KILL SCREEN 036 // Phase 1: Dylan Walker of FULL O…

SUBSCRIBE TONIGHT prime video

Photo by A.J. Kinney

Back in 2022—before Kill Screen was even in alpha—Decibel’s nerdiest full-time staffers found themselves shirking their Metal & Beer Fest duties (sorry, Albert) in favor of an extended and animated talk with an equally procrastinating Dylan Walker, vocalist for grindcore heroes of legend Full of Hell. The topic? You know what column you’re reading. With series-favorite Elden Ring having been released just four months prior, we three couldn’t help but spend the next hour plus gushing about From Software’s latest masterpiece as well as compare notes some of indie gaming’s hidden gems waiting to be mined. Responsibilities eventually caught up with us and the discussion had to be put on pause, raring to be picked up again at a later date.

Nearly two years on, Kill Screen now hard-coded into Decibel’s editorial content and Full of Hell’s newest LP offering Coagulated Bliss set for release, Walker’s appearance as a player character is as welcome as it is inevitable. What wasn’t anticipated, however, was the sheer breadth of conversation to be shared with the like-minded grinder. Clocking in at roughly two hours of footage, not mentioning the freeform continuation once the recording stopped, our interview with Walker has easily soared the top of the leaderboard to claim the new high score in terms word count. Rather than editing out what we consider to be a compelling dialogue that paints a deep, pixelated portrait of our guest, we’re doing what every memorable boss battle pulls—breaking this up into phases. What follows is the first part of our JRPG-sized meeting with the lifelong digital devotee. If you’re ready for Walker’s final form, be sure to return in one week for our thrilling conclusion to this column’s debut episodic entry (or sign up for our newsletter so you don’t have to remember, just saying).

What was your first gaming experience?
I was born in 1990, so my mom brought home some kind of old desktop computer that operated on DOS and it had Metroid on it. She worked in this factory and one of the guys there was a computer guy, so she let me try that out. I didn’t get a console until, like, the year the N64 came out. I got a Super Nintendo and that was when it was real, because we only borrowed the the DOS computer for Metroid for a little bit. But I distinctly remember it being my first.

My parents, for no real tangible reason, were super anti-video game, and my grandma—of course, as good grandmas do—introduced that thing that the parents don’t want in the house. I’m 34 now and I absolutely still love the medium, so it was the right decision to give them to me.

When you finally got a console, was it a point of contention between you and your parents? Did they not want you to get hooked on this too soon?
I think that was it. The idea of being glued to a screen probably didn’t appeal to them. There was probably contention, but I was so young, I don’t really remember. I was definitely obsessed and I do remember that it was in my room, too. That didn’t stick around for very long. As I got older, I remember video games in the room was a big no-no—no TV in the room. I do remember Donkey Kong Country 3 in particular. I played it before the other two and to this day, there’s something about those illustrated backgrounds, I’m a big sucker. Any pre-rendered anything from that era up to the PlayStation, I love it so much. Also, how about the music in Donkey Kong Country? Like, all of them. All of the soundtracks are fucking crazy. Especially with the limitations at the time. It wasn’t like a fully-orchestrated soundtrack—it was all MIDI. It’s a collecting platformer, there’s not much to it, but the music is timeless, for sure.

What are you playing now and what do you typically prefer to play?
I was always an RPG guy growing up—like, JRPGs. Unfortunately, I’ve come to the realization that maybe I’ve kind of grown out of that. The ones I loved, I love. But I can’t really play new ones that would have that nostalgic format or whatever. Nowadays, I’m just mainly on my Steam Deck. I always wanted a PC, but just never really had one. The Steam Deck, I was super gassed about it—pre-ordered it, like, immediately. Loving that. I do have an Xbox, but I can’t even be bothered to sell it. It feels like a brick to me. I don’t even use it, I really regret buying it. But the Steam Deck’s the way to go. There’s so many AAA games to play, but the real meat of it was the indie stuff that I couldn’t get on a console. Right now, I’m playing the Final Fantasy VII Remake, which I hated when it came out, but I’ve come back around to try it again. It was on sale—Steam sales are insane—and I think I’m taking it at face value and I’m enjoying it this time. I hated it when it came out. I was like, This sucks. That’s one of my favorite games of all time, so I just wanted to feel that again and it’s very different.

