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 each week I'm joined by a guest to bring a game out of the backlog, play it and discuss my guest today is a friend of the show. Co-host of pixelated playgrounds podcast and he's here to tame the wilderness in the name of commerce welcome back Bryan Skursha 00:25.42 Bryan Thanks Dave Happy to be here as always. I'm ready to tame the wilds, forge some new trails and beat back the wilderness I suppose. 00:31.42 Dave Yeah, absolutely yeah, longtime listeners will recognize Brian not only from pixelated playgrounds but also from the Baldur's gate 2 episode of this podcast which. Was a really really awesome discussion. So especially for all of you who played Balder's gate 3 and are thinking about finding out what's up with those older games if you never played maybe go check that episode out in addition to the baldur's gate 1 episode. But today we're not talking about Baldur's gate we're talking about a different kind of rpg. Today's game is Roadwarden which is a narrative rpg developed by moral anxiety studio and published by assemble entertainment for pc mac and linux in 2022 and if this is your first time listening to the show. First of all, thank you for stopping by. We hope you enjoyed the episode. Here's how spoilers work on the podcast. We are not going to spoil anything about what happens in the story, even possible outcomes in the story because this is a kind of choose your own adventure type of game here today. So we're not going to spoil that for you. We are going to clearly Mark where the spoils we're going to clearly Mark where the spoilers begin down in the show notes. So if you want to tap out, you can check down. There's a timestamp for when the spoilers begin so you can avoid those if you want to so what is Roadwarden we have prepared some elevator pitches for you. 02:03.46 Dave I say in this tabletop choose your own adventure. You're like a witcher but you're not a superhero, you're just a guy with a kind of shitty job Bryan what's your elevator pitch. 02:15.64 Bryan I kind of agree with that. Yeah, so my elevator pitch is ah Roadwarden is a self-directed character piece that showcases the wilds of the Roadwarden's world in its moody and gritty fantasy. Through beautiful prose supported by simple mechanics and systems. 02:32.10 Dave Absolutely I played this on Pc and it was entirely on Steam Deck on Steam deck. It was a touch pad only game. There's no native controller support. But it's fine like you're not. 02:45.67 Bryan Yeah, yeah. 02:46.20 Dave Doing a whole lot of things like movements and stuff so the touch pad was okay but I played it all on steam deck. It took me about 11 hours to beat how about you Brian. 02:55.20 Bryan Yeah, yeah, this was a pc game for me. I know we were talking when you asked me to play this game about where to play it. Um I thought about playing it while traveling ah on on the deck and then I tried it out and I'm just not one to use the mouse input on the steam deck where it's not necessary. 03:09.40 Dave No. 03:12.85 Bryan Ah, so I played this one on pc. It took me about thirteen and a half hours for my playthrough but I got a lot of stuff done in that time. Yeah. 03:20.90 Dave Yeah, there is a lot of stuff that happens in that if you know relatively short 10 to 15 hour play time for everybody and we'll definitely ah have a lot to talk about how our stories diverged and all of that when we get into the spoilers section. But before that. So. 03:26.53 Bryan Yeah, yeah. 03:37.24 Dave I kind of asked you if you were interested in coming on the podcast and talking about it but it was already kind of on your radar before that. So what? Ah, what brought you to Roadwarden in the first place. 03:44.80 Bryan Um, yeah so funny story back when it was closer to when it came out I don't remember the exact date but I remember um hearing about it on multiple podcasts. Most notably I think our ah friend our friend in common John from gaming in the wilds. 03:59.47 Dave Right. 04:01.83 Bryan Um, he he obviously really resonated with this game and I tried to play it I think it just came at me at the wrong time I was looking for something a little more um with a little different feel in the hands you know something more action oriented and and so I bounced off but it was always there. It was always lingering. I was looking for an excuse to play it and lo and behold tales from the backlog. 04:19.51 Dave I'll give you an excuse. Yeah actually I think I remember like I was thinking about who I to ask to be on this episode and I was like looking on steam because steam shows you your friends that like have it or have played or have it on their wish list and I saw you on that list and I was like well we'll check we'll check up Brian's interested 04:20.11 Bryan That excuse. 04:37.25 Bryan Yeah, and I jumped. Yeah. 04:39.12 Dave So um, for me, it was also yeah for me, it was also John on gaming in the wild so shout out to him and he's mentioned this game several times in different podcasts and videos that he's made he put this game on my radar talking about its storytelling and aesthetic strengths and. For me personally all it took was looking at one screenshot of how this game is set up, how it looks and then reading a little bit of writing and whatever screenshot it was that was like yes this looks interesting and it's cheap. It's like the full price on steam is like eleven bucks or something like that. 05:16.30 Bryan You know it's funny interestingly enough like I was on the same page as you where I was like boy that aesthetic is here. The writing is great but that wasn't necessarily enough for me off the bat like I said I bounced off it the first time but what? What really brought me back and pulled me through was the world building. 05:31.96 Dave Ah, yeah. 05:36.11 Bryan Um, most people or folks of pixelated playgrounds listeners will know that I am a sucker for a well-articulated world your marwins things of that nature and this to me really like hit it scratches that itch in a big way and so giving it a little extra time really helped me. Um. 05:54.95 Bryan Get into it so to speak first. 05:56.78 Dave Yeah, absolutely and I totally agree with you. That's one of this game's biggest strengths is it has built a world that kind of feels similar to other things that you might be familiar with like I mentioned the witcher before ah but. 06:11.74 Dave It's not a copycat of the witcher this it feels distinctly its own thing and um like the the original pitch that I was drawn to the choose your adventure Rpg Really really pays off and and I know that when we get to the Spoiler Section. We'll talk about. How our stories played out and they're going to be very different from each other and I think that basically everyone who plays this is going to get that kind of like that personal story like this is my Roadwarden's story and it's It's really really good. The writing is fantastic. It is a game. 06:39.87 Bryan Yeah. 06:49.14 Dave Like it's all reading basically and it's a game that you can read you get a little picture of what's going on a little pixel art like a still image of the place you're in but like the writing brings your imagination to life as you're going through all these scenes and it is just a. It is a really good game. 07:07.73 Bryan Yeah, you know a couple things about that. Um, 1 interesting you call out the ah the witcher relation because this is also a polish developer. You know, notable for say the witcher. Um and ah another thing. 07:15.77 Dave Um, okay. 07:20.19 Bryan If you know there must be something going on with these like harsh foreboding wildernesses allah the witcher in Poland I am of Polish descent myself. So um I don't necessarily feel harried on all sides by wild animals most of the time but it is interesting that it shares that lineage with the witcher developers. 07:31.40 Dave Right. 07:40.14 Bryan Cd projekt. Um, another thing you mentioned is with the obviously very striking look the monochrome look sort of beige and purple is the major theme and to your point like just a single picture sort of lets your mind wander and I almost think it's not really a picture that's meant to like tell you. What this scene is but more so like this is the picture you should be meditating on while you read the words and then you form the image in your head. Um, there's ah it's a really interesting art style and palette and I think it gets you in a mood of just sort of like. 07:59.89 Dave Yeah, yeah. 08:14.33 Bryan I don't know if it's whimsy or contemplative. It's ah it's obviously an autumnal game more on that later. Thanks. 08:20.39 Dave Yeah, absolutely and there's other aesthetic things about it that put you in that kind of mood for Sure. So Let's ah, listen to some of that music and kind of set up the tone of Roadward and we'll come back and talk about it. How this story setup works. 09:00.16 Dave Roadwarden takes place in a remote Peninsula kind of analogous to a European type of area but it's not the real world and this is a remote peninsula where humans are desperately trying to carve out their place in the wilderness. And this wilderness is full of fantastical monsters. It's full of Dark magic and all manner of fantasy things. So before we talk about your character and what you're doing I wanted to camp out and talk about the setting a little bit because this Peninsula is as much a character as anybody else. In the game. Um, so we said it's untamed wilderness in places humans have gained a foothold but you really feel like every place that you go is like on the edge of disaster at all times like any false any bad decision made by leadership. 09:37.42 Bryan Um, yeah, yeah. 09:54.93 Dave Their settlement will be completely wiped out by all these monsters and dark magical forces. 09:58.22 Bryan Yeah, it's really fascinating that they are particular or they specifically leave it as the unnamed Peninsula Um, and I like that as just sort of the name of it. It's by definition unknown um nature is very specifically more powerful than the humans in this space. Um. 10:03.63 Dave Yeah. 10:17.75 Bryan They do this really interesting thing with nature and um as you learn more about the the setting the the types of things that it's capable of obviously way different than our own not just in the fact that it's got um you know Dragon and lynxes and well we have lynxes I suppose but. 10:34.79 Bryan More so sentient creatures and ah unicorns that effectively serve as battering Rams knocking over the walls of cities and letting all of the smaller apes and Monkeys in to terrorize the populace. It's ah it's terrifying honestly. So. 10:35.18 Dave Yeah. 10:46.37 Dave Yeah, yeah, and like on top of those monsters and they're like there's a point in the game where you can after much effort, get a bestiary and read about all the fantastical monsters and there's a lot like. 11:01.56 Bryan Yes. 11:03.79 Dave It's so many of these that you read about all of these monsters and that's just part one. There's parts 2 and 3 of how dangerous this place is but you just read about all those monsters you're like how are people surviving here like this is this is a yeah, it's. 11:18.99 Bryan Yeah, it's it's it's completely crazy and 1 and 1 thing that I know this isn't a spoiler because it's on the title screen but they have this concept called the wrath of the woods which basically like whenever ah mankind gets too comfortable and like too settled in a place. 11:28.13 Dave Yeah, yeah. 11:36.64 Bryan The wrath of the woods will come and push them back and that's where the unicorn battering rams I mentioned come into play and they, you know, just completely ruin whatever city or town you have in there. It reminds me of sin from final fantasy 10 honestly yeah. 11:49.50 Dave Oh yeah, true. Yeah that's that cycle of destruction keeping people keeping society down in a way. Yeah, um, so in addition to those monsters. There's also magic in this world and it's not fun like Harry Potter type magic. It's like. You have to burn your corpses immediately magic because they'll turn undead. There's necromancy. There are druids with forest magic. There is blood magic that you can optionally get into at some point in the game. There's a lot going on here and again it's like. 12:06.11 Bryan Yeah. 12:22.14 Dave All of these factors together. Plus the fact that it's untamed wilderness which is dangerous on its own for you know settlers and yeah prospectors and things like that. It's really like you're walking into a very very hostile place and that's before you even start talking about the people that live there. 12:42.82 Bryan Yeah I find it interesting that this is just one corner of this world that um, our developer at at moral anxiety Studios Arias I believe goes by um has created um, you have a broader world called viaticum that this is placed in um, also like another. Um. 12:49.43 Dave Right. 12:59.83 Bryan Eastern European Developer The folks behind Disco Elysium ZA/UM, this was a setting developed for tabletop games Originally as I understand it. So. 13:05.52 Dave Right? Which I didn't know that but it totally makes Sense. You know I didn't know that about Disco elysium either before I played that and for both of these games Roadwarden and Disco elysium you play the game. You see how rich the world building is and you're like oh yeah, this was of course this has been used before. 13:24.16 Bryan Yep, they clearly have a history where things have been fleshed out, events have happened perhaps in tabletop settings perhaps in the distant past. But I Really like that about it in that it feels living and breathing and sort of non-obvious things that have happened in the past are true about it. Um. And are true about this peninsula in particular as we'll get into down the line. 13:44.77 Dave Yeah, and in the game you play as the Peninsula's New Roadwarden which is a job. This person is hired by the merchants guild in the nearby city. So it's like there's civilization nearby. The city is called Hovlaven, I'm going to pronounce it. 14:04.20 Dave Um, and ah you were hired again by the merchants guild to go to the Peninsula and secure roads between the settlements unify the tribes and establish trade with the merchants guild. So. 14:19.96 Dave It's a little bit different setup and I'm going to use the witcher 1 final time as a a touch point here. It's a little bit different setup for what your jobs are, but it's similar in the way that you are this traveling nomad type going from settlement to settlement and the people mostly. Don't want you there. They don't want to deal with you. Some people are friendly. Some people are like they'll talk to you but they don't trust you and some people are just like no I'm not talking to you like you're an outsider. We have our village. There's an established history in all of the places you go. They have histories with other Roadwardens in the past that might color how they view you so again, you're walking into this like fully formed world as a complete outsider. 15:00.67 Bryan Um, yeah. 15:06.82 Bryan Yeah, I Really like this flavor. Ah no one trusts you, no one wants you there. You're kind of like a missionary but also a civil servant. Um, so you're both ah an entity of the state. But also I guess a missionary of commerce as you mentioned up top because the idea here is the. 15:14.73 Dave Yeah. 15:26.31 Bryan Havlovenas you said wants you to go into the Peninsula and be a mediator to start to lay the foundation for opening up trade on this new resource Rich unspoiled wilderness unspoiled by humans for the most part but pretty darn spoiled as far as the bad animals go. 15:36.55 Dave Right. 15:42.80 Dave Oh yeah, it's a pretty rotten place and like I don't know, like I'm not sure you get an option when you get there and first talk to the people at the first settlement and hear about how the peninsula goes and you can just be you. 15:44.36 Bryan Um, yeah. 15:56.95 Dave You should have an option for like a non-standard game over to just be like well I'm going home fuck this this sucks. 16:01.79 Bryan I Mean you have a you have a nonstandard early out. But yeah, we'll get into that later. Um, there's definitely ah, it's really interesting to me How like you're sent up there ah by a rich powerful empire. But you're just basically a homeless guy off the bat like. 16:05.90 Dave Um, yeah, yeah. 16:18.92 Dave Yeah. 16:21.13 Bryan You don't have shit to your name. You're just ah going up there and trying to start conversations with people kind of and that is no more apparent than in your first introduction. Um, where you show up with nothing but your horse. 16:35.11 Dave Yep, and you get to name your horse at the beginning so you get to choose a little backstory for your character for like what kind of background you want them to have which will either give you special abilities like if you choose to play as a major type you'll be able to do some magic. 16:44.20 Bryan We have. 16:51.20 Dave I Chose to be a scholar type to have extra knowledge you know going into this wilderness situation I thought that would be helpful and it was helpful in certain situations but you get to name your horse. So what did you name your horse? 