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Call and Response: WOFF! Dispatch August 2023

🕑 Added 2023-08-15 14:01:00 +0000 UTC

Comments

Michelle

🎶🎵 hoo-ray for Hollywood 🎵🎶

Duckfeed.tv

Oh! And I actually have an answer for this! When I lived in Austin, I lived by the external shots they used for Initech in Office Space! --Gwen

Duckfeed.tv

Michelle, I am in awe. :o -Gwen

Jonathan Yih

I am jazzed about the positive reception for Baldur's Gate 3 and Larian Studios. I'm excited to dive back into their systems, and I have a shotgun of questions for you regarding character customization and building (do as many or few as you like!): - What are your favorite character builds and playstyles? - What Tabletop or Video Games have your favorite character customization systems and why? - How do you value building characters to do cool stuff or building to tackle a game's challenges? Which games do both? - Do you value having distinct archetypes for story (ala Final Fantasy IX) or having completely moldable characters (ala Final Fantasy V)?

Harrison Troyano

Can you speak on the issue of gamer American rights? What are some major ideas or demands in the history of this movement and where might such attitudes have come from? Do you think these demands have informed game development? Love the term and the show, thank you!

Chapel Collins

What do y'all think about all them analog horrors roundabout the internet? Gemini Home Entertainment, Local 58, that sort of thing. Interesting? Overwrought? Merely Creepypasta 2?

Willbo Waggins

Apologies if this has been asked before. But what modern triple A game would you de-make? Can be made (or de-made, if you will) with modern sensibilities. I saw a BloodBourne ps1 style de-make video on YouTube and thought it looked really rad. P.S. (feel free to skip this, just had this thought the other day) I have been listening for about 4 years now, and I feel like the podcasts have been really good for me, I think in my early 20’s (when I started listening) I was a bit of a conservative dick and very closed minded; you guys helped make me a kinder and more tolerant person, just simply by being that yourselves while you discussed video games. Thank you :)

Steven Riddle

Coolio. I’ll give them a listen. Thank you!

Naveen Sivakumar

Xzibit has pimped your ride. In addition to the hydraulics, sick paint job, and custom rims, he has also put in an AV system with screens. He is about to put in a game console so you can game while you drive (because he heard you like gaming), but asks you which system, past or present, you would prefer. What console are you going with?

Vivian F.

Yes officer, this poster right here is the Kia Boy who stole kole's car. (It's a whole thing, Kole got his car stolen earlier this year at a convention. They talk about it in AS 500, and then fully detail it in the following episodes.)

Duckfeed.tv

lol

KL

What's something both of you like for wildly different reasons? As an example, I like the Castlevania games for their Hammer Horror aesthetics and gameplay, while my friend likes the series for the plot, because they are a fucking space alien.

Wil Wright

Any chance of you covering DQ3 even though Gary's fatigue with the genre has reached its peak? It's one of my all-time favorites and while it has simple stories and scenarios, it bucks the series' reputation for goofiness and has a really appealing solemnity and sincerity to it.

Austin Mathis

I second! Whether it would work or not, I just wanna support any endeavor for ppl to talk about this book more. It would suit the ethos!!!

Troy Sand

Hi Gary and Kole, I've been listening to you for about a year and can't get enough of Bonfireside Chat and WOFF. To put it plainly, y’all kick ASS and I appreciate your insights especially when it comes to soulsborne games. I’ve been bouncing around a wide variety of games including Outer Wilds, Disco Elysium, Frost Punk , Mortal Shell, Subnautica and Ghost of Tsushima. Which brings me to my point. I think Ghost of Tsushima’s gameplay is solid. Fighting enemies is a ton of fun and the upgrading system is fun to explore. I do not mind running errands and traveling around the open world to earn bonuses, loot and experience (especially with a fast travel option). But what I DO mind are cut scenes that you can’t skip. Dear lord! The game makes you watch these five minute or longer scenes that completely ruin the flow of gameplay. I could only handle about 15-20 hours worth and called it quits because I felt like the game was wasting my time. I am baffled that this game was so well received by some folks. It’s like playing is quicksand. So my question is: What other games have you played that won’t let you skip cutscenes that would have been awesome otherwise? On the other side of the coin, what great games do you think could benefit from adding cutscenes or building a more robust story? Thanks guys and keep doing your thing. You rock! Troy

Steven Riddle

Hey guys! Question for Kole. Back in February I asked what kind of cars you guys have owned. You mentioned that you have had a series of Kia Souls for the past few years. Every time I heard that, I wondered how it’s been with the huge trend of stealing Hyundais and Kias. Have you been lucky or did it happen to you too?

