows.
Speaker 1Yeah, the graphics card company. They do detailed breakdowns, yeah.
Speaker 3So you guys are all ready, right with your fresh characters.
Speaker 2No.
Speaker 1No, I have two characters fully ready. The one is max level. Everything is completely done. Actually, I think I beat Fire Giant. I haven't triggered the next phase of things Just in case, because I had the character ready before. They kind of made the announcement of what you're going to need to have done.
Speaker 2In case you want to do Frenzied Flame.
Speaker 1Or something weird, you know, like some quirk with it, just to have that ready in the back pocket. I have a character.
Speaker 2That's right. At that point too, right before I lit the you know mountaintop or tree on fire, I'll just uh, I stopped right there, and so that's the one I'm gonna use as well and I have a second character that has, like it's like 100 level, 120 or something like that, and they're equipped with a couple different builds that are ready.
Speaker 1I have some weapons leveled up and fucking ready.
Speaker 3So who do we think Mesmer like? Because there's a war. He fought a war based on that trailer, but for who?
Speaker 1He's the brother of Melania.
Speaker 2He's the third brother. There's Melania, mikola and Mesmer.
Speaker 1Oh, I thought Mesmer was Mikola.
Speaker 2No no.
Speaker 3Mikola and Mesmer. Oh, I thought Mesmer was Mikola.
Speaker 1No, no, mikola is the one that's laying there.
Speaker 3It sounds like it's his enemy according to this. I don't know.
Speaker 1I thought it was Mikola reborn Because Mikola's laying in the egg right With his hand out with Moog.
Speaker 3But he's always been a, he's a child. He's forever a child.
Speaker 2He's cursed with eternal childhood.
Speaker 3So that.
Speaker 1Moog Lester could. The Moog Lester could take him.
Speaker 2He's an abandoned child by America and Radagon there we go, so he should be helping us. Maybe he doesn't look like he's going to be helping us. I'm pretty sure he's a boss fight.
Speaker 1He's a summon that you can summon in. He'll just solo a boss for you. Imagine that. He'll take the basket down.
Speaker 3You think those guys at the end that are all touching the ground are those ally NPCs we think? Think, or are they just hype? So will you join us it?
Speaker 1looks like another champion.
Speaker 2Fight like with radon that that, to me, were the vibes that I got, like those were some who would they be fight because you know you're not going to have multiple people helping you fight mesmer. So who would they be fighting? The basket man? The basket giant? The bass? That seems more like a solo fight too. There's obviously things that they're oh yeah, you know, they haven't shown us this game.
Speaker 2This expansion is supposed to be um pretty big like say all of limb grave yeah miyazaki exaggerates, he is always underselling how long, because he's also said the average player should be able to beat Elden Ring in like 30 hours, which I mean after you've played it a couple times, sure, but the first playthrough you're not beating it in 30 hours.
Speaker 1Their QA department must be legends.
Speaker 3That's what I've always wondered With Elden Ring or any FromSoftware how does their qa department figure out which fight is or not? Not even their qa department, just their designers, how they decide what's too hard and what's not dude exactly, I don't think they care.
Designing Difficulty in FromSoftware Games
Speaker 2I think they just design it solely off of whether or not they had fun. I don't think that a from software game is designed with difficulty in mind. It just so happens, happens that Miyazaki and his crew like that type of game, and it just happens to be difficult. I don't think they're intentionally trying to make it difficult.
Speaker 1I actually think it's the exact opposite. I think they spend most of their time dialing in exactly what you're saying to make things. To not only get the animations dialed in, but making sure that the dodge windows and everything animations dialed in. But like making sure that the dodge windows and everything are are dialed in.
Speaker 2To make it like yeah, this is gonna be a little more accessible than this boss or I don't think they're doing that with the intention of making a difficult game, though, as I'm saying, I think they're doing that because that's the type of game they like. I don't think they're like all right, how do we make this difficult? I think they're like all right, how do we make this difficult? I think they're thinking like what do we find fun? Like challenge mechanics, like all that, and they're not like they. In the past, they've designed bosses that weren't difficult but like were fun, and I think that's like part of like they're like. It just so happens that the things they like are tough.
Speaker 2But, it's not like they're like trying to make a difficult game like, because when you do that, that's when you run the risk of like games being difficult but not fun, which happens all the time explain elton beast son fuck that fight.
Speaker 1no, I definitely think they have their mindset on that style, that style. But I think there's an incredible effort that goes into designing the fight to make it more or less accessible and balancing it with where you should be at in the story and where you like I don't know because like Margit's a really good example. Like Margit is sort of that like first it's like the weeder boss, right like it it the filter, the great filter, and there's really not that much crazy like bullshit, elements to market, right like it's very straightforward there's swipe, that well, there's the delay, which can be kind of annoying, but it I think that is almost intentional in design too is that don't read like.
Speaker 1You have to not only pay attention to the animation, you need to pay attention to like the weapon and the direction it's coming from, like because they might hesitate, or something like that. So I think that there's an incredible like care that I think maybe I'm not representing what I'm thinking.
Speaker 2Very well then, because what you're saying is exactly what I'm thinking, but to me, what you're describing doesn't. That doesn't say we're designing this in a way that's hard. They're designing in a very intentional way yeah like that doesn't?
Speaker 2yeah, I don't think that their mindset is let's make this as hard as we can, like. I think that everything is specific and works the way they want it to. Um, but the way you're describing it is exactly how I'm thinking. I just think the mindset is not how do we make this difficult, it's how do we make this work in a way that's challenging and fun and finding a way.
Speaker 1I don't think your original point was hey, how are they designing? I think it's like, how do they? How?
Speaker 3do they?
Speaker 1approach a fight to decide like what level of difficulty it is.
Speaker 3With Radon. The example he's the only one I know of where, after the fact, they went in and they're like he's actually too hard, let's turn it down a little bit. They shouldn't have done that.
Speaker 1What did they nerf his damage? I think they just nerfed his damage and health.
Speaker 2They didn't actually change anything, the mechanics were the same.
Speaker 3Yeah right, maybe made him less aggressive or something, I don't know. I don't remember what they all changed.
Speaker 1I wonder if that is a dial, I bet you that's a dial for maybe some of the open world stuff but aggressive, I don't know Well.
Speaker 3And especially in his fight, because there's multiple. So they probably could have said so.
Speaker 1They probably could have said you know, it takes this amount of damage for him to switch like to aggro somebody because there's multiple you know people hitting him so so like there's like a almost like a taunt, like that's how world of warcraft works, where the person doing the most dps is the one that actually gets the taunt from the boss, which is very interesting mechanic. So your top dps also has to be your tank, which is kind of interesting. So everyone else has to balance how much damage. You can't just blow their load in one moment because they might taunt the boss and then the boss attacks them at least from what I know about it.
Speaker 2While FromSoftware never confirmed what they did in the nerf, data miners discovered that Radon ultimately did less damage and was less likely to make contact with his hits oh so his like his hit window hitbox was like smaller interesting according to data miners which I mean to be fair.
Speaker 3I don't mind when they as long as the hitbox. That seems like a weird one to adjust right. The thing with hitboxes is they I'm nitpicky they have to match what the enemy is Like. You need the sword to be on the sword, not over the sword.
Speaker 2It should match what you're seeing. Was his hitbox unfair before? I don't remember that being a problem.
Speaker 3Maybe. Well, what I'm thinking of? They probably with him. His hitboxes were like his ground pounds.
