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 About Experience Crossbell in this exciting chapter from the renowned The Legend of Heroes series! The site of an ongoing territorial struggle between the Erebonian Empire and the Republic of Calvard, Crossbell has developed into a prosperous city-state and one of the continent’s leading economic centers. After three years away from his hometown, Lloyd Bannings returns in order to follow his late brother's footsteps and join the Crossbell Police Department. However, when he arrives, he finds he's been assigned to the Special Support Section, a new division that handles odd jobs and minor requests. He meets his new teammates, which include Elie MacDowell, the granddaughter of the city's mayor; Randy Orlando, a womanizing ex-soldier; and Tio Plato, a young tech genius. Though their department is mocked by the media and looked down on by the rest of the CPD, Lloyd and his friends continue to fight to make their city a better place. As they do, however, they slowly come face-to-face with the criminal corruption gripping their city. Little do they know just how deep the shadows of Crossbell City go... Key Features Welcome to Crossbell: The beginning of an exciting story arc in the Trails universe is about to begin in this iconic city-state! Experience a rich and refreshing game world that is teeming with secrets and adventures. Polished Tactics: Strategic combat has been refined, resulting in rich, satisfying tactical gameplay. Harness powerful skills and teamwork to overcome your adversaries! Your City, Your Story: Features such as High-speed and Skip mode allow you to cater your gameplay experience to your preferences and enjoy battles quickly to focus on the surrounding story and events.  The Legend of Heroes: Trails from Zero (a.k.a. Eiyuu Densetsu: Zero no Kiseki) is the first part of the oft-whispered Crossbell storyline of the Trails JRPG series, taking place after Trails in the Sky and semi-concurrently with Trails of Cold Steel. What secrets lurk in the streets and alleyways of Crossbell City?! We take control of rookie detective Lloyd Bannings as he and his team work to help the citizens of the state and get to the bottom of this dark and extremely anime conspiracy. If you've seen our Cold Steel LPs, you know how this works. I'm joined on commentary by my friend Sibyl and we'll be chipping our way through this journey at a steady but unhurried pace. As always, these games are quite long, so please lean back and relax as we get over the Barrier, whatever that is!  SPOILERSAs always, since the games were released out of order, and people can reasonably be at any point playing them, and each arc starts with a soft reboot, so what exactly you're expected to already know varies at all those points, spoilers in the thread require a bit more granularity. When dealing with something you think is a notable story point:
 Full Playlist  Z01. Special Sucker Section Z02. The Lesser Bracers Z03. City Connection Z04. What DOES Detective Rank Mean? Z05. Megalo Mania Z06. A Lil' Brawl Z07. Grizzly Grim Z08. Turnabout Downtown  Z08. Turnabout Downtown (from 56:03) Z09. Beasts of Steel and Thunder Z10. Card Pups Z11. Totally Ordinary Businessman Z12. Kitty Corner Z13. Look Alive, Randy Z14. The Rooftop Riddle Z15. I've Got a Train to Inspect! Z16. The Imelda Enigma Z17. Totally Ordinary Girl Level 1 Thief fucked around with this message at 20:04 on Jul 15, 2023 |
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Jan 28, 2023 06:02
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Jan 28, 2023 06:02
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Jan 28, 2023 06:03
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 Z01. Special Sucker Section Yeah -- first day on the job. Great, huh? Name's Lloyd Bannings, nice to meet you. Level 1 Thief fucked around with this message at 06:13 on Jan 28, 2023 |
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Jan 28, 2023 06:03
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Erpy posted:- Since the shadows seem to be slightly misaligned (might be a resolution thing), the sprites often appear to be floating rather than standing. Try not to pay too much attention to it, because it'll get distracting fast. :P There's definitely some oddities with how the graphics are presented (I noticed one pretty funny one in a later video) but it does come across as charming at least. Erpy posted:- Not sure how insistent you're gonna be about DP bonus. Let's just say that unless you get pretty much all optional conditions right, you're not gonna be seeing that tier 1 DP reward in this game. It sounds like we lost points minutes into this one, so I'm gonna go ahead and say max rank isn't particularly likely here. AncientSpark posted:Also, probably was a good choice on the difficulty. Trails in the Sky difficulty is pretty honest with how difficult it is (good luck with first run Nightmare, lololol), Trails of Cold Steel is usually quite a bit easier than their difficulties claim (bordering on almost impossible to not break in some cases). Trails from Zero, etc. are somewhere in between; it's very beatable even on first run Nightmare difficulty, but it puts a pretty stiff challenge all the way