Fight Crab

GWJ Conference Call Episode 721

Final Fantasy 7: Remake (PS4), Final Fantasy 7: Original (Switch), Final Fantasy 8 (Switch), Paper Mario the Origami King (Switch), Fight Crab (PC), Blaseball (Web).

Click here to download!

Amanda and Rich are joined by guest Lara Crigger to talk about games that "grew the beard."

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.

  • Subscribe with iTunes
  • Subscribe with RSS
  • Subscribe with Yahoo!
Download the official apps
  • Download the GWJ Conference Call app for Android
  • Download the GWJ Conference Call app for Android

Comments

00:01:15 Final Fantasy 7: Remake
00:11:22 Paper Mario: The Origami King
00:17:30 Fight Crab
00:23:44 Blaseball
00:37:05 Game Series that "Grew the Beard"

Leaked Blaseball stats converted into a White Wolf style character sheet here.

Lara lost it. My month's already complete.

Blaseball - signed up. Go Chicago Firefighters!!
------
Games that literally and figuratively grew the beard -> God of War

Dragon Age?? Nooooo, say it ain't soooooo!!!!! :'( I kid, I kid, there are valid complaints to be made about DA:I, though I would say it wasn't a complete failure.

My suggestion for franchises that "grew the beard" would be the King's Quest games. They started out pretty simplistic with your straight up hero's journey (KQ1: find the treasures, become king; KQ2: find the treasures keys, rescue the princess). And then it changed. The main quest in KQ3 wasn't all that original (escape the evil wizard), but it was doing something very different with it, and shifted protagonist. KQ4 took that a step further (Rosella FTW!). KQ5 mostly brought technical advances, but KQ6 ramped things up (with Jane Jensen at the helm, though no shade to Roberta Williams, of course). Aaaand then it "shaved the beard" with KQ7 and Mask of Eternity. And the less said about the recent remake, the better.

Yup, I'm talking about a 40 year old adventure game franchise, but how is this a surprise to anyone??

Nice KQ pull! My faves were definitely 3 & 4. Then I moved on to the Quest for Glory games and never went back to KQ.

Assassin's Creed has grown, shaved and regrown the beard so many times now. I loved the Ezio games, but by Revelations, the beard was already getting shaggy. I lost interest until they shaved back to some muttonchops with Black Flag, then drifted out again until the luscious Greek beard of Odyssey.

Also it makes me think of strategy games where expansions and updates grow the beard -- War of the Chosen makes XCOM 2 so much better, for example. Same with Civilization and most Paradox titles.

Oh good pull with the AC franchise. That one has had its fair shares of ups and downs for sure!
As for QFG... I’m ashamed to say that one isn’t in my repertoire! I should really get it to it at some point. I figured I’d play when Joe (billybob476 on the forums) got around to it for the Upper Memory Block podcast, but... such is life. Too many games!

Ohhh yeah. The first few AC's were... Something. Quite a product of their time.

Eleima wrote:

Dragon Age?? Nooooo, say it ain't soooooo!!!!! :'( I kid, I kid, there are valid complaints to be made about DA:I, though I would say it wasn't a complete failure.

My suggestion for franchises that "grew the beard" would be the King's Quest games. They started out pretty simplistic with your straight up hero's journey (KQ1: find the treasures, become king; KQ2: find the treasures keys, rescue the princess). And then it changed. The main quest in KQ3 wasn't all that original (escape the evil wizard), but it was doing something very different with it, and shifted protagonist. KQ4 took that a step further (Rosella FTW!). KQ5 mostly brought technical advances, but KQ6 ramped things up (with Jane Jensen at the helm, though no shade to Roberta Williams, of course). Aaaand then it "shaved the beard" with KQ7 and Mask of Eternity. And the less said about the recent remake, the better.

Yup, I'm talking about a 40 year old adventure game franchise, but how is this a surprise to anyone?? :D

I thought about saying King's Quest, but, like you said, it would have been another "grew the beard than shaved it" selection, and I had already offered up Ultima. KQ VI is one of the best games ever made, so admittedly it was a hard act to follow.

I also failed to bring up Wizardry, which was on my personal notes for the episode and I think got better and better as the series progressed (though I imagine the whole series hasn't aged all that well.)

I think of Grand Theft Auto as growing the beard because no one even remembers the first two entries, and then suddenly everybody was playing GTA 3.

I was not prepared for the discussion to open with that Mario hot take.

Eleima wrote:

Oh good pull with the AC franchise. That one has had its fair shares of ups and downs for sure!
As for QFG... I’m ashamed to say that one isn’t in my repertoire! I should really get it to it at some point. I figured I’d play when Joe (billybob476 on the forums) got around to it for the Upper Memory Block podcast, but... such is life. Too many games!

QFG is so good! Among those point-and-click adventure games, that series especially is my jam. If you only play one, I'd recommend QFG 4: Shadows of Darkness, though they're all good. I doubt QFG 5 has held up as well as the others, though I really dug its setting and the fact that the story allowed you to lose different parts of the contest for the Silmarian crown.

The Conference Call is so popular it broke blaseball.com!

You are too kind! I would cede credit to the Waypoint team for that. <3
Go, splorts!

Spoiler:

Discretion. We do not want to draw a dark eye from the blaseball gods for breaking anything.

You have to pick a team based on nothing but these team names. Go!

IMAGE(https://www.inquirer.com/resizer/yP_qAsW13TVAlEswVlsKV0_eXko=/1400x0/center/middle/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/pmn/44VOR5OCFVBFTDGEDARM25JRBA.jpg)

Unlimited Tacos, hands down. Don't even need to look at the other names.

LastSurprise wrote:

Unlimited Tacos, hands down. Don't even need to look at the other names.

That's basically how I felt when I saw the list, too. How can you not want unlimited tacos. And then I read about the Grand Unslam and loved them even more.

It was really surprisingly to hear Lara bash on the early Dragon Quest games. Sure, the original was pretty much just a demo, but III, IV, and V are still amazing to this day, especially on their newer releases such as iOS that have been balance tweaked to remove some grinding.