17:05.46 Bryan Oh man, my horse. Um, let me think here. Um, I think my horse's name was bandito. Um, but after my dog of course my dog's name is band My dog's name is bandit so bandito the horse was ah was my choice. Um. 17:11.66 Dave Oh nice? Hell yeah, cool. 17:19.67 Bryan And ah yeah, my Roadwarden was a fighter actually I decided this seems like a rough and tumble place. I want to have some extra muscle behind me. Um, what that also meant was that I was illiterate so didn't have much going on in terms of being able to say and read things which was interesting. 17:31.29 Dave Oh yeah. 17:39.28 Bryan A little wrinkle to my playthrough. What about you? What was your horse's name? Yeah. 17:42.60 Dave Yeah, yeah I can I can tell? Yeah, um I named my horse. Yeah I named him Fred because I think it's funny to name horses people Names. So I named my horse Fred and um. So you and your horse who is your only constant companion throughout all of this and I really took care to make sure no harm comes to the horse. Anytime someone's like you know you can stay here but your horse has to sleep outside I would be like I don't know about that. It's like there's dragons outside. 18:13.76 Bryan And you know they make a big point about this horse like throughout the whole game. But even right up front. Um, they always refer to it as a palfrey which um by the way in sort of like medieval terms is a smaller like tame horse that is good for riding. Um, but in this game. 18:32.60 Bryan Your palfrey is gigantic. Um, people are always calling out how huge it is um so like I don't know if that's just because I've never seen a horse before they're used to mules or Donkeys or something but they're always like dang that's a big horse. Um, and that's kind of cool like that you have this interesting gigantic horse that folks are shocked by um, but to your point. 18:51.29 Bryan I Don't know if it's possible to lose the palfrey at any point but I certainly didn't like you. I protected it with my life. It was the most important thing that I had. 18:52.99 Dave You yeah. 18:59.54 Dave Yeah, Absolutely yeah, same here. Um, so you create your Roadwarden You name your horse you're off onto the Peninsula Um, your job going there again is to connect the people. Basically maybe. Secure some roads, clear some paths, talk to the people and try to get them to work together. Try to open up Trade. It is a land full of fantastical monsters. But your job is not often to kill the monsters. That's not why this merchant's guild hired you. You're just there to be kind of a connector. 19:34.67 Dave Although along the way people will assume that because you're a Roadwarden that you're going to be down to go kill some monsters Or. We'll talk about this later, you're going to need some money throughout the game and often one of the only ways available to make money is to help people fight monsters off or scare them off or something like that. So There is a combat element. To this in the Story. We'll talk about how that all plays out later but it's part of it. 20:04.66 Bryan Yeah I mean you're kind of introduced to the world with like two basic quests right? 1 is to explore , the other is to find your predecessor. Um, the former Roadwarden which I'm sure we'll talk about but um to that end like it quickly goes from there into. 20:08.56 Dave Um, yeah, right. 20:21.10 Bryan Not quite knowing what to do to have quite a bit to do and perhaps way too much to do um in in my case but ah that just basically came from me being the nosiest most illiterate M effort in the whole Peninsula Um, and to to that end like. 20:22.10 Dave Yeah, yeah. 20:37.63 Bryan The way you relate to people in this game is largely based on your background as I found it to be and that included your religion. Um, this is ah a game where religion actually played a pretty big part. You know you could be from the United Church or the order of truth or follow an independent fellowship or be a pagan or an atheist. 20:42.17 Dave Yep, true. Yeah. 20:56.21 Bryan I was a literate atheist. So um I just figured you know I never had a chance to read about any of this stuff I Ah I'm just going off what I see man. 21:02.71 Dave Right? Yeah yep, your ah your character prays to the acts and only the Axs. Yeah yep. 21:08.78 Bryan There you go, done and done. Although as I understand it, Scholar/Pagan is the way to pretty much understand the whole peninsula right? off the bat. 21:16.62 Dave That makes sense. Yeah, and the people around have their own sets of beliefs that will not necessarily line up with yours no matter which of those that you pick even if you choose the Pagan you might assume like okay I pick the Pagan I'm going to this like untamed wilderness. 21:36.70 Dave Where people live in these settlements. They're not necessarily all on board with paganism either. They have their own. You know the old gods or whatever that they're they're praying to um. 21:39.94 Bryan Me. Yeah, yeah, you you get to find a sort of I Guess various little Strongholds Which'll I'm sure we'll talk about later but I always found that that interesting that there's so many different things that can affect the way that people respond to you as the Roadwarden I mean just one of them is your job description. There's your religion. There's your appearance. 21:51.30 Dave Yeah. 22:04.60 Bryan There's how beat up you look coming into town. What you're wearing um just a whole host of behind the scenes calculations determining just how favorable or unfavorable. These reactions are and most of the time they're unfavorable because you're a dirty homeless guy. 22:17.59 Dave Yeah, yeah, at least they start that way. Yeah, so um, you create your character you step on the peninsula. Your first stop is always going to be the same for everybody. Your first stop is this soldier's outpost. This is not a procedurally generated game. 22:34.83 Dave Ah, we'll just say that it is all laid out so you'll always stop at this soldiers outpost where you get this proper introduction to the world. It's like you know they're welcoming the guy on his first day on the job, kind of explaining how everything works. There's a couple of soldiers there. 22:53.68 Dave There used to be a lot more now. There's only a couple they tell you about yeah they tell you about what all went down. They talked to you about how the dead come back to life. They talk to you about how monsters are. They tell you maybe some first stops to make um on your. 23:13.50 Dave Mission nearby settlements that you might want to like move in the direction of and stuff like that. So you also learn and you also learn that we've mentioned before the previous Roadwarden named asterion has disappeared so that's why you're here basically be There's you don't need 2 Roadwardens. So the previous one is gone. You don't know anything about what happened to them and that's one of the big mysteries of the game that you'll work toward along with your other mission like Brian said of um. Quote like unifying the tribes. 23:51.26 Bryan So a couple things there. Why don't we need 2 Roadwardens? This place seems like it could support a bunch honestly. But um, that aside I think this tutorial is actually pretty good if a bit long-winded and perhaps difficult. Um, because right away they're sort of giving you this big. 23:52.98 Dave Yeah, yeah, it could use multiple people for sure. But 24:07.91 Bryan Text dump as you said they're talking about your predecessor. They're giving you an overview of all the weird stuff going on in the Peninsula they're introducing you to how the map works and you know here's how you get to your map. Here's how you rest? Um, here's ah your ah your hunger meter your vitality meter your cleanliness meter. 24:27.25 Bryan Just sort of introducing like the basics here and um also introducing you that like your responses will shape the way that people respond to you. It's very quick and elegant in how it does that. But it's also pairing that with a gigantic information dump. So it's definitely a balancing act. 24:45.11 Bryan Where you can kind of choose to make this tutorial great or extremely long depending on your appetite for text. 24:48.82 Dave Yeah, and that's how you know the story and stuff is always delivered in dialogue. That's the whole game is basically reading either text descriptions of what's happening or talking to people. And so I think that like your appetite for what this game is doing is like 90% based on how much you want to read so like I think that if you start playing that tutorial and you're like whoa this is a lot of reading like you. 25:25.70 Dave You will have to either adjust your expectations for what the game is or maybe come back to it later when you're in that kind of mood. So good ah setting of expectations there in the tutorial too. 25:38.38 Bryan Yeah, yeah, and and to be fair like I think I accurately clocked that my first attempt at playing this game and and said you know I don't know if I'm in the mood to read ah an entire novel during the course of playing this game and and the second time when when you would ask me to do so I was um so it really for me was a mood. 25:47.27 Dave Yeah. 25:56.10 Bryan Ah game. But um to that end once you're into it. Boy um I was really into it. Um I do like that they throw so much at you here up front and they give you an option. Um. In terms of ah this thing called your they have your journal of course where you're you know, getting quest and it's tracking things that are relevant to that but they also have a thing called the archive which is where you can see the last like several hundred lines of of text were given to you and so if it was. 26:23.35 Bryan Near enough in the past you can go back into your archive and look at it and I think this basically functions like your character's short-term memory and and for me I was always forgetting stuff that people were telling me and I liked that the game would reward you if you were remembered and reacted appropriately to things that people said later on. 26:27.54 Dave Yeah. 26:40.44 Bryan But I like that it respects you enough to know that you can also be a forgetful person because I often am and I have to deal with those consequences. So why? why shouldn't the roadwarden. 26:49.70 Dave Yeah, exactly. There's just a lot like ah the intro is kind of overwhelming in a way that like imagine that you're showing up for your first day on this job and they're rattling off all of the various dangers around this peninsula. Ah, here are these talents that you can go to here's what happened to us by the way. Don't forget to burn your dead also and your head could start swimming and be like holy shit. What is all of this stuff? So yeah, having that like you said short term memory in the archive to go back and look. Especially if you like I don't know accidentally skip a line of text or like you talk to somebody who says I need you to go to this place and talk to this person and then you click through the rest of their dialogue and you're like fuck. What was their name? Yeah, you can go back and look at that quest log. 27:36.20 Bryan Well, what was I supposed to do to save them again? Yeah. 27:44.10 Dave Was not one of my favorites. I didn't think it had enough information in it oftentimes It would not tell you where you're supposed to go. It would be like talking to this person. But then I don't know what that person is um. 28:03.68 Bryan It would have been helpful if they said talk to X in Y instead of just talk to X and you know it's exactly like how my illiterate fighter would have written down the stuff he had to do if he could write. Um, but you know he couldn't. 28:05.50 Dave Right? exactly? yeah. 28:17.73 Dave Your guy's all short term memory. 28:21.20 Bryan Yeah, the archive was all I had to go on. Um, but now you know to me the sign of a good game is if I do start taking notes outside of the game's you know own systems. So this was definitely a game where I did have like a little notes document going of um stuff I had to do because like you I did not like the way the journal was handling it. 28:27.61 Dave Oh. 28:40.13 Bryan So I had to sort of start taking matters into my own hands about how to handle my questing and. 28:46.72 Dave The 1 thing that the game does give you in those situations is it will a lot of times each town will have at least 1 person or place that will take you to like an old school text adventure type thing where you type in a query and will say like I want to ask about. 29:06.40 Dave And then you type in somebody's name and if they know who that person is and if they like you they'll tell you more about that person. Maybe where to find them. Sometimes they won't know what's going on there other times they'll say yeah I know who that is but I'm not telling you so um. There is that to like kind of give you direction to ah but it's it's not like I get like the realism I guess of them either not knowing the answer or not wanting to tell you but sometimes you you just gotta throw the player a bone a little bit and that's like 1 of the really few. Nit picks I have about this entire game is the quest log because like you said earlier once you get to this opening soldiers outpost and you talk to the people and then you go to the first town suddenly you're going to have a bunch of quests and it's too many to remember the details of all of them for. 29:55.21 Bryan So. 30:01.38 Dave The multiple hours that they might span. 30:02.31 Bryan Yeah, those those text parser puzzles as as I came to call them um were definitely some of the harder things in the game for me like the occasional problem solving that had to be done with that and freeform entry um, was like testing the limits of my my lateral thinking I'm not necessarily a person that's great at that. 30:12.93 Dave Yeah. 30:21.20 Bryan I rely on one of my co-hosts Josh for that level of intuition with games. But um I think it was an interesting nod to the old school text adventures of yore. It was very Zork of this game to put a text parser in it. You know? um so I appreciate that I like that you know I could go back and say like hey. 30:31.30 Dave Yeah, yeah. 30:40.88 Bryan Tell me about the mayor's name here or adventurer's name here or hunter's name here just to get some more info um to the people that might know about them and I really enjoyed it. Um once I sort of understood who to ask about what? um. 30:57.52 Bryan The types of information that you could get out of that and that isn't necessarily apparent upfront which makes it even more bewildering but like by the time you're spending you know twenty days in this location. This peninsula you start to understand who to ask about what and it becomes a little more um, a little more passable. Ah, text parser does. 31:16.51 Dave Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned the ah days too because there's a time limit in game for the Roadwarden's job. You basically only have like the summer to do it on the standard difficulty. It's 40 in game days that you have. Ah, you can play on a harder mode that gives you less time. You can play on a mode I think that takes away the time limit entirely if you want to play that way but that is part of your job to I I I'm guessing. They just don't want you there in the winter like you know you think it's bad now. Just wait till it starts snowing. 31:53.50 Bryan Ah, all the people are clearly preparing like they know that autumn is coming. You know they keep saying x day is still autumn and a lot of the quests that you end up getting are like helping them prepare for autumn and winter and all of that stuff this 40 day time limit thing. Um boy I am like. 32:12.76 Bryan Usually completely allergic to this type of mechanic in games like I want to take my time I want to immerse myself I'm the type of person that will end like a playthrough of an elder girls game with like a thousand in game days just because I like diddled around and did all of the side stuff before going to finish things off and um. 32:26.44 Dave Yeah. 32:29.98 Bryan Ah, this got me way paranoid early on which made me go very meticulous ah with how I went about my first several days in the game and so I think I was chatting with you and I was like the boy I'm like. 7 hours into this game and I've done like five days. Is this going to be how it is for all 40 because I think I got a hundred hour playthrough in me here. Ah luckily things start to speed up a little bit. 32:48.84 Dave Um, ah, yeah, yeah, um, I'm not sure that I've played a game recently that has one of these like ticking clocks and what's cool about this and what kind of helps. Personalize your story in Rodewardden because you different people will play this game they will go through they will talk to the same people they will do the same quests but quests can go differently and you unless you are like spreadsheeting this out I don't think you have enough time to do everything. 