Speaker 1They probably reduced the size of the AoE, or like when he does his scream or whatever he does, the pulse out.
Speaker 2AoE attacks is different. If the area of effect is much smaller, then it's obviously not going to be as scary.
Discussion on Multiplayer Boss Mechanics
Speaker 1I don't mind them adjusting that kind of stuff, because if you're, that arena is so large that you spend a considerable. I don't like like elden beast, I don't like chasing down my chasing they hit him once and they fucking run away again like that's not a fun fight. So I like that they they did that because his has like the knockback effect too, which is annoying.
Speaker 2I yeah, I, that's my only gripe, I think presentation it's a 10 out of 10, but the final boss is just so annoying in Elden Ring.
Speaker 3So I'm playing through this modded version of Elden Ring and this is kind of perfect because I want to tell you guys about. We finally got to Radagon in Elden Beast. I'm playing with four people. We're playing on this seamless co-op Really cool. I would recommend it for anybody it's. It's super fun to do just with friends. But we made it to radagon and elden beast and, as somebody who's played the game, I'm the only one, um, and then, uh, fran, my friend has also played through it, um, but he hasn't played through it as much as we have. Watching the. How the bosses are different is so fascinating to me Because, yes, they have more health, more damage, right, but multiple players really fucks with the AI in really interesting ways.
Speaker 3So Radagon is so much harder fighting with multiple people than one, because his chain will switch people yeah all of a sudden he'll be mid-swing and he'll turn halfway around and smack you and it's like when you're fighting him solo, you know when he's going to. You know he telegraphs his hits pretty well, but here he'll telegraph it and you think he's going after somebody in front of him. But if you did a little bit more damage he'll turn right around and fuck you up.
Speaker 2I wonder why that is? Because obviously you can fight him in base game with up to what three people, yeah, and that doesn't really happen in that. So I wonder what it is about the seamless co-op that makes it freak out?
Speaker 1No, I think it definitely happens when you summon other people.
Speaker 2I don't think his movements get sporadic.
Speaker 1Well, I've never played the seamless co-op, but I knew that he did that.
Speaker 2You're making it sound like it's snappy.
Speaker 1Yeah, you know how he does the three hammers back to back.
Speaker 2Yeah, but it doesn't feel like a glitch.
Speaker 3No, it's not glitchy, but it's just like when you fight him solo.
Speaker 2I thought you were saying he literally would be attacking and be like and snap and hit.
Speaker 1He'll go back, but then the animation will decide I'm going to hit this guy and he'll do it on that side.
Speaker 3Yeah, he's very spinny.
Speaker 1It's just really hard because it's that AOE pulsing on the floor. That's tough.
Speaker 3He's very spinny, so like he'll be in the mid combo on this one person in front of him and then as he charges up his next one, he can swing around and hit the other guy. Like it's built into his thing so if you go around him he can do it to you. Yeah, but the tough part of it is like the ground pound especially and those other combos. With the ground pound he does it three times Big area of effect. But you can eye frame through each one Because it's you know, if you look at it you know he hits you dodge. This was hard because he was doing it to my friend. I was in his section, unhit, right, he wasn't even hitting the ground, so it wasn't glowing. I was like I'm good, I don't have to do anything. He goes down but he turns to me at the last second and hits the ground, messed me up because he all of a sudden was aggro on me for some reason. So it's very interesting.
Speaker 3And then another quirk is that bosses that move a lot move even more and it's like it gets annoying which boss in particular elden beast for sure but because we haven't beat him, but like um, that's annoying before him, malekith moved a lot and then, then so did any dragon. You would get like two hits in and they'd be halfway across the map or not halfway.
Speaker 1Can Malekith's like blood blade or whatever he calls it, like when he's doing it in the second phase he's throwing his blade out. Can that switch? No.
Speaker 3Or is that all on the same person, Because he does like like three swipes right and then lands he can aggro, but I would say I would say, experience wise from playing against both elden beast and radagon have a like a slice that goes forward. It's very rare for them to switch.
Speaker 2I think there has to be a combo has to be a difference because, like when I, I've played a lot of multiplayer and I always feel like the boss is much more aggressive on the host and I think there must be something to the fact that everyone's pinging as a host.
Speaker 1I think it would have to be more sporadic than they probably have on the seamless club, because there's an option to scale the boss right.
Speaker 1So, like, with three people they scale it to. You know, that's all like in-game design stuff that FromSoftware decided on. But then in your seamless co-op mode you have four people there. So I wonder if they have had to make some decisions as to how much stamina regen the boss has, for instance, or how much health they have. So that might all affect their decision making on move attack set, like, because if they have faster stamina regen, I would imagine that they do a lot more, um, they do a lot more of attacks like, like, because it's an algorithm that you're playing against, essentially right, and it's not always the same like. These fights not are not necessarily telegraphed very rarely they are and so if you have like, I bet you there's decision making like if, if spam skills immediately, if you're like above 75 stamina or something like that, and if he has way more stamina than normal, then he might almost always be stamina doing, stamina spam, which is the movement set and stuff like that, like elden beast and all this other shit we haven't.
Speaker 3It hasn't been buggy in any fights, but I've seen some bosses be way more aggressive than like previous fights we've had against them. Like for some, out of nowhere they just spam stuff like um, uh, not astel, what's the one, the the one after the other, um I know which one you're talking about. That one's hard well, that one he does like this thing where he clones himself void walker or something.
Speaker 3Yeah you know the centipede guy he clones himself right, and if you he go, he comes towards the middle only one of them's real and it grabs you. Yeah, I was fighting him and he did that. All the other people were dead already. It it was just me. He comes in, I dodge it. He immediately does it again. I've never seen him do that move immediately after.
Speaker 1That's some clunky. What was?
Speaker 2Melania like Because she can get real spam heavy.
Boss Strategies and Game Discussion
Speaker 3Melania, we beat. Third, try Bang bros. Yeah, it's because I mean, and it. She gets stun locked so easy if you got multiple people with heavy weapons it felt kind of cheap because so, um, our, our layout is we have one sorcerer, we have one person who's like a bleed um dex build, we have a bleed bonk, so bleed strength, and then me, who's just strength, and I'm also like bleed strength seems kind of wild to me.
Speaker 2Yeah, they use the bloodhound um fang, really yeah, okay, well, that one, I was thinking like great sword yeah because, like bleed is built off of repetition so if you're hitting like the bleed would never really build up the way it could. But bloodhound fang.
Speaker 3I can see that yeah and so, um, the the guy that's the bleed dex. He has the bolt of grand sacks and when you have the ability on that and you're able to fully charge it against her, she gets knocked down completely on her ass, like every time it hits. So what we did is just don't get aggro on him. Well, yeah, so he would be sitting back there, me and me and my friend.
Speaker 3Yeah, he'd be sitting back there shooting if you fall down. We'd have to wait for her to get up, because if you, if you hit with the strength too soon, she doesn't stagger. You wait for her to get up, we stagger her just enough for him to throw another bolt off. She wasn't able to do anything. It was kind of unfair. It was kind of unfair.
Speaker 2What about Rick, soldier of God.
Speaker 3He was our toughest fight you haven't beat him yet. Don't lie to me, we didn't even go.
Speaker 1Fucking Rick man, I know.
Speaker 2Somehow this mod makes him the hardest boss in all of the games. That would actually be funny.
Speaker 1I would love that that would be hilarious You're trying to start the game and you're like whoa, he's over there casting spells.
Speaker 2He's just the biggest sponge and he just moves around all quick.
