What's up everybody and welcome to another kind of funny games cast for Thursday February 13th 2025 on one of your show host Snowbike Mike and today we brought out the Xbox green very very special broadcast. I'm doing fantastic sir. How are you doing? I'm good.
It's always great when I get to hang out and talk video games with you. Of course I do have to kick it to our other two co-hosts because they were you know whispering they were murmuring they were talking game showdown for the past couple of weeks now boys you've been taking a beating from Tim how we feeling as we get ready for tomorrow's game I got him right where I want him. I got him right where I want him. Everything that needs to happen that happens for him Mike the dominoes are falling so perfectly for him I'm sick of it right.
I get the first question so that I get to go first and if you know here these are things like you know blessing loves doing like that everybody gets a question everybody gets a category that's sort of geared towards them the one that's geared towards me Mike is name of it was name an extraction shooter there's a lot of video games out there a lot of video games out there you like for you like for more is what's the fighting game that developer we know name an NPC inside of crash bandicoot that isn't crash bandicoot it's like dude only Tim's gonna know that but if I went first I would send you a court text of course I didn't get to go first because I was in the lead because it was later on you're playing the game it's right hot damn well boys of course we have kind of fun game showdown every Friday here on the channel of course this is a lovely Thursday broadcast but we are pre recording this a vowed review a couple days early because we got schedules we got people moving because Thursday night I'm hosting the dice awards over on IG and come check them out did I win no but I think I'm gonna get in trouble one of the jokes is gonna get broken out I'm gonna get on okay there you go there's a heads up if you're watching live today of course that's a reminder set your alarm for later tonight Greg and Stella hosting the dice awards very very fun but this is pre recording so please hold off on your super chats just get down the comments below and have a fun time in the live chat with yourselves over on YouTube and of course on twitch and let's have a discussion about a vowed but don't forget that this is the kind of funny games cast each and every week day we get together to talk about all the biggest reviews previews and topics in the video game world live on YouTube twitch and of course on podcast services around the globe if you love what we do here at kind of funny don't forget about that brand new kind of funny membership that you can get available on patreon and on YouTube the all of our shows ad-free you can watch them live as we record them which we had a terrific kind of funny podcast earlier this week then I'm telling ya you gotta go back and watch the horny's piece of content is on the horny's episode ever is hilarious it was a funny ass yeah funny I gotta make sure to remind you about all of that because it's so special and of course you get your exclusive show a very special piece of content by the one the only Greg Miller Gregways hey everybody of course I'm taking over today's Gregway on Thursday so it's all about me but Greg maybe give us a quick run back throughout the week we'll get people go back and click on and enjoy you talk about gaming backlog of course you mean a whole bunch of different Benny stories you know I've cried a bunch on Gregway there's all sorts of stuff to go see I love the cry play that's beautiful not lately no I don't know if you saw me struggle on games daily no games cast the same way for today as we're recording cause I do want and they go out they go out the window I give you 20 minutes on my time I answer the goddamn question we live in the now yeah yeah yeah yeah I'm gonna be in a game show down all right all I'm thinking about of course some housekeeping for you if I could fast forward time at rewind I think today's kind of funny games daily we'll probably be talking about the PlayStation state of play that happened on Wednesday that they're probably recapping on the Thursday morning so keep an eye out for that one and of course don't forget today's afternoon stream after this will be Andy and Nick taking on Snow bike Mike and sniper elite that's right the hunt is on no it's gonna be a whole lot of fun I've been playing a lot of sniper elite resistance great cool I'm not saying it's fair for everybody yeah let's play a game that only I've been playing if you are a kind of funny member don't forget today's Gregway it's all about Mike I'll be giving that to you today and later this afternoon you will get that live stream so make sure to tune and we want to thank those who support us over on patreon just like our patreon producers for the month the lady twine and Carl Jacobs Omega Buster and Karen Lindenar thank you so much for your support and thank you to our sponsors that are brought to you today like rocket money shady raise and better help but we'll tell you all about them in just a little bit guys let's get to it ladies and gentlemen and nbs I brought to you the three team members here kind of funny who have jumped on and done the review for a vowed which is today's topic of the show we're gonna go through all three of you guys is reviews we're gonna talk about in depth of course a vowed developed by obsidian entertainment release dates of February 18th but you can play early up to five days thanks to that premium edition if you jump in let's jump into your reviews pairs I'll kick it off with you why don't you give me a amount of time you played and of course you're overall review on the kind of funny scale and just jump right into it so before I give you time played and all the good things about about it's worth going on none of us know what the other person thinks we haven't talked I'm so excited about it yeah I have no idea what anybody thinks about this so Mike you and I did a show called the X-CAS which was the best Xbox podcast ever in the history of video games and for many years I would say that obsidian would wind up being the most important acquisition that Xbox has made in their history I would also say that I've always wanted to see what a fully backed funded resources everything my Microsoft and Xbox obsidian could do with their own original IP and that game is a vowed we're here and with that said I have put 52.2 hours whoa whoa a vowed across it was like 32.2 on steam and 20 on Xbox I played on the series X I love this game I like it a lot this is that nerdy RPG that I wanted from obsidian this gives me memories back to 2006 when oblivion first came out from Bethesda if I had to put a score on this have you rolled credits oh yes I've rolled credits that's that's the important party I have completed about and if I had to put a score on this I'm gonna give it a 9.5 whoa that is how much yeah that is how much I love this and the funny thing is when I first started out I was like maybe maybe this is okay and I'm not because I don't know the pillars universe I this is my first trip to the living lands right I don't understand the characters the factions just everything that goes into this world and makes it unique again you're playing as the envoy you are sent by the emperor to the living lands the dream's scourge is this play that's infecting the living lands and threatens everybody in this world so it starts off as almost like a mystery to try and understand what the streams or is is and what's going on and then turns into other character related events it turned into some faction events there's a big twist that that happens which we won't spoil here but I would say by the time I got to the second region I was locked in I was locked in on what this game is trying to do because there is so much here to consume if you choose and I think that's an important thing here with a vowed that you'll probably speed run through this if you really wanted to in about 20 hours you're gonna miss so much if you do though there is there's so many layers to what they've created here with a vowed that I put in those 62 hours because I was exploring find and shit that that was my main thing in this game I was looking for stuff I was I just got that treasure map I need to find out get the treasure we where's this at you get these totem fragments in the different regions that can help add to your your your stat abilities perks you put it into your party camp but you gotta find them right you might be like one I found completely by accident there was this lagoon in in scatter born and I was like oh let me jump in there go down there's a fragment and then it was like alright now that you have this fragment you need to go find something else to give you clues to find the rest of them or you got to find them on their own there's a totem saying you gotta find that's just one little little piece of things that you can do in this game I haven't even gotten to the combat my god at first I get to sort of get the shield I'll get the wand I'll get the grim war book I'll just I'll just run through this in a great words of Charlie Murphy wrong wrong you will hit they will hit you with a difficulty check they will hit you with a skill check at a certain point in this game where it's like because you'll see a certain quest that you can do you'll see skulls on right what you get up to three skulls I mean it's way above your level at one point everything was three skulls I'm like oh my god what do I do how do I I can't complete this how is this gonna work turns out I needed to go find shit I needed to get resources I needed to find a better sword I needed to find a better pistol I needed to find a better grim war book I needed to upgrade them I need to get better arm like in other words the game is telling me don't rush enjoy the process of what you're doing right now right enjoy the RPG-ness of this talk to characters go off the beaten path explore embrace this world that map where everything's all blurred out go to the area who knows