What was the big sticking point for the remake?
I knew I was gonna feel a way about certain details no matter what. When you played a text-based game when you were a kid—I mean, this goes the same way when you read a book and then watch the movie—you put this mental vibe in your head of what the characters are supposed to sound like or what their delivery is. I actually think some of the voice acting is really good, but some of it, even when I’m playing it now and I’m being forgiving, it’s fucking embarrassing. Some of the voice actors, like the Sephiroth voice actor, I’m just like… I’m not a casting director or anything like that, but god damn, it’s legitimately horrible. I didn’t like the battle system at all. I’m still not crazy about it and it felt really linear, which is ironic because the original game is super linear. But there was something about doing it again. I think it was a new enough experience that the stuff I tolerated as a kid in a new little thing feels bad. But I also hated any of the expanded universe stuff, which—on a replay—a lot of it does make sense. A lot of the side character stuff, it’s like they’re expanding on one or two lines in the original game. I feel like they are mostly giving a lot of respect to the original game.

As I’ve gotten older, too, I don’t want to hate stuff. I realized that my taste in video games was unintentionally stupidly narrow, so I’m trying not to judge stuff like that so harshly anymore. I just played Final Fantasy VIII—not to stick on that series—but when I replayed VIII this year on Steam Deck, I was struck by how I understand why people hated the protagonist Squall so much. I used to kind of ride for that one because I just thought it was really fun and I played it at the right age, but people’s criticisms also, I’m finding why they’re valid. I get it, I’m okay with it.

You said that your parameters for video games were pretty narrow. What were these parameters? What was so narrow about them?
I mean, I hit it with JRPGs so early that I was like, This is my shit. It’s got to be really long, it’s got to be open-ended. In the character development, I want to be able to put gear on my characters. I feel like there wasn’t really a good reason for that. I liked other styles of games, but also maybe [in my] late 20s, I felt like, I don’t know if I’ll ever feel like my new favorite game is coming out ever again. I learned over the past bunch of years [that] my new favorites are still coming out. My favorite game was Final Fantasy VII, but there’s a bunch of games now that I’ve been moved [by]. I’ve been moved by video games now so much more significantly, emotionally, than any of the stuff I played when I was a kid. There’s stuff that’s rocked my soul and gives me a lot of excited feelings. Now I’m trying different things.

What are some of these games that you feel recently have really impacted you?
Well, I want to say this beforehand, too: I think the industry’s changed so much that developers have the opportunity to present a story that isn’t Saran-wrapped. Those Final Fantasy stories are awesome, but they’re clearly video game stories.

I’ll give you the three that have rocked my world. The first one I remember being like, Holy fucking shit, Elder Scrolls sucks compared to this, was The Witcher 3 when it came out. That was a while ago, but I specifically remember being like, The lore kind of sucks, this is the cheesiest-looking shit ever. I guess I’ll try this, because it had gotten so many awards. I was just so thunderstruck at how intentional the story was and how good the side-questing was. I didn’t even care that the whole Witcher thing was kind of cheesy—it was so good. I really love Elder Scrolls for what it is, and it kind of ruined those games for a few years for me just because of how well made it was.

I also remember when [The Legend of Zelda:] Breath of the Wild came out, just being like, Every game sucks. This is the best open-world design I’ve ever experienced in my fucking life. I would have shit my pants as a kid. I’ve always just wanted a game where I could climb a tree or climb that cliff. Why am I limited? This isn’t an open world—this is a field with barriers around it. Breath of the Wild is, I think, such a work art. I’ve been playing Tears of the Kingdom a little more in the past couple months. I was almost too exhausted when it came out to really care, and now I’ve come back around to it and I think it’s even better. Those blew me away.