Speaker 3That would be awesome. Gideon was a joke again. You finally come, or whatever he says with his arms out, just Again, you finally come. Or whatever he says with his arms out.
Speaker 2Just I know in my heart.
Speaker 1You cannot be Elden. I know in my bones. You'll never be recalled.
Speaker 3Yeah, the hardest one we've had, that we spent the most time on was probably.
Speaker 1Yeah, go ahead, let me guess Elden Beast. No, well, they're struggling with that now.
Speaker 2Does that count Um?
Speaker 1I'm going to say Commander Nihil Because of the ads.
Speaker 3He would be close. I would say though Placidiusax.
Speaker 2Really, because he's movement based.
Speaker 3So he moved around a lot.
Speaker 1And his arena is huge too, his arena is huge and the flame.
Speaker 3You don't have torrent against this dragon so you can't outrun if you're if you're in the flame you're kind of screwed.
Speaker 1I think I've only killed that boss twice um you know I glitched.
Speaker 2I've only beat him, I think, once, and I have never really cared enough to go back and do it again. It's a lot of effort, man, yeah and you got to do all the platforming to get to him.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2Like it's just not worth it. And I got, you know, my first playthrough.
Speaker 3I got what I needed from him and he carried it over to your next new game, so he was another one that got. He did a thing I wasn't suspecting, so you know how he does his lasers when, like he's like at 25 health or whatever he like shoots beams of lasers. He did that twice in a row and it was like oh shit, because I dodged the first one and I was like oh god, he's doing it again that's a lot, yeah lasers it is.
Speaker 2You know, I I actually never really struggle with nile, really, yeah, and I. A part of that, I think, is I was. I was like like at least a level 100 by the time I fought him. So maybe I was over leveled very first time I fought him, but he was never the the one that and it's funny because I've never once struggled since.
Speaker 2But the one that gave me the hardest time when I first played through was actually um, uh, draconic tree sentinel he is yes at my very first playthrough that guy fucked me up all like for a long ass time gatekeeper and then I was trying to do your method. You're like, no, if you just bring the the rot dogs and you can poison him and then run away, watch him die, I don't know how you got that to work.
Speaker 1I never got like six times without dying, and if they get hit once, uh, but ever since then, like once I figured him out, I've never struggled.
Speaker 3But my first playthrough he was hard, like that was tough unoptimized builds under leveled you know, he was, he definitely was tough the boss that surprised me that we struggled on was probably he's not even boss and he's always good the carrion knight dude. I knew he was going to be trouble. Which one? The? Royal one or the phantom one the dude that's just standing outside of Rinaldo's elevator, the parry, god, the phantom one, yeah. No.
Speaker 2Where he just.
Speaker 3I love the memes. I read a meme recently about him.
Speaker 2It's like somebody in some oh, I was thinking of Royal Knight Loretta. No, no, no, no.
Speaker 1Literally he's like you've been invaded by oh no, he's just there.
Speaker 2He's just standing there, the one that if you don't do it right, he instant kills you every time.
Speaker 1You have a shitload of health and he'll kill you.
Speaker 3The meme I saw was like somebody from software is 24-7 playing that character.
Speaker 2For everyone.
Speaker 3He's like time to beat somebody's ass.
Speaker 1That guy fucking got so long Somehow omnipotent, fighting everyone everywhere all at once that guy fucked me up for so long, man.
Speaker 2Oh my god that that parry was pissing me off I um, I got pretty good at I learned how to parry because of that and like I would parry him oh yeah, I never did.
Speaker 1I kill him um not instant.
Speaker 2It's like takes like half health. It's not like his attack that kills you yeah, I watched it's pretty easy to trick him into falling into that elevator. Oh to come, yeah yeah, I guess I never thought you could literally just walk him over, right, he's about to hit like roll against the corner, and he's always like you can literally just walk him over. He's about to hit like roll against the corner, and he's always like and just falls.
Speaker 1I watched something cool gaming fight him and I was like get ready, man, no spoilers, but I'm like all right, and he had like a huge greatsword at the time and he was just fat, swinging, heavy swinging. This thing every time Didn't bury him once.
Speaker 2What I was so pissed off, the best RNG.
Speaker 1New game plus, he gets back there. Once he beat the game, he rushed through the game to get there again. He fucked him up so many times I was like, yes, this is what you missed out on. He kept fucking perfect, parrying him that was a From Software guy's day off. Yeah exactly, that's actually a funny conspiracy theory. It's just Miyazaki himself.
Speaker 2It's Miyazaki himself.
Speaker 3Every now and again I like to log in, and you didn't buy the digital edition with the freaking soundtrack Bam Buried.
Speaker 1Yeah, I still have not pre-ordered this.
Speaker 3I'm probably not gonna pre-order. I don't see why I need to. If it's an expansion, I guess I mean.
Speaker 2I'm gonna buy it. You're gonna buy it day one. What's the difference?
Speaker 1and this comes out the second day that I'm on vacation for like two weeks that's your problem, it really is.
Speaker 2So I'm gonna come back and I'm on vacation for like two weeks.
Speaker 1That's your problem, it really is, so I'm going to come back and I'm going to be like you guys are going to already have beaten it. You're going to be like, oh yeah, it wasn't that great. Or oh, it was so good, we have to watch you kill this one boss or I can't wait to see how you die to this.
Speaker 3Not only is this the hardest boss I've ever fought, I don't think I'll ever play a FromSoftware game again.
Speaker 2I just can't wait. This expansion gate keeps me out of FromSoftware games.
Speaker 1If I come back and you guys say some shit like that, like the buggiest, worst release of all time.
Speaker 3They added so many microphones, the.
Speaker 2Cyberpunk launch has nothing on this. Not even close to how bad this was.
Speaker 1This is coming out for PS4. It somehow broke the main game. That would be fucked.
Speaker 3PS4. People still releasing for PS4? Wow, and even Steam and Xbox. Ps4 hasn't been updated.
Speaker 2Or it has been updated, but it's been pretty much dead since like four years now that's probably why it took so long for this to come out.
Speaker 1Yeah, well, the ps6 should be coming out like next year, like if we go on like the traditional release schedule. Seven years is typically the and it came out in 2018.
Speaker 2No, 2020, so cup 2020? 2020.
Speaker 1Oh, okay, remember they blamed COVID. I thought it came out in 1999. 1999, give or take. I thought it came out the end of 2019.
Speaker 3They blamed. The reason why they were so short inventory was because covid and you know and how the chips got affected and all that was part of that, if you remember I remember that like bogging down the november 2020.
Speaker 1Okay, so this was. You don't remember what no, I definitely remember.
Speaker 2If you don't remember, I remember you guys both trying to fucking pirate it. Pirate. How do you pirate a console? You pirate hardware.
Speaker 1How do we do that? You download the hardware. You guys put in the patch and you download the hardware. You're trying to fucking scalp it or whatever. Buy it from scalpers.
Speaker 2I'd get to fail. Every time I give Billy a year a day, he always fact checks me and then he's baffled that it's true.
Speaker 1No, I wanted to see what time of year it came out, if it was at the beginning or the end. I know, I'm just kidding.
Speaker 2I am very proud that I was patient and I got it For the price it was listed at Me and Kyle.
Speaker 3This brings back memories we used to at Wells Fargo. We were like in the loop together. I know I remember we'd be like stock drop.
Speaker 2Best buy, go Best buy right now. No.
Speaker 1It's in my cart I can't check out.
Speaker 2I used to. That's insane. I used to literally like, like, put like blocks in my calendar, so I didn't have to do anything except do that. I'd be sitting on my desk for an hour.
