This discussion is Part 2 of our conversation about Lies of P. This game is so damn good we had to record another episode about it. Also, Taylor f*cked up—he gave his ***** to G-Pedo like the real good boy he is. Join us for the extended conversation about Lies of P, the soulslike game inspired by the Adventures of Pinocchio.
This discussion is Part 2 of our conversation about Lies of P. This game is so damn good we had to record another episode about it. Also, Taylor f*cked up—he gave his ***** to G-Pedo like the real good boy he is. Join us for the extended conversation about Lies of P, the soulslike game inspired by the Adventures of Pinocchio.
In this episode, we continue our conversation about Lies of P. We all love this game—we'll be raising HELL if it doesn't win at least one nomination for Game of the Year. We're revisiting this game because there was too much information to cover in a single episode. Who is the Legendary Stalker? What does Dark Horse Comics have to do with the game? Why does one enemy resemble Robin Williams's character from Night at the Museum? Deep in the episode, we discuss the collectible vinyl records, our approach to weapon crafting and Legion Arms, and Geppetto's motivations. Joseph breaks down the 4th wall with the Mad Donkey's dialogue. Willie breaks down the relationship between the Red Actress and the White Lady, and Taylor talks about the secret boss fight at the end of the game. We can't say enough great things about the quality of this game. Find it on Game Pass and play it, but don't piss off the King of Riddles, Arlecchino.
Here's the full transcript for this episode.
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00:00:00
[Alienated by ELFL plays in background]
Willie: The more evidence of that, that you get besides Adelina telling you that is just looking at the lockets that you pick up from them. I don't know if you like read the text in those things and remember them. The White Lady's, if you pick up hers, they exchange these lockets, like the sisters exchanged these lockets and says the younger sister was pleased.
And the quote, in it says, "To stand always on the stage of our dreams together, your lovin..., loving sister, Adelina," right?
Taylor: Hmm.
Willie: That's the one that the White Lady is carrying with her. But if you look at the one that the Red Actress is carrying with her. It says the same stuff, but it says, "To stand always on the," and the stage is marked out
Joseph: Ohh.
Willie: And it says, "your loving sister," and her name is crossed out. It's just a bunch of hash marks over her sister's name, which is Patricia, by the way.
Joseph: Right.
Willie: And the picture in the locket is all fucking carved up. Like she just carved the shit out of this thing because she hated her sister that much.
Taylor: Mm.
Willie: Obviously she poisoned her sister too.
Joseph: Yeah, there's some shit going on.
Willie: She admits that she was jealous, right, of her sister's voice and that's why she did it. It's a real fucked up situation.
[Alienated by ELFL fades out]
[Intro theme plays - Tiger Tracks by Lexica]
00:01:23
Joseph: What's up? Welcome to Berries and Blades. Thanks for tuning in for a casual conversation about video games. My name is Joseph and I'm here with my friends, Willie and Taylor, and we're just three regular guys wondering if we should give our [bleep] to Geppetto. But, I digress. So, what's up?
Taylor: I gave my [bleep]
[Joseph and Willie laughing]
Willie: Yeah, you did.
Taylor: I gave my [bleep] to Geppetto.
Willie: You did.
Taylor: He creeped me out and so I gave him my [bleep] that's what I do.
Joseph: I wanted to ask you, that's why I was thinking about this, because like, how did you get got? Like, how did you, how did Geppetto convince you to give your [bleep] to him?
Taylor: I don't remember why I did that. I, it was for one, they have a countdown timer on, [Joseph and Willie laugh] on those [chuckles] questions so-.
Joseph: Yeah, yeah.
Taylor: -that was one where I was, I was trying to go through the different scenarios in my head of what, what is this? And, um, I just thought I knew I was like, if I give him my [bleep] or if I don't give him my [bleep] it's going to be, I don't know, he won't like that. And I think that was what he was conditioning me to do the whole time. And, uh,
Joseph: For sure.
Taylor: So I just, I just did it.
Joseph: So what was it that made you want to redo it? The feeling of getting got by it or?
Taylor: It was all of the stuff together. It was being able to collect all the weapons that I didn't get before, or the trinkets, or keep upgrading the, the P-Organ. And... oh, and with the first boss, I think the Parade Master, like the first time, then I was like, Oh, I can see what he's saying now.
And that was pretty much a lot. Because a lot of times with the new game plus, even if I don't intend on, on really going through the whole thing, a lot of times I'll start it just like in Souls games to see what happens-
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: -See what's different, see if something immediately feels different, and then gives me a reason to keep going or try it again.
Willie: Also, pause for just a second. Obviously, if you've listened to this, hopefully you listened to the other episode, or maybe this is just one episode that's real long, [Joseph chuckles] but, uh, we're obviously spoiling shit now so-
Taylor: yeah.
Joseph: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
Taylor: Get outta here if...
Willie: -just know that going forward that we're, we're talking about, we're going to be getting deeper into this.
Joseph: Willie, was it a no brainer decision for you? Or did you go back and forth about whether or not you should do it?
Willie: He felt shady to me by that point. He just felt like he wasn't telling me the truth. And it was clear that the whole time that he was like, being weird. I did think it was weird the way that he talks to you, for sure.
But, it's just like, I don't know, especially, [chuckles] I think the weirdest thing, and maybe this isn't supposed to be, is not supposed to make sense, but the weirdest thing is that you get him out of a jail cell, like he's imprisoned, and he gives you the key to the door to continue going up the tower. [Taylor laughs] And I'm like, why the fuck do you have the key to go up the tower?
Like, what are you doing with that?
Joseph: Mm hmm. Like, why do you have it in the first place?
Taylor: Right. Like he put himself in there.
Willie: Yeah. Like, like I already don't trust him. And then he gives me the key to go up the tower to unlock this door while he's in jail. And I'm like, what am I supposed to be concerned about this?
Or is this just like the game is giving me the key, you know?
Taylor: Wow.
Joseph: I think it's more of the latter-
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: -you know, cause it's not like the door you go through is, was in his cell, you know, like that was outside of where- [laughs]
Willie: No, but it's right next to his cell and you can't [Taylor chuckles] go through it. He, you don't have the key. It's not like, Oh, I walked up to the door. I found the key on the ground.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: Like every other item that you need, you get from a boss. Or you find it in a, you know, a chest or something.
Joseph: Right, right, or-
Willie: If you need it to advance or to, like, figure out the next step, it is given to you in a practical way.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: Why would the game suddenly change to, like, Oh, I unlocked the Like, you can't get that key unless you open his cell.
Taylor: Hmm.
Willie: Why? Was that intentional? Because he really does have the key and he gives it to you? Does he actually say, like, here's the key? Because I think he might even say that at the end. Like, this will help you go forward. And it's like, why the fuck do you have this?
Joseph: Yeah, maybe there's a reason-
Taylor: Huh.
Joseph: -he had it before he was in prison.
Willie: Whatever it is, it's not a good reason.
Joseph: I mean, it could be.
Taylor: [chuckles] It's not good enough.
Willie: No, because he got captured. He got captured by the Black Brotherhood, supposedly. And The Fox and The Cat helped, with Alidoro's help.
Joseph: Mm hmm.
Willie: And he got imprisoned, supposedly. He got kidnapped, and then he's in a jail cell.
Joseph: Mm hmm.
Willie: You know, that gets to like, why? Why did he get kidnapped and all of that stuff? And that's more to talk about.
Taylor: Mm hmm.
Willie: But I, specifically, I just didn't trust him at that point.
Joseph: Yeah.
Willie: He even asked me like, have I been a trustworthy father? I was like, no. [Joseph laughs] No, dude, you've been shady this whole time.
Taylor: Yeah, you've been scaring me with the words you're using.
00:05:49
Joseph: Mm hmm. Mm hmm.
Well, okay. As you may have noticed, we absolutely lied about being finished with Lies of P. It's just too fucking good to not spend another hour on. Yeah, unfortunately we cut our last conversation about this game short because I had an important meeting to run off to, but there's just also so much we didn't even talk about, like how incredible the music is, the uniqueness of the weapon crafting system, our interpretations of the main storyline, and the questions it left us with.
So, let's sprint and jump back in, because that's literally the only way we can jump in. Willie, where do you think we should start?
Willie: I mean, I think we should go off your list and just go with the first obvious one that's easy is the music
Taylor: Mm.
Willie: Just because we haven't touched on it and we talked about it in the, in the demo and Joey and I talked about it a lot, like just offline.
I think maybe even in our text, our group thread, it was just like... in the demo you hear obviously the soundtrack to the game, the ambiance that it creates for you. But then you find that first record in the demo, Feel, and you take that back to the record player and play it and it's fucking amazing. It's like such a good track.
[Feel from Lies of P plays]
Willie: Close your eyes,
Come to me.
Feel alright.
Just dance with me all through the night.
Turn it out.
Close to you.
[Feel fades out]
Joseph: Man, they chose, they chose the perfect track for the demo for sure, because it hooked all of us. I feel like it hooked everybody.
Taylor: Yep.
Willie: Yeah. And just hearing it, it's like, if the music is, if the rest of the music is this good, I'm in. Like I'm totally in.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: And then starting to find the records in this game, they're kind of all just as good.
Joseph: Right.
Willie: Feel is still one of my favorites, but they're all really good.
Joseph: Yeah. And they're fucking just beautiful.
Taylor: Yeah.
Willie: Yeah.
[Quixotic from Lies of P begins to play in background]
Joseph: Piano, the strings. There's stand up bass and there's some really kind of subtle percussion in some of the tracks that it's just like you can tell it's a brush.
Willie: There's some accordion in there I assume-
Joseph: Yeah.
Willie: -that It's some sort of accordion.
Joseph: Uh-huh. Yeah, yeah. I don't know it's just so well crafted and composed and it fits the theme of the game, and the mood, and I love that it's a collectible. Like the songs are collectibles in the game. Fucking love that.
Taylor: Yeah and and to go back to the main hub and get to listen to them, put them on the record. That was really nice. Cause it's like a moment of respite. You're just chilling there and you probably just beat a boss [chuckles] or some crazy area, or you're all jazzed up from something. And it's nice to put those on. I think... I don't think I've ever so continuously gone back and wanted to listen to, as soon as I got a record immediately.
As soon as I could go back, if I died or found a Stargazer, I'm going straight back to that hotel and putting that record on. And turning the TV up and sitting there listening to it. And I don't think, I don't think any, any music from any game has ever gotten me to do that. Or like so feverishly have to listen to it.
Joseph: Yeah, I think part of it is because they are collectibles. You know, versus just being music in the game.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: Mm-hmm. That's true. That's true.
Joseph: I felt the same way, man. I was like, every time I got one, I was like, it was like the greatest thing in the game to get. And I was like, yes, I can't wait to hear what this is.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: I think my one beef with that system was that you couldn't, they didn't have like a player that you could put that on while you were playing.
Joseph: Oh yeah.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: So like outside of the hotel.
Taylor: I think, I thought that would have been really nice. Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Joseph: Yeah.
Taylor: So you could, cause they had that little mini player that the King's message was on towards the end.
Willie: Mm-hmm.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: And I think that would have been really cool just to be listening to the music, just be able to put it, cause there were 20 songs-
Joseph: Mmm.
Taylor: -seem like 15 or 20.
Willie: 16.
Taylor: Okay.
Willie: 16 total.
Taylor: So yeah, you could totally just put that on, on replay and go with it.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: Not a big deal that they didn't, but I would have done it. I would have happily, I do love that in games where you can, I can't think of one off the top of my head, but where you can collect cassette tapes or music and play them while, while you're playing the game-
Joseph: Yeah, it's awesome.
00:09:53
Taylor: -It's just like next level. Do we know why some of the records were gold? Like, why some are black, the top half, and then the bottom half are gold?
Willie: Yeah. I mean, so that's the other thing about New Game+ is it's great that there are five more records to get-
Taylor: Mm.
Willie: -And you can't get all of the records in the first playthrough. There's one that you have, you get from a decision that you make.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: Ah.
Willie: You have to say the other thing to get the other record in the second playthrough.
Taylor: Wow.
Joseph: Yeah-
Willie: That one specifically is from Eugenie.