33:23.42 Bryan Yeah. 33:25.19 Dave At least it definitely not on your first playthrough because you're going to spend some time you know putzing around or like oh my guy got really injured I need to rest for four days straight to regain my health you know stuff like that. So one of the things about this is that you don't fail the game. By getting to the last day you just have to leave on the last day and then whatever you've accomplished up until that point that's your story and so that aids in I think both making people's playthroughs distinct and making it fun to compare but also taking some of the edge off of that like. 34:03.56 Dave That dreaded time limit you know because you're not going to get a game over when you get to the end of it. 34:08.80 Bryan Yeah I also appreciated this? um and I think it kind of like it fixes something in my brain where I was like boy if I don't like to do everything in those 40 days I'm just a failure and um, this game definitely bristles at that and pushes back against it hard because to your point. 34:17.80 Dave Yeah. 34:24.67 Bryan It's impossible to do everything as far as I'm aware. Um, so it was more about the places you choose to spend your efforts and you know what there's another game that I've been thinking about that does have this that I also bounced off of that now I Want to go back to called unsighted. Um. 34:36.83 Dave Oh right. 34:39.63 Bryan Yeah, so that's a game that also has sort of a time limit system in it and obviously not everything could be done. You know I don't think maybe it can. Who knows at any rate I'm thinking about this in a new way now having played Roadwarden and am Now. Um. Hopefully at least partially cured of my time limit anxiety. 35:00.33 Dave I Did an episode about unsighted a couple years ago and that game ah the time limits are real in that game so you do have to respect those time limits. Ah, but not to get on to a big unsighted thing. I think that that game makes really interesting mechanical and narrative choices. 35:17.69 Bryan Okay, okay. 35:17.99 Dave Regarding those time limits. so it's really good um so yeah let's see other things about the story here I suppose we'll say that there are a handful or maybe 5 to 10 what I would call like main side characters. And they're usually like the leaders of the towns that you go to or maybe if it's not a town. It's just like an out in the wilderness. You know the innkeeper there or a druid who lives by himself in a cave. You'll remember some of these people and you'll visit them often. Ah because you need stuff from them and the committee. 35:55.50 Dave Ah, they might need your help but you need their cooperation and so part of the game story is interacting with these characters figuring out First of all, how do I get these people to trust me and that's usually by doing quests either for them or that aid them and then. They might have things that they want you to do on their own and what I like about these people is that usually the quests that they send you on once you once they trust you and they're like okay here's something you can help me with if you want me to cooperate with the merchants guild here's what you can do for me. And the things that they want you to do for them are often morally gray and ah not for the benefit of the entire peninsula. 36:40.66 Bryan Yeah, they're self-seeking and that is one of the things that I think this game does really well is it. It forces you to take sides. Um, yeah you are at the end of the day like you're out here. An individual agent but you're working for you. 36:49.12 Dave Um, yeah. 36:58.81 Bryan And other powers but you don't know and I think this is an interesting thing if you don't really know their priorities aside from maximizing profit I suppose. Um, and so that quickly gets you into the point of all right? Well obviously all of these people have their own conflicts. So which side am I coming down on, who's going to be the beneficiary of my. 37:04.76 Dave Right. 37:18.64 Bryan Roadwarden Homeless Mover and Shaker,, and you know it's interesting. You mentioned that all of the ah all the folks ah that you do end up sort of interacting with on a regular basis and taking quests from our you know people of influence the movers and shakers of the the unnamed peninsula. 37:20.90 Dave Um, yeah. 37:36.64 Bryan Um, some of them are religious figures. Some of them? Ah I guess leaders. Um, but at the end there are people with power of some kind more on that later, but it is interesting to me that like they all do sort of have these pre-established alliances and biases and grudges. And you kind of have to understand that first and then figure out how to insert yourself into it because you can easily tip a scale one way or another um and you do end up doing it if you end up doing any number of quests in this game. 38:30.77 Dave Yeah I think that ties back into that kind of like pre predetermined history of these places like the fact that this setting was not just made for this game that this was an established setting and you know I don't know for sure that. This exact peninsula with these exact towns had been used in the tabletop setting before but it would not surprise me one bit to learn that these people had already been characters before they started making this game if that makes sense be yeah yeah. 39:03.62 Bryan Yes, no, it does because there's so many good backstories here. Um so many good backstories and motivations like all of these characters are extremely well sketched, especially the ones that you end up spending a lot of time with like by the end of your forty days or however long you end up spending on the peninsula you. Understand their motivations and you understand how those motivations clash with the motivations of the other folks on the peninsula. So. It's very much a situation where there is more under the surface that you're not seeing right away and it's only a matter of time before those things start to come out in the open and. 39:27.31 Dave Yeah, yeah. 39:40.17 Dave Yeah, 100% and there's 1 other thing I wanted to bring up about the story and some people might clue in as they hear us talking about the story and they might think like our job is to go and spread commerce throughout the land and like. 39:40.81 Bryan And it gets interesting. 39:57.73 Dave That on its head. You might think those people are there. Do they need what you're doing there? Um, but there's also the element that this world is really dangerous and bringing in you know soldiers from the city is going to make this place more safe and there are a lot of the people that you travel around. 40:16.49 Dave And talk with they're in constant danger out there and they're losing people all the time like the first soldiers you talk to? There's only 2 left there used to be many more there. Um, and so your role in all of this is morally gray as well too. And you um, you can keep that in mind as you're making decisions about who to help, how to help them and how much of your Job. You actually want to do um when you go back and stuff like that. So. It really sets up a really interesting set of decisions that you're making constantly with your role in this place. The people you're working with and what they want and how they think that you can help them. And maybe you don't want to help them with this but it's going to help you do this other thing that you wanted to do more.. It's a really complex web of interactions and alliances. 41:20.77 Bryan You know I think what you've made me realize about this game in the peninsula's distrust of the Roadwarden is that they would be getting thrust into an uncomfortable middle by the Roadwarden's um, ability to come in and bring you know the. Soldiers from um Havlovin with him and all the commerce and stuff like that like right now they're in these tiny villages. They're existing under the radar of the wrath of nature out here on this wild peninsula if suddenly Havlovin shows up and they get soldiers and they're expanding and they're growing into that wilderness. 41:47.32 Dave Yeah. 41:55.47 Bryan Are risking the wrath of the herd so to speak. Um because what is told to you. You know as you're um, in the background text about Havloven in the place where the Roadwarden came from is that they exist in a large city where the monsters. 41:58.35 Dave Ah, that's true. 42:11.76 Bryan Generally don't get to come into the city except by fluke and then there's usually enough soldiers to beat them back. But if there's like this middle size city where it's small enough that a big old unicorn and a bunch of apes can come and wreck it. But. 42:14.77 Dave Yeah. 42:27.34 Bryan Then you're in trouble right? Like if you're small enough like the peninsula towns where you can stand on the radar. You're good and if you're big enough like Holovin you're good. But if you're somewhere in the middle there that might be the ah the uncomfortable middle. You know. 42:38.89 Dave Oh that might be the breaking point. Yeah, yeah, it's ah it's a really interesting setup and it's a really interesting world that they've Built. We're going to put a pin in this for now and we'll revisit this in the spoiler section. Ah, but there is a lot more interesting stuff to talk about including. How our respective Roadwarden stories went so ah, stay tuned in the spoiler section if you want to hear that for now listen to for now. Enjoy a little bit of music from Rde Warden when we come back. We'll talk about the aesthetics of this game. Oh yeah. 43:11.75 Bryan Heck yeah, and we got to do the economy stuff. We keep forgetting the mechanics here. Ah. 43:15.49 Dave That's that's in there for sure so Roadwarden's visual style is really striking like I said the first time I saw a screenshot it immediately hooked me. Um, and it's really simple. It's a really simple style. It's pixel art and the ui is set up like. 1 third of the screen on the left side is a still shot of the location that you're in. It's not a depiction of a battle or even the person you're talking to. It was just a pixel art drawing of the inside of and there are no people. Ah, maybe you're out in the wilderness. It will just show a pixel art drawing of a stream going through a meadow and that's it and then the other side is taken up by your dialog box. Ah your menu icons and all of that and over top of the whole thing we have this yellowish brownish purplish reddish color palette. That has taken over the entire visual style. 44:13.81 Bryan Um, yeah, and ah, it's very clearly I think not meant to imply that this is a world that has purple skies and Beige streams. It's meant to be sort of a sepia toned filter that is meant to set a mood and ah I think it's really effective at that. Um. 44:24.80 Dave Yeah, so. 44:31.32 Bryan It kind of as I mentioned earlier sort of serves more to like spur the imagination to fill in the blanks to to fill in the colors for yourself. Um, it made my mind's eye work more than the pixel art on the page did in terms of visualizing the space. It was almost like a suggestion. 44:47.97 Dave Um, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly yeah, it is um, very so it's like someone started drawing the scene and then just stopped when it was time to draw the action or something like that. So it lets your brain fill it in. 44:49.80 Bryan Rather than like this is the art of the place that you're looking at. 45:01.48 Bryan Yeah, yeah, yeah, and that makes that make and that makes so much sense for like a solo Dev who needs to reuse these places a ton for a lot of different circumstances that there is literally not a single person pictured ah with one notable exception which we'll get into later. 45:15.44 Dave Right on the main menu. Okay. 45:19.67 Bryan Oh no, actually a different one but I'll talk about it later? Um, but um, yeah I think that was really ah, a really good and interesting choice because it was very economical in terms of the ability to tell a very large variety of stories with the same. Locations and art. But um, also it's very evocative. You know like I said it makes you use your mind's eye to to fill in the action and ah, that's the best thing about reading right is the ability to use your imagination to picture what things are like you know it's almost sometimes disappointing to see like the movie Once you've read the book so to speak you know. And I think this game is kind of doing the same thing even though it has visual art in it. 45:57.85 Dave Yeah, yeah, hard to live up to all the lengths that your imagination went to and this game like you said gives you just enough to let your imagination run wild with everything else that's happening in the scene. Um. Also to shout out something good about the visuals. The Ui uses what I'm glad the text heavy RPG industry has adopted, the Disco elysium style text box on the right side of the screen taking up the entire vertical space of the screen. It makes it really easy to read. Ah, no more looking down at the center bottom of the screen like in the ah the old infinity engine games and the ah colors chosen for that Dialog Box is really easy on the eye. It's like this dark blue background with this very. 46:36.88 Bryan Oh my god. 46:50.54 Dave Kind of muted yellow text over top of it. It's um, yeah, yeah, really really easy on the eye because again you're going to however long you play 95% of that time you're going to spend reading. So. 46:51.36 Bryan Yeah, sort of a golden beige situation. Yeah. 47:05.10 Bryan Yeah, it's very true and um I guess just to camp out on the text a little bit I really did enjoy what they were doing with the text in this game in terms of how well written it is,you know the prose. 47:14.79 Dave Yeah, yeah. 47:19.97 Bryan They vacillate pretty wildly between like descriptions of um landscapes to descriptions of characters to action in say combat situations and the only thing I kind of wish they had some way of doing was differentiating those a little bit because when you get just like a gigantic wall of text when you enter a new area and it's. 47:39.81 Bryan All 5 of those different things that I just mentioned um, it's a little less easy to parse than it would be if you were reading a book right? because you do have like a scroll on the side of that big long vertical column and to your point I'm very glad they retired the infinity engine special hala planescape torment. It was just. 47:48.77 Dave Yeah. 47:58.56 Bryan Hell on the eyes. But um, this is better but at the same time still like falling short of like say a book or an e-reader in that there's no pagination. It's still got that scrolling thing and sometimes it can be a little overwhelming to keep your place and keep your thoughts straight while dealing with all of that. 48:17.82 Dave Yeah, ah the 1 thing that they do to kind of help you out if you are skimming or like looking for key information is they bold proper nouns and names. So that those stick out easily. So if you're talking to someone trying to find information about this other person. 48:35.10 Dave You see their name. You know, highlighted in that text Field. You can jump to it and then read the rest of it if you want to. However, you take in these big text boxes but the text like all of it is worth reading because it's all very well written and entertaining. Descriptive. Ah, but not like not trying to be at too high a reading level. You know like it's all easy to take in. You know. 49:03.62 Bryan Yeah, yeah I would agree with that. It's um, it's not like a game with purple prose or anything like that like it can stray into that territory. But I think the place where it lost me more than any other place is just right at the top where you're getting a ton of information very quickly and you're. 49:07.23 Dave Yeah. 49:21.55 Bryan Probably maybe expected to remember it or maybe like the Roadwarden you're expected to be overwhelmed. Um and that that works too I suppose Um, it's almost. It's interesting how it's like trying to simulate bewilderment in that way. 49:27.35 Dave Yeah, yeah. 49:35.81 Dave Yeah I would like to um, attribute that to a nice idea from the developer about how the Roadwarden would feel in that situation rather than just having a tutorial with too many proper nouns all at once you know so. Ah, other aesthetic things. The music and sound effects are two things that I really love about the game. So Let's start talking about the music. Most of the music is this kind of somber laidback acoustic guitar and piano based soundtrack. Backing sound again because you're reading all the time. So The music cannot be distracting and it's not it. It lays back in the background really nice and the choices of instruments from the acoustic guitar to like when combat kicks up, you'll get some drums and flutes and stuff that gives you that rustic. 50:13.40 Bryan Right? right. 50:28.96 Dave Wilderness type of feel to the whole thing um and 1 thing I really liked about the guitar pieces is ah it's acoustic guitar and you can hear the fingers sliding from chord to chord yep and. 50:39.63 Bryan Yeah, you can hear the sweeps I love that I was going to point out the same exact thing. 