Roll to Save
Three middle-aged nerds dive deep into the golden age of tabletop RPGs, covering the classics from the 80s and 90s that shaped the hobby we love today. Iain and Jason banter their way through gaming history while Steve desperately tries to keep them on topic—and occasionally succeeds.
Whether you're a grognard who lived through THAC0 or a newcomer curious about what to do with all those lovely polyhederal dice you've aquired, we've got you covered with historical deep-dives, roundtable discussions fueled by questionable nostalgia, and actual play episodes where our players' competence is... variable.
All of this released on a schedule that can charitably be called "flexible" at best.
Grab some dice and join us for a trip down memory lane—just don't ask us to commit to when the next episode will drop.
Roll to Save
Computer RPGs
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With a certain Baldur's Gate 3 taking the world by storm, we decided to do an episode on computer RPGs - all those digital versions of our favourite games that we've lost hours to.
Join us as we talk about games from the past that we loved (and loathed) and marvel at just how much time Steve has lost to Baldur's Gate 3...
Contact us at:
EMAIL: roll.to.save.pod@gmail.com
TWITTER: @savepodcast
FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/rolltosavepod
WEBSITE: https://rolltosave.blog
HOSTS: Iain Wilson, Steve McGarrity, Jason Downey
VOICEOVER LADY: Keeley Wilson
BACKGROUND MUSIC: David Renada (Find him at: davidrendamusic@gmail.com or on his web page).
TITLE, BREAK & CLOSEOUT MUSIC: Xylo-Ziko (Find them on their web page).
Contact us at:
EMAIL: roll.to.save.pod@gmail.com
FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/rolltosavepod
WEBSITE: https://rolltosave.blog
HOSTS: Iain Wilson, Steve McGarrity, Jason Downey
BACKGROUND MUSIC: David Renada (Find him at: davidrendamusic@gmail.com or on his web page).
TITLE, BREAK & CLOSEOUT MUSIC: Xylo-Ziko (Find them on their web page).
Those games of our hosts have wasted hours of their lives on saying that, I'd wager that no computer RPG has ever taken up as much time as Football Manager did in our house. Fun fact, Football Manager has been cited in no less than thirty-five divorce cases as the primary cause of the wife seeking to dissolve the marriage. This may or may not be personal experience talking. Anyway, on this episode, our hosts spend their time wittering on about computer tabletop RPGs that they used to play, and Steve confesses to the fact that he has wasted most of his waking moments recently to a certain computer RPG that all our listeners are probably familiar with. That's it. That's the show. I could do so much better for myself, you know. And Jason, just for the record, I've just a lot of fun because anticipation is a lot of fun. Enjoy the episode.
SPEAKER_03Hello and welcome to another related episode of Roll to Save, the sporadic podcast on RPGs, where we occasionally once every four months release an episode. Entirely my fault. I am joined as usual by my co-hosts, Steve and Jason. How are you doing, gentlemen?
SPEAKER_01It's starting to cool off in uh sunny Texas after it being swelteringly, you know, like the hell's hot for the last couple months. It's it's actually quite pleasant now. So that's that's a thing. Um pretty happy about that.
SPEAKER_02And it's the opposite here in Ireland. We've had the wettest July, August, whatever on record, and it's now pretty warm, sunny October. It's weird.
SPEAKER_03We've got Utah autumn weather here where at the moment it is absolutely glorious. It's sort of Bammy 22 degrees Celsius. I'm not going to bother converting that into Fahrenheit because Fahrenheit is nonsense. It will change, it will flip, and you'll have torrential rain and cold, and we're just dreading the snow, the inevitable snow that will just remind you of home, Ian.
SPEAKER_02That's all.
SPEAKER_03Well no, the rain does, the snow doesn't. The snow is like it reminds me of like the the thing in 1982. That's what the snow reminds me of.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, don't see any lone dogs out there, man. Do not bring them in.
SPEAKER_03I know exactly. There was actually there was quite a funny thing in our local Facebook group where somebody put a message up saying because during the winter you get a lot of the animals from the mountains migrate down, and someone found a coyote under the decking, and this animal had broken its leg. And she put a thing that said, Can anyone help me? And there was one guy who a bit of a Utah stereotype, a bit of a gun nut, he says, Yeah, I'll be around with my rifle in a minute. She's like, No, I don't mean to kill it, I mean can someone come and help me take it to the vets so that the animal could be made better. Anyway, we're not here to talk about scenery. Today we are taking a little bit of a change of tact, and we are going to talk about computer RPGs. Um at the time of release, there's a certain little game called Baldur's Gate 3 that's going around that people are going absolutely daft for. All three of us here have played it to varying degrees, but we got talking and we decided why don't we talk about computer RPGs? Because there are tons of them out there. So, Jason, in order of age, I'll start with you because you are a venerable member of the get it over with.
SPEAKER_02I'd wonder when it was coming.
SPEAKER_03Come on. Yes, so I mean I get that uh back back in your day, like the only real computer video game there was was like decoding the Nazi ciphers on Colossus. But once you get past that, what's your first uh computer RPG that you have like strong memories of?
SPEAKER_02Oh well, okay. So um do you remember that Spectrum 48K thing?
SPEAKER_03We do indeed.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Do you remember the Hobbit?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, do you remember the Hobbit?
SPEAKER_02On that. You awake in a darkened room, you know, all that kind of stuff. That that I think was the first time I encountered an RPG on a computer. So I'd already been playing tabletop RPGs for a long time before that. So this is the first time it kind of made the leap across to computers for me. So prior to that, computers had always been you know, first-person shooters or you know, like your your Wolfenstein's and Doom and things like that. And so this was it was a bit surprising for me to get to that kind of to get to an RPG that felt at least like I was playing a game.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, that was the one. I remember being blown away by the loading screen in the spectrum and that dragging on it.
SPEAKER_02That's right.
SPEAKER_03I just remember thinking how cool that looks.
SPEAKER_02My my mate had the little thermographic printer. I don't know if you remember that on the Spectrum 48. Yeah, and he printed that out. And it's like it's I don't know for the benefit of anybody who's not a thousand years old and born before the flood, right? This is basically that silver paper that the that that this thermographic printer would just scorch on the way past, and it was only what three, four inches wide?
SPEAKER_03It was like a receipt printing.
SPEAKER_02It was like a receipt printing, exactly. Um, and he would print this stuff off. Yeah, but I so I remember that quite a lot. I think prior to that, I mean I've you know talked about the PC stuff, but the you know, gaming wise on that was things like chaos and things like that, which wasn't really an RPG, it was a you know wizard on wizard battle summoning creatures to kill the opposition. So it was so this was the first one where it felt like you had decisions to make and they made a difference, and you had to pick up equipment and talk to people and navigate north, south, east, west, because people could only move the same as a king in chess, they couldn't do anything else.
SPEAKER_03Chaos is a good one, though. You mentioned that that was uh a bit more like a war game than an RPG.
SPEAKER_02Chaos was great. I used to love that.
SPEAKER_03For those of you who haven't played it, it was essentially you played a wizard, and there was a bunch of other wizards in that on the map, and you summoned creatures and cast spells, and it was actually very much like Magic the Gathering, but on a on a spectrum.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and the cool thing was the more you had the all the spells were lawful or chaos, and the more lawful spells that got cast, the easier it then got to cast more lawful spells, and the same with the chaos ones, and each creature would be aligned to one of those, and it would then be easier to get bigger monsters out if you could spill into chaos a bit more. Not though in RPG, I'm afraid.
SPEAKER_03Chaos actually had a sequel that was released for the 16-bit computers in 1990 called Lords of Chaos. I remember having that for my Atari ST. And it's the same premise, except it looked better, and the map was much bigger. You had to actually explore to find where your opponents were. You had to move, yeah, you didn't just stand there like summoning dragons and stuff. And that was really that was really cool. I introduced like spell casting ingredients, like the really powerful spells you couldn't cast unless you found the the necessary artifacts, which were obviously in a place in the map that were guarded by other things. And you could play it in single player as well, which was a lot of fun. Steve, what about you? What's your first real computer RPG you remember?
SPEAKER_01It's probably a toss-up. Bring him, you're you're going so far back. It's a toss-up between Eye the Beholder or Heroes of the Lance. Those are the two that I definitely have distinct memories of. Now, granted, we're talking like 1989 or 1991, and those were that's a long time ago, but I distinctly remember playing both of those, probably on the certainly Eye of the Beholder on the Amiga. I don't remember whether I had a Heroes of the Lance on the 64 or the Amiga. It was probably the Amiga, but I was a huge game nerd back then, and obviously RPGs were my jam, and some of those early DD style games were it for me for sure.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I've just looked it up, Heroes of the Lance, it was 1988. Um I remember having that on my Amstrad CPC 464.
SPEAKER_02Oh, you summer children, you with your Amstrads and your Atari ST, your 16-bit computing.
SPEAKER_03I remember with that being so excited to get it, it came in a big fancy box and it was on two cassettes, and you had all this like fluff that you got with it that told you all about the heroes of the lands, and then you literally sat and waited about 20 minutes for this thing to load from change the tape halfway through, and it gave you all these wonderful loading screens that told you about all the heroes of the lands. And then the game was quite disappointing when you officially loaded it up because you had this crew of I think it was eight characters that you wandered round this ruined temple with, but you controlled one of them at any given time, and the rest just kind of hung out, I guess, while this guy's off fighting things, and it's just a side-scrolling um beat him up, essentially. I'm not even sure any like all the characters had different stats and different magical items, and there was all this lore about it, and which you got hours to read about while you waited for the bloody thing to load. But I'm not sure any of it made much of a difference to what happened in the like one guy had a spear he could throw, which was quite cool, and the other guy could chuck axes, but and there was a couple of spells knocking around, but yeah, it didn't for the build-up to it, it didn't seem to deliver that much. I don't know, is it Steve your experience with it was different or honestly?