what the hell you might find there right some of the best weapons and armor I got in this game the game did not tell me I just found them and that's great or I found like I wound up my favorite loadout wind up being I was using the shock pistol along with the grim war and I just in this pistol I got early on and I just upgraded it all the way to legendary because I just wanted to keep it I thought it was so great but I needed to find all the resources in the world to be able to upgrade it to that level or I could have chose to not do it and flip off to a different build like I like my secondary was the sword I really liked that had some great perks on it and then I kept flipping through different shields but that was basically my main go-to loadout once I figured things out was my primary was my pistol and my grim war so I could use my magic and I would supplement that with the pistol and then if I needed to do some close combat you know maybe like you know a hand-hand combat I would flip to my sword in my shield not to mention I have I'm looking at my different abilities and as far as how am I all right I need to put more more into intelligence because I want to do this or I'm running out of stamina so I need to do that or oh I got this just to find complete this totem and I get this perk so I'm getting more more essence on this like there's just so much shit there's so much shit to do in this game if you choose to do it because a lot of it is so optional they're not holding your hand to go do it sure you got your main quest stuff sure you got the little exclamation point icon that you can pick up a side mission on but then there's so much stuff that they're just they're just not telling you to go do and you go you go find it on yourself find it yourself and you just feel rewarded for it by doing that and there's bounties you can do there's there's just a lot so I know I'm dominating a conversation because I'm dying to hear what Greg and Annie thinks about this game but I connected with this so much I would say like I said probably about around about hour 12 that I was just locked and loaded the rest of the way that I loved it hey to the end so I love that for me I'm gonna say for me and then I'll hand it off I get why Xbox related it to February because this deserved its own time to shine and I think a lot of people will be able to connect with this game now that it's coming out during this time period versus the madness that is a holiday because I think this is potentially their first 9 10 it makes it into the keelies game of your discussion definitely will be an RPG discussion wow and go to wait a kick off the year very exciting a lot of hype and excitement from Paris a lot of great praise there for the team over here obsidian Greg it's your turn I know you've rolled credits yes so why don't you give me your time your review and let's jump into sure fantastic review from Paris and I think there's so much in there I agree with it'll be interesting as we really get into the weeds and talk about this and sift through it right I have also finished a vaud I beat it at a 33 hour mark far less than Paris and that I think it is because with the travel and the schedule and the stuff it was at some point like oh we're getting pretty close to this review and I got to get moving I'm gonna pretty much from this point on just do main stuff right um my thoughts on a vaud right uh it is a game that has a few great parts but I don't think it adds up to a great experience so for me I give this a 7.5 out of 10 I'm saying between a good and a great and I think as anytime we talk about RPG right your mileage is gonna vary for a number of different reasons and where I found myself listless with a vaud was none of what Paris just talked about he's right combat is one of the great experiences the world is one of those great places like I loved exploring the living lands and finding that crazy thing and going over there and oh my god anytime I got into combat I enjoyed it because I normally get good loot off these people at least I can sell or of course break down because I have a really great crafting and upgrade system that's a big part of this game where it lost me was that I found myself you know Paris talks about 12 hours in being locked in multiple hours in that realization like man I don't like any of my companions and this main quest isn't doing for me like the main quest I don't think it's you know we talk all the time about RPGs video games in general but definitely these RPGs that you know how much I love I love getting lost in the world knowing that it's not about the journey it's about the destination I'm sorry it's not about the destination it's about the journey and here was one of the situations where the journey isn't doing it for me if they were like you could just leave everybody at camp I would just love to every camp like I like their powers like the thing but I didn't enjoy the conversations with them I didn't feel like I was deepening to it you sit there you know like um uh K on this game right voice actor is Garris from Mass Effect who I of course I romance I love Garris sorry sorry bad pronunciation of the part uh who I loved right but here hanging out with Kai I was like I'm like you're pretty by the book like I feel like I know where your story's going and then shockingly I knew where your story is going when we complete your companion quest and went through it and then the other four companions you get throughout the game the other three didn't do it to various levels for me and then yeah the overall story I think falls into so many problems right it comes at you on three fronts right at least in my head of what the plot lines are the dream skirts like Paris is talked about it's invading the living lands your emperor has sent you there's the envoy to figure out what's going on and try to stop it right then there's this steel gorilla right which is like this religious cult zealots that are working for your emperor but also like oh like you guys are like you're doing your own thing here and that's a big problem they were really cool villain you've seen a few time there right lord lodwyn or lodwyn they got the boom lot over the oh excuse me but she's a skeleton face person with the glowing red eyes I'm sure we'll get to it eventually get whatever I think very much a traditional video game villain of like whoa you look awesome I can't wait to do now we're doing really cool with you nothing okay by the end of this whatever and then there's the fact that you're godlike right this is something we talk about our previews right you are touched by a god so you have the fungus on your face we've talked about a million times right I paste my fears and kept it on the entire game this time around whatever and that is your godlike ability and what that means is another plot line I put there so I think the plot lines there and I think they all have an interesting see an interesting place but none of them throughout the thing kept me engaged went by the end when they all wrapped up in credits world I was like this didn't have the payoff even to justify the thing here and again this is me personally like maybe you're gonna jump in here I can't wait to hear what you guys all think about you play too even though not as much what you are feeling with these companions if they're working for you but for me a great RPG and an amazing RPG for me needs to be I am all in on the story I love these characters I love this world I'm fighting for a reason and I found like there's a very specific character who's important this game that I won't spare or spoil and that character talks to you a lot and legitimately I was I'm trying to be I'm playing as a good person I'm doing a good thing I'm trying to roleplay like I've been presented with this information so now I'm moving this which is different from where my character started in the media but this one I was literally picking the dick option every time I was shut up what are you talking about shut up what are you know what I mean yeah exactly it's like oh like it wasn't I was picking it because I was role playing the dick I was over you talking to me about this and not giving me answers like this isn't the whole thing and then to get to the end and how that one paid off I was like this just didn't do it for me and that is it to then take away from the fact how much fun this game is to play I am unaware you know if they're doing DLC for this oh yeah we're doing expansion about I want to jump in I want to play about but it is that idea of like that's the combat driving me and that's the world of it I mean when we get into the real weeds of it I want to talk about combat because I do think combat is pretty repetitive like you get into some larger enemies that all of a sudden are doing a big health bar and maybe they're doing a different kind of attack but otherwise you do I like Andy looked at my screen today who made me look at my screen like day one he's like you've really been rocking the same weapon the entire game like yeah 33 hours or more man it's like how it wasn't I enjoyed it but I'm fighting the same lizards and the same fungus people over and over again the same way which worked for me and I like the incremental like Paris was talking about I'm stronger this is that I've got this new upgrade to my swords but it is the same thing over and over again which to me falls into that thing of just like this is a video game which is not bad but I think there's a few other examples for it but I do want to pass the baton I like that all right well Greg at 7.5 right there let's move on to you Andy of course how much time did you put in what you overall thoughts I give us that number um I don't know if I want to give it a number yet you give an asterisk number and here's an asterisk number okay I would give it a seven out of ten okay I early on though I was more around six oh um I how many hours in are you so I'm about 30 two 31 maybe um and it's you know I was asking Greg and kind of comparing where we were and you know he told me I if I main-minded I could kind of get towards the end and you know maybe five hours or