00:00.00 Dave Hello everybody. My name is Dave Jackson and you're listening to tales from the backlog. This is a video games review podcast where normally I bring on a guest to bring a game out of the backlog, play it and discuss today we're not doing that. We've got a discussion interview type episode for you today. It's a really special one so back in 2022 I did an episode called Eldon Ring for the FromSoftware newbie where I chatted with a few people who had never been into from softwares games before about why that was the game of theirs that kind of broke out for them and. Since Balder's gate 3 released I've noticed a lot of the same sentiments about baldur's gate. 3 people saying I don't normally play crpgs but I've put one hundred and fifty hours into Balder's gate 3 and I brought on a crpg expert today to dig into why? ah. 00:56.80 Dave My guest today literally wrote for and edited the book on crpgs. The book is called the c rpg book and I like to welcome on the show Felipe Pepe welcome Felipe 01:07.42 Felipe hello hi Dave thank you for inviting me. 01:11.20 Dave Yeah, it's great to have you on the show. I've been following your writing on medium and your Twitter account for a long time just because you post such informative posts about obscure rpgs stuff that people might not know about. Ah, from uncommon countries will say and then of course commenting on the popular stuff too. So when I thought I wanted to talk about an rpg you were the perfect guest. So I'm really happy to have you here. 01:41.95 Felipe Oh thank you and I'm sorry for all the shit posting on my Twitter as well. Besides the informative stuff. 01:50.89 Dave Oh well, the information is good. Shit posting is always good. Yeah, um, so before we talk about the baldurs gate 3 specific stuff I want to talk a little bit about with you about your personal history with crpgs and about the crpg book project. 02:09.80 Dave This is not a sponsored episode. I downloaded the crpg book Pdf and then I bought the physical version of the book because I really loved reading it. The book is beautiful and I wanted to um, talk to you a little bit about your personal history and about that massive massive. 02:28.16 Dave Project. So first of all, why don't you just tell me a little bit about how you got into gaming and why crpgs are the thing that you've dedicated so much time to. 02:38.34 Felipe Um, okay so this goes ah way back. But I'm brazilian and I first began gaming on an Amiga computer which is something extremely rare in Brazil because they were banning the country because of the military dictatorship. 02:58.10 Felipe We have a thing like in the 80's where they were like okay, we only want to use our own technology anything from outside is going to be then so you couldn't have ah foreign computers in the country but my my father like brought one anyway and we had a few games. Ah. 03:16.00 Felipe And I remember playing those games and that's how I got into gaming so you always came from the side of computers which is something very rare in Brazil. Usually we all grew up playing like consoles. Even if it was like the bootleg ones we always grew up with consoles but I love computer games and I remember. The first um rpg that I played was betray you at Kronor which is like a really traditional crpg from 9092 I think but it had a little problem that is everything was in english and I didn't speak english which is really difficult when you have a game that is fully like. 03:40.33 Dave Ah ha. 03:49.48 Dave Oh yeah, ah. 03:55.32 Felipe Narrative focus and he had things like word puzzles and stuff like this which were like impossible for me to play so I was fascinated by this game is very especially as a child is a very like exciting idea because you have like it was already kind of like open world and first person they had like 3 D Graphics you had these people in costumes with like animated fmv scenes. It was like a very whimsical kind of game but I couldn't play it. I could only watch my father play and so then I went to the other pc games like okay it was the early ninety so you start playing like a doom. Ah. So off inside 3 d you start playing like you know, warcraft 2 and all those kinds of civilization and my friends they had the console so we would then play like some but of fire some chrono trigger which was all amazing but at the same time we were having a huge boon of ah tabletop. 04:54.82 Felipe Rpgs at the time. So let's say when I was like 10 years old I love guru I was like super excited playing this kind of game the d and d second edition vampire and then I remember like very clearly reading a game magazine and he had an article about fallout 1 04:55.66 Dave Um, yeah. 05:13.97 Felipe And he said, "Oh, this game is completely different from any other like Rpg like breath of fire or like Chrono Trigger because the character you create and the choices that you make will change the narrative and the example that they gave is that if you had a very smart Character. You could talk to the farmer and teach him about crop rotation. And that will like improve the life of people in the village and give you like a reward and it's just like just talking but based on the choices and the character that you made and for me there was like completely mind blowing you know like it's something from tabletop gaming that I had never seen in an Rpg before. 05:41.30 Dave Right. 05:51.45 Felipe Not something that you have in Chrono Trigger or a breath of fire and so I went and bought their game and it was simply like mind blowing to these days is one of like top 5 games of my life all out one and not only I got to experience it and get all those different iterations. But then I have a younger brother. 06:11.37 Felipe And he was also playing it but because he's younger he didn't know English at the time I was already like more or less. Okay, so I could understand the quest of like oh like fallout this kind of a simple game like tax wise is not I like would have been possible for me to play thisque easier at the time but fallout was okay. 06:28.33 Dave Ah, yeah, ah. 06:31.11 Felipe And my brother couldn't understand English so he played the entire game just killing every single character in the game and for me, it was amazing that not only he could do that but the game would like to reply to this so he like he had the karma like oh you're the child Killer. You're like vilified in every single City. You know. And he got a different ending because of this when he saved the Vault. He's the you know spoiler for an almost 25 year old game. But if you have bad karma when you save the vault at the end and the vault to alert the devout overseer, tell you that you cannot stay in the vault anymore if you. 07:08.99 Felipe Karma you shoot him. That's like the last scene of the game like if you're like a good karma person you say go and you just leave and you're like wander through that waste If you're bad, you shoot him and I I saw this I was like this is insane. 07:20.71 Dave Um, ah yeah. 07:23.20 Felipe My brother simply played the game killing everyone and the game replies to this and has a different ending. So from that moment I was completely hooked on rpgs I was like okay I wonder which other games do this. 07:26.33 Dave Um, yeah, yeah, yeah, you Wow that is starting gaming like in the deep end really like so how old were you when you played. Those are the first ones that you talked about. 07:44.80 Felipe So fallout one, I was about twelve years old more or less but the other is one that was like let's say 6 eight years old more or less like still very young. That's why I couldn't understand anything. It was just like. 07:49.78 Dave Um, okay yeah. 07:58.22 Dave Right. 08:00.74 Felipe Really cool. Well, The guys in costumes, talk to you like oh what are they saying? It's like. 08:05.12 Dave Yeah, it's interesting like I think that's pretty at least for my experience and my friends growing up playing games. You know everyone got started playing Mario or fighting games or like I had. Like the power rangers so I had the power rangers game on the game gear and stuff like that and then ah like the probably the most complicated game I played in like my early childhood you know was like ocarina of time or something like that. But what you're talking about is like fallout. Leagues are more complicated than something like that. So yeah, you were shaped and molded at an early age. 08:45.74 Felipe Now I was a huge nerd like the other game that I loved at this age was civilization too and I was such a nerd that I don't know if you ever owned the actual game but he came with a huge fake manual that explains like all the civilizations and everything and I use that. 09:04.72 Felipe To write a report at school because he was like okay, what is a monarchy and he had like 2 pages explaining monarchy for some reason and I was like okay I'm going to use this Civilization 2 manual to write an essay for school I mean. 09:12.32 Dave There you go? Yeah, probably more entertaining for you than your ah your textbook for sure. Yeah, yeah I can go to the library or. 09:19.16 Felipe Yeah, and we didn't have the internet So it's like Okay, what do I have here. 09:26.74 Dave Just look at the game manual that I already have yeah ah, cool like so I had ah not really expected you to get in that early to see rpgs like for me personally my my first. 09:29.90 Felipe Um, yeah, much nicer. 09:43.27 Dave C rpg I suppose would be marawind when it was on the Xbox and that was I was probably 17 when I played that for the first time and that dominated my life for like 2 years. It was just go to school, go to work, play Morrowind that's basically all I did and then. I kind of followed, I think marawin introduced a lot of people to console crpgs like kotor and mass effect and stuff like that and then I've recently in the last like five years gotten really big back into the genre because of disco elysium. Mostly that was the first one that really got me back in and then the divinity original sin series and then I've actually gone back and played some of the older classics like planescape torment, fallout 1 and 2 and stuff like that are recent but you've been in it the whole time. That's awesome. 10:36.56 Felipe Um, yeah is also a bit sad in a way because we had a very really bad time. Um, because like that time that you said was amazing like to morrowind then you have neverwinter nights arcanum, all about like the early 2 thousands but then like from I say the. 10:37.82 Dave Ah. 10:54.69 Felipe Mid the late two thousands to until you have I don't know the thousand twelve two thousand fifteen when they say like the rpg renaissance also like with divinity in this kind of game we had so few games to play like if you were like a hardcore like pc game but it was a very bad times to be like yeah. 11:08.38 Dave Right. 11:14.66 Felipe Very few options, it was a rough time. 11:15.54 Dave Yeah, that's part of why Baldur's gate 3’s success is really surprising to me like not surprising because it's not a ah great. Wonderful game. It was my favorite game from 2023 but like you said like people weren't really making these games like. 11:34.80 Dave Like ten years ago people had to do kickstarters to make these if your name wasn't bioware. You had to make a kickstarter to make a game like this. 11:42.31 Felipe Um, yeah, it was like ah we I was already like at this time like online in forums talking about rpgs and it was like you had by w I the test that that's it all the rest was like oh let's say ah Palia bytes made a reason one and. 11:51.26 Dave Um, yeah. 12:01.27 Felipe No one in the west cared about it like it was like the only people like in Germany and Poland were playing it. You know it is the kind of thing no one would pay attention. So yeah for me, it's also really amazing personally I think like as someone who studied and did like. 12:19.77 Felipe Ah, this historical analysis of how the genre progresses I think the last few years are simply the best years in history for rpgs. I know some people will get angry when I say this because they prefer the early 90 s or the late thousands. But I think we never had so much variety because like. 12:37.70 Dave Yeah. 12:39.55 Felipe In late in the let's say when you have like ninety Ninety Nine Two thousand you had some fantastic games probably like the biggest amount of classics in just 3 years that we have but the amount of variety and like options that you can choose like if you want a tactic rpg you have a thought crpg if you want an immersive scene and you have one a roguelike like. 12:47.34 Dave Yeah. 12:59.51 Felipe Every single genre, every single type of game. You can find something very good now. So I think this is really unique. 13:04.52 Dave yeah yeah I mean I I always kind of have the sentiment that every year is the new best year to love video games because you can play all the stuff from the past but like you said there's so much variety of new stuff coming out that. Even if it's your job to play video games. You're still not going to be able to play all of the good stuff that comes out and game making tools are so much more accessible now that anyone who you know is able to and has the drive to can kind of make the type of game that they want or like. Take 2 or 3 things that they like from other games and mash them together and make their own thing. Um and you know crpgs especially are pretty complex but people are making it work and it's really cool to see. 13:53.14 Felipe Um, yeah for me, it's crazy that some of my favorite games from last year were made by like the classic crpg made by 1 person like crazy that this can be made and also the second thing that I think really helps is that we don't have that many. 13:59.32 Dave Yeah. 14:10.89 Felipe To say um language barriers anymore because now even if you want to play like a Chinese Rpg is probably going to be on steam in English Are you going to be on steam in Chinese but then you get a language patch or something like this. So this is something that was simply unimaginable like. 14:19.35 Dave M. yeah, right. 14:29.35 Felipe Before no one in like 9095 was like oh there's a revolution in crpgs going on in China. Have you played like no, you didn't even know anyone who went to China or spoke Chinese so it's really much more connected, much more diverse and interesting. 14:41.81 Dave Right. 14:48.94 Dave Yeah, absolutely yeah, it's especially great for people whose first language is not English. I mean I'm in a lucky position where like you know unless I want to dig into Chinese games or obscure Japanese games or something like that like everything's made for me most of the time. 14:49.90 Felipe World of like video games. 15:07.20 Dave So it's great that you know localization people can make you know a translation patch if they want even for old games that were never localized. That stuff is awesome. So um I have a couple of questions here from a community member. Boy. Ah, who had some questions for you. Um pie boy wants to know since crpgs have been around for a long time and changed quite a bit during that time and kind of, you know, branched out into many different subtypes, etc. Um. Asking if you have a favorite era or particular style of crpg like pie boy mentions the classic ultimate adventure style or blobbers or infinity engine or even modern stuff or first person. Lots of diverse stuff to pick from. 15:56.83 Felipe Well that's a good question. I Really like it's a very niche thing but there is a style of game that I think is my favorite and is various. I'm very sad because very few developers make this kind of game. It's not a popular style. 