through unless you go out of your way to use the broken methods in the game (of which there are a number of them, but there are a bit more subtle than in Cold Steel). This also gets borne out pretty much immediately here. Stabbey_the_Clown posted:- The Geofront isn't growing new entrances, the database records are just sloppy. I think the original intent was supposed to be that the manhole cover was left open by some workers. Hm, yes ... I'm sure that's what certain elements would want me to think ... Stabbey_the_Clown posted:For this reason, and because Defense X quartz penalizes your Strength, I never bother equipping any "Defense X" quartz on anyone you want to deal physical damage. Which is everyone except Tio. Elie is not a powerhouse, but she still does reasonable damage with basic attacks if you upgrade her weapon (she's just third in priority for the upgrades). This was basically the first thing I did upon gaining quartz freedom, yeah. theamazingchris posted:I'm loving all these little chibi guys! Excited for the Crossbell arc. I'm not usually a big fan of the prerendered-sprites look but Falcom did it really well in this period. It's distinctive and very cute but not so cute it completely undercuts the story. Rabbi Raccoon posted:Trails to Zero? Glares from Tio --------  Z02. The Lesser Bracers Haven't even been paid yet and we already got a hit piece in the paper. That means we're doing a good job, right?
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Feb 4, 2023 05:01
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 Z03. City Connection We begin our first patrol through Crossbell City, meeting all the interesting people and their fascinating names. Level 1 Thief fucked around with this message at 17:41 on Feb 11, 2023 |
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Feb 11, 2023 05:04
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 Z04. What DOES Detective Rank Mean? We finish our tour of the city and then definitely don't help commit a crime.
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Feb 19, 2023 03:05
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Veryslightlymad posted:Just popping in to say that I'm following this thread, but I don't have near as much of a knowledge on this game as I did the Cold Steel series, as I've only played it .98 times. Last boss is that bad, huh? Erpy posted:- I believe there's two chapters where you can get better equipment from the casino than what's available in stores at that point, although it requires quite a bit of medal-grinding. Look forward to me not doing that! Polsy posted:The Heiyue trading company sign does indeed say Heiyue trading company (the sign is basically readable as Japanese, besides that you don't pronounce 黒月 Heiyue in Japanese. In fact if you're playing the game in Japanese it just repeats the writing from the sign in the text box when you go to the door so you're left to infer the pronunciation from the fact that 公司 indicates a Chinese company) That's interesting, since the original game wasn't voiced at all. Was there any other indication or did they just assume it was fine if you misread it? Stabbey_the_Clown posted:- There's a very, very interesting quest from Imelda you can get late in the game if you have enough DP, so try not to miss many points. If it comes to it, I'm certainly willing to toss a non-canon save or two in there, so that shouldn't be a problem either way.
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Feb 20, 2023 04:52
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 Z05. Megalo Mania After doing some paperwork, the SSS squares off against all kinds of bats, from the fat to the nail variety.
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Feb 26, 2023 00:20
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Hwurmp posted:believe it or not, there is an actual good minigame in the Crossbell games I do not believe it.
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Feb 26, 2023 02:49
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 Z06. A Lil' Brawl Lloyd may not be the best at this whole mystery-solving business, but it's not like Wazy or Wald are doing amazing here either.
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Mar 5, 2023 04:10
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It's not hidden, exactly. As will become extremely clear next time, the city's dialogue just updated, so we would've gotten there anyway. I do think it's really weirdly placed -- yeah we're smack dab in the middle of an extremely hot investigation, but how about we stop and take a silly trivia quiz for a bit?
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Mar 5, 2023 06:12
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 Z07. Grizzly Grim We here at the SSS are very concerned about Granny Izuri.
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Mar 12, 2023 06:00
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Hey, no video this week, it's been an absolute disaster every single day. I was going to buckle down tonight and at least get it up late but I just spent an hour in 0F wind chill getting my car moving again so instead I'm going to just play Crisis Core or Dead Cells or something and hit things until they die.