Speaker 1They would come out with inventory increases at a set time.
Speaker 3I was subscribed to NowStock.
Speaker 2We're launching at 12pm Pacific. They'd say something like that a couple hours beforehand. Immediately, go in and clear out my calendar.
Speaker 1Refresh, don't interrupt me, I'm busy. Your regular comes in, hey kyle can you shut up, get out of here it's seven years per console release, so about yeah, so we're coming up on four years now, so we're a little over halfway then, not as close as I thought6,. You guys, day one purchase no.
Speaker 2I don't think so.
Speaker 3PS5's still plenty strong, and I mean.
Speaker 1Until it comes out and they're going to have some marketing.
Speaker 2I didn't day one purchase the PS5, so I think Not that I didn't try.
Speaker 1I was going to say both of you if you could.
Speaker 3Was that a choice? Guarantee your choice.
Speaker 1In three years when the PS6 comes out, and they're going to launch it with some marketing.
Speaker 3If it's God of War 7. I'm going to be like sign me up If I have the money. 45 FPS.
Speaker 2Of course I would buy it. I'm never going to say I'm done with consoles.
Speaker 3That's just silly, I don't know. This has always been my philosophy too.
Speaker 1Going only board games.
Speaker 3He's not going to understand this, but I want to see, if you do, kyle, the sooner I upgrade, the more money I get for my old one.
Speaker 1Because you trade it in or something. Yeah.
Speaker 3Do you sell it? No, I usually trade up through like GameStop or Best Buy or whoever.
Speaker 2Now that everything is bought digitally too, you just keep your game library.
Speaker 3Now it's not even a big deal anymore that's why I usually I don't wait too long into the console life cycle to buy the new one, because I feel like my other one depreciates, like over time what do they?
Speaker 1usually buy it for. What do they buy your PS4 for?
Speaker 3Maybe I got like $100. Actually, honestly, though, the PS4, I think $100 is impressive. I sold that to my friend Malachi.
Speaker 1How much did you rip your friend Malachi? Off for?
Speaker 3I gave him a good deal $250.
Speaker 2$250 for a 7-year-old console that's still like that's really expensive.
Speaker 1That's a last-gen console now.
Speaker 3I left all my games on it.
Speaker 1Oh shoot, did you clear your browser history though?
Speaker 2Who uses a console to search the internet.
Speaker 1You clearly didn't grow up. In the 90s I had a PSP that I used to search the internet.
Speaker 2You clearly didn't grow up in the 90s. I had a psp that I used to browse the internet on ah, psp.
Speaker 1Yeah, what was that experience like?
Speaker 2please tell me how did that work really? It was basically like a gen 1 smartphone. I heard another.
Speaker 1I could not imagine that browsing experience being any good at all like well, no, what did the internet?
Speaker 2look like you know, like on the psp, it was like um, it was like desktop version it wasn't like mobile that's what I'm imagining yeah, I remember like I would like uh scroll through youtube and stuff and like look at like articles and things like on the psp I.
Speaker 3I heard there's another PlayStation Portable being in the works.
Speaker 2I don't think they want to get back into that market.
Speaker 3I heard that rumor, though Like today.
Speaker 1They might. Is that the device where you stream it from your console to your port?
Speaker 3I didn't even read the article.
Speaker 1You're a portable, I don't know what the terms are, because I'm not a console bitch.
Speaker 3Yeah, this is all very surface level, but the image that was on. The article looked like a.
Speaker 1PSP, okay, but what came out? You said PS Portal. Now I'm hanging on this. Didn't they come out with a product a year or two ago called the PS Portal, playstation Portal, and it streamed your? Ps5 to your device, and that's what it was right.
Speaker 2It was a screen.
Speaker 1It was like a $200 screen with a controller built into it. Right, that to me actually would be a worthwhile upgrade, because then you could play in your bed or whatever you wanted to do.
Speaker 3You could play while going to sleep.
Speaker 1It's not really portable, though Definitely not, you have to have your console there, yeah, so like it's, so it's literally, it's just a screen.
Speaker 2How am I supposed to game on my commute to work?
Speaker 1You're right.
Speaker 2Yeah, while driving.
Speaker 1Neuralink chip implant.
Speaker 2Not even like seeing what's on the road. Oh yeah, you know, dylan, I can't relate to selling consoles like immediately like I still have everything I've ever.
Speaker 1I couldn't do that, me too. Yeah, I don't like. Uh couldn't do that, couldn't give it up interesting. Yeah, I don't know what it is, because you have there's games that you don't translate not all of them and so you just gave, you just give those up and you're like that's considerable amount of money I still have my ps1, I have my gamecube, I have, like, my xbox 360, my ps3, my ps4, ps1, ps5 I have um my super nintendo I don't, I have uh, I have a Super Nintendo micro console that I bought from Target that has like 20 bucks.
Speaker 2It was like 80 bucks because it had Really.
Speaker 1Yeah, it had like 500 games on it.
Speaker 2I thought about buying that. And it's legit, like it's the real thing. That's nice. Yeah, do you get the?
Speaker 3nostalgia of actually putting in a cassette. I have my Atari 2600.
Speaker 2Can I play a little joystick?
Speaker 1What games are on?
Speaker 2there On the Atari 2600?. You know, Pitfall, et, the Extraterrestrial, the game that almost destroyed, gaming. Yeah.
Speaker 1That good huh.
Speaker 3There was a landfill dedicated to E do not have an atari 2600 I was gonna say like an item at this point if you have one that's like rare especially et. Yeah, most of those games were destroyed somehow.
Speaker 1I don't even know that whole stuff uh, my grandfather had the original pong in the box and it was in the box dial to control the did he sell it my grant when he passed away? My grandma thought it was worthless and she threw it away.
Speaker 1No, oh, heartbreaking wow, yep, all right, he was saving that. He actually told he was going to give it to me and then, when he passed, we were cleaning up the house A couple weeks after Well, actually not weeks after, way longer after and I was like, hey, grandma, you know where that pong went? And she was like, was that like that thing? And I was like, yeah, grandpa said that she was so upset, did you hate her forever?
Speaker 2No, Did you say you're no longer my grandma? It would have been cool.
Speaker 3It would have been dead to me I wouldn't have.
Speaker 1I honestly like I'm not into it, for like the collecting of it.
Speaker 3I probably actually used it like I I used. I don't because that would be, that'd be cool. I don't keep my super nintendo then, because I'm gonna sell it I keep it because it's like I played it and I still awesome. Like very, very rarely I'll plug it in and I'll be like, let me check out mario, and I'm like this sucks ass well like.
Speaker 1That's just my thought too. It's like I have a playstation 2 yeah me and 160 million other people like it's not like that's gonna become rare. At any point, it's mine's used you know, so like it's got some wear in, like I'm sure there's still people out there with like og first, uh, first, uh, run of playstation two yeah, like serial number one yeah exactly in box I just did a quick little Google and I definitely would not sell it because they said even a Pong console in make condition is like you could maybe get like $150 out of it.
Speaker 2Yeah, see, so it's like you might as well just keep it for the nostalgia.
Speaker 1Yeah, and it was just cool because you know it was for my grandpa and stuff, I guess, but she hooked it.
Speaker 2I grandpa and stuff I got, but she hucked it. I was like we could have put it right there. Yeah, cover up the spider-man so you don't cringe every time you walk in I might have to go dumpster diving fucking eight years old it's all like somehow he finds it covered. It's like the box is falling apart.
