Rebel FM
Rebel FM Game Club - Gun - Episode 3
It's late, but I'm happy to bring you all our wrap-up episode for our Game Club series on Gun. This week, we talk about the ending section and our overall thoughts on the game, and following our discussion, I was able to speak at length with Scott Pease, Neversoft's Studio Development Director, Chad Findley, the Project Lead on Gun, and Joel Jewitt, Neversoft's President. We talk about the origins of the game and its influences, the evolution of the gameplay, and whether we can expect a sequel any time soon. As a quick note, this interview was conducted over a teleconference call, so set your expectations for sound quality appropriately, but all in all, you're in for a treat.
[MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] Hello, welcome to the final. Rebel FM game club for gun. >> Fab penis. >> Fab penis. So yeah, so here we are to talk about the conclusion of gun. And then I guess any side missions that we did along after. I didn't really play too much after. I don't think anyone really did, but. >> No, although I played a little bit. I mean, I like the fact that you can. >> Yeah, after you wander out of the mine and try to find a wild horse to ride away. >> Right. >> So yeah, so let's just launch right into where we stopped last time. Because the game doesn't even really give you a breather just. >> No, that kind of made me sad because after the saving, like between killing Houdu and saving soapy. That's pretty much your last chance for a real long forever. Basically to do inside missions at all, which I wish I would have known before I saved soapy. >> Really, you can't like do the, there's like a. >> There is a gap in between. >> There is a gap, there's a place like it's before you. >> After you'd kill the fort, there's like a time where you can, where you can, you have to then talk to soapy or something like that. And there's, but it's almost like it's so far out of the way. >> Yeah. >> That it kind of just encouraged you to jump straight back in. >> Yeah. >> But, but I know what you're saying, like right where we left off, it's like you have no choice, but you're just like thrown. >> Yeah, like from there, it just barrels down toward the ending. >> Yeah. >> Both literally and figuratively. >> Yeah. [LAUGH] >> So last time we, we left off, we had just killed Houdu and shot his head off. And hoped for small children to play with it in the street like soccer ball. >> And I just want to take this second to, I don't remember the user's name, but someone commented that Houdu is a leprechaun. And the reason they brought this up was because, was because if you shoot Houdu, when he's in his box and you blow off his limbs, if you, when you come back there, they're there again. >> Wow, that's amazing. >> That's leprechaun regeneration. >> It sure is. >> We, man, we went way far down the leprechaun rabbit hole over the last two weeks already. Although the, the, the developers at NeverSoft had been listening, and when I talked to them tomorrow over Skype, they'll be wearing their leprechaun skin suits. >> So, truth is truth, man, and leprechaun truth hurts. [LAUGH] All right. >> So, we're, we're. >> So, after killing Houdu, you're supposed to go find Soapy. So that you can find the safe, supposedly at the bottom of the river and open it. >> Right. >> And there's never really any talk of how exactly you're going to force Soapy to go under the river to open that safe. >> Yeah, I was thinking it's like 10 feet underwater. I was like, hmm. >> Yeah, but I mean, at least, at least the main character does say like, well, not this time of year. >> Yeah, right, right. Otherwise it's like, that suits don't exist. >> That was really, that was, yeah, I was disappointed not to have the Soapy in a diving suit minigame. >> [LAUGH] >> So, so I don't even remember how it starts. >> You're supposed to go to Dodge to find a Soapy, and Soapy has gotten in trouble for cheating at poker, and he's going to get hung. >> That's right. Soapy now, you've scrawny son of a woman. >> This is where you get up to the water tower. >> Yep, and. >> And you get access to a new rifle, sharpshooter. >> Soapy's like droopy the dog in the cartoons. He's always in trouble. >> [LAUGH] >> Yeah, but he gets himself into it. Droopy the dog does not get. >> He's like, slowly meanders. >> Soapy's kind of, soapy's conniving. >> Like, droopy gets himself out of trouble just by being slowly clever. >> Hey, Matt, you should just take the melon. >> We're aging ourselves horrendously by referencing that cartoon. >> You're the one that did it. >> Yeah, but you know I'm talking about your goddamn liar. >> [LAUGH] >> Right. >> You told me you wanted to name your new dog, droopy. >> No, I didn't. >> You should do. >> You're a liar, I wanted to name puggle nights. >> [LAUGH] >> Cuz he's a puggle. Now it came from Nick Setner. I'll give him credit cuz Nick gets pissed when you don't give him credit for things. >> [LAUGH] >> Like his beard. >> Like A's. >> [LAUGH] >> He is from Africa. >> [LAUGH] >> [LAUGH] >> I'm sorry, Nick, it was just too easy. >> All right. >> So you have to sort of sneak up on the lynching and shoot the rope after they drop. >> Shoot the rope, I was so glad that they had to shoot the rope section in this game. >> Two, two shoot the rope sections. >> There were two? >> Yeah, we'll get to it. >> I don't remember the other one. >> You will. >> Oh yeah, I remember now. >> Especially considering they say shoot the rope again. So you shoot the rope as he's being, after they drop the thing, because otherwise it won't break it, because there's no tension. And then you have to keep a bunch of dudes off of soapy. >> Which, that mission is really easy in this game. >> Yeah, I think I died once just because I decided, well, fuck it, I'm gonna run out in the middle of the street. >> Pretty much every time in this game, whenever there's someone that has a health bar, they're bullet machines. They're like the Terminator, ten, ten, ten, ten, ten. It's like blood's going flying and they're not even like moving like their hit. They're just like, I'm gonna shoot 'em. >> See, I don't know, I've definitely had my people get killed before, although there was definitely one point later where soapy is dragging himself away from the train, and I ran up to the mountains to shoot at the people on the train, and soapy was just dragging himself off and getting shot over and over and over again. >> Right, he was just like, I'm cool. >> Like he was slowing down, like he was staggering. He was like leaving these trails of blood. >> He doesn't even pay attention to it. >> Yeah, so you kill a bunch of people trying to win soapy. >> Yep. >> It's just successful. >> Yeah, there's not really a lot of ways to do that part, other than kill all the dudes. >> That's actually, and that's usually how it goes, and in Dodge, there's usually enough pedestrians that kill all the dudes, turns into killing all the dudes, and a few pedestrians that all of a sudden are like, it's a good fight. >> Yes. >> They just decide that I'm the target. >> I've been waiting all day for this. >> That's why we came out here. And actually someone in the comments went to the last week we talked about the town's patience level. If you shoot villagers and townsfolk, and how it eventually goes out, the dude added, when the town's patience runs out, a posse comes after you. >> Yeah, really? >> People don't shoot from the windows or anything that's cool. Sadly, it's about five dudes, and he knows because he kept killing town folk for about an hour, and took out about 15 posse. Every time you take out the posse, your patience meter is reset. >> Man, I can't-- >> Really? >> That's a very tolerant town. >> Well, he killed the posse again. >> As long as he kills everyone that comes after you. >> Yeah, I think what happens is you kill the posse, and then everybody's so afraid of you that they're like, "Just don't make him mad." >> It takes time for them to save up more money to find-- >> Right. >> To go to the next seven samurai. >> To hire the three amigos to come after you. >> All right, so you save soapy. That's kind of a pretty uneventful mission. >> You save soapy, you run off to the fairy. >> I'd kind of forgotten who soapy was. >> Soapy is the scrawny sort of crackers. >> Yeah, but I mean, I had forgotten him until this mission. >> Mm-hmm. >> Right, I mean, you only deal with him in that jailbreak thing, and then it's kind of like-- >> Well, it wasn't that long before this that you actually broke him out. >> Well, it kind of was for bitch. [laughter] >> Tyler. [laughter] >> I wish this was a multi-channel podcast. >> So that we could mic Anthony's arse? >> Yeah, because we have a fifth mic that's not being used. >> I think there's one standing right in front of it right now. [laughter] We simultaneously-- so you get on the fairy, and you're supposed to hold off the other guys that appear on the second magically appearing fairy. >> Right, which is just headshot after headshot with your rifle. >> Yeah. >> The end. >> And that's the part where you have to shoot the rope and send them-- >> That's right. >> And then, like, flowing down the river like the riders. >> You know what this game doesn't have? It never has any brook back riding. What's up with that? >> Right. >> Like, how come you never get on a horse with someone else? [laughter] >> I can't answer that question. >> I'm just saying, you always roll in and rescue someone in the movies, so it's like you throw them up on the back of your horse and you roll it out. >> Yeah, you always have to find someone their own horse. Maybe it would have taken a lot of time to animate that. >> Mm-hmm. >> I'm going to ask, never saw. >> Yeah. >> Why is there no brook back riding? >> Yeah. >> By which I mean two people on one horse. [laughter] Because there could totally be, I mean, stuff that we didn't see, maybe. >> Yeah. >> A special scene cut from the game. >> That's what I want. Anyways, I had a moment straight out of, like, Muni public transportation during the scene where you were going across the river. Because, like, when it stopped my character, I guess he glitched out. He went, like, flying off of the roof. >> It was, like, a catapult. >> Like, such a sudden stop. >> It's a catapult on an aircraft carrier. >> Yeah, he literally tumbled off of the raft onto the land and had to, like, go back and get my horse. >> That's amazing. I didn't know that could happen. >> Fun with physics. So, after that, you... >> I like the sharpshooter, by the way. It's a fun rifle to use. >> I like the sharpshooter, and like I said, it's one of the first guns you get that can blow limbs off. >> Yep, and heads off. >> Yeah. >> And you get the dismembered kaching. >> Yeah, exactly. >> You never figure out, like, if the kaching's doing anything for you, except up your-- >> I think it just ups the amount of the quick draw. You get back. >> Okay, I was just assuming. Or just wondering, because, like, it does things, like, when it counts up, it starts to show, like, you know, a little stack of bullets next to each other, like, how high your combo went. But it really doesn't seem to take more than a couple kills, or, like, one or two combos, to get your meter all the way back up. It's so generous. >> I kind of wonder if that was part of a larger mechanic that got cut out. >> That's what I keep thinking when I see it, especially given that they put in the time to have that really recognizable kaching sound effect, to make it feel like you were doing this thing. I can't help but wonder if, like, that was supposed to be attached to some kind of experience leveling up, or something like that. And then it just never went that far. It's like there's a trumpet on the couch. >> So, after that, you and Sophie ride toward the sunken steamer to try to scope out and figure out how the fuck you're going to get the safe out, and you see the fort that you, the steamer, went by before that you couldn't destroy. >> Yeah, no matter how many times you fired your cannon. >> And you get caught. >> And you get caught by the renegades. >> And at first, they treat you. It's kind of weird, because they don't outright kill you, or anything. Yeah, they just treat you like you're, you're like a semi-civil. Like, he says he'll gut you and do bad things to you, but if you try and do anything, but he still lets you just roll around without handcuffs or shackles or anything. >> But it's kind of reminded me of Riddick. >> Yeah, that's true. >> It's like wandering around in the prison yard, like, free to kind of, you know, plot your own escape as your, at your leisure. >> Well, it's funny too that, you know, they bothered to take all your guns from you, but they left you with your fucking tomahawk of doom. >> I didn't notice that, yeah. I didn't notice it until I grabbed someone from behind. I'm like, "Jesus Christ, how did you miss that?" >> Right, right, when I know when you pull it out, it's like three feet long. >> Yeah, I heard it in my asshole. >> I was wondering if they were going to do like some forced labor minigames, like go and chisel rock for an hour. >> I think that could go in an uncomfortable direction. >> Or a comfortable direction. >> Roll back. >> Roll back. Now we know what Anthony's recipe for gaming success is. Broke back riding. >> Yeah, I'm just saying in a cowboy movie, it just seems like I hope that there's that in red dead redemption. >> Well, usually when-- >> I want to be able to ride by with my hand out, if I can swing someone up on the saddle with me, keep rolling. >> Yeah, usually they're hurt to stress. >> When they ride broke back, like-- >> That's what I'm saying, so I'm coming to rescue them, you know? >> It's almost always when something gets fucked up and gone. It's not long before they're dead anyway. >> Well, I either want to be able to ride-- it can be a girl, too. You know, you swoop up, grab the girl, and you ride out. >> Anthony's not picky about his broke backs. He just wants one. >> He wants-- >> I don't care who it is. I just want someone else on the saddle with me. >> Yeah, I did ride cross country with two people in one motorcycle, mind you. >> Nice. >> So you get captured in the fort. I need to stop saying so before everything really do. >> So I need to stop saying so. >> You capture the fort. >> You capture the fort. >> Well, you say it's true when I watch it. >> When you talk to the Indian, the Indian's like, let's roll out of here. I know, route, the first-- >> You got to save them. >> We've got to save all of my Indians. >> I had a hard time finding them. I don't know what it will-- >> I did too, so the problem is that when you kill one, it'll open the door. >> Oh. >> But before the door's closed. >> Goddamn it. >> So you have to do it in order. >> It just triggers the door opening, and then all of a sudden you're out there's another Indian getting beat up. >> Which, I mean, there's something of a trend in the latter part of gun that we're playing, which is that they establish a convention, and then they break it. Everything in gun up till now, or most things in gun, have been these sort of open world type things, where you can do things in whatever order. >> Mm-hmm. >> But this is one of the first conventions that breaks, and that you have to do things in a very specific order. >> Yeah, and this one, I don't really understand why it's that way at all. Why do I have to do these Indians in order? And I kind of figured it out after a little while. I was like, oh, because they're directing me towards the escape garbage pit. You know, it's like, it's level designed to move you in the right direction, so you can find this pit. >> But they didn't need to, because they break it up with a cutscene. >> Right. >> So they could have positioned you in the same spot, just like they do if you get caught. >> Oh, that's true. >> They reset you to the same spot. >> Yeah. >> I can see what you're saying. I just, it's still. >> Well, I think you're right. I actually