16:15.42 Felipe But I really love when you have first person exploration like a blobber but not graded so not something like I like games like um wizardry and like a legend of green rock I think they're fantastic, but when they began doing exactly that but without being locked in a grid. So some examples. 16:19.49 Dave Ah. 16:34.68 Felipe Ah, wizardry 8, Might and magic series six seven and eight and I think one of my personal favorites is ah wizards and warriors which is all all this is from like ah a certain era. Let's say from about Ninety ninety seven to 2001 one is 16:43.11 Dave M. 16:53.93 Felipe Like they were just getting good enough to do 3d that they were exploring with this and trying different things but not good enough with 3 d to do something like never enterprise because that was I say like the big shift for an rpgs the moment they did neverize everyone was like okay third person camera. Same for like ah yeah, nevertheless and modeling as well when they dolocate we can do three D Worlds we don't have to do them in first person anymore that style and like modeling fits on that too. But I like when they are a bit more like modeling is one of my favorite games of all time. 17:32.23 Felipe But I like when they are more focused on exploration and puzzles. I think this is one of my favorite things. That's why I like wizard and Warriors so much because this is a game entirely focused on exploring dungeons and finding the little secrets that are everywhere because you're very clever and exploring and there's a big focus on combat. 17:52.50 Felipe I think the last classic that they did in this title was something like arx fatalis which I'm very sad about because that 1 game. Ah, ah that no one talks about from where it was or their name for the name of the company. 18:10.40 Felipe Is the same guys that they did. Um oh my God I forgot their names the arx fatalis people. They did all those yeah arcane So arcane did all these classics that everyone likes. 18:16.30 Dave Oh is it is it Arkane yeah. 18:25.33 Felipe People Love to praise The oh my God i' I'm terrible. We named the one that you pay an Assassin to jump on cities. There's one yeah dishonored people talk all the time about Dishonored, they talk about prey but no one talks about arx fatalis which I think personally I think is the best one that they did. 18:31.34 Dave Dishonored. Yeah. 18:40.23 Dave Ah, you know I was so disappointed by RedFall that I bought Arx Fatalis on Steam. So if I play that I know who I'm going to hit up to do an episode of the podcast about it. Um, yeah I'm a huge fan of ArKane. But. Like most people I started with, Dishonored played Prey Deathloop you know other basically everything they've done since Dishonored. But I think I should go back in time. That's ah it's a good recommendation. 19:11.96 Felipe Yeah, it is a really interesting rpg. It feels like a clash between generations because someone is trying to bring the ultima one and 2 ultima underworld one and 2 into the Xbox and is so interesting like there's so much that you can do. There's so many. 19:29.11 Felipe Or I like a mix of immersive sim and dungeon exploration. I Really like it is a very unique type of game. 19:34.88 Dave Awesome! Yeah, okay, gonna push that up the backlog for sure. Um, another question from pie boy here kind of related to the first question is since you now know that you grew up playing. Um well, we'll say early in air quotes early. Crpgs and you've obviously done a bunch of research about them for the book project. Do you still really enjoy playing those old ones? Would you boot up Ultima 1 for an afternoon just for fun or or is it more of a historical interest at this point. 20:12.21 Felipe Um I think some of them really depends. So like I'm not a very big ultima fan like for me, the ultima series became really interesting in ultima underworld what they did like from 1 to even 7 I'm not a big fan of those games. 20:21.29 Dave Okay. 20:28.57 Felipe But I am a huge wizardry fan like exploring dungeons so wizardry one is still a game that I play that I find extremely enjoyable dungeon master I think even yeah, like going back to the 80's I think ultimate dungeon master pools of radiance is kind of like a bit like stretching. Ah, bit. But I still find those games like very enjoyable, especially when I'm finding them from places that I didn't know before so when I was we were talking like before the show began when we I was exploring more like chinese and korean games finding chinese games from like the 90's for move was amazing. 21:07.72 Felipe Because it's the same ideas being explored like in a completely different cultural context and even like those games like okay they have a lot of issues but issues like Ui and stuff like this that don't really bother me much what I really dislike in old games and that goes even to ah jrpgs. 21:11.10 Dave Yeah. 21:19.70 Dave Mean. Yeah. 21:26.71 Felipe It is grinding and that's something that bothers me way more than saying a bad ui or having to emulate the Apple 2 and play a game from 82 that doesn't bother me. It's kind of funny because there is this moment in the dawn of rpgs like the very early. 21:34.13 Dave Yeah. 21:45.44 Felipe First half of the 80's that the games are extremely experimental and they don't have a lot of grinding so you can beat like the say Ultima 1 you can beat the game in 2 hours so ah even if they like let's say they are more like as a historical artifact. 22:04.17 Felipe They are so interesting to experience and they are so short that I think it's a very good experience. The whole package is fun. If it lasted 20 hours I would probably not play it. But as a short like historical and still very creative like. 22:20.60 Felipe You're talking about ultima one is a game that you start like exploring the open world and you end like fighting tie fighters in space like no game today has this kind of range even Baldur’s gate doesn't go like that wild. So it's 22:29.88 Dave Right? Not quite to that level. 22:38.24 Felipe Still like a very interesting experience I will still go back to them, especially the Dungeon crawlers which I like my favorite kind of genre. 22:40.71 Dave Um, cool. 22:48.32 Dave Nice. That's yeah, something that I like because I did not grow up playing games on pc dungeon crawlers are huge like empty spot in my gaming history. I actually have a bonus. Series that I do for the people on Patreon where I go back and play older games to kind of fill in those holes in my you know or what could have been my early gaming history. So ah, you're naming some stuff that I should probably check out for that series. 23:19.20 Felipe And yeah, and and they're great like I'm not sure if they're great for streaming because visually they are not very interesting but ah in terms of content. It's like in 2 hours you play one of the first RPGs in history and you. 23:33.33 Felipe It goes wild like oh I found the lights safe but like what. 23:38.22 Dave Yeah, there's a ah, there's a Fromsoftware game that I'm interested in playing called Shadow Tower abyss that kind of has a turn like that. Um, if you don't know if you've played that game before. Yeah. 23:50.43 Felipe Um, now I like the King's field series but the shadow towers I'm not big into horror games. So I just like to play a bit. Yeah. 23:55.94 Dave Gotcha gotcha. Yeah I played Kings field 4 for the first time a couple years ago and really really enjoyed that. So yeah, the shadow tower has a similar thing where you start out like you know fighting things with swords and then you find guns eventually and then it goes in a weird direction like that. 24:15.40 Dave Not quite tie fighters. That's something else. Um, So yeah, that's Cool. It's always interesting like even with games and genres that you grew up with personally it doesn't necessarily mean that you are going to enjoy going back to them decades later you know. Stuff from my childhood is the same way just because I have nostalgia for it. Doesn't mean that I will actually sit down and play it and have a good time Now. So good to hear that some of those things still hold up for you in that way. 24:54.37 Dave So kind of like fast forward a little bit like when the crpg boom as I'm. 25:11.14 Dave Terming it right now happens let's say like ten years ago or something like that. We start to see people crowdfunding these games. Dragon Age Inquisition wins a game of the year, which I went back and checked. It was kind of interesting, like it's not necessarily expected. I didn't play that game. I know a lot of people are. 25:30.83 Felipe Yeah, that's a good description. Yeah. 25:30.98 Dave It's polarizing. We'll say ah, but yeah, it's polarizing but the fact that an rpg like that would win game of the year when it's typically more you know quote prestige type stuff was at least interesting to see and then you have stuff like divinity original sin and pillars of eternity. And the shadow run games that come out. Um, just tell me like did you dive headfirst into all that stuff when it was you know when it started booming like that. 25:58.86 Felipe Oh yeah, like I think that was like a really interesting shift because I actually disagree with you a bit because I think for me Dragon Engine inquisition winning was super predictable because bioware was like the king of. 26:11.54 Dave Was it? okay. Yeah. 26:18.98 Felipe Rpgs but also of AAA gaming. You know everyone was on the hype of like the mass effect series and the dragon age and and so I think that what's controversial is that like that game came out like one week before the ah the the awards 1 game of the year and 26:22.18 Dave Yeah, yeah. 26:32.98 Dave Okay. 26:37.63 Felipe Today is a game that people don't really talk much about it anymore like ah I think it's strongest point were the were the characters that like really stuck with some people but in general if you look at the great games of the let's say the great rpgs of the 2010 s 26:54.79 Felipe I Don't think people are going to list Dragon Age Inquisition like on the top they're going to be like other titles and and like you said for me, it was a very interesting period because we had like like I mentioned before we had basically no rpgs at a time you were playing like either. Ah, ah. 26:56.52 Dave Right. 27:13.45 Felipe Bioware and bethesda games if you were really hardcore you were into some super obscure indies like you were playing like the geneforce games from ah spider web you're playing like a shalom you would play um, like we mentioned reason or like 2 worlds too. You know, like these games. 27:33.31 Felipe The Eurojank from europe like they would mention but that was it like even games like let's say um, no crpg was being ported to PCs or was like even arriving to us stuff like let's say um, Dragon's dogma and dark souls. You have to remember that dark souls only came to pc because we had all that ah all that like pressure from some force from some fromsoftware started porting those games to pc they had like ah they did a petition and it took like 1 year to part and it was a very bad part and. 28:10.88 Felipe Durante had to make that patch so it would actually run on most computers. It was ah but you had that kind of thing going but then like you said kickstarter change out of everything and I think people really nowadays like it. A lot of people got burned out from kickstarter and the developers moved out like Larian did not use kickstarter to make Baldur’s Gate 3. But I think it's really hard to overestimate how much. 28:26.64 Dave Yeah, yeah, yeah. 28:42.64 Felipe Kickstarter changed everything not only for the big games so like from ah divinities the obvious choice. Um, ah pillars of eternity but also the partfinder games but especially for the smaller rpgs. There are so many smaller pgs that we played around the time that came out like shadow run which like. 29:02.16 Felipe Um I think especially the dragon fall is considered like a classic and it's not a game that would have come out any other way even like very small games like in 2012 I put this game on the book because I think is very emblematic of the situation which is one called paper sorcerer. 29:18.55 Dave Okay. 29:20.74 Felipe Which is like a first person. Um rpg inspired by wizardry that came out in 2012 just as the big kickstarter campaigns were starting so this guy is like a lone developer the guy by himself made the game before even before the double fine kickstarter. 29:40.15 Felipe He raised like $5000 and that was enough for him to make an rpg by himself and release and all the let's say the old school websites cover it because it was like 1 of the few options that we have ah. 29:55.76 Dave Um, yeah, yeah. 29:55.76 Felipe Ah, FTL as well. If you remember that space rogue-like game so you were having like this game's legend of Green Rock was a big revival bought right? Let's say by steam being more accessible by game engines being more accessible this kind of revolution but also by kickstarter. 30:14.87 Felipe And it's really like a fantastic moment in history when you see this shift and I was there like I was. It is a thing that like people don't remember but like Laian was very small and it was very obscure at the time like. 30:27.69 Dave Yeah. 30:33.96 Felipe I play all those games like I love divinity, divine divinity, their first game but in the the 2000 and times they did ah divinity to dragon commander. No um ego draconis which is the one that is like. 30:34.25 Dave They've been around like they've been making games for a while. Yeah. 30:51.50 Felipe Kind of like a janky action Rpg that you can become a dragon. It was like a very big side Rpg and after that they basically like okay no one talks about them and then they did their kickstarter and they were so small that like on our forum like on ah Rpg Codex and Rpg watch we were. 30:55.12 Dave Ah, okay. 31:10.80 Felipe Fundraising for them and if you boot up ah divinity Original Sin One The logos of the forums appear when you boot up the game as like oh thank you for the so like this is the scale you're talking about like what the the company that now made balers gate was thanking like foreign members and stuff like this when you boot the game because oh. 31:21.94 Dave Um, yeah. 31:30.53 Felipe You gave us like $10000 and that really helped is like it's crazy. 31:31.62 Dave Yeah, yeah, that's that's wild and that's like so when I think about the crpgs that I've been kind of delving into over the last five years or so as I've gotten I guess back into them because. I kind of followed the general trend where they started slowly shifting them from crpgs to action console rpgs and then just sometimes even straight up action games like Mass Effect 3 and then I kind of left that for a while. And then stuff like disco elysium and divinity original sin one and I tried pillars of eternity for a little bit I had a hard time with it I would like to try it again. But um stuff from that era seems to have kind of brought it up and we'll talk about this in a little bit. But let's just talk about it now. Actually we're transitioning so we'll cut that and games like that kind of like brought you know, brought it to a certain level. 