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PurpleXVI posted:I'm surprised by how short a lot of these levels are, I think I've said it before, but when watching this game LP'd it feels very... brief.
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Mar 2, 2019 13:09
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  "It's a battle to the death. Preferably someone else's. Gideon's puppet strings can no longer be pulled and the puppeteer's comeuppance has just come up. Ancient One? Are you listening? Then hear this..." Nice of the interstitial text to namedrop the Ancient One, because the game proper completely fails to do so even as you're fighting it. Oh, and that last sentence is a spoiler or something. This video features a very special guest. It also turns out one of the admins of the Blood Wiki has discovered this LP since just before the last update, commenting that they've cleaned up a little on several articles for the levels I've covered and that they added mention of a reference I pointed out that they'd missed before, which is pretty cool. Kadorhal fucked around with this message at 10:06 on Mar 9, 2019 |
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Mar 8, 2019 23:00
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Pretty cool you got the attention of the Blood wiki devs. Also I find it interesting that nowhere else seems to mention the variable damage values at all, or even list damage values for the weapons. You'd figure someone would have mined the files for some actual damage ranges or something by this point. Also if we're closing on the end, any plans for future LP's coming up?
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Mar 8, 2019 23:35
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PurpleXVI posted:Also if we're closing on the end, any plans for future LP's coming up? I've got more than a few ideas, though I'm not sure which one in particular I want to start on first once I'm done here (though between this last chapter, the expansion, and any bonus content I might think up, I've still got a month or so to make up my mind). With the direction I'd like to experiment in I've been thinking of taking a stab at Black Ops and comparing real history to what the game shows (and hopefully not give myself an aneurysm). Beyond that, as far as length of time preparing goes I'm probably most excited to handle Rainbow Six: Vegas 2, since I've been working on a Database™ for that game ever since the idea was floated around in a thread for Ghost Recon: Future Soldier almost six years ago.
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Mar 9, 2019 01:19
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I remember wanting to do an LP of Vegas 2 at some point. I replayed it last year just for fun, solid game overall. The main plot twist is hilarious and the finale is awful on many levels.
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Mar 9, 2019 01:35
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I like the circular pan they used so that they didn't have to animate Gideon transforming.
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Mar 9, 2019 01:37
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 "There's Something Different. You can't quite put your trigger-finger on it. Your old pals are looking rather peaked, maybe even sickly. What the heck possessed them to climb into those coffins? Hmmm. Ah, well. Nothing a bit of supplementary lead won't cure...lead to the head, and put 'em to bed. Nighty-night, fellow Chosen. Poisonous dreams." A boss rush and then the final boss should spell laziness like a lot of the rest of what the game did lately - this level is so short that 95% of this video's editing time  "In the words of some long-forgotten and not-so-long-winded poet: 'Kill it!'" Short and sweet. I can dig it. It is sad though that I praise the game on not having its penultimate level pit me against damage sponges and the game responds by pitting me against a damage sponge. At least there's no ceiling for it to drop on me when I hide to dodge its lasers like the boss I compare it to.
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Mar 12, 2019 22:00
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so what is the deal with the "cut content" stuff? are those lines that were recorded and they're just bugging out or is there just a whole whack of stuff that was scripted and they just didn't have time to actually record?
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Mar 13, 2019 05:36
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I like that this has basically been a story about Caleb's friends pressuring him into saving the world.
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Mar 13, 2019 05:59
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Aces High posted:so what is the deal with the "cut content" stuff? are those lines that were recorded and they're just bugging out or is there just a whole whack of stuff that was scripted and they just didn't have time to actually record? All of the cut lines were recorded, according to the guy from the wiki that commented on a bunch of the videos, and they're all present in one of the main data files. I haven't had any luck being able to open that file so far, but I do know I've heard some of the cut lines in mods for other games. I'm assuming a lot of them don't play in-game because they're intentionally cut, but I'm still not entirely sure why for the majority of them. Obviously stuff that's going off of an entirely different version of the story like Gideon's monologues at the end of the first three chapters is going to get the boot, but a lot of them were things that seemed harmless like Caleb making a quip about where he is or what's going on, so I don't know.
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Mar 13, 2019 06:31
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I'm extremely curious about the expansion pack, that's the sort of place where they might have learned from the issues Blood 2 had, or doubled down on them hardcore.
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Mar 13, 2019 08:15
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I know I played through the expansion at some point, but I honestly don't remember anything about it.
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Mar 13, 2019 14:53
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Does the game ever explain what's up with the sometimes undead, sometimes not NPC Chosen? Like the fact that they got turned against you would be interesting if they didn't immediately go back to being friendly a minute later? 
