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. She's an award-winning reporter for IGN and she always gives her regards to the next frog she meets, welcome, Rebekah Valentine. 00:22.88 Reb I appreciate that this is the introduction you wrote for me. I mean it's clearly a Mother 3 reference but also I am like…frogs are my thing. Um, and so I'm delighted that this was this was the line you pulled for that I do always give my regards to the next frog I meet. 00:29.30 Dave Oh hell yeah, good. Good. Also I'm glad my intuition paid off there and yeah today we are going to talk about Mother 3 which is an rpg developed by Brownie Brown and HAL Laboratory and published by Nintendo for the Game Boy Advance in 2006. Mother 3 famously only released in Japan and never officially localized so we'll be talking about a fan translation by the starman.net community. And if this is your first time listening to the show. First of all, thank you. Welcome here's how spoilers work on this podcast and in this episode we're going to deep dive Mother 3 as much as we can with no spoilers for a while and then there will be a dedicated break and then after that spoiler time begins. If you want to know when that is you can look down in the show notes for a timestamp for when that spoiler section begins. So what is Mother 3? We have prepared some elevator pitches for everybody. I say Mother 3 is the forbidden sequel to Earthbound. Reb, what would you say? 01:34.12 Reb This is not ah this is a long elevator pitch I should have I should have done better for you I think it's probably like the most perfect encapsulation of this like micro genre I've made up entirely for myself. Ah I think it was like weird rpgs I guess I guess the actual elevator pitch is if you like Undertale you'll like this one. 01:49.28 Dave Um, that's fair, interesting. Okay yeah, um, we allow multi-floor elevator rides for these pitches That's okay, yeah. 01:52.95 Reb Ah I think it's even more Undertale than Earthbound is actually. 02:04.17 Dave Um, I played this emulated on my steam deck. It took me about 25 hours to play, good experience emulating it on the old deck there. Where did you play this? How long do you think it took you? 02:15.53 Reb Um, I played this. I actually played it last year before you invited me on this episode. So um I wasn't I wasn't timing myself I think 25 hours sounds about right? It was probably in that vicinity somewhere. I actually played it on an analog pocket with a cart. My husband bought on Etsy that had the fan translation on it. Ah so it was like ah I think it was actually a ds cart and not a game boy advance cart. Um, but yeah, it would just pop it into the analog pocket and play it like a little game boy game. It was really great. 02:35.40 Dave Ooh nice. 02:46.40 Dave That's cool. I don't have an analog pocket. They look super cool but you steam Deck's also cool I'm not you know, crying for help or anything like that. We had a good time there so we always get the episode started by talking about our histories with the game and then of course this is a part of ah a series. 02:48.14 Reb Oh yeah. 03:04.20 Dave So we'll talk about our histories with the mother series in general too. So when was the first time that you played Mother 3 and did you play the other mother games before this. 03:15.16 Reb So this was my first time playing what I was talking about last year. I had never played it before. Um, I'm relatively new to the mother series. I think I played Earthbound. Let's see it was less than 10 years ago. I don't remember exactly when I streamed it actually? um so it had. 03:30.71 Reb Somewhere in there I just streamed it on twitch I played it via some emulator or whatever I it just felt like a game that I had always I again I mentioned Undertale up top I'm sure I'm going to talk about it before but there's like or more but there's there's this whole micro genre I have in my brain of undertail light games. 03:47.82 Reb Ah, Undertale, Moon, Contact, Earthbound these games with like this sort of 2d ah top-down rpg structure where you're playing usually as a very very young kid and wander around this sort of weird world with a lot of silly humor but also like deep emotional heartfelt themes. Um. 04:07.12 Reb So Earthbound always felt like a blind spot for me. I played it, I loved it and then I kind of put it away and didn't really think about it too much for a while. But then I got on a weird kick. Ah, last year where I played Mother One on Nintendo switch online which by the way. 04:20.93 Dave Ok. 04:24.26 Reb I don't like super recommend. It's aggressively fine, Earthbound’s a way better game in every possible way. Um, but after playing Mother One I was just craving something more Earthboundy and my husband had bought that Mother 3 cart a long time ago and so I pulled it out and ah, loved it. 04:44.48 Dave Nice. Yeah I Guess if you're craving something more Earthboundy. There's no better place than staying within the series right? Yeah um and you wrote something here about the mother's cookbook. Tell me a little bit about that because I never heard of that before. 04:55.74 Reb Yeah, yeah, so I dabble in adventures in video game food. I was going on this sort of adventure several years ago where I was cooking every recipe in various video game cookbooks so I did the world of warcraft cookbook and I did the elder scrolls cookbook. 05:08.94 Dave Okay. 05:14.00 Reb And then the third one I did was the mother's cookbook which is ah by chef Brian Connor and it is it is recipes inspired by and from mainly Earthbound but it has some Mother 3 recipes in there as well and when I when I worked through this cookbook I had played Earthbound already but I had not played Mother 3 and it has it has several recipes in there. Ah, that is inspired by Mother 3 and so I got it written. It's written in the style of a mother. Ah, who is you know, writing down her recipes that she makes for her kid like Nesa's mom and the Mother 3 section. She's talking about getting recipes from. 05:49.29 Reb Another woman, another mother just like her who lives in a place called Tazmily and ah you know ah has I now I now understand a little bit more about the emotional impact of that. 05:57.32 Dave Right? Yeah for sure. Interesting. So maybe I'll try to get that recipe for a skip sandwich from you at some point during or after the recording here. Yeah cool cool. cool this is my first time playing Mother 3 as well. 06:08.18 Reb It's in there. It's in there. 06:13.57 Dave I played Earthbound for the first time in like late 2021 early 2022 and if anyone's interested , episode 26 of this podcast is about Earthbound. It is with Keith from Main Quest podcast. So go check that out if you want more from this series and then I had tried Mother 3 on iOS emulators for game boy advance shoutout to GBA4iOS before the app store allowed emulators this whole fucking process to get an emulator on my phone I tried Mother 3 it doesn't work because the rhythm mechanic doesn't work with a touchscreen so I didn't get far. 06:47.71 Reb Oh yeah. 06:52.80 Dave I also just can't focus on playing rpgs on my phone. I have a really bad attention span for stuff like that. But when 2024 started we started our backlog resolutions challenge in our Discord server and I made sure to put Mother 3 on that list. So I finally got it done and shout out to everyone in that. 07:11.17 Dave Challenge who's making dents in the old backlog. So opening thoughts about Mother 3 before we dive in proper- I had wondered a little bit before I started this about something that I'm terming forbidden fruit syndrome which is these games that are super rare. Or really hard to get a hold of or not on modern consoles or all are not translated or all of the above and how like I personally play these games up so much in my head that when I play them. They can't really meet the expectations I had played up. it happened with Suikoden 2, another one of those where I played and I was like this is okay, everyone talks about it and I thought it was okay, um, Mother 3 I came out of thinking it was really good. I really enjoyed my time with it. The. Thing that I really enjoyed the most was not really like the plot of Mother 3 but more the characters and situations and of course like the emotional core in it. I also didn't think that it was as much of a mechanical improvement over Earthbound as I would have hoped given that it came out like. Twelve years later or something like that but they had a really hard time developing it so I'm not sure what I really expected. It is better from a mechanical perspective I'll say than Earthbound but it's not twelve years later better if that makes sense I still had a good time with it though. So. 08:38.12 Dave Um, there's going to be some things we talk about that I don't like about it. But there is a lot that I did really really enjoy. What would you say is some quick opening thoughts at the top here. 08:48.48 Reb I think I liked it more than you, which actually surprises me because I've read through these notes and I think I think you're later writing and understanding of it. Um, I don't know. It seems like from some of the other things you wrote like there were a lot of like you loved all the most important parts of it I don't know of. 09:02.82 Dave Right? Yeah yeah. 09:06.13 Reb But yeah I actually like the plot a lot. Um I think and I along with all the other things you said I kind of like how strangely structured it is for a video game I am not used to. It's got this sort of like episodic chapter structure to it. Ah. 09:25.16 Reb The opening chapters of the game are a little. I don't think unsettling is the right word but it sort of jumps around from different character perspectives. There's a bunch of time skips. Ah my feeling going into it was that I didn't. It took me a while to understand fundamentally what and who this game was about in a good way. 09:43.89 Reb I Really enjoyed the sort of of questioning of what was actually going on here and who I was supposed to care about um and where where everything was going because it didn't It didn't feel like it but it felt like Earthbound spiritually but it did not feel like Earthbound structurally and I really really appreciated that. Um. 09:59.89 Dave Yeah. 10:02.70 Reb Do agree with you that mechanically it's not a huge improvement over Earthbound but I Also don't think Earthbound really needed improving upon I think in terms of Simple Rpg systems. It's one of the best out there. Ah, we'll talk about it later. I Love I Love the rolling Hp meters I Love the Auto battle finishes when you're a high enough level I think more games should do that stuff. Um, I think the Rhythm elements added a really interesting dimension to it even though I'm actually not quite Sure. They were working perfectly on the Analog pocket. But I can't I can't it is weird I couldn't tell if it was just the game being tricky or if I was bad at Rhythm or if it was something with the analog. Anyway, I Loved it. It's this beautiful story about like Grief. And coming of age and man versus Nature. There's just so much going on in it. I Love the cast. I don't know maybe I love it more than Earthbound I don't know I might. 10:52.39 Dave Yeah I do like this more than Earthbound as a total product. Um, but I was kind of comparing back and forth like I like the plot and like the driving ah force in the plot in Earthbound a lot. And what you said intrigued you about how you're going through and you weren't quite sure like why things are happening and you wanted to find out that I was a little bit let down by that same thing like I wanted to know why am I here? Why are these things happening and this game takes a while to give you that. 11:26.68 Reb Ah, yeah. 11:28.61 Dave Ah, but I think you also said it right that the most important thing about this game in my opinion is that emotional core of it and I think that is really really good in here. So I think you said I liked the most important part and I agree with that? yeah. 11:41.13 Reb Yeah, yeah I think you know Earthbound opens with with a bee descending from the sky to tell you that you know you have a mission to save the world and you are the the chosen child and there's like a prophecy and stuff and and and Mother 3 will get into the the trappings of the plot but it it starts with just people having problems. 11:49.33 Dave Yeah. 11:59.28 Reb And having conflicts and there is ultimately a villain ah or 2 running around that you have to stop and thwart. But yeah it takes a very roundabout and I think I don't know it. It takes a more complex road to get there. 12:01.65 Dave Yeah. 12:16.53 Reb And I think I think the payoff ends up being really really good. But I imagine it can be disorienting if you're not sure what to expect? 12:21.94 Dave Yeah, for sure. So let's put a pin in this. Let's listen to a bit of music from Mother 3 no problem at all and when we come back, we will kind of set up what is going on at the beginning of the story. Mother 3 has a writing credit to Shigesato Itoi, the creator of the series, and so the game starts out at the beginning. You're introduced to the core family, the nuclear family and you can just like Earthbound input. Everybody's name. Canon names are Lucas who's the main character otherwise known from the super smash brothers series for a lot of people Lucas's older brother is named Claus father is named flint mother is named Hinawa and the dog is named Boney. you can also put in your favorite food and your favorite thing. And another recommendation just like I said in the Earthbound episode please be earnest and nice about what you put in for your favorite food or favorite thing or else the games get kind of weird for you at some certain points. Um I think the game starts out really setting a tone. 13:30.10 Dave The music during this like enter your name screen and then the little tiny voice lines when you hit enter it just kind of puts you right in the mood for like what this game's tone is at the beginning. 13:34.51 Reb Yeah. 13:40.75 Reb I think one of my favorite things about Mother 3 is that you what? What did you say? was it 12 years from Earthbound is that right? Oh my gosh. That's so long anyway. It was a long period of time. I think in some ways it was a really big. 13:47.27 Dave I think Earthbound was 94 yeah 14:00.60 Reb Upgrade and a jump I think in other ways it was not a very big upgrade and a jump. But I they captured this fan localization I cannot praise enough really captured the spirit of Earthbound and the humor and the the. 14:07.10 Dave Yeah. 14:13.91 Reb Style so well and it pairs so beautifully with the animations and and the little character quirks and the little visual style things. There's just so many little touches all over this game that are funny or clever or heartfelt and all it just ah it all works together tonally so well for me at every single stage. 14:29.89 Dave Yeah, let's talk about that translation just for a second so I don't know about you but like I've had mixed experiences with fan translations in the past you know you don't know who's doing it. You don't know how qualified they are to do it and so when I started this I was kind of like okay. 14:41.49 Reb Yes. 14:49.50 Dave Is this going to be well done or is it going to be like they are the people who did it? Their localization skills might not be great but they finished the project with completely unfounded worries about this fan. Translation. It is Wonderful. So Want to shout out the person who spearheaded the translation Clyde. Ah. Tomato Mandolin who themselves are a professional localizer. They worked on Kingdom Hearts two s and dragon ball stuff and then they had a lot of other people that helped out that they vetted to be a part of the project. So in case anyone out there is wondering like it's a fan translation. Is it good? Yes, 100%. It's really really good. 15:29.14 Reb Yeah I I had actually never played a fan translation of anything before I I haven't I haven't delved enough into the catalogs of games that have not made it west to really ever have that pleasure. And I but I think exactly because of what you said you know there, there's a ah, there's a wariness about that like I don't know if I'm getting something that is accurate I you know I don't I don't need it to be a literal translation but I do want it to be accurate to the original author's intent and I you know I I guess I can't say for sure because we're never going to hear what e 2 a we're never going to hear what? what. 15:54.25 Dave Right. 16:02.33 Reb All the developers think of this. They'll never tell us but I spiritually like I said it feels so wonderfully close to Earthbound and and so reverential to what the game visually appears to be doing and what I what I recall Earthbound doing that it came so highly recommended and I highly recommend it as well. 16:18.41 Dave Yeah, absolutely so back to the beginning of the story we have Lucas Claus and Hinawa again. Younger brother, older brother and mother respectively they're visiting their grandpa on the mountain while Flint. The father again is staying home and working on the farm and on the day. They are supposed to go home by walking through the forest. A UFO or something is starting to fly over. It drops these weird people in pig masks and these robots that are shooting flames all over the place and it causes a forest fire and during this early section you play as flint. Who is trying to help the villagers who are caught in the forest and also that is the same forest that the family is supposed to be traveling through to get home so that is the inciting event. It is like the first ten minutes of the game. Basically yeah I know but. 17:09.61 Reb It barely does justice to anything that happens in this game at all. But you can't. You can't go further because what happens after that point immediately changes the tone. 17:16.23 Dave They're right? Yeah exactly. So I'm going to put a pin in like actual plot points for now until the spoiler section but there are still some things we can talk about with the story that we find interesting about what this game story is doing. Um, you mentioned in your opening thoughts that you enjoyed how this game kind of jumps around from point of view characters and like the first 3 to 4 chapters I don't remember how many exactly. Ah, you're a different main character every single time and then that introduces you to them and then the back half of the game. Everyone joins up together. You have a classic jrpg traveling party and after that you've got time to get to know everyone in the party as their own character with their own backstories and things which is an interesting way to go about teaching you about people before they join your party normally. People just kind of hop on the wagon as you go through the game but not here. 18:14.93 Reb Yeah, and and this is I think this is especially interesting because again avoiding spoilers. But you know you get I think a typical expectation for a game like this and this happens I believe in if I remember right in Earthbound as well. Ah, you get you start off by naming your party so you would theoretically name the 4 18:32.86 Reb Characters that you're going to be spending the majority of the game with but it's not quite what happens here. Ah like you will play you will play as several of these people and and several of them are in the main party but we're missing some people. Ah we haven't even met a couple of the core characters yet. But this focuses on this group. 18:37.37 Dave Right. 18:51.95 Reb Ah, of people like you know we talked about this having a very strong emotional core. This is the emotional core right here and that's who you're introduced to first and so getting that sort of perspective shift of like what's truly important in this game and who we need to focus on and why we need to care about them. I. I think it matters a lot and the game kind of lets you open with this group of people in this fairly small setting before you get introduced to the real meat of what's going to be happening um it is a really interesting choice that I think I think not, you don't normally see. 19:22.42 Dave Yeah, and it's interesting that a lot of the cast of people that join your party are not again like Earthbound and mother the whole series I guess is like nontraditional as far as rpgs go like you're not. Gathering up, you know a warrior and a wizard and stuff like that. You're gathering up a lot of like other kids like Lucas is a child, a young child and you're gathering up another child. Ah you have your dog. You have your dad at the beginning you name your dad your mom your older brother and your dog. 19:41.25 Reb Okay. 19:49.70 Reb Ah. 19:58.88 Dave And then there is another person who joins your party who is a young adult. We'll say or a teenager I wasn't quite sure how Duster how old Duster is I think so yeah, okay. 20:05.58 Reb Clean teenager oh Duster. Ah I think Kumatora is a teenager isn't she? I think Duster's supposed to be an adult like a young ah like I mentally placed him in like his 20s like late 20s maybe. 