Speaker 1The cult's a little broken. Do you think landfills like log when they dump in certain areas? Let's say they own 100 acres and they're like this section we filled up this week, so if you knew when you threw it away then you could go excavate that section. Or do you think that's not even close to that?
Speaker 2I can't possibly imagine that they would do that boom thank you, victory um. I heard that landfills are can dangerous, not just for the obvious reasons, but also because of potential nuclear fallout and radiation Not nuclear- fallout Nuclear fallout.
Speaker 3But radiation fallout. I'm like wait what? They detonated a few nukes over there.
Speaker 1Nuclear fallout.
Speaker 3That's how they get rid of the land I was like wait, what are they doing on fucking landfills?
Speaker 1Are they just fucking nuke it?
Speaker 2No, definitely not nuclear power, but like I was joking about that, but, not like radiation. I heard that that is actually like a thing.
Speaker 1That's crazy. Like as stuff decomposes, they just off gas.
Speaker 2So like you, gotta be careful. You can't just like go digging In the landfill, or you know what you could do.
Speaker 1You can't just go digging in the landfill. Or you know what you could do Set up a prison for children and have them just come out with a shovel and dig holes.
Speaker 2It's called Juvenile.
Speaker 1Hall.
Speaker 3It's called Holes. You're going to have some kid named Zero.
Speaker 1You have them. Locate your treasure.
Speaker 2Can you find my Bitcoin?
Speaker 3It's buried somewhere. I started a juvenile detention center. Locate your treasure, you know? Yeah, can you find my bitcoin?
Speaker 2that's, it's very similar so they can look through the landfill shit to find your half decomposed laptop.
Speaker 1You probably have zero chance of rebooting, if you even found it yeah, it's completely dead.
Speaker 3I got, I got a topic hit me. I don't think you guys are ready for it, okay, so let me start off by saying this topic is this like uh, yeah, where are we going with this?
Speaker 1because I do have a couple.
Speaker 3It goes real deep, it goes. You know, I need you guys to buckle in and put your seats on I'm sitting in a vibration chair there is no put the vibration on your collapsible chair.
Speaker 1Can I make two comments before we do a nosedive?
Speaker 3We're going to go deep.
Speaker 1Can I really?
Speaker 2want to talk about the methane that's found in landfills.
Speaker 3Yes, I need you to dial in.
Speaker 1Dial up Sit up.
Speaker 3Lay down, do ten push-ups.
Speaker 1Oh, I can't do that.
Speaker 2When's the?
Speaker 1last time I did ten push-ups.
Speaker 2I don't even know.
Lord of the Rings Trilogy Discussion
Speaker 310 years ago. Yeah, jesus, we're going to talk about this topic. You're really building this up when I get to what this topic is.
Speaker 1This topic is going to suck ass. Like I've already told, this is how you date a woman. 101.
Speaker 3No, join us. Are you guys ready? Yeah, we're fucking ready. Jesus christ, billy, tell us about mesh servers. Oh jesus I've been planning that bit for three weeks, this fucking asshole.
Speaker 2I'm not gonna lie to you. I didn't hear what he said.
Speaker 1Mesh servers because I put it on the fucking podcast topics for so long and we missed it. And then that's a nosedive of a topic, so let me say the two things that I wanted, so we just get them out of the way when are you gonna find out?
Speaker 2we don't care, I don't go quick.
Speaker 1Lord of the rings season or rings, sorry, rings of power season two. Rings of Power Season 2 comes out August 29th, I think. Hell yeah, super hyped for that. I'm excited, fuck you guys. And then they also had a subtle announcement that didn't make more waves and I'm not sure if you guys have even heard of it, but Lord of the Rings is getting another trilogy. I did read that and it is. They're sort of they haven't really. They're still in the script writing, so nothing is set in stone. I really hope they don't fucking do what they're talking about right now, which is following Gollum.
Speaker 2They're doing a. Oh God, it's going to be the game, the fucking video game dude.
Speaker 1I'm like I hope to God that that's not the case. I'm over the golem storyline. Why people, we don't need that over that character? I don't know. He's literally. He's so tragic. Yeah, I don't. He got six movies, he was in the fucking hobbit. And he wasn't like sorry, that's enough, we need andy circus back. Um. But the first movie of this trilogy, of this new trilogy, is going to be directed by Peter Jackson, oh shit. And he's bringing all of his OG writing team back with him, like Fran and Michael or something.
Speaker 2What's the Fran Drescher?
Speaker 1No, she wrote Lord of the Rings no.
Speaker 2The nanny, the nanny.
Speaker 1Is that the lady with the crazy voice?
Speaker 2She has, like the boss days, the nasally New York accent.
Speaker 1But he's bringing back his whole original team, like the writing team and stuff, so that could be really interesting to see and he, I think maybe he's. I didn't have really an issue with the hobbit movies. I really didn't.
Speaker 2I thought they were enjoyable I'm confused as to why he's doing this, though, like why is he remaking his own movie? 100?
Speaker 1million dollars. No, no, he's not remaking, it's a new film Set in the universe but not following the Set in the Tolkien universe.
Speaker 2Okay, I thought you were saying they're remaking the trilogy. No, no, no, no, no. These are three.
Speaker 1No, they're funding a trilogy, three movies, and the first one is going to be directed by Peter Jackson, and they have not decided on what they're going to do it feels like it's getting milked. Oh, it feels like it, it is it absolutely is.
Speaker 2I don't know if I'm hyped for that. That doesn't sound like something I'm interested in.
Speaker 1I just love that we're getting Lord of the Rings. I love Lord of the Rings, I love that world, but it feels a little sacred to me.
Speaker 2I feel like it's getting Look what they're doing to the IP.
Speaker 1They have War of the Rohirrim coming out, which is an animated film. It comes out this year. I think it's about Rohan or something I don't know. I don't know who the Rohirrim is or whatever, but it's an animated film.
Speaker 2The Rohirrim? You don't know.
Speaker 1That's the Rohan writers. Yeah, that's the.
Speaker 2Buster the Rohirrim.
Speaker 1But I don't know. Is that what they call them, or is that a subculture? Is that what the culture of Rohan is? I don't know those kinds of details.
Speaker 2I'm going to Google.
Speaker 1Tolkien fans will call your ass out real quick. So, I'm hyped for that. It's absolutely getting milked, but what the fuck isn't getting?
Speaker 3milked these days. I was going to say in regards to the milk comment, I don't feel like Lord of the Rings is there yet. I think they're definitely ramping it up in like, oh, we need to milk this cash cow.
Speaker 1Please don't turn into Star Wars.
Speaker 3Well, star Wars, transformers, those are two that have been Planet of the. Apes, yes.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 3Are we 12 movies in Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes?
Speaker 2By that logic, Godzilla.
Speaker 1Oh.
Speaker 3Yes.
Speaker 2But when do you?
Speaker 3I think Generation is where you cut off.
Speaker 1They've been making the same movie for 80 years.
Speaker 3Because, like I, wouldn't consider. How many cities have yet to fall. Yeah, like I wouldn't consider the Planet of the Apes, the old ones, any way connected, like saying that, oh, they've been milking it from the 70s. No, they made the three which I think were really good Rise, dawn, war. Those are three.
Speaker 1Those andy circus were good, but then this new one, well, I kind of agree with you with, like lord of the rings isn't there yet, because we had the lord of the rings 2001, 2 and 3 and then the hobbit was like 20, 11, 12 and 13, I think, or 12, 13, 14, something like that. Now we have the Amazon TV series. Other than that, I don't know if we've had other content specific to the IP Shadow of Mordor the games which were great, but Tolkien.
