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Sept. 7, 2023 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
43:22
5255 STEF AND IZZY: BALDUR'S GATE 3 REVIEW!

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Alright, so it's time for us to do a review of Baldur's Gate 3!
Yes, we're not done the game, we're like maybe a third to a half, nah, a third done.
So we're not, like, it's probably not many spoilers, but obviously there will be some if you're going to play, but not for like the later parts of the game.
So we tried, so two other games we've tried that are similar, Minecraft Dungeons and Diablo 4.
Yes, Diablo 4 is a good game.
Diablo 4 was a fun game.
I loved that game.
No, you didn't love the game.
I loved the story.
You didn't even love the story.
I loved Lilith.
There you go.
So Lilith was the demon.
Dude, the cutscenes were like so cool.
I mean, yeah, she was evil and all, but like, you know, she was cool.
She looked cool.
She had cool armor.
She had this very calm way of speaking, yet it had a certain sinister tone to it, just like me, in general.
I disagree with that one.
Good morning, child.
That's not even soft, that's just aggressive.
So yes, you enjoyed that funniest moment in the entire game.
So there was a cutscene between my character and her character.
This is Diablo, of course, in Lilith, right?
And I think I went, how do I bow?
How do I bow to Lilith?
Yes, excellent.
And the most tragic cutscene?
Oh my gosh, so the final cutscene in the game after the boss fight in Diablo at the very end, I thought, this is going to be such a cool cutscene, I love this game so much, this character's awesome, right?
It's the very end, and then it wasn't my character because it was my dad's character who was the main character this time.
He's super manly but he's got this goofy pink hair.
It's like neck length and it's like bright pink red and we both looked at it and we just started laughing which we shouldn't have but it was the goofiest color.
It was, yeah, it was like Woke Barbarian.
It was, it really was.
So that was pretty tragic, but it was fun, it was enjoyable, but not super strategic.
Like, there was like a couple of different attacks, and I guess you choose your power-ups and all of that.
Most of it was like dodging was the most strategy.
Yeah, a lot of dodging.
But I think the story was better than Baldur's Gate.
Baldur's Gate did not start off well.
In my humble opinion.
I didn't like the Nautilus ship or whatever it's called.
Yeah, so it starts off, you're in a mind flayer ship and it seemed, I like the medieval side, I like the woods, the dungeons and it was like weird science fiction space.
Start off with dragons though.
And we learned a new word.
What?
Sphincter.
Sphincter.
So the doors were sphincters, which is apparently your butt muscles.
So I wasn't a huge fan of journeying through the lower intestines of a mind flayer ship.
Well, okay, so I thought it was pretty interesting.
Lazale, or that's however you're supposed to say her name, the green kind of goblin-looking thing, I think they're like... The woman at the beginning?
The woman at the beginning.
So, we met up with her, right, and we ended up finding Shadowheart in the very beginning, in that actual ship, instead of when you most often meet her, which is after the ship.
So, we, um, we did a lot of stuff.
Lizelle was like, come on, we have to keep going, like, we're gonna die, and I'm like, but I want a new companion, she looks cool!
So, we, it was the, um, sorry.
We went through the door, we got everything that we needed to, we went back to the control panel, and I believe we had to roll a 3 or higher, and we rolled a 1 or a 2.
We've had some bad rolls.
And we didn't save her until later we met up with her and she was like, well, thanks for trying.
She's kind of annoying in my opinion, but...
She's kind of... yeah, she's annoying.
Can we touch on a little bit, this is not so much a review of the game as your emotional stability.
Can we touch on a tiny little bit your emotional roller coasters with regards to the NPCs?
I've never seen a more up-and-down relationship than your love-hate rotating chromatic rainbow of up-and-down with the NPCs.
There's a bit of that.
Okay, Shadowheart.
Okay, so we first met her in that thing.
I'm like, a new party member!
That's super cool!
Yeah!
She's not some green goblin-looking thing.
An actual human, or elf, whatever she is.
That's cool.
Why don't we save her?
And then we started talking to her and she was really annoying.
Now, what did you find annoying?
Her voice is really nasal.
It's like... But it's also the...
I don't know, it's just she's kind of... She was kind of hostile and standoffish, right?
She's kind of snarky and, yeah, standoffish.
She's very standoffish.
It's like, we're the only two people around, why don't we stick together?
And she's just like, no.
Well, maybe we'll stick together, but after I've got important things to do that don't involve you, buh-bye.
And we're not going to talk to you either.
And she's like, she won't tell us about anything really.
We have to roll really high charisma.
To get, like, really high on our charisma rolls to talk to her, basically.
Now, my dad, we both made this character, but I'm going to say you had a bit more influence.
And so, look, throughout, he has a lot of strengths in this world.