Joseph: -so in the first part of the conversation, I asked like, what was the most disappointing thing about the game? For me, it was that you couldn't collect all the records in a single playthrough.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: I kind of love that because you, it makes me want to do a New Game Plus just to go and get the rest of the records that you can't get through in a single playthrough. But also, oh man, let that be the one thing that you can collect on a single playthrough so that I don't feel forced to do a New Game Plus-
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: -because they are so damn good.
Taylor: Mm-hmm.
Willie: I haven't listened to the gold records enough to say if there's a through line between why all the gold ones are the gold ones.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: The gold ones are remixes of the other tracks, right? They're still they're the same thing, but it's a gold record.
Joseph: And they have the same names, right?
Willie: They have the same names, but it's the golden version of it-
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: -and the vocals will be different, and one might be an instrumental instrumental compared to the other one, but that's not the through line for all of them. They're not like, these are all the instrumental versions versus these are all the other ones, but there's one that's much shorter. There's one that's like a minute and a half or maybe like a minute 40-
Taylor: Hmm.
Willie: -versus the full 3.5 minute version of the other record. And the other thing I want to say before I forget is, what is also really cool is Joey pointed out that they all connect with the story in some way, which is very cool. Even the titles feel like they belong in the story, but it's super interesting that they're actually all covers. They're all remixes of songs that were in a previous Neowiz game.
Taylor: Oh wow.
Willie: That was like a rhythm game called DJMax, I think.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: And those are all like more electronic songs. They're not all like completely electronic dance stuff, but they're a lot of them-.
Taylor: Hmm.
Willie: -have that feel to them. But all of them are just remixes of of those songs.
Joseph: It's fucking cool.
Taylor: One of the gold ones...I should have written this down so I'd remember, but one of the gold ones did seem a little simpler than-.
Willie: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: -than its counterpart. And then another of the gold ones sounded much more elaborate than the counterpart-
Willie: Right.
Taylor: -so maybe it's just like alt versions-
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: -and that's the main thing to 'em. But it's hard... I mean, with as much meaning as there is behind everything in (chuckles) this game, it definitely starts to get harder and harder to just move past something without thinking, well, maybe there's more to it. Also, before I forget, when you're fighting the Nameless Puppet, it cracked me up every time I would hear, hey, by the way, it's me, Eugenie from...(laughs)
Joseph: Oh, like the memories mixed in. (laughs)
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: (laughing)...from the shop.
Yeah, yeah. Is that what was going on or what?
Willie: Yeah, just different memories from each person that you met.
Taylor: ...from different people. Okay.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: (laughs) Because I would just hear that every once in a while. Hey, I'm Eugenie from the workshop. (Joseph and Willie chuckle) I'm like, why are you doing this to me? Then why are you doing this? And then I go back to the main hotel and there she is. It's like, I'm going to kill you.
Joseph: It was so hard to listen to what was being said during that fight.
Taylor: So hard.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: Like I struggled to hear anything that Geppetto was really saying until like after about ten tries and I was like, okay.
Taylor: Most of what I got was when I was dying-.
Joseph: Exactly, exactly.
Taylor: And I was dying there, I was getting it and it was always creepy. It was just-
Joseph: And it's always that one line, right?
Taylor: (in gravelly voice) Thank you God, Carlo, for coming back to me. Thank you for the P...-Organ.
Joseph: (in gravelly voice) Thank you, Carlo.
Taylor: So weird. But anyways, I'm glad we cleared that up-.
Joseph: Yeah, yeah.
Taylor: -because I was curious about what was happening there.
Joseph: (as Venigni) Compagnos.
00:13:37
Willie: Let's stay on...(chuckles) Let's stay on music and sound design for a little bit, because I just want to point out that one of the messages that Taylor sent one day was like... When I said something about the game getting patched, Taylor was like, did they patch out the like, creepy whispering because that would be nice? (Taylor sighs) And I remember when I finally got to that part, that whole section, it's somewhere after the cathedral, but some in the cathedral too. But then later in the game, once you start getting to the carcass enemies, there's just whispering in places and it's like, what the fuck?
Joseph: Yeah.
Willie: And it felt very... It made me so... It made me think of The Last of Us so much-.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: Mm.
Willie: Just where you'll... If you walk up on enemies in that game and just listen sometimes they're like, still partially human and still talking about stuff.
Taylor: Yeah.
Willie: But like, they're not there. They're like fungus monsters, right? That's sort of what it felt like with the carcass stuff too, at first. It was just like, you would hear them, it felt like they were muttering stuff all of the time in the background.
Taylor: Yeah, yeah it did.
Joseph: There were a couple of times where I was thinking about how tense some of the, like, creepier moments in Lies of P felt compared to, like, the catacombs in Elden Ring. I was like, which one is more scary? And I feel like Elden Ring kind of was a little bit more scary to me just because of the music and like the way there were a lot of hidden enemies that would jump out at you. And there was like almost more jump scare opportunities [00:15:00] in Elden Ring.
Taylor: Hmm.
Joseph: But I have to say, when you do get to fighting carcasses and specifically in the arcade and in the cathedral, man-
Willie: Mm-hmm.
Joseph: -there are some-
Willie: Yeah, there.
Joseph: -there are noises that are like enemies not even near you-
Taylor: Mm-hmm.
Joseph: -they're on like a floor below or above you, but you can still hear them like they're next to you.
Taylor: Yeah.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: And it was like this constant, like, head on a swivel, dude. Like, am I about to get run up on right now.
Taylor: The Malum district, where you would go to that Stargazer and then run over to the guy above the ladder.
Willie: Uh-huh.
Taylor: You know, you never get it... messed with by the monsters there. Didn't care. I always ran to that ladder because the sound (Joseph and Willie chuckle) was so creepy. Because of that reason right there. There was... There's that really big squishy guy with the long-.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: -fingernails-.
Joseph: Yeah, I hate that one.
Taylor: -down below, and then above you is or above and to the left is one of the crazy dudes and not a fan.
Willie: Yeah, the levels were definitely scary. I don't know, I feel like the scarier moments in Lies of P were, if I was comparing them to Elden Ring, felt scarier to me. But what you said about enemies popping out reminded me. I do think one of the more ridiculous things about when enemies popped out in Lies of P, was there were a number of locations where a monster popped out of a wall in like it didn't lead anywhere.
Joseph: Right, right.
Willie: There was situations where there was the hallway, and then a monster burst through the end of the hallway and came into the same hallway as you. But there were other times where they were literally just trapped in a wall there, waiting for you to come by. There was literally no reason for them to be in a hole in the wall-.
Joseph: Right, right.
Willie: -that doesn't go anywhere-
Taylor: Yeah.
Willie: -but they just pop out. And it was like, what? This is silly. There's not even anything in there to grab. There's like, it's nothing.
Joseph: There's no reason.
Willie: They were just an enemy in a hole in the wall.
Taylor: A setup.
Joseph: If...was going to say it makes even less sense than them being around the corner, right?
Willie: Mm-hmm.
Joseph: Not behind a wall in like a small compartment within the wall. Like it makes way less sense than that.
00:16:53
Taylor: Yeah, like the Robin Williams' characters. Umm, the guys with the sword. They they remind me of-
Joseph: The Robin Williams' characters?
Taylor: Yeah, his character from Jumanji.(laughs)
Joseph: Oh, the big fuckers. (laughs)
Taylor: When he's playing Roosevelt or whatever. (Joseph laughing) Yeah, that's I kept seeing them as, like, Robin Williams. I was like, all right, fucking Robin, you got me that time.
Joseph: Dude, they could do some damage.
Taylor: They had some of those dudes. They had some of those guys set up to knock you right off the side.
Joseph: Dude, they really went all in with, with that character, dude.
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: Like in the going up the tower.
Taylor: Yep.
Joseph: Dude, there was like 20 of those dudes.
Taylor: Yeah. And they were nasty. They could just they could skew you real quick if you didn't get out of the way in time or knock you right off of something because they had enough power even if you're blocking, they're still knocking you back 20ft. So they were a good thing to listen for really.
Joseph: Yeah. And back to music. So this game and the ability that you have a little mini player and you know you can't play it everywhere, which I don't think any game lets you do that. But I do love-
Taylor: Uh, I'm sorry Metal Gear Solid sir.(Joseph chuckles)
Joseph: Does it really?
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: At any point?
Taylor: Any tape player. Yeah. Yeah.
Joseph: Oh shit.
Taylor: You can play any anything.
Willie: That's Phantom pain, right? That's the one that does that.
Taylor: Yeah. Number five.
Willie: Yeah yeah.
Joseph: Damn, that's legit.
Taylor: Hell yeah. Yeah it is.And it's that's another game with an impressive soundtrack.
Joseph: Word.
Taylor: Incredible.
Joseph: I would say Lies of P is definitely the best music in a game I've experienced since Ghost of Tsushima.
Taylor: Ooh, yeah.
Joseph: Because in photo mode in Ghost of Tsushima, you could play the entire track list while you're just kind of hanging out and creating photos. I love that there was a mini player in Lies of P, and I think it's definitely on par with that game, but there's more variety in the music on Lies of P versus Ghost of Tsushima, which is nice. The variety, the variety in general, I think is really great in this game because they just really mix it up in a good way.
Taylor: Yeah.
Willie: In the intro, you talked about the uniqueness of the weapon, weapon crafting system. It's obviously a great mechanic. It's awesome to be able to like take a handle and like put it on something else and change the, the balance of it so that it can be used for Dex versus strength. I don't think I've used it enough though. Like I've used it somewhat to make the weapons that I like be good, but I also I've used the same weapon for like 100 hours now or something, I bet.
Joseph: Damn.
Willie: (chuckles) Like it's a long time that I've been using, I bet like a solid 60 or 70 hours I've used the same weapon.
Joseph: Yeah.
Taylor: All my faves were boss weapons.
Joseph: All the specials?
Taylor: So that was the problem there.
Willie: Oh, right. Yeah. You can't even switch out handles or anything.
Taylor: Yeah, I upgraded fully, you know, maybe 5 or 6 normal weapons, and they just didn't have the same impact to me as, as boss weapons.
Joseph: I fully upgraded three regular weapons and then fully upgraded two special weapons. My entire approach to to the weapon combat was to only have one weapon equipped because of weight. But I was switching out between, I think my most used weapon was probably the clock sword blade on the clock sword handle.
Taylor: Oh, that's one I didn't even use at all.
Joseph: I use that for most of the play, and I was switching that one out with the electric coil stick head that was on the electric coil stick handle.
Taylor: Oh.
Willie: Mm-hmm.
Joseph: And I would pull that out for any puppet confrontation, I would switch to [00:20:00] the electric weapon. And then if it wasn't, then I was using the clock sword.
Taylor: Hmm.
Joseph: Unless I was in boss fights, then I would pull out the specials, like every now and then.
Taylor: What was the clock sword? Is that a greatsword or just a sword?
Joseph: Don't think it's a greatsword because it's not as heavy and it's not as slow as the other great swords, but it was a single handed weapon.
Willie: It felt like it was in between. It felt like it was a, there are some things that look like lances almost-
Joseph: Hmm.
Willie: -more than they look like swords.
Taylor: Hmm.
Willie: And was that one of them? It felt like that was one of them.
Joseph: It does like not have like the traditional kind of sword shape, like it doesn't have a guard, like, like most swords do-
Taylor: Hmm.
Joseph: -but fucking loved it, dude, because it was a little bit more of like a piercing stab, like it was a slash and then a pierce.
Willie: Mm-hmm.
Joseph: But it wasn't as fast as the like the straight up Dex weapons, but it was like in between, kind of like in that balanced, the balance speed.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: But it didn't have a very good handle Fable Art and the Fable Art that it had on the handle is that it would increase... I forget the name of it, but it would increase your damage, but would also increase the damage taken. So every now and then I got confused and thought I had the electric coil stick handle, which is the one that does the badass like frontflip slash on the handle Fable Art.
Willie: Mm-hmm.
Joseph: Love that, because it has range and distance. Every now and then when I had the clock sword blade equipped, I would accidentally hit the Fable Art for the handle like in the middle of a boss fight, and then it would put me at risk for taking more damage if I got hit. So I was like, oh fuck.(Joseph and Willie chuckle).
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: So I screwed myself a couple times thinking I had the wrong weapon equipped.