forgot about the cutscene. It was a slippery slope into annoyance with the last part of the game. You find all the Indians and then the, I can't remember the, the Indians name. >> Uh, many wounds. >> Many wounds, many wounds who, uh, is it here or is it after this part where you find out who you are and where you came from? >> I don't even know. >> I think it's after this part. >> It's after. >> It's pretty far after. I mean, like, you figure it out unless you're. >> Oh, yeah, it's way after, actually. >> Mm-hmm. >> But you don't actually get it, you don't actually get it, like, totally explained to you right until just before you're going to go. >> Don't kill him. >> And get him to kill Lev Gruder. >> I know it is, but how can you not say it when it's one letter difference? >> Yep. >> You turn that D around and it's right. >> God, I hate you so much. >> I was playing this game a lot. >> Only because you're right. >> I was by myself and my apartment going through it and every time I saw his name come up in a text flash or anything, I'd go, "Mm-hmm!" >> By yourself in the apartment, so I couldn't help it. >> You're like the police and I go on your door. We had complaints with some crazy person down here. You don't want to get the top of their lungs. >> No, with the way Tyler rises though, he can shut up to the door and be like, "Evening gentlemen, something seems to be the problem." [laughter] >> I was just listening to my jazz records. >> His nice bass cooking some tortellini. >> It is nice bassed in Italian shoes. [laughter] >> Yeah, so many wounds. I said so again, but it's such a good way to start a sentence. >> You can't help it. >> So he takes you to his camp, demonstrating. >> And then he's like, "And now we're going to make those white men pay." >> You're like, "Well first, you have to go in front and beat his bitch and murder a bunch of renegades before you can get out." >> Which is okay. >> Which is a little weird, the sort of conditions for failure at that point, where you grab some of them and they yell and people turn around and you grab other ones and they yell and no one hears them. >> Right, I think it's long as you grab them and they didn't know you were there until they got grabbed. >> That's all it matters. >> There's definitely a commenter that pointed out that they had better luck just running at them swinging their tomahawk than they did grabbing them. >> Oh, I didn't have any problem grabbing. >> No, I stopped right through that part. >> You didn't really have any problems. >> I thought it was fine. I thought it was especially when you're following many wounds as opposed to trying to do something for them. It's this cute little train of dudes, like snacking around. >> Yeah, I thought of it as the Assassin's Creed priest shield. As long as I'm here, yeah, yeah, I won't see me. >> It was the great escape. >> So you have a bunch of dudes and you roll out and then the cool part where it's the Indian massacre assault on the fucking fortress, which I'm going to be honest with you. Seriously, like nothing against Indians and stuff, but I'm just saying, how are some Indians with bow and arrows and the occasional rifle going to take on a fort with like gathering guns and cannons? I'm just being- >> By putting, by having their secret weapon, get on a canoe and go around and take everything out from behind from within the fort. >> They're just the distraction, man. They're the raw meat. >> That's what I meant. Yeah, I mean, they would have just been getting chewed up. >> Yeah, well, before that, after you leave the fort, you're back in the area where you first started the game after the steamboat, which is kind of cool. >> Yeah, yeah, but that's like an Indian camp. >> You're back in Montana at the Blackfeet camp. >> But no honest, Tom. It would have been awesome if you saw honest, Tom's picked clean corpse. >> Yeah, exactly. >> Bleaching. >> Some little cutscene you walk up and like, you know, kick this, kick this, like, what kind of a skull. >> Or he's strung up and skinned as a warning. >> Then you pee on him, and then you pee on him. Anthony has a one-track mind. >> Everything revolves around penis. >> And peeing. >> And peeing. >> I do like to pee outside. >> Exactly. >> I do like to pee outside. >> I came up a lot this weekend for some reason. >> Yeah, I should have made a better effort when I was riding cross-country to pee on, like, on the dirt of every state I went into. >> Is it so the other ants could follow your trail? >> No, I'm just saying, you know. >> I first thought you were going to say to, like, pee while you were driving. So it, like, warmed you. >> So your friend, Paul, would be driving the motorcycle, and you'd be on the back, facing the opposite way, just peeing. >> That way you could truly make the United States your own. >> You're really regretting that you didn't do this right now. >> Well, Paul didn't have a motorcycle license, so I did all the driving. So Paul could have stood up and pissed off the back, I guess. That would have been dangerous, though. >> I mean, you could have still done it, and then you could have marked Paul as well. Just all over me and all over Paul. >> You had a closed-face helmet, right? >> Yeah, we did. >> Yeah, what's the problem? >> We're getting hit by bugs left and right, but that's a sad story. So you, damn me, you fight a bunch of renegades in that querying that are attacking your Indian friends. >> Right. >> And hopefully most of them don't die, and you continue on to the- >> Doesn't matter, they keep respawning. >> And then so you write this so canoe into the sew building. >> [LAUGH] >> I hate you so much. >> So, so much. >> [LAUGH] >> I think this is the point where you're finally told by many wounds, your background, isn't it? >> No, I think it's afterwards. >> Mm-hm, no, he doesn't tell you, you don't find out. >> You don't find out until after you killed Reed. >> You find out, yeah, you find out your background. >> That's right, because you take the crossbar to many wounds. >> And then he explains it. >> And then he tells you to go to the Apaches. It's the Apaches that tell you your background. >> Got it. >> Mm-hm, and you find out that you were Apache. >> Chalker, or at least partially, you're the son of the doctor. >> Yes. >> You're half-whiting. >> The doctor got it off with one of his patients. >> Yeah, I'm hot. >> I'm hot. >> In the meantime, there's the assault on the fort, man. >> In the meantime, the assault on the fort was stupid. >> It was stupid. >> It was throwing the dynamite part was kind of annoying. >> Yeah, well, first of all, you started in a completely different costume because Colton decided that it would be an awesome idea to go out and pants, and that's it. >> Well, I think maybe the idea was that I'm going to defend it for a second, which was maybe that if he dressed similar, he wouldn't stand out quite so bad and be an obvious target. So he was basically an Indian uniform role with the Indians. >> It's not short-haired Indian doing down there. >> I'm just saying, less noticeable than some dude rolling around with the hat and everything. He'd just be like, "That guy needs to die." He's obviously some hero class. >> I did find it extremely strange that once you took the fort, suddenly you're back into your regular outfit again, because I like the different costumes and stuff. >> Yeah, Colton does a lot of outfit changing in this game. >> Yeah, that's really cool. That's all I thought of. >> They just give you the option once the game is finished to change costumes. >> Not that I'm aware of. >> I couldn't find anything like that. >> I'd be rad because I thought his Rebel outfit was the coolest thing. >> You want to take the red stripe down the navy pants? >> Yeah. >> That was a cool one. >> His Han Solo pants? >> Yeah, yeah, yeah. I actually used to remind me that they did this girl in high school. Her father was a postman, and she gave me some of his mailman pants. I knew it was cool, it's a fucking pants man, but I gave him away. Shame. >> Why were they just because of this stripe? >> Even the material they're made with, it's like this really weird polyester, but I don't know exactly sure what the material is, but they were really light and cool. >> Send us some postman pants. >> Massive material. >> There were actually several occasions where I would have postal workers come up to me in public and say, "Oh, you're not supposed to be wearing that. Where'd you get this?" >> From the last postal worker who asked me that question. [Laughter] >> That's what I was just saying. >> They would be like, because you're not supposed to just wear it as a casual sort of thing. >> Well, apparently, their employees aren't supposed to give it to thrift stores or anything like that. >> Postal pants mean business. >> You're like, "Well, I would take them off and turn them into you right now, but I'm assuming you don't want me standing here." >> You're telling me to buy them. >> Yeah, I didn't get these from a postal worker. I made them from a postal worker. >> [Laughter] >> Yeah. >> All right, after the Indian confrontation of the clearing, you have to make it to canoes, which I feel like I got lost trying to find that, because the other Indians ride off, and for some reason I thought I had to go the other way. I don't know if this rings a bell. >> No, I had no trouble just jumping in my canoe and going. >> I was the dyslexic Colton for this particular gaming session. >> [Laughter] >> So you ride off, you have to get to the canoes before they get destroyed, and then you storm the fort with the cannon. >> I just realized I've been eating chips right in front of my microphone for like the last five minutes, so my apologies. >> So yes, so you storm the-- it's okay. So you storm the fort. >> With the cannon. >> Well, not with the cannon. You storm the fort and you take over cannons in the fort. >> Yes. >> And then shoot them at-- >> And so bonkers or at boats. >> And stationary cannons, fine. >> Right. >> Cannon's on shitty rail cars. >> No. >> Not fine. >> Not fine. >> But you find that out later. >> Yeah, you find that out later. >> You do. >> Over and over and over again. >> And so this is another part in this game where it establishes that cannons have a large area of effect and cost stuff to blow up. >> Right. Which is totally shit on and ignored later. >> Right. >> So you get through the-- I mean, not a lot happens at the fort. You're just going through the same spot. And Jabra walkie ding dong. What are you doing on your iPhone? >> Sorry, as a side story real quick, I got this email the other day from Miss Vera and it was like-- >> I saw your email address and I just wanted to let you know that I think I fall in love with you. >> And so then I just sent her back like keyboard slams. I just slammed the keyboard and hit send. And then I got another picture today with-- I got another email today about-- >> I'm so happy that you responded to me, my love. Here's my picture. >> And it's like-- >> So I don't know, sorry. >> Is she hot? >> Don't open it. >> I just want like-- >> Who's your cook? >> Who is that? >> I don't know. >> I think it's-- >> Tyler's really interested now. >> I think it's just a spam bot, but it's just funny that-- >> Whoa, really? >> Yeah, it's just funny that I got a response when I just did keyboard slams. >> Wow. >> So anyway, sorry, I just-- >> You just broke a lot of lonely guys' hearts on the internet. >> My shit just vibrated. And so I was like, "What is it?" "Oh, it's an email from my friend Vera." So-- >> Reprocon. >> Yeah. >> Not a lot happens in the fort. >> No, I mean, you just-- >> It takes a while. >> You fight a bunch of guys, you use cannons, you fight a gaddling gun. And then when you did this part, you did it wrong. Like after you killed the guy in the gaddling gun, you just quick draw it and shot everyone, but the gaddling gun actually rotates all the way around. >> Oh, yeah. >> And so you could have killed them all that way. >> That was sort of my approach to everything, was fire, fire, fire. Okay, run in, quick draw, murder seven people. >> Right. >> Get behind cover, use my rifle some more. >> Right. >> Yeah. >> Which later. >> And especially, after you get your dad's rifle right before this, don't you, or is it-- >> Ugh. >> When do you get your dad's rifle? 'Cause that kind of-- >> After killing the lead. >> When you can see the boss. >> Yeah, after you kill Reed, yeah. >> Yeah. >> Which is a very fabulous rifle. >> That rifle rules. That's pretty much what I used almost exclusively for the rest of the day. >> It looks like a rifle that Johnny Cash would appear at the moment. >> It is single shot, but it really looks super fast. >> Yeah, yeah. >> And it does ridiculous amount of damage. >> Yup. >> Wait, is Reed the priest? >> Yes. >> Which is-- >> You don't get to do your rifle from the priest. You get your rifle from that really tall looking-- your father's rifle from that tall looking, undead looking guy. >> From Duchy? >> From the really tall guy. >> That's Duchy. >> In the Confederate outfit. >> Oh, Hollister. >> The zombie looking guy. >> Hollister. >> Oh, yeah? >> He has the rifle. >> Really? >> He has your father's rifle. >> Oh, okay. Crazy. Anyway. >> That would explain-- >> Oh, yeah, you're right, because that guy is a fucking asshole that kills you super quickly. >> Yeah, yeah. He was one of the harder-- >> When was the Hollister fights? >> It's right after you tech fort. >> Yeah, it's right after the fort. >> There's like no pre-there. >> You leave on a raft and you're there with many wounds, I think, again. >> Yeah. >> And-- >> Many wounds and soapy. >> Yeah, and all of a sudden dynamite falls and blows everyone in different directions. >> Right. >> And you're on an island that is laid out exactly like every other boss fight for the rest of the game, basically. >> Well, all-- >> Which is like circular area, a bunch of rocks in the middle, run away and try to hit them when they can't see you. >> Right. >> I feel like there's a better trick to killing him, in particular, but I don't remember what it was. >> I-- >> I ended up just having the gun in my bunch, but I know that there's a better way to do it. Like something when he throws the dynamite or something, you can quick-draw it. >> So yeah, I tried that and it didn't do anything. >> I know, I couldn't figure it out either, but I'm almost positive. There is a trick to beating him. >> My big problem was running away from Hollister down to the beach and thinking, "Oh, okay, well, I'll hide on the other side of this boat." And he would shoot me through it, and then I saw him walk through it. So I was being chased by the ghost of Hollister for a while there. >> Yeah, and who's there hiding by your boat? It's like-- >> Soapy in many wounds. >> Soapy in many wounds. >> If you lead him to them, he'll just kill them. All right, and it's a big game. >> If he can't see you, if he can see you, he beads in on you, just like everyone else in the game. >> All right. >> If you're around, you are a target. >> Yep. >> Is that-- I mean, I had Indian food, which you're excused. >> Yeah, do you have issues today, Anthony? >> Was it the curry? >> Is it our presence? >> I pass a lot of gas, guys. >> So, I mean... >> How did you take on how-- did you do anything special against Hollister? Did you just-- >> No, I just dumped all my ammo into him. >> I quick-drought, and then I'd run around, throw dynamite, and then after that, it was just, yeah, using my rifle, and just, like, waiting so I could see his head just barely come around the corner and be like, boom, run it. >> I think that's how I did the whole thing. >> Yeah, I just did a whole bunch of stick and move around, cover, and just eventually warm down. >> Pretty uneventful, pretty boring, actually, and so things. >> Yeah, this is, again, unlike the Houdou fight, which was very hectic and active, but it didn't-- >> Well, but Houdou, you didn't really fight Houdou himself. >> Well, you did at the top, but, I