Backlog Dialogues

Backlog Dialogues, a new video game discussion podcast that aims to dig you out of your backlog BEFORE it buries you! Come meet the assholes responsible for this mess. John, Jared, and Matt introduce themselves, lay out the goals for the show and introduce their first discussion project, which is the entire saga(to date) of Kingdom Hearts! Don't worry folks, this one's actually pretty easy. Enjoy roundtable discussion, random digressions, and an obsession with trivia that can't be that healthy, but hopefully fun!

Let's start discussing Kingdom Hearts right, by jumping in at the very beginning, with a dream-like Dive to the Heart, followed by wandering around Destiny Islands! Any story lives and dies with its cast, so its time to introduce them Meet resident good boy Sora, his moody boyfriend Riku, and mysterious cute girl Kairi, as well as some fan favorite Final Fantasy characters, including Tidus, Wakka, Selphie, and, of course, Donald Duck. That's right folks, you heard it here first, Ducks are from Final Fantasy. So listen now to see our trio uncover this, and other cosmic secrets. Also Goofy appears!

Weird stuff starts to happen to Sora as he shows up in Traverse Town! It's a Final Fantasy town as seen through a Disney filter, and it has a bunch of Final Fantasy characters sent through the Disney filter as well! Sora meets Yuffie and Squall- er, Leon, and Donald and Goofy meet Aerith. Riku gets lost in the void. Sora joins up with Donald and Goofy and learns Final Fantasy magic from Donald.

Discussion takes us and Sora through three Disney Worlds, Wonderland, Olympus Coliseum, and Deep Jungle. We learn about the nature of level design in Kingdom Hearts and its many Chaos Mazes. Sora is given a very brief crash course on the stories of Alice in Wonderland and Tarzan and trains to be a hero under Hercules. Also, Cloud from Final Fantasy is here!

We set out to experience the next pair of Disney worlds, Agrabah and Monstro. Sora meets a stiffly animated Genie, then gets eaten by a giant whale. John lays out the reason the most dangerous characters in a setting are the ones that know the most lore. We start to see Riku is on some shit. Someone needs to call him on that

Sora, Donald and Goofy become horrific abominations, but still are not as terrifying as the swimming controls in Atlantica. Then they only manage to become mildly spoopy as they work out the first principles of Kingdom Hearts with Jack Skellington in Halloween Town. Finally they learn to fly in Neverland without ever actually going there. We learn the secrets that only kings about other worlds, but it makes them highly paranoid. Riku is still on his shit. 

Kingdom Hearts is BACK, bay-bee! Sora, Donald, and Goofy make it to the ruins of Hollow Bastion, which is the best part of Kingdom Hearts 1. Sora loses some friends through Riku being a jerk to him again. Luckily he gets bailed out by making a big fluffy BADASS friend in The Beast. Sora learns proper combat strategy by letting his friends be his power. Then Sora also makes a bunch of characters in the most important scene in the entire series, but that's not important right now. John, Jared, and Matt decide to start injecting amateur voice acting for line reads and have too much fun to stop.

Boy, last episode was a little heavy, huh? Let's try switching tracks, and dealing with existential dread of a different kind in the Hundred Acre Woods! Come along with Winnie the Pooh and the people he torments and yet calls friends. After, we return to Hollow Bastion and discuss the cuteness of Behemoths. And also read off a bunch of Ansem Reports, because LORE.

We reach the end of our journey through Kingdom Hearts. John goes nuts with completion, resulting in a discussion of crafting and optional bosses. Then we traverse through the End of the World and face off against Chernobog(watch Jared's inner music nerd go nuts!). At last, we finally confront Ansem, Seeker of Darkness, and prove that, Without a Doubt, Kingdom Hearts is Light.
And then we get a preview of what is to come.

We take a break from Kingdom Hearts to discuss one of the best action video games of the last decade, Hades! Meet Zagreus, loveable but fumbling Disaster Bisexual giving the entire underworld a headache, and his many... friends? Bouldy is a friend, at least. Listen to Bouldy. Love Bouldy. Bouldy is always there for you.