Michelle

The latest episode of Quakstak served as a nice reminder that every day on my commute to work, I pass by the public restroom where Forrest MacNeil reviews the concept of glory holes. If you can do it without doxxing yourself, what's the funniest local landmark you've lived near?

Mike G

Long-form discussion/question : good and bad mental health gaming habits. It wasn't until I played Bloodborne that I realized the way I play games could be pretty unhealthy. For instance, when I was playing From Software games, I would inevitably die and respawn and try again, and eventually, I'd find myself caught in a downward spiral of frustration becoming agitation and agitation making me too angry/stubborn to try anything different or learn from my mistakes. At the time, I was also suffering from depression so this cycle would put me in a pretty miserable place, but playing Bloodborne was one of the very few things I could enjoy at the time so I had to find a solution. After some much needed introspection, I decided to come up with rules so I would stop bashing my head into the wall and ruining the rest of day. On levels, I would play until I died and would only continue in order to get my lost blood echoes and then try to get the next lantern and if that didn't work, I would take a break, and do something else for while, such as take my dog to the park. With bosses [where most of my worst frustrations would come from] I would go in with the expectation of dying on the first attempt and then decide how many tries I had left in me. Once I hit my predefined limits, I was done for the day, with the promise that I would try again tomorrow. This ended up making the game so much more enjoyable, and now I look back on those more difficult moments with fondness rather than frustration, such as the week I spent trying to defeat that dammnable bastard Laurence. With that being said, how did you handle your frustrations with difficult games you've loved [or had to tolerate in order to do your podcasts], and what strategies have you employed to cope?

Mateus Silva

So you guys are both Mega Man fans I'm curious, did either of you take a dip into either of the GBA series? The Zero or Battle Network games? Zero has more of the lore, but it's miles better than X's.... in concept mostly but also execution. It's more out there. And Battle Network has the best random battle engine i've ever experienced.

Tom Healey

How do you feel about the "Haunted Spaceship" trope (Dead Space, Event Horizon, Alien etc) in horror fiction? Any favourite or least favourite examples?

J. Mattinson

Hey guys, New patron here! The announcement of Cruelty Squad this week got me thinking, are there any games you choose not to play, dispite interest? CS interested me as a fan of Immersive-sims & weird artstyles, but I have to take meds for intense migraines, and I think playing for more than 3 minutes might kill me. Are there artsyles that just can't mesh with Y'all? Any controllers you avoid for the safety of your hands? Music that pushes yoy to the mute button? Thanks again! -J

Jordan and Maya M.

I’m back you Cool Cats, and Best Quality Vacuum has me thinking about how I never watched Breaking bad until after I watched the first 5 seasons of Better Call Saul, being more interested in the Bob Odenkirk lawyer show than the Funny Coughing man from Malcom in the middle (Don’t worry I love both now, but still waiting to watch El Camino along with B.Q.V.) It created a very interesting watching experience, and made the callbacks in Better Call much more palatable as I had no clue what they were calling back 😅. Have you ever entered a franchise or series sideways or in ways definitely not intended by the creators?

Videogames dot Afghanistan

Would Wolf in White Van by John Darnielle work for adaptation decay?

Greg Polander

It's never been confirmed by Nintendo, but it's widely believed that Nintendo had a 'Switch Pro' ready to go for widescale release in 2020 before the pandemic and all of the supply chain issues that resulted in killed the project. We know looking at Sony and MS that it really wasn't until about late 2022 that you started to easily find Playstation's and XBox's -- two years after release! -- so perhaps this was the right choice for Nintendo, who made a killing. However, it looks like it will be at least a couple years now before Nintendo's next system is ready to replace, the Switch is badly showing it's age by now, many new games are not coming out on it, and Nintendo may struggle due to all of this to reclaim it's lead when the new system comes out. Do you feel Nintendo made the right decision in killing the Switch Pro, or not releasing ANY kind of upgrade to the Switch?

Kyle S.