20:19.49 Dave Okay, yeah, so I kind of like a group of misfit characters that you gather up as you go and then like a couple of animals that you can play as and stuff it's ah it's an interesting cast. 20:30.65 Reb Yeah I and I don't know are we getting too far off the path I want. I want to talk about that main cast. maybe I'll save this bit but I think there is earth Earthbound you mentioned Lucas being a very young child and Earthbound again has this core 4 group of. Of kids who were all very young children and so much of what makes Earthbound really powerful is that it reminds you repeatedly that these are very young children in a world full of deeply incompetent adults and and but you know we we put our burdens on the next generation and so that's what we do and and Mother 3 I'll I'll save it. 20:50.36 Dave Right. 21:07.92 Reb The spoiler section. But I think Mother 3 takes a slightly different look at that It is not. It is not opposed to that philosophy in any way shape or form like we are still putting our burdens disproportionately on people who do not deserve to have those burdens put upon them. Ah, but it is really like Puts a different kind of lens over you know how. How children are forced to shoulder our responsibilities and how we pass things off to Society's outcasts and I I think it's really fascinating I Love I Love this cast. 21:34.53 Dave Yeah, yeah, and your whole group are not children but the main character is a child and that doesn't change. I mean there are some time jumps. But it's not like you're jumping 10 years into the future or anything like that like you're a child for the entire time and this is a game where some. 21:39.78 Reb Yes, yes. 21:47.83 Reb Right. 21:54.58 Dave Ah, serious and heavy things happen around that child and you're kind of one of the things that I like about how this story handles that is they never seem to lose sight of the fact that he is a child and he reacts to things the way that a child would instead of you know. 22:06.57 Reb Right. 22:14.18 Dave Lucas is a child but he doesn't act like one, he acts like he's 25 years old or something like that. I did not get that sense at all from this and I really enjoyed that. 22:22.42 Reb Yeah, there's some things that happened to him fairly early on in the game that would make any child have an emotional response of some kind and a lot of adults that you talk to who have known you throughout this will remark. Oh it's Lucas the cry baby. Oh he's crying all the time. Why is he always crying and 22:28.75 Dave Yeah. 22:37.70 Dave Right. 22:39.64 Reb Like he's a child but but the impression you the player walk away with is oh these adults are Jerks like why are you talking to this kid like this of course he cries all the time I would too. 22:46.13 Dave Yep. Yeah, exactly and that's ah, that's a segue to talk about the setting and like the people in this town of Tazmily which is where most not most but a lot of the game takes place in and around the village. It is definitely the place you'll visit the most throughout the game. So the. Village of Tazmily is set up as this really sleepy innocent place where people are supposedly nice to each other although you know what? what you just said is absolutely true. Not everyone's nice to Lucas all the time. There's no money in the town. People just give each other what they need like at the beginning if you go in the store. 23:15.79 Reb Yeah. 23:27.64 Dave You can just take whatever you need. They're cool. They just have it whatever Um, and then one of the key evolving storylines that I really enjoyed about this game is the slow corruption of this place by outside forces and you can I think read this in a couple of different ways. 23:29.34 Reb That's great. 23:46.49 Dave But I enjoyed this as if it was a slow thing that you see the process of happening is this Sleepy Idyllic place being turned into a capitalist Hell world. 23:56.84 Reb Yeah, it's really good and you talk about Tazmily being corrupted over a period of time and I do kind of want to again reiterate that this is the story's timeline. It's very interesting structurally what they do with this but they do actually have multiple not giant but they do have multiple skips. So it's not just that you're seeing it over the course of like a few days or a week or like a year you're seeing it evolve very dramatically as time passes and you're seeing characters or change as. 24:30.73 Reb These outside forces come in and shift them and I think the way when you move to a new chapter at certain points. There's this moment of oh no, what's happened to me. Now I need to go see where these characters are. What has happened to them in this period and that being able to watch things and and even the. 24:43.42 Dave You can. 24:50.63 Reb Mechanical things like you talk about? Um, you know, being able to get certain items for free in the shop is always going to be the case like am I still going to be able to go back there and get them for free I don't know. Are there areas with treasure chests that I might lose access to later or that I might gain access to who can say. Ah, it's really fun mechanically? Ah, but it also does a really good job of demonstrating both the ways in which outside forces corrupt this very sleepy little town. But also as you kind of alluded to. The ways in which the call was always coming from inside the house right? like it was our hearts that were always corrupt and you know we are the ones who made the choices that set us on this path. Even if we were just given a little nudge by outside forces. 25:29.45 Dave Yeah, absolutely and I think that you touched on something there that is a big compliment that I can give to rpgs of this type which is I wanted to talk to everybody in town every time something changed and that is not. 25:40.93 Reb Yes, every time. 25:46.64 Dave Even in my favorite rpgs like this I don't always want to talk to everybody in town. A lot of times they have nothing interesting to say but in this game. Ah yeah. 25:50.38 Reb Oh my god I'm playing Dragon’s Dogma but 2 right now I don't care about anything any of these people has to say it's completely pointless to me but you were your spot on. 26:04.81 Dave Yeah, ah things change in the town and in the world and people have interesting. Not only do they have interesting things to say from a dialogue writing perspective but they have interesting things to say about what's going on with the place that they live and maybe changes that are happening so Big. Ah big credit. To the writers. The localizers of course for just like Earthbound making this a game that I wanted to talk to everybody. Another reason to talk to everybody is that this is a very funny and ah charting game. Yeah, it's good. 26:30.84 Reb Oh. It's so funny. Yeah, and again I cannot compliment this localization enough. They did such a good job if you thought Earthbound was funny Mother 3 is also funny and it complements the animations and the characters and the plot. So well that the only conclusion I can come to is they did a really good job and they didn't just insert a bunch of jokes for no reason like it's a very funny game. all all I could think of. 26:51.48 Dave You know. 27:09.17 Reb Ah, second ago was the scene of Boney dressing up in human clothes. Ah, it's ridiculous. Why you got 2 legs and fooling people or not, you know it's oh my gosh. It's great. There's all sorts of weird little gags. Ah, even the item descriptions are great. Ah. 27:12.73 Dave Um, yeah, walking on two legs yeah 27:27.21 Reb Earthbound. Also again had this but all of the little you could check different items or check different things or just talk like you said talk to people repeatedly and you know it's It's occasionally satirical. You know, ah adults are incompetent ah people people are a mess. Ah, but also people can have good. Deep inside their hearts if you look for it Ah, people are fallible and are constantly doing, you know, ridiculous slapstick routines because we're all just struggling in this world and silly things happen to us. 27:58.16 Dave Yeah, that bit you're talking about where Boney is acting like a person wearing people's clothes standing on 2 legs and you have an exchange with some bouncers outside of ah, a place and they. Just have this back and forth about whether he's a dog or not because they have a clear, no dogs policy in the club and it's just really really funny and it's a a credit I always give credit to the RGG Yakuza localizers or their work making those games funny. 28:25.10 Reb Yeah, they're good. 28:30.54 Dave And so I got to give these people credit to on Mother 3 because it's got to be so hard again to translate humor in another language into another language in a way that not only makes sense but also makes sense for people from that culture. So it's ah it's. It's really well done. 28:43.12 Reb Yeah, yeah. 28:50.14 Dave Think that there is like a charm to Mother 3 Also that charm is something that works on some people and doesn't work on others. It's hard to say that this is charming to me. It'll be charming to you but like I feel pretty strongly that this is one of those games that you can play and you can just feel like this. Intense Love radiating from the people who made it and there's like a really clear charming quality to the whole thing. The humor plays into that too earnestly. Yeah yeah. 29:09.59 Reb Yeah. 29:16.27 Reb It's Earnest. It's earnest, I think the whole series is really earnest. Um it. You know it's It's really easy to sort of just sort of flippantly say oh well, it boils down to being a story about you know, love conquering all and and friendship and joy and peace. Whatever. And you know it is. It is maybe like if you try to just describe the plot to people in sort of basic terms. It does end up sort of being a very cheesy moral right? But it's played out in such a heartfelt and sincere way. 29:49.98 Reb But also playful but also loving but also satirical in the way that it just works. I don't know I Love I Love all of the I I Love the way this is written and I love the way it is conveyed. 30:00.90 Dave Yeah, absolutely um I don't think there was ever a point where I tuned out of conversations whether it was funny or heartfelt or anything like that like I was always interested in what people were saying so really good writing here. Um, there is. Something we want to talk about about some of the content in Mother 3 just as we got done saying that it's you know earnest earnest and lovingly made and things like that. There is 1 particular set of characters in Mother 3 that arises all sorts of potentially problematic or you know. 30:24.61 Reb Yeah. 30:38.71 Dave Let's say like inarguably problematic things about them and that's this group of characters in the game and the first thing about that is the second half of their name is a slur that the romani people don't like so there is that um. 30:41.11 Reb Yeah. 30:58.47 Dave I Don't want to make comments about intent or anything like that. I mean they're the ones who put it in the game I didn't read, you know how the Japanese work or anything like that. Ah, but the other interesting thing about these characters is that they have ah male physique but they are all dressed as women at the very least dressed as women. 31:16.37 Reb Yeah. 31:18.40 Dave And it's never clear exactly what their identity is supposed to be. I mean they're if. 31:22.99 Reb Yeah, they're they're writing in the localization that we played is coded in a very feminine way which could mean literally anything you know. 31:31.54 Dave Oh yeah, yeah, Absolutely yeah, um I did not know if this was if these are transgender characters If These are drag characters. They don't say you're just kind of left so I don't know. However, you take it. Um, from what I read the Japanese translation uses both male and female pronouns for them again instead of using and I don't remember what they did in Mother 3 I should have checked but I don't think they use ah the non binary pronoun They which. 32:06.45 Dave Japanese games and Japanese translations don't often use this for some reason I think. 32:09.40 Reb Yeah, it's also really hard to say you know I mean this is old. It's not an old game but it is some years older and you know our culture. Our cultures have become more conscious of things so you know you could. You could say they knew and were insensitive and terrible. You could also say maybe they just. 32:18.10 Dave Um, yeah. 32:28.44 Reb We're not aware of the best way to handle this and you know that it's yeah, it's hard to know it's hard to know what was going on here intention wise. 32:31.15 Dave Um, yeah. 32:39.92 Dave Right? I again I don't know if they're supposed to be Trans if they're in drag if they're you know Genderless Non Binary Whatever the game doesn't tell you all you have is the way they look and the way they talk and there is definitely something there. There is an intent of some kind but we just. You know we'll probably never know unless there's some interview with Itoi about them in Japanese Somewhere I don't know. Ah, these characters are important in the story. They're very important and you meet lots of them throughout the journey and. 33:05.51 Reb Um, yeah. 33:18.33 Dave There are some scenes with them that are really like tender and heartfelt and amazing and there are some scenes with them where I was like what the fuck just happened like that better not be what I think it was you know there's a scene in like a hot spring with Lucas where I was like I had to go look up like did. 33:32.34 Reb Yeah. 33:38.25 Dave What I think happened there actually just happened and I'm just you know people on Reddit answering the question of how they interpret it. But there's some weird stuff going on with these characters too. Ah that yeah just makes you wonder like what? What are they doing with these characters? 33:43.24 Reb Yeah. 33:53.20 Reb Yeah I Very much agree that it's all over the place. I think the scene that you just mentioned is really damning and upsetting . It's very weird. There have been a lot of theories as to why this game has never been brought over to the west. Um, this content is one of those one of multiple theories. 34:11.64 Dave Um, yeah. 34:11.69 Reb And frankly I think there are many things you could do to make this game better. I think you could change the name of this group of people for instance to no longer include a slur and that would be a very easy fix for that problem. There's plenty of puns on Magic you could come up with. 34:29.10 Reb Um I I think there's some things that are a little more complicated like I think that ha springs scene I was trying to think how you edit that out of the game and you fundamentally have to change the game because that scene is where Lucas gains a very specific ability that he needs to proceed and you would you would actively have to like redevelop that entire scene and I think. 34:42.40 Dave Um, yeah. 34:47.99 Reb They should. But you know that depending on where you're sitting. That's an amount of work. They might not be able to do or might not have the rights to do ah but it does get confusing again. We can't ascribe intent without knowing but I apart from the bits. We've just mentioned there is. There are a lot of great scenes with these characters. They are. They're almost like these sort of wise spiritual guides to Lucas; they are portrayed as brave and kind and a little silly. Ah sometimes. 35:08.68 Dave Um, yeah. 35:19.36 Reb Sometimes it feels like they're maybe being played off as a joke. Sometimes it feels like they're not being played off as a joke and they're genuinely just funny characters that you would want to be around and it's just so all over the place. I Do think the game ends up coming away. With them as as these very heroic and lovable ah people who are ultimately there to do the right thing and I think there's ah, a good reading of Mother 3 that you can do and again I Want to talk about more of this later but there's a good reading of Mother 3 you can do about the ways in which it portrays. The people who live on the fringes of society. The people who are marginalized are the people who society otherwise looks down upon as the people who ultimately have to shoulder the burdens for Humanity's worst sins but because they are brave and kind and good and look out for each other. They end up succeeding and I and I think there's a reading of that where. Where this group of people is is included in a positive way. But then you have that hot spring scene and I'm like what are we doing here? People. 36:18.53 Dave Yeah, yeah, that's that so you're right? Basically everything else about their actions in the story is brave and kind and heroic and all of these really positive things. They're funny. They're, you know, really helpful for all of the above. And then you have this hot spring scene which is ambiguous at the very best whether something predatory is happening if they were to localize this or do something like that they would have to at the very least acknowledge. 36:40.30 Reb Yeah. 36:56.67 Dave And like publicly say what's going on in that scene or what's going on with these characters and renaming them is something that you know that's as easy as just changing the name they can do that I mean I change the names of the characters too in the game. So not these characters but you know the main characters you can change their names. So yeah, they could do that. 37:04.97 Reb Yeah. 37:15.72 Dave Ah, but it is something worth bringing up when we're talking about like this this charm and the writing and how wonderful all the characters are there are these characters in here that will give pause ah to a lot of people playing it at the very least, but there is an overall tone to the rest of the game. 37:27.76 Reb Um, yeah. 37:34.41 Dave And the rest of the series that makes me want to give them the benefit of the doubt It's just like there's a couple things like that hot spring scene where I'm like like seriously what the fuck just happened there like I need an official answer for what they're trying to do. 37:47.66 Reb Yeah, it's one of the many. I mean there's so many reasons I would like them to localize this in an official capacity. But this is one of them because I do want to believe that the people who made this game are thoughtful, Kind people who had a thoughtful, kind idea in mind and. 37:56.32 Dave Yeah. 38:05.80 Reb For whatever cultural or upbringing or just what was going on at the time, reasons made some mistakes like like the name ah is not appropriate and also in 2012 when this came out I didn't know that information. And I think maybe a lot of people didn't and so like like that's that's maybe 1 that you could say well they you know they you want to give them an opportunity to do better and and that's that's what I would like I would like them to be given the opportunity to even if they're not going to come out and make a statement about it to at least release a version of this that has a little more care put into it. 38:22.10 Dave Yeah, yeah. 38:41.38 Reb Around these characters and around the communities of people who would otherwise really love this game but look at that and go Oh no you I am not welcome here. Ah because I think that is antithetical to what the series wants to stand for and I want them to prove me right on that. 38:41.84 Dave Yeah, Boom. Right. 38:54.40 Dave Yeah, exactly yeah and it is worth noting again. This game began development in 1994 like right after Earthbound came out and did not release until 2006 and a lot's changed since 1994 39:05.96 Reb She does it 6 I'm sorry I said twenty twelve two thousand six yeah I definitely had no idea what was going on in 2006 39:11.94 Dave Yeah, a lot has changed since 2006 since 1994 but it is worth bringing up if you're going to play this game. This is something you're going to see and. Again I Want to give them the benefit of the doubt because basically everything else about the game is, you know, heartfelt and caring and wonderful from that perspective. It's just yeah, kind of weird to see that so not to ah belabor that too long but we did have to to bring that up and talk about it. So. 39:33.55 Reb Yeah. 39:43.59 Dave Ah, we'll listen to a bit more music. We'll come back and talk about how this game looks and sounds from window visuals in Mother 3. The art is credited to Noble Hero Imagawa and the big thing that stuck. 