And then over COVID, I finally decided that I should try The Last of Us because I just, for some reason, never bothered. I enjoyed games like Resident Evil and stuff growing up, but I just never bothered with The Last of Us. The second one was coming out, so I tried the first one and I was blown away. I was like, This is really, really fucking amazing. This story is so well written. And then I got the second one. I’ve never in my life cried to a video game. That game, I played through it three times in a row start to finish—rocked my fucking soul. It was [during] COVID, so I was already not seeing my friends for years and I was already pretty depressed.

I respect other people’s opinions, but the backlash against that game? I would love to just beat the shit out of some of those incels that had problems with some of the through lines in that story. The people that didn’t understand the major plot points in that game who were so offended that they dared to kill off a major character—even though it was so in the wheelhouse. The whole point of that entire series, it made perfect sense. When I say a game that impacted me emotionally in a big way—I still don’t know if I’ll ever experience something like that game again. It’s un-fucking-believable. I couldn’t believe the feelings that I got from that game and how intense that game was to me. The trans through line in that game is so natural and beautiful and sad. Dude, that game is beyond a 10 to me. I couldn’t believe it. That’s my number one. Never would I have ever thought that something coming from Naughty Dog would be that world-shaking to me, and Part II was that for me. It’s just so perfect.

I was actually so fucking mad when I saw the backlash against that game for a lot of reasons, but the biggest one: The voice actor for Abby [Laura Bailey] had to delete her Twitter because she was just getting harassed so much. And it made me think like, What a travesty if these people decide not to develop a Part III. It was the number one HBO show, it sold so well, there’s no way it’s not happening.

And then the more-modern remaster of the first one killed it, too. That was super successful, even when they brought it back. I [James] feel like people are voting pretty hard with their wallet right there.
Also, Part II on a PS4 looks better than most current gen games still. It’s great. It just blew my mind. I feel like it was a master class. I have friends that don’t like those games for the gameplay loop, and I think that’s totally fair because it’s super predictable: You walk into this little maze and you clear the rooms. I thought those JRPGs I love—like Xenogears or Final Fantasy or Chrono Trigger, any of that stuff—those stories are amazing, but they’re cartoons. This is like, I felt something from that. I couldn’t believe it. It’s a grimy-ass, beautiful game.

I [Michael] will say I don’t enjoy Last of Us Part II because of that gameplay loop.
That makes sense. I totally get that’s valid. I just hated the transphobes.

It was the reason I [Michael] bought the game in the first place. I was like, I’m gonna play this for myself because these people are assholes. I think the true tragedy is if these voice actors get out of the industry because of this.
Yeah, totally. I can’t even imagine how infantile and melted your fucking monkey brain must be if you’re like, I’m gonna go on Twitter… Even now, today, you could go to [Naughty Dog co-president] Neil Druckmann’s Instagram [and see] people commenting, “Where the fuck is Part III? Fuck you!” Blah, blah, blah. Same with Valheim—another great game. Every time the Valheim devs very transparently post about an update that they’re working on, there’s just a bunch of fucking trolls that are like, “When’s Ashlands coming? Where is it? I’ve been waiting so long! You’re the worst company ever!” It’s like, Dude, what’s wrong with you? Get off the internet, it’s embarrassing.

I forgot. Maybe just as important as Last of Us Part II to me: Elden Ring fucked me up completely. I’ve always wanted to get into FromSoft games, but I’m part of the contingent where I don’t really enjoy that gameplay particularly. I want to, but it’s just not fun to me.

