To make a podcast about video games, you have to play them. Lol. Join us for a conversation about the future of Berries & Blades and the new types of content we want to explore.
To make a podcast about video games, you have to play them. Lol. Join us for a conversation about the future of Berries & Blades and the new types of content we want to explore.
In this episode, we announce a change to our release schedule. For 18 months, we've published a new episode every two weeks without skipping a beat. However, in that process, we also missed out on a lot of time for gaming, so we're looking for ways to balance the time spent podcasting vs. the time we spend gaming. Another big reason for a change is to explore new kinds of content creation, and since the beginning of the podcast (actually, since before), we've wanted to create video content. So, in the future, we're hoping to make videos for YouTube, stream games together on Twitch, and hopefully increase the quality of our podcast episodes along the way! Thanks for tuning in, and we hope you stick around to see what happens. Oh, we also talk about a few games in the episode!
Here's the full transcript for this episode.
If you like what you hear, the best way to support us is to tell people about the show. Please consider subscribing wherever you find your favorite podcasts.
You can also keep us going with coffee refills on Ko-Fi.
Follow @BerriesAndBlades on IG for in-game photography, video clips, and behind-the-scenes content. Follow BerriesAndBlades on Twitch for D&D and video game streams.
The music you hear on the podcast is by ELFL, Lexica, and Christian Nanzell.
berriesandblades.simplecast.com
00:00:00
[Alienated by ELFL plays in background]
Willie: Yeah, that game, it was in early access for over 10 years.
Joseph: Damn.
Willie: It just released a month ago, two months ago now.
Taylor: Their cycles were ridiculous. You wouldn't hear anything for six months or something. And be like, we've added blueberries. We now-
Joseph: Gosh.
Taylor: -have blueberry bushes. And [laughs]
Joseph: That's some serious early access. A fucking decade.
Taylor: I can't deal with games that have development cycles like that anymore. There's no way. Hit me up when you're done, I don't want to hear-
Joseph: Yeah.
Willie: -anything else about it.
Joseph: You're just better off forgetting about'em.
Taylor: Exactly. Yeah, we had some good times playing them, but...
Willie: Early Access was December 13th, 2013.
Taylor: Crazy.
Willie: And it just released on July 25th, 2024, like 1. 0. [Joseph laughs]
[Alienated by ELFL fades out]
[Intro theme plays - Tiger Tracks by Lexica]
00:01:06
Joseph: What's up everyone, welcome to Berries and Blades. Thanks for tuning in to 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 guys wondering when they should get Elden Ring tattoos. But, I digress. So what's up y'all?
Taylor: Yo. I'll probably get one if they do another DLC. If they surprise us with another DLC, I'll do one. It'll probably be my flamesword since I've used that-
Joseph: Hmm.
Taylor: -throughout the entirety of from the moment that I've gotten it. So, yeah, I think I would put that on my back going from basically the base of my skull down to my butt crack.
Joseph: [laughs] You have tattoos, [Taylor chuckles] right Taylor?
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: You have tattoos on your arms?
Taylor: Yep.
Joseph: Okay.
Taylor: Yeah, I got some, some places.
Joseph: Yeah, some places.
Taylor: Some places.
Joseph: So I think it's pretty unlikely that there's going to be another DLC.
Taylor: It's unfortunate for them. They could have me sporting a big ass tattoo.
Joseph: It's unfortunate for us.
Taylor: Yeah, that's true.
Willie: I would like an Elden Ring tattoo, but I haven't gotten a tattoo at all in a long time. I would like some new ones, but also there's that issue of it costs money so...
Taylor: It's not a great tattoo economy right now. We're not-
Joseph: It's not a great economy.
Taylor: -we're not living in those. Yeah, we're not living in the 2000 to 2020 or whatever. That was a golden era right there for getting some tats felt like you had plenty of extra income and you could, uh, wear your thoughts on your sleeve, but now that shit's too expensive.
Joseph: Similarly to what Taylor said, I told myself after the base game, if I love the DLC that I would get one and I did love the DLC. So I've been thinking about ideas, haven't really settled on anything. What I really want to do is find an artist that would create an original composition based on the game in their style.
Taylor: What you need to remember is it's going to be there forever, sir. [Joseph and Willie chuckle] It's going to be there forever. You-
Joseph: Yeah.