whatever um but I knew I wasn't like the main reviewer on here so I just kind of wanted to put as much time into it as possible and explore a lot of the living lands and all these side quests and I think my feelings are very similar similar to Greg's where I don't love my NPCs I don't love my squad mates and and I hate doing the thing like where I'll do you should watch this tv showman like you know the first four seasons really rough and take a while but season five is where it really gets going it's like I don't want to invest that much time and like legitimately for me this game didn't really start picking up until about our 20 oh wow where I and it you know on the flip side of that it's a completely I think a completely good and serviceable video game if you're you know it's it's my problem with it was I wasn't feeling like it was doing anything surprising I went back to start streaming the outer worlds to kind of like all right about coming out soon like what if you play the outer world to kind of see you know that where the lineage is and let's kind of get a flavor of what might be in store for us and I wanted to keep going back to play outer worlds I think the characters in the story were and also the tone I think felt a lot more my style and more interesting I guess I wanted more surprises like there's a I was talking to Greg about this maybe you know several days ago you can random side quests there's like just bounties right yeah and you do these bounties to get XP and there that's pretty much income yeah good source of money good source income and I kept on I kept on wanting to experience all these bounties like just normal years doing it for the fuck of it but then like once I got to the end of them and I finished all the bounties I was like damn I you know surprise me I want to get to the end of I want to get to one of these bounty things and I'm gonna go kill them and the person I'm gonna go kill goes whoa don't kill me dude the person the the bouncy master who sent you over here and I want like intrigue and go oh shit that person was crooked the whole time surprised me I wanted something like this game didn't do a whole lot to really make me go oh shit that's what we're doing awesome I love that I didn't really start getting that until the 15 to 20 hour mark in the third land really and the third land has a lot of characters and tonal changes and comedic stuff that reminded me a lot more the outer worlds and I'm like man I'm digging this more but it took 20 inch hours for me to get here I obviously have been you know much more down on this game as I've been talking this whole time but on the flip side combat is a lot of fun combat freedom and flexibility is awesome as hell I love that you are not stuck to your skill by any chance you can always respect for a little bit of money it's not the most expensive thing in the world but the amount of different weapon slots and slotting in your main hand you're off hand yeah the main hand and by the end of it I'm rocking dual pistols and it is like just so freaking fun to sort of have that level up and feel a lot more powerful but for the start of it I was dual dagger and so I was just like spamming left click and right click I'm doing all these cool spamming sort of combos and one of the daggers I have is a legendary fire one the other one is a legendary ice one so it's just like doing all this crazy it just feels really cool and fun to play but I agree with Greg that I wish there was a bit more variety in some of these boss fights you know you kind of start to know what they're doing after a while and I wanted a bit more surprises there but just taking on random camps you know I hit that difficulty wall early on and was like damn this game is like kind of hard in some spots and this is kind of like surprising right now do I want to drop the difficulty but instead what I did was respect my character to have max resolve and then ended up talking my way out of a situation and then I respect back and that was and that was nice right and you know I think I could have gone out and grinded more but the more curious like game developers side of me was like what will happen here unfortunately it was kind of boring it was just like oh oh you know the enemy just like oh you talked to me out of this cool you're good to go I was hoping there was a bit more there but I like the option that it is even there I just was hoping that it kind of maybe led to more things and a lot of that is you know Bob was gay 3 really spoiled us and you know this is all this was always meant to be a more truncated open world experience you know early on early on they said this is not gonna be Skyrim we're doing a much more smaller experience which I love that for and I do think the world is still really damn I was gonna and that's the one thing I think that they did to their credit I mean probably for the best undersell is like it sounded like a game was going to be oh 20 Rbg and you know yeah maybe if you mainline you would but back to the difficulty spikes every time you go to New Land the enemies are going up again are a tier up they have a different color armor and weapon right so you need to be leveling it I at least for me grinding it out to do it and it is the thing of having rolled credits there is no new game plus right you go back to the point of no return if you want to play on like jumping back into that world and looking at my math I have so much left to explore there's so many questions there's a quest log filled with things to do like the game is really really really big even though they tried to undersell it was going to be so big but one thing I don't want to say sorry I can't say one thing no no I do want to jump into probably dissected later is I had a similar thing where in the run up to this one I really want to play it out I re-rolled and started a new outer world and it was like man was I too harsh in this game because I enjoyed it fine but I thought it was too small whatever in bubble playing and jumping this I was so like where are the characters that were in outer worlds not literally but I mean like the actual hey look at this definitive and this with this guy's wacky and this thing and like even in outer worlds the first time you talk to a guy like yeah it's my ship or you just take an identity it's like that was all so cool and quirky whereas this I think you know blessings said it more succinctly than I did but like for when I talk about this it's like about is treading very well worn territory and I don't think it's doing much with the material that every other fantasy RPG is doing yeah and that's why I don't feel like until that third world is where I started getting dialogue and writing and character moments that I enjoyed a lot more that were just entertaining to me from not only you know doing sort of a corny joke here and there that made me laugh but character twists and stuff with side characters I'm like oh shit that's really cool and I wish I was having that this whole time the whole past 20 hours but it's still like a lot of fun to play I do love the kind of quality of life stuff where you immediately have transmogrify you can transmog any of your items would be nice of a library I don't want to carry the thing with you to choose the transmog I'd rather be able to store it in closet or whatever once I collect it like the obloh I just have it sending stuff to your stash at any moment is great breaking down stuff at any moment is great you don't have to be back at a camper in front of a you know a lot of the I want to talk about all this because there's like but then you do have to go to camp for certain things but parents have to say something about it I'm gonna go in depth in just a moment parents why don't you happen to stop here on this first part of it um it was just again I had no idea what you want to be thought so so it's fascinating to hear the different opinions in here which are all valid I totally get it but that's why I even said in the opening it's like there's layers to this because Greg you even said you wrote credits you go back to the point in no return and there's still all this map that you have to have not seen in quests that you have not done and I think what I did during my playthrough was I was trying to do everything so I wanted to see all of it and I think that just enhanced my experience because I had encounters that the game did not tell me go here to do this I found it on my own and I felt rewarded as a result so the game encourages you doesn't encourage you how am I trying to say this the game isn't telling you to isn't holding your hand to go to certain certain points right you're encouraged to go explore and keep it to be clear just so my reputation is on the smurched I that's how I play open world RPGs and that's how I play the first however many areas and hours where I was like what is over there let's go do that but even doing that in finding size up and doing it was like oh man it's so much more for me to go chase and I love this game does a great job of incentivizing you to go off the beaten bat hey there's a bramble you can burn oh yeah burn that what am I getting oh treasure chest in there here these weird little things you need to electrify if you do three of them you open up that door but you don't have to use you to blow past it you know the game does a great job of all that but like to my point of you know why you guys use ice grenades to make platforms water I wish there was a bit more of that I wish there was like more reasons to use that but the I think I've only not done about three side quests I'm pretty much like a hundred percent all of it so far and I had two bounties not pop for me the one I can do about and then another one where I have one right now to that is like oh pick up the trophy from the guy I'm like the guy's dead and there's nothing I don't know I had that happen to me twice so far with with two different ones in different worlds I went back I'm like I don't decide I'm isn't on the ground that's that sort of thing so you know that happens with game to have an audio bug now and then but so my so Michael how much about