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Mar 13, 2019 21:56
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PurpleXVI posted:I'm extremely curious about the expansion pack, that's the sort of place where they might have learned from the issues Blood 2 had, or doubled down on them hardcore. A preliminary run through the first level seems to indicate it's a bit of both. The decent early-game weapons are much more common - particularly, the first gun I can pick up is the sniper rifle, and the human enemies that show up drop sawed-off shotguns, without instakilling me with them like the damage their assault rifles did in the main game would indicate - but it still couldn't resist from spawning four Drudge Priests in a row. On the other hand, that wasn't as bad as some of the base game's spawning habits considering two of the four were within spitting distance of another Anger powerup, and the other two were A) more interested in fighting each other, and B) right next to the level's exit anyway. The main issue right now seems to be that it's crashing far more often than even the base game, but I think I can manage. ultrafilter posted:I know I played through the expansion at some point, but I honestly don't remember anything about it. Beyond the general settings of the levels, I don't either. I remember being legitimately surprised when I was setting up for this LP and I learned there were two new weapons added with the expansion, because I cannot for the life of me ever remember using them. A quick check indicates they actually do show up in the new levels, so that's good. Yami Fenrir posted:Does the game ever explain what's up with the sometimes undead, sometimes not NPC Chosen? Like the fact that they got turned against you would be interesting if they didn't immediately go back to being friendly a minute later? It doesn't, no. I'm going under the assumption they were just magic duplicates or something made by the Ancient One to mess with Caleb - killing the actual other Chosen and having them come back for no reason again doesn't make much sense, and a theory I read once that they were the original bodies of the Chosen doesn't work either (people seem to have a hard time remembering Gabriella wasn't always a seven-foot-tall woman). Kadorhal fucked around with this message at 23:06 on Mar 13, 2019 |
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Mar 13, 2019 23:02
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The Unreal Tournament HUD during the deathmatch with the Chosen was brilliant. And I loved your little custom death messages! I similarly loved the little jokes you put in the little FEAR-style radio transmission messages you added. Just realised I never complimented you on that till now. Interesting how the Otherworld (Reality Beta) has ruins of some kind of ancient city... it suggests that once it was a world inhabited by people, and that world was overrun by these nightmarish creatures. Heh, another Half-Life similarity... both Half-Life and Blood 2 have parasitic creatures that zombify people, that come from another dimension. Which prompts the question... what did those parasites normally take over, before coming to our world? At least Blood 2's manual has the common sense to say that the Bone Leeches infest and take over "other creatures", rather than just specifically humans, so I guess they might be infesting all kinds of other beings in the Otherworld. If only Monolith had more time to work on Blood 2. Given what they accomplished in a mere year, an extra 6 months could have done wonders. It's no wonder the game is full of so many bullshit encounters, they must have had very little time to playtest and balance things. By the way, did you ever show off the Insect-A-Cutioner bug-spray weapon? I remember it being pretty useless so it's no wonder that you'd never use it. And the bug spray ammo is used as the ammo for the M16's grenade launcher, which is a much better use for it. But yeah, if it happens to show up anywhere in the Nightmare Levels, might be nice to have a blast or two with it. your evil twin fucked around with this message at 16:28 on Mar 15, 2019 |
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Mar 15, 2019 16:25
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your evil twin posted:By the way, did you ever show off the Insect-A-Cutioner bug-spray weapon? I remember it being pretty useless so it's no wonder that you'd never use it. And the bug spray ammo is used as the ammo for the M16's grenade launcher, which is a much better use for it. But yeah, if it happens to show up anywhere in the Nightmare Levels, might be nice to have a blast or two with it. I used it a little bit, but not a whole lot, I think it was mostly in one of the videos where I shifted focus onto the development history. A quick check on the wiki indicates it doesn't show up at any point in the Nightmare Levels, either, so I'll probably have to show it off in a video I had planned for things I didn't show in the main run. Interestingly, at this juncture it looks like it's going to be almost entirely weapons I didn't show much of - the main thing I had planned for that video can be shown off more naturally with the Nightmare Levels themselves. Also interestingly, the cutscene to start off the expansion actually directly refers to this reality as "the Otherworld", which I guess shows how much I remember from this expansion (I don't think I played it since around when I first got the game more than a decade ago).
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Mar 16, 2019 21:35
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 The Nightmare Levels doesn't have interstitial text the way the base game did, so there's not gonna be much more than my own comments to go along with this last stretch of updates. The gist of the Nightmare Levels' plot is that, as the name indicates, the levels are individual "nightmares" involving the Chosen. In Caleb's case, his is an amalgamation of a few levels from Episode 2 of the original Blood, because apparently the second episode of any classic episodic shooter is a nightmare (see Wolf3D's second episode).