mean, even before that-- >> No, even at the top, you just quick-drawned to kill him. I mean, they just made him-- they didn't make him make boss as much as his gang and taking him down. >> Or Rudeba, fighting Rudeba on what's his name earlier. It felt like it was an active boss fight where you were doing a lot, as opposed to this arbitrary slog through, and that's what Hollister felt like. >> Yeah, I think that was almost my favorite boss encounter. It was because you had the one guy on foot, and then the other guy on, you know, horseback. It was just, and a lot of cover to mess around with. >> And someone wrote in the comments, actually, to remind me that Rudeba was actually Arkansas, Dave Rudeba on the Young Guns movies. It was Christian Slater's character. >> Really? >> So now, every time I think of Rudeba, I think of Christian Slater, I want to shoot him. >> Awesome. >> Pump up the volume, pump up the jam. >> Oh, damn. That's an excellent Christian Slater reference to. >> That's the-- >> I never would have got that. >> Really? >> No. >> So-- >> Kind of ground radio. >> You hit Hollister a bunch with the gun. >> Yes, and you kill him. >> Whatever, and you almost kill him. But first, he runs around the corner. >> Did you have an melee range of him? >> Yes, I got an melee range of every boss. >> Yeah. >> Like an all-time reservation. >> Uh-huh. >> I don't know. I just lost my fucking mind every time. I'm like, oh, no, not to this guy. I can cut everybody else to pieces like nothing. And get butchered in like a single hit. >> Yep. >> So, yeah, so you're right. You take him down almost, and then he runs behind a rock, and then he lights some dynamite. >> He stuffs a bunch of dynamite in every pocket. >> That part's so fucking ridiculous. >> And then all he does is run away. Like, you don't even have to shoot him, you just run. And then he's just like, nah. >> And then he explodes, and his parts fly at you, because that is the direction that he was going. I got hit by his torso. >> Yeah, that would probably kill you, man. Some fucking bone spears. >> Yeah. >> Ribs trapped now. >> Dude, damage you in his torso hit you? >> No, not physically. Maybe a little emotional. >> I tried to shoot the dynamite that was on him. >> Right, but it doesn't even matter. You just have to wait for the title. >> So, you thought he was stuffing the dynamite in his clothes? I had the impression that he was like stuffing it in the bullet holes in like his bullet wounds. >> How fucking huge are those bullet holes after the game? >> I mean, you're shooting a pretty high caliber pistol there. But he's still running around. >> When he did shoot him like 120 times. >> Exactly, I mean, he is obviously a pretty hardcore. >> Well, he really wasn't-- >> What a fucking bear head strapped to his back wasn't an indication that he was quite hardcore. >> I'm just saying, maybe he's doing a lot of drugs to make him don't feel it. Make him don't feel it. >> He's a peyote in "Lodnam Fiend." >> He's in the right place for him. So, yeah, Hollister does have Ned's fabulous rifle with rhinestones. Or maybe it's like an Elvis rifle or something. I just don't understand. It's got like fringes on it and rhinestones. >> It's just beads and leather, like cut leather. >> Like rhinestones. >> It's a pretty common thing amongst its evil that participate in Rondezvous's. >> It's just like-- >> Blinged out in the Old West. >> What you would take to the Grand Ole Opry. >> After killing-- >> When I was a kid-- >> I have no idea that this is true, but when I was a kid living in Idaho, that the reason why all of those, you know, the fringes were decorative, but the leather fringes also had a purpose in that like, if you were out and you were really, really hungry or whatever, you like pull off one of the little fringes and you chew on it to like-- >> That's true. It probably makes you not think about being hungry. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> Which actually, I don't know if that's true, because I've read about psychological studies with gum and that the action of your jaw moving actually makes you-- >> Actually, we chew on more hungry. >> More hungry. >> Yeah. >> So like, you know, people who chew up a tight-- who chew gum to try and stem their appetite might be making it worse. >> But if I was some guy living up in the mountains and my paw told me that chewing leather makes me now hungry, I might believe it enough that then I didn't get hungry. >> Right. >> Well, if you chew it enough, you might actually be eating it. >> Yeah. >> I have no idea. I'm not prepared to make any statements-- >> Make a statement. >> --after the gravity incident on Rebel FM. >> Make a statement. Make a statement and stick back. >> No, I don't want Smarmy emails from British guys that impue in the quality of the American education system based on my 10-year-old remembrance of physics. [LAUGHTER] >> Yeah. >> And that implies that I probably believe in creationism, because that's what they teach over here. >> Yeah. >> What? What's wrong with that? >> This podcast is done. [LAUGHTER] >> I'm done here. >> Wait, the Earth's the center of the universe, right? >> Yes. >> Oh, yeah. >> No, Anthony is the center of the universe. >> All right, and I am the Earth. [LAUGHTER] >> I don't have anything nice to say. >> I'd say so. You kill Hollister, and then immediately-- >> I'm glad someone else said so. >> I know. >> You kill Hollister. >> I get some purpose though. >> And you ride to the Steamboat, which is conveniently close, and then there's another boss fight. >> Exactly. >> Yeah. >> I know. >> He goes right straight through it, yeah, every single time. >> It seems, Matt, soapy must be some kind of safe-cracking wonder kind, because he opens that shit like that. >> Yep. >> And no one else-- they haven't been able to open that safe for weeks. >> Yeah, but I would die to mine or die in the days. >> They were probably only so many safe manufacturers, so wait, sorry, that was a little loud. So once you had, like, safe-cracking down, I can't imagine that it would be too hard, like once you understood it, I don't know. I can't imagine the safe for that diversified back then. >> It almost looks like he just turns the dial once. It's like he's hacking the safe. >> Are you, like, trying to punctuate Arthur's sentences now, Anthony? >> Yes. It's sort of like those people that can belch the alphabet, you know, only Anthony does it with the other anything. >> We went out to eat, and my food's just catching up with me in a bad way. >> Whereas mine is just gurgling in my stomach and slipping fire up. >> Waiting for a more appropriate time, where it won't be immortalized upon the internets for all of creation. >> Yeah, unfortunately, neither Garagebend nor Audacity has a fart filter. >> Unfortunately, my ass. >> Exactly. >> So, yeah, so you then, you know, you're fighting Reed. Reed is a bitch because he rides around the horse, and if you try and get on a horse, he murders it in, like, two seconds. >> He does, yeah. >> He is a horse murderer. >> And they put the horse there right next to you, like, you're supposed to be fighting. >> Well, it does give you, in a way, it gives you, like, four horses. >> In a way, though, riding a horse does kind of give you a fake health bar, like it adds another health bar, like, it takes a shot for you. >> Yeah, in a way, and it's just to hang on to my first horse through the whole fight. >> See, I want to know how you did that, for me, what happened is Reed was running, and Arthur's right, like, if he gets out of your sight, he'll start to regenerate, because he has his own whiskey bottle. >> Does he? >> That's what he read in the fact. But, so, but with me, it then ever happened, because he rode in a circle, and then went to ride in between two rocks and got stuck on one. And then, after that, I was just like, I went super far with my sharpshooter, and just shot him in the head till he died. So, he bugged out. >> Whereas, I spent more time on Reed than any other part in the game. >> Wow. >> And I was ready to destroy something. >> Yeah, Arthur did rage quit for a while. >> I did have problems with Reed initially, but I didn't actually die on him at all. It was just that, like, he kept shooting me, and I kept, like, almost, I don't know what the hell am I supposed to get this guy. And I remember, like, peeking around, like, doing the peek in and out of cover a lot, and firing at him. And then, when he tried to run away, like, I would chase him. And I don't remember his health coming back. Maybe it didn't, I just didn't notice. >> Yeah, if you keep him in your eyesight, it doesn't happen. If he gets out of your eyesight, he doesn't. >> And I did chase him on a horse at one point, but I think my horse died pretty quick, so I didn't do it again. >> Which is funny, because he has an indestructible horse. >> He is riding the Trojan horse, apparently, because you cannot kill it. >> He's got, like, three spots that he stopped that he would stop at, it seems like. And when he would go up onto the hill, did he ever help him there? >> Yeah, yeah. >> Where there's the grassy area. >> Mm-hm. >> Like, when he was up there, that's whenever I would regenerate my horse's health. I would just hide by the bank. >> See, and him being hidden, he didn't tick his health up. I never noticed it, and so he does. >> There was no way you couldn't, because with Arthur, his health would literally tick up from half to full in less than 10 seconds. >> Wow. >> It was incredible. Like, if Arthur left him for long enough, it was just like, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. >> And in fact, the only time he really could ever even shoot me, you know, hit me with any shots, was when I would pursue him on the higher area. >> I think Arthur's game was also bugged. But bugged in like the, he has perfect aim, and faster Jen. >> Well, Reid was a Terminator, is what you're saying? >> No, actually, I think Reid was a leprechaun. >> Oh, yeah, clearly. >> Clearly. >> He had the luck of the Irish with his bullets, and he regenerated. >> Yeah, he also had the power of the Irish as well. >> So, anyways, so Reid's a bitch. >> I had no problem. >> I had no problem. >> Yeah, I only beat Reid once he stopped, or he stopped and just stopped moving, he bugged. >> See, I remember when I played it originally on Xbox years ago, I didn't have a problem beating him either. So, I feel like you had some sort of reverse bug, where it was like. >> The worst part is that no one would, everyone would think I was a giant vagina who sucked at games, if not for the fact that you watched me do this. >> It's true. >> Are you saying that women are bad at games? >> Yes. >> I think you are. >> That is precisely what I'm saying. >> Just like yesterday, when you told me that also Mexicans and Asians are bad at games. >> I think he's just saying. >> Look, I didn't say that. All I'm saying is that gaming skill resides in the prostate. That's all I'm saying. No, you would think I sucked at games, if not for the fact that you witnessed his health increasing. Every complaint I have about that boss battle sounds like what a 10 year old would say playing Call of Duty 4 gets people that are good. He fucking hits me with every shot. His health generates, that's bullshit. >> Well, that's one of the things with this game is that it's just buggy enough that you can never quite tell if the frustration you're experiencing is due to a bug or if it's due to bad gameplay design. >> That's just kind of a bummer because it colors your experience of the whole game. This is another instance where they break the gameplay conventions as well because his every other enemy you see with a horse, if you shoot the horse, they die and that is a way to get the fight over faster. >> Yeah, get them off their horse, but this guy you just can't. >> Exactly. And that is extremely frustrating. >> I mean, the least they could have done was like skin some armor on the horse. I mean, even though as ridiculous as that is, but I mean, because the final boss fight, you can't really hit him. >> Yeah, at least he's got a fucking chest piece on. >> Yeah, shooting him in his head just pisses him off, which I thought was interesting. >> Well, I mean, God, getting shot in the face only took out one eye. >> That's true. >> All right, and actually we skipped a part because between defeating Hollister and making it to the Steamboat, there is the ride through Indian territory, finding the Indian camp. >> Yeah. >> Finding out, finding the skinned bodies. >> That's right. And he's like, I guess we should leave them so they don't make it us. >> We should come down. Do you want to be the next warning? So yeah, that's the time. It's not in between those two boss battles. >> Yeah, it is. >> It's after both of those boss battles. >> I am reading a walkthrough right now. >> I don't think the walkthrough is correct. >> Yeah, I thought it was after those and it's right before you go fight Magruder. >> Yeah, because you go and you find soapy again next to the skinned bodies just before you go and find Magruder. So whatever walkthrough you're reading, get that out of order. >> Magruder! Magruder! >> You're actually right, I'm just retarded, which is another word I'm not supposed to say. >> I'm sexist racist, don't like people with mental disabilities. >> Yeah, I can't play games. >> To be here, we did have a person right to us and say that he liked us a lot, but he found it personally offensive when we say the word retarded. >> I had a roommate in college who had a mentally disabled brother. >> No, and this person had autism and they kind of get a little offended by me. >> She broke me that shit for years. >> I apologize. >> She moved away. >> I actually, I never knew this and I feel like an ignoramus for not knowing it. But apparently, like I found out that handicapped is a bad word, which I'd kind of heard of in the past that handicapped was kind of a bad word, but I didn't really know why. >> They prefer handicapable. >> Yeah, and my girlfriend, she was telling me, he's like, I said handicapped at one point, and I said, oh, well, you know, oh, don't park there, that's handicapped parking. She said, don't say handicapped, I'm like, what, why not? And she said, well, because it has a bad connotation. Okay, how come? Apparently, it was the way that she told me was that it was because disabled people in the past would have to beg, so they would have their hand in their cap. >> That's where that comes from? >> Yeah, handicapped. >> Jesus Christ. >> Yeah, that's what she told me. So I'm like, wow, I better start using disabled. >> So how did that find its way into like sports, like, you know, the boxer handicaps or, you know? >> Yeah, I guess it's, it's just one of those things, you know, I guess it just became popular, like, a word it got co-opted. >> Yeah, I guess so. So after we, so now you're right. So now that we've killed Reed, now we have the part with the bodies. >> Right. >> And now it's kind of like, this is your opportunity to go do side missions. >> Your last opportunity to do side missions before the game. >> I didn't. I jumped in and was like, let's go get Magruder. >> Right. >> And you do that part where you, you now take the pieces of the cross up to the top of the mountain, and you're like, I only quite half understood. You read some fucking Latin, and you're like, all right, I put the shit here and here, and now I know where the city of gold is. >> There was some real Indiana Jones shit, yeah. >> I had actually wandered up to that same ledge before all this, you know? >> Oh, where the Apache camp is? >> Yeah, yeah, and I remember looking down at that little part of the rock where there's, you can tell there's a texture there that looks like it's supposed to be some kind of engraving, and I was like, I bet I will return here. >> Right. >> Some kind of story. >> After the whole scene where you find out where you're from, which is that, as we said before, you're the doctor's