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Mar 18, 2023 19:46
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 Z08. Turnabout Downtown (Prologue End, Ch.1 Start) The team deals with the threat downtown in a stunning display. Then later, wolves!!
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Mar 26, 2023 04:43
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Cyouni posted:Side note: it's easy to miss someone on the back upper tables of the restaurant if you don't specifically check. You can't see those tables from below, and that table is hidden if you're standing at the top of the stairs. You'll be glad to know I took this as meaning I definitely missed someone and I immediately booted the game to check. Stabbey_the_Clown posted:- Sonia wasn't sweet on Randy in that she had romantic feelings for him, but she did have a high enough opinion of him to ensure that he landed on his feet in the SSS after getting fired from the CGF. The question to ask then is, "Does it seem like Deputy Commander Baelz would do that for someone who was fired for either inappropriate fraternizing or sexually harassing women?" I leave the answer for you to decide. In real life? Probably not. In this anime pervert society? Maybe. If her weapon of choice is a whip we'll have our answer. Stabbey_the_Clown posted:- Lloyd is not Beautiful Mind-ing Cecile. It would be unusual to make a protagonist of one of these games to be delusional. You don't have to be delusional to be getting mindhacked! Mr. Fortitude posted:Because he got one in Akatsuki no Kiseki, a gacha. The mod adds portraits to characters who would eventually get ones in Azure, but also adds portraits to characters who appear in Akatsuki no Kiseki. It's still kinda weird that he in particular is apparently a significant character in a gacha spinoff. Then again the effort put into hyper-monetized spinoff stuff has always baffled me (like how they managed to pull a nearly complete set of character sprites from, of all things, the Umineko pachislot machine for its western release). Level 1 Thief fucked around with this message at 05:26 on Mar 27, 2023 |
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Mar 27, 2023 04:46
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Now I want to see that shot of Lloyd in the back alley surrounded by mafiosos, but they're all holding balloons.Classy Hydra posted:I actually had no idea those offered bonding points, or carried over into Azure. Near as I can tell, the only place that's visibly tracked is that achievements menu, which is new for the PH3 ports. I guess you're just not supposed to worry too much about it. Level 1 Thief fucked around with this message at 19:02 on Apr 1, 2023 |
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Apr 1, 2023 18:59
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drat, I'd thought it was a safe assumption that it's new because Cold Steel didn't have a menu like that. Ah well. The BGM feature is a neat idea, but I actually found it pretty annoying in test recordings as it constantly popped up on the dungeon -> battle -> victory loop, so I left it off. I'd like it better if it was just a constant widget onscreen like Danganronpa has.
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Apr 2, 2023 00:47
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 Z09. Beasts of Steel and Thunder The SSS spend another day uncovering Crossbell City's darkest secrets, without even trying to this time! They're so good at their jobs.
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Apr 2, 2023 03:41
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 Z10. Card Pups A series of hubristic decisions go exactly the way everyone thinks they will. Only Oscar lives a life free of consequence.
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Apr 9, 2023 01:31
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Updates are probably gonna be spotty for a bit, sorry. Real world poo poo. Z11. Totally Ordinary Businessman This whole "divine wolf" thing probably isn't significant. Let's not worry about it too much.
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Apr 18, 2023 01:35
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Nope, totally missed it. We pick it up in the next one.
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Apr 18, 2023 03:10
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 Z12. Kitty Corner Much like the people of Erebonia, the lost cat quests are very durable and practical, which is why they're in every game in some form or another. ------- Hey, sorry for the wait. The short version is I finally walked out of the job I've been complaining about in all these videos and started a new one, and it's been pretty chaotic for the past month. I'm still getting used to things, but I'm hoping I'll be able to get back to a more solid schedule soon.