32:31.44 Felipe Okay. 32:43.64 Dave You'd say. But I think you mentioned something like people who would call people who are in it would call ShadowRun DragonFall like a classic of the genre same with you know if people really like pillars of eternity but pillars of eternity didn't sell really well and pillars of eternity too Sold even worse than that did. Ah. 33:04.80 Dave Harebrained schemes isn't making more dragonrun games and stuff like that. So we kind of had the genre Resurge a little bit but it didn't break through into becoming game of the year for a while you know. 33:18.92 Felipe Um, yeah I think that is like the genius of Baldur's gate and the genius of what Larian did so well because I agree with I just say like when we had this revival in let's say like 2000 and the early 2010 it was very nostalgia driven. So like. 33:37.87 Felipe Pillars of eternity was a game made for people who grew up with Baldur's gate 1 and 2 and like they were very open about this. It was funded by those people. It was for those people. So like if you are not used to controlling 6 people in an isometric view in real-time it is going to be a mess for you. 33:40.11 Dave Yeah. 33:52.81 Dave Yeah, yeah, ah that it was a mess for me because of that. Yeah. 33:54.98 Felipe Same way with a bunch. Yeah and same way with other games like let's say um, that were coming out around the same time. A good example like the legend of grimrock is the same legend grimrock like is based on the first person blobber which is a genre. 34:13.36 Felipe Ah, is actually like a ah historical anomaly is one of the few gens that died like literally died from around like to say to um, even less from around like 9098 to 2012 34:30.30 Felipe You didn't have a single game in this genre being made like ah by a big studio is like really like more than 10 years and this is not like say like a big side in the early 90 s this were the top sellers computer rpgs were games like I have the beholder like um envelope of dawn. Um. 34:49.90 Felipe Ultima underworld even stuff like descent under mountain even like everyone was trying to make these games and they were extremely popular dagger fall um was the name stone keep which was like 1 of the biggest seller of the 90 s that people basically forget about it because it's very cringe to go back to it but like. 35:06.75 Dave Okay. 35:09.82 Felipe These were like the top sellers. This was what rpgs were in the early 90's and then five years later the genre is dead and you don't have a single game about this in 2012 you have that revival going back to those so wasteland 2 is the same is a very like. 35:26.61 Felipe Is made for people who grow up like we fall out and that's cool like that is nice, but even for me who is a person who grew up with those game like those games are being made for me like I was the one funding those he started and playing those games be made for me but they always had that vibe of like okay. 35:39.55 Dave Right? right. 35:46.32 Felipe I played this before this is something that is not This is not trying to be a fantastic game on his own is trying to be like ah a good copy of those older games and I think what really sets apart some games like a divinity original Sin One is that it's like no I want to be my own thing. 36:06.17 Felipe So like I have a foot on the pass so like original scene one is like heavily inspired by Ultima, especially utima 7 ah swen like the the owner of Larian is a fanatic about ultima I actually contacted him and I asked him to write about the ultima 7 for the book. He replied but he was too busy making divinity original scene one to help but he like were like super nice with me and he was like oh I love this game I wish I had time to to write a review about it and everything but that's is a game that like okay one foot in the past and one foot in the future. 36:36.71 Dave Ah. 36:43.77 Felipe And then when they try to do things like okay we're going to add a multiplayer and we're going to add like a bunch of things that are not something that the other games have like of course ah bothers get 1 into head multiplayer but no one actually played them that way and so. 36:59.82 Felipe This one was like okay we have split screen multiplayer and that kind of like more reactive more like D and D kind of stuff I think that is what really defines and changes things and that is what really brings us into this kind of revolution that you have this first? ah. 37:18.00 Felipe First step which is like okay, let's bring back what we had we were doing the past which like pillars wasted and 2 and everything and now I think we are in this moment when it's like we have been for I think the last three years more or less that okay, this is what we did in the past. How can we do this and bring it in? 37:37.42 Felipe Today I like to get the best of the past and the best of today and I think Butler's gate is such a classic is going to be like this watershed moment because it's the game that nails it on the head is the perfect combination of everything from the past with all the advancements and. 37:41.24 Dave Um, yeah. 37:49.42 Dave Yeah, yeah. 37:56.12 Felipe Is even very forward looking in the way that it handles multiplayer and stuff like this. So I think that is the key. This is why like even let's say I was enjoying those old school rpgs the pillars of eternity but you weren't but now you're enjoying Baler's gate I think this is. 38:01.50 Dave Um. 38:14.50 Felipe The key element is making them accessible and modern and also looking more interesting. 38:21.53 Dave Yeah, part of it for me is um, real time with pause is just like I didn't grow up doing it. I have a really hard time with it especially when there are complex rule sets and you know complex decisions being made every second during that. You know I played Balder's gate 1 and 2 last year for the first time getting ready for baldur's gate. Three I did podcast episodes about them I had a very hard time with those because I just I didn't understand what was happening in the game didn't try to teach me and i. I know that back in the day it was sold with you know a tome of a manual to teach you how to play but you buy the game on switch. You don't get that manual. So um I think part of the thing about stuff like shadow run about disco elysium. Ah, baldur's gate 3 is that they are like they contain like you said the essence of those older games but they're also trying to teach people how to play and they're also like making their own thing for people to learn as well. You know baldur's gate 3 is based on modern d and d but. They did not can arrest on their laurels and say well people who know fifth edition d and d they're going to love this game and people who don't know fifth edition can't play like they didn't say that they they took a lot of effort There's a lot of u I design that went into teaching people how to play how to understand all these. 39:50.84 Dave Terms that you know if you don't play d and d you look up and you're like what the hell is a saving throw. What does that mean, but this game actually teaches you if you're willing to read and I think that's a big part of why Balder's gate 3 broke through is because it is. A super complex game. There's a lot to learn There's a lot to think about and a lot goes into your strategy but they didn't sacrifice that to um, appeal to a bigger audience the way that knights of the old republic did. Ah, they kept it all but they're like no, we're going to put in tools to help you learn so you can understand this stuff. 40:34.87 Felipe Yeah, and just a little aside. What is really funny hearing about you is like every single thing that you mentioned just now you could apply to baldur's gate one because and I think this is the key element like ah. 40:43.46 Dave Um, ah yeah. 40:50.78 Felipe I saw a presentation by josh sawyer which is like the developer who did like ah new vegas and pillars of eternity out for him. It was very weird to see a divinity original sin 1 breaking especially divinity original sin 2 breaking all the knowledge that he. 40:56.97 Dave Um, yeah. 41:08.91 Felipe Built upon the industry so bothers get 1 and 2 were like a huge hits at the time they were like they so like 1000000 units and everything like and they were this revolution. That's why it's so funny that this is happening again with Baldur's gate 3 because these games were the revolution already real time with pause. 41:13.24 Dave Um, yeah. 41:28.52 Felipe Was the accessibility revolution of rpgs back in the 90 s because before they were altern based and people think this is too complicated I say if you go back? ah to the god bot series of like ah or something even like way even fall out a bit. So let's say. 41:48.30 Felipe The face of d and d games in the 90 s were especially ssi games the the famous gold box series. So pull of radians um, they're kind of very archaic in the sense that like but still the very. Same style as you create a party of 6 character. It was top down technical turn base combat and you had to know the rule set and people were like okay this does not work anymore in the world of like doom in the world of Warcraft and starcraft. So what they did. 42:07.80 Dave Um, yeah. 42:22.97 Felipe Was that like they combined the on base rpgs with Warcraft and this is how you get ah real-time with pause. This is what the developers from bioware saying . Look, we are trying to make this accessible so now the and d plays like Warcraft which was like the most popular thing at the time. And it was an explosion of accessibility because you don't have to let's say tell every single person in your party. What to do you just select everyone and right click on the enemy like in the low level thing you can do this if you put on easy you can play the entire game like this so baldur’s gate 1 did this revolution but now I think. 42:49.49 Dave Yeah. 43:01.42 Felipe Not only you why and or game making knowledge in a sense evolves so much but also people don't play Rts anymore. It's not like a very popular genre like it's not the peak of ah of popularities like you both Warcraft 2, age of empires starf and everything. 43:05.88 Dave Right. 43:17.72 Dave Yeah. 43:20.31 Felipe So now that became weird but turn-based combats done in like a controller with like modern ui is much more accessible. So it's really funny for me to see this going around and I completely understand why that first wave of rpgs were so weird because it was people like Josh Sawyer who were like okay. 43:28.18 Dave Um, yeah. 43:39.91 Felipe I Grew up with this logic that again, an Rpg to be accessible has to be real-time with pause some to do this again and then they see a game going fully turn based and being more accessible and selling more is really weird like I actually put if you check the. 43:44.48 Dave Yeah. 43:58.70 Felipe In the book. There is a direct quote from Josh Sawyer saying okay Divinity original sin to taught us that we're not in the 90's anymore that we can do turn based combat and that is why like on pillars of eternity 2 they later added via patch the option for you to play the game in ten days and it's is really like a. 44:10.70 Dave Yeah. 44:17.10 Felipe 1 of those moments that you're like okay, the industry really changed. 44:20.58 Dave Right? And it is interesting to me at least that other rpg makers. Um, so they think that turn-based combat is out now. Final fantasy goes into a full action game and stuff like that. When you know we see that's not necessarily the case that historical context is really funny for me I didn't know that so I'm glad you brought that up and it's interesting like if I list the crpgs that I've had an easy like. Entry into and just like hit the ground running and play. They're basically all turn based or they don't have combat at all in disco elysium's case but divinity originals sin the early fallout games like those are. Weird and buggy and they're they're very different but they're turn based so I can at least sit and think about what I want to do um stuff like that really easy to get into and the real time with pause unless it's something that's like incredibly simplified like knights of the old republic. Was really hard for me to get into. So yeah, very ah, interesting context there. Um, do you have anything that really stuck out to you like we've been texting back and forth about Balder's gate 3 the last several months when we've been planning this episode and stuff. 45:48.10 Dave You're in the middle of a playthrough right now. I beat the game a couple couple weeks ago. Is there anything that stands out to you that you feel is 1 thing that you can pinpoint as to why we had this rise of other crpgs. The pillars of eternity. The. Divinity original sin series etc. But they didn't break out like the general population. They didn't top the steam sales charts or break records for concurrent players on Steam Baldur's gate 3 did so is there anything that sticks out to you as to why? Why was this game such a success? Beside the fact that it's a very, very good game. You know. 46:29.93 Felipe For me personally I think it is because the first game that we actually like for me, there's like trick pillars to this first is like the general rise of tabletop gaming and like ah as ah, a very popular thing with like ah especially the you know. 46:42.17 Dave Um, yeah. 46:47.17 Felipe Whole things are like watching Youtubers play and that kind of thing wanting to get involved and if you look at any clip of people playing Baldur’s Gate multiplayer. It's that basically so people want that and that is why it's so important and so genius that this game is so fun to play multiplayer and this too it was like a process because. 47:06.14 Felipe Divinity original sin one is not fun to play with the player if it completely gets the logic wrong. It tries to make like ah like you're playing co-op basically but like there's only 1 protagonist like if feel was more like an older style of games. You know, like when you were play like ah like this. 47:07.11 Dave Okay. 47:25.96 Felipe Very old console games were like oh you can fight everyone just an action game and you can start and someone will help you like but almost like gauntlet of that kind of like style of games Divinity Original Sin got the idea the second one understood the like oh we should make them. 47:43.90 Felipe Fight in the style of like should be conflict within the party each person playing the game should have like um, some sort of agency I think that's really what makes it interesting so it tries first with things like oh everyone is kind of competing for the the same position I'm going to do this very tabletop thing of like oh. 47:46.55 Dave Um, ah yeah, yeah. 48:02.38 Felipe Have a cuts scene but each player seeing a different cuts scene that kind of thing I think really brings up the idea of like oh you are let's say you're playing the red princes and you want to help the dragon to get some information but I'm playing a warrior and I want to kill the dragon to get ah ah say he scales to make an arm or for me. 48:21.57 Dave Um, yeah. 48:21.67 Felipe That kind of like a struggle of conflict within the party I think is one of the core things that like everyone playing this game has agency and can do something fun and this fits perfectly with this like new popularity of tabletop rpgs I think that is one part with is genius. 