What about it is not fun?
I don’t really want to be challenged. [Laughs] I know it sounds pathetic, but I don’t want to be challenged that hard. Imagine a kid that just played turn-based RPGs being like, What the fuck? I’m supposed to die over and over until I get the rhythm down and find the hit boxes? I’ve tried all of them over the years repeatedly. I own half of them. I own a copy of Bloodborne and I get it now after playing Elden Ring so much, but I still just don’t enjoy it. Elden Ring, to me, is such a brilliant game. Bloodborne, I get that it’s a 10. It is a 10. It’s incredible, I’ve watched lore videos and everything, but when Elden Ring came out, I was like, Fuck it, I might as well try it. It looks incredible. Them going into an open world like that and approaching it the way they did was just the best possible thing they could have ever done because it introduced people like me or even people that are even worse at video games than me into this incredible universe. That [From Software president and game director Hidetaka] Miyazaki dude is a straight-up fucking genius. His team is so good, they know what they’re doing. I just think making it a little more accessible for people like me was a great idea. The way that world was built and just everything about it—every inch of it—was like if I was to design a fantasy world of my dreams. It’s beyond imagination. I think it’s so perfect. I can’t wait for the [Shadow of the Erdtree] DLC. That’s probably the only major one I forgot to mention.

Have you always had a burning interest in video games or were there times where you got busy with life and didn’t pay attention for a few years?
They were always around for me. I was always interested. There were gaps, a little bit of a lull, but that was more an economic thing for me. When the PS4 came around, I was in Full of Hell and I was just like, I have to do this. I had no fucking money at all, ever, and I just had no hope of having a PS4. I actually ended up getting a PS4. As I’m sure is the case with most people, I usually won’t get a next-gen system immediately for a lot of reasons, but I’ll wait until there’s a game where it’s like, I literally can’t not play this game. I waited until Skyrim was on PS4 and then figured out a way to get a used one. But no, all my life I’ve been into it and I was a little concerned thinking, There’s nothing out there for me anymore, maybe it’s just not for me. But again, that was years ago and I started checking out some other stuff and realizing the favorites are yet to come. I don’t think I see any end to it.

You mentioned with the Steam Deck that part of the appeal was access to the indie titles. What are some of the indie gems that you’ve come across?
Of my all-time favorite indies, Terraria is probably number one. I did own that previously on the PS Vita. The Vita is, like, a low-key insane system still. I had a friend put all the homebrew shit on me when COVID started and I was just overwhelmed—it was too much shit to even play. But I remember getting Terraria and just being like, I can’t believe this game costs $10 and I’ve put hundreds of hours into it. It just blew my mind. I played this game Starbound for a while. Not quite as good as Terraria, but a similar vibe. Stardew Valley I also own several copies of, so that was not a fresh one either. But that’s another one where it’s made by one guy. Can’t wait for his [Haunted Chocolatier] game to come out. I just think that guy’s incredible.

I also like the fact that you can play early access titles that are from indie developers. I was mentioning Valheim earlier. Valheim blew me away. I do revisit that one pretty regularly, and that’s made by a really small team. I feel like they use their limitations to their advantage. The way it has that really, really nice lighting, but the low-poly figures, it’s almost like there’s PS1 textures, but with ray tracing. I don’t even know how to explain it, but it looks insane and it’s just a work of art. That game Dave the Diver was really fun. Hollow Knight, really, really cool. That’s kind of got a Metroid-y/FromSoft-y vibe to me, but I struggled through that one. That’s absolutely beautiful. I’ve been running this game Enshrouded, which is in early access on there—pretty cool. It’s an open-world builder fantasy-type game, but it’s really taxing. It doesn’t even look that great, so I don’t really know where the problem is coming from. But it’s a pretty interesting game. I don’t know if you guys have heard of it, but the whole world is built out of blocks that you can break, so you can edit all of the terrain and the building system’s pretty sick.

The way I feel about indies on Steam is, like, this is the place where there’s actually a vehicle for indie devs to make whatever impractical, fantastical game that a big software developer would never cosign and get it published on Steam, and it can take off. It’s for the people. I was just tired of waiting for indie game stuff to get the port to Switch or to the PS4 or 5 or whatever, and you can run really janky early access. Sometimes the early access is amazing, but I want to be able to go in there and see what’s up, because a lot of that shit’s just never going to go to console. There’s no viability. They don’t want to even bother.

