Greedfall

GWJ Conference Call Episode 675

Borderlands 3, Gears of War 5, Void Tyrant, Greedfall, Kind Words (lo fi chill beats to write to), International Gamers With Jobs Day 2019, Games that teach us, your emails, shout-outs, and more!

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This week Cory, Julian, Sean and Amanda talk about the games that teach us!

To contact us, email [email protected]! Send us your thoughts on the show, pressing issues you want to talk about or whatever else is on your mind.

*Correction: Date read on show should be 18th, not 17th*

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Comments

00:01:54 Borderlands 3
00:09:12 Gears of War 5
00:12:13 Void Tyrant
00:14:51 Logitech G920 Dual-Motor Feedback Driving Force Racing Wheel
00:15:45 Greedfall
00:23:36 Kind Words
00:29:10 What We've Learned From Games
00:43:34 Your Emails

I just put two and two together listening to Amanda talk about Kind Words
Mail Deer delivers you a letter. Letters start with "Dear...". I love that I only just realized this.

It's a beautiful game and everyone should go spend the $5 to play it

Does anybody actually like lobster? I just see it as a socially acceptable pretext to eat an unhealthy volume of lemon-garlic butter in one sitting.

This must be the article that first emailer referenced: https://screenrant.com/steam-indie-s...

Besides the pressures discussed in the article and on the podcast, I wonder how much of that dip can be attributed to the Switch. Who all waited for Hollow Knight, Slay the Spire, or Return of the Obra Dinn to hit the Switch*? So many of these indies feel like they belong on a portable system.

* or CrossCode? When is that coming anyway? *googles*

Did someone on the podcast say that Control was available on one of the subscription services? If so, which one?
Thanks

Looking back now it seems ridiculous but I used to have one or two goes at something in a game, say the multiplayer for a certain title or a boss fight (I used to REALLY hate boss fights) and then think, 'clearly I'm absolutely awful at this,' and never attempt it again. Since then I've learnt the, now startlingly obvious, lesson that your first attempts at something aren't an indicator of how good you could become at that activity.

When I first started playing Dark souls I enjoyed the bits in-between the bosses enormously but saw the boss fights themselves as an intimidating/annoying roadblock between me and further progress. I beat a few of the bosses in the game solo but I looked up guides for all and used the co-op (Dark Soul's unorthodox, effective but rarely mentioned 'easy mode') to bypass the tougher ones. By the end of that game my opinion on bosses hadn't really changed, although I grew to love and appreciate Ornstein and Smough, after initially seeing them as the heavily armoured poster boys for Dark Soul's seemingly sadistic difficulty level. I also developed a strong affinity with Artorias of the abyss as a character and his fight is another that went from an initial hatred of that one armed broadsword wielding bastard and his cheap flips and spins to a sickening adoration. I never beat him on my own sadly but I did spend ages helping other people to beat him which was just as satisfying.

With Dark Souls 2 it was much the same. Only with Bloodborne did a true enjoyment of boss fights creep unbidden into my soul. I took on Gascoigne, a boss my brain was telling me I'd never beat and beat him. Similarly I dispatched the blood starved beast (I have a video called 'Ugly even by werewolf standards' as proof) and Shadow of Yharnam. Somewhere during those encounters I stopped panicking whenever my health dropped low and started to maintain a deliberate level of calmness. If I won I won if I didn't I'd try again.

I did summon help with Rom the space knight The Vacuous Spider because **** you Rom The Vacuous Spider.

My favourite fight in Bloodborne and the boss fight I'm proudest of beating is Lady Maria of the Astral Clocktower. She wiped my out within seconds on my first attempt. It took me quite a few further attempts to find out that, beyond the incredibly fast and challenging initial sword fight, was another boss phase that was a step up in difficulty (and beyond that a third that was tougher still.) My approach to bosses now is to set aside a chunk of time for attempts. I'll play for that length of time having runs at the boss and then plan to try again when I next have free time. It was at the start of one of these blocks on a Saturday morning that I finally beat her. As she fell I had a very similar feeling to the moment my instructor told me I'd passed my driving test. A kind of light headed, contented disbelief.

Demon's Souls taught me about sunk cost fallacy, and that just because I'd put 15 hours into it, doesn't mean I was going to enjoy it anymore after being stuck on a particular level for hours.

JRPGs taught me that FOMO is largely an illusion, and just because others might rave about such games, they never clicked with me (any of them).

Europa Universalis taught me that Venn digrams aren't always perfect circles -- just because I had a fondness for history podcasts and other strategy games, doesn't mean I will enjoy an illustrated spreadsheet set in a time period or country I have learned about.