48:34.57 Dave Um, yeah. 48:40.12 Felipe And no other rpg this this not only like no one did this? Well no one did this at all like Lon is the the company that mastered this the other 2 sorry please it. 48:45.69 Dave Okay, yeah, it's it's yeah it's it's interesting like I had that as one of my kind of points to is that like you always heard about d and d or at least I did you always heard about it. But I didn't know anyone who played like when I was in high school or when I was in college I didn't really know anybody who played and then you know other than d and d you have other tabletop rpgs that like were around you know like but I didn't know anyone who played shadow run or cyberpunk or. Shadow runs another one or anything like that like I didn't know anybody had never even heard of those but the like pop culture appeal of d and d I think has risen ah I I saw it in stranger things and like stranger things was a huge huge deal so people saw them playing. Like you said, stuff like critical role is some of the most popular content on the internet. Um the pandemic kind of you know, forced people to play games together in a different way and there's a lot of ways to play these types of games at a distance from each other which is essentially what. You know divinity original sin, baldur's gate 3 lots of people are playing these co-op but they're not it's not couch co-op the way it could have been and like they even made a d and d movie and stuff so they think pop culture appeal in general acceptance and. 50:18.39 Dave More people playing tabletop games with each other was definitely something I highlighted too. 50:23.45 Felipe Yeah, and going back on this is like playing like I'm playing right now. A baldur’s gate room with three friends so we have the full party of 4 people and we're playing the dark urge story. 50:37.29 Felipe I'm playing the dark urge and and we're just calling like completely bonkers. It feels like almost like playing a sometimes because it's like oh we should talk to this Npc No I just kill him like and it's such a fun like it's so funny like not only the game lets you do this the game reacts to this and like. 50:37.86 Dave Ah, okay, yeah, ah yeah. 50:56.49 Felipe Like there wasn't one moment where the party was starting to stop me from getting to an Npc to kill him so they were like they were pushing me off the cliff. You know, like that kind of thing I was trying to climb the cliff and one of them would just push me and it was like you kill me and they're like oh we're waiting until we finish the quest then we're going to revive you. So. 51:12.82 Dave Okay, then you can come back. You can satisfy your dark urge. 51:16.12 Felipe Kind of like yeah and like that kind of thing like no other like I wrote a book or about Apg history. No other rpg history did this. I think the first one who actually nailed this was like um Divinity Original Sin too but Baldur’s gate takes it to other levels. So. 51:26.49 Dave Um, yeah. 51:32.69 Dave Yeah. 51:35.91 Felipe It's really like I think people underestimate just how important this is even if it's not not everyone is playing multiplayer of course. But even watching people live stream themselves playing this game and Multiplayer is huge and helps people want to buy the game and play it as well. 51:42.39 Dave Right. 51:50.88 Dave Um, yeah, one of the community members named dog nozzle who's a patron of the show. Thank you dog nozzle says that um, it seems like they have seen way more people talking about playing Balder's gate three co-op than any other crpg. Um I know divinity original sin too had co-op because that's how they dog nozzle played it but it feels so much less janky in baldur's gate 3 like it was an important feature that they designed around rather than something they threw in as an afterthought between that and ah. Social media appeal which we'll talk about in a second baldur's gate 3 somehow feels less lonely than other crpgs which do nozzle says is the ultimate genre for don't bother me I'm locking me locking myself in my room for the next hundred and twenty hours 52:41.89 Felipe Um, yeah, and they were like simply ah it was very rare to have any like if you look in history I think you can count like in 1 hand the number of like ah classic carpages that actually support multiplayer. We have a little. 52:56.92 Felipe Moment in the early 90's when you had some games that were like split screens that you were supposed to like both people sitting on the same computer playing the game together. You had the bothers get 1 and 2 heads multiplayer. But again like I played this with my brother. It was like we like 2 brothers living on the same house. 53:13.32 Dave Yeah. 53:15.16 Felipe We never finished. We never even liked leaving the first city because it was simply like a pain to play the game. The only real use for multiplayer in that game was that if you play multiplayer you can create the whole party of custom characters instead of playing like one character and making and recruiting companions. 53:26.33 Dave M. Yeah. 53:33.10 Felipe Baldur’s Gate 1 didn't have a 1 and 2 didn't have a tool for you to create. Let's say ah like modern games like this time like even baldur’s gate has that you can play only custom characters. You had to go into multiplayer and do this so I think that was ah the only real benefit because. 53:51.18 Felipe They never got the tabletop thing right? You know it's always 1 person is the main character and the other character is just there. 53:59.59 Dave yeah yeah yeah I I don't play basically anything co-op unless it's a game that you have to play co-op. So um, I'm kind of on the outside looking at everybody else who's playing it co-op but like I don't hear anybody saying like that. Playing baldur's gate. Three co-op is a chore or that it's janky or that ah it's broken or anything like that. The only thing that I hear is stuff like you were mentioning where it's like I'm playing with my friends. 1 of my friends just wants to create chaos and so like. Worst case, scenario you miss some of the story because your dark urge friend keeps killing all the Npcs or something like that. But you're creating your own story when you have something like that. So. It's not like you're breaking the game to a point where you can't play it. 54:46.92 Felipe Yeah, and that's is why the game is so brilliant because like one of the joke that we have is that like we have so many cluttering non inventory because we kill every single vendor. We don't have any want to to sell items to you know it just keeps like organically creating these kind of stories which is. The core of a good ah tabletop Rpg section like I grew up playing those games. You know it's something that like we were talking before like a baldur's gate is not a perfect game. There are some small details that you can complain about it. So like I heard people saying that like okay, the story when you close it is not. 55:07.47 Dave Um, yeah. 55:24.66 Felipe As good and everything it could be better. The whole thing is like if you check tabletop ah modules the stories that you play they all have like very mediocre story but no 1 remembers like oh I play this rpg session and we kill astrala the last king of the valley. 55:36.68 Dave Um. 55:43.66 Felipe And this made the peasants happy again. No you remember they're like oh I was exploringing a dungeon like this dumb thing happened because my friend was stupid and this is the thing they like you know this is what tabletop is built around and this is what balers gate really understand that like maybe the story that the game is presenting. 55:50.70 Dave Um, yeah. 56:02.94 Felipe It's kind of like okay, it's not bad. It's just like okay, what you're going to remember is all the dumb things that you did all the way around. So like I was again playing the darker, playing evil in the second chapter I don't want to give like spoils but like there is this evil guy that you can work for him. 56:22.74 Dave Um, ah yeah. 56:22.77 Felipe Or like usually players are going to betray him and kill him. I was like okay I want to see where this goes so I just kept working on him. He kept asking me to do the worst things for me like my ultimate goal was to kill him but I was still helping him the entire chapter and everyone was like. 56:41.62 Felipe Why are you doing this? Ah I want to see where it goes and of course this screw me up in the end but we were just like trying and like seeing as pushing it as far as we could to see if the game would break or like what will happen and this is like wonderful because other games don't let you do this like um which is like let's say. 56:42.46 Dave Um, yeah. 57:01.62 Felipe What are the other big popular Rpg series that have something like dragon age, especially Mass effect I think was the last mass effect and skyrim was the same the big hits of popularity. You cannot go in skyrim and kill olfric stormKing he's just going to like. 57:19.99 Felipe He's not a killable Npc you can attack. He's going to say don't do this again like if you're playing mass effect. You cannot go into the council and shoot everyone because they don't let you go full spectrum all around like you cannot push the system any further like it's very. 57:20.10 Dave Right. 57:34.52 Dave Yeah. 57:37.33 Felipe Linear is very like on the rails and baldur’s gate 3 doesn't care. You can do whatever, it's really magical. It reminds me and this is what I see like a lot of the ultimate inspiration that swen has in larian if you play ultima 7 57:40.80 Dave Yeah, yeah. 57:54.80 Felipe You can literally destroy the entire planet. There is a planet. It's like is ah a little Easter egg but there is a spell called Armageddon that destroys the entire planet and you can cast it and you can play like it and the whole world is destroyed and King Lord British goes to you like. 58:00.38 Dave Yeah huh. Okay, just for fun. 58:11.30 Felipe Why did you do this? are you crazy like you just destroyed the plan that like can yeah and now I will reload but like you can do this and you know it's something that is kind of like lost in modern rpgs like you play a lot of modeling you can kill everyone there and the the thread of Prophecy is severed. 58:11.40 Dave Yeah, and you're like I just wanted to see what would happen. Yeah. 58:26.41 Dave Um, yeah, yeah. 58:31.20 Felipe But you can continue playing the game in this du world. You know it will let you do all the wacky stuff like we were talking about like my brother play fallout one killing every single n pieces in the game and then he killed the overseer in the end and the game was like yeah this is your story. This is the kind of thing that. 58:43.76 Dave Yeah. 58:48.16 Felipe It was that would be like the say the second pillar that like it brings all the complexity not only in systems like oh you have all the classes and everything but you have all the reactivity the choices you can request any dumb way that you want and the game's going to react to that which is something that was completely removed in. Ah. 59:07.36 Felipe As games became more mainstream and more polished you know as you play mass effect. She's like are you good or evil and that's it. You know you can only be that you cannot be like oh I'm going to be like smart and just still this and I'm going to just ignore them. So I think that's the second thing, like you have all the complexity of quests. 59:10.25 Dave Yeah, ah. 59:26.63 Felipe Of reactivity of classes and the third pillar that really makes baldur’s gate is the presentation like we have to talk about this like it's something that I think goes even further the like the witcher three which was already like the high bar for the industry. 59:33.78 Dave Um, yeah, yeah. 59:45.13 Felipe Goes even further while still keeping the janky multiplayer the way you can do anything and all the reactivity. So it's really like it's insane, like the more I play this game the more I'm like completely like my mind is blown away that a game like this exists which is why. 01:00:01.95 Felipe I cannot imagine the anxiety that swen and Larian has right now because how do you follow up on this? I have no idea how they can do something like this again. 01:00:06.70 Dave Right. Yeah that's something that like I've been thinking about and there's been. You know some think pieces that people wrote where they were like this sets a new bar that every rpg afterwards has to meet and it's going to ruin rpgs forever I'm like no, it's not like everyone I think people. If you love the game as much as the 2 of us do like you understand like this is a special product but not that the next rpg that comes out doesn't have to be this again like Larryian's in an interesting situation because like that's their follow up right? But like the next. Ah. Let's say disco elysium 2 comes out. They don't have to match baldur’s gate 3. They need to do their own thing and I think people are going to calm down over time but it is interesting to think about how larian approaches it because of all the things that we've talked about. Like the reactivity the way that the game will proceed basically regardless of what you choose to? do you choose to kill everybody kill every vendor kill every quest giver etc baldur's gate three has an ending for that. It has a story for that. Ah. 01:01:25.21 Dave Aside from the stories that you've created but like that complexity with this level of polish is a rare very difficult thing to do so. It's like I don't think it's fair for people to expect this from every rpg going forward like this is a labor of love and I would. Not be surprised if Larian did something on a much smaller scale for the next game they did. 01:01:47.65 Felipe Yeah, like for sure I'm not worried about the industry in general because like historically it simply never happened that 1 big hit is followed by another big hit in the same style historically never happens like if you have like let's say you have mass effect being the huge hit which is like a linear. 01:01:51.19 Dave Yeah, yeah. 01:02:07.61 Felipe Party based ah cinematic adventure. The next one is like the complete opposite is like oh this open world. Super easy exploration game and the next one is dark souls which just like okay we're going to like smaller scale and going super hardcore if you think about I say the peaks of the rpg genre. 01:02:26.73 Felipe They completely keep changing and then from ah dark souls you go to like the witcher three. So it's like it completely keeps changing. It is never the same thing but for the same company I think that's a bit tricky because then you have something like I say mass effect 1 to 3 or dragon age one. Ah. 01:02:37.52 Dave Um, yeah. 01:02:45.94 Felipe Origins to and inquisition that's a bit tricky because that's the game that you are making and let's say divinity original scene one 2 and baldur's gate 3 are the kind of evolution of course what came before is completely different like there's basically nothing connecting really? ah. 01:02:56.00 Dave Yeah. 01:03:05.54 Felipe Divinity to original sin like is the same setting is the same villains like I wonder how many people even understand the lot because you have to play basically all those games like ah yeah, original sin 2 is like the ending of the game. 01:03:23.44 Felipe Is a reference to divinity divine divinity which has came from 2001 to like 100 people this is like I think ah Youtube videos maybe a lot of heavy lifting about the lore and everything. But yeah I don't think is going to like the next. 01:03:33.64 Dave Yeah, yeah. 01:03:39.89 Felipe Big game is not going to be baldur’s gate 4. It's going to be something completely different. Maybe dragon's dogma 2 I hope so but like but I think it's going to be something completely different that like has no let's say learns from ah um. 01:03:41.92 Dave Yeah I hope So yeah I'm very excited. 