One of them is not character design.
One of them is not character design.
It's the opposite of character design.
Creating appealing characters.
Our charisma is what?
Our charisma is eight.
Eight.
So apparently we are medium handsome, but with massive roils of body odor.
The character's handsome, you could say, but he also kind of looks like a confused toddler with facial hair.
He has no expressions whatsoever.
Also, we made his eyes too light, so he just looks really dazed the whole time.
He really does.
And so, yeah, we have charisma challenges.
He looks feminine, I'll say.
He looks feminine.
All the men look feminine!
Well, okay, yeah, that's kind of true.
I was talking, and she's like, why do they all look so... Except for the goblins, where they all look manly!
Well, they look like stereotypical dwarven manly, like excessive beards and potbellies.
And the women, too!
Yeah, yeah.
So I was saying that to Izzy, like, why are the masculine characters so feminine?
And I was saying, well, you know, you've got to program 12, 14 hours a day for some of this stuff.
And the only people, the only men who want to sit at that desk tend to end up with nothing but estrogen running through their veins because they're not seeing any sunlight or movement.
Yeah.
So there's that.
It was very funny, at least.
So a couple of pluses and minuses.
So for me, the plus is the game is beautiful.
Yeah, maybe not on the facial expressions so much.
Yeah, they have not got facial expressions.
They all look like Botox actresses over 40.
They do, and even when there's like... We just had a scene where we have LaZale and Shadowheart both at the camp, something I want to touch on later again, but... You can touch on it now.
No, I'll do it later, but in the scene where Shadowheart was trying to kill LaZale, the movements are just so unrealistic.
LaZale's pinned down,
And she's, like, moving back and forth, like, side to side.
It's like, you can't do that.
You're supposed to be still.
Percentage of skin-tight leather costumes for males versus females.
What would you roughly say is our proportion here?
Oh my gosh, it's ridiculous.
They're all, like, shopping three sizes too small.
I wonder if I can get armor in a spray can and just sort of spray it over the women, because it's just like, dude, my armor doesn't breathe.
It just chokes.
Honestly.
And then the guys with their robes and like... Oh yeah, robes and all of this to cover up the punch.
Like four fur layers and helmets.
It's like, uh, so female warriors, I'm really going to need to take all your day's breath before I put you into the armor because there's no breathing afterwards, which I think is just kind of funny.
And no breathing room.
Anyways, what were you saying about... Okay, so you have a theory about when one... So we had the first female introduced to another female.
Okay, so, Liselle and Shadowheart have never liked each other, but...
We just got to the part where LaZale meets the Gith warriors and they end up in a fight.
Now, I know that there's a lot of different paths because earlier on we ended up going a bit in and then loading back because we'd made a mistake.
But, originally... The only time.
Totally.
The only time we've done that.
The first time we went through, we ended up rescuing Lazael at the beginning, after, like, from some Typhlings, but this time we didn't do that, so we're gonna just assume she got out by herself.
She ended up dying during that fight, and it took us two tries to get the fight, but it was a good fight, and let me tell you, I have a thing, we don't use any scrolls.
I don't know.
We save them.
I am a hoarder in games.
I'm not in real life.
We have stuff.
We have a chest.
We have a chest in Minecraft Dungeons from the very first level you refuse to open.
Or use.
You didn't draw anything legendary, did you?
It was in our base!
Oh my gosh.
You're a hoarder?
No, that's a European thing.
To prepare for winter.
But not in real life.
My room's empty in terms of stuff.
But in this game, look, it's a scroll.
We don't know when we're going to find another one.
We have to keep it.
Even if it means everybody dies, at least you die with the scroll.
Yes, and then they loot it, and oh my god, then they use it.
Oh, you see?
Whoa.
You see?
Trying to get you to use consumable items is really, really tough.
Even health potions I hate using.
I hate using health potions.
You hate using health potions?
I use them because otherwise we die.
Okay, for those of you who are out here who understand the game, I just want to engage with you a scenario.
So we are facing creatures who have huge amounts of hit points.
80, 90, no but even some of the other guys.
80, 90 hit points.
We've never had 90.
Now, 88.
One of them was 88.
One of them was 88 and I got it first try in three hits.
Can I just finish my, my, okay.
Now, you have some attacks like Firebolt.
We're good to go.
I don't use the fire, stop looking at me like that, I don't use the fire bolt against high hit point monsters or enemies because they have high hit points.
I use them, stop looking at me.
I'm just curious, I'd love to hear.
I've been told you already!
He doesn't accept my answer.
Look, I use the fire bolts against enemies that have lower health and are weaker because I don't want to waste high level, like, or sorry, I don't want to waste
Mana, or power-consuming attacks and spells, because we're playing a cleric, and we have another cleric on our team, and we have a wizard, we have way too many spellcasters, but I don't want to use those on the low-level monsters, like the high spells, because there's no point.