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Mar 19, 2019 23:02
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Not bad but I think I'd rather replay the original.
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Mar 20, 2019 05:33
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Huh, did they make the Drudge Lords more fragile?
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Mar 20, 2019 21:38
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PurpleXVI posted:Huh, did they make the Drudge Lords more fragile? Nah, that was that Anger powerup tripling my damage output. You'll notice the last one or two I killed took a lot more ammo to put down. Plus I actually had shotgun ammo for the first time since the start of chapter 3, which sped things up considerably. It's amazing what one powerup and slightly more open areas does to encounters that in the base game would have seen me dying in five seconds and just running past every enemy for the rest of the level.
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Mar 20, 2019 23:44
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Oh, I completely missed you picking up that powerup somehow. Funny thing is, with that Anger boost, that seems about to be the durability level they're fun to fight at, where they can gently caress you up hardcore if you slip up and let them fire, but competent play can keep them locked down and let you breeze through a crowd of them.
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Mar 21, 2019 01:32
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I mean, if it's in the guy's will that he wants his skull used in performances of Hamlet, that seems like a pretty easy sell to the public. Also, this level is reminding me of one thing that I was never fond of with the Blood games, the enemies DO NOT SHUT THE gently caress UP. Holy poo poo, there is only so many times you can stand hearing those cultists jabber on in Latin before you want to rip your speakers out
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Mar 21, 2019 17:04
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 As you probably guessed when I mentioned the nightmares involved all of the Chosen, one of the Nightmare Levels' gimmicks is that the player character changes for almost every level. The good news: all four Chosen get at least one level as the "hero", so I get to show them all off without having to do a dedicated video for that purpose. The bad news: Ophelia gets next to no health or regular ammo, but a ton of Focus (edit for archive purposes: I misspoke in the video when I said Ophelia was supposed to have 4 Strength and 2 Focus - I misremembered how much ammo I was able to pick up when I tried her out sometime before the LP). But that's not too much of an issue, because... The Weapons  Flayer A new magical weapon and the first of two new weapons in the Nightmare Levels, the Flayer is a magical hook and chain that exists mostly as another shout-out to Hellraiser. Primary fire sends out a chain that stabs into an enemy for a short time before pulling away to damage them further. Secondary creates a trap that fires multiple hooks into a victim all at once. Uses Focus as ammo, 25 per primary throw and 100 for secondary. Kadorhal fucked around with this message at 23:25 on Apr 11, 2019 |
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Mar 22, 2019 22:59
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The Flayer seems handy in the sense that you could whack someone with the primary fire to hold them in place, then switch to a weapon better suited for actually mangling them to death while they can't get to you or dodge.
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Mar 23, 2019 00:18
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I'm starting to wonder if I actually did play the expansion. I recognize bits and pieces, but for the most part this doesn't feel familiar at all. Doesn't seem like I missed out on much though.
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Mar 23, 2019 00:32
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Her story references the classic film Re-animator
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Mar 23, 2019 01:04
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Caleb's got an eye for frat house attics.
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Mar 23, 2019 03:45
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 I'll try not to make JoJo references. Especially since I still haven't watched/read/whatever JoJo. I'm sorry to say, however, that the devs completely slipped on this level and forgot what not to do. To put it simply, Ishmael's level is not designed with Ishmael in mind. He has only 1 Strength, which means he tops out at 100 health and 100 bullets. This is not the kind of guy who is designed for shootouts with multiple By all means it sounds like a level where everyone just said "gently caress it" and got drunk instead of playtesting it, but the fact that there actually is a method to get through the level (particularly dodging Drudge Lord attacks by standing still, of all things) and more Life Seeds in this one level than I think I saw through all of Chapter 2 leads me to believe it's instead supposed to be a "hardcore" type deal. An expert FPS, so to speak. We all know how that tended to work out back around the turn of the millennium, though at least this one remembered to account for people who insisted on not turning on God mode from the start rather than waiting until the second quarter to start being reasonable.
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Mar 26, 2019 23:00
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It's a shame they bungled it, having a relatively open circus level to explore piecemeal could have been kind of cool.
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Mar 26, 2019 23:44
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What the gently caress. I know I didn't play that cause there's no way in hell I would've forgotten that level of bullshit.
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Mar 27, 2019 00:05
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You WILL feel like an underappreciated circus performer, covered in poo poo, that's the Monolith promise!