SPEAKER_01I just remembered looking up the early games I played, and that's I just remember playing it. I don't remember much more details than that. My memory is so fragmented. It was like a first person one of the very first first person games.
SPEAKER_02It had real-time combat in I think it did.
SPEAKER_03Its roots actually were, and this is me showing my nerdy credentials. Eye The Beholder actually harkens back to a game that was released in 1987 on the ST called Dungeon Master.
SPEAKER_02I was gonna say Dungeon Master, yeah. That was classic.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, Dungeon Master was a game I lost hours to because it was this first person, and it had loads of puzzles in it as well. You know, you pull one lever, something else opens, and you go down there and fight some monsters and get some stuff, but it had a full like character creation engine in it, and it really felt like a a proper quote unquote RPG because you're you're putting this party together, and as Jason said, it had real-time combat, and you never completed it. I think I I just spent my entire time like lost down there fighting things in the depths, but but that was when Eye of the Beholder had its roots in. Um I think the developers uh more or less came out and said, Yeah, we kind of DD'd uh Dungeon Master and you put all the branding on it and had more of a coherent story. But Dungeon Master was fantastic.
SPEAKER_02I did get confused with Dungeon Keeper, which came along a lot later.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, Dungeon Keeper was hilarious. That's the one where you were the badge of the boss monster.
SPEAKER_02Building the dungeon to keep the heroes out, which was great fun, and a nice little twitch.
SPEAKER_03Did any of you remember one called The Bard's Tale? Yes. Yes. Yeah, that that was uh an older one as well. I think it was about 86, 87, um, that came. There was a whole series of them, but they started off on the computers, and again it was uh first person, you rolled up your party sort of DD style, and you wandered around this town getting quests from people and going off and fighting beasts, and it was much more turn-based than real time. You know, when you go into a fight, a screen popped up, and it was like, you have found five arcs, you know. Well, what are you gonna do?
SPEAKER_02But they still do that, they do turn-based combat jumping all the way forward to Boulder's guy three. That's they do turn-based combat in that, and I think it's it's kind of quite a good thing because it's you know it's it's not so important about your Twitch reflex and you know, you haven't some ultra-sharp, ultra high DPI mouse and the reactions of a you know, caffeinated 16-year-old. It's you know, you can at least plan a few moves as a bit more tactical, and yeah, you can work as a team a little bit better, I think.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean you definitely jump right forward if you start talking about like the whole split of like it's almost like uh like a political divide between the people who like the turn base versus people like a real time plus pause, right? I mean, they're both good. I I I personally like them both equally, you know, because that's obviously we're we're jumping like to like Baldur's Gate, where it's like you know, real time plus pause, and then Baldur's Gate 3 is you know going more sort of purist, you know, turn based D D type. So it's it's definitely it does depend what you're after.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, definitely does depend on what you're after, and I've I've I've definitely played both. And yeah, there's positives and negatives. I think just as I've I think because I've played a lot of fifth ed and and I'm and we'll get on to it, I'm sure, but I'm playing Baldur's Gate 3 multiplayer, and you know it's nice to have the the kind of stop it's your go, right? Okay, I'm gonna do my bit, rather than you know, somebody running off like a lunatic and just hanging everything to death before everybody goes, excuse me, that that yeah, that thing over there I wanted to talk to, you know. So yeah. But I'm I'm jumping forward quite a lot, so forgive me.
SPEAKER_03I I'm a big fan of the XCOM games and they turn-based, that's uh my tongue-based, yeah, because you you can actually take the time and and and think about and watch your squad be hideously dismantled one turn at a time. I always do that thing in XCOM where I always name my squad after people I know who likes to be like. You're not the only one. You get you get so much more invested in the uh guy we both know.
SPEAKER_02Do you remember Gary from Leicester Rayak? Yeah, he ended up doing the latest XCOM game and and naming it, and I ended up as one of as apparently the only survivor of his of the from the original squad. Yeah. Yeah, so that was quite nice. I had nothing to do with it, he just played and just sent regular updates, but you know, it was fun.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it's it's definitely a a style preference, the the turn-based versus real time. Like some games, there was a series of kind of quasi-RPGs. I remember for the PC in the this early 90s, that where it was first-person perspective, and you wandered around various uh dungeons and castles and whatnot, and when it came to combat, it was like you were basically pointing your mouse like the monster and like trying to tap it with the the hilt of your sword or whatever. And I always find that deeply unsatisfying because it felt random and it felt it'd be more it'd be more realistic to just have it tongue-based and roll a D20 and tell me what happened than relying on some vague hand-eye coordination, which I may or may not have. Those of you who have seen my painting will know it definitely comes down on the may not have.
SPEAKER_02So I don't I don't know. I mean, I I love a first-person shooter, and you know, I've there are times where my Twitch response was very well honed, put it that way. You know, but 30 years ago. Oh yeah, and probably more. So yeah, it's been it's been a while. I've definitely slowed down since. So yeah, it's I think it suits more the role-playing. If you want a true role-playing game and you want conversations and player interactions and things like that, I think the turn-based one slightly has the edge, but yeah.
SPEAKER_03It's funny what you see with the Twitch reactions. I find that I've played Fortnite with my son and some of his friends, and these 14-year-olds have reflexes like ninjas. Like cats. Or it might just be that I have reflexes like a man in my late forties. That might be the comparison. But I also find I tend to survive longer because the idea of the idea of squad coherency doesn't really apply when you're 14 and trying to be king of the hell, and you want to be the first one over there taking out everyone in sight. And like, oh, come back, come back. Oh, he's dead. Right, great.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. So you're basically setting your survival instincts a bit better than theirs.
SPEAKER_03Uh they are, yeah. I do very well in solo Fortnite, where you know you basically can sit on top of a roof and just shoot people as they as they as they walk past. Yeah, exactly. You get wins that way.
SPEAKER_01I don't know. I feel like you've carried me at least once or twice when we've played Fortnite, and so you know, I guess it's very kind of you.
SPEAKER_03Well, Steve and I actually did have a fun game of Baldur's Gate recently where my capacity for bad luck and disaster um extends to computer games. Does it? Yeah, how many times how many times did you have to revive me, Steve? Yeah, yeah, and this is in the tutorial.
SPEAKER_01What we almost didn't get out of the tutorial as a multiplay thing because Ian uh Ian had a nasty habit of you know blowing up things he shouldn't blow up that caused him to die horribly.
SPEAKER_02There's a lot of explosive stuff. There is.
SPEAKER_03They weren't clearly marked as explosive in my defense.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, because that's what happens, health and safety go around and put yellow and black stickers on them.
SPEAKER_03Exactly. The world of DD needs that sort of stuff. Oh, do not hit this with your big fiery great sword because it may be flammable. So if you think then about you mentioned multiplayer with these games, what games have you played that had that multiplayer experience that actually made it feel like you were playing a tabletop RPG? Because people always talk about RPGs on computers, and they tend to mean you get some stats, but there's not actually that much roleplay involved. What games have you played that have actually captured that tabletop experience?
SPEAKER_02So apart from Boulder's Guy 3.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, we'll come to that as its own as its own topic. Uh its own topic.
SPEAKER_02I think for me it was probably Neverwinter Nights was the first one that kind of did it for me, because it had it was much kind of lauded, had this GM toolkit where you could literally build somebody could build their own adventures around it. So theoretically, you could build your DD campaign on Neverwinter Nights and do it that way. And I was once obviously done the single player game, and I kind of discovered there was a multiplayer option, and there's all these servers sprang up across the internet. There's a Mensa Baranzen server, that was the one I kind of hung out on quite a lot. And no, it wasn't set in the underdark, and no, you didn't get to play drown, but it was set just on the entrance to the underdog. Oh, of course it makes me set. Is there anything in the gold? I know it's terrible. But it was it was literally situated on the mouth to the underdark. So um, if you strayed down there early on, you would you wouldn't come back. Uh it was pretty lethal. But there was quite a good little society around, and people used to hang around in the town and do actual proper role-playing, which was odd. And then you just ah, right, we're bored of talking, let's get all our stuff together and go farm a couple of areas and get some stuff. So but it but there was a distinct separation between the role-playing and the and the and the combat, which was nice.
