4PP 256: The Zany Show

I'm glad David played Katawa Shoujo, I was really surprised by the quality.

hey nick whats up with some of the past broadcast archieves on twitch? some of them seem to be missing...well the recently ones anyways. Does that have something to do with the FF13-2 livestream?

Semi erotic? The sex scenes are as explicit as in a typical eroge. Not that anyone can actually get an erection while playing through that game.

Im listening just for the Katawa Shoujo, but the other stuff is interesting as well....

This is the weird situation I find myself in where I agree with David about certain parts of the modding;

First off I loved the modding community in previous elderscrolls games where it would add a lot of new content and features to the game, so I'm not going down the route of "You should only consider the vanilla game, mods don't mesh with the lore" etc. What I WILL argue though is that the removal of certain things and the addition of others in Skyrim BALANCED the game, and some of the mods that Brad describes removes that balance;

Take lockpicking. I LIKE that lockpicking is reduced to the lockpicking skill. Why? Because that's what the archetypal rogue does, and what warriors and mages don't do. He's relatively weak in combat but he can sneak and get into places that others can't, that's his strength. If mages could get into locks or if warriors could bash them open, then what's the point of being a lockpicking rogue? Their advantage of access is removed.

Contrast that with something I LOVE from the transition to skyrim is enchanting; it's back as a skill, and ONLY a skill. In Morrowind you didn't need to have the enchant skill at all, and in fact it was easier to just be a bloodthirsty warrior, beat shit, get loot and then PAY enchanters to give you new enchanted stuff, thus negating the whole skill to begin with. This time around only the dedicated enchanter can make his own enchantments, and while it might not make complete sense in terms of lore it really makes me feel that the master enchanter I rolled with is a unique individual who can DO THINGS that other characters simply CAN'T.

It's all about the limits that the game puts on certain characters. I feel Brad is sort of destroying that with his playstyle; a mage who's in the fighters quests that can unlock anything. It's his playstyle, but I feel the more interesting characters (and playthroughs) occur when the character isn't a jack (or rather master) of all trades.

Great show as always, but what's with Brad highlighting Nick's joke as if he's an old grouchy man :D Usually, Nick always makes jokes and I usually feel just a tad disappointed 'cause everyone else just seems to ignore them or doesn't notice them, I mean Brad had to really pause and think about Nick's joke in this one.

Don't worry Nick, you're not always the bottom...of the comedians.

All I gotta say David, is you play some messed up stuff.

Thanks for introducing me to Katawa Shoujo, David. It's pretty far outside of anything I normally play, but I was intrigued by your description and I'm finding it quite interesting.

I would just like to say thanks to Brad and David, one of the more if not most heart wrenching game/visual novel (Katawa Shoujo) would have gone on unnoticed if not for them bringing it up on a previous podcast. This game shows the ability of people not only to bring up a distasteful subject, but to rend my heart in ways that I have never experienced. I truly felt saddened and dismayed at some points of the individual stories, but that always brought me back to see if I could find a way to get to the girl of my dreams. While this might be just ranting or tittering on my part and no comments about the show, I just wanted to let my feelings about Katawa Shoujo be known; since I don't have many friends that are into this type of genre let alone "off the beaten track" type of game.

Katawa Shoujo mostly sparked my interests in this podcast, especially since I downloaded it only a day before you guys talked about it.

I just dl'd Katawa Shoujo, happy to hear discussion about it.

Why were there no impressions of FFXIII-2? Kinda odd, eh? Even though I guess it was only Nolan that actually played it, both Jack and David were watching the whole time and discussing it.

Great show guys!
The Skyrim modding debate was really interesting, & thinking of looking into Katawa Shoujo, really like the variety of games being discussed this week!
(You've also got me thinking of picking up Skylanders, because I was a Spyro fan but got put off by the whole toy thing for some reason..)
& Nick makes jokes all the time! xD
Looking forward to the next podcast.