Retronauts Episode 246: Demon's Souls
Added 2019-09-09 23:32:23 +0000 UTCIn the past decade, developer From Software went from making poorly reviewed oddities to being one of the most important developers in our modern era. And it all started with Demon's Souls, a humble, slightly janky game that challenged the new standard of frictionless gameplay in the HD era, and delivered an experience we didn't know we were so hungry for. On this episode of Retronauts, join Bob Mackey, Jeremy's Parish, USgamer's Kat Bailey, and Duckfeed.tv's Gary Butterfield as the crew explores the bleak and endlessly compelling world of Demon's Souls. Listen now, so the world might be mended. So the world might be mended.
Comments
I’m 2 minutes in and just found out there’s an Etrian Odyssey episode already recorded, and I’m pumped!! Jeremy’s enthusiasm turned me on to that unique series, and I can’t wait to hear the full episode, hoping Kat’s on that one too. (I still haven’t played any Souls games, but know I’m in for a great discussion with this crew)
Colbin Erdahl
2019-09-10 23:11:19 +0000 UTCI just started listening to Watch Out for Fireballs and thought I'd take a break to listen to Retronauts but Gary is here too 😆
littleterr0r
2019-09-10 16:08:33 +0000 UTCThat it was funny? I was laffing! But I'm not being a True Gamer troll or anything
Ken Hoyt
2019-09-10 15:07:20 +0000 UTCI demand proof!
Bob Mackey
2019-09-10 15:03:15 +0000 UTCThis extends to character tendency that if you commit an "evil" act, your CT will shift to black. This includes invading other players' games or murdering NPCs. At pure black CT, this unlocks a sort of infamous quest that requires you to basically kill every friendly NPC in the game, so it's all pretty dark. On the flip side, killing black phantom NPCs, helping in multiplayer, and doing generally "good" things will shift the CT toward white. This means that a player can manipulate the game to having pure black WT, for example, while still obtaining pure white CT under the right circumstances. There are, of course, advantages and disadvantages to both CT states, because this is a video game. Still, I look at this whole mess of mechanics as an extension of actual "role-playing." Like Jeremy said, it's a bit of a morality system, even if morality in this game world is essentially useless. I'm so sorry I felt the need to explain all of this
John Learned
2019-09-10 13:10:51 +0000 UTCI always understood the world/ soul tendency system to be how good and evil you and the world around you become. By killing bosses, you shift the WT toward white, which means enemies are easier to kill and drop more healing items, but drop fewer souls. By being another human killed in a world, though, WT turns toward black, so enemies have more HP, more of them spawn (in VERY insidious locations), and primeval demons appear, but will yield greater amounts of souls. WT tendency shifts white if you do something more "good" within that world (killing invading players and named NPC black phantoms also do this as they're "evil" entities), while it shifts black if you do something "evil," like killing a sane human like named NPCs or yourself.
John Learned
2019-09-10 13:04:07 +0000 UTCBob is on some selective memory energy here... he had to be the king of calling games unironically "the dark souls of..." It was, along with Gary Butterfield, the reason I heard about Dark Souls, so good on him but hearing him talk about people overdoing it on referencing Dark Souls was a little funny
Ken Hoyt
2019-09-10 08:35:42 +0000 UTCI'm not very good about these games, but I'll def second Bloodborne being 3D Castlevania, especially with the whip cane. The world is also meticulously built in how it connects, which also fits the bill. Over on /r/metroidvania it's a big point on contention - essentially that if the Prime series is in genre, the Souls games can be as well.
Mat Segal
2019-09-10 07:31:13 +0000 UTCThis podcast made my day!
shea dewar
2019-09-10 00:44:38 +0000 UTCMy first thought when I saw the episode was on a Souls game was immediately "I hope Gary or Kole are guesting." No disappointment!
Frank Horrigan
2019-09-10 00:29:02 +0000 UTCOh my god, I was just about to ask if Bob was going to make an episode about this game! This is so great.
shea dewar
2019-09-09 23:54:37 +0000 UTC
