Waypoint Radio

Though the beta for Star Wars: Battlefront II just started, it's only added fuel to the fire for a conversation that's dominated the last few weeks of games: loot boxes. Rob, Danielle, and myself weigh in on whether some players are being overdramatic, or if the industry is overreaching in a way that'll quickly backfire. In The Question Bucket, we mull over how boring it can be to play a "bad" character in a video game, the ongoing debate over whether you can like a game when its creators are shitty, and more.

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It's taken too long, but the second installment in Waypoint 101, where we revisit old games and have a community discussion about them, is here. Austin, Rob, Danielle, and Patrick have played through the first six chapters of Wolfenstein: The New Order, in anticipation of the game's sequel, The New Colossus, arriving later this month. (And also because the real world is, weirdly, full of Nazis again?) There are abundant spoilers, obviously, as we discuss how The New Order was perceived when it arrived in 2014, catching most by surprise, and how 2017's political context has changed perceptions of the game. We'll be back with a second, final episode in two weeks.

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If you're the kind of person who gets a nostalgia hit listening to the sign-on sound from old AIM clients—yes, the one where the door opens—you're going to enjoy our long conversation about the recent announcement AIM will shut down later this year. Austin, Rob, and Patrick discuss the awkward teenage crushes that played out over the messaging service, before using BuzzFeed's recent piece about the origins of the alt-right website Breitbart as a means of re-examining GamerGate, three years after it all started. (Since this podcast was recorded, the VICE employee mentioned in BuzzFeed's story has been fired. Also, Austin's Internet magically turned back on.)

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If games are the furthest thing from your mind right now, no one could blame you. It's why Austin, Danielle, Rob, and Patrick couldn't start Waypoint Radio without reflecting on the (still unfolding) events in Las Vegas, where a mass shooter killed at least 58 people and wounded 500 others on Sunday night. There aren't words for a moment like this, but we try to find them. Elsewhere, we discuss Golf Story, Forza Motorsport 7, Danielle's love of a visual novel about gay baseball players, and answer a Question Bucket email about games based on our favorite albums.

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Does it really count as the 100th episode when we publish two episodes a week? Is that cheating? Whatever, we’re going with it. Danielle, Danika, Austin, Rob, and Patrick all jumped on microphones today to discuss the nuances of the unreleased film Skybound, a movie where (wait for it) the ground disappears, for an uncomfortably long time. After that, we reminisce about Vice Gaming’s New Podcast, before opening up The Question Bucket.

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With Danielle still on vacation, Rob, Austin, and Patrick huddled together for a quiet, easy episode of the podcast, where Austin would tell us about the surprisingly smart sci-fi Hitman-like game, Echo, and Rob would update on his terrible drinking habits. Instead, both happened, and a question about how to effectively protest took us down a long and winding road about the politics of golf courses, Trump's tweets about the NFL, the exploitation of black athletes, and more. It's a doozy.

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We discuss the odd threat against Epic Games about PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds vs Fortnite, the crappy humor of South Park, and more.

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​With Austin back from vacation, he joins Patrick and Rob to discuss his experience accidentally playing a fog game of PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds with a complete stranger, resulting in Austin chasing down another player, ala Jason Voorhees. Elsewhere, Rob recounts this weekend's botched attempt to play a board game, thanks to a woeful misreading of a bottle's label, and what motivated Patrick to murder an entire bar in Dishonored 2: Death of the Outsider.

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With Austin and Danielle both on vacation, the ol’ Waypoint Radio microphones are only pointed at Patrick and Rob today. Fortunately, there’s plenty to talk about, as we work through our feelings on the campaign in Destiny 2, and whether Bungie should seriously consider ditching a “campaign” for Destiny 3, or whatever they call the next one. Elsewhere, we gush over the new Dishonored 2 add-on, Death of the Outsider, and answer a reader question about the best kinds of games to play when you don’t have much time to game.

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It's a full crew on Waypoint Radio today, with Austin, Patrick, Danielle, and Rob huddling around a microphone to discuss our thoughts on the weekend's big, crappy event: while streaming PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, the most popular YouTube personality, PewDiePie, used the N-word. Heads up: Several times during the whole podcast, Austin says the word in full.

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