Hi guys! As someone who grew up lower/middle class and went through childhood in the early 2000's, I would get roughly 1-2 new games a year for my hand me down GameBoy, if I was lucky. This lead me to spend a lot of time with flash + browser games in my youth on various websites back then. Looking back I have a lot of fond memories playing those games and talking about cool new stuff I'd found with my friends in school. In hindsight, a lot of them were crassly commercial, and navigating the websites that hosted them was like talking through a minefield of ads. Did either of you have much experience with flash games back in the day? I do think it's very interesting how it's almost like a lost genre of art that's difficult to access, and has been usurped by mobile games. Thanks for your time! - Kyle S. P.S. This is my first time submitting a question, but I've been listening to the Duckfeed network for the last 4 years or so. I really appreciate the work you all do, and you've gotten me to play a ton of games and check out other media outside my usual wheelhouse that have really had an impact on me. <3

mwh

I’ve been playing Baldur’s Gate 3 and loving it! Feels like a game worthy of super zoomed-in coverage similar to BFSC. If you folks did a BG3SC I would listen!

Eric Jedraszczak

Hi Kole! Apologies if I missed it elsewhere, but what happened between you and Devil In Me? It doesn't sound like you broke up with Dark Pictures entirely but Devil In Me definitely got too drunk at a party. I thought it had a much better story on average than the other entries, but on a replay I could sense how much padding there was. What was it that soured things for you?

Eric Jedraszczak

Hi Gary! I was coincidentally playing Shining Force 2 when you sent out your missives on Dragon Warrior 4 and thought "huh, does this resolve some of Gary's issues with this genre?". It has limited battles, the choices in those battles make a difference and require some amount of rigor. Admittedly the story is baby town frolics, and the combat isn't super complex, but I was curious if for the time this is more what you'd have liked out of RPGs?

Chase Moore

Hey guys! This will probably be a stranger question so bare with me :) Basically there is a rapper named Lil Uzi Vert about 3 years ago he released an album that featured heavy alien and abduction imagery/theming/audio. For whatever reason that album has a hotline straight to the part of my brain that remembers Mothership Zeta, so now whenever I think of one, I automatically think of the other. My question is do you guys have any weird mental connections like this where you can’t think of one thing without thinking of the other? Thanks for the work you guys do!

Abe

Did Kole ever get around to recreating the Whale’s Shamrock logo? Re-listened to the Sonic 2 episode of AD for the 4th time just to hear Gary and Will’s dumbfounded silence at Kole’s revelation.

Gabriel Tindall

Two things: Thing 1: I recently started working at an IT support helpdesk and had about a month of terrible phone anxiety. One technique I tried to calm myself down and sound calm to the user was to emulate Kole's type of speech. It sort of accidentally happened, I was just thinking to sound warm and calm, but realized I was sort of mimicking Kole's tone and speech patterns. So Kole, in a way, you're like my little Mike Ermantraut in my head for IT help. Thing 2: You guys often mention using your megalixers in games instead of hanging on to it and never using it. Do you apply this mentality to real life? For instance, I put money into a savings account and have goals with it, but when it comes time to use it, I get that "No, don't use your megalixer" feeling. How fast and loose are you with your real life resources? When I do crack that seal and use my resources IRL it is usually followed up with that Dark Souls feeling of "what do I have to lose?" when failing to recover lost souls.

Matt DiTomaso

With Baldur's Gate 3 getting glowing reviews I've started thinking about getting into CRPGs. It's a genre I've never played before and I'm sure I can figure it out. However I am a console gamer, and I know this genre is more optimized for mouse and keyboard. Do either of you have any experience with CRPGs on console? Is that control scheme easy or is too much lost in translation? What games are well tuned for console/ controller and which are not? Thanks!

KerooSeta

As someone who came to you guys through Bonfireside Chat, I am somewhat obsessed with Souls games but am taking a short break from the series just to make the return all the better. I was wondering if you guys have played any Soulslikes or Souls adjacent games recently that you would recommend or maybe warn people away from. Thanks and love all the great work you guys do. - Kerry

John G

How good would you say you both are at videogames? On a scale of 1-100, with 100 being Lobos beating Sekiro with a ladle using a guitar hero controller. Sorry if this is a repeat question.

Colin Reed

I’d like to recommend Dredge, a lovecraftian horror fishing game with some rpg elements on steam. Just finished it and had a great time for a great price. I feel like this would be great for a Halloween episode or a lovecraft special.

Jared

2e wishing that the ETG pivot is Gary and Will doing commentaries on the WOFF skits. "Everything to WOFFTRAX".

Sean P.

Hi Guys! I wanted to recommend Chained Echoes for the next time you feel the need to scratch that jrpg itch. It fixes a lot of the issues Gary brought up in his blog post as well as what was discussed on the pod. For example, grinding is non-existent and no random battles. The game has its issues (I don't like the mech fights towards the end) but it is far and away the best jrpg I've played in years and felt fresh. It really brought back my love for the genre that I haven't felt since early Pokemon games. Best, Sean