01:03:56.52 Felipe I think the big legacy of Baldur’s Gate three is the multiplayer. That is what I expect that let's say the poor people at bioware right now are like how can we put multiplay and into the next dragon age or the next mass effect. But I don't expect anyone to be trying to be like oh we're going to do. 01:04:06.50 Dave Yeah. 01:04:15.47 Dave yeah yeah I think cooler heads will prevail from people who are making decisions about that because it's it's frankly, it's an insane thing for everyone to expect everyone to do um the presentation I think is is a good shoutout for Baldur's gate 3 um and it's not like there haven't been like quote modern looking crpgs recently or out there. But I think that like when you are thinking about why it hit such a mass appeal like you don't. You do have the isometric view but you don't have to have the isometric view. You can move the camera around. However, you want in that game. Um, when you talk to all the characters and baldur's gate 3 has so much dialogue so much voice acting the characters are right in front of you like you mentioned the witcher 3 very similar to that. Um, and that presentation kind of I I think helps sell the performances like people get really attached to the characters in in Baldur's gate 3 and that presentation of the characters or important story moments with certain characters thinking of like my favorite. Endings for certain character quests like that all takes place with a more cinematic focus or a more cinematic presentation than the big climactic moments in disco elysium do and that's a that's a recent game but that that stuff takes place. 01:05:48.33 Dave Mostly through just text and listening to the voices and you see what's happening but you're very zoomed out from it. Not that it's any less impactful because of that. But if someone's just watching a stream For example, then they're maybe not going to pick up On. Or they might not connect in that same way. So yeah, the presentation was a good shout. 01:06:08.81 Felipe Yeah, and I think I think a lot of it up about the presentation because of games like Pathfinder which I don't know if you play them like ah ah so pet find especially the last one ah raft of the righteous is basically the same game as baldur's gate 3 01:06:14.99 Dave I haven't. Yeah. 01:06:27.59 Felipe Like in the sense of like mechanics is the same level of complexity in some ways it even goes even further like the amount of options like narrative choices and the activity that you have in their game is absolutely insane like by the end of the game you can either like let's say be um. 01:06:46.65 Felipe Like a holy creature. Ah raising armies to fight the devils like armies of Angels and like everyone is super holy and you are actually like a divine creature with special powers fighting against the armies of demons or you can be an actual Leech and everyone in your party you killed and you raise them as an undead. 01:07:06.59 Felipe Like you can play all this is insane. How many options and how much depth and like the character creation of the game is like 10 times more complex than baldur’s gates and like you can you can play as little as say you can play as a hobbit. No sorry ah wasn't what's the. 01:07:13.58 Dave Yeah, yep. 01:07:26.17 Felipe Was the legal name of the hobbit a halfling. Yeah you can play as a halfling that is like a night that rides on a triceratops into battle and. 01:07:26.44 Dave Like ah like ah a halfling. Yeah. 01:07:34.87 Dave Yeah, that's one of the members of our community Zulgeek was talking about. Zulgeek is a serial character creator and then like play a couple hours and then make a new character and he's been talking about all of these just wild. 01:07:50.62 Dave Creative characters that you can make in that game. So yeah. 01:07:52.49 Felipe Yeah, and it is fantastic, but it is in that old school isometric presentation. So like even I as I am playing I was like I really wish this would like Zoom in like oh you became a lich. 01:07:57.97 Dave Yeah, yeah. 01:08:07.23 Felipe And you' like you see like a little sprite on the screen like you have a nice picture and everything but like is in your mind which is really cool but sometimes even like to show to your friends like oh like I say I wish I could like record a clip of myself turning into a lich that is not like I say. 01:08:07.82 Dave Yeah. 01:08:23.28 Felipe Ah, super faraway view of isometric characters talking to each other. You know that thing really brings things to the next level and it's not something that I can ask the petfinder developers to do is like oh why don't you spend like $200000000 making this cinematic. It's like which is the whole thing. 01:08:35.71 Dave Um, right? Yeah, ah. 01:08:42.49 Felipe When we were discussing these kinds of games like when we were talking about this before when rpg started to go mainstream and especially shifting to console. So like when you have a mass effect when you had the first dragon age hitting. We would always ask people like why can't and we do not have a bit more depth. 01:08:59.90 Dave Um, yeah. 01:09:00.76 Felipe Why do they have to be streamlined and I remember this conversation with a developer who said like you cannot have a faithful recreation of tabletop D and D in ah, an Rpg because what happens like let's say um, you're fighting a dragon and use. Ah a grapple attack. I'm going to have to create the animation of your character grappling a dragon and this is something like and what if the character is small. What if you are grappling like let's say ah ah a creature that is like an object like you're grappling a Ram or stuff like this This was like simply like. 01:09:20.94 Dave Yeah. 01:09:35.82 Felipe They would say this is impossible. You cannot make this level of reactivity and animation and then Baldur’s gate goes and does it. Of course they spend absurd amounts of money to make this. That's why we cannot expect any other studio to do this. 01:09:40.80 Dave Yeah. Yeah, right. 01:09:51.59 Felipe Maybe like only bethesda and Bioware can do this. Not even sure that Ea would give them that much money but like that is what is so mind blowing they like they did what people always told this is impossible. This is why Roguelikes exist because in roguelikes your character is like. 01:09:56.29 Dave Right. 01:10:10.94 Felipe A little letter so I can put on text anything this character grapples the other rolls on the mud and lose his weapon. I can do this because it's just text if I had to animate this with all the variations of classes, races and everything it will cause millions just to do like one animation. So. 01:10:16.24 Dave Yeah. 01:10:28.85 Dave Um, yeah, the development situation is unique. We'll say they had the budget. They had the early access period to work on all of this stuff to fix it all up and get feedback and all of that. 01:10:36.40 Felipe Yeah, for sure. 01:10:44.48 Felipe And I think the main one. The main thing is like they wanted to do this. It was important to them like them themselves. They're very like they're very passionate about this like if you talk to swa so it is actually like he loves rpgs and he wanted to do this. 01:10:46.20 Dave Not something you can expect of other people. Yeah. 01:11:03.39 Felipe I interviewed him like almost ten years ago before even the original sins and he was already talking about like oh I want to make like I'm building this company for like 10 years to make the 1 big rpg of my dreams and like he always wanted this so like those things are there. Not. 01:11:15.46 Dave Yeah, yeah. 01:11:22.89 Felipe Because like they make business sense but because they're very cool and because they're cool. We also think they're cool and like in the end it ends up making business sense. But let's say if this went through like a normal company, a normal producer checking like oh this is not worth the expenses. 01:11:23.47 Dave Yeah, yeah. 01:11:39.24 Dave Right. 01:11:41.62 Felipe You could probably say like 30% of the budget of the game and most people will not notice but then it will not be such a passionate project. You know, like the people who really like those little moments that really make you absolutely love the game. The little like. 01:11:49.67 Dave Yeah, yeah. 01:11:59.98 Felipe Parts of reactivity that are just like made for like 0.0 one percent of players but anyone who sees this is going to love the game that is I think is what really like unrivaled. 01:12:06.24 Dave Yeah. 01:12:12.72 Dave Yeah, it's you know they always say that to creators that if you're able to to make things that you want make something that you would like not what you think other people would like and that's going to lead to a better product and I think that that's a good. Ah. Sentiment for for Balder's gate and for larryian for sure. Um, there is 1 other thing about Balder's gate three s kind of breakout that I want to bring up and it's something that people in the community brought up which is social media and shareability and meme ability will say. Um, snacktaku who's one of our patrons. Thank you, snacktaku says I think baldur’s gate 3 was so successful because of social media and word of mouth and also because it's a massively polished game. Ah. Snackoku doesn't think it's because of interest growing in d and d as a whole because that's stayed pretty consistent for a while now. Um, and then Jake who's a patron from the pre-order bonus podcast good show a former guest on this show. Says I agree about the word of mouth baldur's gate 3 reached well beyond what most games do my quote casual gamer and quote friends. Ah who mostly play call of duty in fortnite were asking me about Balder's gate 3 and if I'd heard of it and I don't believe Larryian's marketing push was anywhere near trying to compete. 01:13:35.76 Dave With those big dogs in gaming something else bridged the gap then last but not least Adam from the respawn aim fire podcast says not even joking here wasn't that massive spike in Google searches lined up with the bear sex reveal. So I think that there is massive. Part of this that is like going back to the reactivity and the complexity of everything that you can do all of those things make for interesting clips that you can share or that you can watch on Twitch and then go tell people about and say like hey I was playing Balder's gate 3 my character turned into a bear. And then we had a sexy time with my you know companion character and it was a bear or something like that. These things that I feel like in Balder's gate happened naturally like I played the entire game. Not even going to pretend I saw all the content because it's not that kind of game. But I played the whole game and there are very few times when I saw something and was like they put that in there because it's going to make a fun screenshot or clip for people to send to other people like all of the things that I was like this ridiculous thing happened I need to show people all came up. Naturally, you know what? I mean. And then social media and shareability plays a big part in spreading the word. 01:14:55.95 Felipe Yeah, for sure like we're seeing something very similar right now which is Palworld which is just like this huge hit because everyone's like oh for came on with guns and like this is cool and like not only this but like all the little things like you can capture humans with your poke balls and like. 01:15:02.19 Dave That's right? yeah. Right. 01:15:12.40 Dave Yeah, yeah. 01:15:14.30 Felipe This is cool and like I think and this is like a very personal opinion of mine that like we over time the industry became so formalized and so stuck to some? let's say ideas of gameplay and stuff like this so like games like let's say God of war. 01:15:33.22 Felipe Which is like an amazing game but is a very predictable game. Everything weird about it is going to either come from a story twist or something like this meanwhile and this is like I'm sorry to say. We're basically the same age I think where this is starting to become like a Boomer game. 01:15:35.85 Dave Yeah, yeah. 01:15:53.70 Felipe Meanwhile we have an entire generation of people who are growing up with roblox with minecraft with like this kind of like way more chaotic kind of game which is what we grew up with as well as when we were playing flash games like if you were on news ground like you. 01:16:01.11 Dave Um, yeah, yeah, yeah, right? Yeah on New grounds. Yeah yeah. 01:16:10.55 Felipe Yeah, you will play something like lets say oh Sonic final fantasy tab or like this is the story like I remember there was an rpg that I really like called Epic battle my God Epic battle something Epic Battle Saga or something like this and the final boss was a zombie go cool. 01:16:29.35 Dave Um, ah of course. 01:16:29.56 Felipe From Dragon ball and like yeah I want to fight zombie goku and like it's cool like I think when we go so much into like the industry. The professional side of stuff and everything we forget how cool those things are and how sometimes you just want to see that kind of stuff and like I said up. 01:16:47.50 Felipe PalWorld does this intentionally is trying to be like a partoday and trying to be very popular and it's very successful at this but baldu’rs gate 3 does this like organically it's just like you can do like weird shit like like the previous games had these things were like you can wet a bucket as ah as a helmet and he's like a little silly things. 01:17:06.74 Felipe But there are so many silly things like this that you can do in in baldur’s gate 3 like you can literally like stack crates to jump over a wall and stuff like this or push your friends over the like all these kind of things are so fun and so interesting that like of course they're going to become like. 01:17:13.82 Dave Yeah. 01:17:24.92 Felipe Like you said organically become memes and things that you want to share and I think I like that the industry sees this and like oh maybe my game should have things like this as well instead of being like so narrative you know, especially these kind of things that comes from Sony. Like ah uncharted god of war the last of us they're like everyone has exactly the same screenshot. Everyone everyone has exactly the same experience because what? what is interesting is not what is happening in gameplay is what is the game is showing to every single person you know. So personally I'm I'm very much way more interested in the chaos in the games that are like flash games like early and mmos that are games like um which is kind of why I like exploring we were talking before I like exploring. Games from outside the industry. So like let's check what China is doing. Let's check what Korea is doing. Let's check what? like um, a favorite of mine is like what people are doing in Tia which is like a free and mmo from the two thousands that they converted into a free game engine and they keep making free. Ah. 01:18:35.50 Felipe Online and mmo is like oh this is the naruto and mmo and you can go and play the naruto mmo and like I like that kind of stuff and I think a lot of people also really enjoy that sometimes you don't want a movie you want a game and and Paul world then also bothers gate lands on this and I think it's it's a really. 01:18:37.26 Dave Um, ah yeah. 01:18:54.40 Felipe Cool stuff that we have things like this coming not only from roblox but also from let's say one of the biggest budget games of the decade. 