Because then we waste them, and I don't want to do rests every other turn, or every other battle, because then we're going to run out of supply packs, and I don't like to spend the gold, because I want to save it to get... And supply packs are consumable items!
I want to get...
Okay, bye!
When it's up against somebody with 80 hit points, I used Inflict Wounds and Guiding Bolt level 2 for both, and killed her in 2 hits!
You did have some very lucky rolls.
I didn't!
The biggest Inflict Wounds you have... I killed her in 2 hits!
Okay, we did get 51 damage once with Inflict Wounds, but I used it against somebody who had 42 health, and was casting, like, it could do like 3 hits per turn in the last fight we just had with the Gith Warriors.
They're powerful, and it was difficult because Lazael died in like 1 hit.
So, look... I'm just saying you could use...
His mouth is covered.
Get out.
Deplatform from your own studio.
What is it that you say sometimes?
Enough.
No, leave or what is it?
You can go now.
You can go now.
You are dismissed.
No, I use the high power weapons against high power enemies, not low power enemies because then it's a waste.
Alright, got it, got it.
Thank you!
So, pluses, it's really, really pretty.
I think the character design is really cool.
I think that the combat is really good.
Yeah.
Like, it's the most strategic game we've played, because you have so many spells, you have so many scrolls, potions, options, there's pushing.
Oh, I did one thing, so we were up against, it was me.
I'm going to be real smug here, because I like being smug.
It helps boost my ego.
So, you couldn't get the fight done, even when using scrolls, when I had specifically said don't.
Right, yeah, keep going to and away the mic, that's going to be fantastic.
Yes, it's going to be really helpful for everybody with headphones.
And then, you went outside,
So I did the fight, and I think I did Guiding Bolt twice, and then I shoved the person with like 70 hit points off a ledge and they died.
Did they die all the way down?
They took 44 points, right?
That was this fight.
I remember a couple days ago.
It's all I'm saying.
It boosts my ego.
I have to be smug.
So it's a really clever combat system.
I haven't played turn-based combat systems in forever.
I think it was like the original Neverwinter Nights that I played with your mom, like, I don't know, 20 years ago or something.
But it's really a good, clever, detailed, interesting combat system.
The NPC dialogue is some of the best written and well acted, for the most part.
It's really, really good.
They put a lot of effort.
Asterion.
Whoever voice acted him is hilarious.
Oh, Asterion.
Magnificent, would you say?
Hello!
Now, you had some concerns about Asterion from the very beginning.
So, we met him.
We didn't notice that he was smug, so I called him you.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, there's two characters who've been me so far.
Volo.
Volo.
One is the bad bard.
The bard.
He's like, ah, my good fellow.
And we're going to have lovely victuals and drinks together.
What, what?
Okay, so Asterion, he held us at night with a knife.
He held our throat to a knife.
I can't even talk.
You don't get what I'm trying to say.
And then we talked him out of murdering us.
So he's like, okay, that's cool.
And then we moved on, did a couple fights, and then we went to the camp at night and we woke up and he was trying to... Okay, hang on, hang on.
Like, let's just set the scene because I'm sure this has happened to a lot of people.
This has happened to everyone.
Like, you know you have a sleepover.
Oh yeah, those sleepovers.
You have a sleepover and you just wake up with someone's teeth on your neck.
Yeah, pretty much.
You know and you're like...
Should I say something?
He just wanted a bit of blood!
It feels like a Me Too moment.
We called HR, do you remember?
They had a meeting.
He's basically what he refers to as a vampire spawn, so like a half-vampire.
Anyways, he was trying to bite us, and the first run through kicked him out.
I was like, no.
Anyways, we died a couple of fights later because it was our character, Argoth, and Shadowheart.
We kind of needed a third person, we couldn't really find one, so we loaded back and we let him have just a drop of blood.
As you do.
As you do, yeah.
Yeah, good advice.
If anybody wants your blood, just hand it over.
It's an Aristotelian meme.
Not no blood, not all your blood, somewhere in the middle.
So, also, I found this funny.
I looked it up.
So, apparently, after him giving his whole speech of, like, I promise I won't take a drop more than I need.
I will absolutely stop at some point.
You can trust me, he was saying.
So, I looked it up, and apparently if we hadn't pushed him away, he would have killed us.
Yes, but I'm sure you'd have been happy to go defeat him.
I love the honesty that he has, but oh man, anyways.
Hang on, what was the, you had an interaction, I wasn't there, I think I was getting a coffee or something, but you had an interaction with the vampire guy?
Astarion.
Astarion, where he had the most shocked face.
Oh my gosh!