00:21:28
Willie: Somehow, if you've made it this far in this conversation, like listening to us and you don't know what we're talking about, you should know that the blades and the handles can come apart for non special weapons.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: If it's not a boss weapon, you can take them apart and you upgrade the blade with some stuff in the game, some items and then you can upgrade the handle separately, only once as far as I know, you can upgrade it.
Joseph: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Willie: You can make it from a B to an A or an A to an S, and you can reset it so that you can change a different stat on it and upgrade it by one level. But the handle and the blade each have something called Fable Arts that are special attacks that you can do. So that can definitely make or break a weapon. Like with the electric coil. The blade just like makes the electric blitz like more powerful, right? Like if you use the Fable Arts for the blade, but the handle does that thing that Joey described where it just does a really badass attack that gets a lot of hits in it's kind of jumps forward a little bit too, right?
Joseph: Yeah, it's like a single hit, but it kind of leaps forward and just like it's a really kind of it's like a downward swing, but it's powerful.
Taylor: Mm-hmm.
Willie: So I'm saying all that because I did use that coil early on in the game, and then I used the thing that Taylor had described and was using for a while, which was the, what's that thing called? The Booster Glaive.
Joseph: Mm.
Taylor: Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Willie: Booster Glaive handle with the wrench-.
Taylor: Mm-hmm.
Willie: -like the pipe wrench head, because that thing did some massive damage and the Fable Art on the, that Booster Glaive was basically it launched you at enemies from quite a distance aways.
Taylor: Hmm.
Willie: Like you charge it up and then you would like launch at an enemy to hit them. So I really like that. But if you go back and watch my playthrough on Twitch, the moment I got to that,(chuckles) that wandering merchant that Taylor was just describing a little while ago in the Malum District where you have to run up the ladder.
Joseph: Mm.
Willie: The moment I found that guy and I opened his inventory for the first time, I saw a record and I was like, that's got to be bought. (Joseph chuckles) And I saw a blade in there that looked like a kukri. And I was like, yeah.
Taylor: Mm-hmm.
Willie: Fuck yeah, I'm getting a kukri. Like, why would I not have a kukri? That's literally my favorite blade. And that sounds ridiculous to say,(Taylor laughs) but like, watched a lot of uh-.
Joseph: Forged in Fire, yeah.(laughs)
Willie: -(chuckles)Forged in Fire, and watch people make blades, and Bronn from uh, Game of Thrones has a badass kukri.
Taylor: Right.
Joseph: Nice.
Willie: I've literally almost bought a kukri on a number of occasions just because I love that blade shape.
Joseph: So that's the weapon you've used ever since, huh?
Willie: Yeah, I bought that thing and I never looked back. (chuckles) I got the uh, shortly after that, you also get the Dancer's Curved Sword and I replaced the handle with the Dancer's Curved Sword handle on that Bramble Curved Sword blade.
Taylor: Mm.
Willie: And so I have those two together. And that's that's what I've used. I like leveled that up to ten and I have not turned back one time. No, that's not completely true because I used the what are they called, the Twin Serpents or the twin swords that you get. It's not it's not actually a twin blade, but it's a-
Joseph: Oh, the special?
Willie: -the special weapon you get from the swamp monster.
Joseph: Gotcha. Yeah, I don't remember the name, but I know what you're talking about.
Willie: It's not a katana. It's whatever the Korean version of a katana is.
Taylor: Oh, okay, that.
Willie: I'm not 100% certain.
Taylor: Yeah, yeah.
Willie: But that blade I used for a little while, too, I guess.
Joseph: Hmm.
Willie: But I did go back, I think I, I used that for a little bit. I was like, this is cool. And then I went back to the curved sword, like the Bramble Curved Sword blade. And that's what I used for the entire playthrough for New Game Plus,
Joseph: Oh, damn.
Willie: Like I literally never switched off of it.
Joseph: Damn.
Willie: I fucking love that blade. And maybe that's why some of the fights are harder when I'm not like specing into like, damage [00:25:00] types, you know?
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: But I love that fucking sword.
Joseph: I definitely did more swapping than I feel like I normally do for the damage type.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: The Electric Blitz on puppets. And then I was using the Salamander Dagger for like, corpses. The only thing I didn't really tap into, which I think I would have benefited from, was using the acid weapons or using like the acid grinder to put acid on blades and stuff like that.
Taylor: I was underwhelmed, dude. I watched multiple videos from multiple bosses that they were like, oh yeah, just spec for the for the stabby poison blade and this one's a breeze. It was never a breeze for me. (Joseph and Willie chuckle) It didn't make any sense. I tried it.
Joseph: Yeah.
Taylor: It just didn't work out. I mean, I think it's just one of those things where there's legitimately a different style for everybody.
Joseph: For sure.
Willie: That's the best thing about the weapons is that you could make whatever style you want and you could make it work for you. And it's not just about the weapons, because I think, you know, Joey was talking about never using Throwables, but I like heavily relied on Throwables because I just like that. Like if I was playing a different game, I would be playing a magic user. Like I'm always playing a magic user.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: But there's not a magic user. So instead I have to settle for a Legion arm and Throwables. I got to make that work somehow, so I just pair the right combinations and do that. And I think that just speaks to like, you could play this game multiple ways and make it work.
Taylor: Mm-hmm.
Joseph: Absolutely, man.
Taylor: I really enjoyed that disc weapon. Found myself using that a lot. The special weapon that was just a disc blade that you could throw out and-
Willie: The Ouroboros thing.
Taylor: -Yeah, if you use that, if you basically fight, fight, fight, build up your Fable Arts and then use like a couple saw blades and then throw that thing, you could stagger almost any boss.
Joseph: Hmm.
Taylor: They just couldn't take all the constant hits. And even if they were in the middle of a hit and you throw it and get it off in time, it still would like disrupt them. And I really liked that weapon. And its charge attack was brutal because the the first time you do it, you swing up, you like go with this double swing up to get two hits. And if you hold charge again right after, you'll do the same thing but down to two hits. And it was it just felt really powerful. And if you could get a couple of those off, then it would bring a lot of people down.
Joseph: I'm pretty sure I chose the amulet over that weapon. I forgot what it was but-
Taylor: The amulet was good for that one. That was a hard decision.
Joseph: Dude, I struggle with those. Like, man, I don't know. And I went, I went all Motivity. My whole build was Motivity like my Technique was nine. Like when I finished the game, it was no, not a single point in technique.
Taylor: Yeah, mine was lower. Mine was 5.
Willie: That's how I am right now.
Joseph: You went back to Motivity Willie?
Willie: No, I mean, sorry opposite.
Joseph: Opposite, okay.
Willie: Mine was the opposite.
Taylor: Advance.
Willie: No, I had technique at, I had Motivity at nine and Technique like leveled. (Taylor laughs)
Joseph: I did throw some into Advance, but I think what was kind of unusual is I played the entire game with Flamberge. I didn't even unlock all the the other arms.
Willie: I started that way. I was like, oh, this is going to be cool. And then I got the Falcon Eyes and was like, well, I'm going to use this for a while. And then I did... Ultimately, I will say about the last fight for me, for the Nameless Puppet. That was the one time that I did sort of change my approach to the game. Like I was still using throwables and stuff, but I did switch out my arm because I was like, I need to try something different because it just wasn't working for me.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: And I switched to the, I did switch to the shield, to the Aegis and like, use that for a bit in that fight. And ultimately that's what did it. Doing that and using the special grindstone to like get perfect blocks better-
Joseph: Mm.
Willie: -so that I could just like use that during the second half of that fight, helped a lot. 'Cause leveling the aegis means that you can just, like, hold that up and just poke around that shield and just keep guarding and, and fighting at the same time.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: Yep.
Joseph: That was actually useful?
Taylor: Uh-huh.
Willie: Super useful.
Taylor: Yeah, 'cause if you got that guard regain, if you had all that stuff powered up, you could just be taking hits and immediately getting all your health back.
Joseph: Oh yeah, yeah.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: Okay.
Taylor: That's how I was-.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: -trying to take down Nameless Puppet, but even with that it would help you through the first phase.
Joseph: Mm.
Taylor: But the second phase, he just did not care.
Willie: Yeah.
00:29:10
Joseph: Dude, the reason you should actually defeat Nameless Puppet is so you can get the Proof of Humanity weapon.
Taylor: Yeah, it looks cool. What? So what happens with the with the painting? With the nose, by the way? Because I could never use it.
Willie: Oh yeah.(chuckles)
Taylor: And I got it like, it was way the fuck out there for me.
Joseph: 'Cause you ain't no liar homie.
Willie: Yeah, you got to lie enough, and then it'll be available to you.
Taylor: What?
Willie: And you get the the Golden Lie.
Taylor: Oh, is that another weapon?
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: Yeah, it's good too. I think I leveled that one up, but I still only used it like a little bit. And maybe just practicing in the courtyard with it.
Willie: Hmm.
Joseph: Yeah. Didn't have it available to me at the end of the playthrough.
Taylor: Damn.
Joseph: I think you have to lie. Like, every single time.
Willie: You don't. It's close, but no.
Joseph: Oh. Okay.
Willie: I don't think so because I don't think I lied every single time in my first game.
Taylor: I know I fucked up because I didn't talk to enough people in the second game. Like I really wanted to get it, [00:30:00] but I didn't... I didn't do the side quests-
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: -and those I think were required for you to lie on.
Joseph: Mm.
Willie: I think I lied one too few times-
Taylor: Aw.
Willie: -to get it in my second playthrough.
Joseph: Aw, damn.
Taylor: That's got to be mine. It's like all the way over to Geppetto's desk(Joseph and Willie laugh) just stretched out.
Joseph: Mine looks really long too,(Taylor laughs) but I still can't. I still can't pick it up.
Taylor: Fuck.
Willie: It's funny because it's like, honestly, it's because of the record. The record, the first time I told the truth about who Eugenie's brother is. And in the second one, I lied and said he's just some stalker. That's the only difference between the two playthroughs. And I think that one time that I lied, which I did lie in that instance, somehow it negated some other thing that I did earlier-
Joseph: Mm.
Willie: -because I'm pretty sure I literally did everything else the same.
Joseph: That must be what got me then, because that's the answer I gave Eugene was basically the truth.
Taylor: Hmm.
Willie: Uh-huh.
Joseph: So that could have been what ruined my Golden Lie.
Willie: Yeah, I'm not sure I need to go back and actually count how many there are. I don't think it's all of them. I think you have to lie a lot more often than you don't.
Joseph: Uh-huh.
Willie: But it does have to be quite a bit, I guess.
Joseph: In general, I felt like my lies and truths were like 50-50. Maybe a little more lie than telling the truth, but I definitely didn't stick with one over the other.
Taylor: I just thought it was all like they would be tricking you. I didn't, I guess the first time I was going through, I just had this feeling that I shouldn't always lie. Like that... Like it's in the name. They're always saying, you lying like I was just like, I feel like there's times that I'm going to need to not lie. And so I kind of followed that and by the end totally realized I should have lied the whole time to everybody, every single thing. It's just, it was too on the nose and I just couldn't buy it until the end.
Willie: Yeah. The funny thing about that weapon, whenever you do get it, is that they're literally nostrils at the end of it.
Joseph: Seriously? (Taylor chuckles)
Willie: (chuckles) Yeah. There are nostrils if you look really closely. (Taylor laughs) And it also has like gold coin fruit hanging from it.
Joseph: Hmm.
Taylor: Wow.
Willie: That's what's glowing at the end. And they'll like, they'll sprout whenever it's long enough for you to grab.
Taylor: Wow.
Joseph: Oh, shit.
Taylor: That's incredible.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: Wow.
Willie: Like you can't grab them, but, like, when you can interact with the weapon-
Joseph: Oh. Oh, okay, okay.
Willie: -you'll know that it's ready because there's fruit at the end of it.
Joseph: Ohhh. Yeah. Mine just has, like, leaves at the end.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: Anyway, what we're talking about the Golden Lie. It's basically in the game you find a portrait of young Carlo, who is Geppetto's son that looks like Geppetto's puppet, who is the person we're playing as in the game. And you take it back to the hotel, which is like the main kind of central hub, puts it on the wall, and then you come back to it and there's literally a nose growing out of a flat painting. And if you lie enough, then you're eventually able to, I guess, break that nose off and use it as a fucking weapon. (Willie chuckles)
Willie: Yeah. The other cool thing about that is just the like, it's another one of those things. It's like, what is this connected to? Is this going to be something else that's in a future game? Because the like connection there is that Geppetto tells you, and even if you read the item description, it's like by a painter named D. Gray, which is obviously a nod to Dorian Gray. Which he was not a painter in his story, but the story of Dorian Gray, like the short version is, he has a painting of him that ages while he doesn't.