01:19:00.60 Dave Yeah, exactly and I think that kind of organic chaos is part of the draw to see rpgs in the first place like any game that's trying to emulate that feel of a tabletop session. That's part of it like you said with your you know your co-op playthrough with the dark urge like that is capturing that same essence. So. It's yeah, no surprise that that is something that. You know some people might experience it in tabletop with their friends but also experience that same level of chaos and memorable moments and things in Balder's gate 3 like I finished my playthrough of Balder's gate 3 i. Just like I get this feeling so I do a different game every week on the podcast and I take pretty extensive notes while I'm playing them because I will just forget so many things but Balder's gate was one where I was very confident when I was playing it. 01:20:05.70 Dave I don't need to take notes. All I need to do is look at the quest log. I'll remember exactly how this played out because it's so memorable everything that happens is so memorable. Um, in that kind of chaotic way like you said oh yeah I did that? yeah. 01:20:16.66 Felipe Yeah, like ah I lost an eye in one of the quests in the game I lost an eye I don't know if you went through this yeah and like a few regrets but that is funny. They like every single cut scene I Like oh yeah I lost an eye because you keep seeing there so it' really. 01:20:27.13 Dave Yeah, that's right? yeah. 01:20:32.37 Felipe Another game that does this well that reminds me is the zelda tears of the kingdom that for a month everyone was just sharing how they were making like a megazord with the yeah I make like a helicopter and I'm carpet bombing all the goblin you know that kind of thing is like. 01:20:37.41 Dave Um, yeah, of course. Yeah. 01:20:50.35 Felipe I really miss that morning games and I think it's really cool that we're moving away from because if you think like on the I don't want to be too harsh on early to on on two thousands rpgs but if you go back to Bioware and Bethesda the like what were the equivalent. What were the shareable clips and it's like. Fallout 3 and and that's what everyone was talking about though you can choose to nook or to not to nuke a city and this is a moral choice and like that is not a choice and and ah. 01:21:24.56 Felipe Mass effect has a similar one where you punch the reporter. Yeah, exactly you know exactly what I was going to say because that is you know we're talking about, about how like you can have sex with a bear or how you can lose your eye and Mass Effect is like oh you can punch the report and it is you know it's going back. 01:21:24.71 Dave Where you punch the reporter. Yeah yep. 01:21:44.54 Felipe Falls like really flat at the time it was like you had this whole context and it was like in a sense they were the best that we had at the time but that's why I think it was kind of like a dark time because we had like very little options and the options were a very specific kind of game. 01:22:01.40 Felipe Well now you can have like you can carpet Bomb The goblins you can have sex with a bear you can have all these weird things and I think that's we're much better for this. That's what I was mentioning before. I think this is the best moment because if you want to play the cinematic game. You also have those you know. 01:22:15.34 Dave Um, yeah. 01:22:18.55 Felipe You can be playing like a cyberpunk now which everyone says like it's amazing after the patches and it goes much more into this kind of like the bioware kind of vibes is like I think he's more faithful to the 2010 vibes of rpgs than something like Baldur's gate 01:22:34.55 Dave Yeah, yeah I can see that for sure I'm playing cyberpunk right now actually. And yeah I don't get the same kind of like my choices have consequences or I create these incredible organic moments the same way. 01:22:53.90 Felipe Um, yeah I really wish playing that game and like you have all these implants and everything. Sometimes I just wish instead of driving a car on a bike I could be like running, jumping across buildings or some like Spiderman kind of stuff but is not that kind of game. You know. 01:23:00.51 Dave Yeah, right, right? T 01:23:33.78 Dave So going forward. We've talked about all these amazing things about Baldur's gate 3. We've talked a little bit about the history of crpgs or at least our own personal history with the genre. So going forward my hope because Balder's gate 3 is such a huge success. The interest once people are finished and finish replaying the game maybe a second or third time or whatever my hope is that some of that interest will trickle backwards into history into the other games that never got that same light shown on them. So I would like to get some recommendations throughout. History. 01:24:24.00 Dave From the different decades. We'll say um, starting with the 80 s so we'll get 1 from the 80 s 1 from the 90 s the two thousand s 2010 s and then more recently the 2020 s and each of us will give a recommendation for everybody here. We'll do this lightning round style. Ah, but if people liked Balder's gate 3 what else should they try, where should they go from here so we'll start with the 80 s. 01:24:49.60 Felipe Okay, so the most obvious recommendation would be the gold box series which were the dungeons and dragon games from the eighties like and they're like really good games. 01:25:05.68 Felipe Like 4 games in a series that you import your character from 1 game to the other which is really like in is done really well you start like fighting goblins and everything and you end like traveling the playings with Elminster and like ah defeating gods and stuff like this but is a game from. 01:25:21.94 Dave Aha. Okay. 01:25:25.40 Felipe 1988 that never got a remaster so I don't think is a good entry point if you want to play a game from the 80 s an rpg I would rather recommend wasteland remastered because wasteland was one of the first rpgs to introduce the idea of like. 01:25:44.38 Felipe Choices and consequences in a way they're like oh and especially with great morality. Not always is obvious what you should do like should you like if an enemy has a hostage should you let him kill the hostage and escape and but I kill him should you let him escape What should you do? 01:26:02.94 Felipe It makes a bunch of interesting questions and it got a remaster like two years ago that I think does a very good job of keeping it faithfully to the original while also making it more accessible. So like if you're coming from balers gate and you jump into a game from the 80 s is going to be a shock no matter what you choose. 01:26:05.58 Dave Okay. 01:26:20.25 Dave Yeah, ah. 01:26:21.78 Felipe I think wasteland remastered is like the closest thing you can get to like an accessible Ui and like a more easy to get into experience. 01:26:32.34 Dave Nice, Yeah, that's um, famously one of the games that inspired the fallout series right. 01:26:38.52 Felipe Um, yeah, and he has like a lot of the same vibes like a weird wasteland turn-based combat and you a bunch of like moral choices and interesting things for you to do and like it gets completely wild like there's a moment where like you're traveling inside the the brain of an ai and stuff like this So like. 01:26:54.98 Felipe Really interesting game, very dated in the sense of like its humor and reference. But I think now it is so dated that it adds to the charm. You know like. 01:27:04.45 Dave Yeah, yeah, um, I'm going to sit out the eighty s because I was reading through the book looking at all the options and I was like I've never played any of these so I have nothing to contribute here. But now I have some stuff that we've got. I've got some new tabs open um ah on the browser for new games to go check out from from that more distant history um moving into the 90's and you know you said wasteland so my pick for the 90's was fallout 2. Um, I played this a couple years ago. It still holds up. It's got some stuff where it's like if they made it today. They would program like the ai better in stuff so you like your companions don't shred you if you give them an assault rifle. They won't destroy you with that if they made it today but you know it's still a game that I think. Offers a lot of choices in character building in choice in how you want to role play that like if you liked Balder's gate 3 you probably liked that aspect of it. So Fallout 2 is quite old in a lot of ways but offers that like you mentioned before like the appeal of. If I play a high intelligence character then I will talk to people differently than a low intelligence character will and fallout's pretty famous for that. Um I had a good time playing it. I enjoyed the combat for the most part. It's turn based so it's again for someone like me not as hard to jump right into. 01:28:37.54 Dave And ah the story's fun. The characters are memorable like I had a good time with it. So that's my pick from the 90's. 01:28:45.16 Felipe Yeah I think it is a great pick like still one of my favorite games I like for one a tiny little bit more but like I think is ah a question of taste and also like I like the way it introduces the world more it is for short is like I say it plays a bit worse. 01:29:02.31 Felipe But I think the atmosphere of the first one is a bit more exciting. You know, like the way you see a deaf cloth for the first time in your life and that kind of stuff. But yeah, the second one is a fantastic game. 01:29:11.37 Dave Um, yeah, yeah, and I also played fallout 1 for the first time a couple months before I played fallout two and I had a game breaking bug that like fucked up the main quest. 01:29:26.99 Dave Before that happened I was having a good time. So it's not like fallout 2 is terrible. er fallout one's terrible and fallout two is great like they're both good. 01:29:35.17 Felipe Yeah, okay so from my nineties I'm going to go with an obvious one which is Planescape torment which is like it is a classic is one one of like 1 of the best written rpgs of all time and I think it. 01:29:41.67 Dave Yeah. 01:29:52.47 Felipe Like it. It plays on the same engine as baldur’s gate 1 and 2 so it has the same thing of real-time with pause that I know not everyone enjoys. This is a game that, if you want you can the combat is the least important part of it. You can just play everything on easy and I don't think it is an issue. 01:30:07.50 Dave Um, yeah. 01:30:10.81 Felipe I Really recommend you playing a Mage with high intelligence so you get extra dialogue choices because the whole core of the game is you're exploring this completely wild and fascinating world of the city of Doors Sigil and. 01:30:28.22 Felipe Is it a weird setting. Extremely interesting. You feel like a stranger in a strange land with really fascinating companions like if you like the companions in baldur's gate 3 you're going to love the ones in landscape because it's also like a very weird group of weirdos each of them with very personal stories and. 01:30:47.85 Felipe Just a fantastic game to play through. You know, experience the story of like you, the nameless one this character the like is Immortal and how the game plays with this like there's a dungeon that requires you to die to progress. So You know it's really like a fascinating experience and you also got a remaster. You can even play on a tablet and people say the like is a very good experience on Tablet. Actually so yeah, this is for sure like the 90 s I think one of the easiest recommendations from people. 01:31:14.68 Dave Yeah, yeah, I love planescape torment I played it again for the first time maybe three or four years ago and it was after I played disco elysium and I read that they were inspired by Planescape Torment so I was like oh shit I got to play that and it's on switch. So I played it. On switch like you said play on easy. Just enjoy the story if you like if you liked Balder's gate 3 for the writing in the characters and like the story planescape torments got that it's got some of the best writing and like story. What you learn about your character because you it's an amnesia character. It's an immortal character and an immortal amnesiac is an ah ah a an interesting combination. We'll say what you learn about your character and the side characters are great too. What you learn about them is fantastic. 01:32:09.84 Felipe And a little just ah, a little aside here as a historical curiosity landscape torment came out just a bit after ah final fantasy seven and it's one of those games but you really feel the people. 01:32:23.92 Felipe Usually talk about this. They like oh western rpgs and Japanese Rpg are completely different Planescape torment is an rpg heavily inspired by final fantasy to the point that not only do they have summon animations , I don't know if you ever use 1 of those. 01:32:35.80 Dave Um, ah ah. 01:32:40.75 Felipe Like they have things like like you can summon an army of Angels and it's exactly like final fantasy the screen goes to the side and you have like a thirty second animation of a someone battle but also on the credits they specifically like oh thank you final fantasy for the inspiration. So I always like to point that out for people who are like oh. 01:32:49.33 Dave Nice. That's awesome. 01:33:00.40 Felipe To hardcore to enjoy jrpg is like 1 of the top crpgs of all time is like thank you final fantasy. 01:33:06.80 Dave Yeah that's great. That's awesome. I didn't know that um my pick was moving into the two thousand s um, I'm sticking with ah Baldur's gate 2 for my pick for the two thousand s and I only wrote Balder's gate too because I couldn't write. You know what fuck it. It's my podcast. My pick for the two thousand s is to play Balder's gate 1 and two because I'm one of the people who have played them both. You can start with Balder's gate and ignore one but I think. 01:33:22.92 Felipe Oh. 01:33:39.40 Dave Bringing one character through both games and through that giant adventure starting with killing rats in a basement all the way to you know facing the god of murder and even beyond that in the throne of ball expansion. Um. It's a really cool experience to do that. The characters are fun. Um, it's like the gameplay gave me issues as I talked about in those podcast episodes but you can play it on story mode just enjoy dungeon crawling. Enjoy picking up a bunch of loot. Enjoy the quests. Creativity is really really good with the quests in those games so obviously if you like Balder's gate 3 why not try the earlier ones for my pick and you will recognize some names from characters and things that are referenced in baldur's gate. 3 come from those earlier games. So if you don't have that context going back and seeing it would be cool. 01:34:35.50 Felipe Especially if you're playing the darker. There is 1 reference that I was so surprised and I was like oh this is amazing. Yeah, you're going to work. 01:34:40.67 Dave Who damn okay I just started a dark urge playthrough that I'm gonna have to play very slowly but I'll be on the lookout. 01:34:50.26 Felipe Yeah, it's a fantastic thing and like you said, if you don't enjoy the combat you can play on Story mode is not the problem if you enjoy the combat get a mod called Stratagems of the sort coast because. 01:34:57.75 Dave Yeah. 01:35:03.83 Dave Okay. 01:35:06.66 Felipe Is going to make everything much more challenging and I have to say Baldur’s Gate 2, to this day still has the best mage battles in any Rpg ever when you're just casting a bunch of like spells of protection and dispelling the enemy and 01:35:23.30 Felipe Hearing the sound of what the enemy mage is casting. He's like V the Morti Scario and you're like oh he's costing Necromancy is going to be a finger deaf I have to protect from that I think never an Rpg made magic combat So much fun as Baldur’s Gate 2 so really like. 01:35:27.65 Dave Yeah, yeah. 01:35:42.20 Felipe Put a mod that helps if you enjoy putting stratagems off the circle to really like pull it an extra level is a fantastic experience. 