Do you remember?
Okay so I wouldn't give him a compliment because he's kind of rude sometimes you know like when he drank our blood but he was fishing for one because he was looking in a mirror and I went up to talk to him.
Oh he's a vampire so he can't see himself right?
Yeah yeah so he was saying uh
I made some joke about how he has wrinkles and he's like, well, vampires can't age.
No, I don't.
And then I went, there were like three options for a compliment and only one.
I didn't want to be rude, honestly.
I wanted to just leave, but I'm not giving him a compliment.
So I said, has your skin always been that saggy?
And genuinely, I have not seen the same look of horror on that character's face.
Yes.
His horror of drinking our blood was like nothing compared to the horror of his skin might be a little saggy forever.
I know, but it was funny.
I can't tell if he's just really vain and British or if he's gay, but either way, he's funny.
He is probably the best-written and best-acted NPC we've ever seen.
Oh, honestly, except for Lilith.
Nothing can top her.
Lilith was just cool, though.
This guy's more detailed.
She had horns, and the horns were cool.
Yeah, they were.
And she came down from like a net of flesh.
She had horns so big, I wanted to milk her.
Okay, so like cow horns?
Okay, look at that face.
It's a good thing we didn't see the video on that one.
Hey, that was the face that Astarian made when you said his skin was saggy.
Nice.
Nice.
Okay.
So, other upsides... Wait, no, no, but okay, let me... So, there's a... I actually, I saw a song on a music... I can't talk.
You can give the name of the band.
JT Music.
I listened to some of his songs and... Some?
Some.
Anyways, I saw the thumbnail.
He released one about Diablo and I didn't know what the game was about.
It wasn't my favorite of his.
It was a lot of rap, but...
I saw it and I'm like, I looked at the cover and I'm like, those are some big horns, how does she hold her head up?
And then we ended up, you got Diablo so we were playing it and the cutscene when she came down and we first saw who she was, I was like, I know!
Now, isn't that the song with the really deep singing guy?
No, that's Valhalla.
No, no, no.
That was another, I think it was a JT Music.
Oh, that's not JT Music.
Who's that?
That's a different one.
It's called Unholy Mother and it's a different song about Diablo.
Yeah, we sang that to Mom on Mother's Day, right?
No, we didn't.
It'd be funny if we did that one.
Yeah, it'd be hilarious.
Okay, enough.
Yeah, that's a different one, but I remember I heard that song.
It's called Unholy Mother.
It's a fan song about Diablo, and it was very... His voice went like below the sound wave.
Yeah, his voice just made me burp in the car shade.
Yeah.
So, other pluses?
What else have you got?
I think the gameplay is good, the lighting is fantastic.
I mean, I like the graphics and all of that, and I think it's very pretty.
Downside.
Is there anything else you wanted to say for upsides?
Upsides.
Oh, vivid.
Surprising plot twists.
Oh my gosh.
Should we say?
Yeah.
Okay, there's a plot twist coming up, but it's very good, very surprising.
We met a gypsy guy, right?
Oh, yeah, yeah.
We met a gypsy guy and he said he was a monster hunter.
And I thought, we have a vampire.
I hope he doesn't want to kill a starian.
And the next thing we're like, oh, what are you hunting for?
He's like, oh, vampires.
I'm looking for one named Starian.
That was very cool because that could have gone both ways.
I went full on.
I screamed.
I don't get to make as much trouble in the world, so at least these days, so at least what I can do is make trouble in the game.
That was honestly, I'd say the top betrayal was when you wanted to do that option.
Oh, come on, there's so many.
Can you really sort them that easily?
We saved at that point because I thought there was a good chance someone was going to get kicked.
Oh, and if you try and reach for the controller when Izzy thinks that anything negative might happen, she'll like kick defensive position.
No, so we ended up saying, at one point Astarion said something and I said, do whatever you want and he pulled out his sword.
So we loaded back because I didn't want, like, I didn't want Esterian dead.
And the other guys seemed nice, so I'm like, I don't, I don't want these guys dead.
So we loaded back and I'm like, Esterian, we're leaving.
But it was very funny.
Yeah.
And we met him again.
We met him again out of Auntie Ethel's house in the swamp.
Really bad, it was quite funny.
Now you also, I wanted to point out, since I've said this on the game, that you have a really good sense of people.
And even this NPC, so this Aunty Ethel.
Ooh, Poppet!
No, Petel!
Petel!
So, you had a bad sense of her from the beginning.
No, not the beginning, it was the moment when we saw her with the brothers.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
In my opinion, right?
It's the tone that you have to look for because there'll be more of like a confused tone if you're guilty and there'll be more of a how do I like not think how do I make them not think I'm guilty but if you're innocent of something then it'll probably be more like yeah well I'll be as honest as possible and be as sincere as possible so that they don't think so yeah but so they don't think it's me but it'll be very different motives behind it.