son and the son of a hot Indian church. >> And that's weird. >> And you get raised. >> I didn't get from that scene that you were the doctor's son. I thought you were just-- >> You were a cracker. >> Well, that's the thing is that you're, that's the thing is that you're, is that you are-- >> No, you're racist against white people. >> You're the tastiest Indian baby that ever was. >> Exactly, you're honest. >> Well, that's what that was. >> You're obviously a mixed, a mixed, like of mixed hair. >> That's what I thought too, but I was like, okay, maybe he's just an unusually cracker looking Indian. >> So that's the thing is I think that's why I think that it's implied because you see the lady in there and it's kind of implied that she has a relationship with the doctor and that your young Indians like here raised this boy. >> Yeah, and I mostly just like lost over that when I was watching it. >> Do you remember the name of the Indian with the cross tattooed on his back? >> I mean, that's many wounds, isn't it? >> No, it's not. >> No, it's, I'm not gonna be able to remember. >> Balls. >> I thought it was many wounds. >> No. >> Crossback, what was it called? >> Yeah, it's called crossback. >> Crossback took you out of the house when she, right before she hit the fan. >> Right, and the crossback's also the one that kills the people in the beginning, I think, the very beginning. >> And at the end, the trailer beginning. >> But no, no, no, that's a long, long time before that. The conquistadors were in like the 15th and 16th century. >> I guess that's true, so I guess you're descendant of that guy. >> Crossback. >> The secret gold mine. >> Crossback says you're like his brother or whatever, so I'm wondering what they mean in the- >> His father and your father were, quote, unquote, brothers in the sense that they were very close and- >> So my guess is crossback's dad's probably the guy that gets shot in the head, just like out of nowhere by- >> Right, right. >> You know, and him and the doctor roll it. >> Right, right. >> Okay, so from now on, no one says Magruder, they say, Magruder! >> Give me some level, though. >> I thought we had that covered already. We were already saying Magruder. >> Well, no, we keep saying Magruder. Magruder! Like, there's some kind of like hardcore 80s rock echo in there. >> Dude, I want a hardcore 80s rock echo following me around, that'd be awesome. >> You really did. >> You know what, if Jason and Cesar hear that shit, they will totally do it all week at E3 and you will hate life. >> I hate life! >> In fact, that is going on Twitter as a dare to Jason and Cesar. I already want to kill him. >> Do you want a pear, Tyler? >> A pear, sure. >> I want a pear! Tyler! >> That part after you see that cinema where you're on top of the legend, it says go talk to Crossback. >> Right. >> I feel like an asshole saying that. I just can't remember his name. >> I had a really hard time figuring out how to get down for some reason. >> I was going to say, you spot right there. >> I was like, am I supposed to jump off? >> Yeah, I base jumped down there. I was like, okay, so there's a ledge right there. I can land on that. Okay, that hurt, but I'm still alive. Then there's another ledge. >> Right, and then I finally found out, and then like, I died the first time I jumped off, and I was running around, running around, and then finally I see the little path that sprouts down. >> It's because the way that the camera is, when you walk over there, you can't even see that it's actually a path. >> It looks like a ledge. You can't see the path in front of you. I was like, well, I still felt like an idiot. Even though it's kind of, I can, I guess, blame it on the position of the camera in the level design. >> I think at any point where we say bad level design is just us feeling stupid and wanting to play never-soffed. >> I'm jumping. I'm going to a giant. >> That's not actually true. There are parts where I feel that there was some not so hot level design, but in that case, that could easily just be me thinking, okay, let's do this and missing it. Except, do you even need to do those parts where you walk to point A or point B to activate missions? Because I totally went to the map at one point, and it said, there's a mission here, and I selected it and hit A, and it just started the mission. >> Really? >> Yes. >> I never did that. >> Yeah, I never noticed. >> I don't know. You should ask the never-soff guys because I don't know. >> That would have saved me a whole lot of running around. >> Those would have been fast travel. >> Yeah. >> Yeah, another way that this game could have been ahead of its time. >> So now it's time to kill McGurk McGurk. >> Well, first you have to find the gold, which is when you go up to the mountaintop, and you put the cross on the thing. >> And then you get shot at by McGurk. >> You got shot at by Duchy. >> Who rolls with McGurk? >> Exactly. God damn it. That was the dumbest idea of it. >> There's no way around it. >> No, and now it's just going to be that way forever. Duchy fires a cannonball at you on the ledge. >> That's a terrific fucking aim. >> Yeah, no kidding. Not only that, but he has magic cannonballs unlike everything you have for the rest of the game, and it totally takes off the mountaintop. Soapy can really take a hit. >> Yeah, he can. >> Like he skids face first down the side of the mountain. >> And then later on they shoot off his fingers, and he's crawling away. >> That whole part is pretty hardcore. I don't know if the cinema at that point is real time, but after he shot off the finger the second time, it definitely flipped back to where the fingertip was resting on top of his hand for me. >> For some reason that stuck out is especially brutal. >> I didn't see that actually happen. What I noticed when they shot off the second finger was the blood spray was like this single kind of curved polygon coming out of his hand and repeated. It kind of looked like shooting rainbows. >> Yeah. [laughter] >> A job that you wore is coming from his hand. >> Yeah. It was really funny looking. But I got what they were going for, so I appreciated it. >> Yeah. They were just out to kill McGrew because they wanted to drink his blood for a generation. That's the true city of gold. It's fucking under the ability to get regeneration for yourself. >> Yeah, I do admire this game. They decided right off that they were going to be balls out hardcore, and they held it up through the end of the game. >> It is extremely unflinching right through the part where you kill Reed instead of letting Reed live as a commenter pointed out where someone said I really like that instead of walking away and letting him live and having Reed pull out a gun and then Colton turning around and killing him. >> He's like, no, you're fucking dead. >> This is Ned's gun in your mouth. Remember the prostitute who you turned into a peds dispenser? >> Yeah, then they show the blood spray out of your face. >> Yeah. And it's when you realize Colton's not screwing around. >> Yeah, compared to the other 250 people, you've probably killed him. >> I think that's a conservative estimate. >> Yeah. If Colton was based off a historical figure, that historical figure would have had to have been a mass murderer. >> The Saint of Killers. >> Yeah, it was like he then took down the population of Wyoming while the human population. >> That's why Wyoming doesn't exist anymore because Colton made his way through. >> That's where all the leprechauns were. >> He was going to say you carved a path for the leprechauns to take over, who emerged from Utah. >> I actually think that leprechauns went extinct after Colton invaded their home way. Now I'm making leprechauns. >> Leprechauns actually were originally living in the souls of Buffalo's. So when all the Buffalo's were killed, that's where the leprechauns came from. >> Thanks to Colton. >> They moved from the American Midwest to fucking Ireland. >> We like it cooler. >> Anyways, and potatoes. >> I'm just saying it would make sense that leprechauns were in that area if they had that fucking city of gold, by the amount of gold there was at the end. That was clearly a leprechaun stronghold at one point. >> Clearly. >> Anyways. >> A very gassy leprechaun stronghold. >> And it wasn't that that wasn't like that. >> Soapy gets fingers blown off and like a punk bitch caves and tells- >> Make up punk bitch, huh? >> Tells Magruder. >> But if I had where the gold is- >> If I had my fingers shut off, I don't know, man. How long is it going to take before you gave? That's business. >> They wouldn't even get their first finger. >> Yeah. >> They would put a gun to my hand. >> Put your hand up. Oh, it's over there. >> I'd be all Colton will take care of it. >> I can just imagine another scene unfolds. I'm not telling you shit, and then they pull up again. I say it's over there. >> Yeah. >> Maybe I'll shoot a toe, please. A toe. Then I can at least look like I held out for a bit. >> You don't like the security guard that's in on the heist? Make it look real. >> Right. >> So- >> So, soapy bamps like fucking Nightcrawler out of that office as soon as they're turned- >> That was awesome. >> Man, he's fast with no fingers. >> Those are just weighing him down. >> That man moment. >> Yeah, soapy escapes. >> It meets up with you. >> It will. >> Soapy drags his ass on to the train tracks. >> Right. >> You find him. Is that after you fight your way down? >> Did you guys read that as a suicide attempt? >> No, I think it's just- >> I don't think so. >> I mean, what's the same fact you're going to do with that, his fingers, right? >> Right. >> He's got another hand. >> He sold out his friends. >> You don't find soapy before having to fight a shit ton of former Confederate soldiers on the top of the mountain, which is where you first face them and you realize these guys aren't the punk bitches. >> No. >> That the other guys you fought- >> They didn't have to kill them because that's when you get your dynamite bow and arrow too. >> Well, also- >> And they're just like- >> There's just TNT barrels everywhere. >> That's what I'm saying. I mean, you're just raining down fiery destruction on that. >> But that's the first time that you meet regular enemies that you also can't melee like crazy, because they pull out giant ass swords and fucking butcher you too. >> Mm-hm. >> Yep. >> That's okay. I had stopped meleeing people by this point because I was getting so good with the guns. >> I never meleeed people. >> It was easy just to stand in one spot and go bang, bang, bang, bang, and everybody's dead. >> Well, this is another part where previously my skills and strategies for the game became less useful because these guys took up so many more bullets. >> Or because your strategies were bad. >> Well, how did they take up- >> That's like- >> Well, maybe it's because I'd done all the side missions in the past. These guys died in- >> That's true, your gun hand and everything was like maxed. >> Yeah, I don't know how, like I still never really looked at any of my stats. Was there a way to actually look at all of your stats? >> I think there was, so what talked about having a kill count like that they knew exactly how many people- >> Yeah, a lot of shots in the menu. >> Okay, well, I never actually looked at my stats, so I don't know how high my gun hand was or anything. But my stats must have been high enough that these guys weren't a problem. I just went in the quick draw and they took two shots of the chest max, of course, or one shot to the head. They were just like any other enemy to me, they were just more dangerous with their guns. >> Yeah, I mean, I guess that that would be the difference because I didn't have time to do as many stats- >> I mean, when you die and stuff, it does tell you maybe you should do some side missions to work up your stats. >> Maybe you should let me do some side missions, god damn it. >> They're throwing the whole end of the game at me all on it. >> Yeah, they do, they just lob that last third at you without really giving you a breather. >> I think they kind of had to, just because of the way the story plays out. It's kind of- >> It always felt like at the end of GTA 4, there wasn't near as much tension there because after every single mission, I could go and fuck around for two years before I went and continued on the story. And then everybody else acted like it was yesterday that I last saw them. >> Yeah. >> Right. And I think in gun, they didn't want to do that for that last third of the game. They wanted to have it all play out all at once so that you got the whole ending experience. And maybe that's just a problem with these open world designs that nobody's really figured out how to solve cleanly yet, is to provide that satisfying straight through experience like you would expect from a movie ending climactic sequence while still allowing you the freedom to go and do what you want to do. >> Yeah. >> Yeah, I mean, that makes sense. There's definitely problems to having a succinct movie-like story with giant gaps in between plot points, and that's something that is avoided by playing through it in quick succession. But when grinding becomes something that really helps later in the game, if you don't get it in early and you can't do it later, it's kind of- >> Yeah. They do tell you a couple of times to go do it, but they don't warn you that the end of the game is going to be way harder if you don't. I mean, I guess the kind of do, they imply it by saying, you're going to need this for the end of the game. So I take back what I just said, but they don't like, maybe if they were like, okay, your stats are not high enough, the rest of the game will be very difficult unless you go and do some side missions to get your stats up. Because I did notice at the end of the game too that I think probably because my quick draw and my stats were up, like if I got two headshots in the row, my bar was full again. >> Oh, well. >> Like instantly, it just wasn't a problem. >> How many side missions did you do? Jesus Christ. >> I did a lot of side missions. I did pretty much everything up until, like I exhausted all the side missions until I had gone and done and killed like, you know, Reed and Hollister. >> Where it tells you that you've unlocked more missions? >> And then unlocked some more side missions, and I didn't do those. >> Man, you're that guy. >> I'm that guy, that was that guy when I played. >> Dude, he actually got gun for Christmas and had no game for three months. >> Right. >> Three months later. But yeah, that's where you're introduced to the Confederate soldiers who are more challenging. >> Yeah, I mean, with the conveniently placed barrels in your brand new dynamite bow. Like, even when they're all lined up around a corner from me, I would just pull the draw my bow and then I would jump shoot over the wall. >> Right. >> Jump shoot. >> And then that would be it. >> I think I was using it to use arrows too. >> I was hesitant to use the bow because it's so rare that you find arrows in that game. >> Yeah, but it gave you a lot of things in the game. >> Man, they gave them to you right there, yeah. >> Yeah. This was the first point in the game where I started manipulating the environment before battles where I would take TNT barrels and say, "They're probably gonna be guys that come from there, so I'm gonna put that here and shoot it." >> No, nice. I never actually did that. I just figured if there was a TNT barrel somewhere, then I was waiting for somebody to run by it. >> Exactly. >> The only problem is that the barrel, the button that throws barrels that you're holding is the same button that throws Molotov cocktails or dynamite. >> Right. >> So I-- >> When you mash it and then you throw one right off the other? >> No, it means that I would throw dynamite instead of picking up the barrel first and then throwing it off. >> Oh, yeah. See, on the keyboard, it's F to pick up via the throw. >> Yeah, it is. It's why 360, it's