50:45.70 Dave Yeah, it's a really nice touch and it's something that gets cut out of a lot of acoustic guitar recordings and in here it just adds again that rustic well worn kind of feeling that the rest of this setting has so the music reinforces that. 50:59.60 Bryan Um, yeah I think the watchword for me on the music in this game was Moody Um, super moody all the time um to your point like occasionally kicking up with electric guitar accents in tense situations. Um, or you know more synthy accents. It's. 51:03.12 Dave Yeah, yeah. 51:16.70 Bryan It's great and I love the fact that they leave those sweeps and fingering like um I guess effects in there. You know that you know it's a live musician and that they screwed up a little bit. Um and that's ah because you're screwing up constantly in this game. So it's only fitting. 51:25.91 Dave Um, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, Absolutely yeah, um, yeah, it's It's just a. Ah, very pleasant soundtrack to have on in the background and you know I I spent the last couple days listening to it when I'm at work to get back in the mood for this recording and I just find myself just being transported back to the setting because the music is evocative in that way. 51:53.54 Bryan Um, yeah, you know what it weirdly reminds me of like um the act 1 Diablo 2 music. Um I don't know if you were big diablo 2 guy back in the day but is it sort of a similar like sort of guitar acoustic guitar but moody and. 51:59.80 Dave Okay I was not. But yeah. 52:09.19 Bryan It was a little more edgy because it was a Diablo Blizzard game but this is like the down home rustic version of that for indie games. Um, which I really appreciated and I think it's just extremely well done. Um, this is the only thing that the developer said you know. They partnered with another musician and they did not do the music themselves. Um, and I think they found a great One. So No complaints here if you're going to find a place to go out from your solo Dev roots and pull in a ringer. This was a good pull. 52:43.26 Dave Yeah, the ah musician of record on the Bandcamp page if you want to go check out this? the soundtrack is Nick Roder so shout out to them for just a fantastic backing soundtrack for all the reading you're going to do. 52:59.66 Dave This game also peppered in kind of accenting the mood and setting the scene for the places that you go are all of these nature sounds that match the place where you are So Some places you'll hear the wind through the trees. Some places you'll hear the ocean. On the Shore bird sounds insect sounds may be like the roar of a monster or something like that. Um, it's not yeah, insects are insect sounds in your ears when you're you know I'm relaxing before bed. 53:25.11 Bryan Yeah, most upsettingly those insects sound for sure. Definitely did not enjoy that. Yeah. 53:36.68 Dave Ah, just ah doing some light reading before bed. Not welcome in that situation but also in the game itself insects are bad news. Also so um, but yeah these natural sounds are not overwhelming. They just fit perfectly into this whole scene that they've set up. 53:56.41 Bryan Couldn't agree more. 54:02.47 Dave So um, so yeah, loud, We've talked about the music. Let's listen to a bit more when we come back. We will talk about what it's like to actually play this game and the Rpg choices that you make because it's not all reading. 54:21.71 Dave Yeah, Oh yeah, so Gameplay Roadwarden is all contained within dialogue and choose your adventure type choices. So No matter what is going On. You will read a text whether you're talking to somebody or just reading a descriptive text about a new Area. You've gone into and then you will have some choices of what to do whether it's dialogue trees and this is a game where you like. Sometimes I can go through all the dialogue options and get all the information. Sometimes you might say the wrong thing and that person doesn't want to talk to you anymore. So It's one of those games which I appreciate and then oftentimes when you're out in the wilderness. You'll be presented with those classic choose your adventure type scenarios. Ah you. 55:12.89 Dave Approach ah you crest over the hill and you see a monster that looks like a bear scratching up against a tree and then it'll give you 3 options for what to do? So you're welcome to try any of those things and your background goes into what types of things are available to you so Brian picks the fighter. 55:32.47 Dave I pick the scholar which has the perk of knowledge and then there's the mage Also so it would be a much better. Maybe not a good decision but a better decision for Brian to choose a sort of combat option whereas my character might have a little thing that pops up an icon that shows. My character knows something about this creature. So we click that to get a little other background and then that might give you a new choice in the tree of choices and oftentimes that choice will be like ah yeah, that thing's bad news get out of there. 56:09.82 Bryan Interestingly enough the fighter's insight was also usually that thing's bad news get the hell out of there. Um, so it was like well they're too close for my crossbow I can't really pierce its side with my axe better to run away. Um, most of the time. 56:12.87 Dave Okay, yeah, nice. 56:23.98 Bryan Better to run away is the prudent option in this game which I find ah, entertaining and fitting for the setting. 56:28.54 Dave Yeah, so we can just talk about combat situations. Now you will get in lots of sketchy situations usually against other animals and all of the combat takes place within dialogue. 56:46.60 Dave Like in the very rare combat situations in Disco elysium if you played that so combat in this game should not be taken lightly now. My experience is colored by the fact that I chose the scholar who can't fight worth shit. Ah, but. 57:03.78 Dave I was still recruited to do fighter type stuff by people around the world because they're like well you're a Roadwarden you're better than this farmer at fighting so you gotta help us and I really struggled in basically every combat situation that I got in I can. Probably count on one hand the number of monsters that I killed in my journey a lot of times. It was like that, so it'll give you options. It'll say like this thing's charging at you. What do you do? Do you swing your axe? Do you try to Dodge? Do you try to block with your armor.. What do you do? 57:24.73 Bryan Oh man. 57:41.95 Dave And a lot of times. No matter what I picked it'd be like oh you're dude, you're a fucking nerd. You can't fight this thing you swung with your axe and you missed badly. So I don't know how things have generally turned out for you. A little bit better. Maybe. 57:54.78 Bryan Yeah, yeah, a little better than that. Um, generally speaking I killed plenty of creatures and critters in my ah my playthrough. Um, there is definitely a way we'll talk about some of the more extravagant means of Animal. Ah, killing that I came across ah later on. But um now I was generally I think one of the main things that the fighter proficiency gets you is it when you I don't know if you mentioned this but each of the classes I understand has a button if you're in a situation where you can use our skill. You'll flash up. Ah for the Fighter. It's an ax. 58:27.93 Dave Yeah. 58:29.73 Bryan It'll basically like change the dialogue options that you have and in order to react to the situation usually the fighter one would gray out ones that were going to screw you because like the um, the instinct of the fighter was like well I know that's a bad idea so it would kind of point you towards the right action and then within that right action. 58:32.57 Dave Right. 58:48.26 Bryan Usually it struck me that I had a better chance to succeed either that or I was just picking the right choice. Um, it doesn't mean that like I was still largely outmatched in most of my combat situations but until the end. Um, but. 58:51.81 Dave Right. 59:05.18 Bryan It did make me feel a little bit more like I knew what I was doing in that scenario which I guess is kind of the idea behind the fighter build right. 59:08.34 Dave Ok, right? Yeah, you're your warrior's background. The way that played out for the scholar character was more often in Dialogue or in environmental scenes where you would come across a plant. 59:16.56 Bryan Okay. 59:25.84 Dave And my guy would be like oh I know what that plant is I can eat this So then now I get the dialogue option to eat it or at least highlighting that it's a good idea to actually grab that and eat it or vice versa. They would be like this is really poisonous. I should not eat this and then it will gray out the thing that says. Ah. 59:44.77 Dave Pick it up and eat it because you know if your person doesn't know anything about that. You might have that option and you might get yourself in a bad situation. But for me combat was sometimes unavoidable depending on what quest I was on. But if I had a choice at all. 01:00:03.18 Dave Usually the best choice for me was to try to run away, to maybe just tank a hit when I'm trying to run away instead of trying to fight so not to be taken lightly and I guess when you're playing with the fighters still not to be taken lightly. Again, you're not a witcher. 01:00:21.36 Bryan Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, totally I think the important thing that this game does with you know life or death situations is they are life or death. You know they don't remove the feeling of danger when you're the fighter at all which I think is a wise choice because that's central to the game. Um. 01:00:27.61 Dave Yes. 01:00:35.78 Dave Yeah, yeah. 01:00:38.67 Bryan You know they're giving you a better idea of how screwed you are which I think is actually effective. Um, but ah to that end. Um, you know, sometimes the fighter's instinct would allow me to do certain things that would earn me extra money in town. Ah you know whether it's. 01:00:41.94 Dave Yeah, yeah. 01:00:56.12 Bryan You know the ability to complete certain quests that are more combat-oriented or um, ah we'll talk about ah 1 of my favorite ways of earning money in the spoiler section but let's just say I was a bit of a gambling aficionado. Um. 01:01:06.12 Dave Um, okay, oh hell yeah, um, let's ah, let's real quick talk about those rpg type meters that you are, taking care of or like survival type meters that you're taking care of. And then we can talk about that sweet sweet economy in this game. So your character has four meters that show on the right side of your screen at all times they're your vitality which is your hit points. Ah, but also like your physical strength so low vitality means you have low. 01:01:43.63 Dave Capacity to take damage but it will also mean like if your character needs to chop down a tree. They might not have the strength to do it so you need to keep that up. Your nourishment is the next meter which is a hunger meter and you do have to eat. You need to either gather or pay for food and um. 01:02:03.12 Dave If your character is really really hungry then they will also have a harder time doing physical things. The next one is your armor meter which is just the condition of your armor and your armor is kind of like a barrier between monsters and your hit points. I just defined what armor is but like literally it's like ah it's like yeah, it's it's extra hit points basically and armor is expensive to repair if you don't like to know how to do it yourself and this is not a game with tons of gear around like you're not going to be. 01:02:25.19 Bryan It's extra hit points. Yeah. 01:02:34.85 Bryan Yeah, you're not just replacing that bad boy. 01:02:39.32 Dave No, if your armor gets damaged. It's an undertaking to get it back up to ah to strength and then the final meter is your appearance which is how clean you look, you can Obviously if you spend a bunch of time out in the woods you're going to look pretty dirty. So. 01:02:45.17 Bryan Yeah, yeah. 01:02:58.89 Dave You can bathe in water sources. You can pay for baths at inns, you can buy tooth brace toothpaste and toothbrushes. Ah, you can buy soap to wash yourself out on the road but all of that costs money. Um, and this was tough for me to keep up the appearance. But my guy was a real fucking. He was a real dirt ball out there and because of that people did not trust me right away people are much more likely to trust you on your first impression if you look good which you know can't say that they're making that up for. 01:03:21.88 Bryan Yeah. 01:03:34.66 Bryan Yeah, yeah, yeah, some aspects of this fantastical world. Ah do ring true. Um, but to that end. Ah no I Definitely hear you on that and it it kind of is you know all about keeping. 01:03:50.65 Bryan These meters up and in various ways and that appearance meter boy I drastically underestimated this for like the large first chunk of my playthrough because I was always rolling into town just covered in mud and shit and I was a mess. 01:04:03.19 Dave You're just stinking it up. Yeah. 01:04:07.10 Bryan Buying I just needed to get some soap so people wouldn't run away from my stench is kind of what it came down to um yeah I mean eventually you do learn like all right? Well I can stay in this room for a reasonable price and bathe myself and that in turn is going to let me purchase rations for a much more reasonable price. 01:04:26.18 Bryan Um, or you know not have the mayor turn up their nose at me when they first see me um and those types of things are lessons learned like maybe it's not a good idea to sleep in the stable and um. You know forage for berries instead of getting a good meal at the inn and bathing yourself even if it's your last dragon bone because you know 1 thing leads to another and you know imposter. Ah I guess the idea of ah fake it until you make it works here in ah the unnamed peninsula or the nameless peninsula. 01:04:54.16 Dave Yeah, yeah, yeah I had a hard time keeping that up. Um I like the way these are described to like every step like your ah your hit points are probably determined by your class your vitality but like your. 01:05:11.10 Dave Armor has maybe 5 notches on it and each one of them is described as to like how it looks and how well it will perform same with your vitality and your nourishment and my Roadwarden was constantly like gaunt and. Slightly physically weakened because you can get in a kind of spiral of um I got really injured out on the road. So now I need to rest to recover but resting costs money if you want to rest in a bed. 01:05:34.42 Bryan Yeah, yeah. 01:05:48.61 Dave And if you don't have enough money then you can't buy food and then if your character gets too hungry then that affects your vitality too and it can and all the while you're getting dirtier and dirtier. So it can be kind of hard to claw yourself out if you go. 01:06:00.51 Bryan Yeah I mean. 01:06:06.51 Dave All the way down into like those really low portions of those and I was able to do it but it is all kind of I think plays into the story of your character just having a real hard time out there. 01:06:17.48 Bryan Yeah, you know I think this kind of plays into what I was saying earlier about like the tutorial here being a bit difficult and long-winded. It's like it's just like a long slow slide into decrepitude and homelessness and hunger and tiredness and getting the shit kicked out of you by a few beasts here and there. 01:06:34.33 Dave Yeah, yeah. 01:06:36.38 Bryan And then eventually you figure out all the bad decisions to avoid and you start to, you know, get the snowball rolling and by the end of it. You know you're talk of the town and you know you're you're always got a full belly and well at least I don't know how this ended for you. But 01:06:49.65 Dave Yeah I I wasn't I wasn't exactly I mean I wasn't I wasn't dapper and clean I'll say that but I did yeah I did find you know reliable sources of food for cheap. My character also was able to identify wild plants that they could eat so that helped as well. 01:06:56.55 Bryan Never clean, never clean. 01:07:09.70 Dave Ah, so this all um, is enhanced. We'll say because a lot of the quick ways or maybe even the best ways to raise your vitality or fill your belly or clean yourself costs money and that ties in with I think. 01:07:28.30 Dave 1 of the most confident and best aspects of this game's design, like its economy and game economies, are not something I talk about often on the show because they're often unremarkable, but. 01:07:40.90 Bryan Okay. 01:07:43.92 Dave This is really really good. So there's a quote from this developer in an interview that they did. They said they wanted to quote every coin to have a story in this game and you think about the rpgs that you play where maybe they have randomly generated loot or otherwise. You are just swimming in money by the time you finish the game. I just recorded an episode about cyberpunk 2077 and we talked about how we had so much money at the end of the game. We're just buying cars to spend the money on something. Um, or if you think about it. A skyrim or Balder's gate 3 or something like that. It feels like every container you open has a couple of coins in it. This is not like that it is a low numbers economy where money is scarce and you have to work for every coin that you have and I think. At my richest point in my entire playthrough I had like 15 dragons. They call them in the game. You're yeah, you've you already? ah established you were doing a little hustling in the card games or the dice games. 