The fact that you thought through all this in such detail is in no way disturbing to me.
Okay, I played Among Us every day for like a year and a half with friends.
Whereas, of course, when I was growing up as a kid, my aunts were some of my favourite people, so I got pettled into evading trauma.
Yeah, that's when I took the controller out.
But she called me a flower!
It's like any woman who refers to me as Han or Sugar or Dumpling Head.
I don't know, something like that.
Those old ladies that you'll find at the breakfast houses, the old-fashioned old-day breakfasts, they're just the sweetest people ever.
They really are.
So yeah, I felt some of the fights... Oh, the game is really linear, it's like a train track.
So when you go off and try and do things on your own,
You die.
Well the quests just seem to get all kind of messed up.
So I'm a bit more open-worldy, like I just like to explore and pick up quests along the way.
I think this game is a little like, you have to do this, then you have to do that.
And it's also strangely restricted.
So it kind of reminds me of an Android game I played a bit called Blades, where you think you can explore the world, but everything's just kind of like narrow passages between trees you can't get through, canyons.
So it's very much like a set of train tracks.
You go along, you can't really explore much of the wilderness.
And I kind of like just roaming around and seeing things.
Yeah, yeah, me too.
But, yeah, I'm honestly there for the dialogue.
I think the stories are just hilarious.
Okay, so... No, no, some of the combat is good, too.
It's very interesting, right?
Yes, the combat, but mainly the dialogue, because I think it's very well voice acted.
Very good.
So, oh yeah, so, back to something earlier.
So, LaZale...
We didn't get her in our team earlier, but later on in the fight between her and some gith warriors, she ended up dying immediately.
But we used a scroll of revivify, which she didn't even thank us for because I don't think they expected that.
But then she immediately looked to size us up to kill.
Yeah.
But I thought that was quite funny.
Right now our members on our team are Argoth, which is a cleric, Shadowheart cleric, Gale, a wizard who just eats magic for some reason, addiction much, and then Astarion, who's a rogue.
I want to get rid of Shadowheart.
She's warmed up a lot, but only because we got really lucky charisma rolls.
But she's still kind of...
Cold you could say?
Well it's kind of funny that the character with the highest charisma is the one you like the least.
She has highest charisma?
Isn't that what we used her for?
Asterian has highest charisma.
Oh yes, of course she does.
We're good to go.
So, we didn't want to kick out someone just yet, because she said, oh yeah, well, she said, your party's full, if you want someone, kick out your weakest member, basically, if you want me there.
Why did you look at me at that moment?
Don't worry about it.
Okay, come on, Argoth dies in every single fight.
But Argoth has a glowing magic axe!
Which he could give to someone else!
LaZale would probably wield it better.
We're gonna give the axe to LaZale because she'll wield it.
She'll do better with it, probably.
Alright, no dissing the Argov.
That's the name of my original D&D character.
I know.
You see how we didn't name him Jenna, like my original D&D character?
I'm kidding.
Okay, so we told LaZale to go meet at the camp.
We go take a long rest because everybody was on like one hit point because we got shoved off a wall and took 44 damage when we already had 6.
And oh, sorry, by the by, all of the characters have been getting along relatively well so far.
Mostly.
Mostly, right?
Nobody's really been annoyed with each other.
Except for Hesterion who wanted to bite the other characters and I'm like, I said to him, I'm not having this conversation with you right now.
He's just thirsty.
Now, so you have a theory that the first time we have two females in the camp.
Yeah, so I noticed, we went back to the camp and immediately saw Lazale and Shadowheart fighting, just arguing with each other.
And I told them, why don't we sleep on it and in the morning your tempers will be better.
So they both left and then we wake up at night and Shadowheart is holding a knife to Liz Hale's throat.
And that's when I was saying the movement's not very realistic.
So again, if you have sleepovers... No.
Either the knife in your throat or the vampire fangs.
Or you have the knife, no I'm kidding.
So it was very interesting but I ended up, I got really lucky with like a role and I convinced, even with our crappy charisma honestly, but we got Shadowheart.
We promised to shower I think, yeah.
So that was enough.
Stop looking so girly.
No, you know how they have those heat ripples over the fire?
Yeah.
I think Argoth has those heat ripples out of his armpits, just like, whoa, dude.
He is wearing like four layers of fur in the summer.
Well, he needs to, to block the aforementioned body odor.
Okay, anyways.
But he uh, they ended up, Shadowheart was actually kind of nice for once, but she was like, you know, why don't we stop being mean to each other?
Even, you know, she was the one holding the knife, but she was, why don't we both stop being mean to each other so that we can, you know, focus our anger on enemies?