40:01.34 Dave Big thing that sticks out to me about Mother 3 is that it is very bright and very colorful and very emotive pixel art like a lot of game boy advance games. The game Boy advance was a famously dark system. So a lot of them are very bright games if you play them on Modern screens. Ah, the same thing here. And the biggest thing that I want to shout out about the way it looks is we already talked about the animations but I would like to mention that again because they're wonderful. They convey so much emotion and character for whoever's doing them and character designs are awesome like if you like this is one of those games where you meet. You don't meet anyone who looks the same as anyone else in the game. Everyone's unique. Yeah yeah, but it ends up being a very pleasant game. I mean I Love Pixel art, especially game Boy Advance Era Pixel art, as wonderful to me will never get old. So. 40:40.57 Reb Yeah, there might be 1 or 2 But yeah, everyone feels fair themselves. 40:59.23 Dave Looks great and it was kind of always a joy to go into a new place and see what messed up townspeople you see and are goofy looking townspeople and what enemies you'll find too because the enemies you fight are all really entertaining to see the designs. 41:11.66 Reb Now I think it benefits from the small screen too. I mean I don't. I don't know what your experience was like but in a log pocket like having that small screen that was not quite what it was designed for but pretty close and then I had the benefit of a backlight. 41:25.87 Dave Oh yeah. 41:29.60 Reb And it just really pops on that small screen with the backlight like it is. It feels like a game of its era in the best possible way like when I think back and I imagine what it was like to play a game on the game Boy Advance. I'll think of something and then I might pull that game up again and look at it and I'm like oh wait. Ah. 41:46.55 Dave Fifth I forget. 41:47.10 Reb This is worse than I remembered but Mother 3 doesn't feel like Mother 3 feels like what I wrote like the good things that I remember playing on on game boy advance and that ah that's nice. 41:56.92 Dave Right? This game released like 2 years after the ds came out and so you would have had even on a game boy advance if you had the sp you would have had a backlight but ah yeah, always we're going back to the original game boy advance and being like it is so dark like let me find the most perfect lighting in my house to play this. 42:10.10 Reb Oh yeah, you get those little warm lights that you plug in and they like squiggle up and hang over your game boy advance. 42:14.31 Dave But oh yeah, yeah, we ah we we of the generation that had the original game boy advance We we made the worm light creators some money for sure. Um, this. Ah. 42:24.11 Reb Oh we did? yeah. 42:30.47 Dave Game Also has those cool spacey wacey Lava Lamp backgrounds from ah from Earthbound during combat I Love those so good to shout those out. But yeah I. 42:37.38 Reb Um, oh yeah, yeah, really unique clue because like ah because so many rpgs especially around this era were doing battles where you could see your party right. 42:50.71 Dave Yeah. 42:52.97 Reb Like that that was that was kind of becoming the norm was was to be able to in some way see your party and this is going back to a more dragon quest style that that Earthbound was also using where you're looking front on at whatever the enemy is and looking at their their little sprite or whatever and then you just have your party's boxes in front of you it. It feels. 43:12.91 Reb It feels old school retro. I don't remember, I should remember selecting this in the menu of Mother 3 do you remember this? um and Earthbound you choose your menu colors. But it's all flavors of ice cream as it does the Mother 3 as well like mint strawberry things like that I remember being ice cream flavors and. 43:20.21 Dave Yeah, yeah, yep you I don't remember if it's ice cream flavors but you still get to pick the color. yeah yeah I think so yeah I think I played Mother 3 with and I don't know what fruit this goes on to maybe grape with purple. 43:32.13 Reb I Thought that was cute. 43:38.88 Reb Oh I Love that? yeah. 43:40.50 Dave Menus. Yeah um, music in Mother 3 is credited to Shogo Sakai and this is a wild soundtrack just straight up. I love this so much. It's one of my favorite things about the game, same with Earthbound but I looked it up earlier. I spent today listening to it. Youtube playlist of the soundtrack. There are almost 400 tracks in this soundtrack. Yeah, a lot of them are like um there's a track for every like you know vocalization in the game. Also, 44:03.92 Reb Wow. 44:14.63 Dave And every little sting like when you get into a random battle the dooo do do like that. Um, and then also when you use the thing to isolate the rhythm of the battle songs. Those all have their own tracks too. But like that's yeah, let's say there's 50 of those. There's still like 350 songs on this. 44:17.92 Reb Yeah. 44:25.43 Reb Oh interesting. 44:31.11 Reb The line. Yeah, and they you know where we could talk about this whenever I guess but the music itself is it. 44:33.21 Dave Soundtrack. It's wildly eclectic. 44:45.00 Reb Again I Keep bringing up Earthbound and I apologize but Earthbound very much sets so much of the tone for this game. You know Earthbound was this game about Americana you know as viewed through the lens of these Japanese developers but this is this kind of quintessential Americana where you're this little boy with a baseball bat and a baseball cap. 44:48.47 Dave Yeah, you. 45:01.62 Reb Going off on an adventure and so the music styling so much of them were trying to lean into this sort of retro rock vibe like you get the feeling of sitting sitting at a little diner eating your burger and your fries and your milkshake with your baseball bat and and Mother 3 is is a different vibe from that but a lot of. 45:06.31 Dave Yeah. 45:18.90 Reb Music stylings carried over and so it's got kind of like I don't know I'm not I'm not like an oldies music expert. but I feel like I'm sitting in a diner when I listen to this music. It's got. It's got oldies radio station tones to it. Ah, they actually borrowed I think from a bunch of. They were inspired a little too closely maybe by some actual music tracks which is another reason people have suggested this might be being kept from a switch online though I I believe it's out in Japan now. So I don't know that that's the reason necessarily. 45:49.95 Dave Yeah, yeah, there is 1 song that borrows like the guitar riff from beat it by Michael Jackson. There's another song that is very very similar to the batman the old bat in theme song and the song title is related to bats. Also so like. 46:06.81 Reb Oh that's funny. 46:09.82 Dave Yeah, um, but that rock vibe is there especially in the combat music that old school Chuck Berry Esque like blues rock that is 12 or 8 bar blues type rock. Um. 46:17.55 Reb Oh yeah. 46:23.58 Dave A lot of that there is not a straight up rip of Johnny B Goode like there was an Earthbound but it's a bunch of songs that sound similar to that style and as ah, a bass guitar player I love the very prominent bass in those songs. Love those. 46:28.95 Reb Oh my gosh. 46:36.95 Reb Oh, it's great. It's so good. 46:41.65 Dave Um, every enemy has different music too which plays into the gameplay but also keeps the music fresh as you're playing. You know some of my favorite rpgs. You know, final fantasy 6 You're the same battle track for most of the game Earthbound has dozens of. 46:53.15 Reb Oh yeah. 46:58.84 Dave Combat songs and it's wonderful. 47:00.95 Reb Yeah, and you we could talk about the gameplay here in a second but because the game has ah ah a battle gameplay mechanic based on note like understanding the rhythm to each song. Ah, one of the highlights of playing this for me is entering a battle and hearing. 47:18.22 Reb Like hearing music and being like oh this is one of the ones I can do yeah or going like oh no I suck at this one. Ah. 47:19.77 Dave Yeah, yeah, just to go into battle and be like oh this is the do did do doda I I can do that one. Yeah for sure. 47:29.74 Reb Yeah, well they play they play with it too because there's there's some, there's There's a lot of ones that are just like pretty basic tempos. But there's some where the tempo actively increases and then decreases throughout the song and you're just supposed to know what's going on. Oh. 47:38.78 Dave Um, yeah, a bunch of the a bunch of the tracks like if you look at the Youtube Playlist. There's like we have this combat track and then this variation of that combat track and then this upgraded variation of those combat tracks. So. A lot going On. Um, one of the other things I Love about this soundtrack is that it is full of very recognizable themes for different places and then variations on those themes. Lots and lots of leitmotif throughout the game. Ah. 48:10.80 Reb Oh love that? yes. 48:14.97 Dave Listening to the Soundtrack. You'll hear the same 4 or 5 melodies used and reused seriously dozens of times each for different situations and this game is just wonderful about things relating to family things relating to the villains. Things relating to locations. It's all like this is like expert stuff. 48:36.12 Reb Yeah, that's it. I have no intelligent comment on this but as a cat as a player who has a passing knowledge of music. You know you do pick up on it and you pick up on the emotions being evoked. I remember a specific point in the game where. 48:46.80 Dave Yeah. 48:54.71 Reb The villain theme was playing in a very particular way around a certain character and like the dawning realization before any dialogue had been said that oh I understand what's going on here. It was really good. 49:06.51 Dave Yep yep, there's a lot of that. There is one of the main themes that's like this nice comforting song is reused like a lullaby style and it's called like the Mother 3 love theme is the title of the Song. So. It's really, really well done here in this soundtrack. It's awesome and of course if you love Earthbound this soundtrack is full of those boo those soundtracks, those sound effects throughout which is great and there's a bunch of other great sound effects in the game too. Um. Particularly love when you're fighting and you hit an enemy again. We have like this rock, these blues songs going on and you'll get like a little guitar lick when you hit an enemy like yeah, it's wonderful. I Love it so much I Also love the hot springs music. I just want to give a quick shout out to like the warm comforting feeling of. 49:56.20 Reb Oh yeah. 50:00.99 Dave You go to a hot spring The music slows down. It gets much warmer. It's great. Love it. Yeah. 50:04.73 Reb Yeah, it has a couple it brings back a couple theme themes from Earthbound as well. So people who are missing Earthbound and you'll hear a few little familiar tracks sprinkled in there that will remind you of different days. 50:17.64 Dave Yeah, see we're mentioning Earthbound a lot but the game references Earthbound a lot too. So I don't personally feel bad and will have to apologize. Yeah. 50:22.27 Reb Sorry oh yeah, it is a direct sequel. I mean you, you're not going to find out why, where , how and what until we'll get to it. Ah, but that's it. 50:32.82 Dave Yeah, yeah. 50:36.84 Reb Actually a direct sequel and I do think it's worth saying you don't need to have played Earthbound to enjoy Mother 3. I think the majority of the game stands on its own pretty well. Ah there are moments in this game that will have a much harder emotional impact if you did. 50:40.16 Dave Yeah. 50:49.25 Dave Yeah, hundred percent agree, So let's talk about the gameplay in Mother 3. It is a top-down rpg like we said before you walk around, you talk to people you interact with stuff that's one of those games where if you try to interact with something that. There's nothing to interact with you'll get a message that comes up that says no problem here. So yep, check elsewhere there we go. Okay I'll pick up on it if ah if it happens. 51:11.20 Reb No problem here. That's been integrated into my actual vocabulary. I will just say no problem here sort of casually and at no a clock nobody clocks. Nobody has any idea what I'm saying, no problem here. 51:27.70 Dave No problem here. Um, just like Earthbound you can see enemies on the screen and you can run around them. You can try to evade them and rush past to get to another screen. You can try to sneak up on them from behind to get a free turn in combat. This can also happen to you If. You're not careful. Ah, and getting a free turn is important because this is turn based combat and it is fairly difficult turn based combat for a game that is as cute and charming and loving as it is from a story perspective. It can be quite difficult. 52:02.94 Reb Yeah, healing items can in certain areas of the game be pretty scarce. Ah you do have the equivalent of magic with your Psi abilities. Ah that some characters can do healing but you also have you know magic points that will run out. 52:18.36 Reb And you have a limited amount of items to restore those and sometimes you can find a magic butterfly but you better be lucky. And yeah, there's a lot of there's a lot of moments to this game where you end up in a tight spot and I'm trying to decide if I think it's harder than Earthbound I think um. 52:22.32 Dave The who. 52:36.69 Reb I Think parts of it might be. 52:36.86 Dave I think Earthbound was harder because there is that rhythm thing that just like lets you do a little extra damage in this game I think. 52:45.57 Reb Yeah, it is very much a bonus mechanic. You don't have to engage with it. But. 52:57.35 Dave Yeah, it does feel like a bonus but ah, some of the fights, especially boss fights can be really really difficult. So like if you can get you know 25 extra damage. You need that because maybe it's going to take one fewer turn. 52:59.80 Reb You yeah. 53:13.62 Dave To ah to kill the boss at the end of it. Let's talk. Yeah, let's talk about the rhythm system. So if you do a standard attack like not magic, not using an item nothing like that if you just hit attack. You will go hit the enemy but each combat song has a beat. 53:13.89 Reb Yeah, we should actually explain what that is. Yeah so yeah. 53:32.76 Dave That you can tap the attack button along to and you'll know it's Happening. You'll know if it's hitting it because you'll get this nice spinning animation that goes on when you're doing it and um if you tap along with the beat and not just like not like the quarter note Beat. It's like the actual rhythm of the song that you have to learn. Ah, if you do that then you will keep getting more and more hits and do extra damage and the damage you do decreases decreases decreases. But then we'll go back Up. So if you're able to get you know 10 hits or something like that. You'll do quite a bit of extra damage. Um, this is super helpful and. 54:12.44 Dave 1 of the things I don't love about this system is that it takes way too long before you can reliably use it throughout the game because you can't hear it unless you're really good at music and I'm like I'm decent but I'm not that good. Um, you get a skill that will isolate the beat for you. 54:16.92 Reb Yeah. 54:31.95 Dave And then you can be like okay it's du da da da da da da dada like that. But you don't get that skill for a long time and there's one character that has the skill and they're not in your party for most of the first half of the game and so yeah, there were a lot of boss fights. Kind of midway through the game that was really difficult and I really wished I could use this and I couldn't so that sucked. But once you are able to use this. This is a lot of fun. I love this. 55:01.70 Reb So I have a confession: I never used the skill. I might have used it like 1 time but I didn't know until you just said that it's not just the quarter note beats. So I thought I was just bad this whole time. 55:09.38 Dave Um, ooh okay. 55:16.96 Dave Um, oh okay, yeah now no. 55:20.97 Reb I did mean I did manage to rack up some high combos on songs where it is just a steady beat because there are some easier ones like that. But at a certain point in the game I was never able to get higher than like 5 or 6 in a row just because I didn't understand what was happening. It does not. 55:25.10 Dave Right. 55:38.84 Reb I think this needs a better tutorial like if they ever did localize this I would like to see them add a better tutorial and give you I don't know like I don't know they couldn't give you access to that ability. And that character earlier on without changing the story but maybe giving you a tutorial section where you can just practice with that ability before you move On. It's not very well explained. Ah, but it's cool when it works because when you do get that Combo. It feels so satisfying. There was one song where I did get it almost to 20 and it just was just like. 55:56.32 Dave Yeah. 56:10.76 Reb But Bu and I'm like yeah you like that there the responsiveness of it the animations and and and the the tactileness of it felt really good. 56:10.88 Dave Um, yeah, ah. 56:18.33 Dave Yeah, my highest combo was 16 throughout the game and anytime I got up to 16 I felt amazing, especially because again there are some really tough enemies and. Especially anytime it's either like a boss fight or anytime you fight more than one enemy at a time. It's really tough. So ah, you do need to use this as much as you can. Um I wonder if this is something that's like. 56:39.20 Reb Um, oh yes. 56:48.75 Dave Because it's a game boy advance game if it's in the manual and we just don't have the manual you know playing it the way that we did. But anyway they do tell you about it in the game but they don't say much more. So yep, yep. 56:51.37 Reb That might be it. Yeah. 56:59.57 Reb And do yeah, they just kind of say hey this is a thing have fun like okay thanks Snake or whoever you whoever said that maybe the frog explains it I don't remember. Yeah. 57:09.20 Dave Yeah, probably a friendly frog or ah, a mole cricket or something like that. So um, it's important because this game has a bunch of really difficult bosses and this game commits one of the rpg sins that I hate. Every random encounter in an area is super easy and you can get through it with just your basic attacks or very minimal. You know buff debuff elemental spell damage and then you get to a boss where there is something else going on that you were. Supposedly supposed to learn but nothing about the earlier enemies taught you and that happens a couple times in this game where it's just okay I'm going to spend the next three hours grinding because levels are important. The stats are really important in this game so that kind of sucks. 57:46.92 Reb Yeah. 58:00.75 Dave Um, there are a couple bosses that are just real assholes in this game. 58:03.82 Reb Oh yeah, there's a boss I wrote. I wrote the name down in these notes but we're not spoiling it. Ah, there's a boss in a sewer area pretty late in the game that was the one that really threw me for a loop. I redid that fight so many times before I was able to move on it. It's just. 58:20.60 Dave Yep. 58:22.74 Reb Kick my butt. Ah I was looking up guides. Um. 58:23.99 Dave Yeah there's 1 in a volcano that just was just the worst. So anyway is a thing you probably will have to grind to get up to those bosses level once you get there a couple things to help you though. Even in regular encounters. This game can be quite difficult and there are some things that help so the first thing is your party members will have a good assortment of unique skills whether it's magic skills, size skills in this game or other creative tools, unique abilities, etc. That does buffs and status effects and debuffs and all of that and I love a turn based rpg system that incentivizes using all of these things and Mother 3 100% does that so that's cool. Yeah. 59:10.83 Reb Buffs are great. Yeah, genuinely it's rare, actually normally when I play turn based rpgs they say don't use status effects don't use buffs that's a waste of time they never work. No Mother 3 genuinely. it's important that's how I got through some of those later fights is just buffing the crap out of Lucas and moving on. 59:16.29 Dave Yeah. 59:24.73 Dave Yeah. 59:28.60 Reb Um, there's also something I don't know I wouldn't recommend just like reading a guide to walk yourself through this entire game. I think that would probably I don't know ruin the vibe a little bit. But if you're ever stuck I Actually do recommend looking up boss guides and stuff on the internet there. There's a handful of bosses that do have. Very interesting mechanics or secrets associated with how to beat them. There's specifically one boss I'm thinking about who you can basically just make go away entirely by handing them a specific item or having I can't if you have to have it in your inventory or if you have to use it. But there's a couple moments like that and theoretically you would hope that the game would code it a little bit better and I'm sure there are hints. 