Extra credits bastion Videos

Intro should just be "Hi I'm Dan" "And I'm Dan" "And this is; Dan plays" "Also Dan provides commentary".

I hate those parts where you have to run away while the world collapses, they're a major component in why I never finished the game. Bastion seems to have lots of hidden items and places for you to explore, but if you take the wrong path (and by that, I mean the one that takes you to your goal), they get locked away behind a collapsing sky way and you can't go back to replay the level. Whenever that happens, it makes me feel like I'm missing out on things through no fault of my own.

I'd never seen Bastion gameplay, and I'm super intrigued by what I'm seeing :D it looks amazing

I still listen to bastion's soundtrack...

Why did he call Iron Brigade "Trenched?" The fuck is Trenched?

calling terraria a 2D minecraft is an insault to the comunity

Has anyone played Jade Cacoon?

Terraria is shit. Gmod FTW... oh... fuck fnaf fans raided that game. well atleast im not infected, im only on Gmod for the nice cars.

If you haven't played Terraria, you have not lived.

stanley isn't free

You guys should really check out hawken.

I honestly cant understand why people call bastion's gameplay weak. To me (on mouse&keyboard) is was a very well-done unique experience, and if Im wrong and this kind of thing was done elsewhere and better - please tell me so I can play it. As to Transistor - I honestly liked bastion's system more, because I went in with an expectation of an action game, and spent most of my time in the tactics mode (Im not saying its bad, its actually really good and I enjoyed my time).

There is a canonical reason why some of the world stays up and a lot of it reforms under you. No idea how it's floating, though. I mean it sort of makes sense, but you're way too far off the ground.

5:10 it's explained all it needs to be in the begining. there was this great calamity that destroy, literally destroyed the world, so much so that now chunks of the world are floating around and...tend to come together as you approach them, as if they remeber how they used to be. it's not much of an explination, but it's enough of one to explain away the fancy graphics.

Dan Emmon's comment about Transistor is fascinating- I found transistor too boring to actually play to sustain interest after the first boss fight. It was slow-paced and tactical, without feeling like it had enough tactical options or depth to justify it. Also the narrative and setting seemed less enticing, but I'd barely given it enough time to get me hooked.

Wait, so... If we have Dan Prime, and Other Dan... Does that make the third Dan "Super Dan?" ..."Dan: Zero Mission" maybe?

I used the machete the first time I played through because I liked the damage over time and the ability to attack at range. On successive playthroughs I tried other weapons and found that while the machete does a lot of things, it isn't actually any good at any of them. Using two "specialized" weapons, say the hammer and the bow, is both more fun and more powerful.

Hearing all of this stuff about how the Machete is the best weapon in the game... Even fully upgraded dealing nothing but critical hits, it still has some of the lowest DPS in the game (I think the only one behind it is the Dueling Pistols, which is only really viable with Turbo) Not to mention that the throw falls off in usefulness the further you go into the game.

I agree with others on weapons choice. Machete is terrible for me and impossible with shrines. The best ranged weapon was Breakers Bow. Later in the game cannon beats it, but it becomes avaliable pretty late. The best melee weapon - Spear (before it I used 2 ranged weapons I think). Literally no other weapon seams good to me with shrines, because armor penetration is very strong. BTW I passed all challenges with all weapons, may be its my play style, but i really didnt like any other weapons.

I actually consider the War Machete the worst weapon, personally. I think that it says a lot about the quality of their design that every single weapon has been declared overpowered by someone on the Internet.

More and more these combat sequences are encouraging shield blocking, yet Dan doesn't use it. It shows how good the game is that he can still pass it with other tactics, but the last few levels are going to be a slog if this same tactic continues.

Really disappointed that with so much happening in *this* game, the Dans chose this very episode to go off on a tangent about another game entirely. I would really like to hear about what's going on here in Bastion, when suddenly there's loads of new stuff going on and ... what even just happened? Any chance of a Bastion Lies episode? ;-)

Wow, Link has whiter hair than I remembered, and Navi's voice got super sexy. ;P

That twisted flashback/dream sequence was not only impressive from a narrative standpoint, but also because it was able to reuse so much of the previous part of the game. Maybe instead of so much talk about how Majora's Mask was mechanically dark with its whole looping thing, they should have focused on just that going on here.

Re: Fi: SPOILERS: She's dead. That was the point of the overemotional thing where Link gives up the sword at the end of Skyward Sword. (Also neatly explaining why she doesn't pop up in later games in the timeline).

So here's a question: Does there exist a service which classifies games by the Bartle types they appeal to and can recommend games based on that?

Oh old where these recorded? And how long do you wait to release them?

I love the EC cast, so I'm fine listening to a series where they just get together and talk about all sorts of things, but I came to this series for lengthy design talk about a specific game. I think the Tomb Raider series with Josh Foreman has so far been exactly what this series should be, so I hope future series will be similar. That's not to say I don't enjoy this format as well, I just think it should be tweaked a bit and embrace the fact that it's more of a cooperative, casual let's play with a focus on your conversation. This is the kind of thing I like to listen to, rather than watch, while I'm doing other things. As such, and since it's not exactly dense material, longer episodes would be nice. These could easily be 30-60 min and I would still watch them. Conversely, I feel like the "proper" Guest Play series should be a little more digestible, around 15-20 min, and maybe should get edited a bit more to just cut out dry periods where Dan's hung up on a challenge and the conversation has drifted away from design. Speaking of which, I (almost) never mind when Dan's ineptitude slows down the gameplay in the Dark Souls and Tomb Raider series, but since this one was much more casual I really appreciated that Dan Emmons, a much more competent gamer (sorry Dan Prime), had the controller. This meant that when I did watch the gameplay, it was interesting on its own without being supplemented by the commentary, since it still moved along at a brisk pace. Let's plays are great and all, but if I'm going to watch a let's play I'll watch Jesse Cox or someone. EC's audience, myself included, is here for education, not entertainment, since if we're being honest, you're a hell of a lot smarter that Cox & company. So I hope that greater focus will be on series like the Tomb Raider Guest Play and The Animation of... and that future series like this one just embrace what they are: a couple of game designers playing games together and talking about their jobs, the game industry, and random crap. Just my two cents; thanks for all the great content EC crew!

I NEEDED MY DAN POWER

So...this is a story Rucks is telling Zia. So what happens to the Kid??

Bastion actually uses 2D sprites for most of it's characters, especially the Kid. Also, and I'm sure you get more into it next episode, the Idol system is probably my favorite difficulty altering mechanic in any game ever.

While Donut Block is the official name i like Donut Shake myself.

I think it's super interesting that by having Rucks tell the story, instead of the Kid, the story becomes a second-hand tale. As a player, I imagine that the Kid tells Rucks about all of these adventures and that as the player, you're just filling in/retelling the story. It's especially more interesting because of how the narrative tense shifts in the last level. Rucks displays uncertainty. He doesn't know anymore what's going to happen because the entire game up to that point was just him telling the Girl about the adventures of the Kid as they wait for him to return. That reveal tells me that the entire story could be unreliable and accounts for the discrepancies in player behavior. Rucks isn't omniscient. He doesn't know what the Kid is doing. He's just filling in blanks and as the player, you're just providing different ways of filling in those blanks.

"We're going to finish this game." Like you did Dark Souls? Or is Bastion shorter?

They....aren't they called donut blocks? Doesn't everybody call them donut blocks?