And uh,
They were kind of, she was kind of like, sure, and they both left.
So anyways, in the morning, we went to go talk to Liz Dale.
This is unrelated, but sorry, before we get to that, I'll just say, um, man, what was I going to say?
My brain just went poof.
Oh, yeah.
So the moment we have two girls in the camp for the first time, they start trying to kill each other.
I just find that kind of funny because I think that's pretty relatable to teenage girls.
I have no comment.
I defer to your expertise in this area.
But anyways, I went to talk to LaZale.
I think you were elsewhere at this time, but she was saying about how she'd been kind of like kicked out from her tribe and the option was reach out to comfort her.
I'm like, that's nice.
So I went to do that and she's, well, okay, she got mad at us and she said, if you ever pity me again, it won't just be my warriors I'm killing or something like that.
Nice.
It's like, bro, I was trying to give you a hug, calm down!
Oh, she won't calm down.
She's a little prickly on the comfort scale.
She's kind of cool, though.
She looks cool.
She's got, like, the cool... I don't know if they're paint or actual, like, skin coloration, because I don't really know much about the gith or whatever they're called.
Yeah, yeah.
But they're cool.
So, two other things.
Well, I guess three things.
So, one is that the one thing I don't like about the game is they say, oh, you've got to search, like, the goblin camp.
You've got to search the goblin camp to find this druid.
Yes.
Now the goblin camp, frankly, all looks the same.
Especially the underground area, right?
It kind of looks the same.
It's really tough to find stuff.
There was one area where apparently it was supposed to break through a wall.
It didn't even light up as something we could attack.
And, like, there's just some stuff where it's, like, really boring.
But Shadowheart said that the druid, Halzen, was going to escape.
She said he escaped.
She said, oh, he must have escaped.
No, but we were there first, right?
Oh, so you think he just escaped?
No, because we had that entire fight with the goblins, so all the guards were gone.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
We had an epic battle.
It took, like, four tries.
But it still says to us, though, go and search the goblin camp for this druid.
Yeah.
And I'm just saying, this little wandering around gets kind of boring.
Some of it's going to be, like, obviously it's a huge, like, game in terms of there's so many different paths, right?
But again, I think
We have to give them a little bit of like, it's going to be hard for them to have everything right in a game that complex.
I mean, if they worked on it for like 15 years, sure, but I mean, it hasn't been that bad.
Well, they can't because they have to, they can only design for the technology they expect to be around in five years.
That's what I mean, so.
Now, there's one other thing which to me is really unbalanced in the game mechanics.
I don't know if you remember this.
Actually, no, I've commented on it a couple of times.
So, when we get critical hits, when we get critical hits,
That's just right and fair, right?
But when the enemies or the monsters get critical hits in a row, it's unjust, unfair, and entirely against the laws of probability.
I've had to point this out a couple times.
Do I have a problem?
A slight problem.
When did you first notice it?
In our relationship.
Round one.
No, no, I think it's been in the past.
It probably had something, was it back to Monopoly?
Oh.
What's my view of randomized dice roll chance?
Okay, hold on.
This is a bit different than that.
I don't remember Monopoly because I was probably six or seven when we used to play that a lot.
How about Catan?
Catan's different because it's not even really that fair most of the time.
In the app we use, it's like, we're going to roll eight
Only eights for the first half of the game and maybe once at the end you can get a couple sixes.
So this is where I must have got it from.
It's your perception of the unfairness of... Oh thank goodness!
I feel the weight of responsibility coming off my arm!
Okay, everybody has noticed that, that we've talked to.
They're always like, yeah the roles are kind of weird in this app.
Okay.
So you agree with that then?
That the roles are weird?
So when we have... It's a skill based combat game.
Some people are going to get more critical hits than others.
In fact, I think it's very unfair when we get like four critical hits in a row or hit when we only have a 30% chance and like three disadvantages.
So I think that's unfair, but I don't think it's unfair for the monsters to hit.
So I think we're kind of opposite.
I have an issue with... You think it's too balanced for us?
I have an issue.
Yeah, I think it's a bit too balanced towards us, although I won't switch to a harder difficulty because that's just, you know, evil.
But he thinks it's too difficult, or he thinks it's too difficult towards us.
Well it's mostly because Argoth keeps dying and that randomly should never happen.
You need to stop narrowing him out from the other characters.
No, I realize that I have a kind of complicated relationship with luck.
Right, so I view things that go against me in a sort of randomized setting, right?
I view that as sort of cosmically unfair, and although I hide it almost perfectly, there's almost a mild annoyance about it, which I'm revealing to you for the very first time!
Let me just add one thing to that.
Don't break my finger.
I want to.