59:58.37 Dave Um, yeah. 01:00:06.22 Reb Here and there about how you're supposed to do those things. But ah if you ever are just like super duper stuck. Ah, sometimes there's ah, there's a clever trick hidden somewhere that you can use make your problems vanish. 01:00:14.52 Dave Yeah, yeah, a lot of the bosses even the really difficult ones have a trick to them and the trick is not just do a bunch of damage as fast as you can like there is some particular status that they're week to. 01:00:32.91 Dave Or some item that you might have picked up in the environment around like that plays into the story of like their character and what their character would be weak to etc So That's cool. Um, it's not always like signposted or hinted at even but if you are like putting the dots together you can figure it out. Ah, or you can go check out the walkthrough on starman.net which I used. Yeah, it's awesome. Um, the other awesome thing that we touched on earlier but it's worth bringing up again because it is a mechanic that as far as I know is unique to this series and it's really cool. It's the rolling HP mechanic. 01:00:56.45 Reb It's great. Yep. 01:01:11.57 Reb Ah, yeah, I Love this. 01:01:11.94 Dave So yeah, it's so cool. So if you're unfamiliar the way it works is when you get hit your hp ticks down 1 hp at a time. So if you get hit for 50 hp and you only have 40 left. You don't die instantly like you do in final fantasy. Your hit points tick down forty thirty nine thirty eight 37 and during that time the battle plays out and you're constantly just watching your hp tick down you can do all the same actions that you could have done even if you have taken what they call mortal damage and. If you're able to kill the enemy, if you're able to heal, if you're able to run away, all of those things will stop your character from falling and this is awesome and it's a regular part of boss strategy later to just be like they got hit for 500 damage. It's fine, I'll heal them. They'll be okay. Ah, factoring this into your strategy adds a nice cool layer strategy that like again I don't know why other rpgs don't do this. It's literally just this series that I'm aware of. 01:02:20.50 Reb It's very stylistically appropriate to this series. I think like I don't. I don't think it would make sense in final fantasy necessarily. Maybe it would ah part of this is the visual effect right? because their Hp bars are not bars. They're they're like little slot machine things basically and so you're watching the numbers. 01:02:24.39 Dave Sure, Yeah, yeah. Um, yeah. 01:02:37.97 Reb Bin Um, as they drop down and and it feels very stylistically in keeping with the rest of the series. Ah, but it also rewards fast play which I really like and you actually mentioned the like a dragon series earlier and this is a slight tangent and a slight Vari It's different from what we're talking about here. 01:02:46.20 Dave Yeah, yeah. 01:02:55.73 Reb But the most recent game like a dragon infinite wealth also rewards fast play because when you enter a battle. Everyone is kind of like I ideally spread out where they're supposed to be standing and if you menu very quickly and you know who you want to do what and you move quickly. You can. Keep all of your enemies in a big bunch and just hit it with a really hard attack and get rid of them all and at once and Mother 3 and Earthbound feel like ah, a different version of that which is yeah, you're you're not trying to attack as fast as possible necessarily but what you are trying to do is move through many as quickly, especially when someone's been hit with mortal damage. Because maybe you can save them. Maybe you can get in 1 last attack and finish this battle off before they die or maybe you can play your cards just right with the time that you have. It doesn't reward sitting around in menus and pondering your next decision. 01:03:41.23 Dave Yeah, another series that famously tries to reward fast menu play Final fantasy This is. It's very similar except you're more under the you're you're more under the gun will say to make your decisions like I remember. Like okay this character got hit with mortal Damage. They're gonna die. Ah, the character that I might want to heal them is going to act last on the next Turn. So I can't have them heal them because the character is gonna die before their turn comes up so I need to have the first character the fastest one do the healing and then just my strategy after that. 01:04:17.97 Dave And it's a bunch of really quick decision making adjusting your strategies like again this is wonderful I don't know why I don't see it. It might not make sense in you know the next final fantasy game or whatever but like you know indie rpgs I haven't played them all. But I haven't heard of anyone else doing this. 01:04:36.40 Reb It makes every character valuable too. There's certain fights where like ah I don't know duster is not as useful as other characters just because of what you're up against and what abilities he has at his disposal at that point but I can. 01:04:37.94 Dave Yeah. 01:04:53.30 Reb Low dust or up with certain items I can make sure that everybody, even those who don't have healing spells, have opportunities to heal or to do certain other things and then suddenly their no no turn is wasted when you're going through this game like you're. You know? So Even if you have a character who's not capable of doing as much damage to an enemy on their own.. There's always ways to sort of rig the system with items or or with timings or with support abilities that will make every turn valuable to you and I think that's really cool. 01:05:22.22 Dave Yeah, absolutely. So overall I like a lot of what the battle system's doing. I like the rolling hp a lot. I like the focus on status effects and buffs and debuffs. Um, I like the rhythm system. For keeping you engaged even in those random you know enemies that you can take out in a turn or 2 as you're going through the levels like I enjoy all of that stuff. There is like a balance to some of them. Levels and areas and then the bosses at the end that I think is a little bit out of whack. But overall I think this is a perfectly fine rpg combat system that is like during later boss fights as long as you're at a level where you can hang with them. The strategy can get really interesting. 01:06:12.72 Reb Yeah I love it. 01:06:12.78 Dave Um, and intense. So it's good stuff. Yeah, we did mention at the beginning or I mentioned that like I wish they would have iterated a little bit more on Earthbound. It is basically the same combat system plus the rhythm system but like this game had a. 01:06:25.18 Reb Yeah. 01:06:32.12 Dave A 12 year development cycle. They moved it from like at least 2 or 3 consoles before they landed on the game boy advance. So I don't know and maybe I should count myself lucky that it turned out as complete and finished as it did. 01:06:39.74 Reb Yeah. 01:06:45.20 Reb No I mean I think there's like you know there, there's some weak points I don't I don't necessarily know what I would have changed about it because I do love the Earthbound combat system so much but I I was just thinking you know like the party composition is basically the same again for the third gate. Game in a row you have your hero kid with the baseball bat. You have your magician, you have a magician, a healer, let's side user psi user. Um, you have your sort of tools user a little bit different from ah Jeff but use it using sort of tools and like. 01:07:09.69 Dave Um, yeah, yep. 01:07:21.80 Reb Like interesting gadgets to make things happen and then you have your fourth character who is like ostensibly the weakest member of your party but then depending on what you equip him with and how you play your cards could be very very very powerful. Actually yeah. 01:07:34.85 Dave Um, I always kind of like using that fourth character just as this battle needs them to be the potion person. That's what they're going to do. This battle needs them to attack and hit the rhythm system. That's what we'll do in this battle. So. 01:07:41.90 Reb Ah, yeah. 01:07:47.82 Reb But my memory could be fuzzy but doesn't he have some of the best equipment in the game? I don't remember I might be I might be a little fuzzy on that. But I have an analog for poo in Earthbound that was my record the character Poo If you've played. 01:07:50.34 Dave Um, he I don't remember that either to be honest, yeah rate right. 01:08:05.72 Reb Earthbound but yeah late again, it's a very similar structural setup so you're if you're familiar with the Earthbound battle system with the exception of the rhythm elements. You're basically playing the same thing. It will feel very familiar at a certain point and I don't know. Maybe you're sick of that. I don't know why you're playing Mother 3 though if you're sick of that. 01:08:14.24 Dave Um, yeah. 01:08:23.20 Dave Yeah, you better right? You better Hope the story is going to do it for you. So um, let's listen to a bit more music. I want to highlight as much music as I can in this episode and then when we come back, We'll get into our final thoughts, our housekeeping and then. 01:08:23.58 Reb Find another game. Yeah. 01:08:32.29 Reb Yeah. 01:08:38.64 Dave Soon spoilers will be coming. Okay so wrapping up this non-s spoiler part of the podcast. We always ask the question who what type of gamer what type of person who would you recommend play Mother 3 01:08:53.29 Reb Okay I I mentioned this a little bit at the front of the podcast but this is this is my I have a mental box that I put games like Mother 3 in that I just call weird rpgs I don't know but there's this like sub genre of games that feature very young protagonists ah top-down turn-based. 01:09:02.31 Dave Um, listen. 01:09:10.40 Reb Ah, they're all very inspired by Earthbound or inspired by Earthbound themselves. They usually deal with heavy emotional themes. Ah they usually have really really goofy sensibilities and a lot of humor. Um and they usually play in some way with the notion of what it means to do violence. Ah, to other creatures other things other people ah Undertale is like the biggest example of this that I think most people know Earthbound is obviously the other one I fell into this genre by playing grasshoppers game contact on the ds ages ago which if you like Mother 3 you might not like Contact. 01:09:41.64 Dave Okay. 01:09:47.21 Reb But you will see the visual style basically replicated directly into Contact and it is wild how similar those 2 games look. Moon is the other one I played recently that I really really loved. It's a game that inspired Earthbound itself and was only released in the west just a couple years ago. Moon is phenomenal. Um, there's a. 01:09:52.14 Dave So. 01:10:05.56 Reb Others out there too. Those are the ones that I always think of but if you liked literally any of those games like please find a way to play Mother 3 because I it's It's such a weird small sub genre that every every year or so I find myself craving being able to play another game like all of those games and and you know it's It's sometimes a little difficult to. 01:10:25.34 Reb To track down a new one that I haven't played yet and Mother 3 just really did it for me last year it was just I think it might be the perfect encapsulation of this weird subgenre I've invented and I would love more people to appreciate it. 01:10:39.12 Dave Nice. Yeah I agree with you with that categorization of weird rpgs by the way like I definitely think of a lot of those games you mentioned in the same box. So you're not alone there for sure. 01:10:47.98 Reb Now. Yeah I think you put like one shot in there maybe as well. Even though it doesn't really have combat you can maybe I played off I was on it was on acts of the blood god a couple of like I think a couple years ago and I I was asking for more recommendations of games like this and people recommended off and off as a. 01:10:57.57 Dave Yeah. 01:11:07.50 Dave Okay. 01:11:11.14 Reb I think it fits into the box I was describing but it's also a very deeply disturbing take on this genre. So maybe be prepared if you're going into that one but Mother 3 is the one I think most people have not played just because of its availability. 01:11:19.15 Dave Um, yeah, right I think I think from what I've seen Omori seems kind of like this too. Although it's a yeah. 01:11:30.55 Reb Oh yeah, Omori is all there. 01:11:34.19 Dave So I'm going to be playing that for the podcast later this year. I'm looking forward to that? Um, nice. So yeah I agree with you. So if that, this type of Rpg appeals to you. You know if you like an Rpg and you know you don't want to play a final fantasy game or Dragon Quest or something like that you want something different. 01:11:36.30 Reb I didn't finish it but I did like Omori lot. 01:11:53.93 Dave The mother series, obviously like Earthbound, is much more available than Mother 3 But if you have played Earthbound already. Then I definitely recommend trying Mother 3 and earlier I think I said that I liked the plot of Earthbound more like the setup for what's going on in the plot. But I like the emotional core of Mother 3 a lot more than Earthbound and I liked it in Earthbound too. But I think that that's more the point of this game and in the spoiler section we're going to talk about a lot of that stuff and how this game works with that. So I think that it's quite good and If. Just if you're a fan of this type of Rpg at all, you should find a way to play this.. It's not difficult. Both of us did and I kind of get the feeling that there's all this like fan Outcry for a legal way to play Mother 3 but a bunch of people who really want to play. It has found a way to play it anyway. So It's out there. It's available. It's very good. 01:12:46.30 Reb Yeah. 01:12:48.89 Dave Give it a try before we get into spoilers. We will do a little bit of housekeeping and first things first the guest always gets to talk about the things that they are doing so rev tell people about your work which is wonderful by the way and anything else that you may want to plug. 01:13:00.00 Reb Oh thanks Yeah, I'm primarily an investigative reporter . I'm the resident investigative reporter at ign.com for video games and so you know it's my job to. Tell the story of how the games we love get made which is sometimes a really lovely story and sometimes a sad one. It can go both ways and I try to talk about it all. Um, you can find my work at ign.com/person/duckvalentine. it's all my articles there. I recently did a really really really big time consuming investigative report. 01:13:34.44 Reb About Life is Strange studio Deck Nine ah that I think is worth reading I put a lot of effort into it so you can read it if you want um I am no longer on Twitter I have vanished into the ether I am hovering around blue sky my handle most places is @duckvalentine. But if you're on Twitter and looking for something to follow I would highly recommend looking up the handle at Ign Union that's right ign. Ah, the people who make all of the wonderful things that you see on ign.com every day we unionized a little over a month ago. We're super deeply proud of our union. Still working on getting a contract together that it just takes time. That's how it works ah because we got to go to the table and bargain with management over what we want and all sorts of other fun things. But in the meantime we have a union and all the protections and wonderful things that it offers and I'm really proud of it. So I highly encourage you to support me. 01:14:28.87 Reb Ah, unions in game development in media in entertainment wherever your local union is ah support them and the best way you can support us right now. Ah I you know this is we're recording this well before ah this episode is coming out So I have no idea what's going to be happening when this episode comes out but the best way you can support us anytime is ah following us. 01:14:48.62 Reb On Twitter at @ignunion seeing what we're doing and spreading the good word about whatever the IGN union happens to be doing. 01:14:55.31 Dave Awesome! Yeah, definitely recommend supporting the union. The games industry needs more unions whether it's from the development side or the media side. I highly recommend supporting that. So go check that out and then also make sure to read the work. ReB is doing. It's fantastic. Your article about deck nine and life is strange spurred some good conversation in our Discord server and I have noticed every time I read an article on IGN and I think because I don't always read who wrote it right when I start reading. And I think I'm glad somebody did this and wrote this I look up and I see your name so that's tough, especially I like the articles giving voices to the people in all of the rounds of layoffs that we've had good to give people a chance to tell their side of the story because they would. 01:15:39.63 Reb Yeah, yeah. 01:15:47.77 Dave Kind of disappear unless their tweets get through or something like that. So props to you for the work you're doing Okay, now time to talk about myself. It's a rough transition. But yeah, you'll look down in the show notes you'll find ah every place that we mentioned there where to follow the union where to find. 01:15:51.92 Reb Thank you. 01:16:07.77 Dave Ah, Reb’s reporting good stuff. So um, for this podcast ways to support the same things as always if you leave a rating and review it's helpful to push this up the algorithm if people are looking for Mother 3 podcasts. They might find this one and that's what we want, you can also join the discord server. There's an invite link down in the show notes. It's full of wonderful intelligent kind people. We're a very welcoming community. We love to talk about video games and all of that stuff so please join if you are a Discord person. I have another podcast called a top 3 podcast where we do top 3 lists and we draft weird topics. It's a comedy show. I think that's a good time and last but not least if you want to support monetarily you can do so patreon.com/real Dave Jackson where for a minimum of $2 per month you can vote in what games I do on the show and there are a bunch of other perks as the tears go up so with all of that being said. We're going to take a break when we come back. It's full spoiler time for Mother 3. 01:20:25.24 Dave Okay, we're back and it's full spoiler time for Mother 3 and the spoilers are going to come in Hot. So if you don't want to be spoiled please ah get out. Go listen to something else. Go play Mother 3 and then come back. That's the beauty of podcasts will' always be here. So ah. Let’s talk about the inciting event. The thing that we stop just short of talking about in the non spoiler part and it's like it happens so early in the game and it's something that like people might already know but I didn't want to be a person to spoil it for somebody because I didn't know. 01:20:49.00 Reb Yeah. 01:20:55.48 Reb Before you say this? There's a line I think was used in the Mother 3 marketing that or or something that gets tossed around a lot and people always say about Mother 3 you can't cry till the end don't cry until the end and it's. 01:21:11.31 Dave Huh. 01:21:11.88 Reb It's like a line I'd have to look up to see if it's like a marketing line or what it was used in. But but but that's like the line that people say for Mother 3 and it's such like you know you can cry whenever you want obviously but it's just that line being associated with Mother 3 this game has so many points where you just want to openly weave. 