Speaker 2Tolkien owns the IP and the.
Speaker 1Society of Tolkien, whatever the fuck they're called. They're hella conservative with leasing that out. So I don't feel like we're oversaturated, but I don't think yet.
Speaker 3I think it's a very slippery slope because it could all of a sudden go into like Harry Potter territory where they start. You know, like Harry Potter went crazy with.
Speaker 2Fantastic Beats yeah.
Speaker 3Beasts, yeah, fantastic.
Speaker 2Beats.
Speaker 1Fantastic Beats, fantastic Beats, and I feel like that started to feel like milking it a little bit, especially when it's going to feel like we're milking it, though, to your point, kyle, when we're doing the TV series at the same time as the new films coming out.
Speaker 3I think on how well the movies are written right, because I was all for fantastic beasts after watching the first one, then the second, is there three of them now yeah, but they canceled it after the third one okay.
Speaker 3Well, the third one was like the same as the one before it. It was more of this teasing of let dumbledore and they're gonna fight, but you don't get to see it. It's the best wizard fight ever and it's like it. Just they were written bad. Where I was, I was buckled in on the first movie and then I was like, okay, they're not doing anything.
Speaker 2I actually didn't like the first fantastic. No, I like the second one a lot, back when johnny depp was still the bad guy, yeah, and I never saw the third, mads Mikkelsen. He was good.
Speaker 3But I just didn't like how they kept pushing out the Dumbledore and whatever his name.
Speaker 2I don't think it needed. It got cancelled but they originally planned like five films to do that.
Speaker 3They didn't need to do that. You could have done it in the third one.
Speaker 2So the Rohirrim to get back to that topic, they were the horse lords. Basically, they were nomadic people. They eventually settled in the land that is now known as Rohan, which is named after them. The modern Rohirrim were basically all the soldiers of Rohan who rode horses. So when he says most of the Rohirrim, it's basically their army, the horse riders yeah, the horse riders and the Rohirrim are the ones that their army the horse riders.
Speaker 2Yeah, the horse riders and the Rohirrim are the ones that charged in on battle of Pelennor Fields. But if they say the war of the Rohirrim, it might be well before this before they settled the land of Rohan back when they were still nomadic.
Speaker 1people on horseback so hard to say.
Speaker 2They call themselves Eorlingus after their king Orl the Young, who had first brought them to Rohan.
Speaker 1King Phaedon's ancestor.
Speaker 2No.
Speaker 3In this new trilogy. Would you want it to be another super high stakes adventure?
Speaker 1I don't know. I don't know if that's required. What I want is like, as a fan someone who hasn't gone nuts over the books and simps over that stuff like I just want to sit in that world and make an interesting story from that. Well, I don't want, like I don't need to have the same, because what they're trying to do, from what I read on this article, they're trying to bring in characters that they knew or that we already have been exposed to as an audience, like Aragorn and Legolas and shit like that, bring them back into the fold and then they're like main characters in this new story and it's like I don't know, I don't want that. Let that, let the trilogy be the trilogy. Yeah, I don't want that. Let the trilogy be the trilogy. Let's create something new.
Speaker 1And that's why I kind of like Rings of Power, because it's sort of that second age and we're setting things up. I almost would like to go maybe back to the first age, when the world was really full of magic and very, very beautiful across all the lands, or something even post the fourth age, because at the end of the third lord of the rings movies they talk about now usher's in the fourth age like let's go somewhere new. Let's go somewhere new and and let's expand on that, let's take the settings and the foundations that lord of the rings set and let's let's sew. Let's sew something new. Um, it doesn't need to be this huge epic of good versus evil, light versus dark adventure story. No, just make something interesting in this vast world. It could be a lot of cool storylines, but that's my take.
Speaker 2I am a sucker for a good ultimate evil boss in stories. I think that's why I like Mass Effect so much.
Speaker 3Rebirth.
Speaker 2Yeah, like I always feel like a story is only as good as its villains. But, that being said, there are plenty of really good ways to have just a grounded story that the world isn't ending, it's just around that character. Take, for example, cyberpunk. Nothing happens in that story that really changes anything. In the grand scheme of things, it's all just v story and I think if it's done effectively and done well, then I think that could be.
Speaker 3That could be really good yeah, well, because I was telling billy um before you got here tonight, kyle, we were talking about what our favorite Lord of the Rings was, and I was saying that I think, like number one might be my favorite, because that's when you get to see everybody together. It's like D&D. It's like D&D and you get to see them interact and nobody's depressed. I mean, they're a little bit depressed, but they aren't like you know movie three, where they're just like you know Frodo's like I'm emo, he's not emo, but you know the ring is corrupting him. So I want something more, at least for a little bit. Not as high stakes as we need to get the ring to Mordor yeah, and it's corrupting one of your favorite characters, every movie yeah.
Speaker 1I feel like they could even go tentatively, like walk the boundary of, because now it's the fourth age, right, and now it's the era of men, because the elves have, for the most part, left To heaven. Exactly, which is like literally a spot.
Speaker 3It's Maui, it's Hawaii.
Speaker 2They're chilling in the tropics.
Speaker 1What's going on over there? Look at them, poor guys.
Speaker 2They made it to Tahiti.
Speaker 1Let's get another Mai Tai.
Speaker 2They're all like bros.
Speaker 3What's up, what's up bro Want to go surf.
Speaker 1But like Playing on, like the politics of men Of like these established kingdoms, game of Thrones. Because Gondor just now found its king after 1,000 years. And how's that playing out a generation or two down? And who's the new enemy? Is there still remnants of orc army? Because the way the third movie ends, all those orcs don't just die, they just like kind of scatter. There's still definitely an orc presence in the world. How's that dynamic going? Like? There's just so much to play on, like between like the politics game.
Speaker 2It might be interesting to explore that what if it takes place a thousand years later?
Speaker 1and and it's indecipherable from modern times. Oh God, Cars and Lord of the Rings. It's like he's playing a ring video game.
Speaker 2It's set in Middle Earth, but it's like it becomes a young adult book.
Speaker 3Yeah, a young adult romance or Maze Runner, oh yeah.
Speaker 1You don't even have to, i'm't even have to. Also kidding, by the way there's so much source material for the token universe, like draw on any of those stories, like go take a site and create a new vision for it, like I'm just talking about like off the cuff, of what might be interesting for me because I just love the universe, but there's there's like thousands of pages of content that they could go and and create a story and and make a vision for it do fantasy movies not?
Speaker 2do that well besides, lord of the rings I don't think so, lord of the or harry potter films all did really well, but I mean like that fantasy, like like harry potter yeah, like swords and swords and spells and like harry potter is like modern fantasy, right, because they're like early.
Speaker 3I think they're in like the early 70s. I don't remember what Harry Potter takes place in, but I know it's earlier. But I'm just wondering because it's like we don't have that many just movies set in that time period besides Lord of the Rings.
Speaker 2How did Dungeons and dragons do that just recently came out? Honor my thieves, that was called think I really like that movie.
Speaker 3I'm not sure how it how well it did. Let me look that up game of thrones guys.
Fantasy vs. Sci-Fi in Film
Speaker 1Daniel says that's yeah, a very good point, but I was thinking just movies movies game of thrones took over the world yeah, I I think it's totally applicable to like I mean well, I was just wondering why we don't get more movies that are that genre.
Speaker 3Do you want to know why?