SPEAKER_01Gosh, I was gonna say neverwinner and uh you know Jay still might thunder. There's a reason I get in there first, Steve. That's that's totally fine. Uh still still the obvious, easy answer. That's fine. Uh no, I mean that was certainly one of the earlier ones. Obviously, you start to stray into multiplayer, you start to talk into inevitably into you know your your classic MMOs, like your ultimate online jet requests. Those are games that are more tailor needed for larger groups of players rather than you know one to four. Which is great and fine, but it's it's kind of nice to have a whole squad and lots of other people. So that that that that's always been my jam when I talk about multiplayer. And obviously, we're not probably gonna stray into text-based MUDs too much, but that's where text-based games were really where I kind of saw that the most when I'm talking about computer-based RPGs, was you know, MUDs, the the other random RPGs, ones that were more focused in that area were that's probably where I did most of my early bro playing multiplayer uh in that in that sense, I think.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, for those of you who are obviously not geriatrics, a mud is a multi-user domain that was a very early form of MMO essentially, that was a text-based adventure. There was loads of them. And Steve and I actually met playing one back in 1995. That that really dates us because Bep used to play one called Elephant Mud, which was a ton of fun, and it was cut out of the classic DD mold, like you chose a race, you chose a class, and you went off and basically killed monsters to get XP, and that that let you then upgrade your stats and abilities and powers, and then he'd kill bigger stuff. But as you say, Steve, there was uh opportunity for lots of roleplay there. I actually found because I was thinking of that before in the sort of prep for this the my memories of yeah, because I always do prep. Unlike you, Mr. Fly by Night there, I I lots of care and consideration goes into my responses. Minutes of care and consideration, I'll have you know. Probably not. But yeah, probably not actually. But no, we have we have to we have to think of our listeners, all five of them, and give them what they want. But when I when I think about the mud, there was always like different categories of players. There was people who went on there to play the game and to they used to always get the empower mudders because they would just grind out like monster death after monster death after monster death to get as high level as possible. Then you get people who went on there to to roleplay, and there was some like genuinely good interactions. You also got a subclass of people who basically just went on there to be sex pests to other people. There was quite a bit of that going on. And there was also Steve's gonna shake his head at this. I can sense it already. There was also a political element to it, which I absolutely loved.
SPEAKER_01What are you not real world politics, obviously? No, no, real life politics. But it's like there wasn't politics. Yeah, that I I I bucketed that into the role-play side of things, but yes, there was a lot of I absolutely lived for that.
SPEAKER_03I do because there was there were guilds, and you could give you elected leader of your guild, and I ran a very, very staunch campaign to be elected leader of the fighters' guild, which was great. And I got to hold that position for about two and a half years and really just used it as the excuse to wind people up, which was wonderful.
SPEAKER_01Happy, happy memories, indeed, fond memories. And then we got the those of us who wanted to uh you know, you know, satisfy our inner dungeon master streak, you know, went on to help write the game. And both the and I jumped in at that one point and did that for quite a while too. It just was a lot of fun in its own way, getting to add new you know, monsters and new towns and dungeons and things to the game new spells. So that was uh that was a lot of fun too to be able to see that side of the game too.
SPEAKER_03That that was that really got you to sort of flex your inner writer. Um obviously you had to learn to code as well, and your code was probably better than my code was.
SPEAKER_01But I mean that's what happens when you have a camp sci degree versus you know a McDonald's degree like yourself, sir. Oh, so much.
SPEAKER_03I think I find that my areas in the mud are some of the best described ones out there because I used my English degree. Uh I did actually have a very a moment of very sound satisfaction recently. Well, say recently it was like 2018, I think it was 2019, when we last did an update, a big update to the mud, and I wrote one particular area, and when they released this area, within about three days of it being released, I got a message from this guy saying, Oh, I was the first one to die in a new area. I died to the blah blah blah monster that you wrote. It was awesome. Good, I guess.
SPEAKER_02I'm glad your death was satisfactory, citizen.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_02Please try again.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Would you recommend your death to a friend on a scale of one to ten? Yeah, right, but that was that was a lot, that was a lot of fun though. And it uh mudding took up a I think a large degree of um RPG time at university. Although there was a guy I used to go to university with called Barry, and Barry got absolutely addicted to the mud. He used to be in the same psychology class as me, and it used to be 9am on a Monday, and he would he disappeared 1 9am on a Monday, and he came back and says, Oh, can I borrow your notes from that lecture? I couldn't make it. I was like, Where were you? And he looked kind of slyly and he was like, I found out that the the computer labs are actually empty at 9am, so I was up mudding, and I was like, Alright, okay, well fine, you can borrow my notes. And then he did this week after week after week, and the thing that annoyed me most was not so much he was asking for my notes, but was the fact that he was gaining tons of levels in this game.
SPEAKER_02Was he threatening you as guild master of the Finders Guild or something?
SPEAKER_03Well, I was a guild master of the Finders Guild, very much a newbie then. So we were coming up for a test, and this is how bloody-minded I am. And he was like, Oh, I really I missed the lecture. I was like, Yeah, of course you did, because you're rough mudding. He's like, Can I borrow your notes for the test? I was like, Yeah, sure. But I actually went out of my way to write a load of bullshit notes, which I passed to him. And he then failed it, he then failed the test, and he was like, Oh my god, your notes were garbage. I'm like, Yeah, well, maybe turn up and write your own bloody notes then instead of playing in the mud all day. And he's like, Oh yeah, okay, point taken.
SPEAKER_02So But he's ruined his life now, and uh you know.
SPEAKER_03Well, no, I I think I've helped his education, I think he's learned a lesson now, and he's he's I don't know. Actually, I've no idea what he's doing.
SPEAKER_02But if you know what Barry is doing with his life, please let us know.
SPEAKER_03I think we kinda we kinda stopped talking after that to be honest. Really?
SPEAKER_02Really I'm with the one.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I'm happy memories. Those MMOs though, what other ones have you guys got experience with? Like likes of EverQuest, World of Warcraft, Star Wars Galaxies. Did you play any of those?
SPEAKER_02Not one. You see, I knew that if I let one of them into my life, that was over. That was it, it was over. I'd be Barry. Okay, but only the difference is I'd be Barry where I'd be asking people's notes about my job, and I wouldn't get them, and I'd be fired. And then I'd be destitute out on the streets, and then it's a short hob and skip and a jump to you know destitution, prostitution, and eventually death. So, you know.
SPEAKER_03No offense, nobody's paying for that.
SPEAKER_02Well, that that then death would be quicker, you know.
SPEAKER_03Actually, there's probably a market for it to be honest. There's some sort of weird hobby fetish ever since Peter Jackson made Lord of the Rings trendy, man.
SPEAKER_02Exactly. Exactly. Uh yeah, so I I avoided them like a plague, not because of any oh I don't think these are any good. I knew they'd be good, and I knew I would just lose what little remained of my life to them, so I stayed away.
SPEAKER_01Unlike Steve. Yeah, Steve, would you like to confess your sins? Uh there was a time when I played every single one that came out to varying degrees, and I was a huge nerd for MMOs. And that continued from probably 1999 through gosh, probably 2010, maybe. Uh and you know, obviously real life intervened as far as most of the time it does, and I had to trim down that. Though some of the best some of the best multiplayer experiences I've ever had of being, you know, raiding with guilds in World of Warcraft. Same with like t if you're talking computer RPGs, some of the most immersive experiences I've ever had of being in games like EverQuest. I still remember some of those to this day. And I still go back to those games every couple of years just to even though they're like super dated and graphics have never really been upgraded much. I still go back to EverQuest every couple years. Just because there's nostalgia there. And some of the best nostalgia I ever had is in those games. And they're still there to play most of the time. So yeah, no, I played every single one, and I'll still go to like like Star Wars Galaxies you mentioned, you know, I had such a I had such a thing for that game. I followed it from its inception till it launched and onwards and played it quite a lot. And then um obviously they tanked the game, but it's it c it's kind of had a renaissance in the last few years because people are emulating it now, and there's emulated servers that are actually really faithful to the game, and it's been just great for a nostalgic kick of that game. Lots of RPG goes in and there, lots of role-playing. It's yeah, I I was seriously hooked on that game. Loads of them. But yeah, no, I've uh common sense prevailed. I don't have the time for that sort of shenanigans anymore.
SPEAKER_03I haven't had for years, so you just play tabletop RPGs once a week now.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, pretty much. R Baldur's Gate 3, which is is quickly turning into like I don't want to talk about it, man, because I'm at 130 hours on that game plus and I've not even finished one playthrough yet. And I've started I've restarted a playthrough already. I'm on my second playthrough and I'm I'm working my way through it. So yeah, that game is yeah, it's it's something else.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I gave Star Wars Galaxies a goal. I bought the there was a a box you could buy that gave you like one month's membership and you got all the stuff you needed. I just remember being really put off. Like you're you start in the whatever the starting um town is, and you wander around, you get your bearings, and then there's a bunch of people shouting and screaming that they're gonna go and do something amazing, and it's like a bunch of guys riding in the back of Rankors just tear off, and I'm like, No, I don't fancy this. What were you expecting? I don't know. Just it it's that way that it's like when you play any game and you go in there as a newbie and you get your like tiny little sword or whatever, and then some dude turns up in full plate armor riding in the back of a griffin, and you're like, Amazing. I am. I'm going off to do amazing things. And you're like, alright, good. That's what Star Wars Galaxies felt like, but it was like being thrust in your face.
SPEAKER_01That didn't lead you to want to be that guy on the back of the Rancor, though?
SPEAKER_03No, because it's kind of ridiculous.
SPEAKER_01I was like, who's right to the back of the Rancor? I mean, you're a huge Star Wars n you're a huge Star Wars nerd. And you always have been. And you know, you probably read all the expanded universe books as well and know where all that came from. It wasn't like they just invented that stuff. Oh, well, maybe they meant some of it to be great, but.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. It kind of annoyed me and I was like, no, I'm done with this. I also I played World of Warcraft for a bit and I joined some guild. The guy running it just put me off. He's like he was like sending emails around detached to videos saying, right, next time we do blah blah blah, um this is what I expect everyone to do. I'm like, this is not a job. This is meant to be pretending fun time escapism games on the on the PC, and I've got my my supervisor sending me emails on exactly how my cleric should be using healing spells. Like no, sorry, I'm done.
SPEAKER_01I mean it depends on the level you're playing at. If you're playing at a game that uh at the game at the level of those hardcore raiders, it is a job. And it it's not for everybody, but some people thrive in that sort of thing.
SPEAKER_03I I was pla playing at the level of immature individual who is doing this for laughs.