01:21:21.20 Dave Um, yeah. 01:21:29.30 Dave Um, yeah I know. 01:21:30.50 Reb Ah, and and immediately in the in the very beginning of the game you get hit with 1 01:21:36.21 Dave Yep, so we said that Hinawa Lucas and Claus are on their way home. There's the forest fire and things are kind of going haywire and one of the things that you find out in addition to the fire in addition to the men in the pig masks is that these local dinosaur type creatures called Draggos. Who are normally friendly. They ended up attacking Hinawa Lucas and Claus on the way home. We'll find out why later but Lucas survived and this Hinawa jumped in front of them to shield them from the attacking dinosaur. And she died she was found with 1 of their teeth piercing her heart. So the mom dies. What would you say like 15 minutes into the game 20 minutes yeah 01:22:22.11 Reb Yeah, basically immediately you get the scene where they're playing with the friendly Dragos. Ah, and then you get a couple little snippets of them hanging out at Grandpa's house. 01:22:27.32 Dave Um, yeah. 01:22:34.95 Reb And then they start walking back through the forest and then all hell breaks loose and then this happens it's it's so it's not even it's in the first hour immediately. 01:22:38.37 Dave Yep yep, it's pretty soon and then Claus Lucas's older brother is seen as this chapter ends it kind of pans out. They're looking for Claus. They don't know where he is and they show he's down on. Like a lower level like he fell off of a cliff or something like that. He's just laying there down at the bottom so you don't know if he's alive or if he's dead. I still have questions about whether he survived that or not. Yeah, we can talk about that when we get to the. 01:23:05.62 Reb How interesting. 01:23:12.30 Dave Reunion It's the spoiler section or whatever. So I don't know what you thought he survived or did you think he was. 01:23:18.59 Reb I well obviously it was okay so at this point in the game. You know you see him but you don't you not long after it's like oh we have to find Claus we don't know where he is and it becomes apparent that this search for him is going to go on for a very long time. Ah for certain people and so like. 01:23:26.35 Dave Yeah, yeah. 01:23:35.80 Reb At this point I was like oh well, he's probably alive then because when video games don't show that so like he now was pierced with this thing. She's dead that she's not coming back Claus It's ambiguous and if it's ambiguous. He's probably alive in some way. I did not know what the nature of that was going to be but I assumed he was alive and. 01:23:40.65 Dave Yeah, yeah. 01:23:52.50 Reb Some way and then what I think you're referring to later in the game when you do find out what happened to him I do think that was Claus I this is the first time hearing of this theory and I'm super curious about what you think happened. 01:23:59.76 Dave Oh not a theory that it's yeah, not a theory that it's not Claus but a theory that he is reanimated in some way. Yeah, and yeah, it doesn't necessarily change anything about the story I Just like thought that was. 01:24:07.29 Reb Oh interesting. Okay I mean that's fully plausible within this game's universe. Yeah. 01:24:19.17 Dave You know a possibility because it looks like he fell off of a cliff. So yeah. 01:24:22.93 Reb Yeah I mean the thing we're. It's full speed ahead. Whatever i'm the thing that we get into later is that we find out that these pig masks these guys that were running around have been doing some sort of experiments where they've been fusing ah like cybernetic technology Robot crap with. 01:24:37.62 Dave Yeah, yeah. 01:24:40.22 Reb Natural things which is what we find out happened to the Drago that caused it to attack Hinawa We find all sorts of things like that. Um later on it seems that something maybe like that could have happened to has happened to Claus ah and but I see what you're saying like that could have reanimated him if he was dead. 01:24:58.80 Dave Yeah, yeah, yeah for sure and honestly it's not super important which of those it is. It was just something that came up as if it's possible. Um, so the death of. 01:24:59.79 Reb But it also could have just been done to him while he was alive. 01:25:07.55 Reb Yes. 01:25:14.31 Dave Ah, Hinawa is like the inciting event that kind of kicks off the rest of the game and it it kicks off one of the things that I really like about this game and one of its central themes is grief and how different people deal with it and in Lucas's case how the world treats you as you deal with it. So before we talk about Lucas just real quick flint his dad deals with grief by going extreme tunnel vision into finding Claus to the point where he completely ignores Lucas for the whole game until the very end. Um, which is. 01:25:48.40 Reb Yeah. 01:25:52.95 Dave I Have read a lot of these stories about like um, a parent who had a missing kid and they like devote their life to finding their missing kid and it turns out they have other kids and I just wonder like what's it like for the other kid when the parents are so single minded focused and that's what's going on here with flint. 01:26:01.26 Reb Yeah. 01:26:12.21 Dave And I thought that that was an interesting thing because early in the game you play as him, you fight as him. He is a playable character and then he's basically out of the picture until the last chapter because he's just looking for Claus. That's all he cares about. 01:26:27.11 Reb Yep I I actually think to back it up a little bit the moment when he finds when flint finds out and realizes what's happened to Hinawa like he loses it and I think. 01:26:33.72 Dave Um, yeah, he freaks out. 01:26:39.41 Reb Did such an incredible job. We praised the animations and and the visual stylings of this game. That scene where he kind of goes a little nuts. He hits a guy ah running around. Ah it's you know that? Yeah, it's like it to get him to chill out and stop hurting people to be clear like it is the grief. 01:26:49.20 Dave Yeah, they have to throw him in Jail because he is. He's freaking out. Yeah. 01:26:59.20 Reb Induced madness but he's like it's it's all in this top down 2 d like little little game boy advance animations. But it's just so well conveyed like the emotion that this man who's like. Look, he's quiet. You know he was staying home to take care of the farms. You didn't see him a whole lot in the opening chapters but he is up to that point portrayed as a very devoted family man like he clearly loves Hinawa. He clearly loves his kids and he likes that he lives for them basically and this is just like torn him apart and in the moment when he finds out about. He know his death. He also. Like potentially thinks he's lost one of his sons as well. He thinks Claus is also dead. I actually can't remember if Lucas got back at that point. Did he even find Lucas? I think he has Lucas at that point. Um, so he yeah so he knows Lucas is okay but he doesn't know where Claus is so he's potentially lost with his wife and 1 of his sons at that point is like. 01:27:33.59 Dave Yeah, yeah. 01:27:41.45 Dave Lucas I yeah yeah because they bring Lucas back. Yeah. 01:27:52.41 Reb Very young son and it's just it. It clearly destroys this man in that moment and it's such an incredible scene again like 1 hour into this video game and juxtaposed by the way I I believe not long after or not long before by. 01:28:00.94 Dave Yeah, yep. 01:28:11.57 Reb Pardon me goofy ass shit like duster trying to help out by using a staple ladder, a staple gun on a cliff to make a ladder like all of this going on while this silly business is happening. 01:28:18.33 Dave Yeah, specific. Yeah. 01:28:25.65 Dave Yeah that's one of the things that this game does pull off I think really well is that goofy shit like you said at the same time when very serious shit is happening like you said flint has definitely lost his wife and possibly 1 of his sons and. So he freaks out like you said about great animations. This is all played out through pixel art on the game boy advance. This is not. You know the latest and greatest technology that we have in 2024 so that's great. He goes on like a revenge path. He takes the tooth that killed Hinawa and he wants to go kill the dinosaur that did it. And then we have ah a moment where he's about to do it and then ah the dinosaurs kid comes up next to it and he finally chills out like he spares them the dinosaur even sheds a tear It's this game starts out with um. 01:29:10.76 Reb Yeah. 01:29:23.61 Dave It's very sleepy for like 15 minutes and then it's like a hundred miles an hour immediately it's 01:29:27.19 Reb Immediately delves very clearly into the thesis that hurt people hurt people like everybody is hurting each other because they themselves are hurting flint is hurting and he's punching a guy and trying to kill a dinosaur. The dinosaur is hurting. You get it killed Hinawa who like we see in the opening scenes. 01:29:33.86 Dave Yeah, yeah. 01:29:46.28 Reb The dinosaur and Hinawa were friends. It clearly knows what it was what it what it has done and regrets it. Ah, we see the children taking on the burdens of their parents, the child shielding its parent ah Lucas watching all of this transpire. It's all my gosh. It's so messed up and it's also so. 01:30:04.71 Reb It's not overexplained at any point the art and and the dialogue do all of the talking. You don't need a giant 20 page paper explaining to you How everybody is feeling and. Exactly what transpired moment to Moment. You can just see it and you understand immediately that everybody is just going through it on every possible level. 01:30:26.64 Dave Ah yep, and then right after this um flint goes full tunnel vision mode to find Claus and you barely see him until the last chapter of the game. Ah, you will just hear towns folks say. 01:30:36.83 Reb Yeah. 01:30:42.69 Dave That he's out looking for him all the time or he visits the grave and that's about it. Um, and then turning this over to Lucas where you have the way his dad reacted to everything and now you have Lucas who is a little kid who. 01:30:44.70 Reb Yeah. 01:31:00.85 Dave He doesn't react with the same anger that flint does but he's a little kid like he doesn't know how to react to situations like this his mom is gone now. His dad is gone too because it's very clear his dad's not really paying much attention to him Lucas is kind of left to fend for himself. Yep. 01:31:17.40 Reb He's lost his big brother. Also, you know who's taking care of him. The family dog Boney good old Boney. Boney has never done anything wrong in his life. 01:31:19.82 Dave Um, the dog. Yeah Boney is a real one? Yeah, um, that's right? Ah so Lucas's journey through grief is one of the main things about this game that I think it does really really well and it starts out. Where Lucas is just inconsolable people like we talked about this in the non-spoiler part people in town are kind of mean about this and they just say like oh yeah, Lucas all he does is cry and it's like yeah, don't yeah of course he's like eight years old and like his mom and brother just died. Of course he's crying. 01:31:47.38 Reb Yeah, yeah. 01:31:58.87 Dave His dad's not there like it's it's pretty fucked up the way that it's portrayed at the beginning where like you were introduced to Tazmily as this place of nice people this utopian place almost and that everyone's like yeah Lucas like all he does is cry like what's wrong with Lucas Man and it's yeah. 01:32:16.82 Reb It's played off really well too because I might be sort of misremembering again. It's been like a year since I played this game but they don't usually say that kind of thing to Lucas' face . Ah they do like talk to him like a kid but you do venture through Tazmily as Duster. 01:32:27.67 Dave Yeah, yeah, yeah. 01:32:35.43 Reb Ah, and as other characters at different points too and they say these things to other adults right? like they'll turn duster and they'll be like oh yeah, Lucas lives there. He's like always crying what's his deal and it's that sort of like backhanded very you know someone who grew up in the midwest that very oh will be very midwestern nice to your face. But oh man, what's this problem? 01:32:45.60 Dave Um, yeah, oh yeah, um. 01:32:55.10 Reb Ah, behind your back. Um, and I think the different dialogue depending on who they're speaking to is really well done as well. 01:33:02.15 Dave Yep, yeah, that's a good connection there as someone who's also from the Midwest. Yeah yep, um, later on. 01:33:08.62 Reb So shit talk duster behind his back. It's just all go. Yeah, everyone's just like that. 01:33:17.45 Dave It's at the beginning of chapter four I think or sometime in chapter four. Ah, after you, you do a chapter as Lucas and then you do a chapter as duster and then you do a chapter as Salsa. The monkey will talk about him and Fassad a little bit. Yeah. 01:33:31.16 Reb Salsa The monkey. 01:33:33.30 Dave And then in chapter 4 you play as Lucas again and he wakes up and as soon as he wakes up. He starts to get dressed and then you have a flashback to a memory where he remembers his mom. He remembers her funeral. He remembers them like. Joking with each other because he tries to go outside without taking his pajamas off and getting dressed. Um, this is three years later by the way in chapter four I think this might be the biggest one? yeah. 01:33:55.19 Reb Yeah, this is I think this is the biggest time. Skip right? Are there The other ones are not quite that big I think so because you do see a little change in his sprite right? Like he's a little shorter. Um I don't know what age he's supposed to be. 01:34:13.30 Reb I kind of imagined him as being like I don't know maybe like 5 years old originally when the incident happened and then maybe maybe like maybe like eight nine maybe pushing 10 I don't know he's young. He's a kid. 01:34:19.35 Dave Yeah, like ah a little kid. Yeah. 01:34:27.90 Dave It's yeah, still still a kid. Yeah, even after 3 years still a kid. Um, right? Yeah, he should be but instead. 01:34:31.49 Reb He's not a teenager. He's not a preteen. He's not remotely in that area. This guy's going to like elementary school theoretically, but his dogs are taking care of him. 01:34:42.35 Dave Yeah, exactly his dogs raising him because three years later his dad is still going out in the woods every day looking for Claus or spending time at Hinawa's grave and I just thought this scene was really great to just show us that three years later. First thing in the morning he wakes up and he remembers his mom because he's still a kid. Yeah, it's kind of heartbreaking because it's all these just cute memories of a mom and her young kid. 01:35:00.84 Reb Yeah, he's still a kid. 01:35:11.49 Reb Yeah, and you can get a little more too If you can go visit Hinawa's grave ah at different in different chapters too and get and get different memories and you can sometimes see flint there. Um, but you just get there. There's a lot of flashbacks and you know again a child he is. 01:35:27.40 Reb You know, just kind of always thinking of his mom that he lost. Yeah. 01:35:31.22 Dave Yep, three years later first thing in the morning. Yeah yep, um, chapter 6 is a really famous chapter for people who played this game. It's like. 10 minutes long I don't know why it's its own chapter. But maybe they just wanted to isolate this moment. This is the one in the sunflower field. So yada yada yada Lucas has fallen from an airplane because the is there because the rope snake failed and he falls in this sunflower field. 01:35:47.20 Reb Yeah. 01:35:54.62 Reb We'll get to that. 01:36:02.70 Dave He looks around. You're looking for the party members. He looks around and remembers his mom because they had a sunflower at home and then he sees a mirage of her in the field and he chases the mirage through the sunflower field. It leads to a cliff and she's up in the clouds off the edge of the cliff. And there's like a little moment where he sits and looks and then he jumps off of the cliff and reaches toward his mom up in the sky. Um, luckily he falls down into a straw pile because this is Assassin's creed suddenly. But. 01:36:35.63 Reb Do I remember this right? You have to do it as the player right? like you have to player you have to player input him off the ledge which is the hardest goddamn thing I had to do in this game. Oh my God because you know you know what it's doing in that moment you sit there and you're like okay I understand what I have to do to proceed on this story. But how am I gonna throw my kid off a ledge. 01:36:39.10 Dave You might have to? yeah yeah I think so um, yeah. 01:36:54.96 Dave Yeah, exactly. Um, it's another see , it's really short but it just shows you like okay this is chapter 6 it's been a little while it's been you know hours of game time since chapter 4 um, and maybe you got another scene by visiting the grave. But. Lucas all the while is on this quest and by this point you went I think you went to the thunder tower and you know you met Fassad and you met your other party characters. You've done a bunch of stuff and then you get to the sunflower field and the memory of mom comes rushing back and it's still strong enough to the point. Where he will literally jump off the cliff for the chance to be reunited with her and it's just a very short scene but it's super powerful. 01:37:39.51 Reb Um, yeah. 01:37:46.25 Reb It's freaking incredible. Sorry I Love it. 01:37:48.79 Dave Yeah, it's wonderful and then but back at the this is you know we'll talk about Tas Milles progression or corruption in the soon. But um, when you get back to town. You talk with Alec who's. 01:38:06.32 Dave Alec Alec who's Alec. Yeah, that's duster's dad right? Wes is Duster's dad. Yeah Alec and Wes are in the nursing home and you talk with them. They said that they had a dream where Hinawa told them to put that pile of hay down at the bottom of the cliff. 01:38:07.52 Reb Alec. He's a duster's dad. No no, he's the grandpa sorry west is dusters. Yeah. 01:38:24.40 Dave And they say that no matter what Hinawa is thinking of you and this pays off in later chapters. Um sure. Yeah, no. 01:38:30.95 Reb Yeah, can I go off on a small tangent here. Have you seen a puppy cat? Okay, so it's ah it's an animated show. There. There's a version of it that ran for a while. Um, and now there's a new version of it on Netflix. There's a character in it called cardamom. And Cardamom is a young child. He's like I don't know how old he's supposed to be. I think he's like preschool kindergarten really young. Ah anyway cardamom and in the early episodes he is the main character's landlord and it's initially played off like a joke like he shows up to do a landlord job. He's like fixing the toilet by hitting it with the squeaky hammer. It's a gag. It's funny. Um, but in the new Netflix series in the later episodes you find out a little more about why he's actually her landlord and not his mother who is an adult. Ah and you find out more of his backstory and you find out that he is also like the characters in this game going through it in every possible way and he is. This literal tiny child who is trying to be the responsible one while every adult around him is just like deeply incompetent and completely ignoring his suffering and there's this really great scene that I think of a lot. Ah, in ah in a later episode where again the adults have just failed in every possible way. He's trying to save a bunch of other children and he's just he's he's been doing all this stuff like his house is overgrown with all these plants that he can't get rid of his mom is basically in a coma. Everybody's incompetent and he just looks around and he goes why is nobody there?" 01:40:03.45 Reb Helping me why are none of these adults helping me and he has like this minor breakdown where he's like you all are supposed to be helping me and no one is and I I feel that so much in thinking about Mother 3 because Lucas as you said he's here on his own all the people in his life are supposed to be responsible for him. None of them. Are helping him and he is the one who is supposed to be helped in this case, society should be pooling their resources to take care of this poor child and like help him get the support that he needs and make sure that he knows he's loved and everybody has just ditched him except the dog. But. You know we'll talk about some of the characters who do come to his aid later and why they come to his aid like Duster and Kumatora, Boney. Obviously the dog will never abandon you um, but this is one of those moments because you do get Alec and Wes who are there Alec is there for him. Um, in this moment. Ah maybe he wasn't always like that. Super there for him but the sort of unifying moment of Hinawa like like the mother's love reminding you reminding Lucas that like oh you know she is there for him still like there is there is still at least 1 adult somewhere in in his life in some capacity who loves him and will take care of him. 01:41:12.89 Dave Suffer. 