Update 14: Niall
Now that we’ve rid them of their Floyd problem, we can go in and see Niall.
Niall is basically the answer to the question, “What if Master Roshi was a Saibaman, and also Irish?”
: “Um…yes.”
: “Good luck with that, pal.”
: “Next time, instead of sending some snotty wee urchin tae do his dirty work, tell yer king tae come and ask me himself, eh?”
I like how he can look down on Evan when he’s wearing what appears to be a pile of shit on his head. Seriously, tell me that doesn’t look like a cartoon turd.
: “I… I am the king.”
: “Oh, aye? D’ye think I was born yesterday? Nope. I’ll speak tae yer king and none other. And I’ll make no promises even then.”
: “I said, I am the king!”
: “He is. This is his Kingmaker right here.”
: [incomprehensible gurgling]
What he means is that Evan didn’t call him out on wearing a pile of shit on his head.
: “You… you don’t see any of those things in me?”
In addition to being the worst character, it’s almost impossible to get a screenshot of Tani where she doesn’t look incredibly constipated.
: “And now he’s trying to build a whole new kingdom! And it’s going to be amazing!”
: “Crikey o’blimey! That’s a right auld tale! So ye’re tellin’ me ye’re young Evan? The lad t hey were sayin’ perished in the troubles over that way?”
: “Well, that’s all well and good - I love a bit o’ drama as much as the next man - but I cannae give youse what ye need. Auld Puggie’s the one youse want tae speak tae.”
In voiceacting form, Niall’s VA actually manages to (mostly) keep the accent stable, but in subtitle form it sounds like he’s half Irish, half 1930s Chicago gangster.
: “You mean Pugnacius? From Goldpaw?”
: “Who’s that, exactly?”
So, as soon as we get to Goldpaw, you’ll learn that as much of a terrible and completely unrealistic idea as Evan’s new kingdom is, all of the other kingdoms in the world are even dumber.
: “Aye, that’s the fella! Invited me over for a wee shake o’ the auld dice, and before I knew it, I’d lost ma shirt!”
: “Now his flunkies are trampin’ through mah lovely wood, stickin’ nonsense on trees and tryin’ tae boot me out on mah behind, the heartless devils!”
: “So, those things on the trees… they’re eviction notices?”
: “Which means the Forest of Niall is now the Forest of Pugnacius.”
: “I’ve a inkin’ ye’ve been biled, old-timer. The games over in Goldpaw’re said to be rigged to beggary.”
Sometimes I swear that there’s some sort of multi-million dollar industry revolving around the use of apostrophes, and said industry was paying the writers every time they used one in dialogue. Only way to explain why there’s so fucking many of them.
: “Aye, that they are! Crooked as a dog’s hind leg, the lot of them!”
Roland’s expression here tells me that the first thing he’s doing when he gets back to the post-apocalyptic U.S. is having the Pentagon develop rigged dice so he can try to con the Italian government into wagering Rome on a dice game. Something tells me Italy would go for it.
: “I have a proposition for you, Niall. We need wood- lots of wood. If we get you your forest back, will you give us what we need?”
: “Are ye jokin’? If ye get me mah forest back, I’ll chop down the trees meself!”
After a little more dialog (which I’ll skip, but it’s basically Roland pretending to ask Evan for the okay) we’re off to Goldpaw.
Goldpaw is on the other side of the Forest of Niall. It takes… maybe five minutes to get there walking.
The area outside is shaped like a giant zen rock garden, and is filled with enemies. There are actually more than a few manticores in here, which we want to avoid because we’re playing on Extreme still.
Other than that, most of the enemies are the same things we’ve fought before. In fact, there are only two “new” enemies here - both are fire-themed recolors of enemies from the forest.
Apart from being a different element and doing more damage, they’re really not any different than the ones we’ve fought already.
We mostly want to avoid combat on the way in, because as far as I can tell, the game decides when to start dropping better equipment based on your progress in the story: the drops I got from the monsters on the way in were identical to the ones we were seeing even as far back as Cloudcoil Canyon, but once I got past the series of cutscenes we’re coming up to, the drops changed.
Also, I kind of played a ton of Monster Hunter World, and kept getting the controls confused, so there’s that too.
We also definitely want to grab this trip door - there are a number of sidequests that take place out in the giant zen garden later on.
Welcome to Goldpaw, the Chinese/Japanese fusion town populated entirely by dog furries.
: “I heard Goldpaw was showy, but… blimey…”
: “Beautiful, en’t it? I have a feeling I’m gonna like this place!”
: “So the government runs the casinos, huh? Guess we’d better go find Pugnacius.”
Roland immediately forms a plan to rebuild post-apocalyptic New York as a giant, government-run casino.
: “Yes! I’m sure if we ask nicely, he’ll soon see sense and let Niall have his forest back!”
: “Although, I’m not exactly sure where to look for him…”
: “It’ll be the big castle-looking thingy up at the top of town there, wouldn’t it? That looks like where a Grand High Roller would live to me.”
Goldpaw is so large that it has trip doors of its own. I shit you not that when I was recording this, I actually thought to myself “Oh right I have to grab all of them so I can get the ones that lead outside” and then remembered that no, this is not Final Fantasy 14. Realistically though, we do want to grab all of these because Goldpaw is home to just over a third of all of the sidequests in this game.
We also run into our first restaurant - there’s one in every major city, though later on we’ll be able to make our own meals. These are basically the food buffs from Monster Hunter: you eat them and you get a timed buff. I honestly never used these at all during my first playthrough.
Also of note is the first real weapons shop in the game. Most of the time, stuff you buy from the store sucks, but I found a spear for Tani that doubled her damage, so I went ahead and got one of those.
Just north of the shops is the inn, which works like it does in any JRPG. I’m not sure why you’d ever use it, because in most cases it’d be cheaper to just heal with items.
There’s also the casino, which disappointingly does not allow us to gamble.
One final trip door before we reach our destination: the “Goddess of Fortune” statue.
: “It sounds like a festival of some sort.”
: “And what happens then?”
: “You’re joking! How’s anyone meant to afford that?”
You know, it’s a wonder that Goldpaw has not yet collapsed from its own stupidity.
: “Wow, that sounds… risky.”
You know, I can’t help but feel that somehow, this is kinda racist.
There are a lot of things I really don’t like about this scene, mostly because there’s something that should be in this scene that isn’t, and it kind of ruins the consistency of things.
Since I don’t have the ability to record, the die lands on five but then makes a very obvious jump to the six.
Next time, we’ll watch Evan spiral into a gambling addiction and find out the very obvious solution to this mystery.