Y to pick up and L to throw, but I would just forget to pick it up. >> See him. Once again, bad tactics. >> Exactly. >> Are you done with that? >> Yeah. >> All right. >> Yeah, you make your way down towards the train tracks fine soapy and then you save him before the oncoming train with Duchy and the cannon. >> It's loaded with a bunch of people and I don't know. I found the bullet sponginess of Duchy to be the most annoying. >> I killed him so easy. All I did is like went to one part of the train and it edged out and then his head was exposed and then I just had shot him until he died. He couldn't even shoot back. >> I went up onto the rock, the ledge area where you come down originally from. I went up to that and just sniped people with rifles and sniper rifles. >> Nice. That's exciting. >> Mm-hmm. >> Boy, it was exciting shooting the guys on horseback with the dynamite bow and seeing it sink into their horse's flank and then them right off and hear an explosion from the other surround speaker. >> And you'd hear the chiching for an expensive kill. >> I didn't actually use the dynamite bow at all in this section even though I knew I was supposed to. Like just because it would take longer to shoot, I thought it was going to take longer to shoot the bow. When I actually figured out how awesome the dynamite bow was, was after I, because I used it like near the end of the game, but after I beat the game, I did a couple more missions and I got a bandit attack and these guys attack down horse and I had my bow out and you stick them with an arrow and it's like sticking in their side and then you just go boom and they explode but the horse is still okay. I thought that was pretty cool. >> I just had to pick pieces of the bandit off the horse. >> Right. >> So now let's get to the annoying ending. >> Yep. >> No, we still have the whole cannon. >> That's something, the annoying ending. >> Fucking train car sequence. >> This is all part of the ending. >> So this is Clay makes a new unappearance again. >> Right, Clay and the Apache's working together to attack the mine. >> Which is heartwarming. >> Yeah, that was pretty cool. I like the fact that that was going on around you, but then when you get on to the cannon and you're actually using the cannon, this is the worst fucking cannon in the world. >> Yeah. >> It's like, unless I get a headshot on somebody with a fucking cannon ball, it doesn't kill them. There's like this giant explosion, all this smoke everywhere, like dust and flying around these guys, and they're like, oh, something like that. >> I literally watched guys take cannon shots and it's like I threw a medicine ball at them or something. >> Yeah. >> And so they'd stop and like, look fucked up a little bit, then they'd resume shooting death in me. >> Right, yeah, I guess maybe they were, it just wasn't designed necessarily, especially well, like maybe they were having a hard time figuring out how to balance it with making it like where you weren't just on the God gun, like rolling through it. >> But I think that would have been fine. I think it's really tempting probably to design an ending that's more challenging to the rest of the game, but in my experiences anyway, maybe just because I'm getting old and I don't want to have to fuck around with things anymore, it's, I like it better when I am a God at the end of the game, and where I put me on the God gun, let me mow through all these guys, let me destroy the cave around me as I'm firing at them. And then it seemed that they were so intent on a particular game design idea, like, okay, we're going to have it so that they're on this cannon, and when they come to it's switching the tracks, we're going to make it so they have to get off to switch the tracks, which they can't kill the guys beforehand with the cannon because the cannon's just going to fucking suck, because if we make it happen, it'll be too easy to get off and switch, you know, or whatever, there won't be any tension. Anyway, I think they were married to a particular sequence of events, and then they stuck with it, and they modified things that they shouldn't have modified in order to make it fit this kind of vision, instead of realizing that the experience could have just stood on its own. >> And the checkpointing at the whole part is both. >> It's true. It's very few and far between. If you do die, it's like, I figured out, I'm pretty sure this is the way that it works, is that any time that there was a switch that you had to switch, that was the checkpoint. >> That is not true. Really? That's the first checkpoint in that, when you get into the mind itself, there's a checkpoint at the very beginning at the first switch, and then the next checkpoint is right before the turntable. >> Oh, okay. Which is a long way away. >> Right. >> I definitely took to getting off of the little mine cart and just going ahead and murdering everything. >> Yeah, I was going to say, I didn't even ride it, other than the first group of Gatling guns that you have to use the cart to take out. >> Oh, no, inside the mine? >> No, before you're inside. >> Okay, yeah, that's different. >> Outside of the mine, I never got off the cat. >> Yeah, me either. >> I had to, because outside the mine, you know how you're shooting those barn doors to go inside the mine? >> Yes. >> I was dying every time from the guys on the cliffs. Like there's three Confederate soldiers up there, actually, and their rifles at you. And I swear to God, I was like, I died three or four times, and finally, I was coming around the corner, and all I did is just fucking pelt that cliff with cannonballs, and just watched those guys kind of like flinch and like look like they were getting hurt or something, and then none of them would die. So finally, I just like got off the cart and took out my rifle and just killed them all through the rifle real quick, and that was the only way I could make it through that part. >> Yeah, to go back to what you were saying about Challenge, I like when the end of a game is challenging, but I don't want it to be challenging by crippling me. >> Right. >> That's something that a lot of games do at the beginning, and that's irritating enough to get fucking metroided at the beginning of the game. But if you're going to challenge me at the end of the game, that's fine, but make it challenging in that I really have to use all the skills I've developed and acquired over the course of the game, as opposed to forcing me into this really arbitrary situation where I have to do this specific thing or die. >> Well, there's also the, like what you're saying before about it not being, it not being congruent with what you would learn previously in the game. Like before, a cannon had a super wide blast radius that would kill everything in the area, and now the cannonballs, the explosion doesn't do crap. You have to hit things directly with a cannonball to kill them. >> And earlier in the game, it rewards either shooting from cover and being fast and stealthy, or being extremely aggressive in a concerted way. And you are fucking punished for that. For, you're punished for aggression, and there's no opportunity for stealth or cover in this part. >> Well, again, I think that might be because of your stats. Like, whenever I got off my, whenever I got off the train car, and I just berserked it in there, and pulled out my quick draw, everything died in front of me. >> Yeah, yeah. I had no problem, like once I jumped off to the train car as well. >> Yeah. >> The only time I would get on would be to blow away the barriers. >> Mm-hm. I do think that maybe they should have made it a little bit more obvious what your stats were doing for you. I don't know how, I mean, maybe they probably thought about this already, and then just couldn't think of a way to do it, or maybe they thought it would be obvious enough, and that, you know, the enemies that you were killing, but it did seem to me like, until we were talking today, I didn't really know what my stats were doing for me, because all along the entire game, a headshot would just kill everybody. So I was just headshot, headshot, headshot. >> Whereas I would definitely headshot someone with Ned's rifle, and they wouldn't die. >> Wow. >> Like it would take two headshots to kill them. >> Yeah. So for me, it did never happen to me, yeah. So for me, it just seemed like my stats weren't doing anything, like they were just kind of there. But I did notice at the end of the game, if I went into quick draw, and I didn't really want to take the time to headshot everybody, that I could take down the Confederate soldiers in two, three shots of the chess maximum, and then move on to the next guy. So that might be it, that might be why, you know, you weren't able to be as aggressive at the end of the game as I was. >> That's cool. >> So. >> Yeah, so you can't make people up. >> What's that? >> What are we talking about? >> We're still moving. >> I think we finally got to the point, like the turntable part is super annoying. >> I thought it was easy. >> Yeah, I thought it was easy too. The guys come out and you just quick draw them as they appear. >> Yeah, I guess it just didn't have stats as high as yours. >> I just rifled them as they appear, because like, they would only come out in groups of two or three. >> It gives you plenty of advanced notice where they're coming from. >> It gives you plenty of advanced notice, and then, yeah, I would fire at some guy, even if I don't hit them in the head, one shot from Ned's rifle kills anybody. So maybe you just didn't do enough side missions. >> Yeah, that's definitely what it is. And I'm not the only person in that situation. There were people in the comments that pointed out as well. >> I just thought the side missions were fun. >> The difficulty, I enjoyed the side missions too. It's just after Empire, I didn't feel like I had a chance to squeeze in any side missions. >> Yeah, it's definitely a time thing. Like if you if you were just trying to get through this game for game club and didn't have time to just kind of relax and play the side missions, then I can see this ending being a lot harder for you. >> So after the turntable part, which I thought was annoying, but apparently I was the only person in the room that did. >> Right. >> You make your way through the last barrier with the Gatling gun hiding behind it, and then all of a sudden the tracks end. >> Yeah. >> And you get to do the rest of it by yourself. And I think the way that they explained it is that the cavern is unstable. >> It's collapsing. And so you're like, get out of here. I got somebody to kill. >> Exactly. >> And Clay is like, I got to finish business. >> And Clay is like, okay, I'm done. You have fun with that. So you take on a fort full of Confederates. >> Yep. >> Which is, I mean, it wasn't super hard. It was just more bullet sponges. >> And again, there was a ton of dynamite setup again. >> Yeah. And it refills all your ammo, which is kind of it. >> Mm-hm. >> Although it's kind of a cock tease that it's like, here's all this ammo. Even after you kill all these Confederates, you will use none of it. >> [LAUGH] I did notice that after every single cut scene, all of your health and most of your ammo seemed to be refilled or something. >> Which was nice. >> Yeah. And this was a part of a game where I did, where there was a lot of really nice checkpoints, where I was, where, because I died a few times just because I was overly aggressive. Because at this point in the game, I'm feeling like, all right, if I'm on foot and I've got my rifle, I can take on the fucking world. And it turned out that that wasn't the case sometimes. >> Are you talking about the last fight before Magruder? >> Yeah, like in the fort, I would run into the area where there's the guys up on a ledge and there's one guy throwing dynamite down at you. >> Yeah. >> And I was killing everybody so fast that I wasn't even using the dynamite that was scattered around. So he threw dynamite at me, which exploded all the barrels that I should have exploded and killed me. That happened to me a couple times because I couldn't get out of the blast radius soon enough. And, but the checkpoints were always like right there. So that worked out well. >> Magruder. >> Looks like the walk of shame or something, Tyler. >> Yes. >> Tyler walks very slowly from the bathroom embarrassed what he had just done there. >> What did you do? >> I was just thinking about gun. >> We were just talking about the last Confederate fight before Magruder. >> Yeah. >> Which is, it's slightly pain in the ass, but not really hard, and then you, and then you fight Magruder. >> Then you find El Dorado and Magruder wasn't hard for me, but that's only because I remembered exactly how to do it from my first time through. >> Oh, really? I had to figure it out. It took me a long time to figure out, because I was throwing, when I was like, okay, shooting him in the head doesn't hurt him. All right, so I'm going to throw dynamite at him. Oh, okay, that hit him and hurt him. So I kept throwing dynamite at him. Oh, there's dynamite scattered around him. I must need to keep throwing dynamite at him. And I kept throwing dynamite at him. I'm like, why the fuck? He was standing right on dynamite, and it didn't hurt him. And it took me forever to figure out, like, oh, he has to be standing on those fucking gas pockets. >> Right. >> And then that's when, that's really when your dynamite bow and arrow comes in really handy. And then you just trail him. >> This is the last instance where, again, they sort of discard the gameplay that they've established for the rest of the title, which is, you can't shoot him, you can't rush him, you can't do anything except for do this very specific. >> He's just a puzzle boss. >> Yeah, he is a puzzle boss. And they don't, they don't establish in any kind of cutscene how you're supposed to do that. I mean, the looking back on it now, I see, oh, well, yeah, I guess that could be considered kind of clever that the gas that you're supposed to light on fire is green, and it's a mine, and it's, but there's no other part. Like, if there had been gas leaks elsewhere in the level that you saw burst into flames, then that would have been a good indication that maybe this is what I'm supposed to be. >> Yeah, I can only discover it by accident. >> Yeah. >> Well, it wasn't that hard to figure out. So there were a lot of people in the comments and online that had a hell of a time trying to figure out how to beat him. >> It was annoying to me to figure it out. Like, it, it took me, like, I don't know. It probably took me maybe four or five minutes of gameplay as all before I figured it out, but I didn't feel like that was four or five minutes of gameplay that I didn't need to spend. >> There was more frustration than you felt you should invest in. >> And I was like, kind of tricking myself out because I was using my bow, and there were times where I hit the gas pocket, but I didn't realize what I had done. I felt like maybe I just got a good shot on him, and I didn't connect the fact that he was standing over the store, or I couldn't see. >> My dynamite bow does vertical columns of fire. >> Yeah, but yeah, I don't know. That was odd. To me, the more frustrating part was like the second half, or I thought there was more frustrating, but the harder part. >> The harder part. >> The second phase. >> Right, well, you have to quick draw on his dynamite throwing, and he doesn't always throw the big ones. >> That wasn't difficult. What was difficult was the fucking soldiers that would come from behind. >> That only happened to me once. >> I didn't ever have sold that. >> I never had any ones. >> That were shooting me through rock. >> Yeah, they're bullets were going through. >> Yeah, there's like behind you up on this opposite of the arena where you were fighting Magruder, and now he's up on that ledge throwing dynamite at you. Opposite there, like there's another ledge up there, and guys come