01:41:16.64 Reb And even if she's not there to do it herself. There are adults who are going to try to reach out and say these are 2 adults who have been relegated to a nursing home by society because they are trying to get rid of anybody with a compassionate heart so that they can keep doing their little slimy evil things. 01:41:27.12 Dave Yeah, yeah. 01:41:33.78 Dave Right. 01:41:35.63 Reb And so again those themes of like society casting out the people who are compassionate and trying to help and whoever who's whose burden is it to take on the responsibilities of society anyway, I just I love the throughlines here I love that it's Alec and west who get this message to help him. 01:41:43.49 Dave Um, right. 01:41:50.30 Dave Yeah, um, yeah, it's a good observation that again like his dad's not really helping him because he's got that extreme tunnel vision of looking for Claus. He's basically gone. Um, the townspeople who would be next in line are. Making fun of Lucas behind his back so you can tell they're not, you're probably, they're not going over to check up on him and stuff like that and duster and kumatora and boney are there. They're in the party but they are not necessarily part of Lucas's journey through grief. 01:42:27.00 Reb Yeah. 01:42:27.10 Dave They're just there with him from an rpg party member perspective like they have their own things going on um duster we we can just talk about duster in his his whole deal now since we're on the topic um duster's introduction I think it's in chapter 2 01:42:38.74 Reb So yeah. 01:42:45.80 Dave When you first play as duster and he is a thief and he's under the tutelage of his dad and I already forgot which is his dad Alec or Wess is his dad Alec is his grand grandpa or something like Alec is Lucas his grandpa right that's right because 01:42:53.11 Reb Alec is Lucas's grandpa, Wess is duster's dad. 01:43:01.97 Dave Yeah, Alec had to leave his house on the mountain and the only place for him to go was the nursing home. Yeah, um, and Wes is a fucking dick to duster. Yeah um, just he's trying to teach him how to be a thief and you play as duster. 01:43:04.16 Reb A nursing home. 01:43:11.46 Reb This so awful. 01:43:21.24 Dave You go do the thief thing, duster is clearly a capable thief. Yeah, but yeah, what's yeah staples staples the wall uses the rope snake all that stuff. But yeah Wes is ah Wes is a dick to to duster and duster is kind of like a mopey. 01:43:25.40 Reb He's great at it. 01:43:40.39 Dave Kind of butt of the joke type character early in the story. 01:43:43.92 Reb Yeah I actually love duster. I think he's great. He is kind of Mopey Ah he has a weird amnesia plot At one point that I actually think didn't make a whole lot of sense. Really. 01:43:45.75 Dave Yeah. 01:43:55.90 Dave Um, yeah. 01:43:57.15 Reb Um, he ultimately turns around but he's I think very critically and and very interestingly for a game made at this time ah duster is disabled. He walks with a limp and it's visually noticed in the very good animations. Ah, it's referenced. 01:44:17.11 Reb At least a couple times. Ah like what his deal is ah he's freaking great. The game treats him with so much respect I feel. Um I mean I'm not not really able to speak on behalf of the disabled community for this. But I thought it was really. 01:44:20.77 Dave Um, yeah. 01:44:35.75 Reb Good and interesting portrayal that I was not expecting from a game in this era of this character who is complex and imperfect but also fundamentally very good and again tying back into this thing I keep harping on which is you know the people the people who are rejected by society in various ways as duster is throughout this plot. Ah, his dad's constantly telling him what a loser he is specifically notably not because of his disability but because he thinks he's just terrible at being a thief. Um and you know various other people sort of rejecting duster or thinking he's not really good for anything probably because of what his dad says about him. Um. 01:44:59.90 Dave Right. 01:45:12.20 Reb But he ultimately when literally nobody else shows up to help Lucas when it turns out that Lucas is the one who is going to have to solve. Everybody's problems for them. Duster's like well great. Okay, some I'm here too so we're going to do it and yeah I just really enjoyed it. 01:45:25.93 Dave Yep. 01:45:29.18 Reb Duster's participation in all this and his arc is this thief who is just trying to get by and ends up joining because it's just the thing that he has to do. 01:45:39.60 Dave Yep, and then you know joins a rock band becomes a rock star for a brief period of time. Yeah, yeah, if I ever have amnesia I hope I wake up as a you know part of a rock band that would be ideal. The other person that's part of this is Kumatora. And kind of thinking about all of your party members aside from Boney Lucas has his loss and his whole situation going on like you said is disabled and people generally treat him like trash. Kumatora has an interesting story too. Because you learn very early on that she's princess of this castle that's north of Tazmily. Ah, but there's no one else there like you never meet anyone else in the royal family. The castle is inhabited by ghosts so they never they not never They don't explain this for a very long time. About like what's the deal with Kumatora. But once you find out the fact that she is the last of her people in there and that she is basically grown up raised by the gypsies and ah just kind of like the last of her kind. That gives her that other kind of backstory like maybe not to the same well I don't know similar to the other party members where she has a you would think a traumatic backstory being raised. 01:47:10.18 Dave You know, with no one like her around her family is not around nothing like that. 01:47:14.17 Reb I Think hearing you talk about it again because so much of her backstory is revealed later in the game and so for a lot of it. She's just kind of this young woman who's traveling with you and it's not really clear like what her deal is apart from being a powerful Psi user the more I think about it like I guess if she's going to represent anything. It's. 01:47:25.33 Dave Right. 01:47:32.50 Reb So she's been orphaned like she has experienced deep loss but it's pretty far back in her past at this point and she's yeah and and she's now you know like maybe it impacted her differently because you know she wasn't as aware of it. But I'm sure it was difficult to grow up the way that she did. 01:47:32.99 Dave Um, yeah I think she was a baby. So. 01:47:48.20 Dave Um, yeah. 01:47:49.63 Reb But she was surrounded by all from everything. I can see a loving community of people who raised her well and she is now powerful and competent and thoughtful like she goes undercover for a very long time seemingly to try to help duster. 01:47:56.90 Dave Um, mean. 01:48:07.17 Reb Ah, even though she has no idea what if if he's ever going to come out of the weird funk that he's in um, and yeah, she just she she's she's a competent and seemingly pretty happy thoughtful resourceful person and I don't know maybe maybe in juxtaposition to Lucas it's that oh well. 01:48:24.27 Reb Lucas will come through this as well given time and given support from his community. 01:48:27.22 Dave Yeah, just the issue with that is kind of like you said like they tell you this in an exposition dump late in the game Kumatora to my knowledge never comments on it. So yeah, any kind of like. 01:48:33.61 Reb Yes. No, she doesn't. 01:48:44.30 Dave Character or importance that we're ascribing to her backstory is all on us. It's nothing that the game really gives us so just you know trying to make that connection for it is one of those games where everybody in the party I guess including the dog has is going through. It has been through a lot. 01:49:01.39 Reb Yeah. 01:49:03.47 Dave And so this the the strength of the group together and that's one of the things that becomes important later in the game is um, the encouragement that they get from everybody else and the encouragement they give each other. 01:49:16.63 Reb Yeah I do want to. I just want more for Kumatora. I Feel like she's sort of an I don't want to say an afterthought like she's pretty plot critical in various ways. But I don't know. I wonder if she's fun and she's sassy and she uses cool magic and I just want her to have more going on. 01:49:22.77 Dave Um, was it. 01:49:33.10 Dave Yeah I mean when we got to that backstory thing where they were like she's the last remaining member of this noble house that existed before the people of Tazmily existed I was like oh okay, waited a long time to tell me that and then they never talked about it ever again. So. 01:49:48.20 Reb yeah yeah I think they sometimes feel like they mean it as a fourth party member and they didn't want to just do another Paula and they didn't know what to do so they made Kumatora. 01:49:52.79 Dave Yeah, you're right? Yeah, ah. 01:50:02.76 Dave Yeah, but that was in that moment when they were like um this is her backstory I was like oh right, she's a princess she is Princess Kumatora I remember that now because it's not important in any way for the story. It's. 01:50:10.98 Reb Yes. Now. 01:50:18.80 Dave 1 of those things were like the story and the why of everything took a little while to get going and so like the reason where I'm focusing on Lucas's path for so long at the beginning of the spoiler section is that's what you have as you're playing that and the changes in the town. Basically. 01:50:35.38 Reb Yeah. 01:50:37.40 Dave Um, so one more moment for Lucas that I wanted to mention before we kind of put a pin in this and talk about some other story stuff is in chapter 7 so Lucas has been going through the game and just periodically remembering things about his mom and then you have that scene. In the sunflower seed where he endangers himself to follow this ghost of his mom in chapter 7 this is the one where you wake up on the beach. You lost all your items and you're hungry. So everyone eats the hallucinogenic mushrooms. Yeah. 01:51:09.30 Reb Oh my gosh I completely forgot about the entire drug sequence. 01:51:16.15 Dave Yep, the yeah, the drug sequence. So this part's particularly fucked up because Lucas Hallucinates all the people from town all of his family members including Claus basically talking shit to him. Nonstop everybody. You talk to Lucas about how much of a failure. He is everything like that. So a couple examples of different versions of Claus tell him that everyone you love is waiting for you. This is a quote from the game I wrote down: everyone you love is waiting for you. Waiting to throw rocks at you spit on you and make your life hell Lucas is a child. Let's remember that I'm a different version of Claus tells him he wants to switch places with Lucas because he's more and then it cuts off. You can't see what he says but we're assuming that Claus is. 01:52:12.84 Dave Like Lucas thinks that Claus is probably dead so he wants to switch places with him um somebody tells Lucas that his mother is waiting for him with the favorite food that you typed in at the beginning of the game for me was noodles. Um, and then you go up to a mailbox and it's full of rotten noodles. 01:52:14.85 Reb Now. 01:52:32.39 Dave And Lucas is just having a real rough time Salsa. The monkey tells Lucas that it's his fault that Salsa got caught and got in trouble with Fassad and then I don't know. Yeah yeah. 01:52:42.98 Reb By the way Fassad is torturing Salsa just throwing that out there since we haven't talked about that yet he is telling Lucas it's his fault. Salsa got tortured. 01:52:49.31 Dave Ah, electro shocked him? Yeah, yeah, so again Lucas going through it in this hallucination I thought this was going to culminate with a hallucination of Hinawa talking shit to Lucas at the end of it. It does not happen. But that would have yeah it does not happen that would have really fucked me up if they did have that though but they didn't and I think that's a good observation by you there. 01:53:08.67 Reb It's the one relationship. He's secure in literally the one. 01:53:17.30 Reb Yeah, that's good. It's It's a good choice that they made I think I I think it would have been I think it would have fucked me up I think it also would have been like weirdly dissonant because he know in every single scene he is completely assured of her. Love. 01:53:29.59 Dave Are. 01:53:36.16 Dave Yep, absolutely so just what this is Lucas's journey he basically it seems like throughout the game any free time he gets any free moment or first thing when he wakes up. 01:53:36.32 Reb Even from Beyond the grave. 01:53:53.61 Dave Or when he visits Inala's grave the thing that his mind jumps to is his memories with his mom and then you have this kind of emotional climax here in chapter 7 one of the emotional climaxes where basically everybody Lucas Imagines how everybody. Um, think of him and it might not be too far off because like we talked about several times the people in the town are not nice behind his back. So it's plausible that he would overhear people talking about this at the very least. Yeah. 01:54:26.37 Reb Yeah, also again, none of them are helping him so you know he knows. He's not a fool. 01:54:32.98 Dave Yeah, yeah, ah, one of the reasons that no one's helping him is this change in the town that's going on with these events, this journey that Lucas is going on in the town is also going through changes too. So. Um, one of the reasons I think well at the beginning of the game. They don't have this excuse but everyone gets addicted to their Tvs and stuff as the game goes on and so they seem like they don't have the capacity to help anybody basically which is yeah. 01:55:07.75 Reb yeah yeah I mean it's I don't know maybe this is clear to you but it's not like just a Tv that they're they're being sold so like very early on in the game Fassad shows up and is is basically selling them these these tvs um and and and this it is. 01:55:20.47 Dave Um, yeah. 01:55:25.21 Reb It's very clearly symbolic of oh we're all going inside and staring at our screens instead of going out and enjoying nature and spending time with people. I mean it's a little on the nose. Ah, but there is ah to me at least there was at least some implication that these were magic or like like somehow. 01:55:27.96 Dave Right. 01:55:40.82 Dave Yeah, mind control. 01:55:44.76 Reb Somehow unnatural in some way where they were. They were like literally pulling people's attention in a way that was messed up and you find out as you watch Tazmily change you know, various various things happen. They introduce money because the whole goal here is to get people to spend money and enrich the people. 01:56:03.63 Reb Ah, who are ultimately bringing them these Tvs which are tied back into the pig masks and tied back into who turns out to be the ultimate villain. Um, but while all this is going on. You know they introduce money into town and money ruins. Everybody's lives because suddenly people. Ah. 01:56:11.59 Dave Um, yeah. 01:56:23.12 Reb Understand the concept of greed as if they didn't before and the people who refuse to engage with this. The people who are like no I do not. You know we're not going to get a Tv in our house. Ah, they end up getting sent off to the nursing home or otherwise thrown out of society. Ah. 01:56:28.26 Dave Yeah, yeah. 01:56:39.40 Dave Yeah, they end up getting forcibly displaced from their homes because this lightning tower is directing lightning strikes at their houses like flint and Lucas yeah. 01:56:43.69 Reb Yes. 01:56:51.46 Reb Yeah, they just blow up the houses of the people They don't like. 01:56:57.51 Dave Ah flint and Lucas's house has been struck like dozens of times by lightning because flint refuses to buy one of the they call them happy boxes which is the ah the tv is the mind control devices and this is one of the other things that I really like about this is how Tazmily starts out as this. 01:57:03.42 Reb Yes, right? yeah. 01:57:17.32 Dave Sleepy idyllic place. There's no money. Everyone is supposedly nice to each other. They're kind of dicks to Lucas at the beginning but like you know people seem generally friendly. Yeah they theme things seem fine and then Fassad arrives with ah Salsa. 01:57:26.12 Reb It's going. Okay, yeah. 01:57:33.25 Dave Was never clear on why he needs a monkey to do this stuff. Maybe just be a mascot or something like that. Um, but he comes in and he introduces these concepts of money and capitalism and gives people these happy boxes which are like like you said, kind of magical mind control Tvs that. 01:57:50.13 Reb Yeah. 01:57:53.12 Dave Kind of warp. Everybody's mind and then as the game progresses you see the changes in the village as you go. So I Really liked when a new chapter came. If I was going back to Tazmily seeing what's going on you see a train station go in you see people. I'm excited about the train station. The sleepy kind of song that accompanies Tazmilya at the beginning of the game is replaced by this upbeat sound of Commerce Music. Um. 01:58:18.84 Reb Yeah, pick up. Yeah. 01:58:27.28 Dave I think the song on Youtube is called. They're put in a train station or something like that. It's good and then. 01:58:31.29 Reb That's good. Yeah yeah, it also slowly expands out. I mean I know video games just do that because that's how video games work but but you'd very much get this sense at the beginning. There's Tazmily. There's the forest and then there's grandpa's house up North and then the more you play like it's a really interesting overworld. 01:58:42.36 Dave Yeah. 01:58:48.85 Reb Because it's not. It's not like this typical rpg overworld like you know in an Earthbound you're going from one at to ah Twoson to Fourside and you're you're like moving kind of and not linearly. But you're moving further and further away from where you start but in mother, 3 you very much constantly come back to Tazmily and. 01:59:06.75 Dave Yeah. 01:59:08.77 Reb You're going in 1 chapter, maybe you're going north to the castle in another chapter. Maybe you're taking the railroad somewhere but then later you'll come back and it's constantly just growing the area around Tazmilya and you feel the world getting bigger and bigger and bigger as they sort of awaken to what is going on outside of their walls. 01:59:23.80 Dave Yeah I was going to say it. It reminds me of the world according to a child where the only places that exist are your house or your town. The weird forest and then your grandpa's house. But the people in town are also so sheltered and we'll talk about their backstory in a second. 01:59:34.75 Reb That's really good. Yeah. 01:59:42.93 Dave That that might as well be the world that exists to them as well in that yeah state of I don't know arrested development that the entire town seems like they're under and finding out why they're that way was kind of interesting but um. A couple of the things I wanted to note about the progression of corruption in the town. Um, other than the people whose houses are destroyed by the lightning either going to live in the nursing home which is a fucking shithole of a nursing home by the way. 02:00:14.25 Reb Oh it's horrible. Yeah. 02:00:18.18 Dave The first time you go there. You're like ah man this is where Lucas's grandpa's living now. Um the other thing is there's a factory where a bunch of people in town are working now and it's one of those you know. Factory towns like they have a club that's only for the factory workers and stuff like you can imagine like they might even do this. I remember they have their own money. They do have their own money right? Yeah, so where have we seen that before? Yeah, um, and then in chapter 7 as. 02:00:42.53 Reb Yeah, yeah, they have company money? Yeah, um, um. 02:00:52.82 Dave Like the final stage of this, people are just leaving Tasmily in flocks to go live in the big city where you know the jobs are the better life is more money etc and that's kind of true. Yeah, if you move to the city. 02:01:04.40 Reb Their houses aren't getting constantly struck by lightning. Is a capella. 02:01:11.50 Dave We'll stop hitting your house with lightning because yeah, true, but I liked revisiting the town seeing the changes in the late stages of the town. The kind of Happy Commerce music is replaced by this really sad heartbreaking music. 02:01:28.17 Reb Yeah. 02:01:30.49 Dave Same Melody but much different tone to it. Yeah yeah. 02:01:33.79 Reb Yeah, they do a really good job. I feel like we should maybe address what the actual plot is like from this point because yeah, but so so as Lucas goes. 02:01:40.91 Dave Yeah I was just going to say let's talk about the backstory of Tazmily. 