SPEAKER_01Yes.
SPEAKER_03That was that's largely my level. Well, that's my level I approach most games at, to be honest. And life.
SPEAKER_01That sounds just like you, to be fair.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah. But I was like, no, sorry. Here's my here's my two weeks' notice, Gary. Um I'm not interested in playing anymore. My name's not Gary. I'm Crondor the Invincible. Okay, Crondor.
SPEAKER_01I can't blame you. That guild is not for you. Those types of game good those types of guilds are not for everybody.
SPEAKER_03Much more for the let's go and set someone else's stuff on fire for a laugh. No, MMOs could be a lot of fun. Just the the experience of being in a universe with a bunch of real life players is always much more appealing than playing amongst a bunch of bots. I even I even see with space games like Elite Dangerous when you actually play there and it's it's a living, breathing galaxy where like those other ships are flown by other people. And yes, there are bot ships in there as well, but you'll see other ones like, oh, that's a person, and there's interactions you can have there. And Steve, you and I and Wes for a while, we were playing No Man's Sky together online, and that was a lot of fun. I mean, there's not a a lot of fighting involved there, but just like the resource management, building a base, see helping other people out, that was all good.
SPEAKER_01I mean, there's certainly opportunities for roleplaying. It's more like to me, it's more of a sim than an RPG. Just because of the open world, you know, procedurally generated stuff, but there's RPG stuff you can take it. I mean, ultimately in those kinds of games, because it's basically a sandbox, you can do whatever you like with it, right? And you know, but the multiplayer if you want to roleplay, you can roleplay in there, you know, being an intrepid space pilot and building your base and doing stuff. So yeah, I mean that that's the beauty of those games, the flexibility. So yeah.
SPEAKER_03There there is definitely uh an element of that to it. I remember I'd one very far memory of Elite Dangerous, where I was pairing up with this other guy, and he said that I went for a laugh, we do some piracy, and in Elite uh you can if you've got the right equipment, you can haul other ships out of light speed and then you can interact with them. We were through this whole thing of well no hauling people out of hyperspace and then you can you can communicate with other players. Like I was talking to him on on voice mic, but you can't talk to everyone because obviously it would just be full of starting, but you can send messages, so we pull this guy out and then just start like typing messages to like hi. Look, we've noticed you've got X, Y, and Z, and we're your kind of friendly neighborhood pirates. So, unless you drop you know 20 tons of blah blah blah, things are gonna get really messy around here, and we don't want to do that, obviously. But and the amount of people that we you just have a very nice interaction with, oh yeah, sure, let's do that. This is very nice that you actually asked me and just didn't blow up my ship and blah blah blah. And that was quite good fun until we did it in some guy who was absolutely loaded for bear and he just annihilated the pair of fists.
SPEAKER_02Well, that's always the risk when you take on that that that la that life of banditry or piracy that sooner or later you take on the wrong guy, you know.
SPEAKER_03Thinking we're picking a pair of witty highwaymen, and this guy was like, I don't care, I'm a 13-year-old that was playing this for the lasers. I don't want to roleplay. It's like he appears to be shooting at us and all my shields have gone, right? Bye.
SPEAKER_02Time to leave. I never really got into Elite Dangerous, I have to say. I I bought it because of the nostalgia for the whole PBC Micro and Commodore 64 versions, and yeah, I I expect it certainly wasn't a role-playing game in my experience, so it did sound like you got some element of roleplay out of it. Uh yeah, I never really got on board with it. I still own it. I still I for actually fired it up the other week and yeah.
SPEAKER_03The guy that I was playing on it with, we actually met at the whiskey show in London. He was a Geordie called Dave.
SPEAKER_02Dave the Geordie from the whiskey show.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, you probably don't remember him.
SPEAKER_02Probably was hammered to be honest. To be honest, most of those, I don't even know how many of those whiskey shows we went to in the end. You know, it was quite a few.
SPEAKER_03Those whiskey shows I was always very well behaved at, mainly because the first one was a complete train wreck.
SPEAKER_02That's very off topic, Ian.
SPEAKER_03That is very off topic. Uh Steve, I'll tell you what happened to Jason at the whiskey show sometime later, but it's not one for our PG-rated podcast.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03Because he was a mess.
SPEAKER_02So other role-playing games. So there was the vampire ones, remember those? Vampire the Masquerade, uh, was it Redemption and Bloodlines?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, we'll talk about bloodlines in a minute, because Bloodlines was the good one.
SPEAKER_02Bizarrely, isn't it? Because I mean, personally, I don't know about but the tabletop, I know we both absolutely hate the concept of all these really weird bloodlines in the vampire game, but bloodlines really good, and there's a sequel, due out. It disappeared, cancelled. Hey, apparently next October next year, apparently. Which is good. I'm looking forward to that. I'll buy it.
SPEAKER_03Do you believe software? As someone who works for it. I'm not gonna pre-order it, alright?
SPEAKER_02I'm not gonna pre-order it, it's not happening, alright? I didn't even pre-order Cyberpunk, right?
SPEAKER_03We're talking about releasing a new a new product. We had a meeting in January with product about it, and I sent my boss an email looking to talk about launching in June. I'm like, I literally will bet you my salary. We do not launch this in June. He's like, I'm not taking that bet because I know we're not gonna launch this in June. Then it's like, oh, we'll launch it in August, then oh, we're gonna launch it in December. Now it's like March.
SPEAKER_02It's a good job, nobody knows who you work for, right, Ian? Because that would be bad telling anybody that.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I I work for Microsoft.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, unlikely.
SPEAKER_03Budlines was good.
SPEAKER_02Budlines was great.
SPEAKER_01It was good. I wish I'd played it when it came out because uh like it's it's had some sort of it's it's had quite a bit of a resurgence in recent years. Uh, and I've played it through about twice now in the last five years. Um Heavily modded because it's another one of those games that was amazing but just seriously flawed with bugs, and they never fix a lot, and it's been fixed by the modders, and and a bunch of new stuff's been added by the modders after the fact that make the game playable and even better. And I I do I love that game. I love the lure in it. I love that it's basically canon as much as you get sort of canon stuff in Vampire the Masquerade. I don't want to trigger either one of you masquerade nerds on this, but it's basically canon. And I think you'll find well actually um actually well, yeah. And that's that's and like like if you you that dovetails into you know that whole LA by LA by night podcast uh uh tabletop live play that I was hugely into when it came out a few years ago, and they that was kind of even a continuation of that, and they had people playing some of those characters, get special guests and stuff like that. That that was just a really fun continuation of that whole area that I really dug. And yeah, I I can't wait for Bloodlines 2. I mean I probably should wait for it because it may never come out to your guys' point, but hopefully it'll live up to the expectations of Bloodlines, because I think that's pretty high bar.
SPEAKER_02It's a very high bar, I think. You know, it was it's it's one of the few games I've regularly gone back to and and like redone it and replayed it, and you know, I did play a Tremere first, and then I played a Malcavian and all this kind of stuff. Of course you did. Of course I did, yeah, absolutely. Um but it there was some quite uh you obviously played a ventru, it's just the fact of the matter. You did, didn't you? Yeah, you did, didn't you? But yeah, the mod stuff was fantastic, some of the mods you could get for it to bring up to date. And in fact, it's still you know, you can run it on Windows 10, Windows 11 these days, and it's all thanks to the modding community, as you say. So they've done a great job.
SPEAKER_03The mod side of things is a very late 90s, early 2000s phenomenon. You think any game back then, as soon as it was released, there would always be a good thing. How do they get to do it so quick spring up?
SPEAKER_02How do they do it so quick?
SPEAKER_03I know it should actually work for proper software companies because most of the mods are really good.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, there's a huge like I've um I was gonna mention it later later as well, Cyberpunk 2077 being you know almost unplayable on launch, certainly on the last gen stuff. But I didn't have too many problems on PC, but the modding community around that is uh is immense, and it's the same with you know Baldur's Gate 3 now, all the all the limitations about you only want only to have four characters in your pie. No, not anymore. We've got a mod that allows you to have them all, and you can romance them all at the same time if you want, you know, whatever you if you feel your your desire is right up your alley, Jason.
SPEAKER_03You can disappoint all of them at the same time.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, absolutely.
SPEAKER_03Um, yeah, so Shadow Heart does not approve of Jesus.
SPEAKER_02No, no, no. My boulders gate is is vanilla, it's it's not cut not got any mods. Uh my cyberpunk is vanilla, it doesn't have any mods either.
SPEAKER_03So you know what you're saying there, it sounds very much like if a waiter came up to the table and went, I didn't spit in the soup.
SPEAKER_02Didn't you? Did you yeah, yeah, I didn't. Yeah, I didn't drop this steak on the floor and just put it back on your plate.
SPEAKER_03So you we mentioned Bloodlines, which was the good vampire.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, go on, go and redemption, come on.
SPEAKER_03So vampire of the masquerade redemption, I think it was 1999 that was the first one.
SPEAKER_02The story of Christoph.
SPEAKER_03Christoph the Bruges, who also became canon. He's actually in the clan novel Bruges and clan book Bruges and revised. But I remember when this was the the lead up to this being released and our little vampire community being so excited about this game coming out because it was gonna revolutionise uh computer RPGs and it was to be faithful to vampire, and you're gonna have to like behave like a vampire. And what we essentially got was Diablo with fangs. It was such a crying disappointment.
SPEAKER_02I can't remember. I can't remember where I was, I think it might have been like a uh uh it was a roleplay con of some description, and they had the developers there and they were showing off an alpha of the kind of game engine and things like that, and it looked amazing. It was like you know, he was running around.