Okay, so we were in a fight in the goblin camp, or at least one of the many fights we've been in there, because, you know, we were nice for a bit.
Not, yeah.
They wanted us to kiss his foot.
His foot was ugly, we're not gonna do that.
Wait, are you saying you would have kissed his foot if it wasn't ugly?
No, probably not, but I mean he wasn't.
Probably.
Probably.
Okay.
His toenails were purple.
And he hadn't even been wearing slippers, he hadn't washed, there had been no mani-pedis in the entire dungeon.
He was drunk.
And ulcer.
Okay, go on.
You know, maybe to avoid the fight since there were 400 goblins in the camp, but they were gross, so no.
But look,
It's not good when the top screen of your TV is entirely horizontal with enemy portraits.
Anyway, go on.
Oh, it actually scrolled!
It did, yeah.
It started scrolling!
But okay, it was before that.
That's kind of what started the aggression, but later on... But it's okay, because we had a Firebolt.
I'm kidding, I'm kidding.
Anyways, it was a bit before that whole scene when we had a fight with some sort of bug, not bugbear, yeah bugbear I think, or big goblin.
Miniatures?
No, it was a red guy.
Okay.
In the camp and he had...
I don't know.
In one turn, as a starian, we shoved somebody, we took a health potion, and we shot an arrow which killed a guy as a critical hit.
In one turn.
And that's all right and fair and just.
We went up a ladder to the ceiling.
The ladder must have been like triple our walking distance in height.
But when the goblin climbs up a two-foot ladder and shoots us, dealing five damage.
Unfair!
You can't use ladders during turns!
Come on, that's unfair!
Well, first of all, let me just say this.
They're not ladders, they're portals, because they take no movement to climb a whole ladder, which should be slower than walking.
So this, I don't understand the ladder thing.
Not if you're just skilled.
Like in the last fight, there was a person at the top of the ladder, Argoth, because he's so fantastic.
He died twice.
But he died fantastically twice.
He literally fell over.
Argoth went up the ladder.
For poison damage.
And up the ladder.
Hit someone, climb back down the ladder, and walked away?
Oh, so good.
Can we point out that the axes climb ladders?
They can climb ladders, but they can't float upwards and diagonally?
That doesn't make any sense!
Right, right, right.
Okay, and the other one, uh, what was, oh yeah, so let me just go back to how Argoth died in that fight.
He had been hit with poison.
The poison effects, or the actual initial poison was like 12, but he took long-lasting poison damage.
So when he was at the top of the ladder, he died from two hit points of poison.
Yeah.
And then that other time when he died because he didn't jump quite right and stepped on a bit of warm ground.
Yes, he's a delicate thing.
He's been on fire from stepping on some ash.
Yes, he's a delicate thing.
He's very sensitive.
He breaks out in rashes quite a bit.
You're not helping his manliness!
He appears to be allergic to oxygen and wind.
Oh yeah, and that pollen killed him.
I think what happened was there was something bad on Astarion's teeth that one night, but the throat, that's my guess, is that he got spike-proteined or something.
Alright, so the last thing I wanted to mention, other than the injustice of the critical hits when they go against us, is...
So there was a fight, just so everyone understands.
Guys, he's giving you misinformation.
There was a fight.
What are you, YouTube?
So there was a fight wherein Izzy had tried conservatively 34, 35 times to beat, to win at the fight.
Sorry, I'm still, let me just finish my story.
Please, this is the goblin fight about kissing the guy's foot.
Now Izzy
Was in tears.
She was curled up, literally shaking.
And she's like, no, with her cold, trembling, sweaty hands, she hands me the controller.
Father, father, please save me.
I can't win this fight.
Father, rescue me.
I know I'm almost an adult, but I need your manly strength.
And so I took the controller.
Manly until that.
I took the controller and I was like, honey, daddy's got it.
And I think it was no more than three or four button pushes when the fight was concluded and all was saved and you returned back to the land of the sane and happy.
Exit.
Am I dismissed?
You can leave.
Okay, so this was the goblin fight when we had the screen full of people, or goblins,
And really only three people at this time.
Astarion, Shadowheart, and Argoth kept dying.
I had made it three quarters through the fight.
We got some really lucky critical hit rolls.
They missed a lot.
We were doing well.
So we decided to save because we're like, just in case things go haywire, we don't want to have to do that again.
Maybe the save button's a bit cheating, but that's okay.
So we saved for the last quarter of the fight.
There was one magic user that we just could not hit.
There was like a 12% chance of hitting from the angles we were at.
She was really high up.
We couldn't get it.
Now, by chance,
When he took the controller something about his actions he didn't go up a certain path because I said don't go up that way because when we go up that way she wakes up the blacked out drunk goblins at the top.
Oh yeah.
