I may have rewritten this description four times at this point, because it's hard to sum up my feelings today. This is Austin’s last podcast as host of Waypoint Radio. We're all going to miss him on these podcasts, from his incisive analysis to jovial enthusiasm, he put so much of himself into Waypoint and Waypoint Radio over the last five years. And now he's moving on to greater and better things, but not without one last episode. We'll miss you Austin!
A 3hr 3min runtime. 5 star podcast, 5 star runtime! I wouldn’t want it any other way.
I can’t wait to listen to this. I have a long drive today so this will be perfect for it! I’ll miss you Austin, and excited to see/hear what you’re doing next.
This is Austin’s last episode of the podcast, so we wanted to set some guidelines for conversations. We want to emphasize the importance of Rule 10 especially.
Remember that the games journalism community is small, our community is visible, and other personalities have been active here—treat them like you would any other member…
Do not eulogize or dramatize Austin’s departure. We understand that there are numerous emotions present, but this is a shared and public space. Despite the best of intentions, it can be awkward to navigate and no member should be put on the spot like that.
Spent part of my day listening to the pod and distributing literature for the NDP for the upcoming Canadian election. Felt like an appropriate way to send off Austin. Fuck capitalism, go home (and vote left)!
Great last pod, really touching and to the point sign off.
Enormously excited for where the crew can take Waypoint, and excited for Austin whatever he is up too, and happy he will still be around for Friends and Civilised.
The discussion of Warioware’s price made me think that I haven’t seen anyone discuss the fact that Metroid Dread is going to be $60. Metroidvanias have been the exclusive domain of the indie space for a while so they’re mostly in the $15-$20 price range. Even Bloodstaind: Ritual of the Night was only $40. I’m curious if they’re even going to attempt to justify Dread costing four times as much as Hollow Knight.
Did anyone else get Rob’s botched take ad for butcher box? I got two ads in a row, the “normal” butcher box ad and then another one with no background music and Rob stuttering and resetting halfway through.
Stardew Valley costs a tiny fraction of Animal Crossing (not really the same genre of game exactly but much of the same audience), and the latter sold millions upon millions more, so I think Metroid Dread will ultimately be fine.
I think the issue with Nintendo games lately isn’t that they’re “fine”. The new Yoshi game or the new WarioWare or the new Mario Golf all are good for what they are. The problem is that they’re all $60 fucking dollars, so they can’t be “fine”, they have to be extraordinary. Most people can only buy like 4-6 $60 games a year, usually less than that. So if you’re not killing it with a stone-cold masterpiece, you’re fucking up, Nintendo.
Just sell Pokemon Snap for a reasonable price, dudes.
Also, I will miss Austin badly and his last word on the podcast was brilliant as usual.
Shout out to Patrick for pushing that runtime to the 5-star limit it deserved.
I finally finished this episode last night in bed, and I was fine until Austin broke. His farewell was the reason I will miss him on the pod, I don’t want to spend an hour trying to word it, but I’m sure that most people who listen know what I mean. It also featured a pitch from Austin for a game that put it directly onto my wishlist, a wild set of stories, an extended tangent on something mildly game-related, and a good dip into the question bucket, so all over great final episode for Austin.
Finally, so as to not make this whole reply about Austin, I’m so happy for how positive Rob is on Judgment, I really love that game. I had basically the same experience as him, where I played it far enough after release that I could look up guides for any bit that was giving me trouble. Super excited to hear his thoughts on the finale, and (especially) his feelings on the sequel.
Happy trails, Austin. Thanks for building the space for grown up discussion of video games I could never find elsewhere. I’ll miss getting to hear you talk about games twice a week, but can’t wait to see what’s next.
Was interesting hearing Austin finish by talking about there being a backlash to criticism lately. It’s something I have noticed too and wonder if it is driven in part by the COVID pandemic. There seems to a bit of an attitude of ‘life sucks, I’m stuck inside, just let me enjoy my thing, I don’t want to think about it critically’.