SPEAKER_03Why were you coming by gushing about that? Yeah, because he seeing how awesome it was.
SPEAKER_02He was running around, he was jumping on roofs and he was getting through windows and all this. I was like, this is gonna be amazing, and yeah, it just ultimately came down to how many rockets you packed, uh, and if you could lure the Zamisi into range for the to to level it, is effectively what it came down to for me.
SPEAKER_03So I do remember the ending, and there was one part, and I was like, Oh, this is actually very, very cool, where the bad guy does all these bad guy lines, and then you hit back with something heroic, then he turns into the Chairo terror marauder, and he's got wings, and he's a wing monster, and he cuts back to you, and you see something cool, and then your theme music hits, and you're like, This is gonna be amazing. And then, as you say, it's like dodge, dodge, rocket, rocket, dodge, rocket, rocket, dodge.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03It's like this feels so man by the masquerade.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, the the human the kindred would never hear or see of this fight that's going on as I unleash multiple rockets into the area, levelling half of Prague or whatever it was.
SPEAKER_03It was uh Yeah, also I think that the the traditions don't really come into it much. I'm like, how many times do you violate the sixth tradition in that that game when it's like oh yeah, I'm in the Cappadocian monastery and I've just wiped out all of them with my great sword because this is a vampire game.
SPEAKER_02Ah yes, but I'm cool, dark, and angsty, and I'm pre-Camarilla. It's all good.
SPEAKER_03I did like the the fact you got uh you got the chance to have a bad ending where you could diabolise the Big Zemishi and then he would take you over there.
SPEAKER_02There were a couple of little nods to some quite dark stuff in there.
SPEAKER_03But the majority of it was just nods.
SPEAKER_02But Bloodlines was good.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, the the opening level of um redemption was actually quite good fun though, where you're the where you're actually playing as a human and you go down to like end the Zumishi vampire that's having a raid, and there's like one vampire, there's one vampire's antagonist, there's a bunch of Zlacha ghouls, and you think, oh, this feels quite good, this is like how that would be, and then it just turns out there's like a gajillion vampires everywhere, and you just uh butcher your way through them with your magic using friends.
SPEAKER_02It's basically DD.
SPEAKER_03Well, I say it's Diablo, it was Diablo.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, probably right.
SPEAKER_03It no, it came with similar to what you mentioned in Never Winter Nights, it came with they called it a storyteller engine where you would could build your own scenarios. I remember being very excited about that because I was like, this is cool, we could play vampire online and actually make it a vampire game rather than uh dungeon crawl, and it was so difficult to use. It was not you had to have all this stuff sort of pre-prepped, but uh you uh essentially had to just make dungeons full of monsters for people to fight with. There was no real concept of uh uh role-playing, there was no voice chat, there was no interaction with it, and uh it ultimately could have been very, very cool, but wasn't.
SPEAKER_02So does does Max Payne count as a uh role-playing game then?
SPEAKER_03No, Max Payne does not count as a role-playing game. It counts as an incredibly awesome shoot shoot 'em up, but definitely not a role-playing game. Oh well. It has the best voiceovers on God's Outside the City was a crow monster. Like, yes, I'm in Let's Go, Max. Interesting, have you seen the film they made of that? I did not.
SPEAKER_02No, no, no, no, no. I should I don't think I should. I don't think I should. With Marky Mark. Yeah, Marky Marky Mark. Marky Mark.
SPEAKER_03Marky Mark is Max Payne. Yeah, it's not great.
SPEAKER_02I think I've still got the the limited edition 10 that the second one came in.
SPEAKER_03A second one was really good. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02They were both really good, but okay, not wrong.
SPEAKER_03Anyway, let's talk about Baldur's Gate 3 because Steve, tell us about your 460 hours you've spent in Baldur's Gate 3 and not achieved any.
SPEAKER_01But to be fair, I have achieved a lot in the game. I just haven't finished it yet. Like I said, I'm about 130, 140 hours played now across two different playthroughs. There's three acts in the game. I'm not gonna I know some of you guys haven't played it that far, but that's as far as I'm gonna go with spoilers. There's three acts in the game. I've made it on my first playthrough, I made it halfway through act three. I think I'm halfway. I don't actually know. But uh, I've made it about halfway, I think. And then I realized how much I'd messed up and how much I'd missed in the first two acts after I watched a bunch of videos. I'm like, okay, I actually want to play this game through and do all this other cool stuff because there's so many side quests and so many things you miss if you just go straight through. It's like ridiculous in that in that sense. So I'm like, okay, I'm gonna go restart the game. I'm just gonna ignore it, leave this campaign alone. I started that's what I've been on right now, and I'm I've just got to act three, and that one, I've been doing every side quest. I'm min-maxing the characters, I've got like really overpowered, my levels are way higher than they were before. A lot of the fights are a lot easier. It's and it's been a heck of a lot of fun doing the second playthrough, but there is so much to this game. I just found two new things today that I didn't even know were there at this very start of act three that if you just go straight to where you're supposed to go for the quest you're going to act three for, you completely miss some really awesome stuff. And that's like that's the same way the whole way through the game. You just miss random cool stuff. So it's there's so much depth and and and even different characters you play, it's ridiculous. Like if if you play I'm playing a dark urge the second time, and there's there's I'm not even gonna say much more about that, but it's a it's a pre-canned character that has a specific specific backstory, is what I'll say. That changes the way you play the game just enough where it's you're ha you're getting in some really weird shenanigans uh at different points in the game, and that's actually made the game a lot more fun too. But things just change based on the character you're playing and the people you have in the party, which there's a lot of replayability. So much replayability in the game, even if you've done it all, because the game just changes based on the way the direction you go with it and the order you do things. So I I'm it's it's been a long time. I don't even remember the last time a game hooked me this much. It probably was something like Skyrim or Fallout 3, maybe Fallout, and even those games didn't hook me like this one did. Other than maybe like your civilizations and things, but that's kind of a given, right? You should get hooked into those games. But this one for RPGs is it's just reeled me in. I I I haven't been able to get back to Cyberpunk, and I was just playing that just before this game shipped. And I haven't touched that since this game came out, and I want to get back to it because I wanted to play the expansion that just came out. And I got I I got Starfield, and I haven't even budied that up yet, and I want to try that out too. But I guess I I refuse to play it because I want to finish Balls Hate 3, so gosh knows when I'll actually finish it. But yeah, they this game is amazing.
SPEAKER_03See, side quests are always a problem for me because my completest nature always hits in and I remember playing After Night, which is meant to take place I think over a certain a single evening, and I'm pretty sure my playthrough, Batman's been out there for about 85 hours, just like going after, and they're like, you know, you can finish this. Nope, I need to go and get that last Riddler trophy because I want to know what happens when I get it. And that's always my problem with side quests. I just would lose myself in that, and I tell myself, no, you really don't need to go and do that.
SPEAKER_02But yeah, but you do. I I'm with you, I'm exactly the same. So I I'm I made relatively late to Bouldersgate 3. So what was happening was I'd decided that Phantom Liberty was the what I wanted, and Starfield and Boulders Gate 3 would wait, okay? And then they'd maybe cheaper and stuff like that, and there'd be a patch, so all those first you know, few months of crashes wouldn't happen or whatever. And then I got talking to my Monday night tabletop group. I I say tabletop, it's all over Discord, it's all virtual tabletop. And we talked about mentioned it, and basically we've decided to play that as a four-player multiplayer on a Monday night instead of running our normal RPG session. Okay, so we made the decision to pick origin characters each. So we've all picked an origin character, and we've started playing that, and and it's pretty good. It's one of the players is is still missing and Jones in for proper tabletop role play, and it's not gonna scratch the age for long for me, but I do have another game on Thursdays that's dealing with that. So that's really good fun. We haven't got we're still in Act One. As I said, we're not we're not you know, when you've got four people trying to do it, it takes longer. Everything takes longer. Where where are we gonna go? Well, I don't know. Well, you've wandered off that way, I've wandered off that way. Sandy, would you please come back here and stop running off into different places?
SPEAKER_03Well, you surprise me.
SPEAKER_02Well, so so the the the the problem is Sandy has played all the way up to Act Three. In fact, he may have even finished it. So he was the only one, and he's been very good, he's keeping very quiet on decisions, okay? So anything that comes up role-playing wise, he's keeping very quiet. But he is also, because he's playing Gale, the the wizard, but he's also out there every single minute and he's picking up everything, he's like a Hoover, he just wanders around everything that's on the map, boom, it's in our inventories. So I'm not complaining, it's very useful because I forget occasionally to look, but he's he's very good at it. So so we started playing that, and that was up until last week. I so I think I started one solo game as Shadow Heart, who's the character I was playing, and playing in the the four player, just to get to grips with the tutorial and things like that. Didn't really get very far with it. She's gonna she's gonna the angstiest name as well, so obviously you could the bizarre thing is we discussed it before it c before we knew much about it, and I'd already said that I was thinking about playing a cleric, so it kind of dove into that. But yeah, it didn't, I mean, it's me. They've all got angsty stories. You you're fine, they've all got angst stories. But last week, maybe ten days ago, I started a dark urge playthrough, like Steve's mentioned, because what I wanted was something that was radically different to what I would encounter in the in the single in the multiplayer. So, and the other thing I'm trying to do is make sure I don't go any further than we've done in the multiplayer as well, because I want to experience it first, and and you know, I know Chris has gone off and done stuff and he's found stuff, and I'm like, hmm, yeah. And I know Sandy's keeping quiet, but he knows what's happening. So it I want it to be new to me, so I'm kind of deliberately holding back that single player playthrough to only do the bits that we're doing in I'm doing them differently, believe me. But because the dark age will do things differently, as Steve has alluded to several times ago. Yeah, but yeah, so it's good fun, and it is it's massive, it's immense, you can talk to the animals, or kick them against a tree depending on who you're playing at the time. Um you can talk to the animals, you can you know raise the dead. The great thing about the speak with dead thing is if you were the people who killed them, they won't talk to you. You know, so so you can use disguise self to then talk to them and stuff like that. It's really it's mad some of the stuff you can do. And yeah, you can sneak into places and wander around and try and stealth your way through stuff or or you know bullshit your way through. I don't know. It's it's it it gives you a lot of options, more options than I've ever seen anything else.