02:01:52.41 Reb So initially he's just hanging out at this house and everything's kind of a bummer. Ah, but but gradually he begins to sort of uncover strange things happening around him. Ah that all seem to center around these pig masks and these weird machines that they're using to corrupt. 02:02:02.65 Dave Yeah. 02:02:11.63 Reb The environment obviously starts with what happens to Hinawa, but it escalates as he sort of exists in the town around him and meets different characters. 02:02:23.86 Dave Yeah, so like for a while the plot of Mother 3 is these pig masks are around. They're causing trouble Fassad is introducing commerce to Tazmily and you're just kind of going from place to place. Trying to solve problems but you don't know what's actually happening for a really long time. Yeah yeah, Salsa has a chapter. 02:02:48.73 Reb Yeah, you're playing as different characters too like dust like duster has an early chapter where he's tasked with stealing something from a castle and so you get a little bit of the store that way Salsa has a chapter where you find out where he's traveling with Fassad and you find out like what's happening with him. Ah, I don't remember what's Lucas. 02:03:00.86 Dave Right. 02:03:05.27 Reb Early chapter where he's just sort of bopping around town like what's he even doing in that. Yeah, it's not. 02:03:08.74 Dave I Think that's a good question. So like the plot of it in the reason for what you're doing takes forever and eventually you learn of this ah sleeping Dragon underneath the islands. That is being held by these needles Guts We got a cat guest appearance I Love it. It's okay, um, so there are these they call them needles in the game that are holding the power of the dragon and the. 02:03:29.33 Reb Yeah, sorry she just yells. 02:03:44.47 Dave The villain who you're not sure who it is until the last chapter is having people. Yeah, they're trying to pull these needles out to wake up this dragon because whoever wakes up the dragon I got the feeling was like whoever pulls more of the needles wherever pulls the last one I wasn't totally sure but more. 02:03:48.38 Reb Whoever's in charge of the Pig masks. 02:04:01.98 Reb It's more. It's more. 02:04:03.82 Dave Whoever does that their soul will be reflected in the way the dragon comes out and like the so if they pull it out. It will ah if the evil ones pull it out. It will cause the end of the world and like an evil apocalypse basically Lucas can also do this. He has the power. But he's pure of heart so he needs to go do it so that they don't cause the end of the world in that terrible way. But. 02:04:27.58 Reb Again, The adults have just fucked everything so deeply that the only way we can all have a peaceful existence is if a literal child shoulders the burdens of society and rips a needle out of a dragon normal stuff. 02:04:38.78 Dave Yeah, but you don't know like this was what I met when I said like the plot wasn't super interesting to me for a really long time because it's like okay this is goofy like pulling the needles Out. There's a sleeping Dragon. Why? What's the point until they give you that exposition at the end of or very close to the end of like the backstory of the islands and what this actually is then I was like okay that makes more sense to me and I'm more interested in it Now. So I don't know how. You, I think you said much earlier in the episode. You were already pulled along by the mystery of it all rather than yeah. 02:05:23.50 Reb Yeah I really I really like games that don't explicitly spell out for you in the first however long what's going on I think I really enjoy taking my time and exploring and I I like games where you have a sense that you could screw something up. And I don't really think you can in Mother 3. I think it's pretty. It is , despite its structure. It is actually a very linear game like you just kind of go from point a to point b there's not there. There's stuff that's missing. But none of it's really that pertinent but it very much feels like at times. 02:05:44.97 Dave Um, yeah. 02:05:56.60 Reb Oh There's stuff that I could Miss. There's something I might not be doing. I don't really know what my goal is therefore I could screw it up somehow? Um, and I kind of like that. I like that it's sort of meandering and you're just inhabiting this person, this child. Ah, who's sort of just trying to do right. By himself and everyone around him. You know he's living in this Village. He's trying to help out his family and the people around him. Ah he meets Duster. He tries to help out duster and then you know he eventually finds out that well one he finds out that people's houses are getting nuked by a weird lightning rod. 02:06:33.46 Reb Nearby and so well obviously we've got to put a stop to whatever that is and no, but no one else is doing it like everybody's so obsessed with their Tvs or they've been locked in a nursing home and so he's he's the only one left and so he's got to go do it and and he goes he goes and and takes care of these things. Um, and then he finds out that he has also on top of that this great destiny and it's not a great destiny. That's put upon him because he's like the subject of a prophecy or anything the way ness was but it's just because he's a kid and his peer of heart and his mom did ah did her best to raise him and so. 02:07:04.93 Dave Um, yeah, um. 02:07:08.16 Reb So here he is. He's a savior and so he's just gotta go get it done but I like to. I think that you know that pulling X amount of needles and awakening the sleeping dragon sounds like a very Rpg plot. Ah you know, awake in the seven crystals. Whatever it is. You're going to do it. I like that you don't actually have to do all of them. Ah, in fact, you can't. It's yeah, you're in a race. 02:07:16.23 Dave Um, yeah. 02:07:25.24 Dave Yeah, yeah, you watch the others do some of them. 02:07:26.84 Reb With another person to do it and they keep kind of telling it you feel an earthquake and then they tell you oh off screen they pulled the needle before you whoopsie daisy guessed you got to go on to the next one or oh no and that. 02:07:36.40 Dave Um, yeah. 02:07:39.84 Reb I kind of like that it makes the second half move along at a really nice pace. The first half is all these sort of meandering ah point a few chapters where you're just sort of getting to know the town and getting to know who everybody is and what's going on and then the second half you assemble your party which to be clear. We haven't really said it is Lucas Kumatora Duster and Boney the dog. And you go off on this adventure to you. You have your mission to stop the pig masks from pulling all the needles. 02:07:58.11 Dave Yep. 02:08:02.93 Dave Right? So I don't necessarily need a game to spell out exactly the plot right at the beginning for me all the time. But I also don't like it when I'm going through hours and hours of game and I don't know. Like I don't know why I'm moving from place to place other than just like there's a problem here. Go fix this.. There's a problem here. Go fix this so that was more of the thing for me personally with this. But yeah, yeah, yeah, um. 02:08:30.58 Reb Now that's fine. I think I just liked what you said early. I like the mystery of it. 02:08:41.67 Dave Soon late in the game. They do kind of give you the more detailed backstory about like okay you're pulling these needles in the dragon but like what's the deal with the needles and the dragon Anyway, Um, so a quick rundown for people who didn't play or maybe people who forgot. This is what they tell you about like what this place actually is why Tazmily Village is the way that it is at the beginning of the game and then what this corrupting force actually is so you learn that this is not the way the world has always been that long ago there was a much bigger world that existed full of people. Like our world humans ended up destroying it even though they always kind of knew they would end up destroying it. That's a quote from the game and again where have we heard that before, so just before the destruction a group of people went to this place to escape as part of what they call the white ship plan. And this would be the only place on the Earth that survives the end of the world. Basically um, the dragon that is underneath these islands called the nowhere islands is the thing that makes them special people used to coexist with the dragon but it didn't last because people can't coexist with anything. So they put the dragon into this hibernation and sealed them away with the needles and the people that came to Tazmily on the white ship feared repeating the same mistakes that people always make so they decided to erase everybody's memories. 02:10:13.26 Dave And of the old world and starting over fresh basically just a clean wipe fresh start for humanity on the very village on these islands. There's this item called the egg. That's like the Mcguffin that you're chasing for a lot of the game and that. Egg is important because it contains all of their previous memories. So if it falls into the wrong hands who knows what could happen. Um Kumator’s people were there before the white ship arrived but they left and they left Kumatora as an infant to be raised there. And then this story with Wes and duster as her loyal retainers was all just part of a story that was concocted there. Everything was going fine on the island until Porky from Earthbound. 02:11:08.28 Reb Porky Oh my gosh. He's still here. 02:11:09.62 Dave Yeah, he's still here and he used a time distorter machine to find the islands and arrive there bring the Pig masks and his goal is to get these people to leave and come populate his city called New Pork city. 02:11:27.74 Reb I love the reveal of Porky I think it's so good because you don't know it. It's you remember Porky from Earthbound is this character who at the he's he's ness's neighbor. He's ah he's a bully and a jerk. We don't like him. 02:11:46.75 Reb And a coward as well and throughout the plot of Earthbound he pops up in a couple places and it is just generally obnoxious and then ah you know all of Earthbound is about sort of taking down this group of kids taking down this Alien like horror terrifying Alien for us called guys. Um. 02:12:00.70 Dave Yeah. 02:12:04.33 Reb But at the very end of the game you run into Porky again and porky despite also being a very young child has inexplicably allied himself with guy guesses and turned himself into sort of a weird I don't know he's kind of like a weird robot. He knows he's got a little busy spaceship thing that he's driving. Um, but he fights you and then you beat him. 02:12:08.43 Dave Um, yeah, yeah, yeah. 02:12:24.31 Reb But he escapes and he kind of warns that he'll pop back up again someday and it's such a. It's such a what a strange connection but he does as you say come back through time and space and show up here and this is the moment I was talking about in the first half of the show when ah I said you know if you. You don't really need to have played on earth but you don't need to know who is porky as he's a villain. Whatever I imagine it's a little so if you never played earth body. He probably comes off as a little extra silly. Um, but if you have the moment when you realize what's going on is so good because as Lucas and Parti walk through you're you're coming to the leader of the pig masks. 02:12:44.55 Dave Yeah, yeah. 02:12:59.80 Reb Ah, you're going through their their complex. Their facility. You get to the top which is the leader's room and you're walking around and it's all these items like all this paraphernalia and random objects scattered around the room and you can examine all the different things that are in Porky's room you don't know it's him yet. But as you examine them if you played Earthbound you can start putting together puzzle pieces and be like wait. All of this sounds. Very familiar in a weird kind of way. Ah I can't remember them exactly what they were. But there's a couple items specifically ah where it's very clear that he's like weirdly nostalgic or his time back in one at and like he it's kind of weird. He seems to like miss nests a little bit. 02:13:39.19 Reb Ah, it's sort of a weird creepy bully way ah later in the game when you go to New Pork City he's actively playing a film of Earthbound like the events of Earthbound because he's just nostalgic for this time when he harassed ness and his friends. It's bonkers. I love the reveal. 02:13:47.36 Dave Um, yep. 02:13:51.66 Dave Yeah, he also has kind of a museum you get on like this boat ride in Porky's tower and you go through all these like exhibits of things from Earthbound like the giant. 02:14:00.10 Reb Yeah, the museum. 02:14:09.13 Dave Rock head dude I can't remember his name but you're right inside of him in Earthbound yeah dungeon man. That's right, yeah, there's all those things from Earthbound and yeah, you're right? It's it's weird that he would remember that also fondly and like 1 or like create these memories of it. But that's that's what's going on here. 02:14:10.42 Reb Oh Duggeon man. 02:14:27.55 Reb He likes bullying people. He came to this world for the sole purpose of bullying all of its inhabitants and that's a lot of work So in the meantime he's nostalgic for the time when he bullied his next door neighbor. 02:14:32.75 Dave Um, yeah. 02:14:40.15 Dave Yeah, did also um, his name wasn't porky in Earthbound. It was pokey and they changed it So I was like oh is he a dick because his name is porky and probably people are making fun of him I don't know. But. 02:14:43.74 Reb It was pokey. 02:14:53.34 Reb I could be remembering this wrong. I thought his original name was pokey but it was porky and the localization and then they leaned into that or it might have been the other way around. I don't remember hold on I can look these things up. 02:15:04.77 Dave I Ok I don't remember if because it was pokey in the version of Earthbound that I played his name was pokey. Um. 02:15:13.60 Reb It's poke Minch Porky image ok okay so it's porky mentioned chip japanese it's pokey mentioned the english version due to a translation error. So he is supposed to be porky. 02:15:17.88 Dave Okay, okay, okay, so yeah I was like just because a little bit later like I don't know if this game wants you to feel bad for Porky or if you just want him to eat shit because he's because he's terrible. 02:15:32.85 Reb Yeah, it's hard to say. 02:15:37.84 Dave But he means his name is porky. So I feel you got to think kids are not going to be nice to him if your name's porky. But. 02:15:43.95 Reb It's a lot of it comes I think with being familiar with Earthbound right? because if you if you remember or if you if you know him an Earthbound I mean I don't think the game has lots of sympathy for him. He is sort of a stereotypical bully. But if you go visit his house like his mom and dad kind of suck. Ah, he doesn't seem to have anything like that. 02:15:46.10 Dave Um, yeah. 02:15:57.70 Dave Yeah. 02:16:01.40 Reb Best home life. Um, but he's also the kind of kid that just sort of I don't know like clearly tortures animals for fun. So I don't know if it's hard to say. I think again the big theme in this game is that people hurt people like he himself is a person who is hurting also. Also, 02:16:10.56 Dave Um, yeah, ah. 02:16:19.81 Reb To be clear not to be not to be a Porky Minch sympathizer here. But yes he did go join the alien creature Giygas and seems to have done so on his own free. Will that said guy guess was a hellish terror from space that clearly had some sort of. 02:16:21.54 Dave Yeah. 02:16:38.96 Reb Psi mind control abilities who's to say if porkies descent from casual next door neighbor bully into ultimate evil villain hood was not influenced in some way by Giygas which by the way was the antagonist about the first and the second mother games. 02:16:39.20 Dave Okay. 02:16:57.34 Reb And is not the antagonist of Mother 3 incidentally ah because it has been destroyed by Mother 3. But I don't know maybe there's some guy guessing somewhere. It's not clear. Ah but I don't know he's a kid. 02:17:05.10 Dave Yeah I was under the impression. Yeah, he's a kid and I was under the impression that he was mind controlled in Earthbound and then you know mind control and close proximity to the eldritch. Horror that is gi guess would be um I don't know there should be some residual effects from that. So yeah, ah, Porky's still a dick in Mother 3 and his whole purpose in this game is to corrupt the town. Get the people to leave to come. Populate his city where he's going to I don't know just be a tyrant over the the residents of new pork city just just kind of maintain his life. It is interesting that when you do finally go meat Porky in Mother 3 he's not the kid from Earthbound anymore. He's like this bedridden old man basically on life support. Um he when you talk with the real hymn and not some like projection or robot or something like that. He frequently breaks his dialogue to cough or gasp for air. Um, so I don't know even to the end in what seems like extreme sickness or old age. He's still an asshole to everybody around him. 02:18:29.41 Reb Yeah, it's unclear like what has happened to him in the interim between Earthbound and now when you see him on Earthbound and he's in his little flying spaceship. He looks kind of messed up like his skin's a weird color. He looks like he's melting a little bit. He's kind of he's clearly. 02:18:36.62 Dave Um, yeah. 02:18:46.18 Reb It's not mind controlled like clearly being influenced by this horrible evil like pure embodiment of hatred from space in some way and then he he literally travels through time and space somehow through with all this technology and Alien stuff that he has to get to Tazmily like it's not it doesn't seem to be. 02:18:51.28 Dave Um, yeah. 02:19:04.25 Reb I don't know if it's the same universe or a different timeline or what the exact connection is but there's something going on there. Ah, and so it could have been a very long period of time or it could have been a very short period of time and he has just aged rapidly in some way because he does still have the demeanor of this bullying child. But. Like everyone else and Mother 3 despite his clear villain hood and his horrible choices. Porky Minch is going through it. 02:19:30.78 Dave Yep, Absolutely yeah, um so his whole thing is he just wants everybody to assimilate and be obedient to him now. 02:19:43.53 Dave He talks about how stupid it is to do this whole like clean slate fresh start thing he says that no matter how much you change the rules no matter how much you try people will always sign their death warrant by acting out of stupidity and evil and we've seen a little bit of but of that through the characters. In the game, especially the ones who like you've said many times should be doing this instead of Lucas but they are all so easily corrupted so easily just you know this off to the side I got Tv to watch stuff like that. 02:20:18.58 Reb Yeah, he also performs the perfect example of this himself. Ah not long after because when you kick his ass. He's like well I'm going to be a coward and I am going to be absolutely safe from you and you can't beat me and he climbs with this. 02:20:22.67 Dave Um, yeah. 02:20:35.34 Reb Device called the absolutely safe capsule and gets inside and the premise of this thing is that it keeps you absolutely safe from literally all danger. Ah, but as a result he traps himself inside and nothing can hurt him but because he's stuck in there. He can't hurt anybody else and so it's horrible. So. 02:20:43.61 Dave Um, listen. 02:20:45.94 Dave Um, yeah, yeah. 02:20:54.38 Reb Fate. It's like 1 one last disturbing middle finger to the universe like trapping this messed up evil child old man. Whatever he is in the absolutely safe capsule for eternity question Mark can he die I guess not. 02:21:07.69 Dave Um, yeah, it's it's unclear you just leave him there as soon as he's stuck in there I think the person who designed it was there and was like yeah I made this this way so that if he closes it. You can't open it from the inside. So but then you just leave. So his fate is. 02:21:18.60 Reb Yes, yeah. Yeah. 02:21:26.74 Dave You can imagine what's going to happen with him um down in that place right? before you go fight Porky um you meet flint again. He's down there. You finally reunite with your dad and. He I guess tried to fight against or like go against Porky and he was defeated but he is happy because he finally found Claus and that's another thing we didn't talk about is starting in maybe chapter 5 maybe chapter. Yeah, it is chapter 5 on the airplane because he's the one that keeps you off the plane when you fall down to the sunflower field. There is a mysterious masked man who's under the control of Fassad who just shows up to fight you from time to time and. 02:22:01.18 Reb Yeah. 02:22:17.18 Reb Oh it's super obvious. He's the same height as Lucas like he's got a mask on we know Claus has been missing I mean come on guys. It's clearly Claus. 