Taylor: Hmm.
Willie: Every like shitty thing that he does in his life is somehow reflected in the painting.
Taylor: Oh wow.
Willie: Like as he ages and gets, does worse and worse things. He gets more blemishes on his face and he ages until one day he like stabs the painting and he dies too, like he dies and the painting returns to normal.
Joseph: Mm. Sick
Taylor: Wow.
Willie: And that's a painting that someone made of him. So he's not the painter in that situation. But this is an obvious nod to like-
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: -it says, like, extremely vivid paintings are said to possess soul, sometimes. D. Gray, the genius painter denied all such conjectures...conjectures. However, his death and the rumors about his paintings are still shrouded in a thick fog. And it's like, clearly this is a nod to that story, The Picture of Dorian Gray. And the painting is evolving as we are lying in the game.
Joseph: That's pretty awesome.
Taylor: That's cool.
Joseph: Just a cool thing, man. Cool thing to be in the game.
00:34:07
Willie: Yeah, I do want to talk about one other nod, and then we can talk into some of the lore that like may be connected to all of this, but that immediately made... Immediately made me think of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, because that's actually where my first interaction with Dorian Gray was-
Taylor: Hmm.
Joseph: Uh-huh.
Willie: -was in that movie, and that comic book. I didn't actually ever read that book, and I've still never read it, but I, Barbara does own a copy of it, so I know it's here, and I have read the summary like I understand what it's about. But I knew about him from League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, which is what I thought of, and there's also a nod to Sherlock Holmes in this game, too, like if you didn't catch... When you get your first cryptic vessel and take it to Venigni to decrypt, he tells you to go to the hanging puppet on the Alchemist Bridge. You knock that down and get something, and that tells you to go to an apartment, and the apartment tells you to go, to go to is to 221B-
Joseph: Aw, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Willie: on Elysion Street. And it's to 221B [00:35:00] Baker Street, like a nod to Sherlock Holmes. So I was already primed for like, oh shit, are they setting up some League of Extraordinary Gentlemen shit? And Pinocchio is part of it? (Joseph and Taylor chuckle) Or like Geppetto's Puppet's now in this too, what's going on?
Joseph: Yeah, that's sick.
Willie: Which is also why I think, you know, Joey brought up that there was a credit to Dark Horse Comics in the credits. I wonder if it has anything to do with those characters-
Joseph: Mm.
Taylor: Hmm.
Joseph: Yeah, maybe.
Willie: -because I don't know who actually produced League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, the comic book. I would be willing to bet it is Dark Horse Comics.
Joseph: Yeah, that just stuck out to me when I was reading the credits. It was more just like, why? Or I wonder why.
Willie: Yeah, I'm not sure. Maybe it's just DC.
Willie: Anyway, that's...You started to talk earlier about other connections, and you talked about Paracelsus and someone connecting him to Mad Hatter. What else did you learn about that? I heard you refer to him earlier as like Philippus Paracelsus.
Joseph: Mostly just like what's in the game. So, like reading back through his dialogue when you first meet him and, like, he basically calls himself an alchemist, but then, like, corrects himself and calls himself a pharmacist. So I feel like they're kind of laying some of those, those seeds in early. But I saw somebody make a connection to Mad Hatter in the sense of how like he presents himself in those scenes, like with, like stuttering and like basically showing the symptoms of somebody that would have been poisoned or suffering from, like, the symptoms of poisoning. And then the fact that he wears that hat-
Taylor: Mm-hmm.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: -and what the hat looks like. This is the connection that I heard somebody on YouTube make, which got me thinking about that. And outside of it just being like a real person and like the connection there with like this person really being like an alchemist, plus other things. And obviously the end scene, the secret scene at the end of the credits, that obviously was very revealing to the story and painting the picture that he's not who he said he was, which is the most obvious thing that happens. That's pretty much it outside of the stuff that's written in the game.
Willie: Yeah.
Willie: Like I really haven't gone any deeper than that.
Willie: Yeah, I haven't gone much deeper than that other than knowing that, like, yeah, it's a real life alchemist who I'm not sure exactly what stuff they were like into, but the way that alchemy is presented in this game is interesting in general. Like all the connections that exist with alchemy, it's clear that like, they use symbols for alchemy, like at the Alchemist Tower and stuff, or like in the at the Isle of Alchemist or whatever.
Joseph: On the bridge too, the Bridge of Alchemist.
Willie: Yeah, and that's because they, like, they're responsible for basically bringing the city to, pairing up with the city once ergo is found, like trying to mine it and harvest it and do whatever they could with it. And so, man, I have so many questions about this game. So it's like, (Joseph chuckles) how much do you think that Simon Manus had to do with the death of Valentinus? Did he just straight up murder him or have him murdered to take over?
Joseph: I don't know.
Willie: Or did he actually naturally die of natural causes? Or not natural causes?, he died mysteriously is what we know, I think.
00:38:11
Joseph: I don't know, I haven't really thought about his death at all. Simon, I think the story would benefit if he was introduced a little sooner-
Willie: Mm-hmm.
Joseph: -in the game, because it happens really late, basically after the King of Puppets boss fight. That's the introduction to that character, but there's not a lot of game left, and he's like one of the main characters, that's like driving, he's basically the cause of the petrification disease in Krat. Which is a pretty big deal, you know, and what he's trying to do with Ergo and how he is essentially trying to become a god, like is pretty important to the story. And obviously he's like the main boss of the game. I feel like he was introduced way too late, and that it would have been helpful to at least see him in the game before, even though you do like pick up some notes and like the scripture, like whatever as Pistris.
Willie: So Said Pistris, yeah.
Joseph: Yeah, yeah, that stuff, which is like it has a real biblical kind of feel to it, like almost like a Bible or something. I think they should have introduced him sooner because he is like such a, you know, he's like the main antagonist.
Willie: Yeah, it is, it is definitely weird that the first time you see him is after the Archbishop fight, and you don't know who he is at all, like you're just like at first, like my first immediate thought was like, that's not Geppetto, is it? Why is Geppetto sitting there? Like, because you don't you don't know. But it's clearly a different voice.
Joseph: Uh-huh.
Willie: And he's just like, now the stage is set or whatever. And it's like, what's happening?
Joseph: It kind of reminded me of the Illusive Man in Mass Effect and that you kind of always see like in this setting, but you don't see their face, you know, they're like sitting with their back to you. And then there's like all this ergo shit happening, like, you know, something big is going down, but it's intentionally kept mysterious until that meeting after the King of Puppets fight.
Taylor: He's missable too, right? Like he's off to the side if you kept going.
Joseph: He feels that way, but he's not. Like he's...
Taylor: Huh.
Joseph: Like you're going to run into him because of that conversation after the King of Puppets boss fight.
Taylor: Oh, okay, that one has to happen.
Joseph: Yeah, that's a mandatory fight, which, also, I don't know how the fuck fights are optional in this game, because I don't see how any of these you get passed. [Joseph and Willie chuckle]
There was one I lied and I didn't have a boss fight for, and that was the Atoned. Which is like out in front of the cathedral, I think, like right before you go in. That's literally the only boss fight I didn't do.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: And nothing felt optional.
Willie: So the only ones that are optional like that are... Are they the human ones?
Joseph: Yeah, yeah. I'm looking at the list right now. Survivor, well, Puppet of the Future, that one makes sense-
Willie: Oh, right.
Joseph: -because you can just totally avoid that one. But the Atoned, the White Lady, Mad Clown Puppet is listed as optional.
Taylor: Hmm.
Willie: You could... How could you... How, how would you bypass the White Lady?
Joseph: I don't know.
Willie: Interesting.
Joseph: Owl Doctor, you can miss that one completely, so that one makes sense.
Willie: Yeah, you don't even have to go to that part of the map.
Joseph: Yeah, Robber Weasel, optional. Yeah, Walker of Illusions? I don't see how that one's optional, [Willie chuckles] dude, because you ain't getting nowhere past that without getting your ass whooped.
Willie: Yeah, I'm curious now.
Joseph: Door Guardian, optional.
Willie: What?
Joseph: I don't get it. Either this list is just fucking wrong, or...
Taylor: Yeah, probably somebody got an AI doing it and it's just [Taylor and Willie laugh] saying stuff that'll make you read it longer.
Joseph: Right, man, but I have no idea how these boss battles are optional because none of them ever, besides the Atoned, which I actually didn't do, none of the other ones, I have no idea how you bypass them.
Willie: Yeah, so the other ones that you could bypass are the, the other stalkers, right? Like, you could give, you could keep giving them gold coin fruit, and I don't think you have to fight them.
Taylor: Mm-hmm.
Joseph: Okay, yeah, so Black Cat and Red Fox.
Willie: Black Cat and Red Fox you could bypass, because if you don't kill Black Cat, then you, then Red Fox wouldn't be mad at you. And I don't know if you have to give them another coin or not, but...
Joseph: Yeah, I killed Black Cat. That was by far the easiest boss fight in the whole game. I was like, what? This should have been like in the on Elysion Boulevard.
[Willie chuckles]
Willie: Someone noticed that, that entire room is filled with water and they thought that like, that's how the Black Cat is like tracking you.
Taylor: Huh.
Willie: They're hearing you because they can't see you.
Joseph: Oh, in that fight?
Willie: In that fight.
Joseph: Interesting.
Taylor: Oh wow.
Willie: They're like just hearing your footsteps, especially because you're in water.
Joseph: Yeah, that's interesting
Willie: Like, I think that's just a theory, but like, I, I buy that.
Joseph: Yeah. Yeah. I like that.
Taylor: I thought it was cool how the Big Brother came back in the second fight.
Willie: Oh, yeah.
Joseph: Oh, yeah. [laughs]
Taylor: How he was in the big coffin.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: Then you start, you're like, you just beat the shit out of the first guy or the first two. And then one's like, Hey, big brother, I need your help. And then that dude comes out being a real dick.
Joseph: That fight is when I started to use the Spectre.
Willie: The first or the second version of that fight?
Joseph: The first version. I used the Specter there, but the bosses before Fallen Archib uh, Fallen Archbishop, Andreus, the King's Flame, Scrapped Watchman, and Parade Master, I did all of those, like, stubbornly, strictly, no consumables, no Fable Catalyst, no Legion cartridge, no throwables.
Taylor: Hmm.
Joseph: Nothing, dude. I did all of those, but that one, I was like, no, I tried it a bunch of times
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: And I was like, nah, these assholes are ganging up on me. So I was like, I'm going to use the Specter.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: Oh, I can't even imagine beating that one by yourself. Feel like you'd have to be so OP just to take one down.
Joseph: I got pretty dang close.
Taylor: Hmm.
Joseph: I got so close that I was like, I know I can do it, but I'm like frustrated with the waiting it's taken me to do it.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: And you want that revenge. [Joseph laughs] Give me that sweet revenge [laughs] on this gang of motherfuckers.
Joseph: Then I just fucking mow them down, dude. Like the whole last half of the game was so much easier for me than the first half after I was using the Specter.
Taylor: Nice.
Willie: Yeah, for sure. It definitely helps to like, have them take some of the, the aggro at times-
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: -whenever you can like, especially even just to heal, just to get a second to heal instead of like having to try to do that between parries or whatever, like that's a huge benefit.
00:43:51
Joseph: One of the hardest boss fights for me was Walker of Illusions.
Willie: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: Aw, yep.
Joseph: There was just something about it, like when it split into two and I was just like, I couldn't get the timing, like I couldn't understand the, the swings. And it was just fucking relentless dude, like that-
Taylor: Yep.
Joseph: -like you couldn't even get a break to like, to grind.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: And resharpen your blade or to heal, 'cause like right there, like they're right up on you again.
Taylor: I'd say that one is like that three way tie, right? Between the Axiato [mispronouncing Laxasia] Lady [Joseph chuckles] and, uh, Actual Asia [Willie chuckles] [mispronouncing Laxasia] and the Nameless Puppet.