01:08:43.72 Bryan Yeah, okay I mean I had slightly more than that I'll just say but. 01:08:55.70 Bryan Axe throwing actually but we'll come back to that? Um, but um, yeah I do agree with you in that this game doesn't have sort of the degenerative mechanics-based economy that would allow you to like sell all of your iron daggers in Skyrim and suddenly become a. 01:08:56.60 Dave Axe throwing. Okay. 01:09:11.43 Dave Yeah, the richest person in the game. Yeah. 01:09:12.12 Bryan You know, millionaire. Um, but yeah, yeah, it is just ah, it is not. It has hard limits on the types of things you can make money off of and in the amount of money that's going to be available to you and um I think most crucially the logic is consistent with how much things are worth and how much you're going to get for stuff. 01:09:29.16 Dave Yeah. 01:09:31.32 Bryan Um, you can't just pick up some junk off the ground and you know go sell it and slowly but surely attain your way to being rich. Um, you've got to actually come across things that are valuable to others. You can't just sell the muddy clothes you picked off a bandit for you know, 5 gold here or 5 gold there. You got to get it. 01:09:46.56 Dave Right. 01:09:49.30 Bryan Actual stuff that people can use. No One's going to take a dead man's dirty rags. Um, and this game respects that um it if you know has consistency in the way that it's dealing with the lived reality of the world and how um you know, not necessarily that it's impossible to become rich which would be probably more consistent. But.. It's very difficult to become wealthy in this game and you kind of have to have some insider knowledge to do so which I think does track a little bit more with reality. 01:10:16.48 Dave Yeah, there were certain points where I felt like I was living large with my fifteen coins and then there were other points where I had nothing and I had to you know, put the road war inquests and like all of the. You know dozens of side quests that you pick up put that all on hold and it's just like I have to just help this fishing village I have to help them fish for a couple days because I will I will starve if I can't make four coins. So I think that that level of like commitment to. This kind of low numbers economy really helps again that that storytelling of your road ward in here because I love the fact that you might pick something up. It might not even be garbage. It might be like a dagger or some crossbow bolts or something and like my guy couldn't fight. So I did IT never even found a crossbow. I could have bought one but it was really expensive. That's another thing like nice things are expensive compared to how much money you make doing quests or maybe if you find money out in the world. You're you're not going to find like a. You know a box that has thirty five coins in it it's just not going to happen in this game. So yeah, okay, fair enough I did not so maybe you have something that you think is valuable. 01:11:33.82 Bryan Well oh. 01:11:46.53 Dave But if you try to sell it to someone who has no use for Crossbow bolts. They will not. They'll just straight up. They won't buy it from you like the innkeeper will just say I have no use for this. I'm not buying it. Come back when you have something I need and I really like that commitment because. 01:12:04.27 Dave When you do find something like a fur pelt or something that you think that innkeeper might actually use and you take it back and they're like oh hell yeah I'll give you 10 coins for that and you're like awesome I I that's I awesome I have food in my belly for the next like yeah two weeks 01:12:17.37 Bryan Yeah, it is a windfall. Yeah, you've you've taken that worry off my shoulders for a little while and um, yeah I think what I really do like about this game is it's not afraid to have like. 01:12:23.41 Dave Awesome! yeah. 01:12:31.54 Bryan Small scale value arbitrage. Be a thing right? to your point you can buy some iron scraps in 1 village and sell them in another and it will be a slight profit for you because it's rarer in that part of the peninsula to find some iron you know, um and I appreciate that it is extremely small potatoes in terms of like. You're not going to get rich doing it but you might have enough to like make your trip on the way to wherever you're going worthwhile and pay your way there effectively and um, early on that makes or breaks it right? like that's the difference between sleep and in the inn and and the stable. Um. 01:13:06.32 Dave Yeah. 01:13:08.85 Bryan And and that's a big deal because as we talked about all of those meters are riding on it and those meters are going to affect how the people in the next town see you and then you know it just all keeps going from there and everything in this game is so wonderfully interconnected and the economy is like the centerpiece of it like everything kind of. 01:13:13.73 Dave No. 01:13:26.84 Bryan I wouldn't say hangs off of it because everything hangs off the text in the world building but like it affects everything which I think is a really elegant thing to be able to say about a visual novel that its economy affects everything in it and. 01:13:37.25 Dave Yeah, and I think that the developer accomplished that goal of having every coin have a story. Maybe let's say I'm going to buy a new axe. 01:13:51.15 Bryan Yes, 15 if you stink. 01:13:52.62 Dave Or something and it costs like twelve coins or something which is a lot. It's a lot of money in this game. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, they give you the clean shaven discount but let's say I'm going to spend those twelve coins I could probably at that point in the game reasonably. 01:14:04.52 Bryan That's right. 01:14:11.85 Dave Remember where I got those coins. It's like okay I got some coins for helping the fishing village I Found a couple out in a you know I took them from a sacrificial altar out in the forest and we'll we'll see if that comes to bite me in the ass later but I needed the money so I took it or um I helped out the town. 01:14:31.53 Dave Ah, with some monsters so they gave me some money I helped some people move some downed trees out of the road so they gave me some money and then all of those things were an undertaking and you had to choose to do those things and a lot of times you're choosing to do those because you need the two coins 01:14:49.35 Bryan Right. 01:14:51.41 Dave So I think I Really like that goal and I really think they pulled it off and it's just so different from how game economies usually function that it's super notable. Once you realize how this is working. 01:15:06.48 Bryan Yeah, totally agree there? um it kept everything grounded and it made every reward feel meaningful. Um, and that continued for the whole game. No matter how rich I felt, even what I noticed is easy come, easy go. Usually following a large windfall. There would be a. 01:15:18.91 Dave Yeah, yeah. 01:15:24.26 Bryan Large debit in my future so to speak. Um, and I think that's very much by design in this game. Um, they're wanting you to sort of walk that razor's edge and they do a pretty good job. No matter how comfortable you feel keeping it that way. 01:15:38.14 Dave Yeah, you also get in that mentality if you're struggling for money for a while if you do hit one of those windfalls and you're like oh suddenly I have fifteen coins when previously I topped out at 3 well I'm going to go spend some stuff yet I'm going to sleep in the inn and I'm going to have a. Bath and I're going to have a feast and I'm going to buy a new thing at the store and suddenly I have two coins again and that happened to me a couple times too. Yeah, so it plays into the character in the story of your Roadwarden who's struggled out in the woods and then got to live it up for a couple nights. 01:16:02.59 Bryan But you got a new thing. Yeah. 01:16:15.53 Dave And then found himself struggling out in the woods once more? Yeah yeah, absolutely. 01:16:18.58 Bryan That's all right? Your paycheck to Paycheck Roadwardden Ah man you know it's interesting like I. I've played a few games like this that have done sort of the visual novel thing and combined it with mechanics I'm thinking of like sunless seas and um. 01:16:32.65 Dave Oh yeah. 01:16:34.46 Bryan You know the sorcery series on Ios but um to my mind like this one has the best economy of the bunch. You know most of those games like when they layer in the Rpg elements there. It's more in service of survival or combat or quests of some sort. Um. 01:16:52.42 Dave Um, yeah. 01:16:52.98 Bryan And this one I think is the best drawn economy in terms of having that specific mechanic present. 01:16:59.90 Dave Yeah I really want to play Sunless seas or skies again and do it on the podcast. That's another one of the good Rpg mechanics. Fantastic writing and worldbuilding in those. But yeah. 01:17:12.34 Bryan Oh yeah, for sure. Yeah I'm with you there. That's ah, that's a backlogger for me as well. Yeah. 01:17:19.88 Dave Well, we may have a date in the future. Um, so like all of these gameplay things that we've brought up and in story things too with this this time limit on how much time you can spend out in the Peninsula. Ah, the fact that you're not going to be able to do everything. The fact that you might choose to do things that end up being dead ends or end up not turning out the way you want you can fail quests. Ah you can go on the quest and choose poorly and things don't go well and ah. You might get fucked over the people you with might fail and what they're you're with or might fail and what they're trying to do um and then limiting this economy to like this. Ah this feeling I guess for me for most of the game of scraping and scrounging and doing odd jobs and wasting my time. Just trying to make enough money to get some food. These are all really confident decisions by the developer here that ah they are points of friction that a lot of video games. Don't want you to have a lot of video games might want you to feel like you. Need more money but you're going to find more money like easily just go check the next barrel you find you'll find some money in there. Um, a lot of games won't let you fail quests in the way that this game will let you fail quests or have them turn out so poorly compared to how you hoped they would go. 01:18:53.24 Dave And a lot of games don't have this time limit. So. It's like really really confident in all directions, like the design of what you're doing and how everything can turn out and I really really respect the commitment to these things that people might find. Like friction points. 01:19:11.83 Bryan Yeah I think ah I would add 1 thing to that and that this is a game where the word responsibility um lays heavily on my I mind when I think about all the actions that I'm taking on it like I'm responsible obviously for my Roadwarden's actions and they have to deal with the repercussions of that. 01:19:26.23 Dave Yeah. 01:19:28.38 Bryan But you're also responsible in some ways or another for all of the fate of these various settlements and the people within them in the peninsula because you know you are the and the protagonist you're the main mover and shaker. There are others in there. But you're kind of responsible for the fate of all the people here you know by the end of the story And. Ah, the way that you turn out and all of those people turn out and how well drawn all of it is and how much it feels consistent and not like in a video gamey the chosen one way but in like yeah, that's just kind of this guy came in and a bunch of shit happened. Um it. It. You know it. 01:20:00.67 Dave Yeah, yeah. 01:20:04.93 Bryan It makes sense the feeling of responsibility it puts on your shoulders and I ah I Really think that that is a well-drawn aspect of it as well. 01:20:13.55 Dave Yeah, absolutely um, all of those choices that you make, all of the people you choose to support, maybe in their ventures against other people who you may like or dislike, all of those can turn out in a lot of different ways. And for me personally some turned out really well. Some did not and those ones that didn't turn out well were shocks because again, it's just I don't know I really liked cyber punk Twenty seventy seven but like. The choices that I as a player made in that game did not really affect the fate of these villages and people with a few very notable exceptions and that's kind of how a lot of games end up working but you when you finish Roadwarden. 01:20:53.48 Bryan Yeah. Yeah night 01:21:03.00 Dave You have left your mark on this place for good or bad and it all in between. Yeah yeah, yeah. 01:21:09.58 Bryan Yeah, Night City is still going to be there regardless of the the actions of Cyberpunk 2077 um there there are whole swaths of the peninsula that well, we'll just leave that for the spoiler section. 01:21:23.42 Dave Yes, So ah, let us do that kind of wrap up and a recommendation and housekeeping before that Spoiler section. So um, if you have any wrap up thoughts about Roadwarden Let's lay those out there but also. What type of person would you recommend to play this game? 01:21:40.84 Bryan Yeah I think at the end of the day I would recommend Roadwarden to fans of immersive world building as I mentioned a couple times this game didn't draw me in at first. But when it really drew me in and I'm not a visual novel guy by any means. Um it drew me in because of its immersive world. Am an immersive world guy. You know your marwins your um your soul's games the more background information and lore and interesting world building that a game can throw at me the happier I will be to immerse myself deeper into it and that really was the thing that that pulled me through Roadwarden. Um, and I would recommend it heartily to folks that are fans of immersive worldbuilding. 01:22:20.98 Dave Yeah, absolutely fans of tabletop rpgs and fans of games with lots of writing, lots of reading on your part and some writing on your part. 01:22:37.00 Bryan And right right. 01:22:38.98 Dave Ah, this is ah like 1 of the easiest recommendations if you like you know tabletop Esque Rpg systems but mostly if you're somebody that needs to be doing action combat stuff like that. This game has none of that and thus might not be for you. But if you are at all open to a game that is 100 % reading and that choose your own adventure aspect to it then I can't recommend this highly enough. it's fantastic the world that was built by the characters that inhabit it. Um, and then the personalized ways that you leave your Mark on the place are all really really well done. So this was an absolute joy to play to read and um, once we get in the spoiler section to talk about our experiences in this place. Ah, because there's a lot of different ways that this can go so easily. We will stop for now. We'll do a little bit of housekeeping before we get into spoilers so stick around everybody. So Brian tell everybody about pixelated playgrounds and what you've got going on on the show lately. 01:23:52.62 Bryan Oh yeah, so pixelated playgrounds is a gaming book club podcast discussing the art and craft of video games. So we pick a book or sorry a book a we pick two games a month generally speaking and we'll do a deep dive. All spoilers are fair game. Um. 01:24:12.41 Bryan Ah, do critical analysis of mechanics themes and story the interplay between the 3 and usually that is myself. My co-host Josh my co-host clint some combination of the 3 of us in there. Um, we've been doing it for going on 120 episodes now at that clip. So you know, solid. Four ish year something like that and um, you know we're having a good time with it. Um, hope you decide to listen if you want to start listening pick a game you like ah listen to what we have to say about it and see what you think um. 01:24:46.17 Bryan As far as what's come out lately. We did do a podcast on game of the year 2023 Baldur’s Gate 3 and game of the year 2023 Tears of the Kingdom. So we got them both baby? Um, check them out. 01:24:52.57 Dave Ah, ah, right? Yep also ah, one of my favorite games from last year which at the time of recording I think is the most recent episode they came out a really good one to ah to discuss. 