WT Lite
This episode is a slight departure from the normal format, as Jay wanted to talk chew the fat with Squidge about Diablo. Everyone loves a looter-shooter, right?.
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Show Notes
Because he started us off last time (and even though he was the guest for this one), Squidge introduced the episode and the idea behind it:
Squidge
Waffling Taylor’s Lite: the pocket size podcast that packs a gaming punch.
In this serving of bite-sized banter with a side of gaming goodness, we talked to Squidge about his thoughts on the Diablo series.
Take it away, guys
The WT Lite series of episodes will be peppered in alongside the “standard” episodes, so keep an eye out for them. These episodes allow us to focus specifically on a specific game or series, and really focus on our guest’s thoughts.
Jay: Squidge’s elevator pitch for these episodes was "All the waffle, half the caffeine"
Jay
The whole point of these Waffling Taylors Lite episodes is to get a kind of feel for what the guest really, really like about the game in question.
We’ve already done one with me about the Borderlands series, and I thought we could focus on Diablo III. I know that, at the time of recording, Diablo IV has just come out of the beta period, and happy days for the people who are playing it. But we’re focusing on the ones that came out beforehand.
Which Class Would You Be & Why?
Jay started the conversation about Diablo with a question that, pretty much, all Diablo players have asked themselves:
So in the Diablo universe, there are loads and loads of different characters. If you could be a character, or a character class, within the Diablo universe, what class would you be and why?
And Squidge’s answer is slightly more beastly than you might have thought… for someone who may or may not be an anthropomorphised cartoon wolf in an RPD police officer uniform, that is.
It would be a character from the second Diablo and it would be from "The Lords of Destruction", which is an expansion pack that came out for it. It would be a Druid.
They brought Druids back for Diablo IV, they [weren’t] in Diablo III. They took a slightly different turn on that.
I would be a Druid, mainly for the ability to summon familiars to fight alongside me, all the while I turn myself into a werebear so that I can cast elemental skills. Because when you’re a werebear, you can still cast elementals.
So I’m a bear running round with my familiars next to me, and I’m making volcanos appear out of nowhere and summoning tornadoes.
Imagine the scene: you’re walking through the forest and suddenly a bear, summoning other animals, and doing magic.
Scary stuff, for sure.
What Is Your Ultimate Gaming Loot?
Some people people play Diablo games for years in search of the mystical über loot drop. So Jay wanted to know what was Squidge’s ultimate piece of gaming loot:
What would be your ultimate gaming-related loot item? It can be anything from a mythical sword to an epic cheat code.
And Squidge’s answer harkens back to a game that has been discussed quite often on the show:
Taking inspiration for Phantasy Star Online for this one. I’ve actually thought of the weapon, the stats, and the name and everything.
There’s a character in Diablo I who is a barkeeper and his name is Ogden… the weapon would be called Ogden’s Sign. It’s a primal, ancient, legendary mace, by the look of it.
It’s a frying pan with a massive strength sack that will boost your holy damage. And the tagline underneath, every one’s got a tagline, it would say, "making a satisfying thunk noise when striking enemies." And it would every time you swing it, you hit something there would be a [thwomp]
…
With the downside of most of the time, especially with Diablo III, which I’ve played the most. You get to a certain point in the game, and only one character, class tends to hit with weapons. The rest of it is just skills. So it’d just be there for aesthetic purposes
And that’s related to a quest in Phantasy Star Online called Akiko’s Frying Pan.
Cows?! Gawd-bless-ya, There’s No Cows ’ere! But What if There Were?
Jay’s next question was For All The Cows:
So I know that in Diablo II there was a totally not real but real totally not secret, but secret cow level
…
If you had the power to create your own brand new secret-not-secret level in Diablo III, what would it be like? Would there be a horde of dancing monsters or a treasure trove of puns? What’s going on in Squidge’s secret level for Diablo III.
And Squidge’s idea was off the chain:
I keep it in the same aesthetic.
…
It seems a bit seem a bit cliche, but I think it’d work in a Diablo game.
I’s create like an old school sanatorium, right? And I would populate it with, like, resurrected patients and staff.
The kicker would be all of the elites and all the characters would be story-based characters from the Diablo games. So as the audio logs I’d have the characters saying to the medical staff, "that this isn’t reality, it’s not real, they’ve been tracked, they’ve been tricked by Belial," he’s the Lord of Lies, saying that, "they’re puppets, they’re playing the part in a never ending play and someone else is in control of how it goes."
…
So it’s old school horror and it’s a little bit fourth wall breaking and it’s dragging a classic trope from horror games, which is the sanatorium, what’s going on, blah, blah, blah. But I drag it into the Diablo universe, which is all grimdark anyway, so I try and mishmash them both with characters that you played as or talked to in the main game.
A Quick Fire Round Approaches
So we all know that the Diablo series is partially about defeating evil. But what’s the most evil thing you’ve ever done in a video game? I’m thinking like throwing a cucco into a volcano in one of the Legend of Zelda games. Or taking the baby penguin and chucking it off the mountain in Super Mario 64. That level of evil, right? It’s not really evil, but it’s evil. What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done in a video game?
Most evil thing I’ve done was more a case of it was for the greater good. It was in a game called Mass Effect Two. And you try to recruit a party member called Guardian … and there’s a lot of mercenaries that are going to rush in to take him out. And you trick the mercenaries by trying to help them.