in from there and start shooting you from behind. I think it happens if you're taking too long or something. >> Maybe that never happened. >> Yeah, because all I did, I was pretty Johnny on the spot with shooting him in the head, so we throw more dynamite. >> Yeah, I just went off into the corner and shot with my rifle and when he would go, I'd immediately go into quick draw mode, so I could catch the dynamite. >> Weird, immediately, right when that encounter began, a wave of three enemies behind me came. >> Wow, maybe you were too far from him or something, I don't know. >> I was over by the side by the whiskey bottles. Those are both on either of his flanks. >> By the way, it's interesting that it wasn't triggered for you two. >> Yeah. >> It was triggered for Tyler early, and it wasn't triggered to me, for me, until really late in the battle. >> Well, then there's the reed thing with me. It's very strange. It seems like people on different systems have seen different things. >> Weirdos. Did you just eat your phone? >> Anthony's eating his iPhone. There's toxic chemicals in that room. >> For sure, when you get it, it says not for eating. >> It's swallowed contact a doctor immediately. >> This is a rebel FM. >> It's a rebel FM production. >> Anyways, I think the not eating thing applies to dogs, though, because what person would be dumb enough to eat their iPhone? >> Anthony. >> I'm glad you said it. >> Well, it's like the beer app, so I could be like, "Man, I'm going to drink this beer in here. How do I get it out?" And then I just eat the iPhone. I'm going for the beer inside of it. >> I can't get it. Maybe if I should have done my throat. Oh, man, I'm so drunk. No, he just poisoned. >> All right. So you shoot Magruder a bunch with dynamite. Eventually he goes up. Then you shoot some more dynamite. Some shit falls on him. >> Well, you have to take out both columns and then two sections of sealing. >> Right, but then shit falls on him, and you fucking leave him. >> Yep. >> And he gets hammered by a big thing of rock that you jumped off of. >> I like how they make absolutely certain to show you that yes, Magruder is dead. >> Yeah, I was really, yeah, I was pleased that they made that. >> Yeah, it's not like, "Oh, he might come back later." No, that fucker is smush. >> There was no camera cut away. >> Right. >> They didn't take the cheap way out the possible sequel route. >> Right. >> Yeah, good. I never saw for that, at least. >> Yeah, exactly. >> I don't know. I kind of like the idea of leaving him alive, just like his leg pinned, being like, piece bitch. >> So he gets starved. >> Well, that's what you did. I mean, like, if it wasn't for the fact that the rock that you were climbing up fell on him, then he would have died the other way. Anyway, I'm just glad that they showed him dead. You know, it's like, we're going to make sure that this line, that this storyline is completely closed off. All loose ends are wrapped up and dealt with. >> You didn't even take that gold, but do you, though? >> Nope. It's because you don't need it, man. You were out for revenge. You got all your reward that you wanted. >> They're saving it for the sequel. >> Also, he mind a fuckload of gold throughout the whole thing, so he's got more claims than anyone in the rest of the world. >> Not me. After I finished the whole game, I went back into the town and I'm like, "Man, I saved the whole fucking planet, basically." I'm like, "I got $5 to my name. "I need some money." >> Wow. >> What is this about? Well, I can understand that. I spend all my money all the time on upgrades and stuff. >> Again, I didn't see any place to get upgrades after Empire. >> Yeah, I was thinking about his pockets, like, you know, for a couple of nuggets, dude. >> Yeah, there's some in Dodge, there's some in Empire, and there's from the- >> The Indian trader, too, yeah. >> The Indian, like the, well, one thing that definitely helped out from the Indian trader was, like I said, in the last episode was upgrading my- using the drugs to upgrade my quick draw. >> Mm-hmm. So it was, like, way longer? >> Yeah. It's like, I think the first one's like 20% more, and then the second upgrade is like another 50% or 40%. >> He also has your bow and arrow upgrades? >> Yep. >> Yeah. >> Swing fast bow and arrow, those bow and arrow upgrades. >> Yeah, I think I bought all the bow and arrows. >> So when you kill Magruder, you get the fucking shotgun cannon. >> Oh, dude. >> The unlimited ammo shotgun cannon. >> It's weird that it doesn't happen every time I run out, like- >> I have no ammo, like, there's no ammo indicator on mine. I can fire that thing from now until the end of time. >> I never, I never fired it. I rode around and looked at the fountain bowl. >> It rips people to pieces. >> I didn't realize how powerful it was until I did a one admission, and it was a mission where- >> You were supposed to take him alive? >> Yeah, where I was supposed to take him alive, but here's the thing, though, like, you know, the guy was surrounded- >> Yeah, like gun. >> The guy was surrounded by a gang, right? And a couple of his gang members wrote out in front of him, like, directly in front of him. And I was like, okay, well, I'll take out these first two henchmen, and then I'll knock him off his horse. Fired one shot, and the shotgun blew through all the dudes, blew through the one-and-guy, he's fucking- >> I had that happen to set my guy. I was the one-and-guy, and I went to shoot his horse, and it hit him in the leg, and it killed the horse, and killed him, and I was like, well, yeah. >> Yeah, and the range on it seems like it's infinite, too, because like- >> It's ridiculous. >> And it's just shotgun. >> Yeah, gantling shotgun, no less. >> Yeah, that's what makes it- that's why it's the reward for beating the guy. >> It is so big! >> I love that you hold it over it. It's totally like something out of, you know, Will Smith's Wild Wild West, or something like that. >> It seems like something out of, like, armored core. [laughter] >> Like some kind of rail gun you have to mount into the shoulder of your mech. >> It really is, like, the- >> The weight distribution is good. >> Yeah, it really is, like, the biggest departure in, like, you know, old west kind of lore. >> I was really hoping for, like, guns you could mount on your horse, like, in fucking dino riders. [laughter] >> Jesus, I did do all the- >> Or donkeys with bazookas. [laughter] >> Don- they're called a- they're called- I can't think of what they're called, something Shrek, I can't remember their proper name. Anyways. >> Sorry, I didn't mean to catch up with them Shrek. >> I know, it's all good. >> That's a company of heroes, reference for those out there, not queer. >> I played the- after everything was over, I actually did all the hunting missions, because I was just riding out of that- out of that mine area, and I came across the- oh, who was- I came across the cougar that I was hunting, and so I killed it, and then I was like, all right, well, maybe I can do another nice hunting missions, and I found, like, the next two really easy. The next one was, like, the black wolf, and the last one was a giant bear. >> You don't get any credit for hunting missions unless you've been assigned them, right? >> Right. >> And, well, you can't- the creatures don't even spawn unless you're- >> I totally saw, like, it was a mountain lion or- >> Oh, yeah, there's mountain lion enemies that are just around that you can kill- >> And that one little spot. >> Yeah, that one little spot. >> That's the other thing, I was like, ah, you know, we're talking about red-dead redentions coming up, and they're gonna use a lot more animals and, you know, things like, and I was thinking about the little section of the map, or they had the mountain lions, or they had the wolves, like, how cool would it have been if, like, maybe the wolves could get angry and attack you, or like- >> They do if you kill one of them. >> Yeah, yeah, then they'll become aggressive to you, but even then it seems like a little of them- missed up. >> Yeah. >> They clearly had to compact the world and compact their ideas in this world in order to get the game done. And, largely, I applaud their system of doing it, because, like, the game was- it was really fun. It was surprisingly fun. Like, I just didn't expect it, and, like, I didn't know what I was getting into. And, after all was said and done, I was like, huh, I'm really glad I played this game. >> Yeah, at the end of the day, like, anyone I tell, like, you know, that we're doing gun for game club, or whatever, and anyone who has ever played it, the main word you hear them describe it by is fun. And then, at the end of the day, if you're a game maker, and everyone's calling your game fun, like, there you go, you've done it, you know? >> Yeah, exactly. >> Success. >> Yeah. >> I do agree with the listener who posted in the comments, who's voodoo Ray, who said instead of the shootout sequence that you see during the credits, I would have- I really wish that the end-credit sequence had been you writing off into the sunset. >> The shootout sequence, I actually am glad you mentioned that, because that shootout sequence was ridiculous. >> Oh, yeah. >> It was, like, ridiculously bad, because, like, all you had was a bunch of guys, like, your guys, like, the good guys, had, like, infinite health. And in order to make the battle last long enough, the enemy guys had so much health that it just looked ridiculous, because they're, like, out there, like, getting shot over and over. There's, like, a guy with, like, five arrows sticking in them. And they eventually die, like, I don't know, two-thirds of the way through the credits. And then the other, and then your, your guys are just left standing there, kind of, like, poised as though they're looking for somebody else to shoot. And it's just, like, it was so, like, the anti-cinematic, especially compared to what was going under, like, the menu at the beginning of the game, when you had the Native Americans chasing down, or, you know, going on the hunt or whatever, that was so, that was so, like, it conveyed the feel of the Old West so well. And at the end of the game, it was just, like, this. It reminds me of a vibe I caught during The Mind and Sequence, which was, this is, like, a fucking ride at Disneyland. Right, exactly. And it all, it also reminds me of, uh, one of my favorite moments on, on the Simpsons, when they go to the wild, wild west town, and there's, like, the little shoot-out, uh, skit that, you know, that they perform through all the tourists, and, like, there's one part. It's just so ridiculous. One, one of the cowboys walks right up to Marge, and it's just, like, unloading his blank gun to her face, and then he starts shooting at her hair, and, like, you know, like, the Indians and the cowboys are standing literally one foot from each other with their guns in their face, just, like, literally all it was. That's all I could think about. In fact, when I was walking back into the room earlier, and you guys were, like, man, you look like you did the death mark. I forgot. That's what I was thinking of, bringing up, how that ending sort of deflated the whole tone of the game. It totally did. It really made it seem like I was in some Six Flags theme park. Some bullshit. Maybe we're just, like, guys, we have no time, and we need a credit sequence. Yeah. All right, these AI guys are going to fight it out, and what was hilarious is, like, somehow one of the enemy AI's got on the other side of the tracks, because they're trying to sort of-- Yeah, because they do move around, like, just by the line of the sand, you know. Like, one of them got on the other side of the camera. So, actually, there was a long period of time where I saw no action, other than, like, you know, a dynamite stick from screen right, going screen left, like an arrow from screen left, going screen right, you know, like, whoa, that was comical. Do you guys have any questions for the developers since I'm going to be talking to them probably tomorrow? I hadn't really thought of any. Is there any-- What was that poster in Home about? There was a gun to poster in Home. Oh, yeah. Just said something about what we're going to just go. We can take these off there, though. People don't need to hear to say these questions if it's good. They're going to hear them anyways, so. Oh, okay. Yeah. That would be my main question. Is there-- was that a thing? I mean, I know this thing, but-- Well, there's actually one question that, like, I'll go ahead and say it on the air, is, like, the one notable lack in this game, as far as, like, old, because, you know, they played into pretty much every Western movie stereotype. They mined the genre for every scene in this movie, and effective in this game, and effectively, I will add. But the one thing that they didn't have was a love interest. They kind of hinted at the beginning, and then they kill her off, and then they don't have it for the rest of the movie, which I actually thought was really cool, but I'm-- I would like to know how that came about. So you're casting that for me. Yeah, that's a good one, and I'm kind of mad at it. I mean, is there anyone that's introduced in the movie that's close to Colt that doesn't die? Can we call it a game first? All right. Did I just say hi to you? Yeah, you did. Yeah, I didn't even realize. And the funny thing is, when you said game, I was just sitting here smiling to myself, because I didn't want to be the guy that corrected you. I mean, everyone that is close to Colt ends up getting murdered anyway, so how many love interests can you have die over the course of a game? Yeah, it's true. That isn't a Final Fantasy title. That's not fair, I actually don't know of any Final Fantasy game, so you have more than one more than one love interest die. All right, thank you for listening to Game Club. Thank you. You will get the interview with the Neversoft peeps soon. Oh, this is gonna come out tomorrow, and I'll probably decide when we're at it all together. So you've already heard the point, and you out? It'll be coming up after this. All right. It's the state team, which is all right. [Music] [Music] [Music] Okay, so I apologize in advance if some of this stuff has been covered in the past, and I realize that the game is approaching the four-year mark come this November, I think. So some of this stuff might be a little fuzzy, but we wanted to start around the beginning where gun came from. So first off, how did Neversoft decide to do a Western game? From the standpoint of having really been done or done well recently, that kind of thing, and then when we hit up on the theme of a Western, kind of a lot of us kind of jumped on that from various different standpoints, you know, including passion about the theme, the vision that we could do a lot of fun things in, you know, given that time period as a basis to work from, you know, the content, and the fact that it all kind of fit together to be different than Tony Hawk's skateboarding game. That's also too like, I know for me personally, you know, I grew up playing games, and so a lot of the games that we end up making are, you know, some ways for me based on some of the older games, like Tony Hawk had kind of some nods, 720 and things like that. So when I was growing up, I actually played, there was like an old accolade Western game that I really loved. I can't even remember the name now. And no, with a sense of writers, it was kind of something else, it was just literally like a shootout game in the streets, it was cool. And then there was the EA game, the, I think it was the outlaws. Right. First person shooter Western. What do you know? Text-based game that like you would go and you would have to cross the hill or something. Yeah, booth hill or something like that. Even that text-based game is like a whole different world, but. So there's a little bit of that, and then we also found too that like we're big on kind