Taylor: -need to put a lot of thought into that.
Joseph: I don't think I lost sight of that. [Taylor laughs, Joseph chuckles]
Taylor: Seems like somebody's always got to say it.
Joseph: I would totally do it, man.
Willie: I just don't know what I would get. Cause there's so many things I like from it that I don't know what I would get.
Joseph: I know.
Taylor: Yeah.
Willie: I've seen a ton of things like what Taylor's saying, like just people's favorite sword and shit. I feel like I've seen the, like the Black Knife Assassins Blade, whatever that is, is that what it's called?
Joseph: Mm.
Taylor: Yeah, and then there's the, the question of do you get, do you get it to look exactly like it does in the game or do you get an artist to, uh, to basically do a rendition of it?
Joseph: I almost want to give somebody the reins and be like, hey, here's a bunch of source photography, a bunch of source images to use as inspiration. Here's what I like.
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: Do something like this or with these subject matter or characters or weapons, but create something original.
Taylor: Yeah, because some artists, they'll definitely make you glad that you did that just because like their own spin on it is as badass as the game or sometimes more badass than the game, so.
Joseph: The challenge is just finding somebody that is close enough and that is willing to do it and that, you know, it sort of fits in their style, whatever that style may be.
Taylor: And that they're affordable. Sometimes if they're already accomplished artists and they're badass. I mean, there are some that are 500 an hour, a thousand an hour, just depending, they're doing that shit in Japan with a bamboo slat, like a [Joseph chuckles] little piece of bamboo that they're tapping on your skin or something.
The hardest, longest way to get a tattoo-
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: -and probably a thousand USD per hour.
Willie: I saw a, a cool, uh, was it Miriel tattoo? The uh,
Joseph: Oh, yeah, yeah.
Willie: Pope Turtle.
Taylor: Oh, that's cool.
Joseph: Turtle pope
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: What a neat choice.
Joseph: That's cool. Taylor, would you get some jars?
Taylor: Um, maybe what's inside the jars? Maybe I would get-
Joseph: Well, we know what's inside the, the jars it's-
Taylor: Yeah. The weird-
Joseph: -not pretty
Taylor: -meaty thing that lives inside. I'll get that on my ankle. cute little ankle tat.
Willie: Actually, I'm looking at a very cool Iron Fist Alexander.
Joseph: Mmm.
Willie: It's very cool, cause the like, details on it, on the jar itself, are really badass. Just the way they're done.
Taylor: Hmm.
Joseph: Yeah, they got some really cool texture. Ooh, man, those jars. That was one of, definitely one of the most fucked up things in the DLC. It's just, what is happening?
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: Before they spared us and just let you smash them and be, be done. Yeah, that's not a world that I would want to live in IRL.
00:05:18
Joseph: Yeah, there's some dark shit happening in the realm of shadow for sure. More on that in a future episode. But moving on, today's a bit different because we have an announcement. After this episode, we're changing our release schedule. Instead of publishing one episode every two weeks, we're gonna scale back and publish one episode every month.
I know, I know what you're thinking, but what about Taylor's fans? Well, turns out, Taylor doesn't have any fans. So, we good.
Taylor: That is true, yeah, that uh... To all of you that don't exist, [Joseph chuckles] we're sorry.
Joseph: We're doing it for a few reasons, and two of the biggest reasons are to give me more time for just professional design work, and to give me more time to actually play games. It turns out making podcasts is pretty damn time consuming, and I fucked around and found out because I created another podcast called Students of Design, and now I'm trying to find the right balance between everything.
But another big reason is because we want to explore making video content, which is something we've always considered and have talked about since the beginning of Berries and Blades. So we want to use the rest of this episode to toss video content ideas back and forth. Willie, I know you have been coming up with ideas.
You want to open things up with some of the thoughts you have?
00:06:31
Willie: Yeah, I think so. Like Joey has said, we have been tossing around ideas for a long time now. And I think, you know, at the very, very start of things, it would be interesting just to stream more games. I think would be a lot of fun, something I definitely want to do.
And I think obviously that would allow you to play more games if we were just streaming them more often. So I do want to talk a little bit later about what kind of things we'd like to stream. But in terms of actually making video content, that's something that I've wanted to try for a while and thought would be fun to do.