There’s a part where one of them’s repairing some sort of helicopter, futuristic glider because Mass Effect Two’s set in the future, this mechanic is trying to fix an engine. And Mass Effect all of the games have certain parts where you can either be a paragon or a renegade, and it’s one of the shoulder buttons and you perform certain actions that edit the game. I did a renegade action, and what he did was I knocked the mechanic and he stunned himself and he fell over. So the ship wasn’t completely… he had like, half health by the time you fought it in the battle. So it’s a case of me doing something evil, but it was for the greater good.
If you had to choose between playing video games for the rest of your life or having a lifetime supply of your favourite snacks, which would you choose and why?
It’d be video games. The reason being the gym, the doctor and the dentist would hate it if I had infinite snackage.
And if you had to pick one Diablo Three boss to go on a roller coaster ride with, who would it be and why? And can you imagine what the screams would be like?
I can’t do a screaming impression of this one, but if I had to pick someone, it’d probably be as Azmodan, the Lord of Sin. Now, anyone who has seen Azmodan or played Diablo III knows that he is chink. He’s huge. He’s a big boy, right? He is massive. The reason that I would choose him is because I would love to see the roller coaster that could fit his far ass. Only reason why that’d be it.
Care to Share an Embarrassing Gaming Moment?
We’ve all have embarrassing moments in video games, but what is one of Squidges?
We all have embarrassing video game moments. Can you share a hilarious fail or epic blunder from Diablo Three that you have done?
When I started playing Diablo II way back, I’ve got multiple copies of over different platforms. I started playing on PC back when it was before I think it was Lord of Resurrection or there was an expansion pack. It changed it up and made it better. And well, changed a lot of things for the better, in my opinion. So it was vanilla Diablo Three on the PC way back in the day. This was before I had the I ascended to a better internet connection, so it was spotty at best.
And when it first came out, it wasn’t exactly reliable for letting you be online and you had to be connected to the internet to play the game. It was one of those back in the day… I tend to be the squishy, the squishy class, because they always tend to be, it’s hard to level up, but once you get into a set level, you start decimating. And in my opinion, the most squishy class in Diablo II is the Demon Hunter.
…
Anyway, so [G - #dontCallMeAudrey and I] started playing and we started playing and he got well into it… So I’m running around, I’m doing stuff. I’m not really into PC gaming at that point, so everything’s still a bit alien to me, the controls and stuff. And I had a habit of just wandering off because if a game tells me, "go down here," I’ll go the opposite way. Gaming logic tells me that there’s something shiny new down there. Right. So I did that not realizing I walked straight into the pack of really buffed enemies. I knew I was going to get killed if I stayed near them.
So I’m running around, I’m doing stuff. I’m not really into PC gaming at that point, so everything’s still a bit alien to me, the controls and stuff. And I had a habit of just wandering off because if a game tells me, go down here, I’ll go the opposite way. Gaming logic tells me that there’s something shiny new down there. Right. So I did that not realizing I walked straight into the pack of really buffed enemies. I knew I was going to get killed if I stayed near him.
So I tried to run away, not realizing that I was leading them straight back to him. My thing was I kept doing that until I got it through my thick brain at that point to not do that. I’d stick by him because I was a squish and he wasn’t. So I would kite enemies straight back to my party and I would get yelled at constantly for it.
Dance-Off!
Because Jay loves silliness, he couldn’t let an episode on Diablo go by without a silly question:
So the whole Diablo series has loads of different character classes. So Diablo III’s unique character classes: if you got them all together and had a dance-off, who would win out of all of the different classes? And what would their signature move be called?
We’re not going to write up Squidge’s answer here, because it has to be experienced.
Is The Scary?
And Jay’s final question fits really well with the grimdark horror aesthetic of the game:
We all know Diablo is the Lord of Terror, but what scares you the most in Diablo 3? Is it the hordes of monsters, the eerie atmosphere, or perhaps the fear of accidentally clicking "Exit Game"?
PC, back in the day, it was disconnection. Hands down.
Because a lot of the time it was very hard to farm for certain things and you had to put in a certain amount of hours. Eventually it’d be called the pity system when the DLC came out. But you’d have to farm for hours and hours and hours for a single thing and you disconnected halfway through. You had to start from scratch. So disconnection on PC was definitely something that scared the living bejesus out of me.
External Links of Interest
- Join our Discord server and be part of future episodes
- Our Facebook page
- Us on Twitter
- Support us on Ko-Fi
- Jay on Twitter
- Ogden’s Sign
- Akiko’s Frying Pan.
- For All The Cows
- The Lord of Lies
- Azmodan, the Lord of Sin
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.
- Intro music is Massive Scratch - Eight Bit/Chiptune
- Spoiler Break music is Spectrum (Subdiffusion Mix) by Foniqz (BandCamp)
- Pallet Cleanser music is Breath Deep Breath Clear (Wu Chi) by Siobhan Dakay
- Metal gear solid Alert Theme © Konami
- Tristram Extended 1 Hour Diablo Original Sound Track High Quality Fantasy Music
- Frying Pan Sound Effect
- Outro Music is Massive Scratch - Eight Bit/Chiptune