Like all three of those are just the relentless. They have a seven hit combo.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: I used two saw blades on the, the, what's the word I'm looking for? The duplicate?
Willie: The duplicate, yeah.
Joseph: For the Walker of Illusions, and that's what got me past it, was using the saw blades on that, because it kind of got rid of that thing quickly, so then I was back at just fighting the Walker of Illusions.
Willie: I will say, yeah, that fight was difficult. I think I ended up just flooding that one with throwables, I'm pretty sure. One of my favorite things to use in that type of situation where they're too, like, so fast is the, uh, cluster grenade.
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: What does it do?
Willie: Because that sort of, it just, like, creates a cluster of grenades, like, just going off, like firecrackers, basically, at their feet.
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: Hmm.
Willie: But it hurts, but it also stuns them, basically.
Joseph: Oh.
Taylor: Mm-hmm.
Willie: It doesn't actually stun them, like, give them a stagger effect, but it pauses them in their stance. It's, like, one of the only things that, like, will stop someone's movement.
Joseph: Mm.
Taylor: Yeah.
Willie: You know how you can't interrupt attacks most of the time? That's the one thing in the game that feels like it actually interrupts attacks where they like stop and will stop moving.
Taylor: Like physically slows them down, right in the middle of what they're doing.
Willie: Exactly. And you pause them in the middle of that and then throw other throwables at them. And they're just like stun locked and they're getting hit a bunch.
Taylor: Mm-hmm.
Willie: And then you go in after they're electrified or, you know, on fire and just start hitting them.
Joseph: Sick.
Taylor: And it also, um, uses up their, their defense gauge as well, I believe.
Willie: Right.
Taylor: I want to say if I could get three off on 'em, on especially a smaller boss than, uh, like the, was it the White Lady that you fight on the stage?
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: Just in front. Yeah. Yeah.
Taylor: On stage, yeah. Yeah. She was like, that made her a breeze. You would just hit her with that with two or three of those. And she would just be totally ready to get the rage hit or whatever it was called.
00:46:03
Willie: We should talk about them for a second. Their lore for a moment with the White Lady and the Red Actress. 'Cause that relationship seems pretty fucked up.
Joseph: Yeah. Yeah. Which my understanding is that the, Adelina, is that her name?
Willie: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: Mm-hmm.
Willie: The Red Actress is Adelina, yeah.
Joseph: Yeah, Adelina that she poisoned her sister, who is the White Lady to basically fuck up her voice.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: That's crazy.
Joseph: And then the White Lady thinks that the Red Actress is dead or gone. And is out to basically murder all the puppets she can because she thinks puppets took her from her and doesn't realize that Adelina's in the opera house the entire time.
Willie: Yeah, exactly. And that, it's just so fucked up. The more evidence of that, that you get besides Adelina telling you that is just looking at the lockets that you pick up from them. I don't know if you like read the text in those things and remember them. The White Lady's, if you pick up hers, they exchange these lockets, like the sisters exchanged these lockets and says the younger sister was pleased.
And the quote, in it says, "To stand always on the stage of our dreams together, your lovin..., loving sister, Adelina," right?
Taylor: Hmm.
Willie: That's the one that the White Lady is carrying with her. But if you look at the one that the Red Actress is carrying with her. It says the same stuff, but it says, "To stand always on the," and the stage is marked out
Joseph: Ohh.
Willie: And it says, "your loving sister," and her name is crossed out. It's just a bunch of hash marks over her sister's name, which is Patricia, by the way.
Joseph: Right.
Willie: And the picture in the locket is all fucking carved up. Like she just carved the shit out of this thing because she hated her sister that much.
Taylor: Mm.
Willie: Obviously she poisoned her sister too.
Joseph: Yeah, there's some shit going on.
Willie: She admits that she was jealous, right, of her sister's voice and that's why she did it. It's a real fucked up situation.
Taylor: And so we're to assume that Adelina died, right, whenever she disappears?
Willie: You go back to find her body laying on the ground. That's where you get one of the records.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: Oh, I didn't even notice her body, like in the room that she's in.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: Oh, I didn't even see the body.
Willie: Yeah, I think it's just on the ground.
Taylor: That's weird. I don't remember seeing a body at all. I was just looking around the room thinking, where the heck did she go? Thank you for the record.
Joseph: Yeah.
Taylor: I want to give you some props, but...
Joseph: I'm going to the hotel. That's how excited you were, dude.
Taylor: I'll see you at the hotel. Yep. I'm out. I probably was. I mean, those records coming, my vision gets blurry.
Joseph: Yeah.
Taylor: I need to see what's going on.
00:48:22
Joseph: On the note of just fucking sadistic fucked up shit, The King of Riddles, man-
[Willie chuckles]
Taylor: Aw.
Joseph: -is by far the most twisted fucking NPC in this game.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: That was crazy.
Joseph: It's probably, I think, the best, probably my favorite NPC just because of how sick and twisted it is, but also I think the voice acting is good for that character. And damn, man, when you run into him, his actual puppet body-
Willie: Mm-hmm.
Joseph: -shit just gets off the rails there.
Taylor: He's very, he's got a joker element to his town for sure.
Joseph: Yeah.
Taylor: Like a, like they took the Riddler and Joker and mashed them up into one person-
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: -which I feel is good because it's also super familiar to you as, okay, I can already tell by this guy's voice-
Joseph: It did, yeah.
Taylor: -by the way, he's talking-
Willie: Yep.
Taylor: -and he's definitely about to be giving me some riddles. On those, at first I was pulling up, I just had them on the AI. I would just let the AI, I would say like [Willie chuckles] anything you hear, answer the riddle and then have it listening. And it was working fine until some of [chuckling] them were specifically dependent on answers from within this game and within this world.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: And then I had to like kind of just try it off the cuff because I wasn't ready. I hadn't looked it up and yeah, I got some wrong. The first time I got them all right. Um, but second playthrough, I really, I fucked 'em up pretty bad. [Joseph and Willie laugh]
Willie: Nice.
Joseph: I don't know, there was the very first one, I was like super panicking-
Taylor: Mm-hmm..
Joseph: -about choosing the right one, like in the riddle. Like I kind of almost panicked my way into the wrong answer, but I didn't. [Taylor chuckles] And then the rest of them, I felt like were pretty simple.
Willie: I felt the same way, but I did, I answered the first one incorrectly on purpose. Because I like double guessed myself. It's not even that I was second guessing myself, but I like reverse thought my way out of the answer.
Like I know the answer, that's a very common riddle. But I was like, am I supposed to lie here though?
Joseph: Mm.
Willie: Like I had already decided before I started the game that I was going to lie on every answer. And obviously the lie would also be to say the human answer, which is human, actually, because that's right, and only a human should know that according to this guy, right?
So that should be the answer, no matter what. But I was like reverse psychology ing [Taylor laughs] myself into the idea that like, oh, but I need to get it wrong so he doesn't know who I am. [Taylor chuckles] Because I had already decided I was gonna lie every time I had anything. [Taylor chuckles]
And so I purposefully picked the wrong thing and then I was upset at myself for picking the wrong thing when it didn't even matter because I got the key anyway for the first one.
Joseph: Oh, really?
Willie: Yeah, for the first one he doesn't care-
Taylor: Hmm.
Joseph: Oh.
Willie: -'cause he says he's, he tells you, that's correct. And he's like, that's what I would say if you said the right thing-
Taylor: [laughing] That's rights.
Willie: -but I'll still give you this key.-
Joseph: [laughing] Oh.
Willie: -And like, so you at least know what it does.
Joseph: Right, right. That's what I was afraid of, man.
Taylor: Did you guys say you're a puppet, whenever you finally met him, th... what did you all say?
Willie: Naw, I said I was a human.
Taylor: I said puppet and he like really ate into me.
Joseph: He went off on you, didn't he? [all laughing]
Taylor: He went the fuck off.
Joseph: I did the same thing, man.
Taylor: I'm sitting there thinking I did the wrong thing. This is the wrong thing to say.
Joseph: I did the same thing, man. And that's the point in the game where I was upset at myself about.
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: Because I wanted to pick the other option, like I just wanted to pick human, but I felt-
Taylor: It was too obvious.
Joseph: -Yeah, I felt that way too. And that I needed to say no, I understand I'm just a puppet, right? Like I'm not a real boy yet. I was thinking along those lines.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: And then, yeah-
Willie: Right.
Joseph: -he went the fuck off.
Taylor: Yep. He wasn't cool with it.
Willie: Did he then tell you, like, did you have more dialogue?
Joseph: Yeah, there's a lot of dialogue.
Taylor: Yeah.
Willie: Okay. I didn't know if you still got that or not.
Taylor: Yeah. He's just shitting on you at that point.
Willie: Well, see, the thing is, I thought I got all the dialogue and then had the attack option, which is like, I was pretty sure was the only thing you could do once you got to the end of the dialogue.
But I didn't get the achievement for Venigni at the end of the first play through.
Taylor: Hmm.
Joseph: Oh.
Willie: So I like also had to do the whole thing again, just to like, get that dialogue option again, just so I could, and then I didn't attack him and went away to go talk to Venigni to tell him what I found out and then went back and attacked him because the achievement didn't trigger the first time.
Taylor: Hmm.
Joseph: And it worked that second time after talking to Venigni and then going back?
Willie: Uh-huh. Yeah.
Joseph: Got it.
Taylor: Weird.
Joseph: That's the part that's like so fucked up.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: This puppet has an ego and is literally fucking murdering people just to see what happens.
Willie: Mm-hmm. In Venigni's case...
Joseph: Or murders Venigni's parents, his parents, but lets him live just so he can see how it affects Venigni.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: That's so fucking sick.
Taylor: That's scary shit about robots [Taylor and Willie laugh] and AI and everything is...
Joseph: Like, that's human shit, dude.
Taylor: Yeah, it's always great if it's helping you or whatever.
Willie: All it's doing, it's trying to learn, man.
Taylor: Yeah. [Joseph laughs]
Willie: It just needs to know.
Taylor: Well, that's the terror to me, ever since I saw the Animatrix back in the days, I think that was a terror to me, was like, curious robots, right? Let's just science the shit out of these humans and [chuckles] see what we can learn in is the most grotesque and awful ways, because they don't care. Like they're the ultimate, humans can do that sometimes they can put that aside, but robots doing it to me is just terrifying because there's zero chill.
Zero, like, oh man, I shouldn't do this. Um, the moral aspect. So yeah, that's really well done. I mean, everything in this, in this game fits together like some beautiful puzzle pieces. It's really cool.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: Taylor, so you did see the ending, you did see the Rise of P ending, right?
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: Like you just didn't.
Taylor: Yeah. I watched it.
Joseph: Okay, so that's what you watched. All right.
Taylor: Yeah, we're, uh, Geppetto jumps on the way.
Joseph: Mm hmm.
Taylor: You weren't going to destroy Carlo's heart.
Joseph: It's the tear in that scene-
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: -that is kind of like everything about that ending.
Taylor: Yeah, it's fucking awesome.
Willie: Yeah, Geppetto seeing the puppet cry is what makes him be like, oh shit, I made a mistake. He actually says, I'm sorry in that because he like realizes.
Joseph: I'm sorry, son? I think.
Willie: Yeah, he says, I'm sorry, son. He's like, he realizes that his son is back already. He doesn't need to take his heart to do something else. Like he already grew back into his son.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: He has all the memories. He is a human now.
Taylor: He could have saved me 20 fucking tries [Joseph and Willie laugh] on that Nameless Puppet by just realizing that right before.
Joseph: Yeah, [Joseph and Willie laughing] yeah.
00:54:30
Willie: Yeah. I do think it's interesting, like the, shit I had a note somewhere, that's just about the fact that... So let's talk about that, like Geppetto's whole reason for all of this and like how he gets to this point.
Joseph: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Willie: I don't know if this is your understanding, I don't know if y'all want to try first before I like, go on my shit about how I think this happened or where it came from.
Joseph: Why it all happened?
Willie: Yeah, like you asked earlier, like why... And you, you asked me if like, Oh, why did Geppetto cause the puppet frenzy? Like, is that one of your questions? And like, I don't think that's a question for me, but is that a question for you?