01:25:11.97 Dave Ah, some others that have come out recently looking at the list of episodes Dave the diver ah Balder's gate two as the ah the quest to play the baldur's gate games leading up to Baldur's gate 3 um, the last of us part 2 and then lots of smaller indie games on here too. So it's not all the. 01:25:25.24 Bryan Oh yeah. 01:25:30.49 Dave Ah, you know we'll take the top 5 from the game awards and we'll play those. It's not that other stuff that I've discovered through your show like Mosa Lina which sounds like a really really ah, interesting game. Yeah. 01:25:32.95 Bryan Yeah, yeah. 01:25:41.97 Bryan Yeah, thank you for that, Mosa Lina, we did The Looker to um, a free 1 hour long satire of ah the the witness which is hilarious and great. Um, so yeah, obviously you know I was highlighting some games that everyone may recognize. But if you're a fan of indies and. 01:26:01.90 Bryan Fan of stuff more off the beaten path obviously ah head over there's one hundred and twenty some games there take your pick. 01:26:08.55 Dave Yep, well worth your time and it's a podcast that I get excited every time I see a new episode pop up in the feed. So highly recommended and um, check down in the show notes for easy links to find pixelated playgrounds. And yeah, if you want to support this show. 01:26:11.53 Bryan Oh thank you? so. 01:26:26.25 Dave Ah, ratings and reviews are helpful. People are looking for podcasts about Roadwarden, a rating and a review will help this one come up in the search results more often which is what we want and you can join the discord server. This is actually a great game for ah. Communities to come together and share their experiences. We have a wonderful community in our discord server. There's an invite link down in the show notes and if you've played Roadwarden come on in and tell us about your wild adventures and misadventures on the peninsula. I would be really happy to hear those. You can also listen to my other show. Which is called a top 3 podcast where we do top 3 lists of some recent episodes as ah, we're recording this. We did the top 3 things we wanted to be growing up talking about are realistic and very unrealistic childhood dreams that was a really fun episode. And we also do drafts. We recently drafted the best candy for the movie theater and stuff like that so that one is more of a comedy show and I have a good time doing it. I think you'll have a good time listening and last but not least if you want to support this show monetarily. 01:27:38.11 Dave You can do that at patreon.com/realdavejackson where you will get to vote in polls for what games I do on the show. There's some bonus episodes every now and then and lots of good treats. So ah, the support is always appreciated if not that's cool. Keep on listening. We love that too. So. 01:27:56.27 Dave We are going to take a break and when we come back. It's full spoiler time for Roadwarden 01:28:59.44 Dave Okay, Bryan and I are back in its full spoiler time for Roadwarden and this is ah this is an interesting game. There is no set chronological sequence of events that everyone's going to do in the same order. So like. Things that can only be discovered late game. We'll talk about those a little bit later but everything else is going to come up in the order that we did them. So if you yeah left for me. Yeah I think they told me that was the safest option. So um. 01:29:20.72 Bryan First choice right? or left. Yeah yeah, left for me too. 01:29:32.70 Dave 1 Ah, 1 quick thing I wanted to just get out there in case anyone was wondering because I started to get curious as we're doing the non spoiler section. What happens if you just don't go at the end of the forty days so I looked that up did you do you test this. 01:29:47.78 Bryan No I didn't I left it like 38 thirty nine days like I was like well I'm not doing any of this stuff that's left so tulia you and me are heading home. Let's go. 01:29:51.57 Dave Yeah. 01:29:58.95 Dave Yep, so you'll eventually ah one of the characters will kind of be waiting for you to help escort you back to the city when you're ready to go and for most people we'll probably be around day thirty Eight thirty nine something like that. Um. 01:30:13.93 Bryan But it comes early like right like you can do it after day Twenty I think. 01:30:15.73 Dave The answer is a little. Yeah yeah, you can go home pretty early if you feel like you've accomplished what you want to accomplish? Um, yeah, a couple times when ah things don't go your way and you are you like? yeah you know what fuck this I'm going home. Yeah, um. 01:30:24.32 Bryan Um, honestly I thought about it. 01:30:28.93 Bryan Yeah, fuck this shit. Yeah I definitely thought about it. Yeah. 01:30:35.11 Dave It's a little underwhelming what happens, you just are automatically transported back and Tulia takes you back home. So I was hoping that you could ah either like you get stuck out there and you die and there's like a written ending for that happening or. 01:30:54.10 Dave Ah, maybe like a secret ending that you didn't know was possible where your Roadwarden decides to just fuck off into the peninsula and live there which I was of the ways that my story went was one of the more disappointing things about it which was that that that was not an option. 01:30:59.55 Bryan Into wilderness. Yeah sure. 01:31:10.91 Bryan Oh it is like you can settle you can settle in any of the villages as I understand it I was not able to do so because I pissed everyone off enough that that. Yeah yeah. 01:31:12.69 Dave For my care is it. Can you. Okay, you have to so you have to get them to like you enough to let you stay there. Okay well fair enough then. 01:31:28.45 Bryan Yeah, that you are able to settle and I I don't know if we talked. We talked a little bit about this is you get to sort of choose your own personal main quest up top. Whether it's like getting rich or becoming a folk hero or starting a new life I Chose to start a new life because I like all right that sounds nice, starting a new life. Um. 01:31:38.00 Dave Oh right? yeah. 01:31:45.33 Dave Yeah, kind of like the ah like the Firewatch guy starting a new life. Yeah. 01:31:47.88 Bryan Yeah, exactly and apparently the way to win that Quest is to settle in one of the towns and I failed my main quest if it wasn't apparent already. But hey you know what I think is an interesting story. So I'm going to keep rolling with it. 01:31:55.57 Dave Um, and ok, yeah, interesting. I Never thought of that as a main quest. I always thought of that as part of your character's background. But I. 01:32:08.34 Bryan Yeah, but it's in your journal. 01:32:12.41 Dave Yeah I guess I never I Still never thought of it that way I thought of it more as character Backstory you know like why is my guy taking the job as the Roadwarden. So um I think it was to start a new life. But I don't remember. Yeah. 01:32:17.43 Bryan Yeah, yeah, what was yours? 01:32:30.18 Bryan Yeah I guess it doesn't really matter because you're going to end up doing what you're going to do either way I think it's kind of funny that the game asks you to choose why you are coming out here in the first place and quickly goes out the fucking window. Um like that that kind of actually tracks perfectly with this game story. So. 01:32:30.96 Dave Not sure. 01:32:43.59 Dave Yeah, so I guess I failed that quest because I was not presented with any option to stay anywhere. Not that everyone hated me but apparently nobody loved me that much to let me stay. There were. 01:33:00.39 Bryan Um I think I would start to get to the point where people liked me and then I would do something that would piss them off um many examples of that actually. 01:33:05.48 Dave Um, yeah I think there's only a couple characters that I would say really like to me one of them was that druid in the Cave I did everything with him including giving up. 01:33:22.10 Dave Ah, two full health bars worth of blood to the Pagan statue in order to cure the plague. So yeah. 01:33:29.26 Bryan Okay, so you went the blood route too. Yeah, um I did that I also ah yeah so I guess a little backstory for the listeners. One of the town's old Pagos I think that's how it was pronounced is ah stricken by a plague when you start off the ah the campaign and you. 01:33:39.10 Dave Yep. 01:33:45.77 Bryan Can cure it as you find out by getting a seed from an ancient tree called the beholder that sits in a swamp and to do so you can sacrifice either Pneuma Aka Magic or blood which contains Pneuma and since I was a fighter at no pneuma. 01:34:04.77 Bryan Guess it was blood for me. 01:34:05.68 Dave Yeah I You can also use magic items for that. So I had. 01:34:08.55 Bryan Yeah I did one magic item or or 2 But for the most part for me it was I pay my blood tax every time I walked by. 01:34:16.18 Dave Yeah, so I tried with that one. There is the I forget how there's a sorceress that lives out in like the far East side of the map. She has the golems around did so. 01:34:30.51 Bryan Yeah, yeah I was tight with her. 01:34:35.60 Dave Ah, she gave me the quest to go put up her rods around the world and I felt very uneasy about what she would do if I did that. So I sacrificed like 3 or 4 of those rods to the beholder. Because it wanted magic items and I was like you know what? This seems like a bad idea to give her free reign with her golems around the whole peninsula so that was not enough. I still had to do like two full health bars worth of blood in order to get enough magic but I cured the plague so that druid guy. 01:35:05.70 Bryan Yeah. 01:35:11.74 Dave Really liked me afterwards. He let me come inside the cave and he introduced me to his Bedridden wife and I don't know that he would have ever invited me to live in the cave with them. But if anyone on the Peninsula liked me enough to do it. It was going to be that guy. 01:35:27.20 Bryan Yeah, sadly I don't think there's room in the cave. Um I think it had to be a city as far as I'm aware. But um, now I'm with you there I actually sacrificed a couple of those rods as well. But no, I planted the rest of them and I said go for it. Take your golem army and March across the peninsula for the most part and that netted me some. 01:35:28.70 Dave Yeah, yeah. 01:35:40.40 Dave Okay, so what does she do with that? 01:35:44.86 Bryan Ah, it nets you some dragon bones for sure you get like ah you get like 12 gold I guess 2 for each of the rods you place. So um, that was a windfall for me. Um, and nothing really happens to it like there's as far as I'm aware no like at least in my case, there was no further like um. 01:36:04.17 Bryan Ramifications aside from she started taking better care of the Eastern road So I could traverse the Eastern Road even faster. Um, so that was helpful. A lot of the things that you do quest in this game are like scout this path, improve that path and as you improve and. 01:36:10.26 Dave Okay. 01:36:17.83 Dave Yeah. 01:36:21.65 Bryan Scout these paths like you will be able to travel them faster and we didn't mention this up top. But the whole map is basically a big circle right? So you're going to the various locations on the circle in their towns. There are ah. 01:36:29.33 Dave Um, yeah. 01:36:35.43 Bryan Points of interest and then in the center. There's this dense forest that no one goes and you can go if you want to, but it's probably going to screw you so your life up for a bit I did. Yeah um you you eventually have to go through there to try and find a bandit leader who's hiding out in there. 01:36:41.42 Dave Yeah, did you go through that center path? 01:36:52.25 Bryan Um, I was able to find her. I yeah you know I knew she was in there and so I kept like every time I had a full health bar and a free day I'd go into the center. There's like a cairn in the center and eventually it was like I talked to enough people somewhere that it was like you got to go north from the cairn bro. 01:36:52.68 Dave Um, oh you found her, I never found her. 01:37:11.37 Bryan And so um I found out that he could go north from the cairn and there there was the the bandit camp um with Glaucia the bandit leader and she um. 01:37:19.20 Dave Right. 01:37:23.58 Bryan I didn't have much to talk to her about because I was like really near the end of my playthrough like early on I think there were things I could have done for her like she's really anti-necromancy but I had already like ah solved that problem quote unquote I don't know how you dealt with the necromancers. But. 01:37:37.70 Dave Um, okay, yeah, okay so um, yeah, so I never found Glaucia. I figured that there was more in that center path but I never felt comfortable going through there. 01:37:40.41 Bryan I was a bit of ah, a hard ass with them. 01:37:54.43 Dave And the 1 time I did actually make it through the entire time. It got really hairy. My guy got really busted up. It was just a bad situation. He like you like you can imagine him limping out of the forest and into the ah the in that's up at the top right? corner foggies in up there. So. 01:38:13.80 Dave With the necromancers. Um I got the mayor of Howler's dell on my side to like round up a posse and go try and take them out. Um, but. Ah, I tried to stop them from killing everybody. 01:38:34.55 Bryan There We go all good. 01:38:38.27 Dave I tried to stop them from killing everybody like I like one last second change of heart whereas like wait wait I can talk them out of that I can talk them down and I yeah and then the arrested development narrator says and he could not talk them down and so. 01:38:48.31 Bryan You tried to talk bandits out of banditing. 01:38:57.95 Dave The crew from howler's dell went in and just stole everything from all the people living in the village and then they were like yeah sucks to suck loser and then left me behind so I lost Howler's dell because I kind of changed my mind at the last minute. 01:39:09.91 Bryan Yeah. 01:39:17.81 Dave And I didn't solve the necromancy problem because they didn't kill the undead there. They just stole from the people there so complete failure on both sides. Yeah. 01:39:24.26 Bryan Oh man, that's the worst of all possible worlds. Yeah, so that that played out slightly differently for me I also rounded up enough allies to go take out the ah the undead situation in white marshes. Um, but I. 01:39:36.36 Dave Yeah. 01:39:40.38 Bryan Had enough people to succeed so we took out the necromancer there. We imprisoned him in the village of white marshes henceforth hated my ass um completely wasn't ever allowed back there again? Um, but when they started stealing stuff. Um, ah you know. 01:39:53.16 Dave Yep. 01:39:57.81 Bryan Discretion is the better part of valor for my fighter apparently because I just said well I don't like this but don't hurt anyone and let's get out of here before you know too much bad stuff goes down and um, that turned out you know, not necessarily morally correct, but certainly. 01:40:06.36 Dave Okay. 01:40:16.20 Bryan Kept the bridge I had at howlers dell intact so to speak. 01:40:18.75 Dave Okay, so there must have been a dialogue choice or something like when they started stealing stuff I tried to be like hey stop it or all you know or else and they were like. Okay, yeah, yeah, exactly yeah I'll have a right? a. 01:40:28.86 Bryan Or else or else my scholarly ass will read to you or something. 01:40:36.82 Dave Strongly worded poem about you all or something. Um, so yeah that that went really poorly and um, this is like 1 of many situations where I started to get the sense. Um, that. Not only is my main quest immoral. In a way to basically cause all this commotion and colonize this place help colonize and ah you you get the sense that like yes, the people living there. Their lives might be safer from the monsters. But how long is that going to last really like. 01:41:13.37 Bryan Yeah, yeah. 01:41:16.10 Dave Safety from the monsters and then like safety from these colonizers. How long is that going to last? So I got the feeling fairly early on that the Roadwarden's job is not a noble One. You might help people along the way. But overall you are doing harm to this place. And then Also yeah and then also along the way I hurt a lot of people so I made a lot of people's lives worse through the choices like I was trying to do the right thing in white marshes. But. 01:41:33.80 Bryan He's an agent. Yeah, he's an agent of empire at the end of the day. 01:41:51.91 Dave By like trying to talk them out of raising the village and stealing and all of that. But before that I had gathered a posse and by the time we got to that point it was out of my control I could have not gathered up the posse and tried to solve that a different way but through the choices I made. 01:42:00.97 Bryan Yeah. 01:42:10.00 Dave I Made everyone's life there worse and worse than it already was because they have zombies walking around their town who could turn at any moment you know. 01:42:21.39 Bryan So I think it's interesting What you say about that and and you know I think I am in the same boat as you like I was fairly certain from the jump that like my quest quote unquote as the Roadwarden was not a noble one. Um, you know as I said you're an agent of And. Ah, a large empire that at the end of the day wants this place conquered, it wants it tamed , it wants its riches. Um, yeah, it wants to exploit the Peninsula and um, you know you're you're going to have to just contend with that.. There's really no playing this game that. 01:42:57.17 Bryan Doesn't accomplish that like however you return from the Peninsula you are giving the empire information. There's no option as far as I'm aware to just not give the empire the information that you get unless you're settling there and just not returning which I didn't get that option and clearly you didn't either. So. 01:43:02.21 Dave Yeah, yeah. 01:43:14.84 Dave Right? That was another um, slight thing I wished for at the end. I wished for the opportunity to lie to your employers about what you found? Ah, but you don't even get a choice. You don't get a. 01:43:30.44 Dave You don't get a conversation or a dialogue with anyone there. You just go back home and then you get a results screen of how things played out. 01:43:36.24 Bryan Yeah I mean you do get you? Well I don't know if you got this but I got the that I got a dialogue choice at some point in there about like where to start like where do you think the empire should go first where should hovlaven send its emissaries to be in with and yeah, so. 01:43:49.65 Dave Um, okay yeah I might have forgotten that? yeah. 01:43:53.96 Bryan I chose hollerstell because ah um I knew the mayor was a piece of shit and but I also knew that like she wanted that. Um you know ties the mayor there who is ah the stereotypical 2 two-faced mayor you know, very sweet upfront cordial and then like. 01:43:58.62 Dave Yeah. 01:44:13.91 Bryan Very treacherous Once you realize all the stuff that has gone down in the past and like how she conducts herself and her guards in her town. Um, it's very much like a um, all's on the up and up by day. But then it has a seedy sort of underbelly situation. Not even like in the underworld of the town but just like behind closed doors. People are scared of her. You know she has a gang of thugs at her disposal. Um, and I did yeah over in the fishing village and um I decided to hide her existence from. 01:44:36.71 Dave Um, yeah, yeah, did you meet her daughter? 