This second half was definitely worth the wait. It might not be the funniest NWP episode but it definitely feels like the best one, and the title of the episode encapsulates why. As a person that's been listening since the beginning and never missed a show I've always felt pretty intense currents running beneath the personas, especially for Julian. Life events and mental health have been topics that have been brought up on many past episodes over the last year or more especially, but not in any detail till now. Over time things seemed to be getting darker and darker behind the scenes, and Julian opening up to us in this show puts a lot of it in perspective now, and most importantly is a great catharsis we can all share in a way. As dark as this episode gets, it ultimately comes out the other end with an incredibly hopeful and powerful light. Julian, Patrick, Angelo, and Liana all get internet hugs for being so open and supportive. It made for a really important show.
I've played a lot of Mass Effect 1 over the years and that game made me contemplate who I am in real life. I play that game by saving before every conversation and immediately reloading if I feel like I made a mistake. At first I thought about it purely as a game mechanic. I also play Splinter Cell games in a very perfectionist way, and I obsess over all the details, saving constantly and reloading constantly. In Splinter Cell those habits are based around a binary stealth system where you're either hidden or not, but in Mass Effect my obsession with doing things exactly how I wanted was now in a context of interpersonal relations, ethics, and values. I loved exploring every single possibility and following the dialogue tree in every direction until I knew exactly what my Shepard should do next.
By the time I finished the first Mass Effect I had saved the game hundreds of times, mined out every conversation, made my decisions, and crafted essentially the "perfect" Shepard. It made me proud to look back at those choices, and look back at my fictional character that I role-played for 60 hours, but there was a disconnect and a sadness there that I didn't catch onto until long after. In real life I was sad that you can never be that video game hero. You can't save everybody, make all the right choices, always know what to say, or reload your save when your mess up. It was the age old disconnect where you're comparing the way you wish the world was and the way it actually is.
Psychologically it wasn't until Dark Souls and Spelunky came along that I started seeing video games in an entirely different light, and to some extent the real world. Those two games are some of my favorites, moreso than even Mass Effect, and in those two games the only way to appreciate the immense depth and reward they offer is to concede that you're not perfect, and to know that the world of each game will push back against you harshly. You're not the stoic hero in either story. And regardless of what kind of combat style you role-play in Dark Souls, or what power ups you come across in Spelunky, you still have to die and keep trying like anybody else. In Dark Souls and Spelunky you have to fail in order to learn, and you have to be willing to lose things and move on despite almost all of video game history conditioning us to behave the opposite way. No reloading saves or endless do-overs in dialog trees.
When I play those games I feel less stressed out, less of a desire to be "right", and the satisfaction of making progress or surviving a dangerous situation is much more empathetic and relateable than the feeling I'd get from role-playing a "perfect" character in Mass Effect.
That's why I defend those games so passionately and get upset when people say that they're just overly difficult games that elitist nerds use as a badge of honor.
I've played Spelunky over 2,500 times, and I've only "won" 15 times, but I've loved every session I've sat down to play. 2,485 "failures" have never felt so good. And I'll keep throwing myself at it for thousands of more sessions.
When I play Dark Souls and Spelunky I feel like it's okay to just be exactly who I am, pick up the controller, and try my best.
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