of research, you know, like when we got into the Tony Hawk's area, we researched the hell out of skateboarding. And so I know for me, when I started the research, kind of the Western genre, I mean, you literally just find too much cool material to work with. You know, there's just so many interesting things in the historical record that you can then, you know, start to base scenarios and situations on. So for me, it was just really cool, different compelling content to work with that hadn't really, in our view, been mined very well prior. Okay, so going from that, were there specific movies or media that really influenced what you guys wanted to do with Gone or the storyline and Gun? A lot of people pointed out sort of characters that they'd seen or heard on in Young Guns and how you guys took characters and those and did something completely different. Okay, Young Guns was not a source material. Yeah, I mean, it's funny, it's funny to you guys, I think you guys hit on that in the podcast quite a bit, but I think literally, you know, our writer Randall Johnson, who is, you know, it'd be cool if he could be here too, because he was, he was a big, big part of the game as well. You know, he was a basing a lot of his stuff on historical elements and of course Young Guns is drawing from the same historical elements. So the fact that the two things ended up in the game is more, I think, a product of that than any reference to Young Guns itself, something. Yeah, that guy had bookshelves of source material they'd go through and just always come with every new week we'd meet, just have new characters that we could throw in or new ideas for plot or whatever, it just made it really, really fun and easy to do. Yeah, I mean, there's, and, you know, there's probably, I mean, just a few of the source material that I, that you can see reflected in the game. I mean, for me, there are like three, three key books. The Big Sky, Lonesome Dove and Blood Meridian, which are all some way referenced in, in, in the gun stories game. Okay, so why don't you give me an example of some of the work so you guys reference to when you were setting up the game and the environments and such? Well, sure. I mean, the whole opening sequence is, is kind of straight out of the Big Sky with, you know, Ned is the, you know, sort of the mentor, kind of hunter-mountain man. And parts of Colton's character are all, I think you could find in the Big Sky in there. The very, very, the prequel intro with the, the Golden Cross and the sort of the Apache attack, that's, you know, kind of straight out of Blood Meridian, if you've ever read that book. It's a good chance to read. Well, I know that a lot of our listeners have been sort of displaying an interest in where the source material for the game came from and, and things like that. So I have a feeling there might be a run on something like Blood Meridian in the next few weeks as people hear that it was influencing you guys. Oh, those books are phenomenal books. I totally, I told, that would be awesome if Gunn did that. They conspired people to go back and read, read some of those things. It was super hard to even try to do justice to pack in it into a video game because it's weird. It's like, it's really only like maybe encompasses 40 years, kind of the time period that we based the game on. It's so much happened in that 40 years that it's just crazy. So it was a lot of fun to go back and work with it. And I think, you know, we almost had, we had a lot more story and backstory than, than, you know, as you guys mentioned, it's even seeing the game. Literally tons of documents of, of details that, you know, aren't, aren't quite paid off in the game, but we're, you know, really fun to work with. Okay, well, that's a good place to keep going, because we actually had a number of people that playing the game felt like the segment with a, with Rudibah, an empire in general seemed very clipped and cut off. And one of our listeners chimed in that they'd heard that a pretty good chunk of story had been cut. So one thing that all of us and a lot of the listeners were also wondering is what, what made the cutting room for? And was it something that got cut before the game went into serious production? Or did it exist? And is it hiding somewhere? About three missions? Yeah. I mean, we had, we had, I mean, a guy, you guys totally nailed it. I mean, in, in, in, you know, it's like, we actually had a, had a number of missions kind of building up that relationship. And I believe the way it was set up is I think you had a mission with each deputy. Yeah. Where you kind of learned a little bit about what was going on and it was a little shady and it was kind of building up to the, to the final confrontation. But those were to cut because they really did help flesh out the story and those characters and, you know, give them a little more meat before they actually had to die. And they were gonna be fun missions too, but we just didn't have the time. Yeah. So again, did those exist or did they get cut before production? We had one mission that was a, an escort of a stage coach from a bank that got cut very quickly, but it was in a semi-working state. And that was the only one that got even started. Yeah. We had one of the, one of the references that we had to cut was we wanted to do a real wild bunch, you know, straight up bank robberies. So we actually had a mission where you met up with Soapy and some other guys and you had to crack a stage. Yeah, blow a safe and rob the main bank and empire and escape out of town. I think that actually was a, wasn't that a mission with Clay Allison or something like that? That part of the story? That way, that way. Because I think you were hitting back at Empire. Yeah. That way. But we had, and I think the other one that we mentioned earlier, that we cut. I mean, I remember there was going to be a mission where you escort, like, root about went on a train ride around the whole map. Yeah. You were going to, he would make stops and pick up things and it was a little, a little sketchy and then be ambushes and things like that. And we decided we were important in the very end. So were there other elements that got cut? Yeah, actually, very much so. With a lot of bad things happening along the way that meets question a little bit more and more of what was going on. Yeah. Had a, had a jar that we wanted to, that we just kept trying to figure out out again. I don't know. Well, we had, and some other things, I mean, I think those are the main ones where we, when we had kind of fixed the scope of the game, we were planning to keep those and those just didn't make it. At several points during the production we had, I mean, we went through something like 20 something drafts of the story and it had some different twists and turns which we ultimately- One different characters. Cut out, it's sort of just the, you know, the writing stage. The one point I think there was a whole, I mean, vision more of a southwestern area of the map, right, where we can maybe even go down to Yuma Prison which is a really cool, cool location and have a prison break because that was another kind of western trope that we figured we kind of needed to have. The guy with no eyes. Yeah. And we also had a, a section of the game that involved a little bit of cult back story with a bit more of a spiritual bend to it on how he can sort of do his, his kind slow, his blood mingled with cougars blood after a hand-to-hand battle and killed it and left alive, barely alive, his blood mingled with the cougars and then found by a shaman. He was brought back to life and whole backstory and that's IT that we ended up cutting. A little- It's in them, but- It's in them, but- There's a little from that left in the cougar attack. That's true. Yeah. Yeah. It's just one thing we were in a particularly tough time period with the development running headlong into console transition with the 360 coming out and all that stuff. So I think we made some choices which included shipping it, vis-a-vis, hold it off for another year, which would have come with its own entire slate of, well, now what do we do? Questions? But what we did do it again, it would definitely be fun to flesh out everything that we kind of had in the, you know, the original game plan. The other thing too is just simply populating the world with more things to do. Okay. So on that note, when did development start and how long did it take? We did the whole damn thing ground up in less than two years. Yeah. At least well team at the start. Yeah. I would say it was like, it was like, it was like you and the skeleton crew of that for six months. Yeah. Two, right? Yeah. I think we figured out it was like 18 months of kind of real time. Real time. And even during that time, we were, you know, coming off the Tony Hawk games, we had a lot of key hires and departments where we just didn't have the talent in-house. And so we didn't, we didn't find our AI lead for quite a while and- They were at a lead designer really. They were at a lead designer and we had to hire a whole design department. I mean, we were kind of a little bit frightened uphill to get this whole thing put together in time, you know, which I think you can see a little bit reflected in the final product. One hindsight, I mean, what would you change to fix that particular issue? I mean, what caused that problem? No, if I should have just worked on the whole damn thing for six more months. Well, yeah, but I mean, that's sort of the developer's ultimate complaint for everything, isn't it? Well, but the guy was already visioned. The thing is, the guy that's saying that is the guy that made the decision. Yeah. And I, so I'm not really complaining. I mean, I probably could have gone back and just said, look, it ain't freaking ready, but I didn't. So there you have it. Well, in that regard, do you feel like the release date and releasing next to the 360 launch heard it? I'd be saying a retrospective. It may have, well, it's hard to say. I don't get to know. Yeah. I mean, it definitely went up against some big freaking titles, you know, and that was just a really busy, crazy time. And I feel like we did get sort of smashed by that, by that wave of, you know, other titles at the time. Well, we did at Tony Hawk. Oh, there's, I mean, there's Tony Hawk on Call of Duty and Sir Crime. I mean, from our own company, though, there was a wave of the titles, much less. Even from Activision, there was three shooters in a month. All right. Counting gun, true crime in Call of Duty. Ching, ching, ching, ching, Jiminy Cricket. And then outside, I can't remember, I can't remember what else came out that, that holiday, but another other big title that there as well. Oh, EA pushed Godfather, right? Yeah, that guy. I mean, one thing we were looking at, I think, was that we were looking at, it was an awesome GTA year at that point, right? Yeah. So we were looking at that as, as hopefully a little bit of an edge because we didn't really want to go up against the GTA. But, but yeah, I mean, it was just, it was a really tough Christmas and, and the, we were a launch title on 360, but, you know, well, I wouldn't say that actually very much impacted what we did on PS2, which was really where we were leading the development. It just meant that we just had a super clip 360 version, you know, that was just some up-res textures and we got it out, tried to get it out for launch. Hoping that kind of some of the, you know, the game's story and missions and things like that would kind of compensate for the lack of graphical quality and, and the technology that we just hadn't had time to quite develop yet. Okay, so just to clarify, did gun use the Tony Hawk engine? Yeah. Yeah, it did. But it was largely modified, you know, like we didn't have screaming in that, we didn't have AI component really anywhere we had, we had nav mesh for navigation or whole large chunks of things that we totally had to add from, from scratch for it to make it work, that, you know, had to get done in the middle of also trying to make the game at the same time. Okay, so in hindsight, what was one of the major challenges of putting together a game that took place in an old west setting? What did you have to focus really hard on to, to get working in a way that sold the setting? One of the big ones I think was just the gameplay, shooting gameplay, of making it feel fun, but also not too cartoony, you know, with a six-shooter, you know, there, you got six shots, you know, and to reload, you know, in real life takes quite a while to do and, and, you know, they're actually pretty poor at aiming, you know, you know, you know, they're not very accurate. So we had to bend a lot of license, you know, bend a lot of truth to get it sort of to be fun to play and the enemy used to be fun to play and differentiated, you know, everybody kind of looked the same in the old west in ways in that like, you know, they're dirty and, you know, we don't have aliens that are too, you know, you know, a story to all or the big shoulders, whatever. So it was a lot of gameplay things that came up that were made are really tough to differentiate enemies, differentiate weapons, and then make it all fun to work together. That took a long time to get to be fun, but not feel over the top corny or goofy or whatever. That was one of the biggest ones, I think. I'd say another challenge. Another challenge, too, was, I think, perfecting the horse riding. And, I mean, we spent so long, we tried so many different control schemes, and I think, I think ultimately we pretty much licked it in the end, and it ended up being really cool. The problem was that we licked it so late. We had three missions there. We didn't have enough missions that leveraged what was happening. That was a pretty cool, cool thing that we had developed. So that was, you know, that was a real tough, tough thing to do. Well, I could give you about 67 more. But I think we always would err to the rule of, is this realistic or not? Well, it's kind of realistic. Is it fun? Yes. Okay. So we would always edge realism towards fun. You know, like an example of that, two back to that horse is the sliding stop thing. I know you guys mentioned that in your podcast. You can go online and raining horses, quarter horses, top to rain, actually compete with how far they could slide, right? You don't crush buffalo afterwards. But you don't crush buffalo, right? But at the same time, I'm like, you know, there's some... You could, because there's really... It's almost in reality here, right? And is it fun? Yeah. Okay. That was another one actually, like being real, but you know, keeping it fun was just with the weaponry that they had and that people would carry like just the visual impact of them compared to other games that are coming out, you know, with like, you know, photon blasters and huge explosions and whatever, getting that to really feel visceral and visually interesting and impressive was a large challenge as well. Well, yeah, I mean, to be fair, I think that we joked a little bit about the horse handling and stuff like that, but it did... It was successful as far as feeling natural and intuitive and the atmosphere set was really good. So if it's any consolation, you guys were pretty successful in that regards. Did you tell about $4 million of your closest friend? Four years ago? Okay. So taking it from there, one of the questions we had from listeners is, in hindsight, how do you feel about the way that you handled sensitive content, not so much? I mean, more on the lines of violence. How do you feel about that now the time has passed? Well, it's interesting because I want to ask you a question because now you've played the whole game, right? And you've gone through the whole story. So I always question whether people really got it after they read the whole story or played the whole story. Because I don't want to change your answer, but to me, we went to great lengths to make it feel an equal