When I first started thinking about this, the time that I actually considered it the most was after we played Lies of P. Playing Lies of P had me on a rabbit hole of diving into the lore and figuring out what was going on with that story and compiling all kinds of information about what was going on in that story.
And after digging into the lores of Lies of P, I was looking at other people's videos on the internet and not finding any of the information that I wanted. There's some people out there who are making some cool content around Lies of P and like what's going on and speculation about what might've happened.
But some of the stuff that I was thinking, like wasn't anywhere on the internet and I was like, what if I made videos? What if I actually like went back and collected a bunch of video from all the things we've been doing, documenting all of the files you find on the ground. And then I just never did it.
I documented so many things in that game and never did anything with it. I spent way too much time on videos that never happened, but it has been something that we thought about together as a group before. And I think I see it going like a few different ways. One, I still would like to do a Lies of P video.
I don't know if maybe we do an Elden Ring video on some of the stuff that we've talked about or things that we'd like to see explored. I think I've considered doing stuff like talking about current events, because it's something that we talk about on here, but we never put it in the podcast or sometimes it comes through in the podcast, but very rarely, but I kind of wonder if maybe we'll do some current event stuff like once a week, where it's just a 10 minute conversation where I catch you guys up on what's going on in the world of video games or other gaming news.
And then I think another thing that would be cool is to sort of revisit some of our old podcasts and talk about the stuff we didn't get to talk about. I don't know about y'all, but in my notes, I have a ton of, especially when I did a bunch of research for like, games that hop genres or game features and that type of stuff.
I feel like I have so much in my notes that I could go back and talk about. If we just went back through our notes and combed through some stuff, like, what could we make a short 5- 10 minute video on that we just have a conversation about and capture some gameplay and share that with people so they can actually see visual representations of what we're talking about when we're talking about, like, this particular feature and where it showed up first, that sort of stuff.
Joseph: Mm-hmm. Just thinking back, like you were talking about all the previous podcast episodes and especially the ones where there was twice as much research done than we actually used in the episode, I think there's a lot that we could have easily recorded 2 hours on instead of a single hour. And that genre hopping episode is a great example because there's so many games to talk about and there's just more to talk about than we can in like an hour and 15 minutes of podcast audio.
But yeah, I agree. I think that's a good place to start exploring is, you know, what can we go back and revisit, pull out the old notes and then elaborate or either expand on what we said in the podcast and then find a way to pair that with video. I think, I don't know. It sounds like a fun challenge to take on.
Willie: I know. Part of this is, is supposed to slow down a little bit so we can like focus on the podcast episodes, but that just comes with the way that we produce those, which is Joey doing a lot of editing pretty much and doing a lot of that work. You know, I think this means we'll split up some of the work of making videos and I don't know that the 2 of you like what to be like the primary focus in a video ever.
Or if any of us need to be on camera for videos, actually. So like we haven't really talked about what those videos would look like, but I think there's room for everyone to be involved in the making of them, like the recording of them. And then I'll do a lot of editing and I know Taylor may want to do some editing, but I think it all comes down to time and how we, how we can do that.
And I don't know how many videos, you know, we'll be making a month if it'll even be that often at first or, or what, until we get into the flow of it. We're not talking about like, oh, we're going to replace an hour long podcast with an hour long video. Like that's not what's happening, [Joseph and Willie chuckle] you know?
Joseph: Right.
Willie: Thinking like 5 to 10 minute videos and sometimes like really short. Like I said, just catching up on news or just revisiting an old idea. And to be more specific about. Or slightly more specific about what Joey was saying, like revisiting our old notes doesn't mean like making a whole nother episode on 20 genres or 20 games that switch genres.
It may be focusing on one game for like 5 minutes just to like talk about something that we find to be really cool.
Joseph: Or the gameplay features-
Willie: Right.
Joseph: -you know, just focusing on one feature and it's, it's history and it's past. And that obviously leads us down a very specific branch of video game history. The current events and news, that's interesting too, because those can also be bite sized.
They could be-
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: -really as long as we wanted them to be. And then I think circling back to your question or thoughts around, are any of us the person that's speaking on camera versus not? I think it could literally be a mix of all of those different things. Sometimes there is, sometimes there isn't.