SPEAKER_01It it is ridiculous, and it's the it's the first game in I don't know how long where I've spent lunchtime talking about a damn video game with my co-workers. I know we talk about all the shenanigans we've been getting up to, trying to avoid spoilers, but we spend the entire lunchtime talking about all the crap, and it's been going on for weeks. There's always something interesting or something silly someone's seen on TikTok or YouTube.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Because there's so much content of people pulling up crazy shenanigans in this game. It's I think I've learned so many ridiculously fun things to try in this game because of that a lot.
SPEAKER_02I think that the only thing I would say that's a downside of us playing the four-player multiplayer is the fact that we can't really swap out characters. So all of a sudden, because Karlak isn't one of our players, then we're not going to be progressing our storyline. Or, you know, what we will do Gales, we'll do Shadowhearts, we'll do uh Lasels, and we'll do uh Wills, but we won't do anybody else's. So that's a bit of a drawback. But so I'm kind of that's the other thing I'm doing with my other playthrough is the foot, you know, it's like, come on, let's go and progress your storyline a bit and see what's it because I know it won't happen in our Monday night set. But yeah.
SPEAKER_03One thing it's actually taught me is actually how to be better at DD, because I am terrible at remembering rules, and this is a very faithful adaption of obviously the fifth ed rule set.
SPEAKER_02There's a few things caught me out, and I do know the rules to fifth ed. There's a few things that have caught me out.
SPEAKER_03And therefore I'm like, oh, I can now aware that I can do this in DD rather than just wing it and go, Oh yeah, I cast Eldre's Blast, which is usually my contribution to any counter that we have.
SPEAKER_02Which means you're a warlock, and you accuse me of playing angsty characters.
SPEAKER_03No, he's not angsty, he's not an angsty warlock. How do you play a non-angsty warlock? I play a non-angsty warlock. He's it's not some horrible demon he's sold, he sold. No, he's he's he's he's very content with his choices in life. Wow. Um but yeah, I do my usual of taking tons of utility spells when I play D rather than loading up on various ways to smite people, which means I'm usually very ineffectual in a combat. Like, I go invisible, hurrah. But yeah, Baldur's Gate showed me the you can you do different things in DD. I was reading some interesting phenomena online that there's apparently some people get really upset because they f they find it difficult because they approach it the way they would a regular game of D D without realizing that there's not a nice GM making allowances for their bad decisions.
SPEAKER_02No budging of the roles, nothing it's but it's brutal. Yeah, yeah. It is brutal. Yeah. I had to I had to reload and the other thing I I've had a couple of glitches where I've set things up and you know been quite confident, and yes, I hit F5 before I ran what I thought, and I'm so glad I did, because it glitched and it was like this isn't working very well. So I've had a couple of those. Yeah, but yeah, it doesn't there's no quarter given. The the thing I noticed was that the I think the intelligence behind the monsters is actually relatively good. So there's a lot of them that will run and set off alarms to bring more monsters to the fight, more drums or whatever, or they'll run around and smash the caskets that are holding the other undead so that they get up and can attack you and things like that. So and uh yeah, they're not afraid to push you off high places. That that's not fun. It's a long way down sometimes.
SPEAKER_03I'm kind of disappointed in myself, and I've not got as invested in it as I think everyone else that I know. I mean I enjoy it when I play it. I've just not put the the time into it. I think when you don't put the time into it, it it doesn't draw you back as much as it would be if you've like dumped a whole ton of hours into it.
SPEAKER_02Well, I mean, you only got literally when we started this podcast, before we started this podcast, Steve and I both had Boulder's Gate running in the background. And that's because I thought, ah well, Ian's probably gonna be a few minutes late to the recording, which he was, and it was like I can just carry on playing until he's here, which you know. But he wasn't late enough.
SPEAKER_03I hope you died.
SPEAKER_02No, I didn't. Didn't actually get any literally it was I was sat there and I was about to play it, and Steve came online and it was like then we got talking. So good.
SPEAKER_03You you're ineffectual. That's that's a second best.
SPEAKER_02That's pretty much how my life works out. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03The one aspect of it that does annoy me a bit though is you mentioned with Sandy running around hoovering stuff up. The need to stop and pick stuff up is just drives me mad. It's like, oh look at another box, let's open it and take this random stuff in the hope that we can sell it and use it for something useful.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it's not as bad as something like Fallout for that, I don't think.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's like like every other computer RPG you've probably ever played, which is loading every single thing that you ever find, just more of it.
SPEAKER_03I know, and I that part aspect of computer RPG is always it's fine a bit tedious to run around and pick stuff.
SPEAKER_02And yet, No Man's Sky, you told me how you like the logistics and the the inventory uh that's different.
SPEAKER_03That's getting into that experience format.
SPEAKER_01That's different because mining for mining for resources is so much more exciting than load in boxes, gotcha.
SPEAKER_03That's Minecraft in space, and you're actually making that social contract that that is what you're going to do as part of that game is run around and collect stuff. Whereas this is not, is I want to go on cool adventures, DDs, do cool stuff.
SPEAKER_02You invade some somebody's home, you kill them, and you take their stuff. That's the rules, right? Kick in the door, loot the room.
SPEAKER_03Well, there's a whole school of thought that says you shouldn't be doing that.
SPEAKER_02I don't, and Baldur's Gate will punish you if you try. So no, it's it's a hell of a game. I was I'm it it's exactly like you said, Steve. Everything else is on the back burner. I'm not playing anything else at the moment. I desperately want Phantom Liberty for Cyberpunk. I'm less concerned about uh Starfield, it was up there, I really wanted it, but I've heard middling kind of things and reviews about it.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah, I've heard that as well. There's it it's almost it feels like a game with zero consequences from things I've read that you go and do stuff and someone tells you to do XYZ, and if you don't do it, there's no consequence for not doing it.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I've also heard the NTPC interactions are a little bit weak, a bit flat, and you know, whereas they're not in Boulder's Gate and they're not in Cyberpunk.
SPEAKER_03Well, Boulders Gate, yeah, is is is very different now.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and not in Cyberpunk either, which is you know, so I mean my one complaint with the base game of Cyberpunk is it there were a few choices that just didn't seem to do anything. You literally could take every choice in the same conversation, but that's improved, and apparently Phantom Liberty is supposed to be very, very good. And it's got you just helping it, and that's never a bad thing.
SPEAKER_03Stick headless in most things makes it better. It does. Even with Prethe Prometheus watchable.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_03That's fair. Yeah, it's fair.
SPEAKER_02I mean, there's no Alien 4, but Alien 4 was fine if it stopped 45 minutes before it actually did.
SPEAKER_03Oh geez, that film was You're getting off topic again. We are getting off topic again, so I'm I'm just shaking my head and and sighing at the how badly a franchise can be ruined.
SPEAKER_02But yeah, so I've heard it was called basically Starfield was based the best description was Skyrim in space, and I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. I really enjoyed Skyrim. I lost many hours to that, and I'm surprised we haven't already mentioned it already, Skyrim, so or any of the Elder Scrolls games.
SPEAKER_03Hmm. Yeah, I played an Elder Scrolls game years ago in my PC, literally about 2000, and again that's first person wander around real-time affair, and that was actually a lot of fun. But it had uh an element where you you almost like invented your own class. I had some fun putting stuff in stats, and then of course you look up stuff online, and there's people there like, let me tell you how to minimize everything, and you realize you're just really, really bad at this, you have no idea what you're doing, because there's some guy in Arkansas that's put together the the nuke class.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I mean I spent hours doing all kinds of crafting on it and you know, did this resetting all the perks and levels and and and respecing and different so I played Skyrim to absolute death, all on an Xbox One, which is weird for me. I don't do consoles generally, but
SPEAKER_03I think you don't, yeah, yeah. You had an Xbox.
SPEAKER_02Oh yeah, so I bought a 360. Um my girlfriend at the time was very much into Fable, which again we've not mentioned. Fable, fantastic role-playing game. So and what Fable 3, and that was on the 360, and then then it was Assassin's Creed Unity, that's uh necessary in Xbox One, and the rest of the day is history. I've not got a console anymore, it's all PC now.
SPEAKER_03With your ridiculously expensive graphics card.
SPEAKER_02Not anymore. It's old hat now, it's like two years old now. But yeah, what do you think?
SPEAKER_03But it like cost the same as a house when you bought it back two years ago.
SPEAKER_02No, not quite. Not quite.
SPEAKER_03It's not a little independent power plant to run.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it does take up a chunk of power, yeah. Absolutely. But it runs Boulder's Gate very nicely, thank you very much.