Joseph: It was during the game, up until a certain point of the game. I'm like, I guess maybe after the, the King of... The King of Puppets boss fight where you hear the recording and you learn about law zero. Okay. Geppetto has the ability to essentially override any masters and command all the puppets.
Taylor: Mm-hmm.
Joseph: So then it was an immediate question of why, like, why would Geppetto do this? And I think that's the question that the game presents, right?
Willie: Mm-hmm.
Joseph: Like Venigni is kind of confused about it. He's like, he doesn't understand why.
Willie: Yeah. And I think it's, up for interpretation. Do you, what's your interpretation?
Joseph: My interpretation is, if I talk about Geppetto's motivation, like he's willing to do anything at all to get Carlo back.
Willie: Mm-hmm.
Joseph: But he needs the puppet, the puppet we play as, to carry the heart, collect Ergo, and basically be a host for this heart so that by the end of the game, Geppetto can get the heart, put it in the original puppet, and bring Carlo back to life. So with that motivation in mind, I guess my kind of quick reaction as to why the Puppet Frenzy exists is like some kind of combination between giving the puppet more of an opportunity to collect ergo because the, the, like the heart needs to level up, needs to get more powerful-
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: Hmm.
Joseph: -consume more ergo so that when the time comes, the heart is prepared and it's ready, to basically be put back into Carlo.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: Wow.
Joseph: So I think that's most of the motivation. And then the other bit of it is, somehow tied into like what the Alchemist are doing-
Willie: Uh-huh.
Joseph: -and trying to potentially create the puppet frenzy so that it keeps them at bay or keeps them distracted because he has his own agenda going.
Taylor: Which is evolution, right?
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: Like he's trying to evolve.
Willie: Yeah, Simon is trying to evolve people, yeah. I think, yeah, there's a lot of stuff in there that's right on. I think it's even deeper than that, though, too.
Taylor: Shiiiiit.
Willie: Because, so one, to go back to the Nameless Puppet for a second, if you read the description of his ergo when you get it, it's like the Nameless Puppet was the first puppet made by the old man that was mounted with a P-Organ.
Taylor: Pfft. That wording.
Willie: It's ergo efficiency was not just unremarkable. It was destructive.
Joseph: Yeah. Yeah.
Willie: Thus, the Nameless Puppet was not chosen for the boy's body and sealed away.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: For some reason it just wasn't efficient and it was destroying ergo instead of actually using it.
Taylor: Hmm.
Joseph: Right.
Willie: So he had to make another heart.
Joseph: It's like Data and Lore, dude. It's like Data and Lore from, [Willie chuckles] from Next Generation.
Willie: So there's that aspect of it, that I think you're right, that he needed a puppet to go collect this ergo and that's why he needed to start the Puppet Frenzy. And it is in connection with the Alchemist. And I think it's because he's pissed at the Alchemist though, too, because the, it's for sure...
I'm pretty sure this is, it becomes obvious after you see the stuff, but in the game, there's, there's a statue just outside of, is it the opera house? Yeah. The Estella opera house. There's a statue there that is a dedication to a woman named Camille, which is signed GG. It's like, in memory of this woman. I can find it, actually, if you want me to, but you learn that, obviously, GG is Giuseppe Geppetto, and he has this dedication to Camille, who I assume was his wife, but you learn later that Camille was also an engineer, like a technician-
Taylor: Hmm.
Willie: -who made the Saintess of Mercy statue, which was... made puppets come to life. It gave them new life by, it could, like, put new ergo into their heart, to their P-Organ, right? And you can use the Saintess of Mercy statue to...
Joseph: Reset stuff. I love that it's-
Willie: Also-
Joseph: -exactly the scene at the end of that ending.
Willie: Right. Yeah.
Joseph: When, when it's Sophia and he's, Geppetto's puppet is collapsed in her arms as a puppet. And it's like exactly what the Saintess statue is.
Willie: Yeah. But so the other thing though, about that is, is that Camille at some point died. Obviously that's why there's a statue to her. But Camille, you find a note is also the first, probably the first puppet with an ego-
Joseph: Right. Right, right.
Willie: -that was found by the order. Before that ergo was just seen as like, it says-
Joseph: Like an energy source
Willie: -ergo was just seen as a travel expense for a holy journey of the order.
Taylor: Oh, like gas, wow.
Willie: It was God's gift, but they didn't know that was truth itself. Right? That's like part of that.
Taylor: Huh.
Willie: But, and it was God's miracle that Camille was made into a maid puppet. Despite being in the early phase when the design was rudimentary, Camille caught and saved a baby who fell from a crib, and that was not in her programming.
Joseph: Right, right.
Taylor: Wow.
Willie: So they decided to take her apart. Pull her apart and figure out what was going on.
Taylor: Pfft.
Willie: Like she said... that they found out that she said like in her message that she'd sent to them. It says like, "send me back to my child," talking about Carlo.
Joseph: Oh.
Willie: But by taking her apart, they like realized what Ergo could do, like it's full capacity for what it could do and that it was going to be this eternal life. And so then they started running all these experiments and creating the petrification disease to like make more Ergo.
Taylor: Wow.
Willie: And Geppetto was like pissed that they, they did all this to his wife, right? Like they all found that out at the same time and realized his wife was living in this person. And so he's pissed about that as well.
Which is another reason that he hates the Alchemists and wants to create the puppet frenzy and how-
Taylor: Hmm.
Willie: - It's also how he realizes, like, "I could bring Carlo back," if I had the right ergo, right?
Taylor: Wow.
Willie: Like if I had enough of it.
Taylor: So he had like a double obsession.
Joseph: It is interesting to think about when he kind of comes up with that plan-
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: -you know, like in that whole, the whole sequence of events, like at what point does he realize. This is this is what it, how it could happen.
Willie: And I don't think it would be until they break her apart and see that she has this message inside her-
Joseph: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Willie: -and they realized that like her memories were still inside this...puppet.
01:00:38
Joseph: Yeah, and this all, this all comes back to just what Ergo is in the first place. And when you put that, if you think about what Ergo is in the first place and you put it in a puppet, then it makes a whole lot of sense that that can grow into an ego and then puppets can think and feel for themselves because of what Ergo is in the first place.
Willie: And there's still some confusion around it to me because it's like the original story is that they found it under Krat.
Joseph: Yeah, it's like in the Relic of Trismegistus.
Taylor: Yeah. What the fuck is that, by the way? [Joseph and Taylor laugh]
Willie: That's also a person's name, who's an Alchemist.
Taylor: Oh.
Willie: Trismegistus is Hermes Trismegistus, I think is the, the Alchemist.
Taylor: Okay.
Willie: There's also, we won't, I, we don't need to go into this and I, I couldn't even if I tried [chuckles] , but there's also a lot of ties with Gnosticism too.
Joseph: Hmm.
Willie: The name Monad is like something from Gnosticism.
Joseph: Hmm.
Taylor: Hmm.
Willie: It is God. It is the highest order of what they think divinity is that exists out in the world. It's super interesting to like, look into that because I did see a video on that by someone named Max, I want to say Detter, [The name is actually Max Derrat] but I think that's wrong-
Taylor: Hmm.
Willie: -but it's like talking about the connection to Gnosticism, of like using Monad and Monad's Lamp and having a conscience in that to like guide you because that's what people should try to do.
They should try to understand divinity through their own consciousness and knowing. And have this wisdom as a guide, which also, I'm already, I'm trying to do it and not do it at the same time [Joseph laughs] because it's like so complicated. But like Sophia is a name associated with Gnosticism-
Joseph: Hmm
Willie: -and is wisdom and like is a guide for you knowing stuff about the divinity. And it's like super complicated, and it's like all of that shit is baked into the story if you want it.
Joseph: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
Willie: But like having the connections to Trismegistus and Monad and Oh, even Valentinus-
Joseph: Mm-Hmm.
Willie: -is a name in Gnosticism. He's the person who introduced the term Monad into Gnosticism.
Joseph: Interesting.
Willie: So like Valentinus Monad and Sophia Monad being-
Joseph: Mm-Hmm, Mm-Hmm.
Willie: -like father and daughter is important.
Joseph: Like, are they just tapping into that stuff for inspiration for names and like, how, how deep are they intertwining those, those concepts?
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: Versus just kind of having a rhyme and reason to, like, pull in names that are related to each other and kind of make subtle connections.
Willie: Right, and back to that thing about Ergo being found in Trismegistus, it's like, was it really found there? Because there's also a report about something called Kroud. Like, there's a Kroud Report that talks about there's something that's devouring the Ergo that's down there. It's, like, hiding it in some way. And it's like, I need to read that again because I don't understand how that plays with the Ergo.
And, like... We also learned that Ergo is created from the petrification disease. The petrification disease causes humans to turn to stone.
Joseph: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
Willie: And once they turn to stone, the stone that's in them is their essence. It's like the essence is their Ergo. Is Ergo the, the stone that was under Krat, that brought people there?
Or is it, only made by the petrification disease? Or was it naturally occurring because a star did fall from the sky and landed in Krat?
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: But they also figured out how to like manufacture it basically by giving people petrification disease.
Taylor: Hmm.
Joseph: I feel like you find ergo and then what Simon does, spreads ergo and people then get sick from the ergo.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: And then the ergo then becomes, it's almost like it becomes more human because people were sick with it.
Willie: Mm-hmm..
Joseph: And then what is left behind is that essence. And then that essence gets put in the puppets and then they become egos.
Willie: Mm-hmm. Again, the whole thing is complicated and I feel like-
Joseph: It is pretty fucking convoluted.
Willie: I feel, yeah. And I feel like people quite haven't put it together in a way that I'm satisfied with. So I'm still like toying with all of the ideas to figure out which one, I think there are multiple theories that could fit and I'm trying to, I don't think we know enough to know yet.
Joseph: Yeah. I think that is definitely the case.
Willie: That's what makes me excited about getting more DLC too.
Joseph: Cause they're like, we can't know the full story yet. Like no one can.
Willie: Right.
Joseph: And makes it exciting.
Willie: Yeah.
01:04:43
Joseph: This is kind of switching gears, but Mad Donkey, Mad Donkey and his dialogue in the fight, I don't know if you reread that or just kind of like paid attention to it.
Willie: I haven't lately.
Joseph: It's the only character in the game that makes it, that seems to have an understanding that time is repeating itself.
Taylor: Hmm.
Joseph: And you can find it in the weapon description that he carries the bone saw. I think it's the bone saw handle.
Willie: Mm.
Joseph: If you look there, he's like, I don't, he's basically saying, I don't know, I don't realize when I woke up. Like I've seen this before, I keep seeing the same thing.
Taylor: Hmm.
Joseph: And if you go back and listen to the dialogue when he's outside of the carriage with Geppetto, he's like, Hey, and then he turns to the puppet as you walk up and he's like, I know what you are. You're the devil's puppet.
Taylor: Huh.
Joseph: And then throughout the fight, he makes references to, to timelines, to like the time being shifty. And to understanding that things are repeating themselves-
Taylor: Hmm.
Joseph: -which opens this huge fucking can of worms about who the Specter is and whether that's like Geppetto's puppet from the future that you're calling in to aid you in fights because the moves are so similar and he has long hair and like there's a lot of similarities between the Specter and like also who is the Specter.
Taylor: He looks a lot like the guy who was driving the, The King of Puppets, right?
Joseph: Oh, Romeo.
Willie: Yeah. He does look like Romeo.
Taylor: Yeah, Romeo.
Joseph: Yeah. So the timelines are obviously repeating themselves because of the stopwatch that Sophia gives Geppetto's puppet. And that's what's being used to basically rewind time so that we can make these runs over and over again because we keep getting our asses kicked.
But it's an explanation for how time gets reset before-
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: -the puppet dies every time. And the Mad Donkey seems to realize that there's that time shiftiness happening, but he's the only NPC in the game-
Taylor: Hmm.
Joseph: -that I know of that says anything related to, like, breaking down that wall.
Taylor: Weird.
Willie: That is one of the coolest revelations at the end of the game, is Sophia telling you that she's manipulated, like learned how to manipulate time, that she realized she could do that. And that that's how you've been respawning every time. And it makes all those, like, death screens make sense.
Joseph: Yeah, the clock rewinding?
Willie: Yeah, the clock just rewinding every time.