Sometimes I'm leading, sometimes you're leading. I think it would be really cool to also involve other members of Berries and Blades. The people that aren't here on the podcast every two weeks.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: But finding ways to play games with them and capture their gameplay footage and then edit that into a medium length video and just kind of see where that takes us. I think is where a lot of our exploration is leading us.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: I think we all just have desire to do that. Just to produce a video content that can be, you know, accessed on YouTube or other places and just be there for entertainment. But we have fun doing it. I think that that's a big thing for me is how do I position myself to where I can play more games, but then it also can double as some type of content that we're sharing.
Willie: Yeah, when you are recording a podcast about video games, you do need to play video games. And when we [Joseph laughs] do like a Hip Fire episode, we're like, okay, we're going to play 5 to 10 hours. And that becomes a chore in a sense, but also just like, you got to do that and then take a bunch of notes about what you're doing.
So it's like, it is a lot to try to do. And I think I still want to do stuff like hip fire episodes, but like 10 minutes on-
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: -that, you know, play some games that are on Game Pass or whatever, come back and talk about them and maybe just give our recommendation about whether or not we think you should like check them out or whether or not you're going to continue playing the game after a couple of hours of playing it.
Taylor: Yeah, that would be the ultimate, uh, review, right? Is, am I going to try this some more or not? As opposed to trying to give a number rating or something like that. Is it worth playing more of?
Joseph: And it could translate into video very easily. The whole Hip Fire concept, just short game reviews. We have some of the gameplay footage there as B roll with voiceover talking about the game, however we want to review it and whatever we want to say about it.
But you also do get the added benefit of seeing what the hell we're talking about, which I think is a huge plus when-
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: -you're trying to not necessarily trying to sell somebody on the thought of playing a game, but just trying to share your experience of playing that game with someone. Obviously the video in video games is very helpful.
Willie: Yeah, I want to go back to your idea about, um, getting other members of Berries and Blades on here. Berries and Blades started because we were playing D&D together, uh, on Wednesday nights and I got asked if I would DM a game is what happened. And then that became, okay, yeah, I'll totally DM a game to do on stream.
And that's been a lot of fun. We haven't done it in a while, but, it's still fun. I'd still go back to visit that world. You know, if people want to keep playing, I'm down to keep playing. If they don't, honestly, I think some of what we're talking about now could replace some of that.
Joseph: Mm, right.
Willie: There's two things there. One, I think you're right. Everybody involved plays video games, so we could all play games together.
Joseph: Mm hmm.
Willie: I'd like to stream games with all of y'all. I also, you know, I said we started playing D& D, but I, I have something else that has sort of been working on that I need to put some more time into, but I'm, I'm curious if the two of y'all would play like a tabletop RPG because I kind of am considering, you know, starting something else like that.
And out of curiosity, wondering like if y'all would play in a tabletop RPG, at least for a couple of sessions. I don't know, I think maybe like a three or four hour session, just total.
Joseph: Do you have a game in mind or are you like thinking of creating original content, an original game?
Willie: I'm thinking about an original game.
Joseph: Yeah, I would definitely consider it.
Willie: I'm curious about beta testing something with y'all.
Joseph: And especially if it's something you created, yeah, 100%.
Willie: That's one of the things I would like to do. And maybe that gets streamed, or maybe that gets recorded and turned into something.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
00:15:21
Willie: About streaming though, I'd be curious what type of games, if y'all wanted to start streaming. I have this idea that I'd like to stream games, and maybe all of us record, and maybe one of us stream, and then I would turn that content into, we might play for an hour or two hours and I'll turn that into like a 20 minute video of like the best stuff and just put that online. But uh, I'm curious what type of games y'all would want to do that with or you think would be good for that.
Taylor: Hmm. I think any that we enjoy, like if um, say it's a fighting game and I don't have it or, or care to play it or whatever, I'd still be down to watch. Especially if it's in a, we're chatting about it and watching it and laughing about it environment or something. And I'm down with that.
Joseph: I think something like Helldivers 2 would be good because I feel like we had fun playing that game and there's enough action that there's going to be funny moments. There's going to be good moments with action. There's going to be stressful, intense moments.
And I think all of those lend themselves pretty well to creating entertaining moments in a video. But that's one of the things that jumped up to the top of my list.
Willie: Yeah, that makes sense. And I, I have like a list of things like that 'cause I do think there's something about, about that type of game that you can just hop in and play a couple of rounds or whatever, right?