Do you ever see yourself going the desktop route?
No, I don’t. I don’t like sitting up when I play video games either. It’s like a holy experience to me almost. My routine now, I will work all day, intentionally not being comfortable so that I can take a shower, wash my face, brush my teeth, eat a snack, lay down in my perfect bed in the dark, get a little high maybe and just disappear into a game world. It’s the best experience ever. I don’t want to sit up, I don’t want to be uncomfortable. I used to have that feeling playing video games in school, too. I was like, Why the fuck wouldn’t I play video games in school? But it drains all of the joy out of it. It’s so weird for me. It ruins it completely because I’m in a setting that’s not comfortable. It sucks. I think there’s a huge element of comfort for me. I’m sure there’s probably ways to stream to the Steam Deck from from a PC even now, maybe. But nah, I don’t think so.

You’ve mentioned a lot of single-player games. Do you spend much time with multiplayer at all?
I hate playing games with other people. I mean, I kind of hate hanging out with other people. I don’t know if it’s because of the way I was raised. I was a single child until I was 10 and I never really played video games with my sibling growing up. I just made fun on my own and always had the single-player experience. I never liked sports games, I like very few racing games—pretty much just Mario Kart. I liked Tekken and Street Fighter, but I don’t like Smash Bros. or any of that stuff. I’m a pretty antisocial gamer. I don’t want to play with other people. I’ve just come to terms with it. My wife wants to play games with me, too—and I do that—but she knows that it’s my escape from reality and I want my personal connection with that world, and I want it to be my world. So, I just don’t enjoy it at all.

I’ve got a bunch of long-distance friends—best friends—that always try to get me to play. I vehemently hate Call of Duty, and my band loves to play Call of Duty. The Body loves to play Call of Duty and they’re always trying to get me to do it. I just feel like a dickhead, but I think the line’s drawn in the sand for me. I truly, 100 percent do not enjoy it. I don’t like looter-shooters and I really don’t like first-person shooters pretty much at all. There are exceptions, obviously, because there’s all kinds of first-person shooter games and some of them are pretty sick. I’ve questioned, How much do I really love video games if I don’t play all of these things that all these people like? I don’t like sport games. I would say I don’t like competitive games at all. I’m just not interested. I want to relax.

If you don’t enjoy the big, new action film or something, does that mean you don’t like movies? No—you just like something else. Even watching some people on Twitch, I [James] was like, I can see why this is enjoyable to hang out with your friends. I don’t think I want to do that at all. It’s not my thing.
I actually can’t even fathom playing a game where other people watch me play. I really think it’s a very pure, sacred, solo experience for me. I don’t want to share with anybody else. I think that’s why it took me so long to catch on to FromSoft: When I’m playing these games, I want it to be this almost relaxing experience, even when it’s scary, like The Last of Us or Resident Evil. There’s a weird level that’s soothing.

I really get a bug to play video games the month or two before a tour. I think it’s because I’m getting anxious about having to be around people and I want to escape. I’ll always try to bring video games on tour and it’s always a waste. I brought my Steam Deck on one tour and it’s so fucking big and expensive. I played it for, like, 20 minutes the whole tour.

And it really depends on the tour, too. If it’s a place I want to be—which nowadays, thankfully, most of the touring we do is pretty fun, goes well and we’re touring with bands I really like—if that’s the scenario, then I really don’t have any interest in anything like that. If the tour is a drag or if I’m depressed or homesick or whatever, it can be nice. I’m more open to bringing the PS Vita, which still runs great and has all those ROMs on it. I can just do a Chrono Trigger playthrough or something, enjoy my time. I’ll do the same thing with books. If the tour is kind of a drag, if I’m just homesick or something—which is normal—it’s so comforting. It’s rare, though. Generally, I’m gonna leave it at home nowadays. I’ll probably bring the Vita with me next month just in case, but it’s so small comparatively.