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May 3, 2023 05:14
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 Z13. Look Alive, Randy It's afternoon now. I was promised wolves and these are clearly apes. I want my money back. ----------- Hello again everone, my general life status is still In Flux but hopefully not for much longer, please know I appreciate all your comments and for sticking around for so long now, hope to have better news soon. Stabbey_the_Clown posted:- Actually I think during the ride, the Hayworth's car was said to go for 800,000 mira. I did forget about that one, but the price given in the orb shop was 1.5mil. So there's a range starting at "too expensive at our salary" and shooting straight into "lmao no." Stabbey_the_Clown posted:- The key to infinite money (and thus purchasing Imelda's expensive accessories) is in Chapter 3, although it may not be very interesting to do. I'm willing to hear it out, but it already sounds dull, so don't be surprised if it goes the way of Elliot's soup. Cyouni posted:Your ability to select conversations in only reverse order is absolutely amazing. I thought for sure I was safe on that one with Fernand, but he had to struggle in the face of a powershopper.
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May 14, 2023 05:35
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Hwurmp posted:Randy talks that way because he's a witch (CS1) I would watch a Randy Orlando/Vita Clotilde teamup.
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May 14, 2023 07:27
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 Z14. The Rooftop Riddle Lots of people have a ship or two they covet. Cecile has commissioned a fleet.
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May 22, 2023 04:14
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 Z15. I've Got a Train to Inspect! And then we just ... go in? Just open the door and walk right in the train station?? You're sure????
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Jun 4, 2023 05:22
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Stabbey_the_Clown posted:- If someone had a fever of 103 Kelvin, they probably died of hypothermia, as that would be -170 degrees Celsius. That crack was definitely one of those that fall into the category of "too stupid to cut" in editing. Stabbey_the_Clown posted:- It's a little weird that the notebook is used as identification because the CPD does specifically have badges. It would be kind of fitting for the story if they just forgot to give the SSS badges. We'll get to it soon, so quit bugging us please [they don't get to it]. Admiral H. Curtiss posted:Yeah, English Zemuria uses Fahrenheit for temperatures because someone decided to change the number here back in the PSP translation days... It doesn't really matter too much one way or another in this case, since it's a fantasy world and they can (and do) use whatever measurements they drat well feel like, but I do wonder when American localizers as a whole will realize that the audience of niche anime games that take place in Japan have probably heard of the metric system at some point in their lives.
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Jun 5, 2023 02:13
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 Z16. The Imelda Enigma (Half of) The SSS face off against their largest monster yet: the Wald-Crusher.
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Jun 18, 2023 05:00
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Hey. Things have been super chaotic on my end. I think it'll settle down now? I loving hope so. Next one's gonna be the end of the chapter. Hope you're all enjoying Reverie. Rain Code was good.  Z17. Totally Ordinary Girl RRRRRRrrrr. RrrrrRRRRrrrRR rrrrrr rrRRRrr rrr. RRRRrrrrrrr RR! (Today's blurb has been written by a special guest, who wishes to remain anonymous.)
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Jul 15, 2023 20:01
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 Z18. Late Night of the Dogs (Ch.1 End) Welcome to Mainz Mining Village! Guess what we do here. No, the answer is not "get attacked by dogs," Mr. Mafioso. wait a second where did the tenth dog in the ambush come from
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Jul 23, 2023 22:41
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Hi! Thanks again to everyone for your patience, I had a particularly rough patch recently and it's been hugely stressful to deal with. It's just about resolved now, so we're hitting chapter 2 running, back to more regularly weekly updates and there will be no further problems.   Z19. The Wolf Among Us (Ch.2 Start) We finally begin Rixia Mao and Ilya Platiere's touching storyline.
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Aug 13, 2023 06:04
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 Z20. You Know, That One Art In retrospect, giving Randy invisibility may be setting a precedent we can't take back.
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Aug 20, 2023 05:31
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 Z21. SSS-Rank Gardening Later at the casino, Randy bragged to anyone who would listen about his takedown of the giant Nepenthes trio, but no matter how many times he insisted they exploded, nobody was that impressed.
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Aug 29, 2023 05:01
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 Z22. The Silver Case Their chores complete for the time being, the team meets the most famous person in Crossbell: the Prince of Arc en Ciel himself, Eugene. In this video and the next couple, I was a bit confused because the voice actors were clearly saying "Gin" while the name on the threat letter is "Yin," but I've realized what was going on: they're reading 銀, which means "silver" in both Japanese and Traditional Chinese. So they read it in Japanese and get corrected later by Grimwood to the Chinese pronunciation. Meanwhile, Gin and Yin are obviously not homonyms in the Latin alphabet so they just cut that part from the translation. Level 1 Thief fucked around with this message at 06:31 on Sep 10, 2023 |
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Sep 10, 2023 06:28
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 Z23. Large Man in a Suit The meeting with Rossi was going well until Randy offered him a banana, then all hell broke loose.