Speaker 1why? Because those movies have to have a lot of buy-in. All of the ones that have success have been cultural fads. Like game of thr Thrones were books translated to the big screen and it already had this cult-like following. And then Lord of the Rings same exact thing Generations of books that was then adapted into.
Speaker 2What's the line between sci-fi and fantasy? I mean, I would argue that a lot of Marvel films are more fantasy than sci-fi.
Speaker 1To me where I draw that line, because I've asked that question a million times is technology. Yeah, like fantasy is like they don't have.
Speaker 2I would argue that Star Wars is more fantasy than sci-fi.
Speaker 3Well, when you have like high fantasy, low fantasy, there's different subgenres. Real quick, before we move on too far Dungeons Dragons made $208 million worldwide, the budget of $150 million, so not pretty stated that movie was kind of blech.
Speaker 1Really, I liked it. I liked it. It was very. It didn't get me excited and I didn't hate it. I thought it was like okay, I watched a movie.
Speaker 2Blech, All right. Fantasy does much better in video games.
Speaker 1I think than it does in movies. I think it translates better to character development and you get that from TV series where you have a lot more time to develop characters and narratives. But I think Lord of the Rings was the exception because, again, people had had the books for 60 years, you know.
Speaker 2Pirates of the Caribbean did really well does that count?
Speaker 1yeah, I would yeah was that a book?
Speaker 2no it was a Disney ride. Oh, that's right, it was a ride first that they then adapted wow, that's really okay.
Speaker 1So that's fantastic. That's a great example. So again, people fell in love with the ride. They have that following.
Speaker 2It's recognizable now so maybe they just need to have a.
Speaker 1There needs to be yeah, content like surround something that people fall in love with. That you can then adapt.
Speaker 3Witcher. They never made a movie, it was a TV show.
Speaker 1I think the Witcher was more successful, not because of the books, but because of the video game.
Speaker 3Oh, 100%, but it had that following when the show started. So yeah, I guess.
Speaker 2The Chronicles of Narnia. I was never like a huge fan, but those first couple of movies did really well isn't the lion jesus it's like a it's all symbolism for christianity, pretty sure.
Speaker 2I mean cs lewis was a pretty well documented christian, I think huh and that's why I couldn't stand it the closet no, I just I weirdly, because I I don't share this, this gripe that billy has where, like he says, he just can't get behind something if it's about children, um, but that's the only story that I think I agree with that sentiment and I think it's because those children in particular, I just wasn't a fan of. They just didn't. Which children are you talking about? Chronicles of Narnia, the four kids sent to their what is that? Their uncle?
Speaker 3I've never seen it.
Speaker 1What.
Speaker 3I wasn't interested in it.
Speaker 2I'm not going to go out of my way to say go watch it or anything.
Speaker 1But that's crazy, because that was like a cultural phenomenon and I was like I'll play. I'll play Mass Effect. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3I was all about that Sci-fi grind yo. When did the first one came out?
Speaker 2in 2005. Oh, you were 10. Give me that sci-fi, grind yo. When did the first one come out? 2005? You're 10?
Speaker 3Give me that sci-fi grind, Sci-fi grind. Back then I was reading books like Moby Dick.
Speaker 2Oh yes, Moby Dick was so much more entertaining.
Speaker 3It sucked. It's a boring book, but I did read it. I don't know how I did.
Speaker 2Moby Dick is I like it actually?
Speaker 3I bet I would like it now, but reading it in sixth grade.
Speaker 2What does Ron Swanson say in Parks and Rec, where he's just like I can't stand symbolism. That's why Moby Dick, is my favorite story. It's just about a man trying to kill a whale. And then he's like, is it a symbol for all this? And he lists it off. He's like, no, it's just about a guy trying to kill a fish.
Speaker 3The white whale, so server meshing.
Speaker 1It's about time we talked about it I appreciate you bringing it up. Thank you.
Speaker 3I've been waiting on that bit for three weeks. I don't have a take. I wanted you to explain it to us.
Speaker 2I don't even know what you're talking about. I didn't read that article you sent on server meshing.
Speaker 3That's why I'm bringing it up now, though, because it's better when you get our reaction fresh. It's not worth it.
Speaker 2Tune in to the KDie ratio, where you listen to us react to what server meshing is on the fly.
Speaker 1Yeah, baby entertaining while I butcher a reenactment of what it? Actually is yeah, um, okay server oh, we're doing this. All right, we're doing it ready okay, okay, oh, because I've had this on there and it's just ridiculous. We have to talk about it. Um, we all know star citizen is a meme at this point, right? Um?
Speaker 1but what it is actually kind of good as being like it's basically a tech demo at this point of like what things that they can try to accomplish in the video game. And you know we can mean it for all it is that we want. But they've kind of they actually demoed this really crazy new technology that I've never seen of or thought about as really advancing a lot of how players interact and engage with each other online and some of the limitations that we've seen with games. So, for example, Lost Ark or maybe it's New World or whatever. But, like, players will join a server to play on a server and they'll get stuck on that server and let's say, that server is dying and they don't combine it with another server.
Speaker 1So you're stuck with having a couple hundred people online, that you're stuck in this sort of world and you'd have to pay a transfer fee to then transfer to another server, etc. Etc. Etc. But what's really cool about this server mesh technology is it kind of throws that model out of it a little bit out of the out of the window. Um, it's dynamically allocating, like server capacity to handle online gaming. So what you have, the way it works, is you have one server handle all of the X and Y coordinates like the X coordinates of where you're at right, I guess yeah your positional data where things are being moved to, and that's sort of like the most important calculation server just handling where objects are in the space.
Speaker 1But then there's so much more to like, uh, the way servers render environments right, they have to render the environment, they have to manage the ai and the interactions there. Um, they have to manage, like, the response time of like you're doing damage, you're you know, like, okay, this animation now dies, this character dies and stuff. I got there's immense calculations. What star citizen did a tech demo on which was really insane was they were dynamically allocating server capacity in space. So you had your one server calculation, calculate all the positional data of just where things are, and then they would dynamically allocate servers to certain geographical regions with their own boundaries. So like, let's say, you're on one side of a of a, like a, a map, and you're on another side of the map, like you throw a ball. This ball is bouncing, bouncing and then it, kind of unbeknownst to you, phases through and now all of a sudden, like that positional data server is feeding information to the other server that says, okay, you got a ball incoming, now render it now. And so it hands, it does this like handoff of where this object is. And now that server is being rendered. And what's really cool about this?
Speaker 1If you think about like what start a citizen is as a game, and like one of the things that they have to figure out is these massive scale fights, how do you handle that many people playing with that many different collisions and stuff. One server could not calculate all of that. The game is literally going to die. And this is actually one of the hurdles that they've been trying to overcome for years. Is this server mesh technology? So they've basically written some kind of communication language that can allow these servers to speak to each other to handle this excuse me, this capacity.
Speaker 1So what happens is it's like oh hey, we have a cluster of of players in this area. We need resources there. They can. The system will dynamically allocate more servers to like, so, like the area of rendering is more servers to like, so like the area of rendering is gets smaller and smaller, so like they have a whole server. If it's like really populated in one area of the map, calculating this section right, and then as people dissipate and stuff like that, then the you know more, like it'll you know, one server will take it over, instead of having three or four servers take over it. So it's this dynamic way of allocating resources to handle and tackle whatever is dynamically happening. Wow, instead of just having like, because how many times have you been in a map or a game or something and it's like oh, the server's laggy, there's too much going on.