02:22:17.54 Dave I knew this was Claus like the first time he was on screen. Yeah yeah, yeah, conservation of detail. Yeah, so. He's introduced that way but he's mind controlled so he's fighting against you and you have to go get a franklin badge, an Earthbound item, to be immune to his lightning attacks, a nice little callback there. Um. 02:22:43.23 Reb The Franklin Badge has been in all 3 games and I think is the strongest piece of evidence that they all at least in some way exist in the same universe or or like alternate alternate versions of the same universe like alternate timelines of some kind like the Franklin badge. 02:22:54.17 Dave Um, okay yeah. 02:23:00.64 Reb Has always been created and has always had the same function. 02:23:04.83 Dave That's fair, Yeah, ah if there's only one? Yeah um, okay, yeah, so you have at the end here this big showdown with Claus. 02:23:07.88 Reb If there's only 1 02:23:17.71 Dave There are a couple of other times when you fight Claus and you defeat him but he retreats you don't like ah you know, remember me I'm your brother type thing until the very end here and it's a 1 on one fight. It's just Lucas versus Claus and. 02:23:36.14 Dave I tried to do things that were not attacked during this fight. I don't know if you tried this so you do have to attack I think a few times. Ah, but he's attacking you and so most of your efforts will be spent on just keeping yourself alive because you can lose this showdown with Lucas. 02:23:54.98 Reb Ah. 02:23:55.40 Dave But during the fight you can hear Hennaa's voice calling out to Claus. He's so mind controlled that he doesn't recognize Lucas um, or the other theory is that he's dead and he's been reanimated. So he doesn't have the mental faculties at least not right away to recognize him I don't know. But um, it's one of those things where he doesn't recognize you. You don't want to fight him but he's trying to kill you? Um, so that goes on for a little while. 02:24:13.91 Reb Yeah. 02:24:28.57 Dave And then there's a part where he does this big attack but Flint jumps in front of the attack and begs Claus to remember who everybody is and then talks to him about how he looked for him for so long and this yeah. 02:24:42.75 Reb Ah, oh man, this moment got me like the moment when flint finally clues in on like his most important duty which is to protect the son that he has and like it took him is like. 02:24:55.21 Dave Um, yeah. 02:25:01.44 Reb The whole game of tearing it took him so much but in that moment. He's finally like oh shit I still have one family member left I need to do something and he does the right thing. He does the right thing and he protects Lucas. It just ah gets is good. 02:25:17.91 Dave Yep, and it goes to a flashback right? At this point it shows when Claus and Lucas are born and they talk about what they hope life is going to be like for the boys. They hope that they'll be kind. They hope that they'll help each other and that was the case until this all. Started until this attack at the beginning of the game and then during the fight you're still fighting them in alla'sleas like the battle will pause for dialogue from Hinawa talking to Claus saying please remember please remember I'm your mother please remember um in Claus. 02:25:45.68 Reb Yeah. 02:25:54.40 Dave You can tell he starts to recognize it because he starts to cover his ears and close his eyes trying to block it all out like there's something about this mind control or the events I don't know that he just doesn't want to deal with right now so he keeps on the attack. 02:26:10.33 Reb Another thing that I love is that this this echoes Earthbound in some ways where sorry spoil is for Earthbound if you haven't played it I don't know what to tell you? um you know the the final boss battle of Earthbound you. You can't really win by force alone. 02:26:20.96 Dave Yes, yes. 02:26:25.82 Reb I don't maybe you can fudge it but you really you really can't the trick to winning that is Paula has an ability called pray and normally pray just has kind of a random effect sometimes it can do damage sometimes gonna heal you but the trick is in that battle to focus on surviving don't bother attacking and just pray over and over and over again. Um, and it's such a powerful moment because it again goes back to these very small kids fighting against a horrible evil alien force that's going to destroy everything that they know and love um, and literally all they can do there. They've been forced into these robot bodies. It's a whole mess and literally all they could do is pray um but their prayers are. 02:27:00.50 Dave He. 02:27:04.00 Reb Heard by all of the people who they have met and helped along the way and so Earthbound in its final moments expands it. It pulls in the entire world of people and they all send their good wishes to nest in his party and the power of everyone's love and and hope for a better world and for these kids to survive the defeat of the sky. 02:27:05.47 Dave Um, yeah. 02:27:23.10 Reb Yes, because he can't stand it. Love. He's an evil force of hate and it reminds him of this time when he was a child and felt love and he goes away. Um it Earthbound expands and the ending is what I'm trying to say Mother 3 does a similar thing where the way to beat the final boss battle is not to fight like it's. 02:27:35.80 Dave Yeah. 02:27:42.61 Reb You cannot win this by brute force. It's a terrible idea to try to kill your brother. We are not keen to enable this. Ah but it instead of expanding it shrinks it it pulls in it gets rid of the rest of your party. Ah, it's just Lucas and Claus ah, you're. Your weapons and your abilities don't do anything. All you can do is lean on your little family and it goes back to the people who were there at the very beginning of the game. The people that you gave names to and the people who are the emotional core of the story and you you have to trust in those very very small relationships. 02:28:08.15 Dave You heard. 02:28:17.66 Reb And I just I love it. It's really good. 02:28:21.64 Dave Yeah, and I think like the battle strategy like if you're talking about this from a mechanical perspective like you might hit an attack a couple times just because you think you have to but it becomes clear that that's not what you're doing so all I was doing was defending, trying to manage that and healing. 02:28:33.16 Reb Yeah. Yeah, same. 02:28:40.31 Dave Just trying to get to the next part So you just you just defend you just take the attacks and hope that hennawa's pleas are going to get to Claus in time ah got you? Yeah um so what happens. 02:28:47.39 Reb Playing Undertale before I played this really did help because I was like okay I've seen this before I get it. 02:28:59.21 Dave Please keep coming. They keep coming um and they get kind of more loving as they go like the one that actually breaks Claus of this is Hannais says Claus. You must be so exhausted. Please come to your mother and the music changes during this too. Ah, this is after the scene where flint jumps in front of the attack. The music is now that lullaby version of the mother's love song during the final boss fight against class as a child. 02:29:35.63 Dave We know how old we think he is, maybe like 10 years old or something like that. Um, he's Lucas is exactly? yeah so these pleas these desperate pleas to get this kid to remember his mother remember his family. What happens? 02:29:53.81 Reb Oh my God no. 02:29:54.23 Dave I did not expect him to take the mask off and he shoots a lightning attack at Lucas but Lucas has the franklin badge it reflects the lightning back and you see the message at the bottom Claus took mortal damage and so what happens is. 02:30:03.74 Reb Now. 02:30:13.43 Dave He remembers everything he goes over. He gives Lucas a hug he apologizes and then he says he's going to where mom is he apologizes again and says Goodbye and Claus dies and that's how this game is like that. Yeah I thought so. 02:30:25.61 Reb I Thought for sure you were going to save him the whole game. I was like we didn't see him. We got to go rescue him. It's gonna be okay, the brother's gonna be reunited. I did . I was not ready. 02:30:31.61 Dave Yeah. 02:30:37.78 Dave No me either. 02:30:41.45 Reb So also a weird ludo narrative moment where the the rolling h p meter is kind of suddenly in the background because he takes the mortal damage and you would like envision his HPMeter just spinning spinning down while he's having these lines oh my god it it freaking killed me dude I was not I was not ready. 02:30:56.48 Dave No, absolutely not because like kind of like you said like why would you expect this not to have that happy ending after all the pleas. Yeah yeah, and like Hinawa is there helping flint is there. He helped. 02:31:07.80 Reb Been through so much They don't need any more. 02:31:15.50 Dave Lucas has been doing the best he can the entire game and now he's really doing the best he can just taking all this from Claus and then yeah, he basically you know hurts himself to the point where he dies and he. 02:31:29.18 Reb Yeah, and that's the reading of it too that he does this attack not because he wants to hurt. He takes off the mask and then he does this attack and he does this not because he wants to hurt Lucas but because he knows what's going to happen and he knows that's the only way to stop himself. 02:31:32.16 Dave He dies in Lucas's arms at the end and then flint. 02:31:46.75 Dave Interesting a reading out. Yeah yeah, like I can see that if he thinks that he's too far gone. Basically if he thinks that he can't be saved then this is the only way because maybe he sees. 02:31:48.66 Reb That's that's a reading of it I don't know that that's that's the correct 1 but. Yeah. 02:32:03.60 Dave That Lucas isn't going to do this. 02:32:03.77 Reb Or that more that if he's allowed to live then the forces that have manipulated him thus far will just continue to manipulate him because it's sort of critical to all. This is the fact that the reason why they're pulling these needles Lucas and Claus are the only two can do it. Ah no one else in the world can Fassad can't do it by himself. The monkey can't duster. Can't. 02:32:16.35 Dave Yeah. 02:32:23.60 Reb Ah, these two kids can I don't remember exactly why it has something to do with their psi abilities their latent psi abilities probably tying them back to civilization or something but they're twin or twin brothers they're but yeah twin brothers and so so they're both able to do it. Ah but Claus because he's been corrupted. 02:32:35.58 Dave Um, the other twins. Yeah. 02:32:41.70 Reb Has all this evil in his heart and so he's being used like he's a child who's being used by these evil people. It's not that he himself has horrible visions of wanting to destroy the world. It's that Fassad and other people do and they want to use him for that. So it's possible. He sees if this continues he just continues to get it. Used because yeah Lucas isn't going to do this if there's no threat but that's maybe ascribing a lot of agency to a guy who spent the majority of the game with a mind control helmet on so I don't know. 02:32:58.90 Dave Um, right The other. 02:33:09.68 Dave It's true I mean it's possible and he's I don't know it's It's hard to put a lot of this like complex decision making on like another actual child too I think like what I yeah making these like really complex. 02:33:19.91 Reb Yeah, nine years old. Whatever. 02:33:27.64 Dave Sacrifices at the end. Yeah what I thought happened was that the pleas are getting to him and he pulls the mask off. That's him acting like his own agency. He's able to do that and look at his brother and stuff. But. 1 final push from this mind control source caused this final attack, the one that ended up killing him. Um, but then that gives him the agency to finally snap out of it after it's too late but to apologize and just have 1 final moment with his family before he dies. 02:34:00.46 Reb Yeah I mean it plays into the whole time theory that you had because like an electric shock Would you know maybe revive him momentarily in that moment. 02:34:06.41 Dave Yeah, yeah, it could also explain why he's just unable to break out of this at all even when you know like his mother's pleas might be like 1 of the more powerful things that could happen. But there's. 02:34:22.66 Reb Yeah. 02:34:25.60 Dave Only so much they can do in either case, you know? So um, yeah, right? when you think we're going to have a kind of happy ending I Thought flint was going to die from the attack that he took he did not um, but we thought that. 02:34:27.19 Reb Yeah anyway I ripped my fucking heart out. 02:34:40.28 Reb Yep. 02:34:44.20 Dave The mother's love was going to conquer all in it didn't it was just too late for Claus which I yeah again, unexpected? Um, so Lucas goes and pulls the final needle after this and the thing that I should have mentioned maybe whatever. It's the spoiler section. Um. The thing that's going to happen when Lucas pulls the needle is the world is going to end and it's going to be reformed in the image or like reflect the purity or corruption of the person who pulls the needles and awakes the dragon. So lucas pure of heart is going to pull the needle the world's going to be destroyed. But it's going to be reborn as a good world just world and that happens you get to see after the needle is pulled earthquakes and tornadoes and fires and volcanoes and meteors and shit like it is the actual end of the world and then the screen goes. 02:35:41.93 Dave Blank and you I don't I remember if the credits roll here or after the thing that comes next but home. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 02:35:48.14 Reb I Thought they rolled here but it's been a year since I've played I think part of them role here I don't remember it's but it's been a while. Um, but but you're very much given the impression that this is just the end of the game that it's just ever. Everything's been Destroyed. We don't really know what happened to any of them, did they survive and it's just like this blank screen but you seem to have some ability to control what's going on. 02:36:11.31 Dave Yeah, the screen ends with a question Mark and it just stays there and I wonder how many people just shut the game off because they think it's over but you can actually move around in this screen and then you see people. 02:36:24.37 Reb You can't see your character but you can like the sound and the way that the screen you can tell that some but somebody's moving in the darkness. 02:36:29.31 Dave Yeah, yeah, so was this ambiguous ending like you. I thought I was just going to be left to be like okay well I hope everything worked out but then they give you this post thing to show you so. 02:36:43.29 Reb Ah, so good. It's the victory. It's the video game victory lap . It's a nest walking Paula home. It's the undertail you saved everybody victory tour. It's so good. Um, and Lucas talks to you Lucas addresses the player which he's a silent protagonist for. 02:36:48.82 Dave Yeah. 02:37:02.51 Reb The gate like he doesn't speak but he turns to the camera and well in the darkness and says hey like don't worry, you did it? yeah. 02:37:11.70 Dave Yeah, hey, Dave I'm happy. You're okay, that's what he says. They say it's a miracle and they thank the player for everything and they say that everything's going to be okay in their world and the world is being reborn and um. Have a credits role where the family is reunited in the credits. So maybe in this new version of the world. The family will be together if that's the way that this rebirth of the world works. It's never explained. It's just up to you to. 02:37:32.75 Reb Ah, yeah. 02:37:45.52 Reb Yeah, it's Lucas telling you that everything's going to be okay is like I think a really powerful moment after everything that you've just seen because you do you know in spite of everything that he's just been through. There's the recognition that he now has. 02:37:46.40 Dave You know, wonder if that's going to if that's how it's going to be. 02:37:53.41 Dave Yeah. 02:38:01.60 Reb Does have the things that he needs? He has closure on what happened to his brother. He has reassurance of their love um his dad has figured out his duty to his child and he reassures Lucas of his love for him as well. Um, he can kind of go back to being a kid, maybe a kid who's got a lot to process. But 02:38:09.57 Dave You see. 02:38:16.41 Dave Um, yeah, yeah, or maybe this is going to be reborn. The world is going to be reborn in a familiar way so that they get another start as a family and then without. 02:38:20.15 Reb But he has the space to process it now. 02:38:33.22 Reb Um, yeah. 02:38:33.71 Dave Fucking Porky coming in and messing everything up. They will actually get to live their lives as ah you know as they hoped as a family. 02:38:40.36 Reb Yeah, it is true because would like none of this was a freak accident all of this did happen because of Porky Minch like he showed up and corrupted the dinosaurs and that's how everything happened with Hinawa the fire so that none of this none of this would have happened if not for for Porky. 02:38:47.73 Dave Um, yeah. 02:38:59.81 Dave Um, so final thing here at the end of the staff credits you see Hinawa set a bird free to fly just a little ah ending scene there and then the Mother 3 logo changes on the main menu screen the whole game. The menu. The logo that says Mother 3 was made of wood and metal together. This kind of unholy mishmash of 2 incompatible things and then after the credits roll the Mother 3 logo is all made of wood. So the world is free of corruption. 02:39:28.95 Reb Yeah. 02:39:35.35 Dave Starting fresh. 02:39:36.16 Reb So the moral of the story is go outside. Got it. 02:40:05.40 Dave Yeah anyway, um, Mother 3's got a lot going on a lot lot more. 02:40:08.82 Reb Oh my god we actually didn't even talk about it all. I'm not going to drag us back to anything in particular but we skip giant chunks of it. The plot has so much going on. Oh my god it's a 25 hour game it's not that long. 02:40:22.19 Dave Yep, but there's so much to talk about we in like you said we really stuck to those main themes of ah the corruption. The grief the um. The way that people treat each other like you said and it was a good observation is the way that the burden of saving the world is placed on arguably like the 4 people or 3 people in a dog that should not have to bear that while everyone else just watches Tv or. 02:40:48.82 Reb Yeah, yeah. 02:40:53.62 Dave You know, go hang out in the dance or the club outside the factory or whatever they're doing. Yeah yeah, yeah, ah. 02:40:56.29 Reb Yeah, or is forced to work in the weird Gola mines or trapped in the nursing home. But yeah again, things we didn't even get to. We didn't even talk about the weird golem minds and that we barely touched on the club. 02:41:11.28 Dave Yeah, yes, yeah, but there's a lot to discuss. I'm happy with the way we discussed those things that we got to so. 02:41:12.17 Reb There's a whole segment where you drive a truck around. 02:41:25.95 Dave Thank you so much for taking all of this time and talking about Mother 3 with me. 02:41:30.50 Reb I felt cathartic when I played this game and I didn't have anybody to really share it with because again like so few people like in the Us have actually played it because of the unavailability or they played it a long time ago. So everybody go check out. Ah that fan translation of Mother 3 It's genuinely phenomenal and i. 02:41:39.34 Dave Um, yeah. 02:41:48.72 Reb Even if it's not exactly the author's intent I have no idea I can't speak Japanese ah, it's a damn good game. 02:41:55.15 Dave Yep, Yeah, if it wasn't a good fan translation. We wouldn't have gotten you know this much discussion out of it. So again I will echo the recommendation to go check that out and if there is another game that you need to. 02:42:00.44 Reb Yeah. 02:42:09.76 Dave Deep dive and just get out of your system. You're always welcome back on this podcast. So thank you so much. So I'll give a call at the end of the episode for everybody to go check out. Reb's writing Journalism and go support that IGN Union and pay attention to everything that she's got coming out. 02:42:12.59 Reb Thank you. 02:42:28.67 Dave You'll find links down in the show notes for all of those things and as always tune in next week for the next game to come out of the backlog.