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Sep 20, 2023 08:09
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Erpy posted:- Don't think I didn't catch that Gabriel Knight II reference.  Erpy posted:- There's two people with the surname Crois. One male, one female. You'll meet both before long. We have since established this in recordings, though we haven't met them yet. Stabbey_the_Clown posted:- I don't think anyone anywhere has said that one or both of the mafias in town have bought all the tickets. That seems to be another conclusion you've jumped to based on a scattering of three or so regular citizens who didn't get them. I believe the implication was merely that "Hey, this troupe is really, REALLY popular with the locals." Wild speculation is fun, and tripling down on it is even more fun. I think at this point we've encountered two whole people who managed to net tickets, and they were both handed them by someone else. It's comically poor odds. Stabbey_the_Clown posted:Fishing I did finally have to grind for some bait the other day -- at least with turbo mode on weak enemies it doesn't take very long at all. Stabbey_the_Clown posted:- Yes, partial dialogue updates are pretty obnoxious, especially when the dialogue does NOT update but a hidden quest suddenly appears somewhere. So in this case, all of Crossbell City updated after the scene where Ilya shows you the note, and as near as I can tell, only Cecile, Estelle and Joshua updated outside of it. The IBC in this video was after that shift and we got a bit confused with the back alley, but w/e. I do have a list, without spoilers, of when it all changes but also I constantly forget to check it. Cyouni posted:"Where have they had more than 12 NPCs on screen at once?" I see you've forgotten the Grand Arena in FC. Good catch! I did forget about Kurt having a completely missable breakdown about mind control there, that was a wild scene.
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Sep 21, 2023 03:56
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claw game handjob posted:This definitely means someone at some point is going to turn on us, the players, and I am going to get stupid with my internal guesses as to the most sinister figures imaginable as a result. We never did get Punished Patrick. There's still time.
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Sep 21, 2023 04:10
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 24. The Legendary Xiongshou As the case progresses, we meet the enigmatic Cao Lee, who's not very good at pretending he doesn't know about Calvard's favorite assassin. Not that he really needs to try. ---------------------- Alright, so this LP hasn't really been coming together as I'd wanted. We're still enjoying the game, and I'm happy with how the videos have turned out, but working on it has really been starting to drag over time and there's still so much left. I'd been expecting it to run shorter than the CS games, but now we're pushing 60 hours recorded with three full chapters still to go in Zero and unfortunately I'm gonna have to call it. We're very close to the end of chapter 2 in recording, so the current plan is to finish the chapter to end the LP and switch over to a podcast format instead (details still TBD, but if you listened to our horror movie podcast a couple years back, it'll probably be along those lines). There's still a bunch of fun stuff to go in this chapter, so stick around! Where we currently are: The latest recorded video is part 29, involving the trip to the Geofront water switch dungeon to meet Jona in person. When we emerged to find the whole city refreshed again, not even 3 in-game hours after finishing the last round, it kinda hit both of us like a truck. I don't really want to switch to critical-path-and-quests-only since that's no way to play these games, and moving the dialogue parts to bonus videos isn't really any less work, so ... that's where it's all at for now.
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Oct 23, 2023 03:09
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Thanks all, I've been chewing on this for a while now so I really appreciate the support.Stabbey_the_Clown posted:I'm not sure, though, how well switching to a podcast format will work. While talking to NPC's wouldn't be much of a problem, there are a lot of things in the games which are intended for a visual medium and would require a lot of pausing to describe the scene, and there are occasional bits where the action and text happening automatically advances and can't be paused. Oh, I don't mean like switching to an audio-only LP, that'd be really weird*. Just us talking for a while about a chunk of the game we recently played, still a lot and in-depth but just not ... real-time 130 hours' worth. * we actually tried that once as a commentary track for an FMV game with very strict video policy. it didn't really work so it never got posted anywhere.
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Oct 23, 2023 05:35
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