01:44:52.40 Bryan Ah ties the mayor and says like hey I'm going to give you till fall to do what you got to do and she became an ally of mine and she came on with me on my expedition actually to go find the old Roadwarden yeah. 01:44:53.76 Dave Yep. 01:45:02.86 Dave Oh nice. Ok, um, she I hid her presence from the Mayor Also ah but she did not partner up with me and it's maybe just because I never went back to talk with her I felt like we had a kind of. 01:45:18.40 Dave It's like because there's a landslide that's kind of separating her from the rest of civilization but also protecting her from other people and possibly monsters out there. I cleared the landslide. So I you know it's like I busted a hole in the side of her house and then. 01:45:20.44 Bryan Yeah. 01:45:36.41 Dave Like slowly back to my way out and was just like okay I won't tell anybody about you so she was not my friend and that was another situation where I left feeling like I had done the wrong thing for her for exposing her to. Extra danger because I think she does say something to you about like well that landslide was keeping the monsters out now I'm in you know more danger here so that I was like ok I won't tell your mom about you which I don't know not her mom thinks that she's dead. 01:46:11.19 Bryan Yeah. 01:46:13.18 Dave So am I doing a real good here by not helping this mother find her daughter right? She left for a reason. Um. 01:46:17.52 Bryan Well clearly she left her reason right? like those 2 are not on good terms I think that like the good ending in this situation provided that the daughter I think her name was like um it started with an a was like Aurelia or something like that. Um, if she. If she was a good person and again I didn't like a full sketch of her character because I had very brief interactions. She seemed solid. I think the good ending would have been for her to go back and usurp the village from her mom the mayor um, but I don't think there's. I don't think that's an option. It wasn't one that I was able to get to. But um, first. 01:46:42.16 Dave Oh. Now Oh in the end of that particular story for me was that she did eventually go back to reunite with her mom. But shortly after she left to go live with the druids again. So yep. 01:47:03.36 Bryan Yeah, it didn't work out I Guess um yeah, it's interesting. Um I that whole situation with Howler still like I think that's definitely like for me that was the area where I had the most. Um. 01:47:17.19 Bryan Action happening in my playthrough was in and around howlers still and like the pelt of the north. The first is that you come across and then like I guess a third would be foggies lake up north. That foggy lake was a solid spot foggy I think is probably 1 of my favorite characters in the game just like the 1 armed badass warrior lady who owns a very cool character. 01:47:32.43 Dave Yeah, she's fun. 01:47:39.69 Dave Yeah, yeah, yeah, um I spent a lot of time on that Eastern Road like South of Foggies clearing that up like I did everything out there so they did. 01:47:51.74 Bryan Um, so the Creeks people probably loved you. 01:47:56.22 Dave I was not able to find the hunters that went missing out there. Yeah I found one and I think he was dead but I don't remember exactly where I found them. But um. 01:47:57.75 Bryan Yeah I found one of them that was all I was ever able to find and like yep, same with center the one in the forest or. 01:48:12.38 Dave Yeah, they were dead So the other two never found them. I assumed that they were in that middle section of the map but it was okay. 01:48:18.94 Bryan Yeah, yeah, the one that I found wasn't that middle section and they were dead. But um, yeah I liked that creeks is a funny place so it's basically like a hippie commune where there's just a bunch of nude people swimming in a lake and they're like. 01:48:29.32 Dave Yes, just hanging out. Yeah. 01:48:33.10 Bryan Yeah, they're just sort of farm sometimes hunt sometimes and nooted up on the reg. But um, yeah in my playthrough like even though I cleared up the whole eastern road and supposedly reinvigorated their economy. They were the first settlement to wither and die when the empire came through. 01:48:49.57 Dave Yep, same here they did not survive at all. Um and it was interesting because they, like the other people around, talked about the leadership in Creeks and how it's like they're too young. They're not seasoned. They don't really know what they're doing up there. 01:48:51.18 Bryan Yeah. 01:49:04.43 Dave And I hung out there a lot because they're next to Foggy's place and I was like these people are cool. They're chill and then yeah everyone else was right? They didn't make it. So yeah, um. 01:49:12.50 Bryan They didn't know what they were doing. Yeah, it turns out ties did in my playthrough because I I told them to go to hollers still first back in Hovel and she got rich. She was happy. Um, so yeah and Old Pagos survived. 01:49:28.19 Bryan That area did well because I know it cured the plague. What I think we didn't talk about about Old Pagos is they also have monks living nearby that like to live in a hollowed out mountain that they turned into a library. They carved a library on the inside of a mountain very badass. 01:49:28.40 Dave Yep. 01:49:38.70 Dave Yeah, super cool. Yeah I couldn't do much with them every time I went there I know like I think the first time I went there. 01:49:46.27 Bryan You were a scholar. 01:49:54.57 Dave They were really concerned about something else happening on the peninsula and they were like don't don't talk to us. There's this bigger thing happening or something like that. Um, and then I think I was able to go back later and talk with them but it was just like a nice conversation and it wasn't related to any quest that I had. 01:49:58.48 Bryan Ah, now man. 01:50:13.36 Dave And so I left because I don't know about you but maybe the middle third was busy because I was collecting quests or sorry the opening third the middle third was a struggle. 01:50:17.25 Bryan The pain. 01:50:23.10 Bryan Yeah, yeah. 01:50:32.75 Dave So I spent a lot of those middle days just resting or doing odd jobs around the towns and then the last third was a rush to try to get stuff done and ah there were a lot of big things that I did not do. Because I just ran out of time. 01:50:53.30 Bryan I feel like it was a struggle early on for me which I think is a universal aspect of these playthroughs but then at some point I got my feet under me enough by like here's the thing that I did literally every day and every time I passed. Ah the. 01:50:57.66 Dave Yeah. 01:51:07.96 Bryan Pelt of the north was I threw axes with the guards and that would just snap me 3 bones every time because I could throw axes like nobody's business. Ah yeah, so it was nice to just always know I had ah 3 gold a day coming my way as long as I passed the pelt of the north. Um, but. 01:51:10.74 Dave Nice, Yeah, the warrior this scholar couldn't couldn't do anything like that. 01:51:22.35 Dave Yeah I spent a lot of time like probably 10 to 15 in game days just doing stuff on that eastern road not even really maybe there's like 2 quests that are involved with that. But just traveling up and down that road start at foggies go do stuff on the road, sleep at pelt of the north and the next day go back up the other way and that took so much time and then a couple that with the several days that I just spent fishing up at that fishing village for. 01:51:59.89 Dave Just for money because I needed money to pay Foggy for food because Foggy had the best food deal on the peninsula. Um, so it was a real rush at the end and I think 2 of the intended late game storylines. Ah. 01:52:16.74 Dave You're supposed to make progress with which is the tribe of the green mountain and then finding Asterion I couldn't finish either of those. 01:52:22.95 Bryan Okay, so I found the tribe of the green mountain and they I never really got much out of them like for what's worth one of those leads to the other right finding the tribe of the green mountain is they're the last place that aster in. Ah, by the way, Asterion is the former Roadwarden for the listener. Um, although if you're in the spoiler section. You know that? um asterrian you know the vampire from Baldur's Gate 3 um he was a Roadwarden once? Um, but at any rate. Yeah so you get to the tribe of the green mountain. They eventually tell you that he went to High Island. 01:52:40.10 Dave Right? Yeah, yeah, right? um. 01:52:58.63 Bryan Um, which sounds like a dank place. Um, and um, they're like we don't go there anymore. It's all wild. It's crazy something happened there. Um I don't even know really why he went there I never quite suss that out I think um I don't know maybe I. 01:52:59.10 Dave Yes. 01:53:12.94 Dave Ah, just laughing at the idea this Peninsula is wild and then they're like even if we don't go to this place. You think this place is wild. We don't go to that place. 01:53:15.00 Bryan Skimmed something too quickly or something. So. 01:53:26.78 Bryan Yeah, like the craziest most wilderness mofos on the whole Peninsula like oh yeah, high Island don't even think about it. Um, but yeah, so you can go to high island and follow Asterion's footsteps eventually because um I didn't end up getting that information out of the. 01:53:31.28 Dave Yeah. 01:53:42.55 Bryan Green mountain people I don't think I think I got enough context clues from other people or did enough quests for them that they were like oh yeah, he probably went to high island so eventually I went there. Um the one. Um. Aurelia lady had a boat because she lived in that fishing village and then I recruited like 2 other people like one was the guard that went into the forest and another was ah I think one of the hunters at the pelt. Um, and the 4 of us went to high island and this was honestly like this was the climax of my playthrough was like ah. 01:53:59.49 Dave Right? ah. 01:54:15.50 Dave Um, right? yeah, sounds like it. 01:54:16.40 Bryan Ah, journey to High Island. It was so cool like all of us were pretty badass like we had 2 hunters the Roadwarden and the guard and we were all fairly martial. Oh no, the one of the guys that I got wasn't a hunter. He was an assassin so he was like a sneaky guy. Um. 01:54:28.93 Dave Oh sick. 01:54:32.34 Bryan So yeah I think he was hanging out at like Foggy’s or something like that. But um, yeah, he yeah or we made it all the way through with barely a scratch honestly like I was shocked like I had all of my bag of tricks I used all the stuff in my bag to get through all of the various problems that you come across on high island. 01:54:51.50 Bryan And then the people I had with me solved problems from there because the nice thing that that high island to gauntlet does for you is every time you come across a new thing that could fuck you over you get a chance to ask like all right Aurelia? What do we do now all right, the Assassin. What do we do now all right quentin the guard can you go hit him with your axe or something. Um. And like usually one of them would have something helpful to say or do and so I had the good like um Ocean's Eleven assault on high Island and what did I get as a reward for that, you may Ask? Um I Found a Starian dead as fuck undead chained to a wall. 01:55:24.62 Dave Okay, oh no. So. 01:55:29.67 Bryan Um, so he literally knew he was going to die so he chained himself to a wall in a cave and he is the only other person in the game that is the only other person aside from the title card that is an animated person in the scene. 01:55:33.34 Dave Oh. 01:55:39.45 Dave Right? Yeah I Saw a screenshot of that earlier when I just googled Roadward and screenshot and I saw an undead chain to a wall but I didn't see that I didn't think that was Asterion. I Just figured like.. There's a couple of buildings on the peninsula that I could never get inside. So I figured Maybe that was inside that Guard Tower on the Eastern road that I could never unlock. Um, so interesting. 01:56:05.23 Bryan Yeah, and know that was his arian so you find him. Um, he has some stuff on him like some some valuable stuff like he has like a bottle of wine that you can sell once you identify to Foggy. Um, who is apparently a wine connoisseur for like 20 gold or something like that. So um. 01:56:17.65 Dave Okay. 01:56:23.20 Bryan There's all, there's some interesting stuff and then of course you get all of his old gear from tulia who promised you to give you all of his stuff if you found him found out what happened to him so that was like a big windfall for me like if you get back from high island relatively unscathed. You're in for like 30 ish gold. Um, so. 01:56:38.87 Dave Interesting. Wow. 01:56:42.64 Bryan Yeah, like all told like you get his bow which you can sell or like between probably like 8 to 10 from what I understand you get the one potion or the 1 wine bottle and then the potion and then yeah, there's it's a it's a windfall. We'll just leave it at that. 01:56:58.10 Dave Interesting. Yeah so what happened with me was I found the tribe of the green mountain on day 38 and they wanted a gift in order to like talk to me and they didn't want anything that I had. 01:57:17.41 Bryan What am I going to do? 01:57:17.62 Dave And I was like well it's day 38 so have a nice life folks I'm heading back so I never found Asterion um, did you figure out why he went to high island. 01:57:31.62 Bryan No I didn't like it so there's a couple things like he had a bunch of gold on him because I think he was going to deliver gold from the owner of the pelt of the north to Foggy because. Were we going to start a business together like they were going to merge effectively like 1 of them was going to buy a share in the other and they were going to be all right? We're the north-south in alliance or something like that and um I think instead of doing that he just like. 01:57:52.33 Dave Um, okay. 01:58:04.50 Bryan Used that gold to fuck off and he went to high island for some reason that's as far as I kind of got with his story like I may have missed something or didn't read something fully but 1 way or another he had a bunch of gold on him and headed up to the most dangerous place in and around the peninsula. 01:58:08.31 Dave Aha. 01:58:20.82 Dave Yeah, yeah. 01:58:22.90 Bryan And clearly it didn't end up well for him. He bit off more than he could chew. Um I don't know if he was looking for one last big score before leaving or something. Um, but it's ah unknown I mean I think it's kind of purposefully left. 01:58:40.66 Dave Yeah. 01:58:41.59 Bryan Ambiguous as to why he ended up doing what he did um at the end of the day I think what they're trying to underline is like this guy died for no reason at all. Um, as so many people die in the Peninsula who are around the peninsula. 01:58:48.72 Dave Um, yeah, right? Um, both that. Yeah, he died for no reason at all and also that I really like because of this. 01:59:05.90 Bryan Oh gosh in the late 20's early 30's something like that. Yeah. 01:59:06.70 Dave What day did you find him roughly? Ok yeah so it's pretty late in the game. So what I really like about this and I held this back in the Nons Spoiler part is the way that you get little bits of characterization for a starion at all the places you go and um. 01:59:21.62 Bryan Some wild goose Chase right. 01:59:25.52 Dave It's another way of letting you? Yeah well it's a wild goose Chase and you slowly piece together along with your own actions through hearing about what asterion's done and how he's fucked over some of these various people that you don't have to be a good person to be a Roadwarden. 01:59:37.42 Bryan Yeah, kind of a jerk. Yeah, no, yeah, we're not all aragorn's out here. 01:59:44.47 Dave It's not part of the job description. So ah, exactly so Asterion like pretty clearly like you wanted to find him and find out what happened to him but it wasn't out of this like here's this hero that's in trouble or anything like that. He's. 02:00:00.25 Bryan Right? right. 