So he didn't go that way and by not going that way she ran away and the fight ended.
That's what happened!
Now, I just wanted to also point out, this, I'm not sure, you can probably just fast forward past that last bit, but the standard of completing a fight that somebody else is having trouble with, held as a gold, shining, adamantine, brilliant, perfect standard, until, until what?
Until when?
Was that today, or was it yesterday?
The standard that I complete your fights with great smugness, that you can't complete,
And then I was having trouble with a fight.
You went outside.
I did not rage quit in any way because that would seem to be immature.
And then I turned it back on.
I wanted to.
So then Izzy was, and I was like, oh, fine, go ahead, try the fight, see if I care.
Do you know why?
Why?
Because I didn't use Fireball because she had high points.
Fireball or Firebolt?
Whatever.
Yeah, yeah.
So, yeah, the standard of completing somebody else's fights held perfectly well until just the strange reversal of fortune where you completed a fight I couldn't do.
And it was the whole fight too I did, not even just a bit.
So, yeah.
So, a very good game, great writing, great dialogue, would highly recommend.
A lot of fun.
Try and do it in sequence.
Don't wander off the train tracks.
Don't do it in sequence.
Yeah, don't wander off.
When you get stuck, just walk around until you find a new quest.
That's what I did and it worked fine.
And remember that it's not an exploring game.
It's a bunch of train tracks through these canyons and these narrow pathways.
I think they couldn't do exploring in a game this, like, big.
I don't know.
And also, you know, just spare a thought for the developers who probably have not seen daylight in four years because the amount of code to make all of this.
Oh, yeah.
And also imagine just what it's like.
So having computers run this kind of stuff is one thing, like the distance, the climb.
Can you do this?
You know that there are dungeon masters out there with a little dental floss going around these areas.
Can it get that far?
Because there's all this.
And this was even back.
We never really did this stuff when I played D&D.
We did sort of rough things like you can't run a mile.
But there are people out there with their hex.
Hexagonal little graph papers and they're little figurines.
You go this far, you kind of... Except they probably do stairs in which way this game doesn't.
So that level of fussiness about rules, you could really go nuts.
Well, here's something funny.
So, this homeschooling group that I'm in, there's a co-op, I've mentioned this in other shows, once a week, right?
Now, I have one, it's not even a class really, but in one of the periods, there's four periods, one of them I just decide to, with some of my friends, we just take a gaming class, which is kind of like a free hour for socializing and stuff.
And in that class there's a table and they're playing, they're trying but failing playing D&D because it took them a whole hour last class and they didn't even get their character sheets done.
And the Dungeon Master is like begging them, he's like, guys please watch a video, I said please do this last week, how many of you watched a video?
Yeah.
But anyways, so, none of them watched the video, of course, except, I mean, the people who were already at that table knew how to play, they were doing fine, but there were, like, three new people, and it's like, y'all can't just jump into this.
But anyways, so, I turned to my friends and I'm like, hey, we were thinking of actually hosting a D&D party or campaign, like a one or two night thing at our house, would any of you guys be interested in that?
And there was, like, a long pause, and one guy's like, I'm gonna have to read the whole rulebook first, and I'm like...
That's not how we play.
I'm like, that's not how we play.
I learned when I was six, you don't have to worry about it.
He's like, oh, okay.
It was that absolute look of horror on his face when I suggested that because he thought he'd have to read the whole rule book.
Well, we started with dice and then we ended up with physical tests on like, how do you do things, right?
I remember at one point I was trying to duck behind a tree while characters were shooting barbed arrows at me at nighttime and so we turned off the lights
Through ping pong balls.
In the room you throw through ping pong balls and I had to go behind a chair as fast as I could and however many hit me, and then we do like a calculation for what the damage was, but however many hit me was how many dice we went.
It was hilarious.
And your saving throw was literally throwing something into a bucket.
Oh yeah, saving thread to throw it into a bucket.
A bouncy ball into a bucket and not have it bounce out.
There's also those funny ones where if I got ensnared or something, you'd literally just pick me up and I had to get out, which is really funny.
It was very fun.
Although I'm not sure how much I'd want to grapple your friends.
No, yeah, of course, but no, I mean, we may or may not do that when we have friends over for D&D.
Do you remember, well, you weren't there for this, but we had some friends over to play Catan, like, live.
Oh, yeah.
And we hadn't set up Catan in forever, and we did, oh man, it just takes forever.
You guys don't know how to set it up.
Oh, it's crazy.
No.
Alright, so, definitely a recommended game, great job on the developers, great job on the writers in particular, and the actors, it was just really, really good.
Alright, thanks everyone, have yourself a wonderful week.
Freedomain.com to help out the show, and we'll keep you posted on how things are going.
You gonna say bye?
No.
Okay.
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