Featured Image

First of all, we’d like to thank the amazing yurricanes for working with us to create the featured image for this episode. I think you’ll agree that it’s an amazing piece of art, and you should definitely check out their work

Players

Squidge

Jay

G

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Content Warning

At 2:35, Squidge says:

Squidge's Avatar Squidge:

How they hell did you do that?

At 9:28, G has this to say:

G's Avatar G:

bloody "professional"

At 01:15:30, Squidge says:

Squidge's Avatar Squidge:

Sod’s law, isn’t it?

which isn’t really a swear

it means "if something can go wrong, then it will"

and despite what some folks think, the “sod” here comes from the name for the stuff under your turf

Waffling Taylors: video game nonesense AND education

Please listen responsibly

Show Notes

A quick thing before we start this episode: this was recorded on April 25th, 2020 - the same day that we recorded Hidden Gems Part One and Hidden Gems Part Two

it really was, honest. We really did record this episode five months before we released it

so some of the things that we say might be a little dated. But that’s the nature of podcasts - the old time cast pod machine wibbly wobbliness - they can often be recorded way in advance of their release date.

a reference back to episode 8?! Why not!

We all know that the key to success, when it comes to RPGs, is carefully crafting a specific character. It’s why one of the throwaway jokes I use on almost every episode is that there should be a character creation game, where all you do is go through a series of intricate wizards for creating your perfect character. And when you get to the end of it, you have to go back to the beginning and create a completely different character.

Sure, that reads like a video game version of playing dress up

didn’t they already do that with Final Fantasy X-2?

but I genuinely think that it would be fun, and quite useful for D&D players.

Anyway, I wanted to talk to Squidge and G - who are both very much experts on this kind of thing - about the many different ways to build (or craft) your character. It seems that you can can have a completely different experience of certain games, depending on the character class that you choose, and the skill tree that you follow.

Jay's Avatar Jay:

So games like Diablo and Borderlands - among many, many, many, many others - offer you a way to craft a character in almost any way that you want. With seemingly endless possibilities, it seems that you could craft a heavy with a love for pressing flowers, or a shy, introverted, metal head with tendencies to eat couches in one sitting.

I thought that Squidge and G could talk to us a little bit about the many different ways that they’ve expanded on their favourite games by creating these seemingly daft combinations of characters… which make the game so much more fun and engrossing to play.

Playstyles and Builds

There is a fundamental difference between character creation and character building, we set out to describe this difference

Jay's Avatar Jay:

Dungeons & Dragons allows you to create a character but that’s not what this is about, is it?

G illustrates the point by telling us about his legendary “flame of the firehawk” build for Borderlands 2. One which would reduce the framerates of his friends machines down to sub 10 per seconds, and potentially damage his retinas.

G's Avatar G:

Generally the only reason I would stop exploding was simply because we’d run out of enemies

It’s not that telling to the folks who actually know G, but he definitely likes to play multiplayer games using annoyance and comedy

this is something we covered back in Multiplayer Shenanigans

I really wish that I had some footage of some of these characters to share, because they are a sight to behold. Trust me, playing multiplayer games with G is a lot of fun.

I really want to leave this no-context quote here:

Jay's Avatar Jay:

In what universe would turning yourself into a chicken be a good idea?!

Mass Effect: Origins

I’ve probably just given some games developer an idea for a game

G tells us the wonderful story of his entry into the Mass Effect series - it’s a corker, folks. Let’s just say that it’s a good thing that the Mass Effect games allow you to load character builds from the first game onward.

He also uses this as a great excuse to talk us through the many different build types in that game series, too. It looks like you can do this with almost any game which has RPG-like elements in it.

Squidge's Avatar Squidge:

Imagine a group of enemies hurtling towards you, and you are Taz the Taz-Manian devil

I mean, there’s not much that you can say to that.

From what both Squidge and G have to say, they really enjoyed the Mass Effect games. To be fair, they are pretty highly rated by both journos and players alike, so I can see why they feel that way.

Borderlands 2 and Beyond

During the discussion on Borderlands 2, I asked where the war cry of Squidge’s people came from. As a quick reminder, this is the war cry of his people:

Squidge's Avatar Squidge:

HAMMER!!!

Apparently, the war cry of his people came from when he used to play Dungeon Defenders with G and myself

why I didn’t remember that, is a mystery

And Squidge is more than happy to regale us with the origin story - as it were - for the war cry of his people. The set up for it sounds extremely violent

Squidge's Avatar Squidge:

bodies flying everywhere

but Dungeon Defenders has an almost comic book aesthetic, meaning that the violence is held at the “biff!” “pow!” levels, and not nearly the extremes that Squidge uses to paint his aural picture.

Music

Links to the music used in the podcast can be found below. Definitely check them out, because they're amazing tracks by awesome musicians.

All copyrighted material contained within this podcast is the property of their respective rights owners. Please see the above list for copyright details pertaining to music used.

Games Covered

We mentioned 15 games in this podcast. In the following order, those games where: