Kirk Hamilton

I haven't beaten it though.

I'm only up to the second boss and I will certainly die more than seven times on this game.

I kind of wanted to get to eight just to let myself off the hook a little bit.

Stop thinking about it.

And also just because it would have been funny to have died eight times already.

But I'm sort of playing this game a little differently than I played Returnal and having more fun with it.

And also, death is kind of an important part of this game in particular because a lot of the story kind of develops as Arjun returns to base.

I just had a cutscene play out with a very important character, kind of a mysterious one.

A little bit obvious, maybe, what they're going for, and so the ways that the story is generally kind of obvious, kind of trope-filled, as you said, Jason.

But, you know, I think you really get to see that stuff if you die.

And death, it just doesn't really punish you that badly pretty quickly in the skill tree.

You also unlock the ability to lose less lucinite, which is the thing you're collecting from enemies and then using to purchase items.

your upgrades along with some other rare currencies and yeah I wouldn't say I mean I want to be clear I guess with people this isn't an RPG skill tree like you're not deciding that you want to play a tank versus like a summon character like it's just a it's like you get more powerful the more you play and so you're just it's kind of a tree and there are branches in it you can kind of choose which direction to go but I would imagine that as you play sort of you kind of just yeah

Now, I've unlocked a ton of stuff, and I'm just a lot better.

My guns do more damage, and I have more health, and I get higher-ranked guns earlier.

It's kind of that sort of a deal.

The same as a game like Hades or another roguelike.

Anyways, I think this game is really, really fun.

The story is not really grabbing me.

We can talk about the story more in detail, maybe all together.