Speaker 1You bounce out or whatever. Imagine not having that anymore. You set up your game host studio, you set up all your technology and here's your host servers, right, and then you've got your game going on and everyone's playing on the same map and it can dynamically allocate and figure out how to serve the needs of that and for wow, it's. It's absolutely crazy.
Speaker 3The idea that, like you could have just insane scale of fights, fights right um, would be insane once you need once, you need still, though, like if you're gonna have an insane scale fight, you would still need a lot of servers. Though right, oh shit, so it's.
Speaker 1It wouldn't fix that issue as much as it just fixed the overlapping of servers right, like you would well like imagine if you had, if you had one server and like 50 players were standing in one area like, okay, well, that's, that's gonna like bog down that server, it's gonna like lag because it's too much to render in that one environment, or whatever. If you have now like the resource to basically block that up and break it up into multiple efforts all of a sudden. Yeah, you're right, you still need the full hardware scale. You'll need probably even more, so You'll need as many servers as you possibly can get, but in terms of how the computer is able to render, all that segment it better to different servers rather than taking all one load on one server.
Speaker 3It can say okay, we need to allocate, pull from these other ones.
Speaker 1Seamlessly. They did a bunch of different demos with it. I had never seen any technology like this, or even heard of it. I've played games where when you're on one map and what happens to a server? When everybody starts to fall into one space and you've got 80 people attacking each other and you've got this person inflicted bleed on you and this person inflicted burning on you and you're cursed by this person. There's all this data that you're feeding back and it can't handle the. It's not that your computer can't necessarily render it, it's just that the servers can't actually.
Speaker 3Do all those calculations? Kick that data to you.
Speaker 1Yeah, there's so much stuff going on, so much data to relay and calculate, that the server is just quite literally lagging. So, anyway, that's what kind of got me hyped up and excited because I saw that and I was like it's star citizen. So take it with a grain of salt. But, um, at this point it's quite literally like a tech demo. When I saw this sort of breakthrough that they had and the way that they they explained that they have to overcome this hurdle to even come out with their game, just based on how it's going to play out, um, could be quite interesting be interesting to see how this ends up getting used across the the industry, because wide scale pvp is something that I think people have are continuing to yearn for, like yeah, I mean whenever a game comes out that's that like has, at least in the past, that promised like such and such multi.
Speaker 3You know 100 versus 100 you know not that level, but any game that promises that it usually does pretty good, even though it the game itself might not be the best like. Do you remember back in like ps3, there was a game called like war or something. I don't remember what it was called. It was like 60 v 60. Oh wow, it was huge, but it kind of sucked.
Speaker 1It does that one thing really well.
Speaker 1Yeah, but now imagine just being able to throw this into your game and dynamically handle all of that, instead of having to really be strategic about your hardware and your infrastructure, because think about how much that implicates like design choices going forward.
Speaker 1Right, when you're like, okay, I want to have this scale map or I want to have this many features, it's like we're up against this arbitrary capacity Because, remember, this has to all be rendered on one server and with this many people, this is how many flops. You know that you can calculate or whatever teraflop you know I hear that and I don't know what I'm talking about but computational, like calculations, right. So you have to like change your design up a little bit and based on what you're doing. Well, if you don't have to do that, you can come out with what your vision is and and dynamically you know, dynamically feed the resources to your vision as it's needed. Sign me up, yeah, I. The less hardware limitations that we can put in front of, like art, designers and stuff like that and creative, visionary people, the better they can make more cool, interesting things when you're talking about that.
Speaker 3It reminded me of, like, the lumens thing that we talked about a while ago. I'm so excited for the future of gaming with with that technology in Unreal 5.
Speaker 1Oh yeah, we're like five. Yeah, Unreal Engine 5.
Speaker 3Yeah.
Speaker 1We're like on 5.6, I think just came out or something like that.
Speaker 3Yeah, and you look at it.
Speaker 1You're like they keep coming out with crazy shit and like just some of the stuff in terms of like, just rendering assets. Remember, you know, like the idea of having you would have these different polygon count art assets. Right, you have like, if you're really far away, render this image and you get closer. You get one step closer, it renders this image and then you walk 15 steps closer and then one more step and it renders this image. Right, there's that pop-in effect. Yeah, now the engine is doing that calculation for you, right, of how many polygons or whatever, whatever it is that they're rendering that to like dynamically shift that. So there's no pop-in, it just gets more clear.
Speaker 1But you're so far away you never even actually notice the difference the ability to not have to go and create all those art assets is insane.
Speaker 3Well, like Lumen, the ability for them, like I never knew lighting, was that hard in gaming. I always thought you know what you think. Oh, they point the light and it figures it out.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 3No, like you had to say, okay, this has this certain type of reflectivity. Now you can put in like real dynamic light and you can create like this is leather, and the system automatically knows okay, leather. This is how light looks on leather, especially when it's up here. That amazes me. I learned this today and I was fascinated For the second or the third Planet of the Apes movie.
Speaker 2They use Luma.
Speaker 3No, it's another technology, but it blows my mind again. It's the third, it's War for the Planet of the Apes, I think is the last one with Caesar, but anyways, they, I think it's. Ilm did it right. Industrial Light and Magic. Ilm has created a program for forests to where it naturally plants trees. Like you can you put in. You say, I want trees to grow here, here, here here, and then it'll grow them naturally, based on like proximity to each other. So that way you'll get trees that overgrow the other and the other one doesn't grow because it's taking up all the sun and it does that all automatically. That I was amazed by that like. And it says okay, if it's upper, if it's higher elevation, it's going to be this. Somebody went in there and programmed that all so that now you can just say model of how trees actually.
Speaker 3Yeah, now you can just say okay, I want a model of how trees actually work. Yeah, now you can just say okay, I want trees here, and then it'll.
Speaker 1It, builds it for you, and then anybody now can use that resource and generate a really lifelike yeah.
Speaker 3That's amazing.
Speaker 2These are all just tools. I love it, I know I love it.
Speaker 1I love it so much.
Speaker 3And it gets me excited for, like I mean that movie, I'm sure that I'm sure you can bring it over to video games. Oh, absolutely, um.
Speaker 1And like a lot of this stuff like lumen, I know, is insane on like processing overhead. But you know, even if it's used in four or five years or whatever, where we start like four or five years, the hardware can run it and then another year or two for games actually put it into their game. Um, we're just it's just like really cool to see these hurdles and then kind of envision what can happen down the road and all it does is lower that bar of accessibility for these games, because right now there's a lot of like just bad games or indie games that aren't really people aren't putting that much time into it, but they can make them look fucking beautiful yeah.
Speaker 3It's crazy, touching on the Star Citizen one and Planet of the Apes. It's also amazing how most of this technology is often developed during development of something else. It's because it's a necessity. Let's make this so that we have an easier time doing it. It drastically helps every other video game company out there.
Speaker 2Progress in general.
Speaker 1Progress does not just do it itself. Somebody has to actually work their butts off. Same thing with Star Citizen. They knew this was going to be a hurdle that they have to overcome, so they invented this whole dynamic server system, this server meshing technology, and I don't know if it's actually going to have any implications, but I certainly like the idea of just having static IPs that you log into and that's how it handles. Anything that could be dynamic seems to me that it will handle problems better. Yeah.
Speaker 3And the ability for it to do it on the fly without manual need of like no human intervention.
Speaker 1This server is getting overloaded yeah. Amen. Well, where can people find us?
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Speaker 1Dylan's fault.
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Speaker 3Really Kyle Never.
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