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Mar 27, 2019 04:36
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 After what the last level put me through, the simplicity of this one and then dying two minutes into a preliminary attempt at a test run on the next makes me feel like this expansion is a roller-coaster - starts good, dips to poo poo, gets back to good, then heads back to poo poo. We'll have to see how the finale holds up, but given the even number of levels and the existing pattern (considering there were two good levels before it started dipping into poo poo) I don't really have a good feeling about it at this juncture. Regardless, this level is more than passable even at its worst, and we also get introduced to the final weapon of the combined game. The Weapons  Pancor Jackhammer Everyone's favorite shotgun from the '90s, that point in time when people realized mag-fed auto-shotguns were the coolest idea ever but nobody outside of China had both enough money and any loving clue how to make one that worked correctly. The Jackhammer has a tighter spread than ye old sawed-off and fires faster overall due to the lack of a reloading delay, but deals less damage overall for the amount of ammo used. Primary fire fires shells at a decently-fast rate, while secondary acts like the M16's grenade launcher with the addition of emitting poisonous smoke from the explosion, damaging anyone caught within the cloud. Uses shotgun shells for primary fire, two per shot, and pesticide for secondary, five per grenade.
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Mar 29, 2019 23:00
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I think that strength and whatever determines your max health are separate stats, but I can't remember what the other one's called.
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Mar 30, 2019 02:35
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ultrafilter posted:I think that strength and whatever determines your max health are separate stats, but I can't remember what the other one's called. If it were a different stat it'd probably be Resistance, but I can confirm Strength determines how much health you get. Comparing the maximum number of bullets and health between the different characters, Ishmael maxes out at 100 each while Caleb gets 300 health and 500 bullets. Thing is, Ophelia - who seems to have always had 2 Strength and 4 Intelligence, contrary to what I thought - maxes out at 150 health and 200 bullets, so it seems the baseline for health is 50, and each point in Strength adds another 50. Moreover, a quick check of the characters' default stat setups in the character customization menu shows that Caleb and Ishmael actually have the same Speed and Resistance. Really the problem with this sort of thing is that the pre-release material is so inconsistent with what the actual game is like, and even when it's so easy to get the game nowadays nobody seems to have caught on to the differences. Even one of the threads on Gog.com's forums I looked up about this has people who think high Strength lets you dual-wield assault rifles or Howitzers.
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Mar 30, 2019 03:55
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That seemed like one of the better-designed levels in the game as a whole. Also weirdly enough the Jackhammer seemed more consistent about damage than a lot of the other weapons, too.
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Mar 30, 2019 04:06
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 Not much more to go. I have mixed feelings on this level. It's pretty difficult, but it doesn't feel unfairly so like
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Apr 2, 2019 23:00
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So, what, six levels? Feels pretty short for an expansion, especially since the levels themselves aren't all that huge. I wonder how much they originally charged for it, and how it stacks up against similar expansions, like, say, Return to Na-Pali or Opposing Force in terms of content/playtime, whether I'm overestimating those others or whether this was cheap enough to not be a ripoff.
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Apr 3, 2019 20:32
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Having played Return to Na-Pali 'recently', as in a couple of months ago back when the game was handed out for free on Steam, the expansion feels a lot longer than that one. Pretty sure I spent at least a couple of hours with it without having to redo all that much.
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Apr 3, 2019 20:35
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 I'm having a hard time figuring out what exactly I can say about this level. Somehow, an expansion that was, for the most part, on track to being a far better game than the base game was, suddenly took an immediate turn back into everything that made the original Blood II a nightmare to play - stupidly annoying enemy placement, a boss fight that's boring because the devs had an unreasonable love for a damage sponge boss that's not really any threat in any sort of fair manner (and, apparently, on the hardest difficulty you have to fight two of these fuckers), limited supplies to deal with the damage sponge, and constantly loving crashing. I still maintain this game did some things right, and that its existence was totally necessary as a stepping-stone towards better games like No One Lives Forever or Condemned, but this is going to be one case where I'm glad I'll never have to play this game again once I'm finally finished LPing this thing. That said, I'm not quite finished yet - there's still a bonus video I'm working on to showcase the weapons and enemies and other stuff I missed or feel I didn't give a good demonstration of. We'll see when I can get that out (might just be on the regular schedule, depending on how many secrets there are that I can find through other people's videos or whatever), and then we're finished.
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Apr 5, 2019 23:00
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Wait, that Tom Francis? For a second I thought I recognized the name but didn't realize it was the Gunpoint developer.
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Apr 5, 2019 23:12
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