have you played now do you think about Greg I've played five hours of about I've had a nice intro into it I've had some questions on the story side of things that have not entertained me in certain ways but I am excited to play more thanks to the combat and we're gonna talk about more of that because we're gonna go in depth on the game right after a word from our sponsors this episode's brought to you by Rocket Money missing out on a show that everyone's talking about isn't an option for people like me so many of us are constantly signing up for this streaming service or that streaming service and a few months later realize that we're still paying for the service long after we finish the show rocket money has helped multiple members of kind of funny learn that they were still paying for things that they totally didn't even realize rocket money is a personal finance app that helps find and cancel all of your unwanted subscriptions it monitors your spending and helps lower your bills so you can grow your savings you can see all of your 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to go because when I think of course a vow to think of city and I think of rpgs I think a story I think of combat the world right I have some extras from the community questions I have extras about Andy of course playing out of worlds and kind of that comparison I'm excited to hear from you but what do you want to start this conversation I want to talk about scaling scope of it all right we talked about like I think they underplayed how big this game was but I think what's interesting in many ways is when you bump up against the fact of oh like this is the video game this is about the video game right and what I mean by that is what we talked a little bit about here of okay here's there's so much to do but it is repetition you are fighting these losers you are fighting these fungus people you are they not the video games right I think the environments look beautiful but then once you've learned the environment you're gonna kind of can look the same over and over again right one of the things I thought was an interesting move was what we were talking about there like okay you can break stuff down whatever you want to use that you whatever but then to have meaningful conversations you have to go back to your camp right okay I get it it's kind of like the normity right when we were playing Mass Effect and we have these things you'd go back to the normity between your things to shoot around but since we don't have to go to camp necessarily it was a weird choice to do that in the same way I think it's a weird choice that as you go through this game you find things like I was talking about hey here's some brambles and it puts up the burn logo because of course if you have an instrument that would burn you could do it or if one of your teammates will be able to burn in the same way one of your teammates will be able to dispel this illusion so you can see a treasure chest or a door this a companion can shoot lightning right you have abilities get around this with grimars or whatever but for my build there were certain powers I didn't have so then it was this weird one of okay you're there's four companions you can have you go out with two at a time so you're out as a trio all the time right so if I run in if I'm out in the world and I run into oh I need to be able to dispel this illusion which is one of my companions powers but I don't have her on the team rather than be able to just have a narrative thing of since she's there I can use this device to shoot it I would then have to drag an age fucking I would have to go from where I open up fast travel back to the camp through a loading screen not long but a loading screen get there don't even talk to anybody click on the portal to leave basically change the party and say leave not from where I am now but leave to back where I was so it's this weird crutch to fast travel all the way back there switch people out and fast travel to town portal in Diablo to be able to come back to where you were yeah and it was just a deal where it was like especially when you're late in the game and you are so powerful and I'm still still grinding off weapons and trying to power these things up so I need resources but there were times where I was like I'm on a run oh fuck it's about I'm never coming back you know it's not worth it I don't want to do that I want to continue on what I'm doing I'm so close I feel like finishing this quest I want to go do that well that's the thing that Mike didn't like in Dragon Age where you know in Dragon Age all of your NPCs have these abilities to open up new world or new paths and things like that in a multitude of different ways but because they become your friend you kind of absorb their power through your through that through stack and so you know Mike made the point of yeah but then you know here you are you've worked your whole life to get this rock power or whatever point I have and now you just kind of have it it's like oh I don't need you you go back to the base so like I see the lore reasons why they wouldn't want to allow that but from the ease of but where we've seen them kind of cut a lot of corners for sort of quality of life things that does make sense or like why didn't they just allow you to do that there should there be some narrative clutch of being able to radio back and say I'm doing this and they zoom through your eyes so you shift your finger though when I was talking about what we go say well because it goes back to what I said again like you you mentioned oh well I'm just wondering if it go there so you don't want to go back I again my own personal opinion I think this is a game that you slow play you don't rush to the finish line and we're obviously review we've had for two weeks I get it people want to get it done but I think for people that are watching this and gonna go pick it up don't feel like you need to rush to the finish line and say first I finished it first I did it I know and I think what I'm literally talking about is I'm enjoying the quest I'm on and I want to finish the quest so I don't want to stay I don't want to break up what I'm doing right now to shoot back to do this to get another branch I don't disagree and that's my point my point is you finish that quest that you're on you make and again this is where you can get nerdy with it yeah write it down no book whatever and go hey I want to make sure I go back to this thing that I saw because I did that a lot whereas I may not have necessarily had the companion I needed to open that door or the illusion or whatever at the time but I'm like there's something there now another thing to come back to this another thing about this is I think the loots always there again you're always on this grind to break stuff down get stuff stuff have ready go but one of my things was like okay I'm gonna blow past this room that might have a treasure chest in it because I'm gonna be able to pick it up the next thing I'm getting a lot of and also there's it's a weird thing where you're incentivized because it'll make you stronger in the long run but there's so much that I'm not incentivized for this chest but in the same breath too one of my main complaints and this is just me being me but like I love playing dress up in these games I love looking cool I never looked cool in this game none of the armor is cool in this game so again when it was like well I've been leveling this thing I'm wearing up forever like I can transmog to make it look I mean something looks fine but I'm 20 hours in now plus and I know that I don't like any of the styles here so I even worry about with the chest you really wish you could re-edit your character okay yeah you don't have that ability so once you're hearing your face on yeah once you once you look away you look at you that's how you are you know and here's the thing again we talked to talk to the death for many years at this point Mike the mustache and beard combinations let them know be a champion you're upsetting you're all game developers we need a disconnected beard and mustache that and when you when that option is presented it's always a goddamn Shakespearean yeah yeah I don't want to curl up I don't want that just just this you know just this monster hunter wilds they give you two facial beard options right so you could do a mustache and then you could do a beard and then check this out Mike I had just a chinstrap because they don't have like my style thing okay but I use the makeup in the game and I use freckles to give myself a like just great customization again your first person can't really see your character but still I was really deflated as I made generic jibroni 42 as you know I don't go to in depth and then immediately the first two people I mean I'm like wow we look exactly like that sucks I immediately was like well there goes the other five sales on this one um otherwise I do think the character creator is like fine I enjoy sliders I I prefer the ability to you know um but playing Baldur's G3 recently I was like really disappointed by the character creator because I played with a lot of the other day and it was like man you're just picking from six different heads that sucks yeah you know like playing this playing monster in a wild like let me move the eyeballs let me move the eyes up and down I have a much larger for it because I got the receding hairline let me make my forehead larger you know like I enjoy that so I think overall the character was like definitely above average I would still say even though I don't love the look of a lot of the characters um where the environments when I'm running on full epic you know a pair of people probably tested this you got the 40 90s rockin pairs got a 50 90 like the game you know running this game with ray tracing the environments look fucking awesome but here's the thing you got a 40 90s is the lead about the way they see laptop they went to me so I got it yeah I got it I got it I got Greg's thing kind of humming you know I've watched him play I was like man let's get you to 60 frames per second you know what I mean but um the