You can carry one in a glorified glasses case.
They’re still pretty powerful, too. Underappreciated! I feel like it didn’t get its go. I feel like they found it wasn’t a big money maker for them, and they just abandoned it. And it’s got Bluetooth. Dude, I was so confused when I got a Nintendo Switch [and it] not having Bluetooth. I don’t know if the OLED models have Bluetooth—I have a gen 1 still—but I guess it’s because of the detachable controllers or something. Nintendo’s kind of obtuse. I’m sure you guys like some Nintendo stuff, but they’re fucking assholes They hate the online community. They sue everybody. I get it, a huge bootlegging video game company, they sued them for millions of dollars or something. But that’s their thing. They’re so litigious. They hate streamers. It’s like they don’t even get it—and they don’t have to, because it’s like [a] gold standard.

Nintendo is this pillar. They’ve got these crazy IPs or whatever. Everybody loves Nintendo, but Nintendo does not bat a thousand and their fucking online library sucks now. The WiiU? Do you guys remember that? It had this online marketplace that had pretty much the full digital library of all those old consoles. And then when they migrated over to Switch, they just restarted it and they trickled out games for an online subscription series. I was just like, This is bullshit. You guys suck.

And you can’t transfer your purchases over, which pissed me [James] off! I had purchased some stuff on the WiiU and I was like, Awesome, as soon as I start up the Switch, I’ll be able to play Mario RPG and stuff. Nope. I was so mad.
That’s crazy. I don’t know if you guys have ever watched a [documentary] about where Nintendo came from, but it was, like, semi-yakuza affiliated. They just made playing cards and maybe dice, too, back in the day. I have this theory that there are just a couple little business practices that have kept them competitive and in the black because they’re operating like a fucking organized crime unit still. There’s some guy at the top that’s just like, “Fuck the kids. Get as much money as you can out of them. No sales—all your video games have to be 50 to 70 dollars forever.” I’ll always end up in Nintendo’s pocket at some point, but I’m not a fan. It drives me crazy. The way they run Nintendo is insane.

Honestly, Nintendo is just the Disney of video games. For the family-friendly image that they have in their series, that’s how they can afford to be as litigious as they are. Going after bootleggers? Not surprised. But going after streamers? That was a contentious thing 10 years ago, but then everybody realized that that helped sell games more.
It’s part of the culture! It’s crazy. That’s just the way they’re running that company—super old-school style, I guess. It’s fucking crazy, though. I don’t get it.

I feel like the gaming industry is in a really weird place right now. There’s such a push into new technology and games are so big and there are [developers] like Larian [Studios]. Baldur’s Gate 3 is literally perfect and a thousand times better than any game as far as being done when it comes out. Did you see devs were actually mad at them? They were just like, “It’s unrealistic.” It’s really weird. There’s something gnarly going on, because even companies [that] clearly have good people, they’re just being crunched harder than ever. I feel like there’s so much more required to make these next-gen, super massive worlds. It’s not sustainable. CD Projekt Red, great example: That’s the most infamous roll out of a game now ever because Cyberpunk [2077] was just so hyped and so terrible on launch. They were a really celebrated developer. People worshiped the ground they walked on. And it was just because they got pushed so fucking hard to get the game out so quick. On the flip side, all the players, the customers, just bitch non-stop day and night if a game doesn’t come out as fast as they want it to. FromSoft is great, but most of them are fucking up. Like Naughty Dog: The Last of Us [remaster] ran really, really, really fucking bad on Steam when it came out, to the point where everybody was like, “Don’t buy it, speak with your wallets!” And they nuked it, basically. It runs fine now.

Dragon’s Dogma 2, everybody was psyched about that and all the early impressions were like, “Yo, this is crazy.” And then they discovered a microtransaction thing that was put in there. All these big games that should be semi-functional are coming out and they need a million patches. The day one patch is, like, a thousand gigabytes. You know what I mean? That’s exaggerating, but I don’t know what’s going on.