SPEAKER_01I was gonna say for obviously for the Bethesda games. I mean, we didn't we haven't even talked about like Wasteland versus Fallout. Like this is the kind of podcast where we could we could obviously go all over the place as far as topics. There's a this there's there's certainly a lot of juice to squeeze out of it. We never regularly do that. Come on. Never, never. Skyrim is Skyrim, and that's the f I'd say it's probably the first one of those games that I really spent serious amounts of time in at. I never could really get into Oblivion or Daggerfall. I don't know what it was about those games. I just n never really got hooked into them, but like Skyrim, I spent an obscene amount of time in that game. Like there if you talk about different subgenres of RPGs and you talk about kind of like the immersive I'm gonna, you know, make a home and collect all the things and and and roleplay with in a single-player game, that whole subgenre game is ridiculous for that. Ridiculous. You see so many you hear so many stories about it's not just about the the main plot line, it's literally about the site, it's not doing the side quest, it's literally I'm making a home and I've had kids and doing this stuff, and people are just immersing themselves living in in games like Skyrim or Fallout 4. It's I I don't know how many games there are that like that. It's it's a subgenre that is just there, and I and I've seen the same thing about Starfield as well, and that's not really my jam. I want to play the story, right? You know, I I kind of like that. I like I like the main storyline. I'm not as big of a fan of the side quest, though I've spent hundreds of hours doing the side quest and Skyrim 2 to and Fallout 4, to be fair, from a completionist perspective. The main story is really where it seems like the most effort goes into the main story, and that's where the the hook really is for me in those games. So that's what I'm gonna do when I play Starfield. Is I'm not like I I I don't really like if I wanted to play No Man's Sky, I go play No Man's Sky, right? I don't really care about the procedurally generated stuff because I'm pretty sure other games have probably done it better. I just want to play this the Skyrim in space storyline just to say that I've done it for Starfield, and that'll probably be my length of my experience with it. Because I want to see what they've done with the engine and see how far it goes.
SPEAKER_03But I'm gonna play this conversation back to you when you've spent 180 hours doing every side quest that is.
SPEAKER_01That implies that I'll finish Baldur's Gate 3 by then.
SPEAKER_02That's a that's that's a big maybe next year sometime, maybe the year after.
SPEAKER_01Maybe next year, my after my fourth playthrough of Baldur's Gate 3, we'll we'll talk. But uh but yeah, no, I mean I I love Fallout 3's probably uh my favorite in a lot of ways. Fallout New Vegas. There's a game we haven't talked about. New Vegas. Like if you want to talk about CRPGs of like with an interesting story, how New Vegas out Fallout, Fallout 3, and it wasn't even by BGS, it was by Obsidian who made it? Obsidian Obsidian, I think Yeah. And how they basically got subcont subcontracted to make, you know, a side story line. And that game's actually probably one of the best in the series. People still talk amazing things about that. If you've never played New Vegas, you should.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And I never played it for years. I never played it for years because I was like, oh New Vegas, meh. And then I played it, I'm like, holy crap, how did I miss this when it came out? This is so damn good.
SPEAKER_02Yep. That gives a role-to-save gold award, I feel. Must play. We have one of those. We should do those. We should do we should do awards, you know?
SPEAKER_03Okay, let's just do that. We'll do an awards. We'll do an awards episode. This is not that we're absolutely busking the podcast on the fly here or anything, but yeah, awards show, we'll do that. Is Fallout 4? Was that the one that had an absolutely disastrous launch?
SPEAKER_02I think all launches pale into insignificance compared to cyberpunks.
SPEAKER_03So I think compared to No Man's Sky, No Man's Sky the worst launch on.
SPEAKER_02But it wasn't really a launch, was it? It was all uh the Access Beta stuff, wasn't it?
SPEAKER_03No, it was it, it was a lot. He promised all this stuff and didn't deliver. Well, they're a wonderful example of not having a marketing department and getting your technical people to do your publicity and having the world's press in front of them asking them awkward questions, and then going, yeah, it should be able to do that. And then people going, it can do that, and then it launches, and people are like, What is this nonsense?
SPEAKER_01F4 did not have a disastrous launch, as I recollect. Was it as like it had a lot of hype, but it there was a lot of unreasonable and unattainable hype and expectation around that game that might be what New Vegas and Fallout 3 that it was never gonna attain. It was still a solid game, as I recall. And I mean it was your typical classic, you know, Bethesda game. There's gonna be bugs in an open world game. It is what it is. It's gonna be modded like crazy from the get-go. It is what it is, and it never it was still a solid game. I really enjoyed it. I played played a ton of it. A ton of it. And it is a good game, but it's not their best game. And that's just the reality, is people had built so much expectation waiting for the sequel for so long that in their heads nothing was gonna nothing was gonna achieve people, the fans' expectations of the game.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. One thing that's always surprised me is there's never been a good Warhammer tabletop, or sorry, computer RPG. Because there's been a ton of war games, because that's obviously what they do. But when you consider like the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay universe, which or even the Warhammer 40k universe, it is so rich in lore and background that that would be the perfect setting for a computer RPG. But there's nothing.
SPEAKER_01But there's one coming out soon. There's one coming out soon. The Rogue Creator one is meant to be really good. There we go, you peaked his interest there.
SPEAKER_02I was about to say there's one.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I I I'm gonna have to Google what the title of it is now, but it's it's sort of in the vein of uh I'm trying to remember what what it's in the vein of. I think it's I think it's an isometric that they're going for. But I'll have to take a look.
SPEAKER_03I'm gonna and Steve has gonna have to do some research. Yeah. Our field correspondent is gonna have to consult with his contacts, whoever's developing this, depending on what comes first. Uh yeah, I've always loved to have seen a Warhammer Fantasy roleplay proper RPG, but everything's always been like turn-based, so it's been Total War or stuff like that.
SPEAKER_02Which are great. But yeah, but not RPGs, right?
SPEAKER_01It's by Alcat Games, it's by the guys who've done Pathfinder Kingmaker. Oh.
SPEAKER_02And which we another RPG we haven't mentioned.
SPEAKER_01Yes, we haven't talked about Pathfinder, and like like we haven't talked about the renaissance of like those of those style of like 3D isometric games and how there's been several really, really good ones that have come out over the last five years. But this Warhammer 40k one, Rogue Trader, literally, I'm gonna link this link to you guys offline. Anyone's gonna go buy the collector's edition because it comes with a pretty amazing statue. Uh but yeah. It looks really good. It is not a statue, it is not a statue of Horus. It's a statue of it, looks like uh she I think it's a Rogue Trader character. Can you paint it? No, it's an actual statue.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it doesn't come unassembled and meet Bakari.
SPEAKER_03He's not interested. I want it to be grey plastic that I have to paint badly myself.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, they literally brand this as the first classic C RPG in the Warhammer 40,000 universe.
SPEAKER_02Just take shut up and take my money.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, that's why I'm like I'm I I'm genuinely excited about this one because I have the same I have the same gap that you that you just mentioned that I'm like, I really would like that because I love the war game, but I'm like, it would be amazing to get proper RPG in this game.
SPEAKER_03So you know that Mrs. Wilson's and I'm gonna add you to our hit list, Steve, for mentioning this.
SPEAKER_01I mean Mrs. Wilson can add me to our hit list if she really wants. You're gonna be thanking me.
SPEAKER_02It's not you you think it's a bad thing, but I think I've been on a hit list for a lot of years now and I'm still here. So, you know, if she's microdosing me poison, it's really low doses, right?
SPEAKER_03Well, that that's uh that that is a happy piece of news, Steve. Thank you for brighter.
SPEAKER_02See, this is what happens to do, yeah. It's like we prepared this for you.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, exactly. It's like the minutes of prep that you guys put into this. In fact, Steve went off and looked up while we were recording.
SPEAKER_01I want to make sure though, for for our listeners, our five listeners, that we're providing accurate information when we communicate it.
SPEAKER_03But we're letting them see behind the curtain of this well-oiled machine. Anyway, gents, we anything else we want to mention computer RPGs.
SPEAKER_02Loads loads. You haven't done Planescape Scape Torment? You haven't done any of the DDs.
SPEAKER_03Exactly. Planescape Torment was amazing. Right. That's actually one of the few ones I get really invested in.
SPEAKER_02There we go.
SPEAKER_03I absolutely love Planescape Torment. And in fact, it was our friend Phil that got me a dodgy parity copy of it.
SPEAKER_02I'm not sure you should admit that on podcast either, but okay.
SPEAKER_03Well it's Phil who gave it to me. I immediately threw it out and went out and bought the colour. Of course he did, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, being the fine upstanding member of society as well.
SPEAKER_03Not an animal. Absolutely. But no, play Planescape Torment was was good, and it actually had I think it was one of the first ones back then that felt like a proper RPG in that you were going up talking to people, they were giving you stuff to do, and it wasn't it wasn't as linear as a lot of them.
SPEAKER_02There was a lot more freedom to And the weird thing was when you died you didn't reload. You just woke up again because you couldn't die, and it was like that's a bit weird. Okay.
SPEAKER_03So the torment, yeah.
SPEAKER_02So that was that was great. I mean, the thing is we could go on for hours and hours and hours for this. There are so many computer RPGs out there. Yeah, we could be here a long time.
SPEAKER_03Oh, give us g give us another one then. Give us another one.
SPEAKER_02Like, I mean, we've mentioned Border's Gate 3, but we haven't mentioned Borderscape 1 or 2 and the various different incantations.
SPEAKER_03That's that's cheating.
SPEAKER_02Icewind Dale. I'm just doing the DD ones, right? So Icewind Dale as well. That was good. Exactly.
SPEAKER_01So yeah, we haven't even talked about Bioware, really. Like like we haven't talked about, you know, Dragon Age or Mass Effect, right?