game doesn't have uh it has the option for AMDS FSR and NVIDIA DLSS and neither of those were functional and maybe it's a bug and maybe I but I did a lot of things wrong like changing them and I'm like nothing's happening visually and I'm looking at my frame rate and the GPU utilization nothing's changing here the only thing that was working on this build that we have is a temporal anti-aliasing which just like it takes you can run your game at like 85 resolution so it's a tiny little bit blurrier um but it helps the game run a little bit better but again the game running with ray tracing looks the environments look stunning and amazing all the lights like shadow casting it looks really awesome in a lot of moments yeah I really enjoyed a lot of the environments that I was seeing in the early colorful game very colorful when they say the living lands you feel that when you run around and you see the different areas uh quick question before we get off of character creator the godlike look of course you can turn that on or off I turned it off did you find any looks or you know pieces that would go on your head that you enjoyed yeah I thought Greg had a nice one that I was like oh that looked cool but everything else I didn't find anything that I loved um I chose the one that um I just looked like a pretty little fairy boy and I had a I got like the above my eyebrows just like a tiny bit of that sort of like purple sort of fungus look but and then uh and then I have like a little pink sparkle I'm just a little pretty boy yeah I like that I'm slacking it's assets screenshot I just took on my phone computer screen because that's how cool I am you know the parents what did you go with yeah god likewise yeah it's similar to yours uh bringing hairstyles into the sea I wanted the angel of Davis afro and the one that I did didn't like my career I'll have to post it even post it's terrible it's not good we're gonna power through this we're just gonna play the game so to your point I wish we could go back and edit our characters after we're done because in the creator character I was like oh this looks good and then I'm in cutscenes and I'm like this you know what I mean so it's fine I believe us yeah I didn't leave god like on though I didn't turn it off yeah I still couldn't do like the godlike where it was like your eyebrows or mushrooms or your hairs mushroom so I did this thing that looks like a fun game like she's turning into root oh that's gonna be called their eyes Lee for you know Pamela's name boys and I gave her some green hair right there put that in there yeah she looks like a we have millennia at home Andy oh sure yeah of course see I think she looks like bat one to do you know I want to bring in some of the community because I was looking at the avowed hype cast that Greg and a pair said earlier I was reading through some of the comments to see if anybody brought up some questions of course you do see your character quite often in this game but there is a first and third person though the chat wanted to know can you toggle that on with just a button press or is that you have to go into the menu three baby you can talk when I don't know the you button on keyboard I like that did you use that often no okay no I mean either once in a while when I'd be like traversing the living lands just running through the desert so I'd be like all right let's look over there but like in combat like it's clearly meant to be first person it feels great I'm not even a big first guy but like a comment feels great it looks great it was just like the way to go I think they did a great job of still making it look as convincing as possible that this game you know could fully be played third person and it totally can be but just like the way the character moves and stuff it's like this is supposed to be a first person shooter the way whenever you go to third person and you kind of see like the way the character kind of like twists their their waist and stuff it doesn't look like it was built from the ground up with this in mind and first person is still so good anyway that I just like resorted to that okay if it were a lot better I could see maybe going for that but I still enjoyed first person a lot you know let's time to the combat sure because I was a big real quick great great guy I'd select you my character oh there was let's take a look at Paris this character oh I would have said a bear in depth on me oh my god okay I don't want to see the combat not a good sign with Greg says yes you don't want to hear it oh my god computer you'll be able to see this of course if you're watching live you'll be able to see this if you are listening come on over you get to see these guys these creations they made hey boy don't you know I got something no no I'm sitting to ask it's as well bear oh we said everything over well you get to see everybody's here you get to see my pretty boy with a mustache silver hair got some uh I just you know I just look so I'm just a little pretty fair you look like you look like a Tony's Howard star Howard star oh yeah yeah I can see again you give me a second facial you know hair option like I would give myself a beer I love that for you got beautiful there's Andy right there see the mushroom eyebrows I can't do oh really I love it I love it I'm just gonna crawl literally now the first one I think the first beef the first beef all option you get it look like when you said that made your skin crawl I had the same feeling seeing I think maybe one of the first options where I was like oh did something I cut into my face because they're like deep gashes in your face but it's really like your skin is kind of growing out around it's just a terrible zoomed hair yeah bring it up okay oh you did the hair fungus as well yeah way too much plastic surgery by the way look at those eyes and lips so so pears chose the face fungus as well as the hair I did not choose the hair fungus yeah I only did like the eyebrow thing I turned it all off I just want to be Mike yeah let's jump into the comment to have some fun of course combat you guys brought up in your reviews being a big factor here we really talked about the free form combat here in avowed which is you have two loadouts which you get to choose you know up to two weapons in each or one weapon in each and have two weapons per loadout you have the freedom of choosing different abilities and leveling up those skills in the different fighter class the wizard class kind of the stealth archer class so let's talk about where you guys went with your builds what did you like what did you not like about having the two loadouts that you had uh so I went sort and bored so I went I originally was like I'm gonna be dual daggers I was running dual daggers and I was running bone arrow in the back and on my secondary one right eventually though got this sword that was on fire and had flame damage on it I was like it was pretty cool and then of course picked up a shield and I was like oh you know dual daggers it's nice but it gets in the way of pairing it gets in the way of blocking stuff like that right you still dodge but you can't parry with it which you could but not quite as easier which I feel like is something that could be fixed and I wish it was personally could be elevated because I like the pairing in this game like you know I initially thought oh you're only gonna be able to parry if you have a shield right and you get that sort of shield bash knock them back and it feels good it sort of slows down and he's gets done the feedback you get visually and uh audibly audially it's awesome it feels good to do right um but I I have a dagger that whenever you parry and I was able to further upgrade this dagger not only just to make it stronger but then you can go to the in your home in the in the in the enchantment table and the enchantment table helps you kind of further upgrade it although it's permanent so if you upgrade a thing and you maybe click something you didn't like as much freedom as this game gives you once you enchant something it's enchanted you cannot disenchant it and take it back which kind of sucks it's like it's it tells you this is a permanent thing um kind of a bummer with how free and sort of experimental the rest of the combat can be but I would this thing I enchanted it to wherever you if I parried somebody the person that I was parrying would get crazy fire damage that would like you know damage over time sort of thing and I love to doing that but as soon as I equipped another dagger I no longer had a parry which just doesn't make sense to me because it's because the same button right it's the same button right so if you only have one dagger in your hand your left click is attack and your right click is the parry but if you put two daggers in each hand then each click is each hand right and I still wish that like I wish there was an option that just made left click attack with both and then right click still parry because it just doesn't make sense that I can if I'm only holding one knife I can parry with that one knife but if I have two I can't parry with that one knife still it doesn't just like to use the solder button or something like that yeah just it just doesn't make sense to me um so I wish that that option was there but since it's not there I did switch back to uh sword with one when I'm doing melee stuff just a one-handed sword I could parry and then the other option was I have dual pistols and so if you charge if you hold down the attack button with the gun it will charge and take a bit more stamina off but then it'll like do a much tough much stronger shot and having both of those and charging both of those it feels awesome I feel so powerful and ridiculous the one thing though that I found playing is I eventually was never using my secondary like I was switching weapon I switched all the time I switched so much then I upgraded the ability that gave me a faster quick swap so when I shoot I could switch to my melee stuff and I upgraded it so far that not only do I swap my weapons faster but when my guns are not equipped they reload that's nice and it's awesome and I so that's