There needs to be some kind of change because it feels bad at the top. All the AAA dudes are fumbling. Even Bethesda. I guess they’re kind of known for being wonky or whatever—which is part of why I like their games at all, is because they’re goofy as fuck. But I bought an Xbox to play Starfield, not really being that psyched that they were making a space game. I didn’t bother playing Fallout 76, I thought Fallout 4 kind of sucked. And then Starfield came out and I didn’t even buy it. I just tried it a little bit on Game Pass and I was like, This sucks. It’s so vanilla. It’s so fucking boring. They didn’t do anything new. I don’t even know if it’s in their new game engine or what, but it just felt like Fallout 4 with a new skin on it. It’s just so boring. I think that procedural generation thing and maybe A.I. tech in general, you can just tell when it’s not crafted by a person. It’s just so fucking copy/pasted that it’s just not cool at all. No Man’s Sky turned that shit around by making all kinds of other shit going on, but I was so turned off when I learned about procedural generation when that came out.

A big open world is cool, but if you run around in nothingness for hours, eventually you’re gonna get bored. And you do that in five or six games, you’re real tired of that. Whereas if you have something where you feel like you have the right amount of exploration—like you were saying with Elden Ring—things feel like they all have a purpose.
Yeah, they’re trying to fill your time appropriately instead of just literally trying to waste your time with fake openness. I don’t hate on them for doing these things, though. I’m sure it’s extremely challenging making these games and there’s so many other factors. I just can’t imagine having—for these big guys—so many hands on a game. A bunch of them have really good intentions. The genesis of the game, the ideas at the beginning could be incredible. And then people at the top being like, “No, you need to make it more like this so it hits this metric that everybody loves right now, that we’re seeing huge trends with this,” by the time all that shit gets wrapped through and then it gets crunched really hard, it could just be a big, old, steaming piece of shit. It sucks. Movies do the same [thing], like the Marvel movie syndrome. It’s the same shit. I can’t even play some AAA games that I might enjoy because I feel like they’re just doing that stupid-ass run-between-checkpoints, climb-up-this-tower [quests] like Horizon: Forbidden West. The first one was pretty cool for maybe 15, 20 hours to me, and then I was just like, It just feels so AAA, I just can’t even play it. It’s just too boring. I just feel like I’ve played this before a hundred times.

Another example of the incel community coming together to rally against shit that doesn’t matter. Do you remember that?
Were they shrieking about that one, too?

Because the protagonist [Aloy] isn’t a traditionally hyper-attractive femme.
That’s crazy. Like, what the fuck are you doing here? Get the fuck out of the room. It’s pretty unbearable. Nothing’s gonna get me more than The Last of Us II thing. Those people are just so full of hate, it’s fucking crazy. The fact that they’re brave enough to say that shit online in that community, you know what I mean?

But it’s the antithesis of bravery. It’s just harassment with zero consequence. There’s no spine to it.
I was particularly offended by that. I was so impacted by it and I thought it was so beautiful and well-written that it really offended me. How do you not get this? It’s not complicated. Read a fucking book, watch a movie that isn’t a Marvel movie. Maybe you’ll understand. A lot of subculture communities suck. So goes it.

What parallels, if any, do you see between extreme metal communities and video game communities?
I mean, there are a lot of parallels. The things that I like about the one definitely translate to the other. Over the years, some of my favorite experiences have been finding people that love these video games that meant so much to me in my little private world, and also grindcore or Finnish death metal or noise or whatever. The Venn diagram is very overlapping. It’s really sick. I always end up talking whoever’s ear off, like at Decibel Fest. I didn’t even do my job for, like, hours. I was like, I should have been selling merch, and I was like, These guys want to talk about video games. I’m not walking away. That’s the cool part about it. I love when it transcends mediums, you know?