melos from analgesic here! Glad you enjoyed the game (and our others! hooray Angeline Era) so much. It was also really nice to hear you both unpacking the approach to writing - I like that term "narrative pixel art", which captures the balance we try to strike at times, being just brief enough (but not too loose/abstract) to where people can bring their own experience to the table. And it's interesting to hear discussion about writing process, since we often work from the direction of writing a lot more/overexplaining and then cutting down drastically until the necessary minimum remains. Like with the moletuber line, I could have written that more detailed, but I figured that if someone's going to have those ideas on their mind, it just takes the briefest of pushes from the writing for them to start thinking about it, at which point they can probably think at depth in a way beyond what I could achieve (as I wouldn't know any players personally). This reminds me of Romancing Saga 1 (SNES) which I just played. It's a VERY trying, testing, 'hate it or love it' RPG, but if it sticks with you, the super minimal, chaotic approach to narrative is quite inspiring - despite it being a game very much working within the confines of a pulpy RPG fantasy setting (and not really attempting to go beyond that in terms of thematic complexity).
I swear, every time Jeremy suggests a game, I go to the steam page, watch the trailer, and am immediately entranced in this dreamlike state, and then I wishlist the game.
Congratulations on your marriage Jesse! Congratulations on your awesome video and tweet Frank! (Love living vicariously through you at these cool events) Congratulations Jeremy!!! (General awesomeness) (not a perspective gamer tag, but the plane of existence you occupy)
I did not expect a discussion of Akiba's Trip to lead into a wholesome discussion about genuineness and finding purpose in life but if anyone can have that conversation its Frank Howley
I guess intro item off kinda has to goto Jesse this week (Congrats!!) but Jeremys Berserk T and Franks Marin statue are great I bought Anodyne 2 after hearing Jesse talk about it last week so i'm even more excited to get through that after hearing Jeremys thoughts this week
Thank you so much for the Anodyne 2 recommendation! I just finished it and absolutely loved it. I swear this podcast has brought me to more games I’ve loved than any major gaming site or meta critic ever have, thanks for all you do
Oh wow, doc about Disco Elysium is coming. Awesome! Hopefully it will touch a little about topics which People Make Games' doc been trying to investigate. It was truly great vid and one of the best about gaming dev and grey area of business.
regarding the conversation about lack of definition in characters and things, allowing space for the observer to more easily relate to the subject, because of how humans naturally use their imagination... i think a great example of this is the character Guts in Berserk. he is extremely lightly defined, which i think is perhaps the biggest reason why he's so relatable to so very many people. -- i love your guts shirt jeremy.
Frank talking about wanting very very Japanese feeling games, I wonder if he ever played Tokyo Mirage Sessions FE. Originally on the WiiU but thankfully they did a port with a little bit of extra content on Switch like 5 years ago or so. I have a deep, strange love of that game and everyone who likes JRPGs should play it. The mix of Persona and Fire Emblem is so... neat. Also the characters are strangely heartfelt. Edit: on the question about JRPGs that respect your time, Xenoblade Chronicles 1 is my favorite game ever but it has a lot of built in grinding that it at least tries to convince you to do. The story is an all timer and the music is insanely good but for someone who doesn't like most JRPGs I'd be iffy on using Xenoblade to sell them on the genre.
Had to laugh about Jeremy's Cormac McCarthy/Blood Meridian reference talking about writing, because I so get what he's saying. The masters just have a way of handing the reader the weight of a scene, behind a sparse-seeming description as the facilitating vehicle.