Taylor: Mm-hmm.
Willie: That I feel like we should consider because again, time is a thing we have to be considerate of. Yeah, it can be hard to like game for more than an hour or two at a time, but you could get in a couple of Hel... Helldivers games for sure. Or something like The Finals,
Taylor: Especially the free games, the Game Pass games.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: Those kinds of things that are You know, more affordable.
Joseph: Yeah, it definitely helps the accessibility of those because we all have a subscription, which means we all have that game. We don't all have to go out and find a way to get a copy of it or purchase it. So I think priority on those games, unless they're, you know, absolute heavy hitters that we're expecting to all purchase anyway.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: Obviously those can be worked into the mix. But something like Helldivers 2 or The Finals, they are the kind of game that you can jump in without a lot of prep, without a lot of baggage, and you can step away from those games. I think those are great games to put like into a rotation where they kind of pop up every now and then sort of go to games that we know we have fun playing and we can always get some type of content from that gameplay and then turn it into something.
Willie: You know what I want to get back into that's completely ridiculous. And this is silly. We should play some more, uh, Fall Guys. I don't even know if Taylor's ever played Fall Guys.
Taylor: I've played a little bit on, I think, uh, I downloaded it on something, PlayStation maybe?
Willie: I don't know if we've ever played together. I think we started playing when it was out on PC a really long time ago. So much stuff has been added to that game.
Joseph: Gosh, I bet.
Willie: I've watched a few people play it recently and...
Taylor: That's cool. They're still supporting that one and not necessarily bringing out a new one or anything at the moment?
Willie: I don't know if there's any plans for a new one, but there's definitely.... making new, new levels and stuff. But also this, this has been there for a while now, but there's also like squad based gameplay too. So-
Joseph: Mm.
Willie: -like, You play in squads-
Joseph: Teams?
Willie: -of four, yeah-
Taylor: Huh.
Willie: -and you advance based on your team advancing.
Joseph: Oh.
Willie: It's not like one of you gets knocked out and has to watch the other three people play the whole time, you know?
Joseph: Or you all have to exit because you still want to play together.
Willie: Yeah. So that would-
Taylor: Hmm.
Willie: -be a fun thing to play.
Taylor: Oh yeah.
Joseph: I bet it still has a ton of players.
Willie: Oh yeah, I bet so. I'd be curious about looking those numbers up. The other thing that I think is something that I have been trying to get Joey to play for a long time. Not specifically, just, I still want to get Joey to play some sort of survival type game.
Joseph: Oh, I thought you were going to say Minecraft.
Willie: Well, I would say that's in this category.
Joseph: Okay.
Willie: I still would love to introduce Joey to Minecraft and play through that, just to see.
Joseph: What's another example of a survival game-
Willie: Uh...
Joseph: -that would fit in that category?
Willie: Like Ark. Ark would fit-
Joseph: Oh.
Willie: -the dinosaur game, or, uh, Seven Days to Die recently, finally, after, I don't know how many years of early access just got a full release, so I'd be curious about that one.
Joseph: I don't think I've heard of that.
Willie: I think Taylor, you and I played Seven Days to Die a really long time ago.
Taylor: Yep, and I played a lot of it with you and a lot of it with Clint and Cera and Dan and...
Willie: Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, that game, it was in early access for over 10 years.
Damn.
It just released a month ago, two months ago now.
Their cycles were ridiculous. You wouldn't hear anything for six months or something. It'd be like, we've added blueberries. We now have blueberry bushes. And That's some serious early access.
Fucking decade? I mean I can't deal with games that have development cycles like that anymore. There's no way. Hit me up when you're done, I don't want to hear anything else about it. You're
just better off forgetting about them.
Exactly. Yeah, we had some good times playing them, but
Early Access was December 13th, 2013.
Crazy. And it just released on July 25th, 2024, like 1. 0.
Taylor: And the engine was so bad.
Willie: I've seen some people playing it, and it seems good, it seems okay. Like, I think it's improved over the years, but I honestly haven't really touched it since like, probably like 2015 or something. Like, it's been a long time.
It's one of those things that, again, I'd just be curious to find out if Joey has any patience for that sort of game.
Joseph: That's a good question. I'm already out of patience, [Taylor and Willie chuckle] thinking about a 10 year early access period.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: Yeah, I just can't imagine that it's come along far enough for me to play it again. I probably sunk a hundred hours into it pretty easily.