opportunity if you really got the story, right? What do you mean in respect to how it handled race or? In the way that you have the white versus the Indian and by the end, you're all on the same team fighting for what's right, you know? I think as far as games can handle stuff like that, it handled it pretty, pretty well. I think the only questionable part, at least when I was playing, it was the sort of abrupt switch from the mission immediately following the saloon and dodge where you're fighting Indians on the bridge to the situation in Empire, where you're basically friends with the Indians, and all of a sudden everything has forgotten and forgiven. And I mean, that's a pretty abrupt transition. But I mean, other than that, I thought it worked well. Yeah, I think on that mission, particularly, unfortunately, just to make something fun, you need numbers a lot of times, and to make it long enough. And it was not meant to be anything more than just a fun mission. I think we wanted to kind of be true to the setting as well. I mean, there are other characters besides your own who we talk in certain ways, which we thought would be accurate to the time period. And I think what Joel was trying to get as, we did want to not shy away from some of those conflicts, but in the end kind of pay off pay off that conflict in a different way by shining a different light on the situation. I mean, the really, the goal was to kind of play into maybe a little bit of the cliche at first, but then uncover later that, you know, what the Indians are doing in that particular situation is really on the side of, I don't know, would it be morally right, you know, so to speak, but it's sort of the town that's casting them in this negative light. So, which kind of was interesting to me, and I'd be interested in your opinion on this. If you get into that content and really start to study it, there's potentially no way you can really convey the brutality or the pain or that. Any of the hardship that those people went through just on a day-to-day basis, because that's what they did, you know, I don't know if you can convey that in a video game effectively. Not really no, not the way games are. And we wanted to, I mean, be true to the times and, you know, as like Scott said, we didn't want to shy away from things, and we wanted to, you know, present this picture of the old West, you know, of what people went through and the hardships and the bigotry and the, and all the good and bad of it. And, you know, I thought it was a pretty good betrayal, actually. I think what we tried to do is we tried to boldly go and go for it. We'd like to do that. I mean, I thought it was interesting what we were trying to do in terms of, you did fight Native Americans at the beginning of the game, and then we tried to cast your actions in a little bit different light later in the game to make you think about that a little bit. You know, I don't know if it worked, but that was one of the goals. I'll ask this again, since we talked about it a little bit earlier, there was recently in Sony's home, a space for a Tony Hawk game that had a poster for Gun 2, which was from the Grooters Ghost, I believe. So, is there development and progress on a gun sequel? Proving the Aggie photograph. Yeah. Well, we always talk about it internally, like every, every six months. Bring it up. There's an idea. But, but yeah, I mean, currently there's not, there's nothing in the works. And we're obviously very busy working on our rock and roll thing with Guitar Hero and having a lot of fun doing it. But if everybody keeps nurturing that hope, we know someday something might happen. So, so does the buzz around redemption from Rockstar contribute to the possibility of a gun sequel, do you think? Or does it hurt the possibility? That one goes two ways, right? If it comes out and sells 113,000 units or some shit worldwide, then you guys can count on not seeing gun two. I mean, it looks good so far. I'm interested in playing it. I know my roommate really seemed to like it. What he saw so far? Yeah. Yeah. Me too. I want to see that thing do well. I want to play it. So, this, for this year, we don't have to go out and do any research into whether or not we should do a sequel because they're going to do the research for us. Okay. The next question, what I want to ask you is a lot of developers, after Project is over, they talk about their certain things over the course of the project that kept them up late at night or sort of haunted their nightmares. And then there's also something looking back that they're especially proud of. Almost four years later, what was it about developing gun that really kept you guys up late at night? And on the opposite of the spectrum, what is it that looking back that you guys really are proud of from the game? The first one for me, this Joel, is the fact that we spent a lot of time really trying to make the control scheme of that game accessible and fun for anybody. And I'm concerned that we made it so accessible that when one of the first reviewers came out and then called back and said, "Yeah, dude, I smoked through that thing in six hours." I just went, "Oh, fuck." Well, that was with outside missions, right? I mean- It didn't matter, right? As soon as he, in his brain, says he played through in six hours, that's how he killed me. Okay, so, so why no one mandatory side missions that I mean in hindsight, would you do that differently or should they have been mandatory? I think, you know, our philosophy was always, you know, make the game kind of low hassle. Fun for the player. Fun for the player? Like we were, I think maybe a little bit responding to GTA, we weren't fans of like vicious backtracking and all this other kind of wasted effort in the game. And unlocking the next story chapter with having to do ex-side missions and very- And I think ultimately, yeah, that philosophy might have backfired on it, you know, quite a bit. I mean, because, again, that we didn't- We treated those things literally outside missions as extra content that you could go do if you were interested in it, but weren't necessary to the main quest. And we tried to keep everything really, you know, guided so that you weren't ever confused on what you needed to do next. And we put a lot of checkpoints in the game as well, so you weren't like throwing down your control or pissed off that you just got set back, you know, 30 minutes. The thing I would love to know at this point is, then given all that, did a ton of people just go rent this thing and have an enjoyable experience, you know, I kind of like to know how many of them did. Hopefully, a lot of them did, I guess, given where we sit now and had fun with it and enjoyed it. So yeah, I mean, one thing too, I should point out, I mean, I think you guys mentioned this. I mean, the PC port came after and was just out of port. So I think it sounded like a lot of people were playing on the PC and talking about how easy it is to get headshots and things like that. And that, you know, the control scheme was definitely designed for the console and with the dual shock in mind. So, you know, the PC probably makes those problems I was describing earlier, even worse. Okay, well, what about the really abrupt difficulty change at the end? Was there a reason behind that or did it just not have time to do play testing on that or? Well, control is difficult. I mean, we, you know, right up to the very end, we were actually tweaking the difficulty and we, you know, you know, one of the things that kind of killed us is we are expecting the main story to take you through stuff, but you're going to have to do side missions to upgrade yourself so that you can even get through the main mission. But then as Joel was saying, was we wanted this game to be accessible by everyone to be able to finish this game. So almost like right at the end of the game, I remember, we sort of ratcheted our difficulties almost down one notch each, so that, you know, the beginner really should have been a little bit of, the medium should have been what the beginner should have been, the the hard should have, what the medium should have been, you know. Because part of the theory was that the Western, almost by nature, should be a mass market proposition. And by doing that, I mean, we potentially made it easier. I really want to make the point, I really am proud of the controls and think they were totally cool and fun, and I'm basically more of a mass market type game player. What haunted me was when the hardcore guy, he didn't have enough video game then, because I didn't want it too easy for him. Right in for us to do some of the other stuff. So he's like done and got his picks in six hours and he's like, this thing ain't worth 40 bucks or whatever, 50 bucks. All the other hand, I had friends who never played video games because they, but they are into lectures and they played through it and they loved it, which made me happy on that side. I got them on 10, but he's going to have one video game and it's done. So there we did that. Yeah, well, I imagine the, uh, I imagine the Chris Kristofferson and Tom Scarett voiceover helped a little bit with those friends as well. Yeah, that went wrong man. I mean, the game started on the Missouri River 30 miles from my own town. Yeah, I think, uh, just to add one more piece to what those guys were saying, I mean, they, it was tricky at that time. The, the dual shock sort of shooter controls. I mean, for someone who was not into those games at that time was pretty challenging and we wanted those people to have fun. The problem was you also had really skilled halo players who were picking up this game and they're just shredding it on the, on the, whatever we, I think we call the normal, I guess, or the normal difficulty. And really we should have done, in retrospect, I would have rather fed those guys into the harder difficulties or figured out a way to, to make them play the game that way. I think they would have had more of a challenge and, and, and a little bit deeper of an experience. Or the side missions and, and yeah, because it's a whole different game to play through on different difficulties, really. Uh, yeah, it gets a little impossible there at the end. So those, those hardcore players could hate themselves at the end boss fights. I can believe that actually. I know one mission to think of that was almost impossible. And then one quick one for me is I'll always question whether or not we should at least try to split the screen and have some level of four player, multiplayer in the game. Like adversarial multiplayer or co-op or? Adversarial was, I think, the only one we could have done at any short time, but we never know. I think, yeah, I think the standard for me was you, you know, if you weren't going to have any multiplayer, then you, you need to have a really robust, deep single player game. And, and ours is just short. And it's just the way it was. I don't know. What do you think? Do you think it's, it's far too short? Do you think that's an issue with the game or? I, I think the, I mean, we stressed with the listeners that the main plot is kind of short and that they really need to play side missions to get a full idea of the game. I mean, the, the narrative works because it's, it's short. It's not dragged out, like, say, Grand Theft Auto game is. And, and I think once people really got a feel for the side missions and, and had a chance to experiment there and develop their skills and do all that, that they enjoyed the game more. So I think that, that now that the game is not in the immediate release environment, now that people have time to go back and just sort of enjoy it, that that helps the game a lot. I don't, I don't know if that's reassuring at all or if that helps, but. That seems reasonable. Yeah. And that was always our concern too with some of the reviews we got. It seemed like that might have been part of it as well. Yeah, it's just the, the sort of review mentality for finishing game is to blow through it as quickly as possible. And if they can blow through that particular game in a really crowded season, as you guys pointed out before, then, then it's hard to justify doing a bunch of side missions when, when you're trying to rate a game sort of objectively and just blow through it as quickly as you can. Again, though, I think that, that now that it's out of the immediate release cycle, that it's easier to look at the game based on its own merits. But, I mean, that's just, that could just be me, or the people that listen to the podcast. So I mean, just to, to go back to the original question, um, the, the second part of the original question now that you've had some time to distance yourself from the game or, or not to distance yourself. But now that there's some distance from the early state, I mean, what are you guys happy with now? What, what looking back are you proud of from gut? Well, I got one thing that's, uh, for the amount of time we spent, and I just have to take my hat off to the monumental effort put in that I said this one before, the guys on the team worked their asses off to get that thing done. And so hindsight, I'm really proud of the fact that ground up short period of time, I think we made something that was really pretty darn enjoyable and cool. And it's something that in fact could be built on in the future. So I'm pretty proud of that. And just the fact that even you guys resurrected it, I'm, you know, proud of that multiple years later, you know, it's kind of cool. So we're certainly worth doing. Yeah, for me, it was a lot of that. I mean, I can't remember how many 2 a.m. nights there were on it, but the fact that we could make something that I think that at the end of the day, like Joel said, controls really well, the horse I thought just like felt almost the butter like toward the end, I felt. And I thought some of the gameplay was pretty fun. I thought some of the mission variation was pretty fun. I thought we had a pretty good basis for a really good game. And that's, you know, made me very happy. You know, it obviously had its laws, but for something out of the block that we hadn't done before, I was pretty proud of that. I say, yeah, I mean, it also gave us the opportunity to work with some really talented people outside of our own company as well. Randall Johnson, our writer, Chris Leonard, our composer, and then really all the entire voice acting cast, which is a real kind of a real treat and a thrill to work with all of them and get them involved in the game, is we're doing just to go hang with Chris Kristoff. Yeah. I think we had like 83 cut scenes in the whole thing, you know. And that's another one that totally pointed out it was the first time I never saw that we'd really worked with motion capture. And in fact, like we were talking how we kind of hired the team as we went for that game, we hired the whole motion capture team and bought an entire motion capture system, got all that up and running the pipeline in, and then mocapped all those scenes. And that in and of itself was just a totally bitch and effort. And from that point until the day, the guy that runs mocapped Jeff, he could actually probably tell you how many frames of motion capture animation we've used in our games, man, but it's just, that's just an amazing one right there. Before that, I never would have known how killer of a tool that could be. And it's just been great. Yeah, I guess there's not a lot of motion capture that you need to do with Bam, Marjor and Tony Hov doing voiceovers. But uh, well, those guys are fine in their own right, trust me. All right, guys, it looks like we are actually out of time, unfortunately, but I wanted to thank all of you for talking with me today. Scott Pease, studio development director, Joel Jewett, president and Chad Finley, project lead, never saw any gun. Thanks very much for joining us, and we really enjoyed the game. Thanks a lot. Thank you. Thanks. [Music] [Music] [Music] [BLANK_AUDIO]