02:00:04.33 Dave He's kind of a piece of shit from most of the interactions that you hear um or at the very least that he's not trustworthy. You can't trust this guy. 02:00:07.99 Bryan It couldn't. 02:00:14.67 Bryan Yeah I think there's like there's a spectrum of reasons you might seek out Asterion and they range from like ah he was a comrade of mine in arms as a fellow Roadwarden I need to find out what happened to him too. He might have some valuable stuff. Maybe I could find his corpse and loot it too. 02:00:25.22 Dave Yeah. 02:00:31.19 Bryan Ah, he's a criminal that needs to be brought to Justice Um, and any of those are valid answers for why you might seek him out and depending on what you find out from who any of them could be valid. 02:00:31.90 Dave Um, yeah, yeah. 02:00:39.89 Dave And I like how you do talk to people who very clearly don't like him. They had negative experiences with him but there are some people who are like yeah he rolled through here. It was fine and then he left seem fine to me. 02:00:55.78 Bryan Yeah, he delivered some stuff for me and seemed like a standup guy. Um you know and like some folks on the peninsula. That's what you were too. Um, and for others you were the guy that led a team of raiders to their village and then let them loot it. 02:00:57.50 Dave Ah, so yeah, um, exactly yeah as if their life with all the undead was not bad enough. Um. 02:01:13.70 Bryan Yeah. 02:01:16.20 Dave I got the feeling throughout my playthrough like my guess was that a Starian had just kind of abdicated the duty of the Roadwarden and had just decided to do his own thing on the peninsula and it sounds like that's kind of true. Um or at the very least. 02:01:29.20 Bryan Um, yeah I think that could easily be true I think that's almost definitely what was going on here right? Like you have, you have this job which is to quote unquote do intel in a place. Um. 02:01:35.11 Dave He was going to get a little something else for himself before heading back? yeah. 02:01:46.67 Bryan You know what this sounds to me like undercover cop. Um, guess who's most often accused of corruption. Um, so yeah I don't know. It wouldn't surprise me at all the years trying to slice off a little bit for himself there. Yeah. 02:01:50.34 Dave Yeah, ah. 02:01:58.92 Dave Yeah, I think part of the deal is like when you get back, you get paid. But like you don't get paid enough to live the rest of your life on or something like that like a Roadwarden is not a super high paying job. 02:02:11.77 Bryan Yeah, yeah. 02:02:18.68 Dave Ah, but it is a job that a desperate person in your situation could take on. 02:02:26.57 Bryan It's like the bottom rung of the folks that work on an oil rig. Perhaps um like super dangerous, decent enough pay. But the quality of life sucks. Um, and you know at least in Roadwardens you get to talk to someone other than the you know 40 people in your. 02:02:29.31 Dave Method. Yeah, yeah. 02:02:44.10 Bryan Your oil rig cohort but you know I don't know I've never worked on an oil rig, maybe it's a lovely job. Ah. 02:02:46.34 Dave Yeah, yeah, could be so yeah, the quest for Asterion ended unresolved for me. I Wonder if there are different endings or if it is just that one set story for him I would. Probably guess it's just that one set story. 02:03:05.91 Bryan Yeah as far as I'm aware like I don't I don't I'm not aware of any sort of like multiple ending situation for esterion like as far as as far as I'm aware like the conditions you enter the peninsula are are with are static and staring and being dead. 02:03:21.35 Dave Um, yeah, okay. 02:03:24.93 Bryan And on High Island is one of them. Um, like I don't think you have any ability to affect that. You know I don't know how early you can get to high island and if that changes if you get there on like day 15 or something but I probably will never find out. 02:03:40.19 Dave Yeah, same here. Um would be an interesting game to replay because I feel like I could like almost unintentionally end up with a different story here just you know different choice here different choice there spend more time here. Spend less time. 02:03:49.81 Bryan Oh yeah. 02:03:57.41 Dave On the eastern road with Foggy and those 2 dudes that are just chilling in front of her cabin. Um. 02:04:03.10 Bryan Um, you know I agree, like I think a second playthrough of this game would definitely be interesting because like now that you do kind of know what's going on behind the scenes like maybe you can optimize for like the outcome you actually want and would that affect. Enough to allow you to accomplish it or would something else go wrong and it still be. You know, a mess. 02:04:23.93 Dave Yeah I Just kind of clicked around on some wikis.. It seems like that's the ending for Asterion. It would be kind of cool if you got there like on day five or something and you know he's there alive and chained up but I don't. Want to place too much expectation on a solo developer in a game with this much Text. You know. So yeah. 02:04:47.92 Bryan There's already a lot of interacting systems and contingencies for various events in this game like yeah I'll give them a break too. It's ah yeah. 02:04:53.25 Dave And that that quest to find a starian is one of your driving forces for taking you to different corners of the peninsula in the first place. So the fact that it does end up being a wild goose chase is probably good because it got me to really investigate it. 02:05:02.43 Bryan Yeah. 02:05:12.93 Dave The tribe of the green mountain because that was the lead and it took a long time to figure out where they were so ultimately it's a nice device to have you keep poking in the corners and like I like how some of those places you go on the Eastern Road is one of them. 02:05:31.99 Dave There is a path off to the side that your character just wouldn't have been looking for and thus wouldn't notice until someone tells you like here's how you find the tribe of the Green mountain. 02:05:42.84 Bryan Yeah, yeah, you need to have the insider knowledge like someone needs to have told you that it's there. Um I think there's a lot of like flags like that in this game and like normally that type of adventure gaming stuff drives me nuts like when there's a flag that needs to be triggered before you can go down the path. 02:05:46.67 Dave Yeah. 02:06:00.59 Bryan But for some reason it worked in this game. Um, yeah, yeah, so I think that's something, they they did something right there with that. So. 02:06:00.91 Dave Oh it all feels really earned in this game. 02:06:10.17 Dave Yeah, um, so other like results I suppose of what happened in my playthrough I don't know if you wrote down your detailed results for what happened in all the places. Okay, so ah, the pelt of the north people. 02:06:19.58 Bryan I have some of them here. Yeah. 02:06:27.32 Dave Ah, they retired and the city took over the in. So um, whoops and Tulia your friend stay there to be a guard So I always like that in that felt like the most. Ah yeah. 02:06:37.55 Bryan For me, sort of home. Yeah, actually for me Howler’s Dell was home because eventually they liked me enough that they gave me a piece of parchment that let me stay at the Inn and get my armor repaired for free. Um, so that was cool. But yeah I like the pelt folk better. 02:06:47.70 Dave Nice. 02:06:54.10 Bryan Um, but yeah, they got rich because of the trade that started up at Howlerstell and eventually moved back to Hovlovin and started a mercenary company in my game. 02:07:04.27 Dave Okay, um, let's see Howler's Dell in my game was friendly with the people from ah the city but they did not partner with them. So I don't think the mayor got rich or anything like that. They just kind of. 02:07:19.79 Bryan Okay, yeah for me, it was definitely like that was the first stop for the Hovlaven and Thais got a fat slice of that so became very rich. 02:07:20.76 Dave Coexisted. 02:07:29.00 Dave Yeah, White Marshes in my game The after the incident will say they destroyed all the roads leading to the village which isolated themselves in the swamp. And ah the necromancy problem apparently got worse. 02:07:47.60 Bryan Okay, so no necromancy problem but they also isolated in my case mostly because I took care of the necromancy problem but apparently later on it became strange beasts so they just got problems all over the place there right? Yeah new problem for white marsh. The white marsh incident by the way sounds like. 02:08:00.72 Dave Oh yeah, figure out a new problem. Yeah, um. 02:08:06.94 Bryan Some sort of conspiracy person. 02:08:08.40 Dave Um, oh yeah, Fbi involvement. Yeah um, foggy and her in so I really cleaned up that eastern road like perfectly. 02:08:11.51 Bryan Right? Yes, for sure could be in control or something. Well. 02:08:26.40 Dave So trade flourished on that Eastern Road Foggy got rich and finally built a wall around her which was just just like raw dogging it out in the wilderness that whole time and then she died right after that so she was able to build the wall and then she died. 02:08:39.28 Bryan Ah, I didn't write down what happened to Foggy for me. Um, I don't know why I don't have anything about Foggy here. But um I'm going to assume that Foggy lived a long and happy life because that's what I would prefer. 02:08:52.62 Dave Yeah, we'll go with that. Um, and the last one I Guess Notable is that the tribe of the green mountain was left a secret and they were never discovered. 02:09:03.16 Bryan Oh yeah, so for me ah they were they remained isolated for me but you know they they were there. They just weren't bothered. For me another notable one was the folks at Creeks were the last generation of their village. Um. 02:09:16.64 Bryan So basically were they were like yeah they they were done and ah Glaucia who I met the ah the bandit leader just said one morning she just disappeared um and apparently um I don't know if this was was yours but it's some the the final note on my Roadwarden um was that like you. 02:09:34.58 Bryan Something caught up with them and they perished in the night which I took to mean my character was assassinated so like something came back for me from the peninsula and I don't know who or what it was but. 02:09:44.14 Dave Interesting, who did you piss off the most? 02:09:49.80 Bryan Probably someone from White Marshes. Um, that would have to be my guest. I don't know Yeah I don't know that's what I'm wondering is like or maybe a green mountain pert. It might have been a green mountain person because once I went to High Island without their blessing. 02:09:53.27 Dave But are they traveling out of the ah out of the swamp to go assassinate you in the city I don't think so. 02:10:05.88 Bryan They would never see me again or else if I went to their village I'd be executed. So yeah because high Island is like a sacred ground for the village of the green mountain people. So yeah I might ah it might have been them at any rate I didn't make a lot of friends on the Peninsula and ah. 02:10:07.75 Dave Well that makes sense. Okay, interesting. Yeah yeah, me either I. 02:10:23.47 Bryan Yeah, sad, sad ending for my character. Unfortunately. 02:10:25.92 Dave I got to think that most people are not like the ratio of people you piss off to people who love you is going to be pretty skewed in the pissed off direction for most people. My Roadwarden moved back to the city but was dissatisfied with City life. 02:10:34.28 Bryan Oh yeah, yeah yeah, you're yeah. 02:10:44.75 Dave So then they moved back to the peninsula to keep trying to help people there but intervened in a robbery and got killed doing that. So not a happy ending for like my guys a scholar he should have minded his own business. Apparently so. 02:10:53.28 Bryan That sounds about right. 02:11:00.19 Bryan Yeah, you got a nosey scholar there like a nosy fighter I mean I guess I understand but noses scholar. You got to be nosy about books that stay in your lane scholar. 02:11:08.40 Dave Yeah, yeah, you should? Ah yeah, just stay in the library. No One's robbing the library. Um that and that ending kind of like put a bow on this whole idea that this is not a story about a savior you might help some people along the way. But my character did more harm than good overall and then died very unceremoniously at the end. 02:11:31.12 Bryan Yeah I mean I kind of have to agree with all of those things. Um I think the funniest thing about this whole game and like the path of the Roadwarden into the peninsula is that it was inevitable. I don't know if you notice this but on the start screen you can choose to say but I hesitate to lead the city or something like that. 02:11:46.18 Dave Oh yeah, and there's like 30 different funny excuses for not going out on the road. Yeah. 02:11:48.74 Bryan And it keeps. 02:11:53.90 Bryan Yeah, eventually it but thou musts you into leaving? um so you know one of those things where um, the leaving was inevitable. The experience was inevitable and the sad ending seemingly also inevitable. 02:12:06.98 Dave Yeah there's probably a way where like if you become really good friends with the people in howlers dell and you strengthen up that place and they're like good partners with the empire or whatever then you could live out your days out there. But. I don't know how many different endings there are. There's got to be dozens with just how many yeah how many ways these quests can go and stuff. Um, oh yeah, and then and then just regardless of what you did you return back to the city the writer probably wrote. 02:12:28.14 Bryan Gotta be if we're talking permutations you know hundreds thousands. But yeah. 02:12:44.26 Bryan Oh yeah. 02:12:45.89 Dave A lot of different ways that can end and then my guy didn't like city life anymore. So he went back to the peninsula and then all the ways that can end. So yeah. 02:12:55.60 Bryan Yeah, it's ah it's an interesting game and like you said, like so much contained in this solo Dev effort. Um, really admirable um haven't seen anything quite like it. You know. 02:13:01.82 Dave Yeah, yeah, really interested in what they do next whether it's one of these really text heavy stories or that means they clearly have the chops for like mechanical Rpg systems too. So I would like the Windy Meadow Yeah, which is another story set in this Universe. It's a similar type of game. Um, so. 02:13:21.92 Bryan So they have us, they have a follow-up. Um Windy Meadow: A Roadwarden tale. 02:13:31.40 Bryan Yeah, different though as far as I'm aware like don't go into it expecting Roadwarden 2 is my understanding. But yeah I'm looking for Roadwarden 2 though are something else with like this scale and this like. 02:13:37.25 Dave Right? exactly? Yeah, yeah, yeah. 02:13:48.40 Bryan Style I don't know, maybe I'll try Windy Meadow you know I trust this developer now in terms of like the world. They've built in the interests that they have here and honestly like I could go for like a shorter lighter version of this in a given mood. So maybe I'll check that out. 02:14:02.60 Dave Yeah, for sure I'm definitely interested and then yeah, whatever full size effort. They're working on in the future. I Hope they made a bunch of money doing Roadwarden so they can put their effort into whatever they want to do next. This is awesome. I Really love this game and ah. 02:14:15.77 Bryan Amen. 02:14:20.29 Dave I Love how different our playthroughs went. There's very few things that went but maybe there's not even anything that went exactly the same for us. There's a couple things that were similar but you had a somewhat happy resolution to the White Marsh incident not me. 02:14:38.75 Bryan Ah I know one thing that's going to end up the same um Windy Meadows on sale right now spring sale. So I think the 1 thing that will happen for both of us is going and picking that up right now. 02:14:39.42 Dave Mine was fucked in all directions. Ah. 02:14:49.14 Dave Boom there we go and yeah, okay, cool. Well this has been a great time man. I really enjoyed the conversation comparing our experiences talking about the game and that non spoiler part 2 so thank you so much for again. Taking over 2 hours to come on the show and talk with me. 02:15:08.95 Bryan Happy to do it Dave and I'm you know, always happy to come on the show and help whittle down that backlog. I'm really glad you spurred me on to play Roadwarden and I had a great time playing it and talking with you. 02:15:19.81 Dave Yeah, awesome. Yeah, always a pleasure so we will ah we'll definitely figure out the next one that we're going to bring out of the backlog together. Um I might take you up on that one of those Fallen London games. 02:15:30.22 Bryan There you go. 02:15:33.58 Dave Played a little bit of both of those and I loved what I played and then I just got distracted so that might be the excuse but in any case, we'll have you back on here soon and for everybody listening please please please go down in the show notes and follow those links to check out pixelated playgrounds. It is worth your time. And thank you as always for listening,tune in next week for the next game to come out of the backlog.