how much I am kind of using that pair so what were you rocking so you you mentioned this way earlier which is another quality of life featuring here the economy to respect is pretty pretty reasonable so yeah most encouraged to respect and find what works for you so I ultimately fell into kind of this weird hybrid of fighter range and wizard abilities that I used so that like I was saying before my my main go to was my grimor book and I was using a pistol that that had the shock perk to it my secondary was a sword that I wind up enchanting and I had this poison perk on it and along with giving me a boost in stamina and I think and I think even my shield wind up giving me a boost in essence as I'm upgrading it up and I found that that balance of I was going back and forth depending on and also utilizing my companions as well and their abilities and in certain certain enemies like all right I'm gonna take and I was screwing him up but yachtsly yachtsly yachtsly like her that essence bomb that she'll drop on people I was constantly using that with her um Kai I would take advantage of of of his range pistol that he would use if I was using I was using a jiggy I was using his Hulk smash where he was flying yeah yeah you do that too upgraded to the point where he gets the more enemies that are around not only is it a larger aoe thing that hits but the more enemies that are around that he does hit he gets more more health back really love that one yeah no no I was just gonna say like the jiata she's like the healer so I bring her in like especially earlier on when I was really getting my butt kick in combat you sort of constantly trying to heal she has that barrier that that you can put around people stuff like that meh maris is probably the one that used the least as a companion but I loved his route especially if you upgraded it his route ability because it also had a poison effect to it as well or bleeding effect as well if you upgraded it really like that so you could take some in a horde of enemies and give them stationary and then they're immediately bleeding and then you can attack them use another different ways but another thing which I kind of alluded to was those totem fragments because if you take the time to get those and get I think it's six of them along with the stand you're gonna get other perks that you don't have to spin ability points into your character because they're basically it's almost like passive passive ability points that you're getting because you're being rewarded for getting those ones so I took advantage of that and I would spec my build around that like okay I'm gonna get extra stamina here I'm gonna get extra essence here you know I'm gonna get more damage here I'm gonna get fire resistance because of this this other passive ability I got from the totem fragments right and then I'll spin my other points into other things that'll supplement that and you know improve my character so that's kind of how my approach to combat was I tried to be super nerdy about it like all right well if I do this here then I'm gonna be able to do that over there and you know and it was good like I said I really enjoyed the combat and I think that's what really pushing me forward through the game was I was looking forward to getting into different encounters because I wanted to try out stuff wandering the living lands and I'd see I'm going from point A to point B and there'd be any faction I'm fucking these guys up coming to be the one killing you and doing this you know I had a really I had a really cool perk on one of my pistols that I upgraded to because for a while I was doing pistol with a dagger and I only did it because of this one perk that I had where if I would get a crit shot with my pistol it would suck the enemy towards me to melee range and then I would start wailing on so there's a lot of cool creativity that sort of happens in addition to all of the you know I didn't go wizard class but like a pair so you bring up Marius' sort of root entanglement ability I was a rogue so I went with that anyway that was my ability so like Marius you're kind of just like not only are you not super entertaining and not only do I like if you were super sick I would have had you in my party regardless of your powers nobody's really like that you know this wasn't I'm gonna get a lot of hate for this anyway because Dragony's Rail Guard largely not loved by a lot of people but I love so many of the MVPs or any so many of the NPCs little Freudians sit right there they're all MVPs for me but for the the NPCs and I'm like you know what I don't really vibe with your comments but I love having you in the party and you have such cool things to say never felt that about any of the people here until you know until recently where I'm getting a bit more threads that I'm kind of enjoying narratively before we go that way because I do want to the one thing we haven't talked about we're talking about how much we like combat we're talking about the dual wielding and we're talking about the switch between weapons we're not talking I think effectively about how you're using your companions and how you're using your abilities so of course you have your weapons yeah but then at least on controller right you hit LB in a fight right you bring up a wheel it's just a tab that brings up the entire wheel and then you have your abilities that you've chosen to unlock via your skill tree as you've been going but then for the two companions they have their own section with the abilities you've unlocked for them and that's where you're getting the Hulk smash you're getting the entanglement I did entanglement for me as well but then I also used the stealth one where I would go invisible so I could sneak around and then use this this godlike blade that looks like the omni blade that looks like the sword the dagger from Dragony's to stab people from behind like double damage or whatever and so that's what you're really getting to what are you using in combat what do you need both from your tree and then what do you need from your companions that you're bringing along with you and it was the thing again where for me personally as we start to move not more towards narrative and what these people are never connected with any of these companions and also I feel like the game it has pivotal choices more down the line than in the beginning there's the two ones that are like oh there's a before and after for this choice but like not enough again this is similar to my argument about Dragony's where I really wanted more of those to have more permutations but I will compliment it on the fact that I was running with two characters I don't want to get any spoiler things here two characters I was presented with one of the major choices I chose the one that I was like well clearly this is the right choices the good choice and those two companions flipped out on you about it and I was like well guess what you're riding the pond the rest of the show I like your abilities more than the other two abilities but fuck you both you're not you're not with me you're not right or not I bring these two people in I think there are cool moments just not nearly uh not nearly often as I would want them to happen and again like for the side missions I did and I'm not nearly as exhausted as Paris throughout his 50 hours right but again for the first two islands I was very much like I do everything let's do it all there I was finding it few and far between where it wasn't just uh my parents they turned into dreams thralls can you go I went killed them all they're dead that said all right bye thanks here's some gold like all right like there's a great one there's a bath house there right that was a really cool mission that I was like oh wow not only is this a cool mission in terms of this world it's a cool mission in terms of me as a character because I'm making a choice here and it is very much there are it's black white and red of like what shade are you making your character like that's cool I wanted more of that when I think did the overall majority of what I played side mission wise was can you go do this all right you did it thank you here's money even the bounties where I was like all right I was with Andy like I did all the bounties twice and I was like all right I wanted to find you cash yeah Paris I'm sorry did you do because this is scatter born in the third area did you do the one side mission where it was kind of no I know that's what I'm gonna be vague the graffiti no it's not my thing I haven't done yet that was pretty cool and then there's another one I don't want I want to be so clear that like I like this game you should play this game if you like open RPGs open zone open world whatever but it's like there are interesting quests in this there are interesting beats in it but then it's like overall back to my thing the size and the scope the amount of times where I would turn off captions just to watch the scene and it is just like I'm standing there talking like this and it's like yeah this feels like it is in a Bethesda game but it feels like what we all think about Bethesda game and I love it but that's the game but it's like again bumping up against those walls where it's like oh this is what this is it's got that sort of old school jank to it yeah it's in a lot of moments where I may have a I may have just completed this really pivotal side quests and it's emotional and it's like one that I actually was like super stoked to do and you end up murdering somebody and it's like a really kind of tough moment you know and then your NPC's like nice shot all right and the person's like there and it's like it's nice to work as a team yeah I need you to sort of like hop in here with your character bark at this moment you're really sort of like harsh in the vibe right now um but I think the reason why I have mainly you know I won't say I'm a hundred percenting everything but I'm like 98 percenting everything right I've done so many other side quests and the reason I have been doing them all is not because I'm like I just want to live in this it's because I'm sort of chasing the hope that I will get