The Exposition Break Podcast

The Exposition Break Podcast

By Exposition BreakLeisure
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The Exposition Break Podcast episodes

  • Dark Souls 3

    While Blake continues trekking through the Resident Evil series, or at least the good ones, Sean has finally finished Dark Souls 3 and is ready to discuss it at length. Being the cranky pair they are, both hosts agree that the game is good, but think there's something missing that keeps it from being one of From Software's top-tier releases. Want to know what that missing special ingredient is? Well listen in and maybe we'll figure it out, or at least we'll kinda circle around what this thing is and table the matter for another day, because games are complicated.

    1 hr 28 min
  • Show Me Your Gambits

    While Sean is still stuck in Miyazaki-land with Dark Souls 3, Blake has ventured onward from Sekiro: Shadows Die An Undetermined Number of Times to begin Final Fantasy XII: That One You Probably Skipped. That's right, for once Blake is playing the older game, and to keep up with this opposite-world trope it's one Sean has actually played before. What follows is a lengthy discussion about the merits (or lack thereof) of various Final Fantasy battle systems, how much the world of video games has changed with social distancing in full force, and when exactly Polygon stopped sucking so much.

    1 hr 25 min
  • Soulsin'

    Do you like Hidetaka Miyazaki games? Of course you do. Everyone likes Miyazaki's games, because not liking them is to not like games at all—or at least to have bad taste. In any case, both of us have been delving into his last real (i.e. non-VR) titles, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, and Dark Souls 3, and we take the incredibly controversial position that From Software's games are, in fact, good. Trailblazing!

    1 hr 6 min
  • Back from the Dead

    After a recording break of… well, longer than we care to think about, we’ve returned to the realm of podcasting just in time for the world to fall apart around us. Nice. Anyhow, for the first episode of our hopefully more-consistent second try at this whole podcasting business, we got down to business and spent most of our time catching up on the games we’ve been playing. That consisted of the relatively hot, new-ish release Doom Eternal on Blake’s front, and the relatively cold, two-console-generations-ago-ish release Mario Galaxy from Sean. Also in the mix were La Mulana, Divinity: Original Sin II, Death Stranding, Hearthstone, and some discussion about our differing feelings about exploration in video games.

    Theme music provided by Icefields. Find more of Icefields' music on Soundcloud, Spotify, and Icefieldsmusic.com

    1 hr 24 min
  • Halloween Special
    It's the season of the witch, so we decided to focus our entire episode on scary video games, be they traditional horror titles or simply games that gave us chills. For help with this endeavor, we enlisted the service of horror connoisseur Kate Currie, one half of The Library Ladies' blog. Along the way, we touch on Left 4 Dead, P.T., Night in the Woods, Castlevania, Resident Evil 7, and of course that paragon of horror titles, Super Mario Bros. 2. Yes, seriously. Also under discussion: whether poor controls are an important part of making truly terrifying games, the role of the uncanny in scaring us, and whether sometimes it's more exciting to play as the monster than it is to flee in terror.
    Theme music provided by Icefields. Find more of Icefields' music on Soundcloud, Spotify, and Icefieldsmusic.com
    1 hr 16 min
  • Spelunky
    What with all the talk (and a less-than-stunning trailer) of a sequel on the horizon, we decided to take on Spelunky and give it as close to a well-rounded discussion as we could manage. It's a game that has the honor of being both one of the greatest titles ever created, and also something neither of our hosts have been able to beat despite dozens of hours spent travelling its strange caverns. Not that defeating the game is really the point of Spelunky, a game that's very much about the pure experience of play, as well as the not-quite-so-pure experience of being endlessly hurled by a yeti into the same wall for all of eternity.
    Theme music provided by Icefields. Find more of Icefields' music on Soundcloud, Spotify, and Icefieldsmusic.com
    1 hr 2 min
  • The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
    Remember way back in 2017, when all anyone wanted to talk about with video games was how The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild was the best Zelda ever, the best game ever, and quite possibly the best thing ever made? Well it's now a year and a half since BotW dropped, so we felt it was about time to take stock of the title with a more nuanced, dare we say critical look, and discuss what made it both so exciting and so, in many (perhaps unpreventable) ways, disappointing. Topics include the magical first few hours of the game, how Nintendo's take on open worlds differs from other studios, and why the downloadable content falls completely flat. Plus, we consider the possibilities for where Zelda might go in the future, and our hope that Nintendo isn't simply planning a Breath of the Wild 2: Link's Boogaloo. All this, plus Blake intentionally asks Sean for more information about Hearthstone,and somehow doesn't regret it.
    Theme music provided by Icefields.
    1 hr 26 min
  • The Mass Effect Trilogy
    In the first of our podcasts focused on a single game, we decided to outdo ourselves and actually cover three games instead: the entire Mass Effect Trilogy. That's right, we go all the way from the first game, with its terrible-yet-for-some-reason-beloved-by-Blake Mako controls, to the second game, filled with more crew members and relationships than you can throw a heaping pile of sticks at, to the third game, which featured what might be gaming's most controversial ending and also probably other things that everyone instantly forgot about because of just how controversial that ending really was. In our pursuit for truth, we also discuss such engaging topics as why people thought these games were the future of RPG's, how Bioware really doesn't know how to deal with romance, and whether that ending really was as bad as everyone remembers it was (spoiler alert: yes).
    1 hr 24 min
  • E3 2018 Wrap-Up
    Well another year's E3 has come and gone, and the future looks bright indeed. With that in mind, in the latest podcast episode we focus on the games that have us the most excited, and discuss how the show seems to be growing up and moving away from its smoke and mirrors of vaporware and empty surprises. All of which is to say that we spend a lot of time talking about Death Stranding, and even some time on games that aren't Death Stranding, though often in relation to Death Stranding because who are we kidding that game still looks absolutely nuts.
    Also discussed: samurais vs. ninjas, the flood of pirate games, what the hell Bioware is doing with Anthem's missing AI, how Square and Nintendo secretly had great showings, and whether or not The Division 2 is worth paying any attention to.
    Theme music provided by Icefields. Find more of Icefields' music on Soundcloud, Spotify, and Icefieldsmusic.com
    1 hr 37 min
  • Pre-E3 2018 Hullabaloo
    The training wheels are off as we move onto our "first" episode of the podcast. While we briefly touch on some of the games we've been playing and news from the last couple weeks, we largely focus—in our own meandering way—on E3. With no insider knowledge to speak of, we use our memory of the E3's of yore to make semi-educated predictions about what this year's big event might entail. And once that's done, we jump way off into the deep end to indulge our fantasies about what the most exciting releases would be if we could remake the industry with our whims.
    Theme music provided by Icefields. Find more of Icefields' music on Soundcloud, Spotify, and Icefieldsmusic.com
    1 hr 16 min

About The Exposition Break Podcast

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Exposition Break is a website and podcast dedicated to video game criticism, analysis, and wild pontification. New episodes are uploaded every two weeks.