Joseph: Damn.
Taylor: Yeah, it was a long time. And now looking back at it, obviously it's been a while, but looking back at just the engine and the sluggishness of like simply moving around. And it's one of those where very much like Minecraft, if you hit sprint, you don't feel like you're sprinting as much. Actually, Minecraft is better about that, about making you feel like you're kind of sprinting and bobbing and I don't know...
and there's a lot of free stuff that's coming out like there's a Call of Duty will be launching on Game Pass. They've released Modern Warfare 3 is now on Game Pass. Obviously those are a big investment as far as your bandwidth of your internet [Taylor and Joseph laugh] because the download times are going to be insane, especially for me.
I'm down to check some of those out to, you know, at some point, if we want to get the zombies and go check it out.
Willie: Zombies would be great, yeah.
Taylor: Something, you know, whatever it might be, I'm down. There's also games like Valorant and other types of games that are coming out that are kind of drawing some action. People are liking them. So I'm down to check out games like that as well.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: You know, obviously we'll give it the, the old video check. We'll just go watch it, watch a few minutes of video and make sure it looks like something that we would enjoy at all.
Willie: In terms of getting other Berries and Blades people involved. I also-
Taylor: Oh yeah.
Willie: -think just playing like.... I don't know, games like Mario party or Pummel Party is like a rip off of a Mario party that I enjoy watching, but even shit like Gartic Phone or, uh, or you know, any of the Jackbox games or something like that, something where lots of us could play, I think would be fun to do.
Taylor: Oh, there was a, uh, Nickelodeon party game-
Willie: Oh, there is, right.
Taylor: Or whatever came out, right?
Willie: Uh-huh.
Taylor: Like a smash, a smash like I saw an ad for it and I think it was free.
Joseph: Oh, like All Star Brawl.
Taylor: Yeah. And it's got like SpongeBob. It's got some crazy characters in there.
Joseph: It was pretty well received, at least the second one. I think you're probably talking about the second one. All Star Brawl 2.
Taylor: Is it a sequel?
Willie: There is a second one-.
Taylor: I didn't even know-
Willie: Yeah
Taylor: -that just recently came out right? Like in the last month or 2.
Joseph: It's older than that, but it's sort of like a Super Smash Brothers. It's sort of like Multi-Versus.
Taylor: Maybe they just did a big update or something, and so it was a featured ad.
Willie: Yeah. I'm not sure when the second one came out. The first one was 2021, which is wild that there's already a second one. I think general idea is like, let's play some more games. It's been a while since all three of us have played something together.
Taylor: Yeah.
Willie: We definitely have been on mic playing Elden Ring together for... separately, but together. But, uh, that's been consuming a lot of our gaming time, which I'm still deep in that. So there will be... you can expect an episode about Elden Ring coming soon.
Joseph: Mm hmm. Yeah, that'll be fun to talk about. I haven't played since I finished the DLC, but there's definitely still a lot for me to do in the DLC. I didn't even fight any of the Furnace Golems.
Willie: That's wild.
Joseph: They're all just hanging around, walking around, shooting fire and shit still.
Taylor: Are those a one kill? Like, you kill it once and then it's gone, or?
Willie: Yeah, they're sort of treated like the, the Erdtree Avatars in the base game.
Taylor: Oh, okay.
Willie: They drop a tear, basically. Most of them do. I don't know if all of them do.
Joseph: I didn't know that until the last time I mentioned that, and you said that, so I was like, aw, shit, man. That probably would have been helpful.
Willie: There's two really cool tears that I haven't got to play with that they drop. People have been calling, uh, adds like a Sekiro like mechanic to the parry.
Basically-
Joseph: Mm.
Willie: -just increases the parry time I think is, I don't I forgot how it's described but uh, it makes counterattacks and parries better.
Joseph: Nice.
Willie: And the other one is this interesting like oil flask where you drink it and then your character starts spewing oil [chuckles] from their body everywhere.
Joseph: [chuckles] Oh damn.
Willie: So if you set anything on fire in the vicinity of-
Joseph: Mm.
Willie: -that get extra on fire. [chuckles]
Taylor: Hmm.
Joseph: Nice.
Willie: But yeah, those Furnace Golems take forever to kill so it makes sense that you would just pass them up and not mess with them.