Taylor: Mmm, wow.
Joseph: I loved it, dude. I love that they just, they just took the time to give it an explanation, right?
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: To provide an explanation for that very video game thing of dying over and over again.
Taylor: That's a great way to tackle it.
Willie: Yeah, that was great. What is that blade called? I need to look that up
Joseph: I, I think it's the bone saw. The bone saw handle.
Willie: Okay. Yeah.
Taylor: That was the one weapon that I used, um, on a couple different occasions because if you attach, attach that to the, to the rocket handle, that thing was insane because whereas the wrench had that heft to it, that would really break down an enemy's defense.
The blade also had a good amount of heft to it, but it also added like a two feet onto it, to the end of it. So even if an enemy is, you ram them with the, with the blast and then you go to swing, even if they're trying to get away from it or around you or whatever, you're still going to hit them. And it did mad damage.
Willie: I am looking at that text now, and that is super interesting. Like, "I don't know when I awoke. The sights I have seen overlap. They repeat. Was that a puppet... a dream?" And it says notes from a stalker's last counseling session before going mad.
Taylor: Hmm.
Joseph: And then go back and find, after we're done, go back and find the dialogue from the fight itself?
Willie: Yeah, yeah, I see it actually now too.
Joseph: Oh, okay.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: What does that say? Because I don't really remember.
Willie: It says, upon defeat, it says, "This time it's destroyed for sure." "Devil Puppet no more, eh?" And then upon return, "Cursed Puppet back again." And then "are you a dream or a nightmare? Stop showing up already."
[Taylor laughs]
Joseph: Yeah, dude, that is-
Taylor: Wow.
Joseph: -that is wicked, man.
Taylor: That's really cool.
Joseph: And there's nothing else in the boss fights. No one else has anything that alludes to the idea that you understand that timeline is being repeated in some kind of way.
Willie: Yeah, that is super interesting. I didn't notice that at all.
Joseph: Which also means that Mad Donkey realizes that he's fought this fight over and over and over again.
Willie: Yeah, that's super interesting. What does that mean? That's a new thread to pull on for sure.
Joseph: Why? Why? Why the mad donkey?
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: I figured Mad Hatter. Like, I just immediately figured just because his hat that he's wearing or no, he's not wearing a hat. Nope.
Joseph: Naw, he's got the donkey mask on.
Taylor: Yeah. That, that was the first thing I thought was Mad Hatter, especially because of the crude kind of look to his donkey mask. It reminded me of something out of Alice in Wonderland.
Joseph: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Taylor: Like there was just a crudeness to those characters sometimes.
01:09:02
Willie: Yeah. I don't think we have an answer to this, I wonder who the legendary stalker is that gets referenced.
Joseph: Mm. That Carlo and Romeo are trying to get trained by or somebody different?
Willie: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Same person, but they-
Taylor: Hmm.
Willie: -the legendary stalker wasn't a Bastard or a Sweeper.
Joseph: And it's a woman, dude.
Willie: They were before. Some woman who was a legendary stalker.
Taylor: Oh, that's gotta be Dorothy. It's gotta be Dorothy.
Joseph: Oh.
Willie: It would be interesting.
Joseph: Dorothy would have to be old.
Willie: Some people thought it was Antonia.
Joseph: Hmm, that's sick.
Taylor: Oh.
Willie: That it's actually Lady Antonia. But I don't know if it is, but Lady Antonia definitely knows Carlo from somewhere-
Taylor: Hmm.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: -prior to all of this.
Joseph: I think she just knew him from his real life, you know, like when he was, before he died.
Willie: Yeah, but Carlo spent a lot of time at-
Joseph: The Charity House
Willie: -Monad Charity House, because he was basically orphaned by Geppetto.
Joseph: Right.
Willie: Like once Camille was dead, once his wife was dead, he just left him there to work on whatever stuff he was working on.
Joseph: Mm hmm.
Taylor: Hmm.
Willie: Was it because Lady Antonia was always already there like all the time as a stalker? Like that would be weird. It wouldn't be weird, but it's like that would be cool I guess but I I don't know if that answer seems almost too easy in a way.
Taylor: I think it's Dorothy. I think it's Dorothy like if you look at the context of we saw at the very end. We saw Dorothy's shoes. We saw that she's gonna be a thing combined with that what you guys were just talking about. Because If you think about it, Carlo, he's not dead, right? He's a human now and was collapsed, right? Not dying.
Joseph: Well, it's not Carlo though. You do have to think about them being-
Taylor: Oh, well, puppet. Yeah, I guess.
Joseph: Yeah, separate.
Taylor: So my thought is you can't show Dorothy at the end like that and give that kind of, Hey, this is what's next. And then do a DLC, that's not that at all. Unless, it could be an in between DLC that's like we were saying, can be challenges or things like that, but I just don't see how you would end the game, show Dorothy, show that she's going to be a thing, and then come out with some DLC in between, you know what I mean?
Like before whatever that is happens, because now you've gotten people crunked up about Dorothy.
[Joseph chuckles] How would you continue? It seems like Puppet's story is over. I think that the DLC will be Dorothy. And she's just going to be a sick ass stalker and it's going to be a different, maybe a different play line or something. That's my prediction.
Joseph: I don't know if it connects Dorothy to what Willie's questioning and whether or not that's the stalker woman that we're kind of searching for.
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: But clearly it's going to be a part of whatever DLC or next game.
Willie: I basically only wonder if that legendary stalker is important to-
Joseph: Dude.
Willie: -the rest of the story, because she might not be, right? Like, we might not ever hear from her again.
Taylor: True.
Joseph: Yeah, we might not need to.
Willie: Right. I'm just curious if there is an answer to that somewhere in the future.
Taylor: Hmm.
Joseph: It could be the person that Paracelsus is on the phone with, who sounds like a woman.
Taylor: True. Could be the boss of whatever is next.
Willie: Well, so I, you know, I thought that too, I guess. When I was looking up the voice actors, I was looking at the credits cause I was wondering if they like credited anybody with that and they did credit someone at the end as the stalker master.
Joseph: Hmm.
Willie: And I don't know if that's the same voice cause there's not a legendary stalker in the credits.
Joseph: Yeah.
Willie: There is someone credited as the stalker master, though, and it's not the same person who's on the phone as far as if that's the Eternals or Eternals.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: It's not the same voice there.
Taylor: Hmm.
Willie: So I don't know. And it would have been way too easy to be like, Oh, look, Antonia is this actress and so is the master stalker. The legendary stalker is clearly shown in those flashbacks, right? Going to Romeo and Carlo, and, or Carlo asking to be taught.
Joseph: I think in one of the-
Willie: And she's like annoyed.
Joseph: -in one of the memories.
Willie: Right.
Taylor: Hmm.
Joseph: Yeah, and she tells Gemini to get rid of 'em.
Willie: Yeah, she's in two of them, and she, he has to be... He asked to be taught. She says no. She's annoyed by it and says Gemini take him away. Oh, that's the thing. She also says take them away, but I don't know if she's referring to Carlo and Romeo. Or Carlo goes, like actually uses they/them pronouns.
Taylor: Hmm.
Joseph: I would have thought Romeo and Carlo.
Willie: I say that because of only one other thing. There's, and maybe this doesn't matter at all, but you find a gravestone-
Joseph: Mm.
Willie: -that says that this child was a something to their family.
Joseph: Yeah, like on the Path of Misery, like in that area.
Willie: Uh-huh.
Joseph: Yeah.
Taylor: Hmm.
Joseph: That's also right by that stargazer, isn't it?
Willie: Yeah, it's right by the stargazer. It's where you pick up the bunny mark, which, by the way. The Legendary Stalker looks like they're wearing some sort of, like, bunny mask.
Joseph: Mm.
Taylor: Mm-hmm.
Willie: Like, they have at least one ear, like, poking up off their head in those...
Joseph: Right, right, right.
Willie: -those flashbacks. So it seems like that person left the bunny mark on that gravestone. And that gravestone says they were... I don't remember how they phrased it. I had to look it up. Um, I do have it written down somewhere, but it's like it uses the word their to describe them. It says their families or their family,
Joseph: Mm. Okay.
Willie: And it could be referring to Carlo as a singular person using they again or them again, or like, you know, their for their pronoun.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: And it's like, is that was that intentional to say those are the same 2 people that were being referred to? Obviously, like, the stalker leaves the bunny mark on the thing, so it seems like it's a stalker who left it at that gravestone.
Taylor: Hmm.
Willie: But I don't know. I like, I don't know if that's the same person that does both of those things.
Taylor: I see some people speculating it might be the Fox.
Willie: Yeah, a lot of people have said that.
Taylor: That seems too, that seems too easy. For sure.
Joseph: Oh, like the Red Fox could have been the person-
Taylor: Legendary stalker.
Joseph: -that they were wanting to be trained by?
Taylor: Yeah, but I don't know. I don't see it in her dialogue.
01:14:33
Joseph: What's most interesting about that memory that you were talking about, Willie, is the mention of Gemini, period.
Willie: Mm hmm.
Joseph: Because like, I mean, what, you're not talking to the cricket puppet. Like, Gemini has to be somebody before he was a cricket. You know, like he was probably a person. Probably a stalker.
Willie: That's the interesting thing about the very beginning of the game, too. Because, the first thing that Sophia says to you is like, Oh, it looks like they got Gemini too.
Joseph: Yeah, what does that mean? And then there's like [Willie chuckles] blood all over the fuckin floor.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: Hmm.
Joseph: Where you find the lamp, right?
Willie: Yeah. Mm hmm.
Joseph: But that exactly, yeah, like, oh, it looks like they got Gemini too. Like, what? What?
Willie: The thing on the grave says, "A child who was a blessing to their family lies here. May he rest in peace." And the reason I think it's the same person is because-
Joseph: So they used their and he?
Willie: Uh, yes. Yeah. They say may he rest in peace. But uses both of those pronouns. And then the reason I think it could be the same person is because at the end, there's two flashbacks, the last flashback...
There's three flashbacks total but the last one with the stalker, the legendary stalker who he asked, she's like upset that she didn't make it back in time. She's like, Oh, I was too late. And it says, I'm sorry, because there's a dead body on the ground, which I assume is Carlo-
Joseph: Yeah, I think so.
Willie: -and she's upset that she wasn't there to like, help them.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: Hmm.
Willie: So I think, yeah, that's her mourning, Carlo is going to that gravestone and putting the bunny mark down.
Joseph: Hmm.
Taylor: Wow.
Willie: But, again, it's too complicated, way too much shit to talk about.
Joseph: We just don't have all the answers.
Willie: No, we don't.
Joseph: We don't have all the puzzle pieces to even... Put the puzzle together.
Willie: Right. And I'm going to have to figure out some other outlet to, uh, put those puzzle pieces together just to like, theorize about it on my own. 'Cause it's like, I feel like there's other stuff.
Taylor: You're going to have the Charlie, uh, mad [Joseph and Willie laugh] man board up with all the red string on it.
Willie: Red string going from everything. Yeah, for sure.
Taylor: Oh yeah. You could do that with this.
Willie: Dude, if you only knew what I've already done, [Taylor chuckles] I have, I don't know how many, how many documents do I have in this folder? 10 plus documents separated by person.
Joseph: Really?
Taylor: Damn.
Willie: Notes about everything.
Joseph: Damn.
Willie: I have like notes for all the collectibles. I wrote them all down into a, I copied them from other sources obviously, but I like verified that that's what they say in game and like have a word document or a Google sheet or Google doc. That's literally just every collectibles text in it. I also started cataloging all of the loading screens.
Joseph: Mm.
Taylor: Oh, yeah.
Joseph: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Willie: Everything that's lore based. I mean, I'm doing all of them, but I'm separating them out by like, what's lore based, what's like in game tutorial stuff-
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: Yeah.
Willie: -and like, just going through all of that to see, cause there's stuff there about, you know, the hotel, it being like, it was a castle once and it was then uh, a mental institution. And then it got bought by Lady Antonia.
Joseph: And then turned into basically a tourist attraction.
Willie: Yeah. And the stargazer there was made, it was just an experiment to see like-
Joseph: How big it could be.
Willie: How big you could make a stargazer.
Taylor: Wow.
Joseph: Right. Right. Yeah. There is some lore in there.