01:35:49.80 Dave Nice, nice. What's your pick for the 2000s 01:35:53.74 Felipe Um, mine will be Neverwinter Nights 2, specifically the mask of the betrayer expansion which is like this is um in a sense. This is the new vegas of neverwinter nights the same way in the like. 01:35:59.90 Dave Okay. 01:36:07.58 Dave Okay. 01:36:11.11 Felipe Obsidian followed Fallout 3 and did New Vegas this is obsidian getting neverwinter nights and doing masks of the betrayer which is basically I think in a lot of ways the closest we ever got to planescape torment 2 which is very high praise I know. Ah. Neverwinter Nights 2 has the problem that the engine is very clunky. The biggest issue is the camera. The camera in the game is atrocious. Most of the time you're going to like spend like looking at the ceiling or looking at the floor but in terms of gameplay it has like. 01:36:47.12 Felipe All the classes of D and D that you can expect like you can play all the crazy combinations and the story is really interesting. It goes for the kind of planescape torment vibe where you have a curse where you have to consume souls or you are going to die. 01:36:50.40 Dave M. 01:37:05.81 Felipe And because of this you're going to travel across the planes as well and meet a bunch of really unique companions from like a spirited animal to like a devouring demon and stuff like this and recruit everyone to your party because that's the the cool thing to do so is really like ah is kind of tricky to play in a sense of like. 01:37:18.32 Dave M. 01:37:25.34 Felipe The camera is a big janky after like one or two hours you'll get used to it. It never feels great. The controls but the story is just so good. The story, the plot and the combat is just so interesting. It's really like I think ah, a kind of forgotten gem. 01:37:32.70 Dave Um, ah. 01:37:42.43 Felipe Specifically for the crpg book I made a separate entry entry for it I didn't want to do like on never nights and also the expansions I put a separate entry entry because like everyone who played this game really loves it. You can start from the base campaign of Netflix for the internet too which is not like. 01:37:48.30 Dave Right. 01:38:01.27 Felipe Amazing but it is good enough and then you go into the mask of the betrayer which continues that story and it's just like a fantastic experience. 01:38:10.54 Dave Awesome! Awesome! Love to hear it. I like obsidian. I didn't know obsidian did that so that's ah, that's cool and the fallout new vegas analogy is ah sounds good to me. Um, moving into the 2010 s I picked shadow run dragon fall which we've talked about already. But the reason I picked shadow run dragon fall as we're starting to get more into my wheelhouse here. The reason I picked this is because for someone who liked Baldur's Gate 3 1 of the reasons you probably liked it is because you probably liked the characters and dealing with their backstories learning about what happened and then doing the quests to help them along um in their own stories independent or kind of you know on the side of the main story. Shadowrun dragon fall has one of my favorite groups of side characters of any rpg I've played. They all have really interesting backstories and by the time you get them like a lot of them are kind of rough. Situations similar to some of the characters. Well actually most of them in Baldur's gate 3 are they're pretty fucked by the time you meet them. Dragonfall is pretty similar and I just thought that the writing of those quests. Ah the way that you. 01:39:36.88 Dave Kind of earn their trust over time and then get to go on those side Missions is something that is a direct comparison also like turn based combat combat that I think is pretty damn fun in the shadow run rpgs The more recent ones. Um I should go back and play the old console ones more. But. Anyway, ShadowRun Dragon Fall. That's my pick. 01:39:56.81 Felipe Is a great game that honestly I overlooked when it came out because the first shadow run game didn't give me a good image. It was originally made to be like a mobile game and you can fool some of that on the ui especially like it. It feels very like. 01:40:10.69 Dave Um. 01:40:15.36 Felipe Small scale games sometimes but they did so much good with that small scale like especially Dragon Fall really like is an amazing game and I really like the setting as well. It's very interesting, like all cyberpunk I think. 01:40:25.80 Dave Yeah, yeah. 01:40:31.30 Felipe In many ways it does cyberpunk better than cyberpunk 2077. 01:40:35.62 Dave And shadow run Hong Kong is good too. It's just it's it's it's like saying if you love shadow run dragon fall you will also love shadow run Hong Kong like they're both really good. 01:40:49.44 Felipe Yeah, so for the twenty ten I'm going to go on the exact opposite of this I'm going to for dragons dogma dark arisen which is like top 10 rpgs of my life. I really love this game and I think I'm really happy. We're getting the second one. 01:40:50.82 Dave yes, hell yeah. 01:41:09.18 Felipe Because people simply don't get this game. Yes, it has the amazing combat that people talk a lot about and it's really cool that like you can grapple any enemy you can you know you're fighting ah a griffon you can grab on him. He's going to fly around trying to shake you off, you hit him. He fall on the ground like. 01:41:27.48 Felipe Fantastic combat. But 1 thing that people don't talk about much about is that it is actually very hidden inside. The game is the amount of reactivity. It has the choices that you make organically so it's not a game that's going to do that very western rpg thing of like. 01:41:38.69 Dave Mm. 01:41:45.47 Felipe Oh there's like ah there's 2 2 people fighting and it's going to pop up a menu like do you want to help person a or person b and then depending on that you play a cuts scene. Everything isn't organically so if you have 2 people fighting they're going to fight each other out and whoever wins. 01:41:52.18 Dave Yeah. 01:42:04.88 Felipe If you interfere or you don't interfere that's going to change the story and that is like everything is like organically sometimes like maybe they do backed role person a or person d is going to win like in this simple example and you can go and like if you watch them fight. Is going to play one way you can go and attack one. You can go and heal the other if 1 dies like they're having an honor duel and 1 person gets killed. You can go and resurrect the person after the combat and the person is going to say oh thank you for resurrecting but I lost and lost my honor. So I'm going to have to leave. 01:42:42.79 Felipe Country So this kind of reactivity The like you expect you, You don't expect in Japanese rpgs and we praise Baldur's gate is already in Dragon's Dogma. It's just like the game never tells you about this. So there's a bunch of things that like let's say. 01:42:54.52 Dave Nice, nice. 01:43:02.59 Felipe If you go to the castle at night and you visit this tower the door will be unlocked and then you can see this cutscene that explained a whole different story and gives you a a side quest that you will never have nothing of this has any quest markers has any like quest journo explaining to do is just like a very. 01:43:22.63 Felipe Reactive world for you to live inside of it and it's such like ah a wonderful experience like if you play this game once and you you still don't understand what I'm talking about if you play the second time you're going to see a completely different experience and you're just like what have I done differently and it's just like. 01:43:41.94 Felipe So interesting how they did this and I really hope that they do the same again on Dragon's Dogma too. But this time they tell people because honestly I saw so many reviews that say like oh this is a great Rpg Such a shame that's linear and like this is not a linear Rpg you get things like a quest to go to the. 01:43:47.11 Dave Um, yeah, yeah. 01:44:01.20 Felipe The forest and save this character. You should take too long. The quest will completely change and the outcome of the quest is completely different and you will lose like 1 potential seller with a bunch of items like there's so many options and reactivity in this game is just that like is hidden and. 01:44:18.58 Dave Interesting. Yeah I didn't even know that I played Dragon's dogma I love it it's ah but I didn't know that about it probably could like you said it's it's very hidden. Um. 01:44:20.26 Felipe Yeah, it's really a fantastic game. 01:44:31.45 Dave Fun fact. Dragon's dogma is the most popular episode of this podcast ever made so people who like Dragon's dogma like Dragon's dogma you know 01:44:41.83 Felipe Um, yeah, if you get the you remember there is a quest where you have to get a ring for the King right? Which is this really amazing ah ring full of powers. Most people just so I got that quest to give the ring to the King Most people just give them back. 01:44:47.51 Dave Um, ah. 01:44:55.64 Dave Yeah. 01:44:57.51 Felipe You can actually go to the city and there's an Npc there that makes copies forgeries of items. You can give the King the ring to them. They will make a copy and then you can give the forgery to the King. The King says oh the ring loss is power. But maybe this is normal because it's too old and you keep the ring. 01:45:03.72 Dave Um, yeah. 01:45:16.91 Felipe With all those super powers for yourself. None of these is mentioned by any Npc in the game they will react to you if you do this but no one will tell you do that it's really like ah in a sense. It's kind of like the dark Soul's logic of like I'm not telling you like go explore go find the lord. 01:45:17.25 Dave Um, ah, nice right. 01:45:34.22 Dave Yeah. 01:45:36.34 Felipe But they did this for the quests which is something like I don't know any other Rpg that is maybe like modeling with things like ah finding the cure for vampirism and stuff like this. Maybe that's the closest to an Unmarked Quest but Dragon Dogma That's like. 01:45:53.26 Felipe 20 times more. 01:45:54.74 Dave Interesting. Yeah well I am even more excited for the sequel now more than I already was um, my pick for the twenty twenty s I'm going to make it kind of quick I've already mentioned it disco elysiums my pick and it's. Ah, kind of cheating but the final cut came out in 2021 so we're using it there and it's my podcast you can file your complaints at patreon.com/realDaveJackson um disco elysium is one of my favorite games ever made so when I have the chance to recommend it I'm going to do it I love. 01:46:28.24 Dave The story in it Of course I Love the writing I Love the characters but what I love about it is it is yeah the main thing. Yeah what I love about it is the ah different take on using. 01:46:33.22 Felipe Um, communism. 01:46:45.50 Dave Tabletop mechanics that you understand like dice and like skills etc but using those things for a narrative purpose in a way that I don't I haven't seen any other game. Basically, your skills don't act like skills in other rpgs. Ah you you. 01:47:03.49 Dave Your checks that you roll are a little bit different. They're pretty interesting. Um, the way that you can use your clothing to influence. Um, how you're able to do things ah but all of this without worrying about combat at all So many rpgs are like you know. Oh I'm I picked up a new armor piece. Um I am most worried about how much armor it gives me above any other characteristic that it might have. Disco Elysium doesn't have combat so that's out of the equation whatso are you like entirely and you. Kind of like some physical skills that you might use in a violent situation but it doesn't have a combat system like ah, a game traditionally would so the way that they implement tabletop mechanics into something that doesn't have to be concerned with combat. Um, all tying into this really awesome story about a person who's trying to put their life and their mind back together if you want to you don't have to do that if you don't want to you can go full tequila sunrise if you want ah but yeah, that's my pick one of my favorite games ever. So. Obviously going to be my pick. 01:48:17.80 Felipe I completely agree with you, like 1 of the best rpgs ever made not only because of how good it is but also for how like you said it doesn't have combat. I think in a way it blew open the doors for the genre. It's not the first rpg to do this. 01:48:34.80 Felipe But the first one that was so successful that I think like we're still going to see the repercussions of this of people going like okay now I can make really cool rpgs that don't focus on this. We got Citizen sleeper of course. But ah I think. 01:48:43.44 Dave Um, yeah, yes, yes. 01:48:51.46 Felipe We're going to see more and more of this which is great because like we have so many rpgs that are focused on combat we should also have some that are not. 01:48:59.20 Dave Right? Um, and your game that you wrote down for the Twenty Twenty S I was very happy to see because it's a super interesting game. So tell everybody about it. 01:49:07.18 Felipe Yeah, so my pick for the 2020s is wildermyth which is like it's a very weird game to get into because like the minmax part of me the moment I start playing the game was like oh this is a tactical rpg and like. 01:49:16.77 Dave Yeah. 01:49:25.72 Felipe Is really cute and everything and like why can I move my items around I I start to go like really angry with the game when I first start playing it like why can I not give like the sort the other character and but then when you get it What the game is trying to do is really amazing because the whole focus of the game is not being. 01:49:45.70 Felipe Just the Tactical Rpg It is focused on telling stories dynamically based on the choices and the events that happen so small things like for example, you gave this character a sword. He's now the sword This is his sword This is his weapon everything is about tied to the character. 01:50:04.23 Felipe So if he gets hurt in combat that might affect his story. He might get like a scar he might get scared of combat or something like this outside of combat you will get like some um, some story ah choices. So Let's say maybe you're going to investigate a cursed ah tempo and you're going to find an item. If you steal the item now you have a really powerful sword but also the gods curse you and now you have like let's say a red stale because ah it's a curse of the gods and this gives you up a penalty and as you keep playing these stories pile up time passes On. Ah, your characters' good relationships between them and just every single playthrough that you make you create an entire and different story with a whole lineage of things like that hero character that you start making that you're like oh this is my character Now. He's old and. He died and he passed away and your other character is going to inherit the the magical sword that he got from the troll cave you know it just builds this whole narrative this whole story like we were talking about in tabletop rpgs is not about the story that presents to you being good or bad. 01:51:20.99 Felipe Is mostly like an evil invasion of Evil monsters. You have to stop it. What's important about the game is what your characters are going through and the story that is being generated by this. If you're being good, if you're being bad, what you want to do with the resources that you have is really like a one of a kind rpg. 01:51:40.70 Felipe Combines Really good technical Rpg with this whole thing about choices consequence and creating your own organic kind of story. 