more of of the obsidian that I want and I've been kind of led down by a decent amount of them more than I would like so here's a big question I have listening to you review this game now that we've reviewed it and we've set a piece are you gonna keep playing or are you gonna move yeah I want to beat it yeah because I'm again I'm at the point right now where it the game is a lot more enjoyable to me now because of the zone I'm in because of the characters I'm dealing with because of the writing I'm dealing with because of the sort of political implications of it was always a really cool thing from the start you are with the empire you are a fucking like I don't know captain in Darth Vader's empire and you're out in the world doing stuff and you're seeing these people being affected by your fucked up empire and you're like I know they're doing mess up things but you know I'm just kind of the messenger I understand and I really like the moments where the game asks you are you are you willing are you willing to sort of just go with the company status quo or do you want to show these people I'm not like them I'm not a part of that system and yes like I'm not like a captain for them I'm just like this other person who's still kind of with them and that introduces a lot of really cool kind of character interactions I just I wish they went like the extra mile with it I agree I'm saying against the bump especially the ending with it which I won't talk about but the ending with it where I was like okay yeah yeah to avoid any spoilers this is the two people I did talk to about the game just just to get you know kind of comparison stuff during the process what I found out is your decisions do matter in certain encounters that you're eventually going to have so the choices that you make there were certain things that I did that they're like I didn't do that I didn't see that I didn't count that and they're like oh I had this done it and I'm like I didn't do that so and it turns out well I chose this it took me down this path they chose something else and it took them down another path so look I get it that not everybody's gonna want to go back and replay a 30 40 hour RPG but it almost seems like they're setting this up that I am definitely curious to go back and play it differently to make different choices to see I want to experience the thing that he experienced oh you got this weapon I get that weapon I'm gonna get that you know so I think that is there as well and that's why I said at the beginning I do think there's definitely layers to this game whereas you can play it just straight up as just your standard cookie cutter RPG all right I played it 20 25 hours rinse and repeat I'm done or you can kind of dive in even deeper into layers and enters more to discover I think the first you rewarded me for diving I know that you've done you've done you feel like it has whereas the stuff I was doing I just okay this isn't worth it I'm gonna just go through and do it I think what I think maybe the first side quest I experienced was why I was so high on this game in the first like couple hours like it just had a really kind of cool story and neat discoveries about the world because again much I care I don't know anything about the pillars of course you know zero but seeing what this character was going through immediately I was like oh cool if we can keep diving into this and see the way other people are affected by this certain aspect of their world and I just I don't know I'd I never feel like I never feel like I quite got there but again in the third zone that I'm in I'm getting a lot more of what I want and I wish if the rest of this game was like this third zone I would be way higher on this it's just the first two zones I feel like aside from a couple of like neat things that happened I was largely left a bit underwhelmed so yeah I still have a bunch of notes here let's see I'm gonna really quick jumping off that I want to give some praise to the team over at Obsidian because when I first jumped into this game not having the pillars background you are smacked with it over the mouth right away like oh man I don't I don't know any of this what is going on and they have a nice little dialogue glossary every single time you talk to someone they will be highlighted words of like hey we know you're not going to know what this is if you press X you can jump in you can read all about causes the conversation so you can read through what they're talking about because it is overwhelming the first probably hour you're gonna jump in you're gonna go I don't know let's calm down a little bit you're gonna wish it went a little bit slower but great job on that I really enjoyed the dialogue options I think they really push forward of like hey you have options here if you want to be if you're on voice a certain class you can do this option or hey if you've gone into persuasion you can do this or you can just be Mike and say you know what we're fighting I think there are more times than that I just went straight to now we're fighting now it's no more conversation I really enjoyed that in the dialogue tree yeah to keep praising them about their lore thing Final Fantasy 16 first did it from what I know as a gamer in my experience with Final Fantasy 16's active time lore where you can pause any cutscene and you get the Amazon Prime TV what are they called DNA Amazon what do they call it whenever you pause an Amazon show and you can see what actors are in the scene and what they've been in and who their characters names are x-ray x-ray thank you um i love seeing that in Final Fantasy 16 to be like oh thank god I am so bad with my ADHD it's hard for me to stay immediately focused and I'll cast myself slip in focus wise and to be able to pause the cutscenes in Final Fantasy 16 and see who the characters are what factions are with what the implications are awesome stuff the same thing here I'm so glad you brought that up because I I want this to be standard here going out I learned so much more about this world where a word could just kind of come and go and it slips and you're like I'll hopefully remember that later on if I decide to open up the glossary or whatever but having those cutscenes and you know you bring you hit pause and there's all the those magical terms you're like what world is that they're talking about what you know what's a nim doot like what the what are all these what are all these terms and having all those definitions they're super great and I love that really really big kind of that oh guys as we start to ramp down I of course want to open it up to any of you that might want to hit on something that we didn't hit on I do want to bring in of course just to kind of of piggyback off of that the community once again the Colson writes it and says does this push any of you to jump in and maybe check out pillars of eternity no not at all no okay it does I like again I know this has been a critical one or seven five calling a game good I might as well call dog shit if this is one where I do get go like man I hope that there's a quiet period to re-roll a character because I would like to do a new character and just go and be the asshole yeah and just be like no my emperor says this fuck you and see how that plays out and what that does and how that changes the effects because even playing this and not having talked to anybody I was like oh man I do wonder what that choice does versus what the choice I'm doing how that's all going to play out now the only reason I say no immediately to the pillars thing is I think I've always sort of loosely been interested in that game anyway because it is so highly regarded but this game didn't in any way make me want to play it more okay like this game didn't say like whoa shit I know I've been holding that game off for a while it's been on my backlog now I need to go it's like it didn't really encourage me to go do that more and I don't necessarily think that's like a bad thing either it's just like to me if they out of nowhere we're like you know what it's actually not part of the universe like I just I don't know somebody who wasn't really aware of this universe anyway it just it doesn't feel like there's a whole lot to make me grasp onto pairs about for yourself you mean it you mean it when you sneeze you mean yourself I had the most sarcastic response all came up and I just blew it but no I disagree both of you and yes I would like to know more about the pillars universe so if time allows yeah I would look check out one of the other games okay that's great guys um I just got a bunch of like things kind of listed here I love that loot shimmers you have a shimmering sound effect like loot boxes in Fortnite I so you didn't know where they're at I love that as well I love the shimmer sound I love a good treasure chest also amazing this is the first RPG my son's ever played my third year old son was running around playing a vat on my controller I sent Xbox the video so they got to do it but every treasure treasure I'm like I know Ben this is what this game is is it the one thing I would say is and I know Steve sailor of course blind game receive is doing a review of this and I want to check it out because I thought accessibility options were lacking because what I went in is I was having trouble all the time spotting the loot from kills on the ground I don't know if this is just a Greg thing but it was like I have to look at the map and see the X which of course awesome that it says that I love it when I'm getting good does that but I'd be running towards like where is it in the bush like I wanted to be able to put on a thicker outline and I couldn't yeah I don't disagree that there's a lot of I mean I just kind of ran around and I found it I don't I don't I don't least treasure um let's see um I really enjoyed that whenever you sort of start to bond with an NPC and you start kind of like learning more about them eventually they'll be like anything you want to learn from me and you can talk and then you'll be like yeah sure and they give you a couple things that you could learn from or they could give you you know let's say