Willie: So I'm like cataloging all of that stuff.
Taylor: That's wild.
Willie: I like this game a lot. Like, I like what it's done. The gameplay itself is great.
01:17:40
Taylor: Yeah. Whoever is writing it, if it's a team or a person, phenomenal.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: Let them keep doing it because [Taylor and Willie chuckle] they really killed it-
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: -as far as, so many mysteries seem like everything was a mystery and it really did like, I feel like that is a, that's one of the things that has kept Dark Souls, those games so interesting, is that, all the mystery. And, and it's like these, these people took that and just ramped it up and then added a really cool fable to it. I want them to do this with all kinds of things. Just like we talked about before-
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: -I, I would play anything that they, that they make that is in this same vein, for sure.
Willie: Yeah, and I think that's, that's the key there, right? I was already like, seeing the Dorian Gray reference and then the Sherlock Holmes reference, I was like already primed to be like, man, this could be cool. And we had already talked about possibility of Alice in Wonderland. And then you get to the end of this game and I just wasn't expecting Dorothy to show up.
Joseph: Not at all.
Willie: And it's like, Oh shit, they might do it. They might actually do the thing that everybody was just like speculating and hoping for. How many other games like this could they do and like-
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: -or how many tie ins to this universe could there be? What is this story with the Eternals and how many of those people exist that are immortal?
Joseph: Yeah.
Willie: What's going on with that? There's more to explore and I'm like excited about that.
Taylor: Yep.
Joseph: I love the potential it has, you know, because even after finishing the game, like it's still super mysterious, right?
Taylor: Mm-hmm.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: And obviously intentional, you know, they're intentionally not giving us all the pieces. They gave us a really good secret kind of cut scene at the end of the game that obviously just introduces more questions than any answers whatsoever.
Taylor: Mm-hmm.
Joseph: And I feel like whatever they have planned, I'm excited about because of the way this game went in general, even with all the missing pieces and questions we have. That's where I think it has a ton of potential, but most of all, I think this game delivers on both the combat mechanics and the story to kind of back up the world.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: And those two things are like in that sweet spot that just makes it a really good game.
Taylor: Agreed, man. Everything fires on all cylinders, all the time and it. For the first time in a long time, this game would leave me just shaking, you know, where you're just so mad, but then you come back and pick it up an hour later or three hours later and you go at it again and just keep trying.
I mean, I'm, I'm, especially after the baby was born, I'm so quick to fall off of stuff if it's not working for me because I, I don't have time to sit there and fight and bang my head up against something, you know, I need to be able to move through it. And I thought they did a great job of meeting that balance-
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: -of, okay, it's not impossible that, you know, there were some points in Dark Souls games and other games like that, that I've definitely been like, this is, I'm not going to do this.
And I uninstall it just so I don't even go back to it.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: But this one just kept me coming back. I had to.
01:20:36
Joseph: What was the hours, Willie, hour... both of you, I think mine's-
Taylor: Oh, I forgot to look.
Willie: Yeah, that's what I was gonna say. I feel like we wrapped up sort of our final thoughts. I feel like glowing recommendation from all of us.
Joseph: For sure.
Taylor: Mm-hmm.
Willie: I'm gonna be replaying it some more, so I was gonna share my hours and I'm at 120 right now.
Joseph: 120?
Willie: Yeah, 120. It's more, it's like 120 and 26 minutes or something.
Joseph: Got it.
Willie: At level 179. And the thing is I'm not done. Like I know I'm gonna do another playthrough.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: And I feel like that'll be another 20, 25 hours. Probably.
Taylor: I might, after, [laughs] after all we talked about it, [Joseph and Willie laugh] I might, I might, but I think if I do-
Joseph: Gotta get that Name, that Nameless Puppet though.
Taylor: Yeah, I don't know if I'm going to do the plus plus, I'll try. I'll try to take him. Like if I learn his patterns, I think I can do it, but if it gets too bad, then maybe I'll just start over from scratch and see what happens.
Willie: If you take the Aegis and you level that, go back to your P-Organ and reset that shit-
Taylor: Mm-hmm.
Willie: -to give you every buff that you can for the Legion.
Taylor: Hmm.
Willie: That'll help.
Taylor: Okay. What Legion did you use against him? The Falcon Eyes?
Willie: No, I used that Aegis against him.
Joseph: Flamberg, bro.
Taylor: Oh, Aegis. Okay. No, I have it fully upgraded, but...
Willie: No, but I mean, not just the upgrades there. I mean, like, the P-Organ. Make it so that you have more, so that your Legion automatically regens, make sure that, like... Your, uh, legion effect is increased or that, like, if you have more than half health-
Taylor: Huh.
Joseph: It does more damage.
Willie: -It does more damage. Or it not...
Taylor: Oh.
Willie: Does more damage, but also takes less of your legion away.
Taylor: Oh.
Willie: Find all those sort of perks that would actually have an effect.
Taylor: Okay.
Willie: Since it's not one that does attack damage, some of them don't count towards it. But, um-
Joseph: Yeah, it's a great idea though.
Willie: It's worth looking at those.
Taylor: Hmm. Yeah, yeah.
Joseph: Especially to try something different.
Taylor: Absolutely, because that explosion is clutch too-
Willie: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: -especially in that fight where, you know, if you can run from him enough and then let it refill and then do it, not only are you blocking and getting all that stuff, but you get that good explosion at the beginning that fucks 'em up.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: Yeah, I'll try that out.
Willie: The other thing is, if you didn't already, like, make the special grindstone do two uses.
Taylor: Yep. Yeah, I got that.
Willie: And then use that perfection grindstone so that every-
Taylor: Huh.
Willie: -so every block becomes a perfect block.
Taylor: Oh, what? Is that the gold one?
Willie: Uh, I think it's like a purplish reddish one.
Taylor: Oh, I'll have to check that out.
Willie: It's called Perfection, I think. It's called Perfection.
Joseph: It literally makes everything a perfect guard?
Willie: Yeah-
Taylor: Woah.
Willie: -for like 20 seconds or whatever.
Taylor: Oh my God, that's amazing.
Willie: So put that on the Aegis, like use that and turn on the Aegis and then everything's a perfect block.
Taylor: Wow.
Willie: And you could also be poking him to get your health back while you're perfect blocking everything. And you'll like stagger him like much faster.
Joseph: Damn.
Taylor: That's great. Yeah, that I had no idea.
Willie: But try to save it for the second phase, right?
Taylor: Okay.
Willie: Like, do what you've been doing to get through the first phase-
Taylor: Yeah, I can beat him on the first.
Willie: -and then do the second phase like that.
Taylor: And for the cube, are you using the, uh, the legion cube to like refill?
Willie: Yeah, exactly.
Taylor: Yeah.
Willie: Get yourself two or three uses with the cube through your P Quartz, through your [indiscernible]. Yeah, through the quartz thing so you have more uses of the cube and use the legion thing for the cube.
Joseph: Does that do a lot?
Willie: It adds like another like pretty big substantial chunk of legion.
Taylor: Shit, okay. That's gonna help a lot.
Joseph: Maybe I'll pull that out in the second playthrough. I didn't even use, I didn't use the wish stones at all.
Taylor: It's amazing.
Joseph: And I used Flamberge dude in that fight.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: Oh, I do like the Flameberge. I was gonna say like, whenever it added in that second part, whenever you get the blue flame and you can-
Joseph: Yeah, yeah. You hit...
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: -you can blast them with it. Oof. Some of those bosses hated that.
Joseph: Yeah. [chuckles]
Taylor: Bad. They, uh, man.
Joseph: The key is to get them on fire with Flameberge-
Taylor: Yeah.
Willie: Right.
Joseph: To like, where that you actually see them burning.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: But it's hard to sprinkle in.
Willie: [chuckles] Yeah, yeah.
Joseph: It's hard to sprinkle in because you move slow and they've, they always dash through it. And you also can't see their attacks coming through the fire flames.
Taylor: Yup.
Joseph: But yeah, somehow I managed it in that fight.
Willie: Yeah. That was a tough one. It was tough for me. You can see all of it on the Berries and Blades stream, like it took some time.
Joseph: Yeah, I'll have to go back and watch some of that. I was, I was, intentionally not watching.
Willie: It was bad. It was bad. [Taylor laughing] It was real bad. [chuckling] It was real bad.
Joseph: I remember it was long.
Willie: For sure. It was real bad until I did switch up my game plan and started using that. And it was just like, I just wanted to do something different, so-
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: And it turns out after I did all of that, turns out that's what a lot of other people did too.
Joseph: Oh shit.
Willie: Literally the same thing, was use the Aegis and like, redo all of their Quartz like I did. And it's like, Oh shit, I guess that seems to be the method.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: Uh, it's so ridiculous.
Joseph: I would love to stream it, like going through a second time, just because I didn't stream nearly as much as I wanted to in my playthrough. Well then obviously had, you know, other things come up, but that would be fun.
Willie: It sounds like there's some replayability that we're going to all be enjoying for a little bit longer.
Joseph: Yeah.
01:25:26
Willie: I can't say enough about this game, but, uh, we probably should call this one.
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: It is a game of the year contender for me, for sure.
Joseph: Yeah, same.
Taylor: So far it is my game of the year. I mean, I... we've got other stuff to play, but-
Willie: The only reason I can't say that definitively is because I still have watched people play Baldur's Gate, and I still want to play Baldur's Gate 3. And that game has so much open world and choice in it that it's like-
Taylor: Hmm.
Willie: -that's going to be tough to beat for me.
Taylor: I will definitely check it out. If it goes on a super sale or they add it to, um, to the pass at some point. I definitely want to get on that.
Joseph: Hell yeah.
Willie: It's so good-
Taylor: it looks cool as shit.
Willie: -from everything I've seen and like-
Taylor: What about Lords of the Fallen?
Willie: About that one, I don't know. I've heard mixed reviews and people were waiting for patches.
Taylor: Okay.
Willie: So I'm waiting for patches to, to figure out if it's worth getting.
Taylor: Cool. Oh, that makes it easy to wait though.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: That makes it easier to wait. But I would, I do, I am interested in, uh, we've also got Warhammer to check out. We've got more Gotham Knights to check out. It's not over yet.
Willie: Yeah. With all that, keep, keep your eyes on the Berries and Blades, both Instagram account, the Twitch account. Some of us may be streaming from there instead of just me, but I need to get back on there and stream some more now. I'm going to play some more fun games for a little bit.
Some more relaxed games, like some Plate Up or something.
Joseph: Super Mario Wonder, man.
Willie: Maybe some Super Mario Wonder could be interesting.
Joseph: Yeah.
Willie: But yeah, uh, we appreciate you listening to all of our rambling about Lies of P and the story there and how great of a game it is.
[Outro theme begins to fade in - Caribbean Arcade by Christian Nanzell]
Joseph: Check it out. If you're, if it's your style of game, it is 100 percent worth playing.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: Keep your P-Organ strong.
Joseph: Keep them strong. Keep it loose.
Taylor: Keep it strong and... loose. Okay. Yep. [Joseph laughs]
Willie: [chuckles] Yeah. [laughs]
Joseph: [laughing] Alright. [Taylor chuckles]
Willie: Later. Thanks.
Joseph: Peace. [Taylor chuckles]
Willie: See you again soon.
Taylor: Peace.
Joseph: Pe Peace.
Taylor: Pe pe pe peace.
[Outro theme continues - Caribbean Arcade by Christian Nanzell]
01:27:12
Joseph: Berries and Blades is an independent podcast created by Joseph Bullard, Willie Garza and Taylor Garratt. Thanks for tuning in, and consider subscribing if you enjoyed listening to this episode. You can also support us by telling your friends about the show, and we hope to see you in the next episode of Berries and Blades. Until then, thanks again.
[Outro theme fades out - Caribbean Arcade by Christian Nanzell]
Taylor: [in a scratchy voice] Geppetto, don't touch me you pedo. [Joseph laughing] Uh, why is his name not G-Peddo?
Joseph: Ge-Pedd-o.
Taylor: His name should absolutely be G-Peddo. [Joseph and Willie laugh] Be what they call him.
Joseph: Oh, gosh, never thought of that.
Taylor: Fucking don't touch me-
Joseph: G-Peddo.
Taylor: -G-Peddo...