Taylor: Yeah. And they one shot me anytime [Willie chuckles] I get near one, it's either that little spiral doodad that it shoots out or...
Willie: Yeah, that shit will fuck you up. I played through a second time, got through new game plus I'm at the final boss with this melee character who's basically, uh, this is not too much of a spoiler, but it's a Captain America build. I've got this shield that's throwable and, uh-
Taylor: Nice.
Willie: -using my fist for my other weapon.
Joseph: Oh shit.
Willie: So I'm like fighting the final boss with my fist and it's, it wasn't going well. So I haven't really played that since I got there.
Joseph: Base game final boss or DLC final boss?
Willie: DLC final boss. It just wasn't going well. So, uh, I stopped and switched to my original character for Elden Ring and started playing through as a magic.
Joseph: The astrologer?
Willie: Yeah. The astrologer so...
Joseph: Interesting.
Willie: I've been trying, trying that, but that's been taking a bit, but it's, it's been fun.
Joseph: Right. Comet Azur that fool.
Willie: That thing got, uh, debuffed a little bit. It got nerfed. So, doesn't quite work as well.
Joseph: The boss?
Willie: No, the-
Joseph: Oh, the, the spell.
Willie: The spell. Comet Azur
Taylor: Obviously not the boss. [Joseph and Willie chuckle]
Willie: That is a whole other thing. Generally, yeah, we'd like to come back with maybe the Elden Ring episode will be the next episode. Who knows?
00:25:53
Joseph: Could be. Yeah, I think I was thinking the next episode would probably be somewhere toward the end of September.
Willie: Yeah, that's what I was going to ask.
Joseph: I'm sort of planning this, uh, like I have to stagger them with Students of Design. So as long as they stay staggered with that podcast, then I think we'll be fine releasing one a month.
I don't even think it has to be like a certain week or a certain day. It could just be happening in that month at some point.
Willie: Yeah. And I think it makes sense for, uh, the next one to come out September. Cause you'll... probably, y'all will be hearing this one in August and then, yeah, sometime between this episode and that Elden Ring episode, hopefully you'll be seeing a couple of video things from us if you want to be seeing that.
Joseph: Who knows? I mean, I think it's pretty low stakes right now, obviously not really committing to any specific schedule because that's... Well, two things, I think the quality could improve if we do fewer episodes and we just have more prep time for each episode. And then the second thing is that we're no longer locked in to such a rigid schedule, specifically with the video stuff.
We can just kind of push that out whenever it makes sense to, or at least as we're fine tuning how quickly we can record stuff and put video content together, all of those things. I think it's pretty loose in terms of like when we're planning to do things. And I think there's still a lot of logistics to find out in terms of how we're all going to each record video and how we're going to get that to Willie, if he's editing and are there going to be face cam recordings or not just trying to figure out what the boundaries are for us in terms of production and all of those logistics.
I think once we work through all of that stuff, we'll have a much better idea of where we really want to go with it outside of being inspired to do those sorts of things.
Willie: Specifically for us, I feel like I want us to, beyond those logistics, I want us to focus on finding more time to just play some games together. Which could very easily turn into, let's play some games together and I'll, I'll turn on a stream for an hour or whatever. And we could just stream some more stuff first, just because we should play some more games.
Joseph: Right. Big priority there is, right, just keeping up with the stuff we already have.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: Especially for me, the stuff I've started, but haven't finished, but then also just kind of keeping up with the gaming world in general. Cause there's a lot of stuff that I want to play just as a fan of video games. So hopefully this can help us or, you know, help me get a little bit more time back that can be used for playing games.
Willie: Taylor, any other closing thoughts?
Taylor: Yeah, I'm just, um, this is definitely a good move. Uh, just to give everybody a little more time to play games and like build content and to find cool stuff to play, you know, instead of having to like, uh, just rely on the obvious. Have you seen anything about Horror: Evil Residents VR co op game?
Willie: No. [Joseph and Taylor laugh] What is that? [laughing] Is that the name?
Joseph: Sounds like something you butchered.
Taylor: Yeah, Horror: Evil Residents VR Co Op.
Joseph: Horror colon Evil Residents?
Taylor: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
Joseph: But in VR?
Willie: Oh.
Taylor: Yeah, it looks like Phasmophobia.