01:51:50.26 Dave Yeah, Absolutely um, that kind of feeling that like anything can really happen and the game is just going to keep going with it and that becomes your story and then that becomes like. Your Ancestors story and then that becomes legend as you keep playing and playing um is really really interesting and it's like it's a procedural generated story but it's still entertaining and I like it. It never felt like oh yeah, this doesn't have the human touch to it or anything like that. It felt really good to have that be your story as you play and um, the combat's really fun too. I Really like the combat. It has some really creative magic that I've really never seen in and in other stories, not just games but any story that uses Magic. Um. 01:52:41.40 Felipe Yeah, and they are very good at making the scenarios as well because it's not a game that has a lot of trash combat every battle is kind of meaningful. Not only because it may be a story battle that's going to have very big consequences. 01:52:41.71 Dave Ah, cool system. So. 01:52:59.72 Felipe But maybe sometimes you're just exploring a village and in other rpgs there will be like trash combats. It's just like oh you're fighting 3 goblinss but maybe 1 of them is going to infect you and that's going to make your character get poison. He might ah recover but now he has like let's say a bad arm and none. 01:53:17.49 Felipe Cannot use to hand the weapons. You know every single thing that you're doing in this game matters and is going to impact the story and I think it is really a one of a kind rpg. 01:53:27.67 Dave Absolutely yeah 01:53:43.90 Dave So with all those rpgs being recommended and that little history lesson we had at the beginning. Um, it's time to talk about the crpg book project. 01:54:01.60 Dave Ah, which I mentioned at the top is a wonderful resource full of crpg. History, kind of a walk through the history of the genre but also like individual entries for any game that anyone might think is important through the years there are over 450 games in there. Um, each game gets a dedicated section with history screenshots. A mini review. Um, the review talking about the game itself but also talking about its place in crpg history maybe some things that it introduced or. Like you know , like Dna that was passed on to later games in the genre and then some even have mods that are recommended for people who want to try them out for the first time. Um, so I saw them. Ah, inspiration list on rpg codex I was happy to see planescape torment as number one on the list I saw that I was like yeah it makes sense. Ah, but what inspired you to take this from you know, a collection of votes on a forum and turn it into this. Huge project. 01:55:11.62 Felipe So the whole thing is like it wasn't huge when it began like ah like you said like we made a voting on the rpg codex to get like the top first. It was the fifty then it was a 72 then it became like 100 and 1 top art pages of all time. 01:55:14.45 Dave Yeah. 01:55:24.25 Dave Right? Because you can't stop. Yeah. 01:55:28.85 Felipe Yeah, yeah, and that is the whole thing like we did that vote and we're like oh please everyone like explain like you're saying to me that I really should play gothic to why so we asked people to write a little short paragraph explaining why and of course people didn't write 1 short paragraph they write like a whole page of text why this is the best game ever. 01:55:45.19 Dave Um, yeah. 01:55:47.91 Felipe So we do have like instead of like 50 games with a short paragraph. We'll have like 100 games with 1 page of text for each of them and then I was like this is really good content I should turn this into a book and and just like to to be clear about this. The book is free like the Pdf version because it's like. 01:55:57.28 Dave Yeah. 01:56:05.59 Felipe The collaborative work of so many people I edit together but the book is free. I don't make any money from it. You can download the pdf from the website and if you buy the hardcover version from Bitmap Books all the earnings from it goes to a charity. So like is a completely non-commercial project. But then when I saw all that content I was like okay how can we make this into a book because I in my mind I was like oh I have like 75% of a book already I just need to put like a little extra and then I began. Okay. 01:56:40.49 Felipe I need to put the historically important games. So let's say the book has ultima seven the forum post has ultima 7 I should put all the other Ultimas as well. That's already like 10 new games if you put 2 pages to each of them is 20 pages of text and then you add every wizardry game. 01:56:41.15 Dave Yeah. 01:56:51.83 Dave Ah, yeah, yeah. 01:57:00.30 Felipe Every might and magic came you add diablo 1 and two because the codex doesn't like Diablo so they didn't put it on the list and of course you have to put their game and then you think like oh I should put the bar still as well. It just keeps going and as you are exploding which is why the game the book had 2 editions. 01:57:06.91 Dave Ah, yeah, yeah, ah. 01:57:20.50 Felipe The first edition was let's say like the gamer edition of what we usually us like in the west talking about rpgs. We see as ah, the timeline of rpgs is ultima and everything wizardry you go into might and magic, fallout baldur’s gate, and then. 01:57:29.22 Dave M. 01:57:39.92 Felipe People from other countries started reaching me out. So the way I found out about chinese rpgs was when a chinese guy emailed me and said like oh you should talk about these rpgs as well and I start checking them and I found this all actually in the 90's and the early two thousands between China and Taiwan you had over. 01:57:59.24 Felipe Three hundred pc rpgs of like really high quality inspired by things that we don't have like like book stories and folklore from the land and like we never talk about this. How can I make a book about rpg history that doesn't mention those. 01:58:07.55 Dave Um, yeah. 01:58:17.49 Felipe And then we found the korean ones? Oh the koreans also had like their whole scene with like a a bunch of saga like war of genesis which for them is like the final fantasy of Korea like I have to put that on the book as well and it just keeps going like then you find out Iran also has like a legendary Rp like. 01:58:27.10 Dave Yeah, yeah. 01:58:35.55 Felipe Have you played children of Morta? yeah that game is made by iranian developers who had to start making this ah this game or iranian crpg from like ah the 2000 01:58:38.80 Dave Um, oh children of morta. Yeah yeah. 01:58:54.16 Felipe That's like age of prevalence like age of heroes, like they had to start this like the game that you play on steam is from iranian people that started in the industry with this game. How can I say this is not important so I have to put it on the book and it just keeps going. You know like Russia has its own scenes of rpgs that goes like from. Ah. 01:59:06.40 Dave Right. 01:59:14.19 Felipe Ah, bunch of games that were only released there but like what extremely influential so you have to add them too and it just keeps going. That's why it has almost seven hundred pages and still to this day I keep finding things like the last update that I did to the book we had already like printed the hardcover version. 01:59:21.97 Dave Yeah. 01:59:33.40 Felipe So this is the only game that like is not on the hardcover version but is on the Pdf which is the anito which is a game from the Philippines is was the first pc commercial pc game from the Philippines and the guys did the crpg based on colonial history and it's like it's such a cool game. It's such a cool idea. 01:59:35.38 Dave M. Okay. 01:59:52.20 Felipe The visuals are completely unique and I have to put this on the book. So it just keeps going. You know that's why I'm not updating anymore because like it will be impossible to handle like the game goes in two 2019 it ends with Disco Elysium which I think is a very nice like bow tie to put at the end of but. 01:59:56.15 Dave Um, yeah. 02:00:04.00 Dave Yeah. 02:00:12.14 Felipe Today will be impossible because there are so many like me that I could make up a book the same size just of Rps that came out between 2019 and and now. 02:00:20.94 Dave Yeah, yeah, I was um, really really interested when I first picked up well when I first started reading the Pdf and eventually bought the physical book really interested in the early history, the stuff that I'd never heard about the stuff from the 70's and stuff like that. But also those things from other countries like I used to live in South Korea but nobody at least like the students that I teach were not interested in rpgs like they're interested in the popular stuff of today. So when I was reading about that you had me texting my friends in Korea and being like hey. Can you help me find the war of genesis too. So I can play this like freshen up on my korean language and stuff too. But I love the inclusion of that stuff in the book and you know we were running up against time and not able to spend as much time on the book as I would have liked to but 1 of my favorite things about the project is. How comprehensive it is and it's not just like you know here's here's kind of like you said the list from the Forum which is here are the favorites and then that's that's it. That's the history of crpgs like it's so much more comprehensive than that and it's something I really appreciate because. I don't know if you're if you're as into it as I am and as you obviously are then this is all interesting stuff and worth reading and learning about um that you know I really recommend and if you're if you're just interested in. 02:01:52.52 Dave History of games from Korea or China or something like that Felipe has wonderful posts on medium about that stuff too. But the book, whether you want to buy the physical 1 or just read the free pdf, is super worth your time. It's a great resource if you want to learn about a game. But it's also just fun to open it up and read about something I never heard about. 02:02:14.75 Felipe Ah, thank you for the shout and like the articles that you mentioned about Chinese and Korean games I edited and updated on the book. So I would recommend just even if you just want to read those articles to just get the pdf of the book. 02:02:20.84 Dave Yeah. 02:02:28.32 Felipe And go to the end because it is like the updated version with screenshots and everything. 02:02:28.61 Dave Um, yeah, yeah, um, let's see oh ah, 1 question for you because this book project is um. A collaboration with lots of people like over a hundred people contributed articles about the games to the book. But you also wrote several of them too. Do you know how many of them you wrote for it? yeah yeah I 02:02:52.50 Felipe I wrote about I think 40% of the book more or less because the whole thing is that people are very passionate about certain games. So like if you say who wants to write about fallout one or dragon age is like 100 people but then if you go like who wants to talk about the say alien fires. 02:03:01.35 Dave Yeah, yeah. 02:03:12.30 Felipe Ah, which is an Amiga game. Ah an amiga dungeon Crawler that is really unique because the dungeons are not usually like the square grid. It has odd angles. So like it's not like ° it could be like ° and the other is 1 is ° 02:03:30.88 Felipe The walls and every single Npc talks to you using the amiga text to voice Pattern. So like is a complete historical artifact that Curiosity is a very bad game but is such an interesting and cool game that I was like oh I need to write about this game and of course like. 02:03:35.97 Dave Okay. 02:03:49.21 Felipe I had to write that review because there's like 5 people alive who played that game but I really wanted to. So usually that's how you go for the big games, especially the ones that have complex modding scenes like I cannot talk about let's say never winter nights and um so I got a mother who likes. Did a lot of mods and like 1 of a respected members of the modern community to write about the mods for neverwinter nights those I usually get like let's say high profile people winning the community so like for jagged alliance to I got one of the admins of the bear sp which is like ah a form for. Focus only on jagged alliance and what I did was the weird games. You know the ones that no one wants to talk about are the ones that like no one plays but they're still very interesting and so those are the ones that I cover and i. 02:04:32.66 Dave Right. 02:04:41.76 Felipe I Also covered fallout one because it's my favorite So like okay this one is mine. 02:04:44.50 Dave It is because at the end of the day. It's your project so you can stake out that one. 02:04:48.71 Felipe Yeah, exactly like you said, your podcast, this is my book I'm like okay fallout 1 is mine. 02:05:01.58 Dave So yeah, it's a really cool project. Um, and highly recommended for you know if anyone has listened this far in this podcast you like rpgs or you just like the 2 of us. Why not go check out the book again. If yeah, it's free and if you are inclined if you like physical books The physical version from Bitmap Books is really really high quality stuff I have it sitting on the table next to me. 02:05:20.26 Felipe Yeah, and it's free. 02:05:35.60 Dave Um I pick it up and flip through it from time to time looking at you know, just some cool game I want to learn about but really high quality stuff and as felipe said all proceeds go to charity. So a worthwhile cause as well. So I will not take up any more of your time. We've been here. I think we're probably over time at this point. Ah, but Felipe I really appreciate you taking this time to come on and talk rpgs with me this has been awesome. 02:06:01.24 Felipe Ah, yeah, it has also been awesome to me. Thank you so much for inviting me and for all the praise for the book. 02:06:06.79 Dave Yeah, of course and if anyone's listening they can look down in the show notes for this episode. You'll find a link to the book project. Ah you'll find a link for the bitmap store for the physical version of the book and we'll also link Felipe's Twitter account down there too. So go ah go check all of that stuff out very worthwhile. Um, if you would like to support this show the same plugs as always ratings and reviews on your favorite podcast platform really help so that people can find the show you can join the discord server where we will hopefully have a lot of rpg discussion going on this week um Balder's gate 3 episode is also coming up. So if you want to come in and talk about that game. The Discord server is a great place to do it. There is a link down in the show notes where you can join and also patreon.com/realdavejackson is the place if you want to support monetarily. Um, also have another show that you might like it's called a top 3 podcast where we do top 3 lists and a little bit of the things that we've talked about today have been mentioned on that show. We did top 3 video game sidekicks. And I talked about Morte from planescape torment in that episode because he's very memorable so that is all what's that oh yeah, ah Kim was probably number 1. 02:07:20.70 Felipe I Hope you also put Disco Elysium’s Kim in there. 02:07:33.44 Dave Yeah, that was a long time ago. But yeah, um, so that is all for us. Thanks again to Felipe for joining. Thanks everybody for listening to the end tune next week for the next game to come out of the backlog