SPEAKER_04I was gonna say our classics.
SPEAKER_02Disappointing endings aside on certain ones, but never mind. Sure. Yeah, but yeah, Dragon Age. I I love Dragon Age, it's fantastic.
SPEAKER_03The Mass Effect was good.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that's your in-depth commentary, is it? That's it. There you go, readers. That's why that's listeners, that's why you tune in is to hear him say, Oh, that was good.
SPEAKER_03Exactly. That that was good. Look, as a British person, that's actually very high praise. It's like me going, yeah, it's not bad. It's not bad.
SPEAKER_02That's yeah.
SPEAKER_03I actually found out when I first moved to the States that if you say that's not bad, that actually crushes the hopes and dreams of your colleagues. There was a guy who presented some to me, an idea, and I was like, Yeah, it's not bad, and it looked like I kicked him his face. He was like, Oh, I'll go make some changes then. I'm like, no, no, I said it I said it was good. No, you said it wasn't bad. Cultural difference. I do, yeah. That's that's the high the high-depth commentary you get here on World to Save, it's good. It's good. What would your in-depth commentary be on it?
SPEAKER_02Which one?
SPEAKER_03Mass Effect. Because I said it's good. Yeah, see, suddenly stuck for one zombie. I don't know.
SPEAKER_02Go on, sorry, Steve.
SPEAKER_01Let's have a let's have a prompt on this, and we're running way over, but this is a good topic. What is your take on a voice versus non-voice protagonist in the game?
SPEAKER_02I don't know. I think I think I quite like non-voice. I don't know. I always find my imagination it feels slightly better than whatever's actually generated.
SPEAKER_01Because Mass Effect is one of those ones that has voice protagonists, and they're very well known for it, too.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, well, Cyberpunk has it as well, you know, voice protagonists.
SPEAKER_03So we talked about this before we we started recording. And in Baldur's Gate 3, there's one of the NPCs who is a vampire, and I killed him at the first opportunity I got because his voice kind of reminded me of someone I used to work with in real life who was really annoying, and I thought I cannot bear to have this clown around with me for a deal of Steve and like spend 300 hours playing this game and have him chirping with his annoying southeast accent so he gets staked to the straight away.
SPEAKER_01Or you just did what I do, which is leave him in camp, bring him out when you need him for his storyline, and otherwise he just doesn't he's just not there anymore.
SPEAKER_03Nah, you're indulging him. He needs to die. He's a regular in my party.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, but the thing is, I played a ro I have a I have a multi-class rogue as my current character, so I don't need him anymore, right? But I bring him out when I want to annoy and torment him, that's what I do. There's at least a couple of interesting opportunities to bring him out and annoy and torment the characters you don't like in this game, which is highly entertaining.
SPEAKER_03But but on the on the question on voice acting, I actually prefer that. Because it does actually get that sort of response in you, where I'm like, I really don't like that person, or I really do like that person. And I think that lends something to the game. If it's done well, there are some games with terrible voice acting, or where you can tell that it was originally in a language other than English and it's not been translated very well, and they come out with weird disjointed uh sentences that don't make much sense. But if it's good voice acting, absolutely love it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean, to be fair, like like companions and other characters with Indian voice, absolutely agree, right? Like, like in this day and age at least, good voice acting on those is amazing, but I think that the whole controversies, manufactured controversy, because I really don't personally think it's that big of a deal, is you can't immerse yourself if your character is speaking in a voice when you want to imagine them with your voice or whatever voice you think of them in your head. But now you've got this preconceived notion of the way that they speak, and then you know how it is with these games, it's always a very limited number of conversation. You talk Baldwin's Great 3, right? Your protagonist is not really voiced, they're not they don't speak in the dialogue, right? You you select the text of what you want them to say, and they don't say it. They maybe like have like grunts or battle cries or whatever, but then for the voice, but they don't really speak in the game, whereas in say like Mass Effect or you know at least one of the Fallout games, you have this fully voiced protagonist, and some people don't like that at all. In fact, it's ruined the game for them, and it's actually like it's an interesting topic. I was just curious if you if you guys had a strong opinion either way, because there's some people that just absolutely hate it.
SPEAKER_02It's not strong, but I think the the non-voiced is better for me. I'd prefer that.
SPEAKER_03No, I I prefer voice because I don't want my characters to have a Glaswegian accent. I can't take protagonists seriously to sound like they're from Glasgow unless they're hitmen or something like that. Like Max Payne, for example. Max Payne works brilliantly with a Glasgow accent accent there. None of our Glasgow accent, but with the accent that the voice actor gives it. That adds a lot to the sort of film noir feel of it. I can't imagine that in my voice. That doesn't sound good in my voice.
SPEAKER_02No, but you'd imagine but you don't necessarily imagine your own voice. I I get some people do, and that's what they want, but that Max Payne would not have the My Voice. He he would definitely be the gravelly voice over guy.
SPEAKER_03You know, he wouldn't be Geordie Max Payne would be brilliant. Boy I think that'd be terrible. Yeah, can you say your Geordie accent outside the city was a cruel monster?
SPEAKER_02I don't have a Geordie accent. I'm a stealth Geordie. I left the other day.
SPEAKER_03If you go up above the 44th parallel on the map, you turn into a Geordie.
SPEAKER_02If I try this, it's going to be seen as racist because people will know.
SPEAKER_03I was thinking Steve, Jason and I went to Scotland on holiday once.
SPEAKER_02Wasn't holiday? It was your stag dude, your second stag do.
SPEAKER_03No, we went in holiday once, so remember?
SPEAKER_02Oh well, well, up to yeah, Campbelltown.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Yeah. And driving there almost just into the thumbnail, and suddenly you've got Jimmy Nails sitting next to you in the car. It's not true. It's incredible. Anyway, go on. Give us your job. I haven't got one.
SPEAKER_02I'm not doing it. I'm not a performing monkey feeling. I'm not doing it. Go on bite a grove.
SPEAKER_03Do it for our listeners, Jason.
SPEAKER_01Do it for the listeners.
SPEAKER_02Do it for you. That's the problem. You better cut this out.
SPEAKER_01What kind of a GM are you if you can't do amazing voices?
SPEAKER_02I'm not Matt Mercer.
SPEAKER_03Okay. See Steve playing my game, but every one of my protagonists sounds like me. Well, yes. Strange that, right? Well look, the prince appears to have maybe been from Glasgow at some point. Oh look, Nosperato Privilege and he's from Glasgow.
SPEAKER_02I can't do voices. No, and I can't do a Geordi accent properly, so I'm not going to embarrass myself.
SPEAKER_03That's disappointing. Sorry, listeners. We try to fight and by the way, that's not been edited out. Your your failure will be on record for everyone to hear. So that's why Jason Jason doesn't like voiced protagonists.
SPEAKER_02I'm kind of expecting you at some point to point the point the crooked finger at the screen and say, you have failed me for the last time, and then I'll start joking.
SPEAKER_03I'm saving that. Saving that. Can you do a Geordie Darth Vader?
SPEAKER_02No. I can't do a non-Jordy Darth Vader.
SPEAKER_03It's a bit like you see the outtakes from Star Wars, or rather the scenes before they put in James L. Jones' voice. Commander, tear the ship apart. I want you to find these plans. Like, oh god.
SPEAKER_02And he says he can't do voices.
SPEAKER_03That's my vaguely West Country Darth Vader.
SPEAKER_02Oh, is he a pirate? I'm not sure. They're pretty similar.
SPEAKER_03It's the same thing with all pirates down there. You're a holster today. And I'm only saying that because they don't have electricity, so they can't listen.
SPEAKER_02One of our five listeners left.
SPEAKER_03It's Devon. I mean, come on. We actually went on holiday in Devon once, and I was really disappointed that nobody sounded like that until our last day there. We went into some like Tesco Express and there was a guy there who A had a straw hat on, B had nicks to no teeth, and C, when he spoke, it was just noise. I was like, this is fantastic. I cannot understand the word. He's like, if I was to draw a yokel, it would be this man working in Tesco. Anyway, on that note, before we go, um, is there anything you gents want to add about anything else? Anything you want to promote, anything you want to recommend?
SPEAKER_02Apart from Boulder's Gate 3.
SPEAKER_03Apart from Baldur's Gate 3, it's been quite clear that we're fans of Boulders Gate 3. That's my last one.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, me me too. I already already told you guys about the real trader. I've done my thing. I've shared shared my hey, you should check this game out when it comes out.
SPEAKER_03My recommendation is not going to be a game. It's going to be if you're painting, buy an airbrush. I bought an airbrush and it has changed my life. It's brutal. You had an airbrush. I did, it was crap. Oh yeah, you gave it to me. Thanks very much. I gave it to you, yeah. I was like, you can try and get this working. It was terrible. It was like cheap and cheerful one. This one was slightly more expensive, but it's a thing of beauty. Um if you if you want to paint Space Marines and make them look nice and smooth, it's wonderful. And then you can screw up, screw them up, try to do highlights on them, which is what I do. There's lovely finishing, that looks really good.
SPEAKER_02You got a little box to paint them in rather than like spraying paint all over the walls and tables and little books when you put them in.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_02Because otherwise you'll be on the hit list of Mrs. Wilson.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, although anything that happens in my painting room, she's fine with it. As far as she's concerned, this room, when I die, all of this stuff's just gonna be set on fire. This is the room full of stuff that she wishes wasn't in her house. Usually probably including me, to be honest. Anyway, thank you very much, gents, for your time. And I will see you both again on the next one.
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