they're good at magic so they might have they may be an intellect type character with a whatever I don't know type character and then you can be like a little boost yeah and then you can be like you know what kind of teach me whatever you want to know and they'll be like all right I'll teach you you know kind of a mixture of everything I'll give you a mix bag and then you get added stats after you talk to them or so you're kind of rewarded for doing that yeah play on my kill yeah one thing I don't love is that I feel like a lot of these conversations with people in the world you were given the option I love talking my way out of situations as much as I love combat in games you know I love just seeing how I can talk my way out of something just like what are the devs gonna do here to see you know exactly what the dialogue is gonna be here to make the this character how am I gonna trick them how am I gonna lie to them how I'm gonna convince them I really enjoy that about RPGs and um a lot of them could be solved with resolve and intellect and I feel like that's been a massive majority of the ways that you could get out of conversations if you have the resolve stat or the or the intellect stat yeah I'm not a mage so I never put into intellect and resolve I eventually started putting stuff more stuff into resolve which means that I didn't put stuff into my other rogue stats that I need but resolve is when you hover over what the resolve stat is it's like if you're a hard-hitting warrior that wants to you know be in the thick of it or whatever and that's not me either like I'm a rogue I'm a kind of archer guy but the amount of situations that relied on resolve and intellect it's like well I'm not putting any stats in that I guess I should start putting into resolve but the things that you're telling me those stats are for don't really apply to me but I'm the amount of situations that I'm seeing where it's like which I had resolve or intellect there it's like all right well I got to start specin into that even though those aren't meant for my rogue type of character so I wish I wish maybe resolve the description was a bit more like good for you know resolving situations I would pull up it's very much talking about second wind here right and we feel bam ginger whatever yeah good for warriors who need to swing heavy weapons and survive big hits it's like well that's not me either none of these apply to me but the majority of conversations that I could talk my way out of required either of those yes and that sort of sucks early on so I've been just not doing stuff like I started putting points into that but I wish resolve also said I was just like it resolved really used for a lot of conversations guys anything else that you want to praise or maybe I just discuss really quick one thing I I forgot to mention before just exploring the land is you'd look at something to go can I get out there can I climb up to that yeah and a lot of times you could great on board you know not every time you're rewarded with something but you know you find like oh hey that was worth it that I took the time to go explore that and see if I could climb up to the top of this thing or whatever the case may be and I'll bring up again I found the treasure hunts the treasure map stuff it'd be pretty fun in my opinion because they didn't hold your hand they kind of just gave you a picture of where it was and then you have to figure out in that zone where that picture is and then even when you figure that out there's usually some kind of secret cave or button or something you got to push somewhere to actually get to where the treasure is not all the rewards on it were decent I mean some of them were actually pretty good but again I enjoyed my time doing it yeah the manteline and parkouring fantastic freeze and the water like you said or electrify as a snowcaster the whole time that I've played it's been a lot of like using the environment's my parkouring freeze that now I can jump on it jump off that like you really excellent stuff I want to echo that from Paris so like this falls into I think one of the great things the same does is the level is what it is laying it out and making it a jungle gym slash world you can scale you can go I want to get up there and forgiving enough to where there's been there were a couple times I'm like oh yeah that split second moment when you're midair like I underjumped this I'm not gonna hit this ledge it's gonna take forever to get back up here I'm already annoyed but it'll you know give you the grace every you know a lot of times where you feel like you're gonna miss a jump your character will sort of mantle so yeah parkour and traversal in this game really really damn good very enjoyable one thing we didn't really stick on was those boss fights you will have a number of encounters where you will find someone with a large boss health bar did you notice a lot of flavor to that where they were hitting you with different moves is it always a big ogre that kind of just does the charge and the big shield smacker did you run into some other flavors I found none of them to be remarkable the latest one that I did I was like oh okay you're wearing a funny hat and you just want a bit to attack me but this is kind of where I jotted down the note of like again there's all this stuff to do and again the scope the scale bumping into the walls going through the first two areas of bounties and doing them all just being like all right like I'm killing things which is fun but it's not and I don't need the money and I don't feel like I'm getting something out of this narrative least like why am I doing this other than to do it would my character I'm trying to be right now do this on our giant open quest to do this so they didn't say that to me but that's me I agree with great I don't they didn't really stand out to me either aside from having like a name you know exactly oh there's an health bar this is important yeah it's been it this way I don't necessarily disagree with what you're saying as far as the boss is doing something drastically unique that made them stand out but what I found on this kind of goes into what you're talking about Andy there was one boss where and this is war cooler talk where I found out I thought I was talking to this boss to resolve the issue peacefully and then it went up just turning in all hell and fighting all these different creatures and I want to kill in the boss and doing my thing talking to someone else they were able to successfully talk to this boss and resolve it peacefully and then now that boss and its creatures became allies of yours in that region they didn't attack you anymore so I was like oh man so that that was cool in that regard and then there was another one actually this one the the level they showed that people got hands on during games come because we got to play that games come L.A. and I know they did it at games come proper I did that that mission in the game and the end result that I had with that boss I did it completely different than I did during the preview and then something really cool happened as a result I don't want to spoil it for anyone so I don't think it's necessarily about all the bosses are doing these these crazy things that you know you got to find the cadence to figure it out yeah the combat is very similar with the bosses with a bigger health bar as they are with the other enemies but I do think in results how you encounter them can can have rewarding results if that makes sense and I love the physics system as well like being able to yeah once you're sort of overpowering dudes it was a great moment where I'm in this zone that has like a massive sort of hill decline and the enemies sort of above me and my squadmate does something that makes them ragdoll and they just start sliding down this hill with no hope in hell because like the game is telling this NPC once you have you know footing you'll be able to get up but the courage is like they're just like they're trying to recover just sliding down this hill because the physics never ever caught up for them and once they got back up I you know immediately dual pistol charge headshot and their body flies again it's a lot of fun when everything's happening like that that's great well that has been the kind of funny game's cast of valve review to go around one more time just your score and your final thoughts before we get out of here parasol kick it with you what was the score again my final score was a 9.5 I thought this game was excellent I really it really resonated with me as a nerdy RPG and like I said before I think this is the first big game of the year for Xbox did a great job congrats up city I like that back Miller I think this is a very good game I gave it a 7.5 I didn't get the story and companionship I wanted out of it but I had a great time playing it I enjoyed it I never was like oh I gotta play more of out tonight never never never never I enjoyed that moment to moment combat and that discovering exploration and again if they do in a vow to if they do DLC for this I'll be first in the line to play it wonderful Andy just to wrap us up I had the asterisk because I'm not finished with it yet but I do want to keep playing it and see it through because I'm enjoying it more than I did but so far I'm at a 7 out of 10 good and I know this whole episode was mainly a wine and baby baby crying fest from me over here just kind of complaining about a lot of stuff but a lot of it is because I I see the potential and I'm kind of disappointed by a bit of the potential even though I still think it's a a game that is very very competent and very good and fun at a lot of moments once again a vow coming to you from obsidian entertainment releases February 18th but of course you can play early with that premium edition five days early so I'm sure we'll be seeing some comments down below if you're jumping in to early access if not we will catch you hopefully in the comments later on once you go hands on let us know what you think of a vow thank you for watching the review here on today's gamescast enjoy the stream after this and goodbye everyone