Willie: Except it's VR.
Taylor: And it's free, I think. Oh, okay, that's a demo. Okay. They got a demo coming soon that's free.
Willie: Interesting.
Taylor: Maybe we'll find some more stuff like this. Also some fun co op horror or something that's funny to kind of record and-
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: -play along too.
Willie: Yeah. That has its own interesting set of challenges to do, but I, that would be fun.
Taylor: Yeah, of course.
Willie: I've definitely been looking for another Phasmophobia like game.
Taylor: Yeah.
Willie: I was going to say that earlier too. I do think some sort of horror game would be fun to play together and record.
Taylor: Yeah. As those come along, we will definitely do that.
Willie: I had a... on my list was a game that's been out for a while now, but I don't know if y'all ever played Sons of the Forest or saw Sons of the Forest. That's a survival type crafting game, but also has a storyline to go through together. And it's definitely-
Taylor: Hmm.
Willie: -a little bit horror so.
Taylor: Oh, okay.
Joseph: I've never heard of that.
Taylor: I wonder if anybody's working on a horror, like Outlast or something that's just.
Willie: Oh, that's a game we could play. There is a horror... There's an Outlast four player game.
Taylor: What?
Willie: I've been wanting to play it for a while now. It came out in March, I think. It's called Outlast Trials.
Taylor: Oh, God.
Willie: Yeah, I don't know why we haven't played that yet. [Joseph chuckles] I really wanted to. I just haven't done it.
Taylor: I can tell you why we haven't played it yet. [Willie chuckles] Because I probably saw the trailer for it once and just put it out of my mind. [Joseph laughing] Let's see here. I'm watching the trailer for it.
Willie: It's funny because that's still a game I've never finished. Because I, at-
Taylor: Hell no.
Willie: -some point, every time I'm like, fuck this game.
Taylor: Yeah.
Willie: I can't do it.
Taylor: Oh my God.
Willie: Taylor and I once played that game on a, uh, on a projector. [Taylor chuckles]
Joseph: Oh, nice.
Willie: Like a hundred uh, inch, like screen right in front of us. And that felt like you were in the game and it was way too real.
Taylor: Yeah, that was not where you wanted to feel like you were. Maybe we'll hop on a little bit of that too. Outlast is terrifying, but it'd be way better with some friends, [Willie chuckles] even though we may not ever make it past the first level for fear of something. Content like that, I think it'd be a lot of fun rather than just straight up talking and yapping about something actually, like you guys mentioned, having some video content along with it and for something... for other people.
A lot of podcasts do that and they do it in tandem. Anyways, I'll release the, that seems to be a normal model now of having just the audio version if people are there for it and there's a demand, and then having the video version as well. So we'll play a play around with some different things and see if anything sticks.
Willie: Cool. I think that's all for us today, then. We'll have some more, uh, research to do for our Elden Ring episode. More-
Taylor: Absolutely. [laughs]
Willie: -time to do that research and come back to you guys with that episode, probably next, I think.
Taylor: Getting our microscopes out as we speak. [laughs] Getting ready to really, uh, zoom in on the granular details. [laughs]
Willie: Yeah, I love that about that game and can't wait to talk about it with y'all.
Joseph: Dude, it's the fucking best, man.
Taylor: Yeah, it really is.
[Outro theme begins to fade in - Caribbean arcade by Christian Nanzell]
Willie: But yeah, if you've been here with us, we appreciate you listening. Hope you'll continue to listen and check out some, uh, video stuff as that starts coming out. And like I said, probably some streaming soon.
Joseph: Stick around. Let's see where this goes.
Willie: Thanks, y'all.
Taylor: Thanks for hanging. Zip!
Joseph: See y'all. Peace.
Taylor: Is that right? Zip! No...
Joseph: What about all Taylor's fans?
Taylor: What about his fans?
[Outro theme continues - Caribbean Arcade by Christian Nanzell]
00:32:07
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]
Joseph: Get on some sock puppet shit?
Willie: Mm mm, no, not quite. [all laughing]
Taylor: Joey's like, we make our-
Joseph: I'm fucking down for that.
Taylor: -we pivot completely, Berries and Blades is now Muppets.
Willie: Let's do a whole fucking... yeah.
Joseph: Berries and Puppets, [Taylor laughing] motherfucker.